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Comment by dghf | Hacker News Reader

What is going on with Celtic Christianity? Was it really as distinct from Roman Catholicism (and for as long) as the graphic suggests?

Also, why no Cathars/Albigensians in the south of France during the 12th & 13th centuries?

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Yes it was, as since it was never part of Roman empire it developed from missionary activity, and even started its own monastic missionary activity back to North Umbria, Faeroes and apparently even Iceland.

But was it doctrinally different from Chalcedonian Christianity to justify its own colour on the map. Wikipedia suggests no, which chimes with my understanding: some local minor differences in practice, but nothing like the Christological disputes that caused the rift with the Church of the East, nor like the row over papal supremacy etc. that led to the Great Schism between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

That is correct afaik, though there were serious disputes in Anglo Saxon Britain about these and other issues (mostly about 'leadership' of the church as in any human organization). I'm not sure if it warrants another color, etc though per this video.

Yes, it seems to be promoting the idea, popular in New Age writings, that Celtic Christianity was a separate denomination (or what Rome would have considered a heresy); and that just doesn’t seem to have been the case.

Ah I see thanks, wasn't familiar with that. That sounds like a stretch, as it wasn't that long a period from St Patrick until the reunification back into the Latin church

after non-trivial inquiry from far-away California, my best understanding is that the Celts did gracefully embrace the Christian faith among the monks and those serious about religious life. Since there were vivid and lived religious traditions alive at all times through history, this transition was not uneventful. However the kind of "top down" and by-the-sword conversion that did occur e.g. the Baltic tribes, was not the case with the equally fierce Celts

But the graphic suggests that Celtic Christianity was in some sense theologically distinct from Chalcedonian Christianity, and that doesn't seem to have been the case. The main ways that the Christians of Ireland and Britain differed from those of continental western Europe seem to have been in the shape of the monastic tonsure and the calculation of the date of Easter; and in the latter, at least, British and Irish Christians were in conformity with Rome by the end of the eighth century. (There was also an emphasis on penance and absolution as a private rather than public rite, but this was ultimately adopted by the wider church.)

There doesn't seem to have been any doctrinal disputes, nor any suggestion that British and Irish Christianity was in any way separate from the Church of Rome.

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