Avalonian Mystery Traditions

The Ancient British Church

by Palden Jenkins

The Celtic Church - an historical twist

Arising from the collapse of Jesus' mission in Palestine, which had been backed by the Essenes, of whom he was a member, Glastonbury eventually became the first Christian church in the West. Out of this and other developments in Wales and Scotland grew the Ancient British Church, a mystical and druidically-influenced form of Christian faith which was close to Essence teachings and deeply contrasted the doctrinal and institutional approach of the Romish Church. The Culdees, a band of roving British Christian-Druid renunciates, whose tradition lived on into medieval times at Glastonbury, were derived from a melding of Essene and Druidic traditions initiated at Glastonbury and in Wales [Celt, Druid and Culdee, Elizabeth Hill Elder, Covenant, London, 1962].

The later long-running rivalry in medieval times between the Abbot of Glastonbury and the Bishop of Bath and Wells was not merely a little local tiff, but a remnant of the tragic political friction between the Ancient British (Celtic) and Catholic (Saxon) churches, which had ended with the suppression of the Celtic church after the Synod of Whitby of 664. Christianity was the modern faith, and both the Saxons, who had invaded England in the 500s, and the Pope, who supported them, sought to maintain a cultural distinction from the British (Celts) and, eventually, to overwhelm the British.

Though there were some 150 years between the Anglo-Saxon-Jutish invasion and the Synod of Whitby, during which the Celtic and Catholic churches coexisted, with regional concentration, the Saxon-Catholic conspiracy to overcome the British Church was concerted and intentional. Being more hierarchical and centrally-controlled, the Catholic church was politically more appropriate as a state religion. In the Celtic church the druid-bishops advised rulers and, in some cases, possessed the capacity to dethrone them which, of course, was politically anathema to the Roman order – traditionally, power in the Celtic world was not inherited by rulers but elected and conferred. The Saxons' payoff was that alignment to Rome gave them respectability and a civilising influence, helping them eventually outstrip the Britons who, until then, had been inherently more civilised.

Here's the twist. Going back to Joseph's time, the apostles Peter and Paul, who travelled to Rome from Palestine, unwittingly to lay the first seeds of the Catholic church, had been invited there by British aristocrats, resident in Rome as guarantors of treaties between the Britons and the Romans [The Fire and the Stones, Nicholas Hagger, Element, 1993]. Time passed. Centuries later, after the fall of Rome and superseding the Roman order, the Catholic church gradually grew larger, spreading into north-west Europe. The Saxons, seeking respectability, converted to Catholicism, with the help of the mission of St Augustine to England from 597 onwards. Later, at the ill-fated Synod of Whitby of 664, the British church was overwhelmed. Thus it was that, over 550 years, British Christians inadvertently created their own downfall: they had brought Peter and Paul to Rome, and their own British Christian faith was eventually brought down as a result.

Primacy

During ancient times Glastonbury served as a kind of spiritual capital of Britain, thus beginning its career as a pilgrimage place. If it is true that Cadbury Castle was King Arthur's Camelot – a plausible notion – the prominence and proximity of Glastonbury Tor suggests a local polarity of secular and magical/spiritual poles of power in Cadbury and Glastonbury.

In medieval times, the primacy of Canterbury over Glastonbury was a matter of political expediency more than genuine spiritual precedence. Canterbury was the headquarters for the Saxon Catholics, but Glastonbury was five centuries older and British or Celtic in origin. Glastonbury's sanctity and primacy was kept awkwardly discreet by Canterbury and Rome over the centuries that followed. When Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in the 1530s, Glastonbury was the very last of the ecclesiastical institutions to be destroyed. Henry would have preferred Glastonbury and its holy relics to have come willingly under his control. However, then as today, Glastonbury was independent-thinking, in a world of its own.

The last abbot of Glastonbury, Richard Whiting, seemingly caused these relics to be spirited away, refusing to give them up. He was duly hanged, drawn and quartered atop the Tor - in effect, for treason against the king. The relics have never since been found, though some suspect they are under Ham Hill, south of Glastonbury, and one, the Blue Bowl of Nanteos, went to Wales and now lies in a bank vault somewhere.

The Abbey was forcibly closed and all valuables – including such things as a high alter lined with pure emerald – were taken by the king's men (one of them a predecessor of Oliver Cromwell). Much of the stonework was used over the decades in local building and roads, and traces of gargoyles, columns and windows still adorn houses around the town (including my own 300-year old cottage).

Palden Jenkins