Introduction
In 634, monk Aidan established a monastery on the ‘holy island’ of Lindisfarne in Northumbria. Aidan taught King Oswiu’s chaplains the traditions of the monastery founded by Columba, an Irishman, on Iona in western Scotland; but Oswiu’s Queen came from Kent, and her chaplains kept the Roman ways brought by St Augustine to Canterbury. At last, Oswiu could stand the bickering no more.
THE strife between the two parties rose so high at last that Oswiu was prevailed upon to summon in 664 a great council at Whitby, where the future ecclesiastical allegiance of England should be decided.* The points actually contested were trivial enough. Colman, Aidan’s successor at Holy Island, pleaded for the Irish fashion of the tonsure,* and for the Irish time of keeping Easter;* Wilfrid pleaded for the Roman. The one disputant appealed to the authority of Columba, the other to that of St Peter.*
“You own,” cried the king at last to Colman, that Christ gave to Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven?* Has He given such power to Columba?” The bishop could but answer “No.”
“Then will I rather obey the porter of Heaven,” said Oswiu, “lest when I reach its gates he who has the keys in his keeping turn his back on me, and there be none to open.”* The importance of Oswiu’s judgment was never doubted at Lindisfarne, where Colman, followed by the whole of the Irish-born brethren and thirty of their English fellows, forsook the see of Aidan and sailed away to Iona.
* The monastery was founded in 657 by St Aidan, and given into the capable hands of a nun of royal blood, Hild, who had acquired a formidable reputation as a woman of kindness, learning and sound judgment. See St Hild at Whitby.
* Tonsure is the practice of initiating a new monk, which in the mediaeval West involved a ritual shaving of the head. The Irish and Roman parties did not do this in the same way, in effect branding each monk as belonging to one of the two rival factions.
* Much to their irritation, King Oswiu and Queen Eanflæd kept Easter on different days. At the Council of Nicaea in 325, the assembled bishops (including bishops from what was then Roman Britannia) had agreed that Easter would be celebrated every year on a Sunday, that Jewish calendars would not be unthinkingly relied on, and that a calculation to fix a shared date would be found. That task was eventually fulfilled by the fifth-century Alexandrian Paschalion, and dutifully adopted by the Roman Church. As Colman testified, the isolated Irish Church had not implemented any of this. See also Bede and the Paschal Controversy.
* Colman also claimed St John the Evangelist on his side, arguing that he, like the Irish Church, kept Easter on the anniversary of Christ’s Passion regardless of the day of the week on which it fell. The Romans and the Greeks had a three-day feast, lasting from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, whereas the Irish crammed everything into one day.
* Oswiu is referring to a passage in Matthew 16:19, where Jesus gives the keys of the kingdom of heaven to St Peter.
* The background to the ‘keys of the kingdom’ lies in a prophecy of Isaiah 22:22, from which the knowledgeable Oswiu takes his choice of words here.
Précis
In 664, King Oswiu of Northumbria called a church synod at Whitby. Some Christians in his realm had been taught by Irish missionaries, some by Roman, and there were quarrels, especially on the date of Easter. When the King found that the Romans traced their customs to St Peter, and the Irish only to St Columba, he backed the Roman side. (61 / 60 words)
In 664, King Oswiu of Northumbria called a church synod at Whitby. Some Christians in his realm had been taught by Irish missionaries, some by Roman, and there were quarrels, especially on the date of Easter. When the King found that the Romans traced their customs to St Peter, and the Irish only to St Columba, he backed the Roman side.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: about, besides, must, not, or, ought, unless, whether.
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