The northern bishops and abbots traced their succession, not to
Augustine, but to Columba. Cuthberht, the English apostle of the north,
who really converted the _people_ of Northumbria, as earlier
missionaries had converted its _kings_, derived his orders from Iona.
Rome or Ireland, was now the practical question of the English Church.
As might be expected, Rome conquered. To allay the discord, King Oswiu
summoned a synod at Streoneshalch (now known by its later Danish name of
Whitby) in 664, to settle the vexed question as to the date of Easter.
The Irish priests claimed the authority of St. John for their crescent
tonsure; the Romans, headed by Wilfrith, a most vigorous priest,
appealed to the authority of St. Peter for the canonical circle. "I will
never offend the saint who holds the keys of heaven," said Oswiu, with
the frank, half-heathendom of a recent convert; and the meeting shortly
decided as the king would have it. The Irish party acquiesced or else
returned to Scotland; and thenceforth the new English Church remained in
close communion with Rome and the Continent. Whatever may be our
ecclesiastical judgment of this decision, there can be little doubt that
its material effects were most excellent. By bringing England into
connection with Rome, it brought her into connection with the centre of
all then-existing civilisation, and endowed her with arts and
manufactures which she could never otherwise have attained. The
connection with Ireland and the north would have been as fatal, from a
purely secular point of view, to early English culture as was the later
connection with half-barbaric Scandinavia. Rome gave England the Roman
letters, arts, and organisation: Ireland could only have given her a
more insular form of Celtic civilisation.