Chapter IV: Abbots, Abyesses, and Coed Monasteries

 With the decline of the Roman Empire of the East, the Church retreated in the face of Anglo– Saxon invasions, consolidating in the Southwest, West, and Northwest of England, and in Ireland. From there it maintained contacts not so much with Rome—which had been sacked, pillaged, and largely destroyed in a series of barbarian invasions—but rather with the Churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Constantinople.

Archaeological excavations indicate that during this period, the British conducted a flourishing trade with those parts of the world. British Primates—such as St. David, Dewi Sant—were traditionally consecrated not by the Pope, but by the Patriarchs of Jerusalem.

From its strongholds in the West, the British Church moved out to convert not only the Anglo– Saxon invaders, but the population of the continent of Europe as well. It was the Celtic Church —not Rome—that evangelized Europe from the Alps to the Scandinavian border. When, for instance, St. Boniface—the Saxon monk known as the Apostle of Germany—arrived there in the 7th Century, he found a large and flourishing Celtic Church whose sway extended from Burgundy, through Germany, Switzerland, and Austria to the Italian border.

Boniface, I might add, earned his title as the title of “apostle” not so much by converting the heathen as by cutting political deals on the Pope’s behalf with the secular authorities to suppress the Celtic Church—which had actually done the converting. It is tempting to argue that the Celtic Church left a lasting impression on the peoples that it converted to Christ. Can it be, for example, entirely coincidental that the Reformation sprang up and took root in the regions converted to Christianity by the Celtic Church? There are definite parallels between doctrines enunciated by English theologians of the 7th and 8th Centuries and doctrines expounded by the more moderate English reformers of the 16th Century.

This would seem to offer a rich field for scholarly research, and it would be interesting to learn if any recent doctoral dissertations have been produced on the topic.

We know a good deal about the manner in which the British Church operated. It was a loosely structured organization, centered around a number of great abbeys. These abbeys sent out the missionaries and parochial clergy. The most powerful ecclesiastics in the British Church were not bishops, but abbots and, on occasion, abbesses, such as the redoubtable Hilda, who hosted the Synod of Whitby at her abbey in A.D. 664.

Rarely was an abbot also a bishop. Columba, the Apostle of Scotland, for example, was an abbot, but never a bishop. Aidan, the Apostle of Britain (Lindisfarne, A.D. 635) was for long a bishop, but not an abbot. Bishops lived in abbeys under the authority of the abbot. Like Aidan, they were often sent out as missionaries.

British religious houses differed greatly from their Roman and Greek counterparts. It was by no means unusual for abbeys to be populated by both male and female religious. There is also persuasive evidence that married couples also formed an integral part of some religious communities. St. Hilda’s great abbey of Whitby, for instance, had two huge dormitories—one for monks and another for nuns—while married couples appear to have been accommodated in individual houses or huts.

Like the orthodox churches, the secular clergy seem almost invariably to have been married. This practice continued well into the 13th Century in England, while in Wales it was never abandoned. It is recorded that many Welsh Parish priests were shocked when the English reformers informed them that they might now marry: They had never given up the practice.

The British Church’s coeducational abbeys and its policy with regard to clerical marriage have been cited by both by Romanist partisans and anti–monastic Protestants as evidence that the British Church was corrupt, and its clergy debauched and depraved. Perplexingly, many modern historians seem to take these claims at face value. Such notions are hard to reconcile with the fruits of the British Church’s labors. How could a corrupt Church and a depraved clergy have been so zealous in its efforts to convert the heathen? And how could they have been so remarkably successful in this endeavor?