Editing Synod of Whitby (section)

==Legacy and historical significance==
The Synod of Whitby was just one of many councils held concerning the proper calculation of Easter throughout Latin Christendom in the Early Middle Ages.<ref>See C. W. Jones introductory text to his edition of ''Bedae Opera de Temproibus'' (Cambridge, Mass., 1946) pp. 55–104.</ref> It addressed the issues of Easter calculation and of the proper [[tonsure|monastic tonsure]],<ref name="PatrickWormald">{{cite book |first=Patrick |last=Wormald |chapter=Bede and the 'Church of the English' |title=The Times of Bede |page=210 |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |date=2006 |isbn=9780631166559}}</ref> and concerned only the part of the English Church that answered to the See of Lindisfarne:<ref name="PatrickWormald" /> that is, it was a Northumbrian affair.<ref name="MayrHartingThe" /> Wilfrid's advocacy of the Roman Easter has been called "a triumphant push against an open door", since most of the Irish had already accepted the Roman Easter and for that reason Iona "was already in danger of being pushed to one side by its Irish rivals."<ref>Brown, ''Rise of Western Christendom'', p. 361.</ref>

Although the focus on Whitby is on the decisions on tonsure and dating of Easter, the synod was an important step in the eventual Romanisation of the church in England; even though this Romanisation might have occurred anyway without the Synod of Whitby.  Nonetheless, since the Protestant [[Reformation]], the events of the synod have been symbolically interpreted as a "Celtic Church" opposing a "Roman Church", and the decision of Oswiu was thus interpreted as the "subjugation" of the "British Church" to Rome. There is a debate regarding the reality of a distinction between a pre-Whitby "Celtic" Church and a post-Whitby "Roman" Church. (Until fairly recently, the Scottish Divinity Faculty course on Church History ran from the [[Acts of the Apostles]] to 664 before resuming in 1560.)<ref name="PatrickWormald"/> In the words of [[Patrick Wormald]]:<ref>{{cite book |first=Patrick |last=Wormald |chapter=Bede and the 'Church of the English' |title=The Times of Bede |page=207 |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |date=2006 |isbn=9780631166559}}</ref>
<blockquote>From the days of [[George Buchanan]], supplying the initial propaganda for the makers of the Scottish Kirk, until a startlingly recent date, there was warrant for an anti-Roman, anti-episcopal and, in the nineteenth century, anti-establishment stance in the Columban or "Celtic" Church.&nbsp;... The idea that there {{em|was}} a "Celtic Church" in something of a post-Reformation sense is still maddeningly ineradicable from the minds of students.</blockquote>

In placing the synod in its proper historical context, historians of Anglo-Saxon England have also noted the position of the synod in the context of contemporary political tensions. Henry Mayr-Harting considered Alchfrith's interest in the convocation of the synod to be derived from his desire to see his father's position in [[Bernicia]] challenged and to see the replacement of Colmán with another bishop who would be more aligned with himself.<ref name="MayrHartingThe" />