Lives of the Saints
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Lives of the Saints’
Cuthbert trusted that keeping his promised fast would not do him any harm.
A shieling is a temporary stone hut, built for the summer months when sheep or cattle are taken to higher ground. Bede tells us that a near-contemporary, the seventh-century saint Cuthbert, once had a remarkable experience in one of these huts, as he was journeying across the empty moorland of Northumbria.
William the Conqueror’s purge of the English Church was halted by a humble bishop and a dead king.
After the Conquest in 1066, William of Normandy appointed an Italian, Lanfranc, as Archbishop of Canterbury, and set about clearing out the English bishops. Wulfstan was the last, stubbornly protecting the English from their new masters, and it seemed God was on the side of the old religion, too.
Irish monk St Columba is credited with being among the first witnesses to the ‘Loch Ness monster’.
Columba brought twelve monks to Iona in 563, and set about converting the pagans of Scotland. Two years into his mission, his labours took him and the monk Lugne Mocumin, whom he had cured of a persistent nosebleed, to the River Ness at the eastern end of the famous Loch.
The grand-daughter of Queen Victoria was as close to the poor of Moscow’s slums as she was to the Russian Tsar.
Elizabeth (1864-1918) was the grand-daughter of Queen Victoria. Her husband Sergei was Tsar Nicholas II’s uncle and the Governor-General of Moscow; her younger sister Alix was the Tsar’s wife. Steadfastly opposed to violence and the abuse of power, she dedicated her life to peace-making and charity.
England’s first and greatest historian explains why history is so important.
St Bede begins his famous ‘History’, written in AD 731, with an open letter to the King of Northumbria, Ceolwulf, explaining that history, rightly told, teaches us to refuse the evil, and choose the good. King Ceolwulf later resigned his throne to become a monk, and a saint.