Lives of the Saints
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Lives of the Saints’
Anglo-Saxon poet Cynewulf wonders at the mystery of the Bethlehem manger, where all the light of heaven was shining.
Cynewulf (possibly the 8th century bishop Cynewulf of Lindisfarne) reflects on Christmas and the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, and praises God for sending his Son, God of God and Light of Light, to earth as one of us, to bring his dazzling sunrise into the night of this life.
The young Roman Emperor Theophilus backed away from marriage to the formidable Cassiani, but he could not forget her.
Cassiani was a nun of noble birth in the Roman Empire’s capital city, Constantinople, during the 9th century. Her gift for poetry and hymn-writing was widely admired, and the Eastern service-books are littered with her works. The most famous is a Hymn for Wednesday in Holy Week, and thereby hangs quite a tale.
A succession of religious leaders came to Kiev, hoping to win the wild barbarian Prince to their cause.
The Christianity that spread across England in the 7th century spread to Kiev in the 10th, but there it had to compete not just with paganism but with Islam, Judaism, and other flavours of Christianity — and also with Vladimir, Grand Prince of Kiev (r. 980-1015), who liked his religion spicy.
One week into a Lenten retreat with the Bishop of Hexham, a boy’s miserable life is turned right around.
Bishop John of Hexham (?-721) is better known today as St John of Beverley, as he had been Abbot of the monastery in Beverley, North Yorkshire, before being elevated to the See of Hexham. His contemporary Bede was a great admirer, and told this story of him.
By the early eighth century, sacred art was thriving in newly-Christian England, but in the East seeds of doubt and confusion had been sown.
Although we associate icons with Eastern Christianity, many churches in Britain prior to the Reformation, and especially in the Anglo-Saxon era before the Conquest of 1066, were wall-to-wall, floor-to-roof, a patchwork of frescoes of saints, Biblical scenes, flowers and animals. Indeed, it was in the East that doubts about sacred art first arose.
Rudyard Kipling’s poem about St Wilfrid’s chaplain and an unusual Christmas congregation.
Kipling firmly believed that Christianity should embrace the animal kingdom, and this poem precedes a tale in which a seal plays a key role in the conversion of the South Saxons. That story and this poem are pure fiction, though Eddi (Eddius Stephanus, Stephen of Ripon) really was St Wilfrid’s chaplain.