King Harold Godwinson [Archive] - Monachos.net Discussion Community

Herman Blaydoe

04-08-2006, 08:08 PM

From the Orthodoxwiki:

The Basis for Sainthood
The question of Harold's sanctity is a bit complex. History records that he led a moral life and was an honest and dutiful ruler for the English people. There probably is not, however, enough evidence of his personal sanctity based on the general conduct of his life in order for him to be numbered publicly among the saints.

Another question with regard to many western saints is the period in which they lived. That is, do they count as Orthodox saints of the old western Church based on living before the Great Schism? Regarding the British Isles, what is known about the state of the Church there at that time is that subsequent to the Norman Invasion in 1066, church life was radically altered. Native clergy were replaced, liturgical reform enacted, and a strong emphasis on papal church control was propagated. As such, it is probably safe to say that, prior to 1066, the church of the British Isles was Orthodox, and the Normans brought the effects of the Great Schism to British soil. As such, it is probably proper to regard Harold as having been an Orthodox Christian.

The principle question regarding Harold's sanctity is whether he died as a passion-bearer (one who faces his death in a Christ-like manner) or even a martyr at Hastings. The defense of England was certainly being undertaken for political and nationalistic reasons—Englishmen had no desire to be ruled over by a foreign king (having experienced it before), so they gladly followed their native monarch in defense of their homeland. Yet did they also die for their faith? More information available here: Harold of England at OrthodoxWiki (http://www.orthodoxwiki.org/Harold_of_England#Saint_Harold.3F)

Anthony

07-08-2006, 03:11 PM

Thank you for the information and links. The question of when the English church ceased to be Orthodox is one that has interested me for a long time. I am certainly sympathetic to the view that links it with the Norman conquest, though things may be more complicated than that. Part of the reason for my query was a suspicion that this canonization might be due to the influence of certain "True Orthodox" groups in England.

I have recently become interested in (St) Margaret of Scotland, one of the royal refugees from the Norman conquest. Can anybody tell me if she is regarded as an Orthodox saint (she died at the end of the 11th century)?

John Charmley

06-10-2006, 07:46 PM

This is an interesting discussion, but I fear that the evidence is inconclusive. Harold certainly considered imself a good Christian, and met his death defending his homeland, but it seems unlikely that he could be enlisted in the ranks of the Orthodox. He certainly regarded the Pope in Rome as the head of the Church. There was a problem with Rome over the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stigand, but that, we are told, is because he was considered to have committed simony; however, since the evidence against him is from Norman sources, it must be considered uncertain.

There were certainly plenty of contacts between England and eastern Europe. Indeed, Edward the Exile, whom many consider the rightful heir to the throne, had spent much of his exile in Hungary and had certainy stayed in Kievan Rus. There is an icon which is said to be of him in the Novgorod city museum, which came from the Church of St. Boris and St. Gleb-in-Plotniki. This reflected links between the Anglo-Saxon royal house and that of Kiev. As the marriage of Harold's daughter shows, these links were quite active.

But, tempting as it is to see Harold II as an orthodox martyr, there is tantalisingly little evidence to suggest it. But it would be fascinating to hear from anyone who can throw more light on this.

In Christ,

John

Kris

06-10-2006, 09:33 PM

According to the wikipedia, Harold the last Anglo-Saxon king of England has been declared a martyr by the Russian Church (not sure which one they mean). I was a bit surprised to hear this, not least because 1066 is after 1054. Can anybody confirm (or disconfirm) this report?

I think one has to bear in mind that the Great Schism was not one particular moment in time, but a process; one which begun long before 1054, and was not finalized until long after 1054.

1054 was merely the date when a representative of the (then dead) Pope placed a bull of excommunication on the altar of Agia Sophia. However, the bull only mentions the Patriarch of Constantinople, and his reply mentions only the Pope of Rome (personally, not generally).

So just because a person was unlucky enough to die after 1054 does not mean that they are automatically heterodox. Likewise, just because someone died in 1053 does not mean they're Orthodox.

The Great Schism stretches from the Seventh Ecumenical Council to the Fourth Crusade; 1054 is just a notable event that happened during this period.

Fr Raphael Vereshack

06-10-2006, 11:25 PM

I think one has to bear in mind that the Great Schism was not one particular moment in time, but a process; one which begun long before 1054, and was not finalized until long after 1054.

1054 was merely the date when a representative of the (then dead) Pope placed a bull of excommunication on the altar of Agia Sophia. However, the bull only mentions the Patriarch of Constantinople, and his reply mentions only the Pope of Rome (personally, not generally).

So just because a person was unlucky enough to die after 1054 does not mean that they are automatically heterodox. Likewise, just because someone died in 1053 does not mean they're Orthodox.

The Great Schism stretches from the Seventh Ecumenical Council to the Fourth Crusade; 1054 is just a notable event that happened during this period.

Especially in recent times Harold has been regarded as the last Orthodox king of Anglo-Saxon England. In a way this is because William the Conqueror is seen as having brought to England the kind of Catholicism represented by growing Papal supremacy & centralization. Thus William is most often described by us as representing the end of a local Orthodox church in England.

In this there are some generalizations and some romanticization of English history. But the main point for us is how there was a time when Orthodox Christianity spread from Britain in the west (some argue it had actually reached Iceland- but that's another matter) to Mesopotamia in the east.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

John Charmley

07-10-2006, 12:05 AM

the main point for us is how there was a time when Orthodox Christianity spread from Britain in the west (some argue it had actually reached Iceland- but that's another matter) to Mesopotamia in the east.
In Christ- Fr Raphael

Father Raphael,

You raise a very interesting point. After all, Constantine the Great actually became Emperor in England, at York, so by that period Christianity was well-established here. There is evidence to suggest that some of its earliest carriers came from Egypt, as well as from Rome.

Because we have taken so much of the bias of our early history from the great Bede, many in this country think that Christianity came here with St. Augustine, but it is actually quite clear from Bede that he and his followers found a well-established 'Celtic' Christianity, which celebrated Easter according to the tradition of the ancient Church, and whose monks and clergy had maintained the Faith through the dark days following the Roman withdrawal from these islands. For Bede, these Christians were at fault for their ethnic exclusivity - i.e. they ministered to the Britons, but steered clear of the Saxons. This was where Augustine gained his converts. It was not until the Synod of Whitby in 664 that the Roman way of doing things was triumphant.

What one sees in Bede is the process by which the ancient, Orthodox Christian faith, which survived among the Romano-British, was supplanted by the Roman mission of Augustine whose triumph marched in step with that of the Saxons.

One of the reasons for querying the romanticised image of Harold II as 'Orthodox' is this history of how Rome's supremacy in these islands was established.

None of this is to deny the validity of Kris' excellent point about the way in which it took time for the supremacy of Rome to win out in the west, but it is to suggest that even before William the Bastard turned up in England, the country was already inclined to bow to the wishes of the Pope.

There is, clearly, a much older tradition of Christian worship in these islands, dating back to Roman times, and it is not, therefore, just a romantic illusion to talk about 'Orthodox England'. Indeed, if one takes the 1060s as the point at which, thanks to the Normans, England slipped into Rome's orbit, then it is perfectly legitimate, I think, to say that England was Orthodox for longer than it was Catholic, since it was that former from about the 2nd century until the 11th, which is about 800 years, whereas it was Roman Catholic from c.1066 until the 1530s.

I am sure there are those who can add to this, and can perhaps correct me if I have erred in detail; but at the very least it reinforces the view taken by the British Orthodox Church (you knew that was coming!) that it is picking up a long, native tradition, not importing something un-English. The BOC website has a nice list of British saints, which bear witness to Orthodox England.
http://www.britishorthodox.org/saints_dir.php

Or am I just being an incurable Romantic?

In Christ

John

M.C. Steenberg

07-10-2006, 09:23 AM

So just because a person was unlucky enough to die after 1054 does not mean that they are automatically heterodox. Likewise, just because someone died in 1053 does not mean they're Orthodox.

This is an especially relevant point, especially when one realises that history was just the opposite: the 'schism' occurred long, long before 1054. By the time that date arrived, the 'split' was long since a split.

INXC, Matthew

John Charmley

07-10-2006, 09:52 AM

This is an especially relevant point, especially when one realises that history was just the opposite: the 'schism' occurred long, long before 1054. By the time that date arrived, the 'split' was long since a split.

INXC, Matthew

Dear Matthew,

Indeed, and there is another problem which complicates things even more. The Normans ran what can only be described as an impressively thorough rewriting of history to portray Harold II in the worst possible light. Because of William's reliance on the Pope, this involved portraying Harold as being 'backward' in matters ecclesiastical, which may well give us the impression that he was not up to speed with those 'reformers' who were taking the Roman line. This may be true, but we lack contemporary evidence other than that of the Normans. No-one seems to have mentioned any such phenomenon before 1066.

The view that Anglo-Saxon England was in some way cut off from the religious life of the rest of western Europe is one of those myths put about by the Normans and believed by some historians. Edward the Confessor had been brought up in Normandy and had many Norman advisers, and many English abbeys had French abbots. As far as we can work out, the Anglo-Saxon state was a highly sophisticated one that existed as part of the west European mainstream - which was why William wanted to conquer it. The implication of this view is that Harold II was probably a believer in the supremacy of the Pope.

The implications of Matthew's words, however, are interesting. Clearly, given the provenance of St. Augustine's mission, the Church based at Canterbury was always inclined towards the Papal view of its own position; equally plainly, the Church Augustine found when he arrived here, was not, and seems to have taken offence at the idea that the bishop of Rome had any primacy except an honorific one. This suggests that the British Church accepted the older view, which the Eastern Church still held to, that the Pope held a position of honour, but not supremacy.

I fear that if we want to find a Britain that was Orthodox in this sense, then, as I suggest in a previous post, we Romantics have to go back to the period before Augustine.

However, if one takes the view that everyone was Orthodox before the Great Schism, but that the Schism did, as Runciman suggested many years ago, put the seal on a growing breach, then one can plausibly argue that England was Orthodox for about 800 years. I need to know more about the ecclesiology of the Anglo-Saxons before being able to say in what sense the later English Church was Orthodox. Any assistance would be welcome.

In Christ,

John

Anthony

07-10-2006, 03:18 PM

In this there are some generalizations and some romanticization of English history.

Father, bless.

I agree with this, and in fact this was one reason that prompted me to start the thread. I have recently been struck by how many of the most pious Anglo-Saxons of the time looked to Normandy and France for their inspiration and were instrumental in bringing Norman religious influence across the Channel, both before and after 1066. This is particularly true of Edward the Confessor, and the children of Edward the Exile, who John Charmley mentioned in an earlier post. One of them, Queen Margaret of Scotland, played a key role in introducing the Normal-Papal system into Scotland. (Also in introducing English into the Scottish court, but that is another story.)

Anthony

Fr Raphael Vereshack

07-10-2006, 04:26 PM

Father, bless.

I agree with this, and in fact this was one reason that prompted me to start the thread. I have recently been struck by how many of the most pious Anglo-Saxons of the time looked to Normandy and France for their inspiration and were instrumental in bringing Norman religious influence across the Channel, both before and after 1066. This is particularly true of Edward the Confessor, and the children of Edward the Exile, who John Charmley mentioned in an earlier post. One of them, Queen Margaret of Scotland, played a key role in introducing the Normal-Papal system into Scotland. (Also in introducing English into the Scottish court, but that is another story.)

Anthony

Yes- the long standing and continuous contacts with Gaul and Normandy not to mention the rest of Europe lead one to think that the situation of the Church in Anglo Saxon England was not so black and white. Maybe William the Conqueror helped speed up a centralizing process in the western Church. But I'm not so sure the historical evidence demonstrates that the Anglo Saxons were really against this themselves.

What makes the whole analysis of this subject of papal supremacy complex is that for many centuries it operated through local centers loyal to a certain kind of vision of the Church which the papacy shared but yet also autonomous to a greater or lesser extent. There wasn't a modern pan European bureaucracy that could pull every string and get an automatic result. Add to this that the local kings & rulers also went back and forth between calling on this new vision or resisting it and we can see how complex papal supremacy really was.

In any case the romantic version of history usually serves the deeper purpose of calling on certain values or trying to resist them. Thus Harold and the all-autonomous England overwhelmed by the ruthless centralizing William is poor history in the way it assumes with poor evidence that Harold's England or vision of England was diametrically opposed to William's.

Russian history has something very similar with at one time huge arguments over how or if Vladimir was a 'foreigner'. Was what he brought native to Russia or foreign? Here a sensitive nerve was struck in the 19th century nationalist debate that all 'good things' in Russia come from the west vs Russia has its own way of assimilating to itself all who come to her.

The Romantic version of history is weak in the way it always portrays difference as radical opposition & neglects too much a sense of historical continuity.

On the other hand this way of portraying history also speaks of something deeper and human- the importance of living models of behavior with the force of ancient myths & that moral choice has something dramatic to it which profoundly affects human history - that being more 'objective' can lose. Even Church history swings back and forth between these two & who knows that both are needed in balance in order to keep something of great value to the Church.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

Ryan

07-10-2006, 05:35 PM

I fear that if we want to find a Britain that was Orthodox in this sense, then, as I suggest in a previous post, we Romantics have to go back to the period before Augustine.

What does this say then about Irish Christianity, and the early Irish saints, who are counted among the Orthodox?

John Charmley

08-10-2006, 10:52 AM

In any case the romantic version of history usually serves the deeper purpose of calling on certain values or trying to resist them. Thus Harold and the all-autonomous England overwhelmed by the ruthless centralizing William is poor history in the way it assumes with poor evidence that Harold's England or vision of England was diametrically opposed to William's.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

Dear Father Raphael,

I like this point, in particular; it is an interesting way of thinking about this subject.

We can, I think, assume a very real difference between Harold and William. William brought a ruthless centralizing tendency, disinherited the Anglo-Saxon nobility and filled the Church full of Norman prelates; Harold would have continued with the old ways. Whether, on the non-secular front, the difference would have been so great, we cannot know; but it seems unlikely. Perhaps England was just brought into line with the rest of western Europe more speedily.

Like the rest of western Europe, the British Isles lacked the developed, literate, urban society of the East which allowed the development of a very different type of Church. In the west of the old Roman empire, authority was fractured and power tended to be concentrated, developments which contributed to the creation of a Papal monarchy. It only needed Popes with the vision and ambition of Leo or Hildebrand to try to develop the potential power this gave the Papacy, and the creation of a Caesaro-Papal primacy was ensured; although, of course, as the Investiture Crisis showed, this was not an unproblematic development. Ironically, William the Conqueror's great-grandson, Henry II, was to have a great deal of trouble with his (very Papal) archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, whilst it was his great-great grandson, King John, who was to find his entire kingdom placed under interdict by the Pope. The Angevins were to pay a heavy price for the favour shown to William by the Pope.

Ryan asks an interesting question, to which I fear I do not have an answer. Ireland took a very different path from England, and, of course, had not enjoyed the benefits of being colonised by Rome. St. Patrick appears to have taken the practices of the Romano-British Church to Ireland, and since the decisions of the Synod of Whitby did not apply to Ireland, I would guess that the old ways hung on for longer there. But I have already strayed too far into my ignorance on these matters.

Certainly the pre-Whitby British Church was Orthodox - although we must remember that it did produce Pelagius! I think the safest formulation is to say that Britain followed the practice of the Universal Church until the C11th, when, like the rest of western Europe, it took the side of the Pope in the Great Schism. Of course, like the rest of the Roman Catholic Church, it attributed the Schism to the East.

The process by which the Faith, as practised in the west became un-orthodox, is a long and complicated one, with considerable regional variations, but it is worth noting, once more, the effects of Schism. Just as the disputes following Chalcedon weakened the Eastern Roman Empire, hastening the triumph of Islam in the Bible lands, so too did the Great Schism pave the way for the loss of Constantinople (with contributions from the 'Crusaders' in 1204) and the many schisms of the Reformation in the west.

Truly has it been said that all we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.

In Christ,

John

Anthony

08-10-2006, 01:52 PM

Dear Matthew,

The implications of Matthew's words, however, are interesting. Clearly, given the provenance of St. Augustine's mission, the Church based at Canterbury was always inclined towards the Papal view of its own position; equally plainly, the Church Augustine found when he arrived here, was not, and seems to have taken offence at the idea that the bishop of Rome had any primacy except an honorific one. This suggests that the British Church accepted the older view, which the Eastern Church still held to, that the Pope held a position of honour, but not supremacy.

I fear that if we want to find a Britain that was Orthodox in this sense, then, as I suggest in a previous post, we Romantics have to go back to the period before Augustine.

I think that in those days it was still possible to be Orthodox without being anti-papal. A good example, perhaps, is the Pope's appointment of Theodore of Tarsus, a Greek, to be Archbishop of Canterbury. (Or maybe not such a good example, as he presided over the Synod of Hatfield, which I think sanctioned the filioque.)

Perhaps the heart of the problem is that it was often the Papacy that was responsible for maintaining Orthodoxy, though always with its own particular slant. The Synod of Whitby is a case in point. It appears (though I understand the evidence is problematic) that the papal party were trying to enforce the Nicene date for Pascha, and also the subordination of abbots to bishops, both respectable Orthodox principles. But the decisive argument (if you can call it an argument) was the papal "power of the keys". Of course the romantics - and count me in here - find the Gaelic monks (and their Northumbrian disciples) far more attractive than the pro-Roman party. But it is all rather complicated.

As far as I understand, the decisions of Whitby (and Hatfield) - though the former was specifically a Northumbrian synod - were adopted over most of England Scotland and Wales during the 8th century. Scotland was brought further into line by Queen Margaret, and Ireland after the Anglo-Norman conquest. I know virtually nothing about Ireland, but I gather that the authority of the Roman Church in Scotland was a pretty haphazard affair (as was the authority of the crown itself in highland areas), with many areas continuing to observe Celtic Christian and probably Celtic pagan customs. (This is not based on research, but on conversations with friends from the Highlands.)

Fr Raphael Vereshack

08-10-2006, 02:06 PM

Dear John,

You wrote:

We can, I think, assume a very real difference between Harold and William. William brought a ruthless centralizing tendency, disinherited the Anglo-Saxon nobility and filled the Church full of Norman prelates; Harold would have continued with the old ways. Whether, on the non-secular front, the difference would have been so great, we cannot know; but it seems unlikely. Perhaps England was just brought into line with the rest of western Europe more speedily.

It's interesting to see how 1066 is portrayed. In English history it is seen as a cataclysmic event, like entering into an entirely different and opposed world once William arrives. And yet a lot of what happened in 1066 and much beyond reflects the fact that these two areas of Europe had such an interconnected history probably from pre-historic or at least ancient times. From this perspective Harold and William were engaged in a family struggle (they literally were engaged in a struggle over the succession after all) as much as anything else.

Whether William brought something radically different to England or something that would likely have eventually occurred in one way or another is the point of all this. There's a lot of the detail of what William brought from Normandy that I'm not aware of. But it does seem similar to the general reforms going on throughout western Europe at the time both in civil society and the Church. A few centuries before this St Gregory of Tours writes very clearly about the increasing chaos and violence of this society. And he appeals for some sort of self-imposed moral order based on the standards of the Church.

For us as Orthodox the 11th century Schism still represents a fundamental & dramatic rift between east & west. But we're only beginning to recognize how what happened was partly due to our reaction to what was really a western attempt to reform itself after centuries of chaos. This makes the question more complicated since we often see it more as being one of power on the part of the west. (eg Papal supremacy, Crusaders, etc) How all of this was only a part of a reforming effort in the west and only peripherally directed at us however changes the focus of what it may have been that the east criticized in those centuries that led up to the Schism.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

John Charmley

08-10-2006, 04:16 PM

For us as Orthodox the 11th century Schism still represents a fundamental & dramatic rift between east & west. But we're only beginning to recognize how what happened was partly due to our reaction to what was really a western attempt to reform itself after centuries of chaos. This makes the question more complicated since we often see it more as being one of power on the part of the west. (eg Papal supremacy, Crusaders, etc) How all of this was only a part of a reforming effort in the west and only peripherally directed at us however changes the focus of what it may have been that the east criticized in those centuries that led up to the Schism.
In Christ- Fr Raphael

Dear Father Raphael,

Another interesting insight here, I think, and thank you for it. I think that Sir Steven Runciman's book on the Great Schism has many sensible things to say on this theme. Certainly by the 13th century the East had every reason to see the issue as being primarily one of power, since the Papacy certainly used the perilous position of the Eastern Empire as a lever to force concessions from it. The fact that by the 15th century there were some Orthodox who thought that the Sultan's turban was preferable to the Pope's mitre, is a graphic reminder to us in this ecumenical age of how fiercely matters were debated and views held in earlier days.

Certainly the Papal reforms started out as a much-needed attempt to bring order to chaos; indeed, after the 5th century in the west the Church was often the only focus of authority in some places, so it is not surprising that the Popes came to see their role in political, as well as theological terms; they, of course, would have disputed such a division at all.

One of the central difficulties comes from the fact that as the East was reeling under the blows first of the Arab invasions and then the threats from the Mongols and later the Ottomans, the west, which had already had its blows much earlier, was recovering, with the Pope as one of the main engines of that recovery. This naturally suggested to Rome that its primacy was being validated by history, and that the weakening position of the Eastern Empire offered an opportunity for the assertion of that primacy.

Not surprising then, I think, that the East came to see the western position as aggressive; after the events of 1204 there was every justification for it. Tragically, all of this helped to lead to the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire - although, as Runciman reminds us in his 'The Great Church in Captivity', things were more complex and nuanced than the polemicists and nationalists will always accept.

A long way from Harold II? Perhaps, but then if it reminds us of a time when England was not Protestant, not that far. I have placed an image of a coin of Harold II in my images. Most of us have perhaps seen the Bayeux Tapestry pictures, but I thought this one might be of interest.

In Christ,

John

Andreas Moran

10-01-2009, 01:15 AM

I thought it better to renew this thread than start another. Last Wednesday, after the Christmas Liturgy in our parish church in Moscow, Fr Joseph invited some friends and us to lunch in the little church hall. We talked about lots of things, and the topic of connections between Russia and England came up. No one present knew about Harold's daughter, Gytha, marrying Vladimir Monomakh. In the context of previous posts, it is worth noting that thousands of English people fled England after William's victory at Hastings. They can hardly have felt attracted to a pope who had blessed the invasion of their country, especially given the murderous tyranny which followed and the utter destruction of Anglo-Saxon society (including the desecration of the shrines of English saints). As to whether the English of that time might be considered Orthodox, consider that Gytha married Prince Vladimir Monomakh in the Spassky Cathedral in Chernigov in 1074 (possibly 1075). Would Vladimir's clergy have thought that Gytha needed some form of conversion before their marriage? We cannot know, but surely those involved at that time would not have considered Gytha as ineligible to marry an Orthodox prince. The first issue of that marriage was St Mtsislav the Great (who also was called Harold after his grandfather). If Gytha married Vladimir without any 'conversion', she must have been considered Orthodox. In any event, this English princess was the mother of a long line of Russian saints and princes.

Jonathan Michael

10-01-2009, 02:15 AM

I read that after the Norman invasion, roughly 1 in every 100 Anglo-Saxons fled the country, most of them going into Scotland and Scandanavia; I think Gytha also arrived at Russia by way of Scandanavia.

Other Anglo-Saxons sailed south, round Gibraltar, and onto Byzantium. Many Anglo-Saxon nobles, once there, fought in the Imperial Army, specifically the Varangian Guard. The Varangian Guard has a history long before the 11th century though, and was a division specifically made up of non-Greeks, Anglo-Saxons and Scandanavians in particular.

The 11th century influx of Anglo Saxons were welcomed into the Varangian Guard, and would then have gone on to fight for Byzantium against both the Persians to the East, and their old rivals the Normans. As Andreas mentioned, the Normans fought with the blessing of the Pope, and literally marched to Hastings under the Papal Banner. The Normans were also used by the Pope to gain concessions in Siciliy and other parts of the Mediterranean, and so it was in this arena that the Anglo-Saxon exiles would have faced the Normans again. It is not romantacism to say that they fought on behalf of Orthodoxy, against the aggresive expansionism of Papism. And this is many years after 1066, let alone 1054.

The Anglo-Saxons who fled to Byzantium finally settled in land reclaimed from Persian invaders, to the East of that city, naming it New England. There's still some debate as to where this settlement of the English was - some say modern day Bulgaria, others say Romania. The most compelling evidence is that they ended up in the Crimea, near modern day Georgia.

St. Herman's Monastery will be writing about Anglo Saxon saints in the next issue of their magazine (having dedicated a previous edition to Celtic Saints).

Herman Blaydoe

10-01-2009, 03:04 AM

Would Vladimir's clergy have thought that Gytha needed some form of conversion before their marriage? We cannot know, but surely those involved at that time would not have considered Gytha as ineligible to marry an Orthodox prince. The first issue of that marriage was St Mtsislav the Great (who also was called Harold after his grandfather). If Gytha married Vladimir without any 'conversion', she must have been considered Orthodox. In any event, this English princess was the mother of a long line of Russian saints and princes.

1054 is more of a convenience date than an "official" one. There were serious disruptions in relations before that date as well. The churches did not see each other as "separate" as we do today, although I suspect the animosity was much stronger after 1204 and the sack of Constantinople. I would have to believe that in 1074 they still saw each other as one family but not talking to each other and probably recognized each others sacraments and orders.

The "split" took centuries, 1054 is just a convenient date to use since it was one of the more serious events between the churches, what with excommunicating each others' patriarchs and all. There was extensive communication between Constantinople and the monks of Ireland until the Romans quelled the Celtic church and enforce the Latin Mass long after 1054.

Herman

Kusanagi

10-01-2009, 12:50 PM