All that I've read says that Patrick was aligned with the Celtic Church which was primarily aligned with the Orthodox bishops and not with Rome.
Is that how you read history?
"All that I've read says that Patrick was aligned with the Celtic Church which was primarily aligned with the Orthodox bishops and not with Rome.
Is that how you read history?"
I think in +Patrick's times it is sort of meaningless to talk about alignments one way or the other. There was only The Church then. Christianity was united in its beliefs, but the churches certainly had local or ethnic overtones in both liturgical practice and ecclesiology. I think it is fair to say that the monasticism which developed in Ireland and Scotland and England in the early years was very Eastern in its praxis and quite independant of Rome. There is every reason to believe that the influences on that monasticism were almost purely what we know call Orthodox. It wasn't really until the Synod of Whitby that Rome made a big push for control. That in and of itself made at least some sense since there is no question but that the bishop of Rome was and is the Patriarch of the West. That said, it is important to remember that the conversion of Northern Europe all the way to the borders of Russia was accomplished by Irish and Scottish monks who were very, very Orthodox in their theology and manner of prayer and liturgy.