Talk:Laurence of Canterbury

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Was the church he was buried in really named after Augustine of Hippo, not Augustine of Canterbury? The latter seems more likely. --Saforrest 19:53, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations

Good job..Modernist (talk) 00:28, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

thanks. Now for Paulinus of York and Gregorian mission and the Featured Topic will be done! Ealdgyth - Talk 00:39, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Suspicious quote...

Another time, Laurence wrote that the "small number of Celts, living at the world's ends, cannot claim to know better than all the Churches of Christendom."

The above sentence from the article is highly implausible: the pre-Saxon inhabitants of Britain and Ireland were not refered to as "Celts" until the 18th century, some 1200 years after Laurence died. Similarly, the "celtic church" is a modern term. Bede, for instance, refers to British, Scots (i.e. Irish) and Picts. Unfortunately I don't have access to the purported source, i.e. the book by Décarreaux. There is no such quote in Bede, who preserves about 90% of what we know about Laurence. 82.6.77.75 (talk) 13:14, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I've clarified that it's a quote and translation from Decarreaux. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:25, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

It still is presented as a direct (translated) quote from a document written by Laurence (presumably originally in Latin). At the very least, "Celts" is a modern substitute for some other term in the original which would have been more specific...people in Laurence's time did not see the British and Irish as being divisions of a single people, and did not use the Greek term "keltoi" or its latin derivative to describe either of them. I'm more than a bit suspicious that the "quote" is invented... are you sure Decarreaux intends it to be taken literally, rather than as Decarreaux's summary of the attitude of Augustine & co? If so, what specific document does he claim to be quoting? 82.6.77.75 (talk) 16:28, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I believe the quote comes from a very early revision of the article, if it's that big a deal, it can be removed. Des doesn't give a source for the quote, but he does indeed give it quotation marks, implying that it is Laurence's words. The exact bit is "In 609, Bishop Laurence, Augustine's successor, complained that Bishop Dagan refused to sit at his table or to sleep under his roof. Laurence himself did not conceal his bitterness: "The small number of Celts, living at the world's ends, cannot claim to know better than all the Churches of Christendom." A century later the Welsh Christians still refused to pray in the same churches as the Latins, or to share their meals." (p. 261). Ealdgyth - Talk 16:39, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Decarreaux seems to have garbled this. The complaint about Dagan is correctly attributed to Laurence (Bede, book 2 ch 4) but the quoted text seems to be based on a later chapter of Bede recounting a letter of Pope Honorius to the Scots in 634 AD. From the Penguin classics translation:

"He [Honorius] earnestly warned them [the Scots] not to imagine that their little community, isolated at the uttermost ends of the earth, had a wisdom exceeding that of all churches ancient and modern throughout the world..." (Bede, book 2 ch 19).

close enough that this seems to be what Decarreaux had in mind. Obviously this is not relevant here since Honorius wrote 20 years after Laurence's death. Is this important? Fairly, because if we describe the controversy as "Romans" vs. "Celts" we are not recounting history but 19th-century nationalist mythology. So I'm deleting this sentence. 82.6.77.75 (talk) 17:50, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

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