Mysterium Fasces - The Celtic Saints Of Britain (4) - Saints Aidan & Columba – w_ Florian Geyer & Sven Longshanks

00:00:00.000 Everyone 나쁜 other people

00:00:07.000 Baby everyone

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00:00:16.000 Maybe that's the end

00:00:22.000 Better series

00:00:27.000 Hello and welcome to the Celtic Saints of Britain, episode 4.

00:00:42.180 You're listening to me, Sven Longshanks, broadcasting at RadioArian.com.

00:00:47.100 Once again today, I am joined by my co-host Florian Geyer.

00:00:50.960 Florian, how are you doing today and how did you find that last episode?

00:00:54.780 I thought that was great, talking about the relics there.

00:00:57.800 Yeah, well, I'm very, very pleasant, of course, naturally, because it's a pleasure to be on Radio Arian.

00:01:03.440 We've been doing these podcasts with you, Sven.

00:01:05.000 I've been very pleased with the material we've produced so far.

00:01:07.860 I think it's just been really perfect, great all-around introduction, quite good meaty content to get into.

00:01:15.160 Real apostolic Christianity and European antiquity and our own history, the history of the people of the British Isles.

00:01:23.460 Of course, the saints we've been discussing so far have all been a little bit obscure, and this one we're going to talk about today, he's a little bit more famous.

00:01:32.800 Saint Columba and also the Iona Monastery, one of the most famous monasteries that we have in Britain.

00:01:40.980 Saint Columba, he was born 7th of December 521, and he passed away 9th of June 597.

00:01:48.700 He was an Irish abbot and a missionary evangelist, credited with spreading Christianity in what is today Scotland, at the start of the Hiberno-Scottish mission.

00:02:01.500 Hiberno is Hibernia, that would be Ireland. 0.89

00:02:03.940 He founded the important Abbey on Iona, which became a dominant religious and political institution in the region for centuries.

00:02:11.780 He is the patron saint of Derry.

00:02:14.040 He was highly regarded by both the Gales of Dalriata and the Picts, and is remembered today as a Catholic saint and one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland.

00:02:24.100 Columba studied under some of Ireland's most prominent church figures and founded several monasteries in the country.

00:02:30.700 Around 563, he and his twelve companions crossed to Dunnaverti near Southend Argyll in Kintyre, before settling in Iona in Scotland, then a part of the Ulster Kingdom of Dalriata,

00:02:44.900 where they founded a new abbey as a base for spreading Celtic Christianity among the northern Pictish kingdoms who were pagan.

00:02:52.740 He remained active in Irish politics, though he spent most of the remainder of his life in Scotland.

00:02:57.780 Three surviving early medieval Latin hymns may be attributed to him.

00:03:03.760 On his father's side, he was great-great-grandson of Nial of the Nine Hostages, an Irish high king of the 5th century,

00:03:11.900 and one of the enemies that St Finchwa fought against.

00:03:15.560 So once again, we see royal heritage here, and we also see a connection there to one of these other saints.

00:03:24.120 I think Nial of the Nine Hostages, he's quite a famous character. Have you heard of him before, Florian?

00:03:30.560 No, he's a new one to me, but the regnal antecedents of a lot of these saints, it's not uncommon at all.

00:03:37.440 We see this as well among the Franks in continental Europe, but all over, where,

00:03:41.900 especially when these warrior aristocratic societies are being missionary, being missionized, and are being converted,

00:03:51.720 that a lot of the energy and a lot of the vigor for these kind of major church figures comes out of the aristocracy.

00:03:59.880 And typically speaking, not always, but it'll be gentlemen who were warriors, aristocrats in their youth,

00:04:07.740 or rulers, princes of this world, who decided to withdraw from the world and to pursue asceticism,

00:04:13.760 to pursue spirituality in a radical way, and later in their lives end up becoming successful bishops or apostles or what have you.

00:04:24.860 Though they're not always the case, but it was certainly a very, very, very common trope.

00:04:30.960 Yeah, I mean, when you think about it, when you've got royalty, not all of the princes can become king, can they?

00:04:36.120 So this gave them a chance to do something else.

00:04:39.160 And a lot of them were, you know, they were really, really vigorous Christians, you know, really, really keen.

00:04:48.120 I mean, even Alfred the Great, when you read the history of Alfred the Great, he was such a pious Christian,

00:04:54.160 even from a very early age.

00:04:56.320 You know, it really did inspire the ancient Britons to love one another, to love their neighbor as they love themselves.

00:05:04.440 You know, you say this was the beginning of nationalism, really.

00:05:07.820 Christianity is the beginning of nationalism, as you said in one of these earlier episodes, 0.70

00:05:12.740 where it becomes that you're not just looking out for your family,

00:05:16.140 but you're looking out for your extended family, and the nation becomes seen as your extended family.

00:05:22.660 And St. Columba here, he's heading from Ireland into Scotland, a totally new area.

00:05:29.580 He sees them as a foreign people, but he knows that they are just like him, because they're white, just like him. 0.99

00:05:37.860 Tradition asserts that sometime around 560, he became involved in a quarrel with St. Finian of Movilla Abbey over a psalter.

00:05:47.220 Columba copied the manuscript at the scriptorium under St. Finian, intending to keep the copy.

00:05:53.160 But St. Finian disputed his right to keep the copy.

00:05:58.040 The dispute eventually led to the pitched battle of Kaldremny in Cabra-Drom-Cliab, now in County Sligo, in 561,

00:06:06.660 during which many men were killed.

00:06:09.320 A second grievance that led him to induce the clan Neel to rise and engage in battle against King Dermot at Kaldrevny in 561

00:06:18.420 was the king's violation of the right of sanctuary belonging to Columkill's person as a monk

00:06:24.020 on the occasion of the murder of Prince Curnan, the saint's kinsman.

00:06:28.800 Prince Curnan of Connaught, who had fatally injured a rival in a hurling match and had taken refuge with Columkill,

00:06:35.120 was dragged from his protector's arms and slain by Dermot's men in defiance of the rights of sanctuary.

00:06:42.740 A synod of clerics and scholars threatened to excommunicate him for these deaths,

00:06:46.680 but St. Brendan of Beer spoke on his behalf with the result that he was allowed to go into exile instead.

00:06:54.040 Columkill's own conscience was uneasy, and on the advice of an aged hermit, Malaise, 0.95

00:06:59.840 he resolved to expiate his offence by going into exile and win for Christ as many souls as had perished in the terrible battle of Kaldremny.

00:07:09.440 He left Ireland to return only once many years later.

00:07:13.100 Columkill's copy of the Psalter has been traditionally associated with the Cathach of St. Columkill.

00:07:21.460 Now that's, I find this really interesting, you know, because this gives us an idea of the actual value of,

00:07:27.160 of these scripts that they were, that they were writing out.

00:07:31.020 And also the fact that, you know, he thought he should actually have this because he had, he had written it,

00:07:37.140 but he had written the copy, but he didn't actually own the, the intellectual, uh, creative creation that was actually there.

00:07:46.500 It was somebody else that had created that bit of writing.

00:07:49.260 So the, the actual original author thought that he shouldn't have the right to even have a copy of it.

00:07:57.260 And that's, uh, yeah.

00:07:57.900 Well, it is fascinating.

00:07:59.000 I think this, this, this life really gives us a lot of insight into, um, the culture of Celtic Christianity

00:08:06.800 and their civilization as it existed in this time period.

00:08:09.700 Like, I mean, we see all of the elements that we have discussed beforehand, you know,

00:08:13.060 see the deep involvement of, um, of clannish politics with the life of the church,

00:08:18.920 because of course the church and the nation are, you know, one entity.

00:08:22.280 Um, you know, we see the propensity for civil violence, reform, right?

00:08:27.160 The, uh, high level of, uh, uh, what's the word looking for?

00:08:33.040 Literacy, scriptural productions coming out of these Celtic monks, you know, 1.00

00:08:37.080 all of these things, uh, play into this particular incident here, right?

00:08:42.060 And so, um, this, and so this is, it's really quite a classic because what we see is that

00:08:47.920 an ecclesiastical dispute, because it involves people from different clans of any

00:08:52.120 civic civil violence, which was fairly common.

00:08:55.380 And this is, was one of the banes really, uh, these kind of, um, Christianized societies,

00:09:04.460 these, these, these Western, uh, Celto-Germanic societies is that these sort of things did

00:09:08.760 happen, you know, uh, relatively regularly.

00:09:10.400 And especially the, um, the weaving of church politics or church disputes into civil violence,

00:09:19.080 uh, don't come, um, although vigorously, and then we'll sort of, um, they attempted to

00:09:27.320 reform these, these trends.

00:09:28.680 And so, but as well, you know, you mentioned the, the reproduction of this copy of the Psalter,

00:09:36.580 this book of, book of Psalms.

00:09:37.860 Well, in the story of, um, St. Columba, it reflects how in pre-Christian Celtic academic

00:09:45.680 culture, there was an emphasis placed on the openness of books and the sharing of information.

00:09:51.900 And the people could go and read books from other people's libraries without restriction.

00:09:55.960 And of course, books were enormously valuable and this free culture of, uh, information

00:10:01.000 was anomalous because they were highly priced in the ancient world.

00:10:05.020 And so his attempt to kind of, to appropriate for himself intellectual property of this copy

00:10:13.240 of the Psalter was seen to be a serious sort of offense.

00:10:16.800 And it like, it led to civil violence, you know, just this copy of a book.

00:10:19.740 But of course, these things take years to produce very labor intensive, highly specialized

00:10:24.300 trade and to, you know, like a parish, if it's particularly wealthy, if it's got a copy

00:10:30.700 of the gospel and a copy of the Psalter written, then it's doing quite well for itself.

00:10:36.600 So, especially as a missionary, you know, you can see what people might want this sort of

00:10:41.020 thing, uh, icons were similar, uh, um, although they were in some cases less labor intensive

00:10:46.660 than, um, uh, hand copied manuscripts of service books, prayers.

00:10:53.260 So all of this kind of blends together.

00:10:56.040 It's a very sort of classic, um, you know, Celtic sort of British story, really.

00:11:03.000 It has all of these, these very typical, uh, elements.

00:11:08.820 Interesting that, um, you know, he's, he's got to make penance for that, for the fact that,

00:11:13.360 uh, this, this fight was caused by him and these people that were killed over it, he has

00:11:18.420 to bring as many people to God.

00:11:20.860 And when, when you think about the, you know, the, um, the worth of these manuscripts, you

00:11:26.300 think, well, that was probably an illuminated manuscript and the inks, the different colors

00:11:31.960 for that, lapis lazuli, um, deep reds.

00:11:36.980 I mean, they would get special dyes from France, from Egypt, from Afghanistan, even to, to actually

00:11:43.680 get these bright colors that they would illuminate these, these manuscripts with.

00:11:48.320 So it wasn't just, um, the fact that, uh, it was somebody else's ideas.

00:11:53.220 It was, it was all the worth that was tied up with it.

00:11:56.180 And it also, you think, well, he was the guy that actually put all that work into it, but

00:12:01.600 it was still somebody else's intellectual property and, and they, they probably paid

00:12:05.900 for it.

00:12:06.360 So yeah, it was probably not a very good thing for him to have done.

00:12:10.580 Anyway, he, he clearly felt guilty about this because in 563, he traveled to Scotland with

00:12:16.920 12 companions said to include Odran of Iona in a Wicca curricle covered with leather.

00:12:24.460 Aside from the services he provided guiding the only center of literacy in the region, his

00:12:31.020 reputation as a holy man led to his role as a diplomat among the tribes.

00:12:36.260 There are also many stories of miracles which he performed during his work to convert the

00:12:41.120 Picts.

00:12:41.880 The most famous being his encounter with an unidentified animal that some have equated with a Loch Ness

00:12:47.300 monster in 565.

00:12:50.120 It is said that he banished a ferocious water beast to the depths of the river Ness after

00:12:55.940 it had killed a Pict and then tried to attack Clumkill's disciple named Lugni.

00:13:02.280 See the Vita Columbi book two.

00:13:05.160 He visited the pagan King Bridie, King of Fortrio at his base in Inverness, that's right at the 0.86

00:13:10.980 top of Scotland, winning Bridie's respect, although not his conversion.

00:13:15.080 He subsequently played a major role in the politics of the country.

00:13:19.400 He was also very energetic in his work as a missionary, and in addition to founding several

00:13:24.120 churches in the Hebrides, he worked to turn his monastery at Iona into a school for missionaries.

00:13:30.680 He was a renowned man of letters, having written several hymns and being credited with having

00:13:35.760 transcribed 300 books.

00:13:38.480 One of the few, if not the only times he left Scotland, was towards the end of his life when

00:13:43.940 he returned to Ireland to found the monastery at Durro.

00:13:48.660 So that shows you the important role that the church played in educating people, in bringing

00:13:55.060 peace between the tribes and the diplomacy that he was involved in.

00:14:00.060 And I think this is probably the first mention of the Loch Ness monster.

00:14:04.260 And when you see him, they usually have a picture of it.

00:14:07.280 It's quite a famous incident here.

00:14:09.840 Right, no, indeed.

00:14:14.940 It's almost difficult to know what to say with this fellow because it really is, his

00:14:20.660 whole life is like an icon of this, of the re-evangelization of Britain, where you have

00:14:26.440 these deeply, deeply pious, monastic, evangelistic people who kind of radiate this very intense

00:14:35.760 form of apostolic Celtic Christianity back into the extremities, both with Picts and other 0.97

00:14:44.140 types of Scotto-Celtic peoples, but also, you know, Germanics as well that we will see

00:14:48.660 later on.

00:14:49.320 And so this norm, and you can see even the form that it's done, this is not some sort

00:14:55.740 of, you know, military conquest, some imperial expansion.

00:15:00.400 It is a very typical manner of Christian evangelism where monastics go and set up a monastery and

00:15:08.320 live the monastic life and travel around preaching the gospel and people become interested because

00:15:13.500 they're impressed by these characters, by their seriousness, by their zeal, by their holiness,

00:15:17.580 by the miracles that follow them around, and they, you know, this interest draws them and

00:15:22.980 they convert of their own free will, right?

00:15:25.980 It's all by setting a good example.

00:15:28.980 That's the thing.

00:15:30.340 I think Augustine was sort of telling people what to do, whereas the Celtic saints were really

00:15:37.520 living it.

00:15:38.100 They were living this poor life.

00:15:39.600 They weren't living in the lap of luxury.

00:15:43.840 I mean, there was also a saint called Wilfred, I think, and he was an Anglo-Saxon one, and

00:15:50.460 he got a really bad name for being really stuck up, whereas these Celtic saints, they lived like 0.99

00:15:56.420 hermits.

00:15:57.180 They rejected all riches and lived in poverty, and they were humble, and yet they were highly

00:16:03.980 educated, really, really educated men that were a great help to have around.

00:16:09.660 And I've got another quote here which tells us what Christianity was like in the 7th century,

00:16:15.680 which gives us an idea of the differences between the Celtic church and the Roman church.

00:16:21.780 Christianity in the south of Britain, which is basically Kent, was closely associated with

00:16:27.860 Rome and with the church in continental Europe.

00:16:30.800 This was because its organisation had developed from the missions of Augustine of 597, sent by

00:16:36.920 Pope Gregory I. However, the churches of Ireland and of Western and Northern Britain had their

00:16:43.440 own distinct history and traditions, as we said going right back to the 1st century.

00:16:48.200 The churches of Wales and Cornwall had an unbroken tradition stretching back to Roman times.

00:16:54.100 Ireland traced its Christian origins to missionaries from Wales, while Northumbria looked to the Irish

00:17:00.000 monastery of Iona in modern Scotland as its source. Although all Western Christians recognised Rome

00:17:06.560 as the ultimate fount of authority, the semi-independent churches of Britain and Ireland did not accept

00:17:12.820 actual Roman control. Considerable divergences had developed in practice and organisation.

00:17:19.780 Most bishops in Ireland and Britain were not recognised by Rome because their apostolic succession

00:17:25.340 was uncertain, and they condoned non-Roman practices. Monastic practices and structures

00:17:31.600 were very different, and I would suggest they were much more similar to the Eastern Orthodox

00:17:35.660 church. Moreover, monasteries played a much more important role in Britain and Ireland

00:17:40.820 than on the continent, with abbots regarded as de facto leaders of the church. Many of the differences

00:17:47.760 related to disputes over the dating of Easter and the cut of the monastic tonsure, which were

00:17:53.740 markedly and notoriously different in the local churches from those in Rome. These political and

00:18:00.120 religious issues were constantly intertwined and interacted in various ways. Christianity in Britain

00:18:06.040 and Ireland largely progressed through royal patronage, while kings increasingly used the church to

00:18:12.520 stabilise and to confer legitimacy on their fragile states. A strong local church with distinctive

00:18:19.560 practices could be a source of great support to a fledgling state, allowing the weaving together of

00:18:25.860 political and religious elites. Conversely, the Roman connection introduced foreign influence beyond

00:18:32.760 the control of local rulers, but also allowed rulers to display themselves on a wider European stage

00:18:39.160 and to seek out more powerful sources of legitimacy. Now there are two ways this could go. If you've got,

00:18:45.360 you know, you've got the church closely intertwined with the politicians. Now the church can either influence

00:18:52.880 the politicians and, you know, they can be good politicians, or the politicians can influence the church

00:18:59.440 and they can corrupt the church. And I would argue that at this time, the church was having the greater

00:19:05.340 influence on the politics, and these kings were good kings, and the nobles were good nobles, and it was only

00:19:12.740 later on that that changed around. Would you agree with that, Florian?

00:19:16.820 Florian I think that's, generally speaking, true in this time period, although it's always 0.85

00:19:22.020 definitely a mix of forces, as we see in Eastern Rome, right? Where you have a notorious force, you have

00:19:31.060 very pious kings, heretical kings, tyrants, just men, saints, all that kind of thing, back to back.

00:19:37.140 So, but in the, it's a little bit more, it's less, it's less sort of grand in that sense in the West, where

00:19:44.580 there's many more lower level rulers. So really a much more direct societal rule, much closer to the

00:19:53.540 people, although both of these are far cries away from our own current forms of government. You know,

00:19:59.700 before going a little bit further, I want to emphasize as well that it's important to understand that,

00:20:05.220 while there is definitely a serious distinction between Celtic Christianity and Roman Christianity,

00:20:11.940 and that there is a certain level of conflict because of the original traditions and politics

00:20:16.260 and these kinds of things, it's not a dialectic, which is important to note that they both had the

00:20:22.660 same faith in this kind of thing. We went back to, you know, Bede's history and Augustine's observations

00:20:28.100 in his dialogues with Pope St. Gregory. But, you know, that it can sometimes be set up, you know,

00:20:36.180 that the Church of Rome is just this ravenous sort of, you know, power-hungry monster that's

00:20:41.620 constantly looking to suppress and to imperialize, you know, the poor denizens of the British Isles.

00:20:50.020 And while it may be, there is some truth to that, I don't think, I think that's a bit of a

00:20:53.380 characterization is a caveat I wanted to make. Well, I think they underplay the role of Constantinople

00:20:59.940 as well. I'm sure I remember reading later on in the life of Alfred the Great, they said that the

00:21:05.700 Court of Last Appeal was in Constantinople. So you could take your appeal to the Church and then they

00:21:12.260 would take it on to Constantinople. Rome was used for something else, because you had the two power 0.70

00:21:18.100 bases, didn't you? Both Constantinople and Rome. And at this time, they were all still

00:21:25.140 linked up together. I mean, we're only talking about the 7th century here. It's only like sort of

00:21:30.260 50 years, if that, from Muhammad starting to invade in the Byzantine world. So they were all still 1.00

00:21:38.980 together. Well, I think we've got time to get into St. Aidan and Lindisfarne. Sure.

00:21:43.380 Here's another very famous one. He's mentioned in Bede quite a lot, actually, St. Aidan. And

00:21:50.820 Lindisfarne, again, is a very famous monastery. Aidan of Lindisfarne, who died 31st of August, 651,

00:21:58.920 was an Irish monk and missionary credited with restoring Christianity to Northumbria. He founded

00:22:05.700 a monastic cathedral on the island of Lindisfarne, known as Lindisfarne Priory, served as its first

00:22:12.000 bishop and travelled ceaselessly throughout the countryside, spreading the gospel to both the

00:22:17.100 Anglo-Saxon nobility and the socially disenfranchised, including children and slaves. He is known as the

00:22:24.680 Apostle of Northumbria and is recognised as a saint by the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church,

00:22:30.920 the Anglican Communion and others. So that gives us, you know, it gives us an idea of the fact that

00:22:37.340 all those churches were together at once. They're calling it the Anglican Communion there, but really

00:22:42.760 that was the Celtic Church. In the years prior to Aidan's mission, Christianity, which had been

00:22:49.440 propagated throughout Britain, but not Ireland, by the Roman Empire, as because the Welsh propagated it

00:22:55.360 in Ireland, was being largely displaced by Anglo-Saxon paganism. In the monastery of Iona,

00:23:02.020 founded by Columba of the Irish Church, the religion soon found one of its principal exponents in Oswald

00:23:08.480 of Northumbria, a noble youth who had been raised there as a king in exile since 616. Baptised as a

00:23:16.580 Christian, the young king vowed to bring Christianity back to his people, an opportunity that presented

00:23:22.380 itself in 634 when he gained the crown of Northumbria. Owing to his historical connection to Iona's

00:23:29.900 monastic community, King Oswald requested that missionaries be sent from that monastery instead

00:23:36.020 of from the Roman-sponsored monasteries of southern England. At first they sent him a bishop named

00:23:41.780 Cormon, but he alienated many people by his harshness and returned in failure to Iona, reporting that the

00:23:48.540 Northumbrians were too stubborn to be converted. Aidan criticised Cormon's methods and was soon sent as his 0.96

00:23:55.500 replacement and he became bishop in 635. Now again, I think this shows a really good idea here. You've got, you've got a

00:24:02.080 young king and he's in exile, so what do you do with him? You give him to the monks, so he's educated as a

00:24:08.060 Christian, he's educated in Christian ways, so that when he becomes a king, he's a really good king to his people. So I, you

00:24:16.560 know, this must have happened more than once, I would have thought, these kings being brought up in the monasteries.

00:24:21.500 Yeah, well, I think it's a rather standard and regular occurrence, you know, both for religious

00:24:27.880 reasons, but also for educational reasons, is that especially in these sort of fringe areas of the Roman

00:24:35.420 Empire, these hinterlands, you know, centers of scholarship are almost exclusively limited to monasteries, and

00:24:44.680 maybe you have continuing centers of Roman urban life, you know, which are pretty uncommon outside of

00:24:52.440 like southern France, you would have, you know, sort of secular scholarship. But no, if you wanted to

00:24:59.480 become an educated person, like read and write and become acquainted with whatever classics were in the

00:25:05.940 library at the monastery, that's where you had to go. And so, it's quite a common practice.

00:25:15.780 Well, this area as well, Northumbria, it's sort of in the middle to the north of Britain, this was the

00:25:22.360 last bit that still had the pagans in it, basically. Everywhere else was Christian, and again, it was the 0.99

00:25:29.380 Celtic Christians that they preferred. They didn't want the Roman Christians to convert them. In his years 0.92

00:25:36.240 of evangelism, Aidan was responsible for the construction of churches, monasteries, and schools

00:25:41.620 throughout Northumbria. At the same time, he earned a tremendous reputation for his pious charity and

00:25:48.180 dedication to the less fortunate, such as his tendency to provide room, board, and education to orphans,

00:25:55.260 and his use of contributions to pay for the freedom of slaves. The monastery he founded grew

00:26:01.920 and helped found churches and other religious institutions throughout the area. It also served

00:26:07.840 as a centre of learning and a storehouse of scholarly knowledge, training many of Aidan's young charges

00:26:13.720 for a career in the priesthood. Though Aidan was a member of the Irish branch of Christianity instead

00:26:19.500 of the Roman branch, his character and energy in missionary work won him the respect of

00:26:25.060 Pope Honorius I and Felix of Dunwich. So, you know, they weren't just looked on as being great people

00:26:32.880 in the Celtic church, but, you know, even the Pope appreciated what was being done. It just shows you

00:26:40.160 that there was communion between these different branches. When Oswald died in 642, Aidan received

00:26:47.060 continued support from King Oswine of Dera and the two became close friends. As such, the monk's ministry

00:26:53.420 continued relatively unchanged until the rise of pagan hostilities in 651. At that time, a pagan army

00:27:01.200 attacked Bamberg and attempted to set its walls ablaze. According to legend, Aidan saw the black smoke from

00:27:07.980 his cell at Lindisfarne Abbey, immediately recognised its cause, and knelt in prayer for the fate of the city.

00:27:14.320 Miraculously, the winds abruptly reversed their course, blowing the conflagration back towards the

00:27:21.100 enemy, which convinced them that the capital city was defended by potent spiritual forces.

00:27:27.640 Around this time, Oswin was betrayed and murdered, and two weeks later Aidan died on the 31st of August

00:27:34.140 651. He had become ill while on one of his incessant missionary tours, and died leaning against the wall

00:27:41.680 of the local church. As Baring Gould poetically summarises, it was a death which became a soldier

00:27:48.340 of the faith upon his own fit field of battle. Today, Aidan's significance is still recognised in

00:27:55.080 the following saying by Joseph Lightfoot, Bishop of Durham. Augustine was the Apostle of Kent,

00:28:00.460 but Aidan was the Apostle of the English. And that was by Bishop Lightfoot there. And it's

00:28:07.040 interesting where he says he, when he prayed, it turned the wind back away from the city, because

00:28:13.760 Bede also talks of another instance where there was a fire that started in a village, and they couldn't

00:28:20.860 get, they couldn't put the fire out. So what they did, the priest said, put me in front of it. So they put

00:28:25.900 the priest in front of this fire, and he prayed, and the wind blew from behind him, and blew the flames

00:28:32.480 away from the village, and away from the priest. And they also, when they were at sea, they would

00:28:37.640 have these priests on the boats as well, in order to get the winds to blow in the right direction,

00:28:44.020 or get them out to pray, if there was a storm, to get the storm to subside. I think there's talk of

00:28:51.340 that happening in the New Testament. But this was something that was almost like a regular

00:28:55.640 occurrence, actually getting the weather to change through prayer, that comes up quite a lot in these

00:29:02.260 stories. Yes, absolutely. And this is something that we see, not only in the English tradition,

00:29:08.360 but in many hagiographical traditions, many of the lives of the saints, and then pious legends. But

00:29:14.440 what is so astonishing, I think, about the tradition of the British saints, is that these events happen

00:29:20.660 with a remarkable density and frequency. It seems almost every other saint you read about have not

00:29:26.920 only issues of weather changing, although this is very common, but all sorts of marvels, really,

00:29:34.920 like very, I mean, in other sacred traditions, in the sense of like hagiographic traditions,

00:29:43.340 the lives of the saints are relatively uncommon. You know, resurrection of the dead,

00:29:49.900 community with animals, these kind of things, which happen, but it's the density, really. And I think

00:29:55.900 this is all just pointing to the enormous development and piety of Christianity in the British Isles,

00:30:03.160 as it existed at this time frame, just that these men were very holy men, basically. And that their

00:30:08.900 level of asceticism and spiritual development was very high, and God listened to their prayers. And

00:30:14.640 that's why these things happened.

00:30:15.640 There was one saint, Saint Justinian. And I think these pirates, I think the story is that these

00:30:22.180 pirates tried to kill him, and he turned these pirates into crows. And I think, and then they came

00:30:27.480 back and they beheaded him. And he picked his head up in his arms, and he somehow, he flew across from

00:30:34.080 the island that he was on on this monastery. And he flew across the sea to the land. And when he landed,

00:30:40.840 he put his head down, and again, another holy well sprang up. So you do get some really sort of

00:30:45.700 fantastical stories in there that are woven in there with legend and folklore. And these people

00:30:53.660 believe them. You don't know whether they happened. I mean, it's not very likely to happen today.

00:30:58.240 But who's to say that it didn't happen back then? Because, you know, they would say, well,

00:31:02.820 these things did happen. And it's probably more believable that the wind would change,

00:31:07.680 rather than people would be beheaded. But as you say, there are stories of people being brought

00:31:13.060 back to life, just as it has in the New Testament with Lazarus. Lazarus is actually a saint or an

00:31:19.860 apostle that supposedly came over to Britain. There are triads that are attributed to Lazarus,

00:31:26.120 supposedly came over with Joseph of Arimathea way back then.

00:31:30.820 Right. Well, that's part of the whole sort of Cyprus-Britain connection, right? Because that's

00:31:36.620 where Lazarus' relics rest on Cyprus. And he was a bishop in Cyprus traditionally after he was

00:31:42.800 resurrected from the dead for the rest of his life. But there are early traditions that say that

00:31:48.520 the mother of God, Joseph of Arimathea, people from Cyprus came over from Cyprus and Ephesus along

00:31:55.500 the Greek and Roman trading routes up to Southern England, which, as we know, just from secular history,

00:32:04.060 had been going on for a thousand plus years before the time of Christ. So this is something as well

00:32:10.100 we have touched on. There's no need to belabor it. But even in the secular sort of Whig historiography,

00:32:15.180 they are more and more cunning to admit that the ancient world was much more connected as far as

00:32:21.640 traveling and trade networks than they would have liked to concede.

00:32:27.200 Yeah. Joseph of Arimathea was a nobilist de Curio, according to Malgoon of Hlandaff. So he was a tin 0.91

00:32:36.200 trader for the Romans. So he knew that route well. And there's also a legend, I think, of Lazarus and

00:32:42.760 Joseph and Mary in Marseille. So that would have been the route that they came from, from Cyprus to

00:32:49.660 Marseille to Britain. And people just don't really know about these, these legends. And I think it's

00:32:54.840 important for British people to understand this, especially, you know, British nationalists that

00:32:59.100 think that Christianity is somehow foreign. I mean, Britain was intimately tied into it and with

00:33:05.680 these people. And they weren't Jews. The Jews didn't come to Britain until 1066 with William the

00:33:11.700 Bastard. Alfred the Great, you know, he warned about the Jews. He thought they had hooves and a tail in

00:33:20.340 one of the things that he was writing about them. And he drew a distinction between the Jews and Israel.

00:33:25.640 And it was quite clear that there never had been any in Britain. There was no usury. And all of that

00:33:31.420 came with William the Norman, or William the Bastard, as he's also called. There were lots of interesting

00:33:37.880 saints from around that time, as well. I mean, the Norman invasion, that was a bad thing. But some of the

00:33:43.780 kings after that, I think St. Edmund, I think he was one of the kings, Edmund the Confessor. But that would

00:33:49.780 have to be for another series. But that brings us to the end of episode four. Thank you very much for coming

00:33:55.340 on today, Florian. Thank you very much, listeners, for listening. We'll be back tomorrow with the fifth and final

00:34:01.400 episode of the Celtic Saints of Britain. God bless and hail victory.

00:34:31.400 God bless and hail victory.

Mysterium Fasces - November 02, 2024

The Celtic Saints Of Britain (4) - Saints Aidan & Columba – w_ Florian Geyer & Sven Longshanks

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