Daniel wrote:CGW wrote:...I find sprinkled around various self-proclaimed Orthodox information sites the assertion that the Norman conquest changed England from Orthodox to Roman Catholic. Those of us who are students of the period know this to be the sheerest nonsense
Care to refute or clarify this? I am curious what it was that turned England from Orthodox to Latin.
Before I begin, let me state a few qualifications. I am myself an amateur, and specifically of the late Saxon period. My specific interests run earlier, from the 600s up to 800 or so. If I need heavier weaponry, as it were, I do know a PhD in Old English literature to draw on, however.
Now, the very phrase "from Orthodox to Latin" is in a critical sense nonsense. As far as rite is concerned, England was Latin well before 1066, and before that it was Celtic. Eastern rites were never used in Britain until quite recently (by Eastern immigrants and, one supposes, chanceries). The celtic rite was suppressed through the Council of Whitby, a council which, as it happens, precedes the development of Eastern rites into their present appearance. There is a certain vagueness surrounding the difference between Celtic and Roman practice, but it's clear that the Celts didn't have iconostases and numerous litanies inserted into their rite.
As far as theology is concerned, I doubt that the question can be definitively answered. The problem is the timeframe. 1054 to 1066 is a blink of an eye as far as documentation of the period is concerned; establishing the spread of the filioque on the continent is hard enough, on those terms. But it is certain that the Normans and Saxons were in every sense part of a church which was as uniform in practice as it could be in that period (which is to say, not all that uniform). The English church was not a separate jurisdiction, either before or after the conquest. And it cannot be said to have a theological system separate from that of Rome itself.