Anglo-Saxon Diocese of Whithorn

The Anglo-Saxon Diocese of Whithorn was a Northumbrian bishopric or diocese of the Anglo-Saxon Church. It was centred on Whithorn, now in Galloway in Scotland, during the 8th century AD. The first known Bishop of Whithorn was Pehthelm.

Origins

According to Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical tradition, a Pictish church called Candida Casa was founded by Ninian in the late 4th century to early/mid-5th century. Christianity flourished in Galloway in the 6th century and there was possibly a 6th-century Magnum Monasterium, or Monastery of Rosnat in Whithorn during this time.

While there was some relationship between Northumbrian Christianity and that in Galloway in the 7th century, following the repudiation of Celtic Christianity by the Northumbrian Church at the Synod of Whitby in 664, the Archbishop of Canterbury created several bishoprics out of Northumbrian territory with the intent that they be subordinate to Canterbury rather than to York. York resisted this development, notably by establishing a subordinate bishopric no later than circa 730 in Whithorn. This subordination was reinforced when York was elevated to an archbishopric by Pope Gregory III in 735.