Pilgrimage with Anglicans

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Hi there, and thanks in advance. I’m considering going on a new local Pilgrimage here in the UK which involves visiting churches devoted to pre-Anglican saints, especially during the period before the Roman take over of the Celtic Church. My question is this, at the beginning and at the end there will be an Anglican service/evensong, how as a Catholic would I partake in this, would it be an issue? As you may well know we have an abundance of Christian history here in the UK although the vast majority was adopted by the Church of England during the time of the reformation, it just would be good to reclaim some of the history rather than avoiding Anglicanism, and you never know, evangelise for Rome!
 
You can pray along with the Anglicans. Catholics are allowed to engage in ecumenical prayer with other Christians. Just don’t receive any sort of communion at the Anglican service, as that’s not allowed for Catholics.

Also, I presume you will find some way to meet your own Catholic Mass obligations if these activities are happening on a Sunday.

It sounds like a great activity. As someone whose ancestry is primarily Irish and has some Scots as well, I love to learn about the saints of UK, many of whom seem to have sadly fallen into obscurity nowadays. I fully agree with you about reclaiming the history.
 
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Thanks it’s good to know that there’s no major issues. It’s a Saturday thing so I’m ok for Mass and will only take the Sacraments in the Catholic Church anyway. I live down in Devon, which Devon & Cornwall has many many churches dedicated to the Celtic Saints, Saint Boniface & Saint Piran being perhaps the best known. Lots to explore and pilgrimage is a very much growing thing here in the UK.


 
GordonP said:
Saint Boniface was Anglo-Saxon, not Celtic.
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Yes he was. At least he was Anglo-Saxon in the sense that he was born in Anglo-Saxon England, but being Devonian he probably had very little if any in the way of Anglian or Saxon genes. And many of the people around Crediton (if indeed that is where he was born — we don’t know for sure) may well have spoken a Celtic language at that period (although the truth is we know very little about the spread of Old English). But yes, we speak of him as an Anglo-Saxon saint.
 
PickyPicky said:
At least he was Anglo-Saxon in the sense that he was born in Anglo-Saxon England, but being Devonian he probably had very little if any in the way of Anglian or Saxon genes.
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He was Anglo-Saxon though and through, in every sense of the word, and almost certainly from the Anglo-Saxon ruling class. Which is why he was chosen for a mission to Frisia.

It’s highly unlikely that he had any Celtic genes or any ties to any Celtic community, or that he could speak or even understand a Celtic language.

Wherever you got the idea that St. Bonificace was Celtic, they apparently just made that up. There’s no historical basis for it.
 
You are sounding very definite, which is brave given the lack of definite ness in our knowledge of the genetic make-up of Devonians in the 7th century and the linguistic takeover of English.

What we do know is that genes which might have arrived with the Saxon “Advent” decline rapidly in the English population from East to West, and Crediton is pretty far West.

As to ruling class, even the king list of Wessex itself begins with British names.

As far as language is concerned, remember that Cornish was still a vernacular into the 18th Century. It seems to me highly unlikely that a Celtic language was not widely spoken less than 50 miles away in Devon more than a thousand years earlier.
 
Everything you have written is pure Romantic-Era fantasy invented by “Celtic” enthusiasts in the 19th century, and none of it is supported in the least by credible historical sources.
 
Dear me, you have sensitive reactions. I’m not a Celtic enthusiast, I’m a Saxon enthusiast.

It is you who seem to live in the 19th Century world in which it was believed that Saxons wiped out (or, some extreme modernists suggested enslaved) everyone east of the Tamar and the Severn. Modern historians are still arguing between the migrationists and the archaeologists, but the wipe-out theory has long gone.
GordonP said:
Everything you have written is pure Romantic-Era fantasy invented by “Celtic” enthusiasts in the 19th century
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Including the genetics?

Including the Wessex king list?

Including the linguistics?

In any case, even a firm migrationist like the lateJean Manco, let alone a supporter of continuity like Susan Oosterhuizen, would not be surprised to find that the bulk of Devon’s population in the 7th Century had its origins in the Bronze Age at the latest, and did not speak English in the home. Of course we don’t know: but that was the point of my post. It is not definitely known that Boniface was not “Celtic”.
 
GKMotley said:
Fascinating
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Truth is that our knowledge is not strong enough to support much definite ness about any of Dumnonia. The battles Saxons v Brits, if battles they were, are confusing by place and date in what passes for written sources. There seem to have been Brittonic kings of Dumnonia until quite late — 9th, even 10th century — but what territory they controlled is doubtful. No doubt they withdrew to what is now Cornwall. But battles pop up as far east as East Somerset.

The Saxon “Advent” is a subject that interest me, but annoyingly I’m unable to come to any firm conclusions on it. The experts speak, then new experts contradict them. If only they’d make up their minds I could believe them and pass on to something else. Very annoying.
 
There is so much that I can only recognize the barest outlines of (far murkier than this exposition) that I draw back to my comfort zones, 6-9 hundred years later.
Firm conclusions in my sandboxes are easier to reach, given that they are more contemporaneous. I find them easier, at least.

I knew a lady whose family came from Cornwall. Never met her brother.
 
GKMotley said:
I knew a lady whose family came from Cornwall. Never met her brother.
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I haven’t read her brother’s book on Celtic Britain. I must get it: perhaps that will sort the whole thing out for me. 🙂
 
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Boniface’s original name was Wynfrith, his sister-sons were named Willibald and Winnibald, and his niece was named Walburga. They spoke Old English. They associated with other Saxons and lived in Saxon religious houses.

So if they were Celts genetically, they were thoroughly Saxonized Celts.
 
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The area of Crediton is believed to have produced several missionary saints at this time. The most famous being St Boniface obviously, but also his two nephews St. Willibald and St. Winibald (who both had very interesting histories of missionary work in Europe) and their sister St. Walbugh or Walpurga/ Valderburgh whose remains were interred at the monastery founded by St. Willibald at Heidenheim and of which she became Abbess. Her remains were subsequently moved to Eichstatt (from where a miraculous liquid started exuding from her tomb and which is still given to pilgrims and used in healing)
This gives some detail of the history of these people.

 
There were a ton of Devon saints who were Britons, though. That is not even in question.
 
IanM said:
The most famous being St Boniface obviously, but also his two nephews St. Willibald and St. Winibald (who both had very interesting histories of missionary work in Europe) and their sister St. Walbugh or Walpurga
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Yes, a very talented family,
Mintaka said:
So if they were Celts genetically, they were thoroughly Saxonized Celts
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Absolutely right. Whether British or Germanic, they were certainly culturally Saxon.
 
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