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The Council of Whitby: A Study in Early Anglo-Saxon Politics

The scene is familiar to most students of English history. In 664 A.D. the Northumbrian kings Oswiu and his son Alhfrith met with their clergy at Whitby to resolve (in Bede's words) “a great and active controversy about the keeping of Easter.” Oswiu, who presided over the council, listened patiently to a long and often bitter debate between the Irish and Roman advocates. On the surface, it was an unequal contest, for the traditions of Iona were upheld by the king's own bishop, Colman, while those of Rome were championed by a young abbot, Wilfrid, a protege of Alhfrith. But once again David slew Goliath. Oswiu, fearing for the welfare of his soul, pronounced in favor of the Apostle Peter, the “hostiarius … qui claues tenere probatur,” thus turning his back on his own childhood teachings. “When the king had spoken, all who were seated there or standing by, both high and low, gave up their imperfect rules, and readily accepted in their place those which they recognized to be better.” Bede portrayed the Council of Whitby as the decisive confrontation in his native Northumbria between the rival ecclesiastical traditions of Rome and Iona. For him, the Roman triumph, the climax of the third book of his Ecclesiastical History, signified that the Northumbrian church would no longer be guided by “a handful of people in the remotest of islands,” but would rejoin the “catholic and apostolic" Church of Christ. Oswiu's dramatic conversion at Whitby was thus a crucial step in the growth of Christian unity in the British Isles.