Mysterium Fasces - The Celtic Saints Of Britain (1) - The Celtic Britons – w_ Florian Geyer & Sven Longshanks

00:00:00.000 Feet Horse

00:00:30.000 Hello and welcome to a new series, The Celtic Saints of Britain.

00:00:41.660 You're listening to me, Sven Longshanks, and I am very pleased to say that I have an old co-host back with me today,

00:00:49.660 an old friend that we haven't had on Radio Arian for quite a while and that lots of people have been asking after,

00:00:55.720 and that is, of course, Florian Gaia. Florian, how are you doing today?

00:00:58.400 I'm doing just grand, Sven. It's really always a pleasure to be back on, doing these wonderful broadcasts with you.

00:01:04.640 I think especially the topic and content we have today and for our next couple of episodes will be very fruitful.

00:01:10.820 Definitely, definitely. This is a subject that I really wanted to get into,

00:01:14.580 and really it first came up in conversation with you on Skype a while back, I think.

00:01:20.120 I think you were studying one of these Celtic Saints, or it was one of their feast days,

00:01:25.580 may have been St. Chad or St. Cuthbert. Do you remember which one it was?

00:01:29.200 I think it was, yeah, I think it was on the occasion of St. Cuthbert, St. Cuthbert's Day.

00:01:33.980 And we just sort of started to get into it on the history of some of these early English and Celtic saints from the British Isles

00:01:45.120 and their glorious history and the deep inculcation of Christianity in the British Isles generally.

00:01:53.160 And it has really a fluorescent history that is much ignored, I think, by lots of people who are of that particular descent.

00:02:02.000 And especially today, many people, you know, the Soria State of Christianity,

00:02:06.520 many people, as we know, are not so fond of it and are not interested in delving in or giving exposure to the glories of its past

00:02:18.060 or to the great lofty state which it had obtained in the British Isles in the 6th to 8th centuries AD

00:02:26.980 before it, unfortunately, began its long descent into its current form.

00:02:33.100 So that is the purpose of our little broadcast here today, I think, is to investigate and delve into

00:02:37.460 some of the lives of these different Anglo and Celtic saints in the history of the Church in Britain.

00:02:42.300 It definitely is a really glorious history that Christianity has within Britain.

00:02:48.280 And I think particularly at the time I was thinking, you know, it's so strange that we get nationalists,

00:02:53.960 that British nationalists that look to paganism and think that paganism is somehow British.

00:03:00.660 And it wasn't British. Paganism was something that was brought over by the Anglo-Saxons,

00:03:05.600 who were foreign at the time, and it only lasted for 150 years. The tradition of Odinism and Wotan

00:03:12.980 and Freya and all these Nordic gods, it's not a British tradition. That is a foreign tradition. 0.99

00:03:19.300 Lasted for 150 years, as I say, when the Saxons came over, and then it was gone again. 0.98

00:03:24.020 And what a lot of these people don't realise is that before then, Britain was Christian and had been Christian

00:03:29.500 for quite some time. And these saints, these Celtic saints, they were real heroes,

00:03:35.140 real heroic types that we're going to get into here. They had fantastic lives.

00:03:39.960 They fought in battles. They fought in wars. They worked miracles. They were miracle workers.

00:03:46.620 Their relics afterwards healed people. And it's just really amazing people with fantastic stories behind them.

00:03:54.600 And when you think of the way that people love the sword and sorcery epics today,

00:03:58.980 you know, you just think, well, why don't you go back and read some of the lives of some of these saints?

00:04:02.480 You've got real life histories there with real life fantastic events that our people used to believe in,

00:04:09.160 that they said, all this happened. This really happened. And they believed it.

00:04:14.200 It's really interesting stuff. But I think what we should really start with

00:04:17.740 is just sort of setting the scene of what Britain was like and who the Celts really were.

00:04:24.660 Because E. Michael Jones has recently been saying that Europe was just barbarians.

00:04:29.460 They didn't really have a civilisation. And there is a certain amount of truth to that.

00:04:33.140 The Germanic tribes didn't come here till later on.

00:04:35.920 And they did arrive as mercenaries and fighters. They fought against Rome.

00:04:40.120 But there was technically proficient people in Europe, in Northern Europe, in Britain at that time,

00:04:47.600 so technically proficient that they were able to defeat Julius Caesar in 55 BC.

00:04:54.440 They may not have had a civilisation. They may not have had cities.

00:04:57.500 But that was because they were mainly tin miners.

00:05:01.720 And they were mining this tin so that they could trade it, and copper as well,

00:05:05.420 so they could trade it back to the centres of civilisation, which was in the Middle East.

00:05:10.680 So we can look at this history. We can probably start around about 3000 BC.

00:05:15.200 We start seeing dolmens and standing stones, stone circles.

00:05:19.240 And we see them in the Middle East. And they spread out into Europe, just along the coast. 0.81

00:05:23.760 And they also spread out into places like Korea, but much later on in Korea, about 1500 BC.

00:05:29.980 About 3000 BC, you start seeing them along the coast of Europe.

00:05:34.000 And that's because this is where the really sort of tough colonists from the civilisations in the Fertile Crescent, 1.00

00:05:43.720 they were heading over here to do that.

00:05:46.420 And if you're going to build cities, if you're going to have civilisations,

00:05:48.980 you have to have agricultural sustainability.

00:05:51.660 You have to have a system of getting the food in from the fields to the cities to build these cities

00:05:57.820 and to have these philosophers.

00:05:59.000 And to a certain extent, you have to have this agricultural sustainability just to put up dolmens and standing stones and stone circles.

00:06:06.720 So that tells us that they had a certain amount of intelligence.

00:06:10.560 Another thing it tells us is that they were good seafarers.

00:06:13.700 And the history of shipping and the history of boats is also going to fit in with this series,

00:06:21.200 because the reason why these Celtic saints were able to convert people in Brittany and elsewhere in Europe

00:06:27.760 is because they were expert seafarers as well.

00:06:31.380 So the history of the boats, I mean, that really started in Egypt.

00:06:34.560 They had reed boats.

00:06:35.660 And these reed boats, they got as far as Sri Lanka and the Ganges,

00:06:40.160 which is quite a feat when you imagine what a reed boat is.

00:06:44.040 It's not particularly sturdy.

00:06:46.380 And then around about 3000 BC, about the time of these dolmens and standing stones,

00:06:50.420 they were forced to keep up with the marine technology from Lebanon.

00:06:54.260 And in Lebanon, they had cedar boats.

00:06:56.600 So Egypt started making its boats out of cedar as well.

00:06:59.820 And then 2000 BC, you get the Minoans.

00:07:03.740 And they're the first recorded people as having reached all the way to Britain by sea.

00:07:09.160 And they were trading for copper and tin with the people that were on Britain, 0.57

00:07:13.560 who were obviously colonists from earlier.

00:07:15.680 And that was when the copper and tin was too expensive in Cyprus.

00:07:19.760 And then you end up with the Phoenicians. 0.99

00:07:21.640 And the Phoenicians are making their way over to Britain as well. 0.99

00:07:25.040 They're getting copper and tin from Britain in trade.

00:07:27.940 And then, of course, there's the Greek myth that says that Phoenix gave birth to Europa.

00:07:31.720 So there's this bit of history that the ancients used to believe that the British people came from Phoenicia.

00:07:39.000 Then we get records, 12,000 BC.

00:07:40.980 We get Odysseus navigating by the stars.

00:07:44.440 1,000 BC, we've actually got the remains of Britain's oldest boat.

00:07:48.380 So 3,000 years old, this boat has been found.

00:07:50.700 And it was made with the Egyptian method.

00:07:53.160 Timber planking, pegs, joints, rope lashings.

00:07:56.500 That's actually found in North Therabee in Yorkshire.

00:08:00.280 So this shows us that we had the same technology that they had in Egypt, basically,

00:08:05.080 and in the Fertile Crescent, just outside of Britain.

00:08:08.020 500 BC, you get a chap called Himlico, who was a Carthaginian seafarer.

00:08:13.180 And he said that it takes four months to get to Britain from the Straits of Gibraltar.

00:08:17.480 And he said the sea was blocked with weed, there's no wind, and there's a perpetual fog.

00:08:23.000 And I guess the perpetual fog must have lifted at night so that they could navigate by the stars,

00:08:28.520 because that couldn't have been the only way that they did it.

00:08:31.500 Also around 500 BC, we've dated this chap called Clonny Claven Mann.

00:08:36.060 He was 5'2", and this is a body that they found in Britain.

00:08:40.260 And he had pine resin hair gel, which was from Loire in South France.

00:08:44.580 This was a very expensive substance that he had.

00:08:48.260 It shows that these people took care of themselves.

00:08:50.960 And this is a substance that we use today, is hair gel.

00:08:54.060 And we also find another man from that time, Old Croghan Mann, and he was 6'6".

00:08:58.760 And apparently he had well-manicured fingernails, and both of them died from violent deaths.

00:09:03.620 They say it was ritual deaths.

00:09:05.380 I have a suspicion that they may have been executed for sodomy.

00:09:08.380 Well-manicured fingernails, you know, hair gel, hairspray.

00:09:13.320 That may not be the case, but we do know that that is something that they did.

00:09:17.480 And so we know that they were trading at that time.

00:09:19.700 They were certainly civilised people, even if they may not have had a civilisation.

00:09:25.720 330 BC, you get a chap called Pytheus.

00:09:27.900 And he navigates around the whole of Britain.

00:09:31.060 He's a Greek person.

00:09:32.580 And he records that he sees these leather coracles off the coast of Cornwall.

00:09:38.060 And he sees them taking tin ingots out to Michael's Mount.

00:09:42.180 And there are Phoenician ships there that are loading up this tin, and they're taking them back. 0.99

00:09:47.820 And these people, these were the Celts. 0.91

00:09:50.180 They never were called Celts, but when they started doing archaeology in the 15th, 16th century,

00:09:55.680 the starting of archaeology, they basically labelled the languages that were spoken in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland as being Celtic,

00:10:06.620 and the languages that were spoken in Gaul as being Celtic.

00:10:10.360 So it was basically a sort of shared language.

00:10:13.100 There were two different types of it.

00:10:14.980 Irish, Manx, and Pictish is one type, and Welsh, Breton, and Cornish is this other type of Celt.

00:10:23.360 So these were the Celts.

00:10:24.940 They were trading with the civilisation in the Middle East, as we were saying.

00:10:31.180 By the time they get to 400 BC, they've got roads.

00:10:33.720 They had a road from Dover to Holyhead.

00:10:37.120 According to Julius Caesar, there were 40 university towns here.

00:10:41.220 There were 60,000 students.

00:10:43.420 And it would take them 20 years of study to actually become a Druid.

00:10:47.260 And all the aristocracy and the nobles from Gaul would actually come over to Britain to study.

00:10:53.740 And in 55 BC, Caesar tried to make war against Britain, and he was defeated.

00:10:58.900 And not a lot of British people really know that, but we sent him packing with his tail between his legs back to Gaul. 0.92

00:11:06.020 And there he stayed.

00:11:07.240 And then, of course, you get the life of Jesus.

00:11:10.880 You get the crucifixion.

00:11:12.480 And then in 38 AD, that's when we're first told that Joseph of Arimathea first came to Britain and put up the first church at Glastonbury.

00:11:22.060 And we hear about that from various later sources in the church.

00:11:26.160 But we also have Gildas.

00:11:27.460 He was writing in 560 AD.

00:11:29.640 And he said that Christianity came to Britain in the time of Tiberius Caesar, which puts it at 38 AD.

00:11:35.740 And then we have Malguin of Hlandaff writing in 450 AD.

00:11:40.940 And this is actually a charter for a charter of land.

00:11:43.960 And it's talking about the church that Joseph of Arimathea founded.

00:11:47.700 And it actually tells you the place of his burial there.

00:11:50.980 So we've got quite solid evidence that Joseph of Arimathea came over here.

00:11:54.960 He came over here.

00:11:55.900 He was granted this land.

00:11:57.400 Obviously, he then tried to convert people.

00:12:00.380 And we're told in the Welsh histories that he actually managed to convert this king that was called Caradoc or Caractacus,

00:12:06.940 who is also famous for actually being defeated by the Romans.

00:12:10.840 Because in 43 AD, Emperor Claudius comes back to war against Britain.

00:12:16.300 And Caractacus is sold out by this female, Charismandua, by a treachery. 0.99

00:12:22.020 He's taken to Rome.

00:12:23.000 And he says, for the first time ever, why don't you have mercy on somebody?

00:12:26.960 And then instead of just going down in history as Rome the Terrible, you will also go down in history as Rome the Merciful.

00:12:33.120 So Rome has mercy on him.

00:12:34.800 And they put him under house arrest.

00:12:37.200 And his father's there as well.

00:12:38.360 This hostage, Bran, is the name of his father.

00:12:41.400 And Bran is recorded as being a Christian.

00:12:43.800 So we don't know where the Caradoc was.

00:12:45.240 But we do know that his father was.

00:12:46.720 His father had been converted by somebody.

00:12:48.880 And then we're told that they lived in the Pallatium Britannicum, which then became the Hospitium Putentiana, which was the first church, basically, at Rome.

00:12:58.580 It was the house of the British king.

00:13:01.100 In 56 AD, King Bran returns from Rome.

00:13:04.720 And apparently he has Saint Aristobulus with him, which is probably a saint that you're aware of there, Florian, I would have thought.

00:13:13.620 Saint Aristobulus.

00:13:15.560 Yeah, Saint Aristobulus.

00:13:17.080 He's one of the 70 disciples.

00:13:19.680 Yeah, so he's called Arvarooi in Welsh.

00:13:24.700 So we've got records of him coming over and him being sort of the first saint in Britain, I think.

00:13:29.620 Then you've got Justin Marcher and Irenaeus.

00:13:31.680 They're writing in the first century, or about 101 AD, I think.

00:13:36.100 And they say that there are Christians in every land that's known to the Romans.

00:13:40.420 In 167 AD, we have King Lucius in Britain.

00:13:44.480 And he becomes a Christian.

00:13:45.640 And the whole British nation becomes Christian. 0.98

00:13:48.180 And we actually learn later on from Bede, after one of these church synods, that in order to make any changes to religion, the British people have to go back and have a unanimous vote from all the British people to make any changes in religion.

00:14:03.160 So the fact that King Lucius and all the British people became Christian at that point, that shows you it couldn't have been forced upon them.

00:14:11.580 The only way it could have happened is if they'd sat down and looked at what Christianity was and decided that that was preferable to following the Druids. 0.80

00:14:20.080 And the Druids also recorded as becoming bishops at the time.

00:14:24.580 In 179 AD, we get the first church in London, which is called St. Peter's.

00:14:30.500 In 190 AD, we have Tertullian.

00:14:33.300 He says Christianity is in all the parts of Britain that the Romans fear to go to, where they fear to tread.

00:14:39.920 In 210 AD, we have Origen.

00:14:41.660 He says the power of God our Saviour is even with them in Britain, who are separated from our world, separated from the Roman world. 0.85

00:14:49.860 In 320 AD, Eusebius says some of the apostles passed over the ocean to the British Isles, because there are also rumours that Peter and Paul actually came over here.

00:15:00.480 There are a lot of rumours that St. Paul came over here, but I don't think there is as much evidence as there is for Joseph of Arimathea.

00:15:07.880 350 AD, St. Athanasius testifies to the fidelity of the Britons to the purity of the faith, which shows you that it wasn't Gnosticism or anything like that that the Christians were following.

00:15:18.720 It was exactly the same as it was in the East. 0.65

00:15:21.700 And then in 400 AD, St. John Chrysostom, he says the faith is the same in Britain.

00:15:27.040 They just speak a different language.

00:15:29.600 So we have this rich history of Christianity and a rich history of actually being an important part of Europe.

00:15:37.500 When you think that all the aristocracy would come over from Gaul to Britain to be trained and go back again.

00:15:45.240 So we had communication with the Middle East, we had communication with Rome, we had a maritime system, and the British people were the first to actually proclaim themselves Christian.

00:15:56.760 And that was, I think it was 150 years before Rome actually legalised Christianity.

00:16:04.120 And of course, that was down to King Constantine, who was a British king.

00:16:08.040 And I've gone into that before, so I won't go into that now.

00:16:10.520 I don't know if you want to comment on any of that before we move into some of these things.

00:16:15.320 Well, sure.

00:16:16.460 Absolutely.

00:16:17.100 I mean, even what you've just presented here, this could be enough for a couple of episodes.

00:16:21.460 And it's really, really important.

00:16:23.360 I was just reflecting to someone else the other day that one of the greatest deficits, I think, in any sort of contemporary Christianity is that people are very ignorant of the early history of Christianity, no matter what part of the world it may be in.

00:16:35.580 And it really is for shame, because in our contemporary society, we have all of the access to this ancient information, all of this ancient documentary evidence, just for free, at our fingertips.

00:16:47.980 It's in English, for the most part.

00:16:50.240 And so, this is the thing, even with these early apologists.

00:16:53.580 You know, 100 AD, you can read St. Justin Martyr, the philosopher whose feast day was yesterday, you know, giving his discourses in defense of the Christian faith.

00:17:02.640 And so, the whole Greco-Roman Mediterranean culture of which Britain was its north or western extremity and had been integrated into for some time, as we saw with the Phoenician trade networks in 1000 BC, was, as we have seen demonstrated, very early exposed to Christianity from the few short years after the death of Christ, which is not unusual.

00:17:28.940 I mean, you know, you have mystery religions, Mithraism, and all of these kind of things show up in London, because it's an integral part of the Mediterranean trade network.

00:17:38.120 And it's very easy, relatively speaking, to go from Palestine to Britain by ancient standards.

00:17:45.080 And so, there's no surprise here that, of course, Britain, as an integral part of the Roman Empire, would be exposed to Christianity as the apostles began to spread.

00:17:55.640 And this is mentionable because, Chris, when Christ gives the Great Commission to the apostles, and he says to go to make disciples onto the ends of the earth.

00:18:03.920 In the ancient times, you know, the ends of the earth, this was not just a poetic expression.

00:18:08.620 There was a sort of sense that there are these kind of, you know, cardinal points of the earth, not in a flat earth sort of sense, but that there are these, like…

00:18:18.700 Limits, the known world, isn't it?

00:18:21.080 Pulse, yes, right, exactly.

00:18:22.860 Right, if you think of the Roman Empire as the world and so forth.

00:18:26.360 And so, you know, Britain is one of these, you know, ends of the earth.

00:18:30.720 And so, it's conceivable, and I would say, you know, probable, that you would have very, very early, at least sporadic and defrayed evangelization of the British islands and the British people by the apostles or some of the 70 disciples, right?

00:18:47.380 Aburisto Boulos is very well known as the first disciple of Christ to be in London, either him or Joseph or Mathea, depending on the sources.

00:18:55.960 You know, and so, and he was one of the 70 disciples.

00:19:01.760 So, and I think that it's also important just to comment, as well, culturally speaking, is that the Celtic civilizations which inhabited Gaul, but especially Britain, because they weren't disrupted by the Germanic invasions, had a very, very high, highly developed metallurgical understanding.

00:19:23.740 Their metalworking skills were some of the best in the world, basically between them and the Ganges Valley, or sorry, not the Ganges Valley, the Indus River Valley in India.

00:19:34.180 And so, there was lots of, especially early types of steel were exported into Rome, or high quality iron.

00:19:43.840 And it was difficult in Rome, it was quite a highly valued commodity.

00:19:48.540 At the end, it's one of the things you even see that the tradition of sword making among the Celtic peoples is richer than in Rome, because they have a steadier access to high quality iron and later steel, which is why Rome tends to favor shorter weapons.

00:20:03.400 So, all of these things kind of play together.

00:20:04.860 It's just to say that Roman Britain, as it existed in the classical era, when it was first converted to Christianity and exposed to it, you know, was quite a developed civilization of its own, although it was, of course, naturally at the hinterlands.

00:20:20.640 It's that after the disruption of Western Roman political authority, you know, 200 years later, 300 years later, we see that it begins to rapidly develop its own indigenous culture and infrastructure, both religiously, politically, militarily, civilizationally.

00:20:38.140 You know, and it will come to be affected by all of the great civilizational shifts that we read about that have affected Europe since the fall of the Western Roman state and continue to affect us to this day.

00:20:50.520 So, and all of these things, it's very important to make this in contradistinction to even a place like Western Germany, just across the Rhine, which was most certainly not part of the civilized world.

00:21:05.640 It was very, it was much more of a borderland, much more of a fringe empire.

00:21:09.840 And I think that, you know, when we're trying to deal with the Christianity is that in many senses, Christianity became bound up with and embodied within, especially in the Mediterranean environment, the Roman Empire and Romanism and the idea of this Roman sort of uber civilization.

00:21:31.460 And all of these, this context is necessary to express that Britain was an integral part of this Roman civilization.

00:21:38.960 And so it received its own unique, but indelibly Roman form of Christianity, which is characteristically traditional, as we shall see.

00:21:49.740 Now, I think I just, just point out there as well, I mean, when, just after, just after Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, the Judeans were all expelled and Christians as well were persecuted.

00:22:04.680 And the one place where Christians could go, where they weren't actually illegal, would have been Britain, because Druidry and Christianity were banned throughout the Roman Empire, but they still continued in Britain right up until, what time was it?

00:22:20.020 I've lost my little bit on here, I think it was about 151 AD, when the Romans actually came over the second time, and then they did actually make a treaty with Britain.

00:22:32.140 So from 38 AD to 51 AD, Britain would have been a refuge for Christians, rather than going to Germany, which was, you know, a bit too rough and tumble. 0.94

00:22:44.560 Well, they, it's quite conceivable that Britain is somewhere that they would have headed for.

00:22:48.860 So Joseph of Arimathea, if he was, if he was a refugee, this is, this is the place that he would have, that he would have actually headed to.

00:22:57.340 And then you ended up with, because it was part of the Roman Empire, you ended up with a persecution under Diocletian.

00:23:05.280 And there was, I forget how many, I think it might've been 2000 marches.

00:23:08.520 There's actually a place called St. Albans in Cornwall that's named after one of these famous marches after Diocletian.

00:23:15.580 And that, and it was after Diocletian fell that you got King Constantine, Constantine the Great,

00:23:21.780 who then became the Emperor Constantine and legalized Christianity in Rome.

00:23:27.060 And then eventually you had, you had the Romans leaving Britain. 0.98

00:23:31.260 And I think right about this time as well, all the, all the strong men from Britain and all the warriors,

00:23:38.360 they actually followed one of their Kings off onto, into Europe for a big battle,

00:23:43.600 leaving Britain without anybody to defend it.

00:23:47.220 Because this leader was so charismatic, they followed him off into Europe.

00:23:50.660 And then also at the same time, you had a comet that's recorded as hitting and there was a lot of plague.

00:23:56.780 So there were a lot, a lot of people dying.

00:23:58.940 So then when you get to the time of the Saxons coming over in about 449 AD,

00:24:05.100 this is why it was so easy for them to just take over.

00:24:08.440 And, and this is why the, the Britons couldn't defend themselves against the Picts because, you know,

00:24:13.720 there's, there's a bit of a disparity here.

00:24:15.260 You think, well, the Britons were able to defeat Rome at first in 55 BC.

00:24:21.820 They were that strong and, and they had Christianity and they had this, you know,

00:24:25.480 this civilized center when, when Rome was here.

00:24:27.620 So how come these Picts that had always been there, 1.00

00:24:30.160 how come they found it so easy to just, you know, just maraud across the country?

00:24:34.820 And the Britons had to call across to the Saxons for help.

00:24:38.420 And, and that was the reason for it because all the best fighters that left Britain,

00:24:42.300 and then you had this, this comet and this, and this plague as well.

00:24:46.600 And also, I mean, when you're bringing up there about how it's all tied in with Roman Christianity,

00:24:52.040 I mean, the first place that really took off as part of Christendom was,

00:24:56.800 I forget, I've momentarily forgotten his name, Charles Motel's father, Charlemagne.

00:25:03.280 That's it.

00:25:03.660 It was, was Charlemagne's, Charlemagne's Christian fiefdom that he had there.

00:25:08.980 And that was who Alfred the Great really looked up to.

00:25:12.200 So you didn't actually have something like, like Charlemagne had,

00:25:15.220 but you had something different here in Britain.

00:25:18.620 And actually the row, when they sent Augustine over to convert the Anglo-Saxons,

00:25:25.200 he really didn't have that much success.

00:25:26.920 He didn't really get that much further than Kent.

00:25:28.880 And it was actually the Britons and the Celts. 0.97

00:25:31.960 It was the Welsh and the Irish that sort of buried the hatchet and thought, 0.97

00:25:38.300 well, look, these, these are our brothers here and we need to convert them.

00:25:42.040 Yes, they, they've driven, driven us out of the land there and in Southern England, 0.91

00:25:46.060 but really we should be going over there and converting them and bringing them to Christ.

00:25:50.540 And that's who the majority of these Celtic saints are that we're going to be talking about.

00:25:56.140 I mean, they did, they, they loved their race.

00:25:58.580 They really did love their race because there was no other reason why they would do that.

00:26:01.980 They wanted to bring this message of Christianity to these people that they'd just been fighting against.

00:26:07.280 And, and rather than leave it up to emissaries from Rome, which they did have fallings out with,

00:26:15.260 they went and did it themselves, which I think is, is a very noble, noble task that they actually took upon themselves.

00:26:23.120 And they were, they were very successful with it because Augustine came over in 597.

00:26:30.420 And he did, he, it's all recorded that he knew that there was a British church here already.

00:26:35.640 And they wanted to know why the British church hadn't been trying to convert these Anglo-Saxons.

00:26:41.960 And that was why, because they'd been making war against them and, and driven them out of, out of half the country.

00:26:48.520 So we'll, we'll get into, we'll get into some of that later on in, in the series when they,

00:26:54.860 when the Welsh actually go there to, to convert the, to convert the Saxons there.

00:27:00.280 Augustine as well, I don't think he was, you know, he really wasn't that nice a chap.

00:27:04.140 He really wasn't very humble.

00:27:05.920 He, he wanted to meet the Britons and the Britons said, well, should we pay this man our respects?

00:27:12.180 Should, should we do what he says?

00:27:13.520 And there was a wise hermit by the roadside.

00:27:16.360 And he said, well, when you go and see him, if he, if he stands up to greet you,

00:27:20.220 then do everything that he says, because he's humble.

00:27:23.080 If he doesn't stand up to greet you and sees himself as being above you,

00:27:27.740 then just ignore what he says.

00:27:30.520 And Augustine didn't stand up to, to greet them.

00:27:34.400 So the British church thought, well, he's, he's a bit too stuffy.

00:27:37.400 And, and why should we be paying honors to Rome anyway,

00:27:40.940 when we were Christian before them for 200 years?

00:27:45.240 And this Augustine actually cursed them.

00:27:48.040 And, uh, later on we hear about, uh, the, the university at Bangor,

00:27:54.000 which was filled with, with thousands of priests and, uh, monastery and the writing scriptures

00:27:59.100 and, and everything.

00:28:00.680 And, uh, one of these Anglo-Saxon pagan warriors slaughtered thousands of these priests.

00:28:07.100 They were unarmed priests that were just walking barefoot on the road to pray for the success

00:28:12.680 of, of their people in having a battle against, against the Saxon group.

00:28:16.980 And the Saxons slaughtered them all.

00:28:19.000 It was a horrific slaughter that was, that was, you know,

00:28:22.580 it stuck in the British people's memory for a long time.

00:28:25.360 And yet they still buried the hatchet as it were,

00:28:29.420 and offered the hand of peace to these Anglo-Saxons and, and succeeded.

00:28:34.420 I don't know if you want to add anything to that, Florian.

00:28:36.240 I think we should get into St. Samson of Dole tomorrow.

00:28:39.660 I think we've, uh, covered the basics here.

00:28:42.240 Well, I think, I think that that is a very good introduction,

00:28:45.100 giving people a lot of context.

00:28:46.560 I think every one of the details that we've already listed,

00:28:50.020 you can get much deeper into in future episodes.

00:28:52.960 So I think that's the thing to do.

00:28:55.060 Okay.

00:28:55.960 We'll be back tomorrow with, uh, St. Samson of Dole.

00:28:59.360 Thank you very much for listening.

00:29:00.640 God bless and hail victory.

00:29:02.000 God bless.

00:29:20.460 God bless.

00:29:22.400 God bless.

00:29:22.820 Thank you.

Mysterium Fasces - November 02, 2024

The Celtic Saints Of Britain (1) - The Celtic Britons – w_ Florian Geyer & Sven Longshanks

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