A history of tithes

by Henry William Clarke

Papal Legates in England, A.D. 787.

For 190 years no papal legate appeared in England since Augustine landed on our shores in 597. When Pope Gregory sent his missionaries to England, he thought the whole country was inhabited by English, and so ordered that there should be two provinces, each containing twelve Episcopal sees and governed by two Metropolitans, one at London and the other at York.[52] Still Gregory must have been aware of the existence of a British Church in the island, for British bishops were present at the Synods of Arles, A.D. 314; Sardica, 347; and Rimini, 359.

The following historical facts should be carefully noted. Each of the several divisions of England—call them the Heptarchy or anything else—owed its evangelization to a source not exclusively of the Roman mission. Kent and Essex had certainly remained Christian under the successors of Augustine; but Wessex, with Winchester as its capital, was converted by Birinus a missionary from Northern Italy; East Anglia by Felix, a Burgundian; Northumbria and Mercia by Irishmen; Essex by Cidd and Sussex by Wilfrid. Therefore the Roman mission, after the death of King Ethelbert whose successors relapsed into heathenism, was rather a failure.[53] Augustine was narrow-minded and sectarian, attached to everything Italian. There were seven British bishops then in England. In 602 a meeting was held at which representatives of the Italian and British Churches were present. Augustine demanded that the Celtic Church should change the time of keeping Easter in order to adopt the Roman time. The British bishops declined to do anything of the sort, and then Augustine lost his temper and rebuked them. His conduct thus exasperated the members of the Celtic Church. The Italians were looked upon as foreigners seeking to lord it over the native Church, and the Scots and Britons were determined to yield their independence to neither threats nor entreaties.

Augustine claimed metropolitan power, but the Celtic bishops haughtily rejected such a proposal.

On the death of Ethelbert, and when a difference arose between his son who succeeded him and Laurentius the archbishop, Laurentius, Mellitus and Justus, were about to throw up the Italian mission in England and retire to Gaul.[54] London was lost, and the whole aspect of the Roman mission was gloomy in the extreme, when the second Archbishop died in 619. Mellitus the third died in 624. Justus who succeeded him had consecrated Paulinus on the 21st of July, 625, as the first Archbishop of York. In 627 King Edwin held a Witenagemót in a room where the introduction of Christianity into the Kingdom of Northumbria was discussed. The result was that the king and his nobles were converted to the Christian religion.[55] The fact that a room was capable of accommodating the Witenagemót has led to the conclusion that the number must be small. Paulinus had fled from York in 633, eight years after his consecration, and after the battle of Heathfield. But his place was taken by Bishop Aidan, a missionary from Columba’s Irish monastery in Iona, who had established an Episcopal see in Lindisfarne.

There is a letter of Pope Boniface V. to Archbishop Justus, written between April, 624, and October, 625, conferring on him the primacy of all Britain and ending with these words, “Hanc autem ecclesiam utpote specialiter consistentam sub potestate et tuitione sanctæ Romanæ ecclesiæ.”[56] [But this Church as specially remaining under the power and instruction of the Roman Holy Church.]

In 634, Pope Honorius I. conferred on Archbishop Honorius, seven years after his consecration, the primacy of all Britain.[57]

But there is no evidence to show that the Celtic bishops acquiesced in this power of metropolitan over all England conferred by the Pope on the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was therefore an arbitrary assumption of ecclesiastical authority exercised by the Pope of Rome over the Anglo-Saxon Church, simply because a Roman mission was sent to Christianize the Saxon heathen. But other missionaries were at work in the same field, who were quite unconnected with Rome or its bishop.

The time of keeping Easter was the terrible stumbling-block in the way of a union between the Roman and Celtic missionaries.

In A.D. 664, a synod was held at Streaneshalch; the subject of the proper time of keeping Easter was discussed in the presence of King Oswy of Northumberland by Bishop Colman and Wilfrid. In the same year Deusdedit, Archbishop of Canterbury, died. The result was that the king espoused the Roman style.[58] Then followed an interregnum of four years. Wilfrid’s strong opinions about Easter kept him out of the archiepiscopate.

It is vitally important to note this turn of the tide to Rome. I take all particulars from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. If this turn had not occurred there would have been two separate and independent Churches in England, the Celtic and the Roman.

In 664 a synod was convened in the monastery of Streaneshalch (Whitby) presided over by King Oswy, who was at first a follower of the Celtic ritual, for the discussion of the proper time for keeping Easter. Bishop Colman spoke for the Celtic Church; Priest Wilfrid for the Roman time. The latter had previously gone to Rome to learn the ecclesiastical doctrine. Colman traced the Celtic time to the teaching of St. John the Evangelist; Wilfrid traced his to St. Peter, and then quoted, “Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it; and to thee I will give the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven.” This quotation turned the scales, as will be seen from what followed. “Is it true, Colman,” said the King, “that these words were spoken to Peter by our Lord?” “It is true, O King!” “Can you show,” said the King, “any such power given to your Columba?” Colman answered “None.” “Then,” added the King, “do you both agree that these words were principally directed to Peter, and that the keys of heaven were given to him by our Lord?” They both answered, “We do.” Then the King concluded, “And I also say unto you that he is the door-keeper, whom I will not contradict, but will, as far as I know and am able in all things, obey his decrees, lest when I come to the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven, there should be none to open them, he being my adversary who is proved to have the keys.” The King having said this, all present resolved to conform to the Roman ritual.[59] This was not the first nor the last case in England in which St. Peter and the power of the keys did good duty for the Church of Rome. The result of this discussion turned the scales from Irish to Roman Christianity as the religion of England.

King Oswy had, before the synod met, held the Celtic views. His son, who was present, held the Roman views. The result of this discussion led to serious changes in the Church of England, for in the same year, A.D. 664, the archbishopric of Canterbury became vacant, and Kings Oswy and Egbert sent to Rome Wighard, an Englishman, whom they appointed, there to be consecrated archbishop by the Pope, because there was no metropolitan in England to perform this duty of consecration. He died there, and then the Pope was empowered by the same kings to select and consecrate a suitable person himself. “We have not been able,” writes Pope Vitalian, “now to find a man docile and qualified in all respects to be a bishop according to the tenor of your letter.”[60] Again, “King Egbert, being informed by messengers that the bishop they had asked of the Roman prelate was in the kingdom of France.”[61]

From these two quotations, it is beyond all doubt or question that the English kings did ask the Pope to select a qualified person for the see of Canterbury. And it is absurd for Protestant writers, such as Soames, in the face of these quotations, to assert that Theodore’s appointment was a piece of skilful manœuvring on the part of the Pope. It was nothing of the sort. It is but reasonable to assume that when Wighard died in Rome, Vitalian wrote at once and informed the English kings of the event, and that they then, although we have not their letters, asked the Pope to choose a man for them. He therefore consecrated Theodore, a Greek by birth and education. We all know what followed. In the same year the Pope conferred on Theodore the “supremacy over all England.”[62] He landed in England in 669, and held his see for twenty-one years. The Churches of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were independent of each other up to the arrival of Theodore, who had energetically worked to unite all the Churches under the metropolitan power of Canterbury. Here then we are on solid ground. The Pope’s supremacy over all the Churches in England dates from the archiepiscopate of Theodore.

There is no reference to tithes from the publication of Theodore’s “Penitential,” probably about A.D. 686, until the two legates came to England in 787, or a period of one hundred years, Archbishop Boniface of Mentz, writing to Archbishop Cuthbert between 746 and 749, refers to tithes having then been received by English bishops, “In daily offerings,” he says, “and tithes of the faithful, they receive the milk and wool of the sheep of Christ, but they take no care of the Lord’s flock.” [“Lac et lanas ovium Christi oblationibus cotidianis ac decimis fidelium suscipiunt; et curam gregis Domini deponunt.”[63]] Here is an early instance of endowed bishops neglecting their flocks.

This brief sketch will enable the reader to follow further particulars.