The Orthodoxy of England before 1066

[OrthodoxyOrDeath]

From Vladmir Moss, who recently joined the Synod of the GOC of Greece...

http://www.romanitas.ru/eng/The%20Fall% ... ngland.htm

[Joe Zollars]

wait a sec, I thougth Vladimir Moss was in teh ROAC?

Nicholas Zollars

PS: this is a very interesting thread indeed. NZ

[CGW]

Now, the very phrase "from Orthodox to Latin" is in a critical sense nonsense.

Then maybe we should qualify these terms first.

Orthodox is easy, every one knows it means 'right glory'. This obviously is irrespective of liturgical practices. Even in the East there have been several litgurical practices. The Coptic is differnt from the Ethiopian and so on and so forth, and then those are different from the Byzantine.

Well, I would dispute that it is indifferent to liturgy, since everywhere I turn in Orthodox advocacy there is someone trying to prove that Eastern practice is good and Western practice is bad. At any rate, the point was rather to pin down where the crux of the dispute was going to be found. From this point on I'm going to concentrate on the filioque) as the religious issue.

I have been told by Byzantine studies student that after the Norman conquest that some of the English soldiers went to Constantinople to fight for the Emperor, as opposed to staying and fighting for a heretic.

I'm going to address the issue of the Varangian Guard a bit later, but suffice to say at this point that I think you would have done better to talk to someone in the English history department.

[CGW]

There was never any such thing as a Western or Eastern "rite". It was all simply the same, which just so happen to be what the Orthodox still use.

If anyone would like to speak of a Western "rite", please explain exactly what that was.

You are talking through your hat. I have to get to work this morning and don't have time to dig out my copy of Dix, but suffice to say one of his themes is the ongoing differentiation of Eastern rites away from Western rites, and the consolidation of all western rites into a single, conservative, Roman rite.

In the present, anyone can tell an Eastern rite from a Western without a scorecard.

[CGW]

The norman conquest was as much a roman conquest as it was a frankish conquest. The conquest was blessed by the pope. The English church prior to 1066 was dependent upon Trondheim which remained LOYAL to Constantinople until the 14TH century. This is the reason WHY there was a vast Anglo-Saxon immigration after the conquest to places like Kievan Rus', Constantinople and Norway. The Varangians and Saxon Britons were kin. Meyendorff writes of the Varangian legion in Constantinople. Many Saxons became members of it.

Let's get one thing straight right off: there is no Varangia. The Varangian Guard was made up of mercenaries mostly from the Norse countries but also including Saxons. They didn't go for religion; they went for money, which they took home with them if they managed to live long enough.

And they went because there were no prospects at home for them. Primogeniture leads to a lot of younger sons with no land and no future if they were uninclined to clerical or monkish life. Failing those, you could go off in someone's army, or go a-viking. All of this suited the ruler of Constantinople because it was convenient to have forces responsible only to him, and especially lacking in any local attachments. (Rome's "Varangians", of course, were Swiss.)

Religion had absolutely nothing to do with this; indeed, it is generally considered that some of the early Icelandic Varangians were pagans (at least when they arrived in Constantinople).

[Seraphim Reeves]

CGW,

Are you Keble, from OC.net?

Well, I would dispute that it is indifferent to liturgy, since everywhere I turn in Orthodox advocacy there is someone trying to prove that Eastern practice is good and Western practice is bad. At any rate, the point was rather to pin down where the crux of the dispute was going to be found. From this point on I'm going to concentrate on the filioque) as the religious issue.

Well, I wouldn't dispute your assessment ("Eastern is better") if the comparison is between the current practice of the Orthodox Church (which in various forms can be traced back to Byzantine usage), compared with the current practice of various heterodox bodies like the Roman Catholics or Anglicans. Besides the heresy which has to varying degrees become an integral part of the very wording of these rites (and issues regarding the use of azymes, lack of proper epiklesis...which we know was once not the case with the Roman liturgy, or the varying Gallican usages of the early Western Church), it has to also be acknowledged that these rites have also been influenced in more subtle ways by the false mysticism and broader doctrinal life of these these communities. Just as it is said that we believe how we pray, the opposite is also true - praxis is also influenced by what, and how we believe.

OTOH, I've yet to see any Orthodox author, scholarly or rank amature, dare to say the Divine Services as celebrated by the likes of St.Gregory the Great, or St.John Cassian, or St.Ambrose, were somehow worthy of contempt... though I'm sure you can find a crank somewhere to speak in favour of any inanity, despite the contrary views of his betters.

Seraphim

[CGW]

Well, I wouldn't dispute your assessment ("Eastern is better") if the comparison is between the current practice of the Orthodox Church (which in various forms can be traced back to Byzantine usage), compared with the current practice of various heterodox bodies like the Roman Catholics or Anglicans.

That would not be my assessment. At any rate the point is that the ancestors of current Eastern rites were never used in England, and that fuurthermore I believe that discussion of this W.R.T. current Eastern rites is anachronistic in this context. (I say "I believe" because my references are still not at hand.)