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Alban voluntarily swapped places with a priest, and was executed for being a member of a banned religious sect.
The Roman city of Verulam was later named St Albans, after England’s first martyr. He was executed on June 22, possibly in AD 305, during the reign of the Roman Emperor Diocletian. The authorities held that religion was a social good so long as no one questioned the official values of the Roman state, and everyone regarded all gods as equally valid. Christians came up short on both counts.
In a sermon for Christmas Day, St Bede confronts his brethren with the truth about Mary’s wonderful child.
In his Gospel, St John tells us that Mary’s child was actually God himself. From early times, the shock of this simple proposition was too much, even for very senior clergy, and they retreated into hair-splitting qualifications to escape it. The eighth-century English monk Bede, in a Christmas sermon, reminded his brethren of what happened to that child later.
A monk living in the tumbledown hermitage that had once belonged to St Cuthbert reluctantly decided that it needed more than repairs.
After many years of tramping about the Kingdom of Northumbria preaching the gospel and healing the sick, monk Cuthbert retired to the island of Inner Farne, just over a mile off the coast at Bamburgh. In 685, he reluctantly combined this with being Bishop of Lindisfarne, six miles further north; but he still managed to live out most of his days in his cell. He was buried on Lindisfarne, but seemingly left something behind.
Imma claimed to be a harmless peasant, but there was something about him that Ecgfrith, King of Northumbria, found downright uncanny.
In 679, King Ecgfrith of Northumbria’s imperial ambitions were severely dented at the Battle of Trent, when he failed to defeat King Ethelred of Mercia somewhere near Lincoln, and lost control of the Kingdom of Lindsey. After telling us about this sorry business, Bede recalled hearing a story about one of Ethelred’s thegns (royal servants), told to him by friends who had it from the man himself.
When the plague once again visited Northumbria, Bishop Cuthbert of Lindisfarne left his island retreat and brought comfort and healing to the suffering.
In 664, a particularly nasty epidemic of plague struck the British Isles and lasted for over twenty years. It nearly killed monk Cuthbert, who was never completely well for the rest of his days. Shortly after he was consecrated bishop of Lindisfarne in 685, the plague broke out again. Undaunted, Cuthbert left his beloved island retreat to tour the villages of the mainland, bringing comfort to the sick and bereaved.
After the monastery of St Paul in Jarrow was devasted by an epidemic, the Abbot had only a boy in his early teens to rely on.
At the age of seven, St Bede was sent to the recently-opened monastery of St Paul at Jarrow to complete his education under Abbot Ceolfrid (a great man who sadly died in 716 on a journey to Rome to present a magnificent copy of the Bible to the Pope). The events in this touching reminiscence took place during an outbreak of the plague in 686, when Bede was about thirteen.
In a sermon for the Feast of All Saints, eighth-century Northumbrian monk St Bede explains why it is worth going for the spiritual burn.
In a Sermon for All Saints Day, St Bede, a monk of Jarrow in early eighth-century Northumbria, picked up on a passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews which compared the Christian to a sprinter in a race. His gaze is fixed on Christ, waiting at the tape, and he is surrounded by cheering spectators from among his own family who have finished the race before him.