The Christianity practiced by the Celtic churches came to these islands before the emissaries of the Church of Rome landed in Kent with St Augustine. St Columba is said to have died on the day that Augustine landed.
The original missionaries spoke Greek and their liturgies and the way in which they dated Easter point to their having originated in the eastern half of the empire. There is evidence that the Druids welcomed the new religion and that the two belief-systems were gradually assimilated. Celtic priests shaved the front of their heads in the Druid manner and men who had been druids continued as christian priests. Columba himself, Colmcille of our hearts, was the son of a druid and educated in a druid college. It was a Celtic monk, Pelagius, who promulgated the famous Pelagian 'Heresy' which denied both the concept of Original Sin and Man's position at the centre of the created universe.
When the two forms of Christianity met up, the Celtic from the North and west and the Roman from the East, they at first co-existed peacefully, even sharing the same churches, but eventually, political events forced the churchmen to unite and at the historic Synod of Whitby, the Roman version gained the ascendancy. In Ireland and Scotland, however, and even in many parts of England, the old celtic ways survived, although at various periods of history they were frowned upon, and so we have a legacy of celtic prayers preserved in the Gaelic language.
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The Chapel in the Green | Carmina Gadelica ]
