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 CELTIC

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CELTIC

Divine, brought the Rite of Ephesus to Provence, whence it spread through Gaul and to Britain. This so-called " Ephesine " Kite (a term often used as syn- onymous with " Hispano-Gallican"), say the support- ers of the theory, was the foundation of the Sarum Rite, and from this is derived a belief that the Church of England had an origin independent of Rome. It is hardly necessary to assert here that the Sarum Rite is merely a local variety of the Roman, and that the influence of the Gallican Rite upon it is no greater than upon any other Roman variety, so that the deductions, which have recently been reasserted with great certainty by the Bishop of Chichester in his "Story of the English Prayerbook", are quite unwarranted by facts. But on examination it will be seen that the Ephesine origin of the Gallican Rite rests only upon the assertion of an eighth-century Irish writer (in Cott. MS. Nero A. II in the British Museum), who, by the way, derives the Celtic Rite, as far as the Divine Office is concerned, from Alexan- dria, and on a statement by Colman at the Synod of Whitby, in 664, respecting the origin of the Celtic Easter, which, as St. Wilfrid pointed out at the time, was certainly incorrect. The theory seems to have been first put forward in modern times by Sir William Palmer in his "Origines Liturgies", on the authority of the said Irish writer, and has found its way into many Anglican textbooks. Yet the only points of difference between the British Church of St. Augus- tine's time and the Roman of which we can be certain are: (1) The rule of the keeping of Easter; (2) the tonsure; (3) some difference in the manner of baptiz- ing.

(1) The Easter question. — The Britons adhered to the old Roman cycle of 84 years instead of the newer cycle of 19 years. They counted the third week of trie moon, on the Sunday of which Easter must fall, from the 14th to the 20th instead of from the 15th to the 21st, and they took March 25th instead of March 21st as the vernal equinox. Until 457, when the 532-years cycle of Victorius of Aquitaine was adopted at Rome, Britain agreed with Rome in its differing from Alexandria and the East. In 525 Rome altered its rule again to the 19-years cycle of Dionysius Exi- guus, to conform to the Eastern usage, and from that time until the change of style in 1582 Rome and the East agreed in their rule of Easter, and even now cal- culate by the same rule, though the fact that the Greek 21st of March is only an imaginary vernal equi- nox, thirteen days later than the real one, makes the actual Greek Easter generally fall on a different day from the Roman. Yet it is still argued (e. g. in Arch- bishop Nuttall's Catechism; S. P. C. K., 1907) that the Easter difference proves the Eastern origin of the British Church. If it proves anything it is the exact opposite. Colman at the Synod of Whitby evidently had some vague memory of the long extinct Quarto- deciman controversy in his mind when lie claimed an Ephesian origin for his Easter, and St. Wilfrid rightly pointed out that the essence of the Quartodeciman rule was that Easter might be kept, on any day of the week, whereas the Celts kept theirs on Sunday only. St. Aldhelm, in his letter to King Geruntius of Corn- wall, seems to charge the Cornish with Quartodeci- manism, but he also mistook the point of that contro- versy. The Easter question was eventually settled
 * it various times in different parts of the Celtic

Church. The following dates are derived from Fad- dan and Stubbs: South Ireland, 626-X; North Ire- land, 692; Northuinbria (converted by Celtic mis- sions), 664 ; East Devon and Somerset, the Celts under Wessex, 705; the Piots, 710: lona, 710-8; Strath- clyde, 721; North Wales, 768; South Wales, 777. Cornwall held out longest of any, perhaps even, in parts, to the time of Bishop Aedwulf ofCrediton (909). (2) The form of the tonsure. — The Britons were ac- customed i" shave Ilie whole head in front of a line

drawn from ear to ear, instead of using the coronal tonsure of the Romans. This, though there is no real evidence that it was the practice of the Druids, was nicknamed tonsura magorum. (Magus was accepted as equivalent to druid, and to this day the M0701 of St. Matt., ii, are druidhean in the Scottish Gaelic Bible.) Later, the Roman party jeered at it as the tonsura Simonis Magi, in contradistinction to their ''tonsure of St. Peter". This is mentioned in the passage attributed, probably wrongly, to Gildas (Haddan and Stubbs, I, 113).

(3) Some unspecified difference in the manner of baptizing. — It has been conjectured, on no real evi- dence, that the British Church resembled the Spanish in baptizing with a single immersion. But this form had been allowed by Rome in the case of Spain. It would seem, however, from a letter from Pope Zach- ariastoSt. Boniface (1 May, 748, Haddan and Stubbs, III, 51), that an unnamed English synod had forbid- den any baptism except in the name of the Trinity, and had declared that whoever omits the Name of any Person of the Trinity does not truly baptize. Spelman and Wilkins put this synod at London in the time of St. Augustine, 603. Mansi makes its date the first year of Theodore of Tarsus, 668. It would seem by this that, it was the formula that was at fault, and certainly in the time of Theodore the possibility of priests, presumably Celtic, having been invalidly baptized was considered. "Si quis presbiter ordina- tus deprehendit se non esse baptizatus, baptizetur et ordinetur iterum et omnes quos prius baptizavit bap- tizentur", says the "Panitentiale Theodori" (Lib. II, cap. iii. 13), and in cap. ix of the same book, after ordering the reordination of those ordained by Scot- tish and British bishops, "qui in Pascha et, tonsura catholici non sunt", and the asperging of churches consecrated by them, Theodore adds: "Et qui ex horum similiter gente vel quicunque de baptismo suo dubitaverit, baptizetur".

Thus it may be seen that, with these exceptions, and excepting also one statement by Gildas (to the effect that certain lessons, differing from those of any known rite, were read at ordinations), and a possible allusion by him to the anointing of hands at ordina- tion, we have no information about the rites of the British Church. They may have been Gallican, but they may just as well have been Roman in type, or, if the Christianity of Britain preceded the construction of definite liturgies, they may have been indigenous, with or without, foreign influences. The Britons were quite capable of composing their own liturgy on that nucleus which was common to all Christendom; but we do not know whether they did so or not.

One part of Britain, indeed, derived a great part of its Christianity from post-Patrician Irish missions. St. la and her companions, and St. Piran, St. Sennen, St. Petrock, and the rest of the Irish saints who came to Cornwall in the late fifth and early sixth centuries, found then', at any rate in the West, a population which had perhaps relapsed into Paganism, under the Pagan King Teudar. When these saints intro- duced, or reintroduced, Christianity, they probably brought with them whatever rites they were accus- tomed to, and Cornwall certainly had its own separate ecclesiastical quarrel with Wessex in the days of St. Aldhelm, which, as appears by a statement in Leo- fric's Missal, was still going on in the early tenth cen- tury, though (lie details of it are not specified.

The rites of the Irish Church stand on firmer ground, though even there the information is scanty. There were Christians in Ireland before St. Patrick, but we have no information as to how they wor- shipped, and their existence is ignored by the "Cata- logus Sanctorum Hibernise", attributed to the seventh-century Tireehan. This interesting docu- ment, which, though its dates need not be accepted too exactly, is worthy of general credit, divides the