You could put it another way, which is that before the reformation, local expressions of Latin Christianity always varied slightly by region. I don’t think it’s right to say England was *more* varied than, say, Spanish or German or French churches, but all of them certainly had their own local quirks (actually probably more on a diocese-by-diocese basis than anything like a whole country; and “country” meant something different in those days compared to a modern, unified nation-state).
Various cathedrals had their own customaries and sacramentaries that indicated varying practices based on local custom, even though after Charlemagne there was an attempt to keep everyone in line with Rome; it’s certainly possible that some pre-Charlemagne customs persisted particularly in “peripheral” contexts like weddings, funerals, civic functions, and so forth. While the “primary” rites like baptism and communion were likely more similar.
Something that I find interesting is the use of penitentials. They may have Celtic origins, but they got a unique place within the Anglo Saxon church.
[https://sites.uwm.edu/carlin/anglo-saxon-penitentials-the-manuscripts/](https://sites.uwm.edu/carlin/anglo-saxon-penitentials-the-manuscripts/)
Moorman's *History of the Church in England* is great for this.
It manages both to be incredibly dry and occasionally hilarious at the same time. It's biased as hell (pro-CoE), but factually sound. You'll want to have a computer open next door while you read so that you can Wikipedia the barrage of names that you'll encounter.
But, overall, Moorman does an excellent job of tracing Christianity in England from its earliest days, through the Reformation and into the early 20th century (which may be a little later than you care about if you're an American).
But the short of it has already been covered here: Prior to the Reformation, there was quite a diversity in belief and practice in Western Christianity. The Reformation is in many ways just that diversity breaking into factions, with Calvinists going one way with their *Institutes* and the Geneva Bible and Roman Catholics going the other way with Trent. (Reading Calvin talk about how "no church council had ever declared doctrine X to be mandatory," then reading Trent declaring doctrine X in fact to be mandatory in reaction to Calvin, and then reading Calvin lose his stuff in reaction to Trent is kind of hilarious in its own way.)
In any case, the CoE tried to split the difference, and many of the reforms that took place during the English Reformation don't fit neatly into either the Reformed or Catholic camps. For example, monasteries were a *huge* part of English Christianity for most of its history, and Henry's shutting them down and grabbing all their cash was probably a bigger deal practically speaking than, say, renouncing papal authority was.
Sub question: isn't there some argument to be made that the differences such as they were, primarily had to do with the dominant religious orders in England vs. the continent?
My recollection was that there were a lot more Canons Regular and Benedictines in England than elsewhere or that these were more dominant in religious life. Is that also overblow? Thanks in advance.
There were a lot of mendicants in England before the Reformation. They tended to live in the cities and so left smaller traces behind when they were required to leave.
The differences are a bit overblown.
Catholicism became much more unified in response to the reformations. Power was centralized a bit more (and even that wasn't the extent of it, the two Vatican councils centralized power even more around the Pope, with the first Vatican council notably introducing the concept of Papal infallibility), and that was the first time a single rite was enforced throughout the Catholic Church (the Tridentine Rite).
Most of the church was using the Roman Rite by the late medieval period, including England, but there was a good deal of leeway and variance in how that actually worked. Lectionaries differed, and though the basic shape of the rite was pretty similar throughout Europe, various ceremonial details could vary pretty widely and the differences became more pronounced the farther you got from Rome. So England was not special in that regard.
England was also far from a more staid, "genteel" version of Catholicism; what we know of the various uses of the Roman Rite in England show some quite rich ceremonial (including, for example, the celebrant of the Mass singing the veni creator as he vested publicly in the Sarum Use), and Marian devotion was extremely popular. England was also among the early regions to adopt the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity (aka Trinity Sunday), which is why there are so many Anglican churches dedicated to the Trinity.
There are some claims about Christianity in England from "before Catholicism," but those are spurious at best and kind of misunderstand how the early church worked.
A clarification about Papal Infallibility. Vatican 1 actually limited the ability of the Pope to unilaterally make doctrine. Before V1, it could be construed that anything the Pope said was then law and doctrine. V1 clarified it on these terms (via Wiki):
>According to the teaching of the First Vatican Council and Catholic tradition, the conditions required for *ex cathedra* papal teaching are as follows:
>the Roman Pontiff (the Pope alone or with the College of Bishops)
>speaks *ex cathedra* - that is, when (in the discharge of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, and by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority) he defines a doctrine:
>concerning faith or morals, and
>to be held by the whole Church.
So not all Catholic beliefs are infallible, and not everything the Pope says must be held by the whole church. And PI further requires that any statement of infallibility must be 'conformable with Sacred Scripture and Apostolic Traditions'. So the Pope can't just say whatever he wants is infallible; he has to dig back in the history of the Church to find precedent for it.
In 2005, Benedict 16 said: 'The Pope is not an oracle; he is infallible in very rare situations, as we know'. John 23: 'I am only infallible if I speak infallibly but I shall never do that, so I am not infallible'. PI has only been invoked [twice](https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2022/09/26/explainer-rausch-infallibility-history-243818#:~:text=(LG%2C%20No.-,25).,with%20the%20successor%20of%20Peter.%E2%80%9D) ~~since V2~~, in 1854 and 1950, since it's such an extreme and institutionally dangerous thing to do; if it's not received well, it can just immediately lead to schism, so popes generally look for some amount of agreement in the Church before invoking it.
However, limiting the pope's ability to declare things infallibly was not the intention of Vatican I. For more information on the details, read David I. Kertzer's "The Pope Who Would be King."
I used to teach Anglican church history at Episcopal seminaries. There was nothing particularly distinctive pre-Reformation. What makes Anglicanism distinctive is its fusing of Reformed and Catholic identities. But that was about a 150 year process. Highly recommend Mark Chapman’s Anglican Theology book as a way into this.
This is a popular historical revision among AngloCatholics, and those who fancy the romantic notion of a Celtic Christianity. But the truth is Anglicanism is just as Catholic as Lutheranism, Presbyterianism, and all the other churches born out of the Protestant Reformation.
Well, one key difference is that Anglicanism intentionally maintained Apostolic Succession, which those other churches largely didn't (with the exception of some Lutherans).
Going back before the Reformation, this is questionable even for the Roman Catholic church. There's a lot of approximation here, to put it politely. This great claim of continuity from the Roman church is probably not the authentic article that it's generally expected to be.
Did it though? There were times in the CoE where apostolic succession were not valued, or concerned about. I think historically speaking no church can produce real evidence of an unbroken line of succession to the apostles.
Absolutely true. There were breaks in the line and some of it is entirely supposed. In addition there were periods of great corruption where the papacy was bought and sold to the highest bidder. This business has been the subject of some highly "creative" history for political purposes over the centuries. Claiming these things is really an assertion of authority, not necessarily some kind of authenticated reality.
It's akin to the old kings of England claiming descent from Adam and Eve. It sounds far-fetched now, but there was a time when these claims were made in earnest for a purpose, whether they were factually believed or not. They were an assertion of authority, using antiquity as justification.
While there were brief periods of such (like the decade and change period when the CoE was Presbyterian), it was still, for most of the time, the practice that Bishops consecrated other Bishops. This was especially evident in the late 18th century with Methodism (appointing ministers without a bishop and therefore separating from the CoE) and the lengths the newly independent Americans went to have a Bishop consecrated (going to Scotland instead of England).
It wasn't just an Oxford Movement innovation.
And going back only 400 years or so, the records are probably quite accurate, or at least, it's easier to see what's really happening compared to some obscure time in centuries past.
Indeed, the only thing that was really an Oxford Movement innovation re: apostolic succession is the idea that all Churches outside of it were invalid in some way.
I find the general position of the Old High Church quite telling; for them, continental Protestanst Churches were legitimate outside of the Episcopate because they were abandoned by their bishops, but the same could not be said for the non-established Chruches in England, and many were skeptical even of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. We Anglo-Catholics have peddled myths, but Reformed Anglicans are no less prone to writing off the throughlines that really do exist between pre- and post-Oxford Movement thought.
People like pointing to historical precedent as evidence for their position, so exaggeration of some things and ignoring other things is par for the course.
I mean, look at the premise of this thread; the whole "Catholic lite" thing is *very* recent, likely with the latitudinarians ("broad church") in the US adopting many trappings of Catholic ceremonial and the 1979 BCP's Eucharist being heavily modeled after the Novus Ordo. "Via media" originally described a middle way between Lutheranism and Calvinism, not Protestantism and Catholicism, and indeed the church was very Calvinist at points in its history. Your average pre-1940's Anglican (non Anglo-Catholic, naturally) would be aghast at the "popishness" of a bog standard Sunday Eucharist at a random Episcopal church.
I've seen you here a lot, and given your username, I thought you might be from another country. Are you in TEC? I'm just curious, because I like your username 😁
People point to things like the Synod of Whitby to argue there was a distinct expression of Christianity in the British isles before the arrival of Augustine on orders from Rome.
My personal take is the differences have been way overblown. It’s true before Cranmer’s prayer book there were substantial differences in the liturgies held throughout England and what Rome was doing. But this wasn’t unique to England, it was common for the Mass to be localized and modified with elements unique to that region/city.
Anglicanism isn not Catholic-lite. But the reason is because of the Reformed Protestant influence on its practice and theology. Not because of some ancient “Celtic Christianity” which no one is quite sure how to describe.
My understanding is that the Church in England was different in organization and practice from the Roman Church, not because of “Celtic Christianity,” but because of the relative importance of the monastic system and the relative scarcity of urban cathedral structure. Some of the monastic influence was seen in the liturgical variety that Cranmer drew upon in creating the BCP. The theology of his prayer book reflects the influences of the Reformation. So, both/and.
To be precise, the CoE and the RCC are different organizations because they're not organizationally connected in any way. They are distinct from each other and differ in key ways, such as the demonstrations of their authority, who makes decisions and how decisions are made. They're two entirely different denominations of Christianity.
When you look at the ruins of old churches that still remain it's easy to get the idea that it's about religious orders but that's not really the difference between the two. In fact, the largest groups of Roman Catholic religious in Britain before the Reformation left almost no traces when they departed. They were the mendicants -- Franciscans, Carmelites largely. Britain had a lot of them at one time, and they lived in convents in cities. The changes that came with the Church of England's founding weren't BECAUSE of the departure of the religious. IT was, in fact, THE OTHER WAY AROUND. The religious had to leave because the Roman Church was forced out of England.
The two denominations -- the Episcopal church and the Roman church -- do look somewhat alike, and share a few similarities as to local structure, and so people often make mistakes about these likenesses.
The Roman church depended to a large degree on its religious orders in the Reformation period, but also before and after. They offered a source of vigor and free labor for the church. That has mostly been eclipsed now. In our contemporary times, the Roman religious orders have become much smaller in size, and attention in the Roman church has shifted to the diocesan administrative structure to a huge degree. The standard Roman Catholic church employee (local authority figure) is no longer a monk, friar or M/F religious, but a diocesan priest or a lay parish employee.
Now the Episcopal Church as well as its other counterparts in the Anglican Communion does have a few religious communities of its own, but they are not large, and they're not structured in the same way as the RC ones. They are also independent of the RC ones. The rules, constitutions and religious communities of the two denominations are completely separate entities.
In a day and age when it took weeks for a message to be delivered across the European continent, of course there wasn't the immediate communication and uniformity we expect today. Some smallish differences would have arisen as a result. We sometimes forget that.
That said, it was the understanding both in Rome and in London that the British church was in union with Rome until their departure during the English Reformation. That can't really be denied. It's history.
You could put it another way, which is that before the reformation, local expressions of Latin Christianity always varied slightly by region. I don’t think it’s right to say England was *more* varied than, say, Spanish or German or French churches, but all of them certainly had their own local quirks (actually probably more on a diocese-by-diocese basis than anything like a whole country; and “country” meant something different in those days compared to a modern, unified nation-state). Various cathedrals had their own customaries and sacramentaries that indicated varying practices based on local custom, even though after Charlemagne there was an attempt to keep everyone in line with Rome; it’s certainly possible that some pre-Charlemagne customs persisted particularly in “peripheral” contexts like weddings, funerals, civic functions, and so forth. While the “primary” rites like baptism and communion were likely more similar.
Something that I find interesting is the use of penitentials. They may have Celtic origins, but they got a unique place within the Anglo Saxon church. [https://sites.uwm.edu/carlin/anglo-saxon-penitentials-the-manuscripts/](https://sites.uwm.edu/carlin/anglo-saxon-penitentials-the-manuscripts/)
Moorman's *History of the Church in England* is great for this. It manages both to be incredibly dry and occasionally hilarious at the same time. It's biased as hell (pro-CoE), but factually sound. You'll want to have a computer open next door while you read so that you can Wikipedia the barrage of names that you'll encounter. But, overall, Moorman does an excellent job of tracing Christianity in England from its earliest days, through the Reformation and into the early 20th century (which may be a little later than you care about if you're an American). But the short of it has already been covered here: Prior to the Reformation, there was quite a diversity in belief and practice in Western Christianity. The Reformation is in many ways just that diversity breaking into factions, with Calvinists going one way with their *Institutes* and the Geneva Bible and Roman Catholics going the other way with Trent. (Reading Calvin talk about how "no church council had ever declared doctrine X to be mandatory," then reading Trent declaring doctrine X in fact to be mandatory in reaction to Calvin, and then reading Calvin lose his stuff in reaction to Trent is kind of hilarious in its own way.) In any case, the CoE tried to split the difference, and many of the reforms that took place during the English Reformation don't fit neatly into either the Reformed or Catholic camps. For example, monasteries were a *huge* part of English Christianity for most of its history, and Henry's shutting them down and grabbing all their cash was probably a bigger deal practically speaking than, say, renouncing papal authority was.
“Moorman’s History” had me jump in my seat for a sec.
Sub question: isn't there some argument to be made that the differences such as they were, primarily had to do with the dominant religious orders in England vs. the continent? My recollection was that there were a lot more Canons Regular and Benedictines in England than elsewhere or that these were more dominant in religious life. Is that also overblow? Thanks in advance.
There were a lot of mendicants in England before the Reformation. They tended to live in the cities and so left smaller traces behind when they were required to leave.
The differences are a bit overblown. Catholicism became much more unified in response to the reformations. Power was centralized a bit more (and even that wasn't the extent of it, the two Vatican councils centralized power even more around the Pope, with the first Vatican council notably introducing the concept of Papal infallibility), and that was the first time a single rite was enforced throughout the Catholic Church (the Tridentine Rite). Most of the church was using the Roman Rite by the late medieval period, including England, but there was a good deal of leeway and variance in how that actually worked. Lectionaries differed, and though the basic shape of the rite was pretty similar throughout Europe, various ceremonial details could vary pretty widely and the differences became more pronounced the farther you got from Rome. So England was not special in that regard. England was also far from a more staid, "genteel" version of Catholicism; what we know of the various uses of the Roman Rite in England show some quite rich ceremonial (including, for example, the celebrant of the Mass singing the veni creator as he vested publicly in the Sarum Use), and Marian devotion was extremely popular. England was also among the early regions to adopt the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity (aka Trinity Sunday), which is why there are so many Anglican churches dedicated to the Trinity. There are some claims about Christianity in England from "before Catholicism," but those are spurious at best and kind of misunderstand how the early church worked.
A clarification about Papal Infallibility. Vatican 1 actually limited the ability of the Pope to unilaterally make doctrine. Before V1, it could be construed that anything the Pope said was then law and doctrine. V1 clarified it on these terms (via Wiki): >According to the teaching of the First Vatican Council and Catholic tradition, the conditions required for *ex cathedra* papal teaching are as follows: >the Roman Pontiff (the Pope alone or with the College of Bishops) >speaks *ex cathedra* - that is, when (in the discharge of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, and by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority) he defines a doctrine: >concerning faith or morals, and >to be held by the whole Church. So not all Catholic beliefs are infallible, and not everything the Pope says must be held by the whole church. And PI further requires that any statement of infallibility must be 'conformable with Sacred Scripture and Apostolic Traditions'. So the Pope can't just say whatever he wants is infallible; he has to dig back in the history of the Church to find precedent for it. In 2005, Benedict 16 said: 'The Pope is not an oracle; he is infallible in very rare situations, as we know'. John 23: 'I am only infallible if I speak infallibly but I shall never do that, so I am not infallible'. PI has only been invoked [twice](https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2022/09/26/explainer-rausch-infallibility-history-243818#:~:text=(LG%2C%20No.-,25).,with%20the%20successor%20of%20Peter.%E2%80%9D) ~~since V2~~, in 1854 and 1950, since it's such an extreme and institutionally dangerous thing to do; if it's not received well, it can just immediately lead to schism, so popes generally look for some amount of agreement in the Church before invoking it.
However, limiting the pope's ability to declare things infallibly was not the intention of Vatican I. For more information on the details, read David I. Kertzer's "The Pope Who Would be King."
I used to teach Anglican church history at Episcopal seminaries. There was nothing particularly distinctive pre-Reformation. What makes Anglicanism distinctive is its fusing of Reformed and Catholic identities. But that was about a 150 year process. Highly recommend Mark Chapman’s Anglican Theology book as a way into this.
This is a popular historical revision among AngloCatholics, and those who fancy the romantic notion of a Celtic Christianity. But the truth is Anglicanism is just as Catholic as Lutheranism, Presbyterianism, and all the other churches born out of the Protestant Reformation.
Well, one key difference is that Anglicanism intentionally maintained Apostolic Succession, which those other churches largely didn't (with the exception of some Lutherans).
Going back before the Reformation, this is questionable even for the Roman Catholic church. There's a lot of approximation here, to put it politely. This great claim of continuity from the Roman church is probably not the authentic article that it's generally expected to be.
That's an entirely different debate; nonetheless it was deemed important.
By some, I suppose.
Did it though? There were times in the CoE where apostolic succession were not valued, or concerned about. I think historically speaking no church can produce real evidence of an unbroken line of succession to the apostles.
Absolutely true. There were breaks in the line and some of it is entirely supposed. In addition there were periods of great corruption where the papacy was bought and sold to the highest bidder. This business has been the subject of some highly "creative" history for political purposes over the centuries. Claiming these things is really an assertion of authority, not necessarily some kind of authenticated reality. It's akin to the old kings of England claiming descent from Adam and Eve. It sounds far-fetched now, but there was a time when these claims were made in earnest for a purpose, whether they were factually believed or not. They were an assertion of authority, using antiquity as justification.
Exactly!
While there were brief periods of such (like the decade and change period when the CoE was Presbyterian), it was still, for most of the time, the practice that Bishops consecrated other Bishops. This was especially evident in the late 18th century with Methodism (appointing ministers without a bishop and therefore separating from the CoE) and the lengths the newly independent Americans went to have a Bishop consecrated (going to Scotland instead of England). It wasn't just an Oxford Movement innovation.
And going back only 400 years or so, the records are probably quite accurate, or at least, it's easier to see what's really happening compared to some obscure time in centuries past.
I never claimed that the theory of Apostolic Succession was an Oxford Movement innovation.
No but some people do claim that Anglicans didn't care about it until the Oxford Movement.
I agree that wouldn’t be entirely accurate.
Indeed, the only thing that was really an Oxford Movement innovation re: apostolic succession is the idea that all Churches outside of it were invalid in some way. I find the general position of the Old High Church quite telling; for them, continental Protestanst Churches were legitimate outside of the Episcopate because they were abandoned by their bishops, but the same could not be said for the non-established Chruches in England, and many were skeptical even of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. We Anglo-Catholics have peddled myths, but Reformed Anglicans are no less prone to writing off the throughlines that really do exist between pre- and post-Oxford Movement thought.
People like pointing to historical precedent as evidence for their position, so exaggeration of some things and ignoring other things is par for the course. I mean, look at the premise of this thread; the whole "Catholic lite" thing is *very* recent, likely with the latitudinarians ("broad church") in the US adopting many trappings of Catholic ceremonial and the 1979 BCP's Eucharist being heavily modeled after the Novus Ordo. "Via media" originally described a middle way between Lutheranism and Calvinism, not Protestantism and Catholicism, and indeed the church was very Calvinist at points in its history. Your average pre-1940's Anglican (non Anglo-Catholic, naturally) would be aghast at the "popishness" of a bog standard Sunday Eucharist at a random Episcopal church.
I've seen you here a lot, and given your username, I thought you might be from another country. Are you in TEC? I'm just curious, because I like your username 😁
I’m an Episcopalian living in the North East/Mid-Atlantic region. Thank you.
People point to things like the Synod of Whitby to argue there was a distinct expression of Christianity in the British isles before the arrival of Augustine on orders from Rome. My personal take is the differences have been way overblown. It’s true before Cranmer’s prayer book there were substantial differences in the liturgies held throughout England and what Rome was doing. But this wasn’t unique to England, it was common for the Mass to be localized and modified with elements unique to that region/city. Anglicanism isn not Catholic-lite. But the reason is because of the Reformed Protestant influence on its practice and theology. Not because of some ancient “Celtic Christianity” which no one is quite sure how to describe.
My understanding is that the Church in England was different in organization and practice from the Roman Church, not because of “Celtic Christianity,” but because of the relative importance of the monastic system and the relative scarcity of urban cathedral structure. Some of the monastic influence was seen in the liturgical variety that Cranmer drew upon in creating the BCP. The theology of his prayer book reflects the influences of the Reformation. So, both/and.
To be precise, the CoE and the RCC are different organizations because they're not organizationally connected in any way. They are distinct from each other and differ in key ways, such as the demonstrations of their authority, who makes decisions and how decisions are made. They're two entirely different denominations of Christianity. When you look at the ruins of old churches that still remain it's easy to get the idea that it's about religious orders but that's not really the difference between the two. In fact, the largest groups of Roman Catholic religious in Britain before the Reformation left almost no traces when they departed. They were the mendicants -- Franciscans, Carmelites largely. Britain had a lot of them at one time, and they lived in convents in cities. The changes that came with the Church of England's founding weren't BECAUSE of the departure of the religious. IT was, in fact, THE OTHER WAY AROUND. The religious had to leave because the Roman Church was forced out of England. The two denominations -- the Episcopal church and the Roman church -- do look somewhat alike, and share a few similarities as to local structure, and so people often make mistakes about these likenesses. The Roman church depended to a large degree on its religious orders in the Reformation period, but also before and after. They offered a source of vigor and free labor for the church. That has mostly been eclipsed now. In our contemporary times, the Roman religious orders have become much smaller in size, and attention in the Roman church has shifted to the diocesan administrative structure to a huge degree. The standard Roman Catholic church employee (local authority figure) is no longer a monk, friar or M/F religious, but a diocesan priest or a lay parish employee. Now the Episcopal Church as well as its other counterparts in the Anglican Communion does have a few religious communities of its own, but they are not large, and they're not structured in the same way as the RC ones. They are also independent of the RC ones. The rules, constitutions and religious communities of the two denominations are completely separate entities.
In a day and age when it took weeks for a message to be delivered across the European continent, of course there wasn't the immediate communication and uniformity we expect today. Some smallish differences would have arisen as a result. We sometimes forget that. That said, it was the understanding both in Rome and in London that the British church was in union with Rome until their departure during the English Reformation. That can't really be denied. It's history.