When I was a kid, if you were to ask me what my favourite things were, the answer would be easy — knights, castles, and the Middle Ages. What were my favourite stories? The answer could be found by finding me crouched just inside the door to my bedroom where the hall light spilled across the floor, reading a library book about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. What was my favourite historical event? The Crusades.
Add to this the fact that I was reared in the Anglican Church with a priest for a dad who loves history. In confirmation class, maybe also through osmosis or conversations around the home or in the car, I came to understand that the Anglican Church wasn’t like other Protestant churches — we stood in line with the medieval church in England, stretching back to Augustine of Canterbury. All we did was clear away some abuses (like clerical celibacy!) and clarify some unclear teachings (like, say, justification by faith alone).
You can imagine, then, how pleased I am to be offering my course The Church in Medieval England: 597-1485 for Davenant Hall this spring term, starting in April! You can sign up here.
To pique your interest, here’s the description I put in the syllabus:
The period known as the Middle Ages is often thought of as “dark”, particularly as far as Christianity is concerned. In this course, we will study the path of Christianity in England from the arrival of Italian missionaries in 597 to the accession of Henry Tudor (Henry VII) in 1485, a journey from small Anglo-Saxon kingdoms through the Norman world, up the cusp of the Reformation era. In the lectures, I will move generally chronologically, examining events and major figures as they arise. Particular attention will be given to the twelfth century because of the transformations of the wake of the Norman Conquest, the emergence of the Cistercians, and the rise of universities, as well as late medieval piety and calls for Reform.
What we shall see is a nuanced world of many layers, where the deep Augustinian theology of Thomas Bradwardine (Archbishop of Canterbury, d. 1349) co-exists with those he felt were Pelagian. Alongside the monasteries and universities, there is also the popular world of medieval religion, found in poems, plays, and pilgrimages, devoted to Christ’s passion, the saints, the Eucharist. In a sort of middle place, we will find time for the mystical writings of hermits, canons, and Carthusians, some, like the Abbey of the Holy Ghost, directed to the laity.
We will read Gildas, Bede, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, The Dream of the Rood, the Life of Alfred by Asser, Eadmer’s Life of St Anselm, Simeon of Durham, Aelred of Rievaulx, primary sources about Thomas Becket, Alexander de Hales, Robert Grosseteste, Everyman, shorter devotional poetry, Pearl, Julian of Norwich, John Wycliffe, and medieval liturgy.
Other big names will also turn up, names like Aneirin, Boniface, Aelfric, William of Ockham, William the Conqueror, William II Rufus, Henry I, Henry II, lots of other kings and queens, Thomas Bradwardine, Richard Rolle, The Cloud of Unknowing, Margery Kempe, John Peckham (Archbishop of Canterbury), Queen St Margaret of Scotland, and so forth, as well as some continental biggies like Gregory the Great, Innocent III, Gratian, Thomas Aquinas, et al.
Today we commemorate Caedmon, our first recorded English poet. You can read my translation of Bede’s account of Caedmon here. Since I’ve blogged about Caedmon before (here and here), my mind is moving in other directions upon this commemoration of the poet, namely “religious” poetry more widely.
Poetry is the imaginative aspect of human language, the grasping after symbol and metaphor and those moments that dance around the periphery of our vision, seeking to translate the sublime into ink and paper (or pixels on a screen — or carvings on a stone). The poetic mode is not simply verse, not simply the arrangement of human language into line and meter making use of literary devices.
It is that, of course. It is also more like … the grasping of language at the numinous? Even (especially) when it is ordinary.
When we reach for that, when we attempt to rearrange language into line and verse with metaphor and simile, symbol and personification — then even the gore of the dead, the crushing of corpses, in the plains of Ilium rises to the sublime. The horror of the Iliad, that is, is transposed to a higher mode of language through Homer’s poetry than a simple synopsis would make it out to be.
What is interesting is that poetry is not simply there at the fundaments of religion.
It is there at the fundaments of language and literature.
From there to here,
from here to there,
funny things are everywhere.
–One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, Dr. Suess
Poetry, like the “funny things” of Dr. Suess, is everywhere. Greek literature does not begin with a prose treatise on government. It begins with Iliad and Odyssey, followed quickly by Theogony, and then, soon thereafter, the Homeric Hymns. Deep in The foundational works of Greek literature are not only poems but also the foundational works of the Greek religious thought-world.
Christianity was born from Judaism, and thus born already with the Psalms, those hymns to YHWH composed and sung by the Jewish people over generations. But it was also born with the canticles in the Gospel of Luke (Magnificat, Benedictus, Nunc Dimittis), with the poetic (if not formal verse) prologue to John, with the prose hymn of Philippians 2.
You may say:
Hey. Prose hymns aren’t poetry.
They aren’t verse.
But can prose not also be poetic?
Be that as it may, Christians began celebrating the blessed Light of salvation in hymns and poems fairly early on (see, ‘O Gladsome Light‘ — second century, maybe?). Latin was a bit slower than Greek in this as in other respects, but in the fourth century, Latin Christian poetry takes off with such people as Ambrose of Milan and Prudentius with his Psychomachia, and there has been no looking back since. (If you want to read some Christian Latin poetry, I recommend One Hundred Latin Hymns: Ambrose to Aquinas.)
Every culture that has Christians in it ends up writing poetry. In the ancient world, this means we get to enjoy, besides the Latins I tend to mention, the Greeks such as Romanus the Melodist and Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Syriac authors like St Ephraim (how many times have I mentioned Ephraim the Syrian on this blog, I wonder?), Jacob of Serugh, and beyond. Medieval Armenia produces Gregory of Narek.
And so the Gospel washes ashore in England, headed for Canterbury from Rome and for Lindisfarne from Ireland. Both continental ‘Roman’ Christianity and insular Irish Christianity are versed in poetry — and the Irish in both Latin and Irish verse (I am fond of St Brigid’s and St Columba’s poetry). With such tutors as these, it comes as no surprise that the English start singing praises of their new God and King.
And our own English tongue has produced a wealth of poetry, of expressing with words something of the inexpressible, of coming close to the Uncreated Light, finding your mind so small, yet wishing, nevertheless, to praise the Holy Trinity, or to attempt to trace the outlines of your own beating heart as you catch a glimpse of Him, whether in the Holy Communion or maybe simply some daffodils.
In today’s utilitarian world, where the Prosperity Gospel wants to use Jesus to get rich quick, where we try to parse the mystery of the Eucharist to its last moment, where people walk out of sessions on biblical theology saying that they didn’t ‘get anything out of it’, where we want our sermons served up with a good side of ‘what should I do’, where we forget transcendence in favour of social action —–
God breaks through.
And He has some poets to help us see Him — Malcolm Guite, Luci Shaw, Scott Cairns, as well as singer-songwriters Steve Bell and John Michael Talbot all spring to mind.
With my office under two minutes’ walk from the tomb of the Venerable St Bede, my mind tends towards thinking of Gregory the Great (Bishop of Rome, 590-604) as the man who sent missionaries to the Anglo-Saxons in 597. This, indeed, was one of the many ways in which St Gregory is a major figure of his day. Through the mission of Augustine and his comrades at Canterbury, the Christianisation of southern England and its Anglo-Saxon inhabitants began. Britain was reconnected much more strongly with the Mediterranean world than hitherto. Anglo-Saxon culture began to take on its great fusion and synthesis that makes it so attractive, bringing with it elements of its own Germanic origins, the Mediterranean culture of the Roman missionaries and Roman Christianity, and the Celtic culture of its own neighbours and their missionaries who would become settled more permanently in English soil in a few years.
This triple fusion is, in my opinion, eminently demonstrated in the Lindisfarne Gospels (715-720).
This alone would make St Gregory great and worthy of recognition.
My research, on the other hand, makes me turn to Gregory’s voluminous correspondence. At a conference in honour of his retirement, early medieval scholar Tom Brown (author of Gentlemen and Officers), said that the first task he was assigned as a graduate student was the study of Gregory’s correspondence. Here he found a window into the social world of the Early Middle Ages unparalleled anywhere else. Indeed, Gregory the Great has over 800 surviving letters, more than any preceding pope. The greatest corpus of papal letters before Gregory is Leo the Great with 173.
In his letters we gain access to the workings of the papal machinery, to the growth and development of canon law, to the theological issues of the day, to early Byzantine politics, to the world of Byzantine Italy and the Lombard invasions. Worth reading, indeed.
My interest in Benedict, of late, makes me think on St Gregory’s life in two further ways. One, of course, is the second of his Dialogues, our only near-contemporary life of St Benedict, upon which we rely for any details about the author of the Rule and founder of Montecassino. The other is Gregory the Great’s Book of Pastoral Rule, which details the ideal bishop but could easily be applied to an abbot or parochial priest — anyone with the care of souls.
Elsewhere, Gregory shows us the union of the active and contemplative lives, drawing on ideas expounded by Julianus Pomerius a century before. He praises the usefulness of images for instructing the illiterate. He sought to reform the singing of the liturgy in Rome, whereby a Sacramentary and a style of plainchant now bear his name (even if they are not, properly speaking, his).
He is worth knowing, this (potential) last of the Latin Fathers, latest of the Four Great Doctors of the Western Church, poised between antiquity and the Middle Ages.
St Willibrord (658-739; Feast: 7 November) is one of the various missionary saints from the Anglo-Saxon world to the European continent such as his younger contemporary St Boniface (saint of the week here); his mission field was Frisia and parts of the modern Netherlands and Luxembourg, reaching into (pre-Viking) Denmark.
Willibrord was born in Yorkshire, the son of a certain Wilgils who at some point after Willibrord’s birth became a hermit. Willibrord was educated by St Wilfrid at Ripon and, in 678, went into exile in Ireland when Wilfrid lost his episcopacy in York and took his appeal to Rome (the first English bishop to use Rome as a court of appeal). Of note concerning Wilfrid is that he spent some time preaching in Frisia, also an Anglo-Saxon first, and no doubt later to inspire his disciple Willibrord.
Willibrord spent twelve years in self-imposed exile in Ireland where he spent time in study and was ordained priest. According to the Venerable Bede (saint of the week here), Egbert had long wanted to engage in continental mission, and the earlier mission of a certain Wictbert had availed nothing. After Willibrord’s return to England in 690, he and twelve companions went as missionaries to Frisia to fulfil Egbert’s vision. The choice of Frisia/Friesland makes sense, given the linguistic similarities between Old English and Frisian. I also believe that it is one of the parts of the Continent whence came Britain’s post-Roman Germanic invaders (ultimately ‘Anglo-Saxons’ to us).
Willibrord had the support of the Carolingian dux Pippin II, and his continental mission, like that of Boniface shortly thereafter, was both episcopal and apostolic. As Archbishop of Utrecht, he organised and reformed the existing Christian communities as well as engaging in evangelism of the non-Christian inhabitants of his Metropolitan area.*
Anglo-Saxon bishops (and Carolingians) tended to hold the Bishop of Rome in very high regard, not simply as the Patriarch of Western Christendom, but also as the person (in particular, Gregory the Great, saint of the week here) who first organised the Anglo-Saxon mission of Augustine of Canterbury (saint of the week here). As a result of this esteem in which the papacy was held, Willibrord visited Pope Sergius in Rome early in his mission. In 695 he again visited Rome, this time for his consecration as Bishop of Utrecht.
In 698, he founded his first monastery at Echternach. Monasticism and mission go hand in hand for insular evangelism.
Christianity, of course, can be a politically and socially de-stabilising creed. While Pippin II may have supported Willibrord, Radbod, a Frisian king who practised traditional religion, did not. In 714, Radbod drove Willibrord out of Utrecht, destroyed churches, and killed some priests. In 719, Radbod died, and Willibrord returned to Achiepiscopal see. It was after this that St Boniface joined Willibrord for a time before going East for his own missionary activity.
Like most missionaries of his day, Willibrord literally killed some sacred cows and destroyed some idols. Unlike the less fortunate ones, he and his companions survived. He died at the monastery in Echternach in 739.
He is an example of how early mediaeval prelates combined asceticism with evangelistic zeal. We would do well to imitate, I think.
Read more about Willibrod!
I got most of this information from:
David Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 5th ed., Revised (2011)
*Quick note on church organisation: Local bishops have the pastoral and administrative care of cities and their surrounding area, today called a Diocese. These are further organised into Provinces, each of which has a Metropolitan. In the early mediaeval church, above the Metropolitans was the Pope.
Girded him then
God Almighty
When he would
Step on the gallows,
Fore all mankind
Mindfast, fearless,
Bow me durst I not.
Rood was I reared now
Rich king heaving,
The lord of light-realms;
Lean me I durst not.
Us both they basely mocked and handled,
Was I there with blood bedabbled,
Gushing grievous from his dear side
When his ghost he had uprendered.
Christ was on rood-tree,
But fast from afar
His friends hurried
To aid their atheling (prince).
Everything I saw.
Sorely was I with sorrows harrowed,
Yet humbly I inclined
To the hands of his servants
Striving with might to aid him,
With streals (shafts) was I all wounded.
Down they laid him limb-weary,
O’er his lifeless head then stood they,
Heavily gazing and heaven’s chieftain.
I was going to make the adjective closing this post’s title ‘universal’, but that’s not the point I want to make. The point currently invading my brain (at the expense of my original plans for tonight, Christianity After Constantine) is that God is not simply ‘The God of Everything’ but the God of Where You Are. He is intimately connected with you and where you live.
And how can we perceive the localness of God?
The stories of His saints.
God is not a Middle Eastern or Mediterranean God, although the stories of the Bible all take place in those two locales. No, God is also a British God. A Canadian God. An Ecuadorian God. A South African God.
Of course, immediately I must say that the scandalising particularity of the Incarnation means that the heart of Christianity is based around a first-century Jewish carpenter who was executed by the local authorities. But when God was killed by us, and then rose again, and subsequently ascended, He made Himself available to all people. That particular moment, that event, makes God able to be universally local.
The faith community that surrounds the Jesus event(s) is called by St Paul ‘the Body of Christ’. The Holy Spirit indwells each and every believer.
God is not just the God of the Bible. He is the God of wherever His people are. Our story is His story, for He has lived through it all by the mindblowingly awesome power of the mystical union He shares with us, a spiritual bond that is well-nigh unbreakable.
God, as I said, is also a British God.
I bring in Britain because I live in Scotland. The stories of God are not just shaped by the warmth and aridity of the Judaean countryside, but the chill and dampness of Britain. God has been here, and not just as Creator, a way in which He is present everywhere in an equally intimate way.
God was here in Scotland with Columba, an Irishman (saint of the week here). God was here in Ninian, a Briton. God was here in Adamnan, an Irishman. God was here in Margaret, an Anglo-Saxon. God was here in Cuthbert, an Anglo-Saxon (saint of the week here). God was here in Blane, a Scot from Bute. God was here in Curetan, a Scot (Pict?). God was here in Sts Fillan, who were Irish.
God was down in England in Cuthbert, an Englishman. God was there in Bede, an Englishman (saint of the week here). God was there in Augustine, a Roman (saint of the week here). God was there in Aidan, an Irishman (saint of the week here). God was there in Caedmon, an Englishman (saint of the week here; also, read my translation of Bede’s telling of his life). God was there in Hilda, an Englishwoman (saint of the week here). God was there in Alban (I dunno where he’s from; saint of the week here). God was there in Aelfheah, an Englishman (saint of the week here).
If I knew any Welsh saints, I’d list them, too.
God was in Britain with these saints as well as throughout the Middle Ages, Reformation, and up to this very day. They were characters who lives and personalities were shaped by the weather and history and culture of this island. Christianity is, perhaps, a universal religion. Yet everywhere we go, we are shaped by our stories here, by the experience that the Body of Christ has in these locations, at these times, with these people.
And so, if we are seeking for local spirituality, for British, or Scottish spirituality, it is here. Hilda was born here, and she found Christ already waiting. He is here, and He has shaped this island’s history. We need not look farther than the green hills or craggy cliffs to find him. We need look no further, indeed, than our very hearts.
I would like to share with you several thoughts about method. Because perhaps my blog has inspired you to set out and read more ancient, medieval, (‘counter’)Reformation, ‘modern’ Christianity. There are two important, and (I believe) valid ways of reading historical Christianity — one is a devotional quest that asks, ‘What does this writer/piece of art/piece of music speak to me?’ This need not know history — but it must never parade as history.
The other, which I am to address now, requires the careful study of historical methodology to bring out different treasures than the above, the treasures that represent the authorial intention of a piece, the realities it addressed in its specific context and time. These, if of use, can still often be applied to today, just as the above is automatically applied.
Both, I repeat, are valid as approaches to texts as pathways to the divine.
But only the second is worthwhile as an approach to historical theology or the history of Christianity.
One area where the first and second often blur is the study of early mediaeval Christianity in Britain, Ireland, and associated smaller islands in their vicinity (henceforth ‘Insular’). This is most often perpetrated in the guise of an imagined ‘Pan-Celtic’ form of Christianity whereby all the quite varied cultures and polities and Celtic languages of Britain are imagined to be united in a golden age that precedes a post-seventh-century ‘Romanisation’ of Insular Christianity.
That’s something I’ve dealt with briefly before, and will mostly put to the side in what follows, as I turn my attention to the varied Germanic-speaking peoples who settled in Britannia following ca. AD 410 and whom we (and, eventually, they themselves) call ‘Anglo-Saxons’.
The Germanic-speaking peoples of western, northern, and central Europe are also imagined to be culturally monolithic in much the same way Celtic-speaking peoples are. This sort of ethnography is not precisely helpful when trying to understand a particular object or moment of history. Let us turn now to the Ruthwell Cross, which is in modern Scotland (early mediaeval Bernicia-Deira/Northumberland) near the Solway Firth. It’s very awesome and worth a visit — I’ve blogged about it here.
Of interest to my discussion is the poem on the Ruthwell Cross. It is about Christ mounting onto the cross as a triumphant, warrior king. This description is said to reflect the martial values of ‘Germanic’ society — certainly it reflects the martial values of Anglo-Saxon society, values largely shared by other peoples of western Europe after the ‘fall’ of Rome (itself a confused historiographical issue). Here’s the poem:
God almighty stripped himself,
when he wished to climb the Cross
bold before all men.
to bow (I dare not,
but had to stand firm.)
I held high the great King,
heaven’s Lord. I dare not bend.
Men mocked us both together. I was slick with blood
sprung from the Man’s side…)
Christ was on the Cross.
But then quick ones came from afar,
nobles, all together. I beheld it all.
I bowed (to warrior hands.)
Wounded with spears,
they laid him, limb weary. At his body’s head they stood.
They that looked to (heaven’s Lord…)
My concern, to finally start getting to the point, is that some people apparently argue that this poem as well as the powerfully majestic ‘Dream of the Rood‘ are based on earlier, pagan versions. The evidence that they are based on pagan versions comes from the fact that in Eddic poetry of Scandinavia (Iceland and Norway, to be precise), Odin hangs from the World Tree Yggrdasil as part of his acquisition of Wisdom.
Now, if we wish to see all Germanic barbarians as the same, and especially Anglo-Saxons and their Norse cousins, this is a quick and easy interpretation to make.
But we can’t do this. It’s not historically viable. I’ve felt this for a long time, and Guy Halsall recently corroborated my concerns as I readsome of his book Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West over a McFlurry today. He argues that we cannot use Eddic poetry as evidence for fourth-century Germanic-speaking peoples, given the fact that said Old Norse literature was recorded after the year 1200. To point out the fallibility of such uses, he writes:
One would make enormous errors reading central medieval christological ideas into late antique depictions of Christ. The Christ of the Saxon epic, the Heliand, is hardly recognisable as the Christ discussed by St Augustine 400 years earlier but the bishop of Hippo and the author of the poem would both have recognised a pictorial depiction of the crucifixion. These differences occurred even with written scripture, such as did not exist for ‘Germanic’ paganism, to anchor ideas. (p. 123; the Heliand is contintenal Saxon, not British)
All sorts of things happened between the Anglo-Saxon migration to Britain, when they would have parted company with the ancestors of the Old Norse writers of the Eddic lays, and the writing down of the lays. And all sorts of things happened in the two or three hundred years between the Anglo-Saxon peoples’ arrival in Britain and the erection of this cross.
The two hundred years of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain included the embracing of Christianity and a potential Christianising of a potential Odin poem; it also included various encounters with the post-Roman inhabitants of the islands and the cultures of Celtic-speaking Britain and Ireland. But did they have this particular myth about Odin? We can never know. We know they worshipped a divinity called Wotan; a conspicuous number of Anglo-Saxon kings trace their lineage to him. Yet it is dangerous to assume that we know any of the content of Anglo-Saxon pagan religious belief, which was probably at least as varied as Bede’s alleged Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.
The Old Norse did have this myth.
But in the eight hundred years or so between the Anglo-Saxon departure from the Continent and the Old Norse writings, all sorts of things happened to the Old Norse — they became Vikings, developed complex kingship systems, settled Iceland and Greenland, explored Canada’s East Coast, founded Dublin, conquered Normandy, became Christians, traded with peopls in eastern Europe, visited Constantinople….
How can we say if this Odin story was the inspiration for the Ruthwell Cross?
We cannot.
I believe that saying as much is part of the ‘all Germanic peoples are the same’ myth of modern ethnography as well as the false idea that barbarian conversions were all necessarily syncretistic to some degree, and therefore succumbing to parallelomania — if a ‘Germanic’ or ‘Celtic’ Christian does something (or even has a name) that resembles some a ‘pagan’ ancestor did, this is evidence of syncretism. Which, quite frankly, it very often is not.
Did you know that the ‘Celtic’ abbey of Iona came stocked with the continental Fathers in Latin? (A very ‘Romanising’ thing for these free ‘Celts’ to do!) I have no evidence that they or Lindisfarne had access to Venantius Fortunatus (d. 609), but wouldn’t you say that ‘Vexilla Regis’ is as martial a predecessor as anything else? Alas, that he is so late and so classical! (Because, of course, no barbarian ever liked classical Latin.)
Abroad the regal banners fly,
now shines the Cross’s mystery:
upon it Life did death endure,
and yet by death did life procure.
…
O lovely and refulgent Tree,
adorned with purpled majesty;
culled from a worthy stock, to bear
those limbs which sanctified were.
Note that the ‘banners’ would better be translated as ‘standards’ — thus, martial. Written by a Latin Christian within a strong, classical tradition of Latin poetry. What can we do with that? The cultures of the ancient and mediaeval worlds are not simply ‘warlike barbarians’ and ‘civilised Greeks and Romans.’ None of it is so simple, as the above shows. The values we stereotype as ‘Germanic’ or ‘Celtic’ were very often also ‘Classical’, especially in this period.
My theory, since ‘Vexilla Regis’ is too late, is that there is a certain amount of cultural similarity throughout western Europe at this time regarding some aspects of the military in culture (that is to say, the rise of the warrior aristocracy), and that the Christians who live in a warlike age have warlike images of the crucifixion. The fact that Christ is hanging on a tree as a king in both cases requires no interference from Odin and Yggdrasil — for Christ is the king (very much so in the Anglo-Saxon hero-hagiographic poem Andreas) who hung on a tree.
These are the real origins of the similarities, if you ask me, not some shared primeval Germanic memory common to Anglo-Saxons in southern Scotland in the 600s and Scandinavians in Iceland and Norway in the 1200s.
Now, not all of you have read the Ruthwell Cross Inscription, ‘The Dream of the Rood’, the Prose and Poetic Eddas, and Venantius Fortunatus, let alone some of the secondary literature. So how can you be a discerning reader? I mean, you’re not doing PhDs (well, some of you aren’t).
Many good translations of sources come with good introductions. Unfortunately, while the Penguin Classics translation of documents pertinent to Alfred the Great comes with a good introduction, Letters from a Stoic by Seneca does not. So Penguins, though readily available, are hit and miss, both as translations and as introductions.
However, I would say that you can generally trust the introductions to the volumes in the following series: Oxford World’s Classics, Translated Texts for Historians, SVS Press’ Popular Patristics Series, Ancient Christian Writers, and the Classics of Western Spirituality.
Study is a spiritual discipline, so if you are really interested in, say, the devotional practices of St Cuthbert and other monks of Lindisfarne, be willing to take the time to verify how your sources are to be interpreted. For ancients, go to your local public library and see if they have Johannes Quasten’s Patrology or Hubertus Drobner’s The Fathers of the Church. Look up the author in The Dictionary of the Middle Ages or The Dictionary of Byzantium. In the case of Cuthbert, see what the Cambridge Companion to Bede may have to offer.
St Cuthbert on his deathbed, from a 12th century northern English copy of Bede’s prose Life of Cuthbert (London, British Library, MS Yates Thompson 26, f. 73r).
On Tuesday evening, for the first time in several months, I turned up at St. Andrew’s Orthodox Church for Vespers. It being the first week of Orthodox Lent, the service was that of St Andrew of Crete, and things were lit only by oil lamps and candles. I lit my candle and proceeded over to the icons on display — the usual trio of Christ, the Theotokos, and St Andrew the Apostle, but also the Saint of the Day, in a modern icon — St Cuthbert (634-687).
If you know your feasts, you will immediately say, ‘St Cuthbert’s Day was Wednesday!’ Following old customs, the cycle of the day begins with Vespers.
And so, in with various prayers of humility and for mercy, coupled with prostrations that involved touching foreheads to the floor, came that Early Mediaeval Northumbrian saint, Cuthbert.
If you want details for the life of good St Cuthbert, he was Saint of the Week around his feast day in 2010. I recommend also that you get a copy of the Penguin Classic The Age of Bede (or the original edition Lives of the Saints), which includes Bede’s prose Life of St Cuthbert (which is online here).
Since I first read Bede’s Life of this saint, I’ve had a soft spot for Cuthbert. I bought Lives of the Saints for St Brendan the Voyager, but fell for Cuthbert. I mean, The Voyage of Brendan (in both editions of Penguin’s volume) is a fun read and a masterpiece of Early Mediaeval imagination. But Cuthbert is a man who draws me the way St Francis of Assisi (my page on him here) or Blessed Ramon Llull (saint of the week here) draw me.
He was a mystic and a missionary. He was a monk and a preacher. He was a hermit and a bishop. He lived both the active and contemplative lives. My belief is that each fuels the other.
I have happily followed Cuthbert around Britain. Although I’ve yet to visit Melrose Abbey in the Scottish Borders, where he was admitted as a monk, I have been to two Romanesque foundations associated with this mystic missionary.
The first was Lindisfarne. I should give you the piece I wrote about Lindisfarne at some point. Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, is where St Cuthbert was Abbot-Bishop, seeking to reform the monastic habits of the brothers there, which included both simple reform as well as bringing them in line with Continental forms of monasticism.
Here you can see the beautiful red sandstone edifice erected years after Cuthbert’s monastery was long gone by monks who honoured the memory of this monk-missionary in particular as well as his brethren who lived on Holy Island from the days of St Aidan (saint of the week here) in the first half of the 600s until 875 when ongoing Viking raids caused the monks to flee from Holy Island to the mainland of Northumberland. Lindisfarne is the site of the famous, earth-shattering Viking raid of 793 that is often thought of as the start of the Viking Age. The Romanesque Priory was built c. 1093 by Durham Benedictines.
Here are some of my photos of Lindisfarne:
The Rainbow Arch at Lindisfarne
Lindisfarne is the point of origin of the Lindisfarne Gospels, a masterpiece of mediaeval book production, full of magnificent illuminations, and produced by Cuthbert’s successor, Eadfrith, in honour of St Cuthbert:
(Not my image.)
In 875, the monks took the relics of St Cuthbert with them. Cuthbert was a big deal and his shrine an important pilgrimage site. First, they stopped off at Chester-le-Street (pronounced Chesly Street) for nine years. I’ve been there, too; changed buses on the way from Durham to Beamish.
They settled in Durham, though. And the big, beautiful Romanesque cathedral that stands there now is built in honour of God and St Cuthbert. Within, you can see the saint’s tomb with a simple, black slab over it. With his body is the head of King St Oswald (d. 642). There is also something of a canopy and kneelers to pray. This is nothing compared to the late mediaeval marble opulence covered with gems that was removed during the Reformation.
St Cuthbert is at the East end of the cathedral, behind the holy table. At the West end, make sure you find the tomb of his hagiographer, the Venerable St Bede (saint of the week here). Here are some pics of Durham Cathedral that I took:
Magnificent North portal
The cloisters
This past June, on the way back from Oxford where I was doing research, I stopped overnight in London. In London, I visited the British Library — and what was on display there but the Cuthbert Gospel? This is the copy of the Gospel of John that was buried with St Cuthbert, presumably his own copy! So I was pleased to see that, as well as an illuminated manuscript of Bede’s Life of St Cuthbert. Even in the South of England, I follow Cuthbert.
The Cuthbert Gospel (not my photos):
I have one other connection with St Cuthbert I can think of. There is a rumour that Cuthbert’s Northumbrian missionary enterprise extended as far as the Firth of Forth (the northern extent of the Northumbrian Kingdom of Bernicia), and that he established a house of worship on the shores of the Nor’ Loch, beneath the Briton (not Pictish!) fortress of Eidyn — the belief is that today’s Church of Scotland Parish Kirk of St Cuthbert that borders where the Nor’ Loch would have been, beneath the mediaeval/early modern fortress of Edinburgh Castle is on the same site as Cuthbert’s house of worship.
St Cuthbert’s, Edinburgh:
St Cuthbert’s as viewed from Edinburgh Castle
Cuthbert seems to follow me. Or, rather, I seem to follow Cuthbert. I really should get down to Melrose soon …
10th-century Byzantine Nativity, Walters Art Museum
I’ve been posting these Christmas posts since it was still Advent. But that part of me that is obsessed with page hits thinks that it would be easier to get people to pop on over to read about Christmas a week before Christmas rather than now, a week ‘after’ — aka nine days in!
Our culture is very good at anticipating an event, but not very good at drawing out celebrations. A prime example of this was one year at my All Saints’ Day party (1 November); we ran out of drinks, and so a few fellow saints and I marched down in costume to the local Loeb (now Metro) to re-stock. All along the way, people would say to us, ‘You know Hallowe’en was yesterday, don’t you?’ Yet people were going out in fancy dress a week before Hallowe’en and no one was batting an eye.
And now it is Christmas. Originally, as I learned from BBC History Magazine in this year’s Christmas issue, Christmas in Anglo-Saxon England was celebrated as a quiet, holy day for prayer, followed by 12 days of festivity, culminating in a big Twelfth Night bash. Now that’s a way to party! Rather than a month of drawn-out, scattered parties, a day of prayer to prepare you for twelve days of feasting. I approve.
Today, some people look at you as if you are lazy if your tree stays up to Epiphany on 6 January but shrug their shoulders if it is up on Advent 1. But Christmas doesn’t start until 25 December!! But, alas, our feasts come on their appointed calendar day and are gone the next.
Part of what the older mediaeval and — to this day — Orthodox way of Advent and Christmas gives us is a way to have real anticipation. Advent is a time of fasting and preparation for Christmas in the older traditions. Not with the sorrowful penitence of Lent leading up to Easter, mind you. But still a fast — a time of abstinence from certain foods until the feast comes on 25 December.
This Advent fast keeps the pre-Christmas celebrations at bay. So also do Advent hymns, such as ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel’, and Advent wreaths, and the ‘O Antiphons’, and such. The old ways gave us a spiritual focus for our energy. This, in turn, makes the celebration on Christmas and the following days more focussed on Christ and the Incarnation as well.
We have reading the Scriptures about Mary and Elizabeth and John the Baptist as well as the prophecies of Our Lord’s coming. We have sung the anticipatory hymns. We have lit the candles. We have prayed the Collects. And now, we can sing the carols, read the Christmas story, and feast, feast, feast!
So, today, 2 January, 2013, open up your hymn book and sing some Christmas carols. Because the feast isn’t over yet.
Yesterday, on a madcap journey about the Scottish side of the Solway Firth, some friends, my wife, and I visited Sweetheart Abbey, Caerlaverock Castle, the Ruthwell Cross, and (accidentally) a section of Hadrian’s Wall. The most interesting of these items was, in fact, Caerlaverock Castle, being the only castle I’ve visited with a moat full of water.
But since this is my blog about Christian stuff, I’m here to talk about the Ruthwell Cross.
According to Historic Scotland, the Ruthwell Cross is a late-seventh-century (others say eighth-century) Anglo-Saxon stone cross erected in Ruthwell back in the days when this part of Scotland was part of the ancient kingdom of Northumbria. A few decades, then, after the Sutton Hoo ship burial with its very fine artefacts; probably within the lifetime of the historian/Biblical scholar/Latinist/antiquarian/monk Bede (saint of the week here).
St Wilfrid was alive and active at this time — the North of England and South of Scotland had been largely Christianised in this century through the efforts of people like Wilfrid and Sts Aidan (saint of the week here), Cuthbert (saint of the week here), and Kentigern/Mungo (saint of the week here). King Offa of Mercia (in the Midlands) has yet to be born, but his pagan predecessor Penda — last pagan king in England — is dead. We are still a century from the Vikings’ arrival as raiders in Northumbria, and less than a century from the (possibly) Ruthwell-inspired Dream of the Rood. Beowulf may have been written by the time the Ruthwell Cross was erected; then again, maybe not. The Ruthwell Cross is contemporary to the Lindisfarne Gospels.
All of this is the context of the Ruthwell Cross. The peoples of Britain are fighting one another, largely Christianised, producing world-class literature in both Latin and Old English, producing beautiful works of sculpture and manuscript illumination. The material culture of the Anglo-Saxon world of Northumbria bears the marks of its Celtic neighbours/enemies/subjects, the far-off Mediterranean world of Rome and Constantinople, and homegrown ‘Germanic’ images.
In what many of this isle would consider a far-off hinterland, someone erected this cross to the honour and glory of Christ, the true King and Champion:
North side of the Ruthwell Cross
I first heard of this cross in the Everyman Book of Anglo-Saxon Poetry that includes a translation of the poem inscribed on it in Anglo-Saxon runes. I had no idea it would be so . . . big (5.2 m tall). And full of pictures. And also have Latin on it. But it is and does and does. The faces are carved with images from the Gospels as well as a couple of saints, although I’m not sold that the image with ‘ST PAVLVS’ inscribed over it is actually Sts Antony and Paul because the rest are biblical. Maybe there’s more inscriptional evidence I could not figure out. The sides are carved with vine designs of high quality.
Anyway, here are some images from our trip to see the cross:
Security was tight at the Ruthwell Cross
Unlocking the door to Ruthwell’s church
We survey the wondrous cross
Top carving: Christ’s feet being anointed by Mary; Below: Healing the man born blind
South side of the Ruthwell Cross; people don’t know what the archer dude up top means. Maybe, ‘Archers are awesome’?
Side view of the vine motif
Christ glorified, from the north side of the cross
Vine carvings on the other side of the cross
Some of the runes that make up the poem, on the narrow edges
It is housed inside the local parish church at Ruthwell. This, as I understand, is about where it stood for 1600 years, until in the 1630s it was broken into bits and stored beneath the floorboards of the church because it is, apparently, idolatrous. In the 1800s it was removed and taken outside to the manse garden. Later that same century, it was returned to the interior of the church. The cross arms are missing, and what you see on it is a nineteenth-century carving that is not based on anything other than fantastic Victorian whimsy.
God almighty stripped himself,
when he wished to climb the Cross
bold before all men.
to bow (I dare not,
but had to stand firm.)
I held high the great King,
heaven’s Lord. I dare not bend.
Men mocked us both together. I was slick with blood
sprung from the Man’s side…)
Christ was on the Cross.
But then quick ones came from afar,
nobles, all together. I beheld it all.
I bowed (to warrior hands.)
Wounded with spears,
they laid him, limb weary. At his body’s head they stood.
They that looked to (heaven’s Lord…)
Like the Dream of the Rood, the Ruthwell Cross inscription combines the suffering of Christ on the cross with the marital values of Anglo-Saxon society. Such a blending of imageries is also visible in the poem Andreas as well as in Beowulf — the difference being that in Andreas a Mediterranean Christian tale is given Germanic warrior virtues, and in Beowulf a Germanic warrior tale is given a few Christian morals and references. In the Lindisfarne Gospels, the blend of Anglo-Saxon and Mediterranean is visual, not ideological.
Anyway, this blending shows the might of Christ, mocked on the Cross but still the great King. He is at once in control, choosing to mount the Cross, and at the mercy of others, wounded with spears. It is the great mystery of the Cross, put into a form that Anglo-Saxon culture could comprehend.
All in all, it was a delight to see this large, magnificently-carved monument from ages past. May we today find ways of communicating the timeless power of the Cross to our own culture.
Classically Christian 