How true is it that England was briefly Orthodox before the Norman Invasion?

by fureddit103

Two years before the Great Schism, the Archbishop of Canterbury was excommunicated and his position invalidated. I'm not sure, but it sounds like King Edward the confessor was under this bull too, and the Norman invasion essentially a crusade. At the same time, Edward and his ancestors had begun using more Greek and Byzantine titles, like EADWARDI ANGLORVM BASILEI, and it seems like a significant English migration occurred to Constantinople as these ties grew, or at least a "New England" after the Norman invasion. That and the Varangian membership that the English may have enjoyed in part?

So my question is, given this shift towards the East, and the excommunication that both were under, how true is it that England was heading towards, or actually was, Orthodox instead of Catholic in the decades between the Great Schism and the Norman Conquest?

Ultimately, the Normans invaded, replaced the bishops and kings, and integrated them back into Catholicism. But I was curious of the in-situ feelings they had of their own identity.

y_sengaku

AFAIK absolutely not, though I'm not specialized in the latest period of ASE.
Sorry, but most (I afraid all) of your premises mentioned in OP have at least some problems, in light of recent historiography:

  • Archbishop Stigand's position: His irregular succession (rather multiple ecclesiastical office holding) was certainly controversial even before the conquest, but he at least sought and succeeded in getting palium in 1058 from the Pope Benedict X in Rome, who was later removed from legitimate apostolic succession of the popes as one of 'anti-Popes' (Huscroft 2005: 48). If he had made a clear break with Rome and allied with Constantinople (extremely unlikely), then why he would have sought pallium from Roman Pontiff? His weak position in the last year in ASE mainly came from this annulled legitimacy of the granted pallium, probably not the explicit excommunication of a series of successor Popes that I cannot find any positive evidence. It is worth noting that even William the Conqueror seemed to accept him in the first years after the Conquest (Loyn 2000: 60f). His deposition happened first after the visit of papal legates as well as after the Great Campaigns (1068-70) in 1070.
  • Norman Conquest as a kind of the crusade: It is true that some crusade researchers counts the alleged grant of the papal banner to William as one of 'proto-crusades' (Cf. Robinson 1990: 323-25), but none of such known proto-crusades aimed at the fellow Christians, even if excommunicated, in the 11th century. Crusades against the Christians were phenomena that in principle belonged to the pontificate of Pope Innocent III and later. While not put into action, Pope Gregory VII once also planned to help Byzantine Empire, i.e. allegedly excommunicated Christians (Ibid., 325)
  • Basileus title of Wessex kings since King Æthelstan: Latest research dismisses possibility of real political implication: 'We should not, however, assume that any particular political idea lay behind each use of a word like imperator or basileus' (Molyneaux 2011: 63). It should be also pointed out that Byzantine emperor would have not recognize another, western basileus in his 'political commonwealth' (the term itself is borrowed from Obolensky's famous work).
  • English emigrants in Constantinople, such as the Varangians: Greek sources illustarates the presence of the Englishmen among the guards first in ca. 1080, and Orderic Vitalis also notes the migration of the ex-revolting Englishmen from British Isles AFTER the conquest (Orderic Vitalis, ii-32, according to Blöndal & Benedikz 1978: 141-147). Another later tradition cited by Benedikz also supports the movement of the English during the 1070s. In short, it was not so likely that many of them had been already settled in Constantinople in 1066.

 

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[Edited]: fixes typo as well as correct italicalization of the works cited.