The Celtic Saints Of Britain (4) - Saints Aidan & Columba – w_ Florian Geyer & Sven Longshanks
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Summary
St. Columba was an Irish abbot and missionary, credited with spreading Christianity in what is today Scotland at the start of the Hiberno-Scottish mission. He founded the important Iona Monastery, which became a dominant religious and political institution in the region for centuries. He is the patron saint of Derry, and is remembered today as one of the twelve Apostles of Ireland.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to the Celtic Saints of Britain, episode 4.
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You're listening to me, Sven Longshanks, broadcasting at RadioArian.com.
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Once again today, I am joined by my co-host Florian Geyer.
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Florian, how are you doing today and how did you find that last episode?
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I thought that was great, talking about the relics there.
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Yeah, well, I'm very, very pleasant, of course, naturally, because it's a pleasure to be on Radio Arian.
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We've been doing these podcasts with you, Sven.
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I've been very pleased with the material we've produced so far.
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I think it's just been really perfect, great all-around introduction, quite good meaty content to get into.
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Real apostolic Christianity and European antiquity and our own history, the history of the people of the British Isles.
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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.
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Saint Columba and also the Iona Monastery, one of the most famous monasteries that we have in Britain.
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Saint Columba, he was born 7th of December 521, and he passed away 9th of June 597.
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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.
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He founded the important Abbey on Iona, which became a dominant religious and political institution in the region for centuries.
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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.
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Columba studied under some of Ireland's most prominent church figures and founded several monasteries in the country.
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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,
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where they founded a new abbey as a base for spreading Celtic Christianity among the northern Pictish kingdoms who were pagan.
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He remained active in Irish politics, though he spent most of the remainder of his life in Scotland.
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Three surviving early medieval Latin hymns may be attributed to him.
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On his father's side, he was great-great-grandson of Nial of the Nine Hostages, an Irish high king of the 5th century,
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and one of the enemies that St Finchwa fought against.
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So once again, we see royal heritage here, and we also see a connection there to one of these other saints.
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I think Nial of the Nine Hostages, he's quite a famous character. Have you heard of him before, Florian?
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No, he's a new one to me, but the regnal antecedents of a lot of these saints, it's not uncommon at all.
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We see this as well among the Franks in continental Europe, but all over, where,
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especially when these warrior aristocratic societies are being missionary, being missionized, and are being converted,
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that a lot of the energy and a lot of the vigor for these kind of major church figures comes out of the aristocracy.
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And typically speaking, not always, but it'll be gentlemen who were warriors, aristocrats in their youth,
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or rulers, princes of this world, who decided to withdraw from the world and to pursue asceticism,
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to pursue spirituality in a radical way, and later in their lives end up becoming successful bishops or apostles or what have you.
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Though they're not always the case, but it was certainly a very, very, very common trope.
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Yeah, I mean, when you think about it, when you've got royalty, not all of the princes can become king, can they?
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So this gave them a chance to do something else.
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And a lot of them were, you know, they were really, really vigorous Christians, you know, really, really keen.
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I mean, even Alfred the Great, when you read the history of Alfred the Great, he was such a pious Christian,
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You know, it really did inspire the ancient Britons to love one another, to love their neighbor as they love themselves.
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You know, you say this was the beginning of nationalism, really.
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Christianity is the beginning of nationalism, as you said in one of these earlier episodes,
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where it becomes that you're not just looking out for your family,
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but you're looking out for your extended family, and the nation becomes seen as your extended family.
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And St. Columba here, he's heading from Ireland into Scotland, a totally new area.
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He sees them as a foreign people, but he knows that they are just like him, because they're white, just like him.
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Tradition asserts that sometime around 560, he became involved in a quarrel with St. Finian of Movilla Abbey over a psalter.
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Columba copied the manuscript at the scriptorium under St. Finian, intending to keep the copy.
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But St. Finian disputed his right to keep the copy.
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The dispute eventually led to the pitched battle of Kaldremny in Cabra-Drom-Cliab, now in County Sligo, in 561,
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A second grievance that led him to induce the clan Neel to rise and engage in battle against King Dermot at Kaldrevny in 561
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was the king's violation of the right of sanctuary belonging to Columkill's person as a monk
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on the occasion of the murder of Prince Curnan, the saint's kinsman.
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Prince Curnan of Connaught, who had fatally injured a rival in a hurling match and had taken refuge with Columkill,
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was dragged from his protector's arms and slain by Dermot's men in defiance of the rights of sanctuary.
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A synod of clerics and scholars threatened to excommunicate him for these deaths,
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but St. Brendan of Beer spoke on his behalf with the result that he was allowed to go into exile instead.
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Columkill's own conscience was uneasy, and on the advice of an aged hermit, Malaise,
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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.
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He left Ireland to return only once many years later.
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Columkill's copy of the Psalter has been traditionally associated with the Cathach of St. Columkill.
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Now that's, I find this really interesting, you know, because this gives us an idea of the actual value of,
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of these scripts that they were, that they were writing out.
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And also the fact that, you know, he thought he should actually have this because he had, he had written it,
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but he had written the copy, but he didn't actually own the, the intellectual, uh, creative creation that was actually there.
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It was somebody else that had created that bit of writing.
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So the, the actual original author thought that he shouldn't have the right to even have a copy of it.
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I think this, this, this life really gives us a lot of insight into, um, the culture of Celtic Christianity
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and their civilization as it existed in this time period.
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Like, I mean, we see all of the elements that we have discussed beforehand, you know,
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see the deep involvement of, um, of clannish politics with the life of the church,
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because of course the church and the nation are, you know, one entity.
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Um, you know, we see the propensity for civil violence, reform, right?
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The, uh, high level of, uh, uh, what's the word looking for?
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Literacy, scriptural productions coming out of these Celtic monks, you know,
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all of these things, uh, play into this particular incident here, right?
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And so, um, this, and so this is, it's really quite a classic because what we see is that
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an ecclesiastical dispute, because it involves people from different clans of any
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And this is, was one of the banes really, uh, these kind of, um, Christianized societies,
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these, these, these Western, uh, Celto-Germanic societies is that these sort of things did
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And especially the, um, the weaving of church politics or church disputes into civil violence,
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uh, don't come, um, although vigorously, and then we'll sort of, um, they attempted to
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And so, but as well, you know, you mentioned the, the reproduction of this copy of the Psalter,
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Well, in the story of, um, St. Columba, it reflects how in pre-Christian Celtic academic
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culture, there was an emphasis placed on the openness of books and the sharing of information.
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And the people could go and read books from other people's libraries without restriction.
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And of course, books were enormously valuable and this free culture of, uh, information
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was anomalous because they were highly priced in the ancient world.
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And so his attempt to kind of, to appropriate for himself intellectual property of this copy
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of the Psalter was seen to be a serious sort of offense.
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And it like, it led to civil violence, you know, just this copy of a book.
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But of course, these things take years to produce very labor intensive, highly specialized
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trade and to, you know, like a parish, if it's particularly wealthy, if it's got a copy
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of the gospel and a copy of the Psalter written, then it's doing quite well for itself.
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So, especially as a missionary, you know, you can see what people might want this sort of
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thing, uh, icons were similar, uh, um, although they were in some cases less labor intensive
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than, um, uh, hand copied manuscripts of service books, prayers.
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It's a very sort of classic, um, you know, Celtic sort of British story, really.
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It has all of these, these very typical, uh, elements.
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Interesting that, um, you know, he's, he's got to make penance for that, for the fact that,
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uh, this, this fight was caused by him and these people that were killed over it, he has
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And when, when you think about the, you know, the, um, the worth of these manuscripts, you
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think, well, that was probably an illuminated manuscript and the inks, the different colors
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I mean, they would get special dyes from France, from Egypt, from Afghanistan, even to, to actually
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get these bright colors that they would illuminate these, these manuscripts with.
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So it wasn't just, um, the fact that, uh, it was somebody else's ideas.
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It was, it was all the worth that was tied up with it.
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And it also, you think, well, he was the guy that actually put all that work into it, but
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it was still somebody else's intellectual property and, and they, they probably paid
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So yeah, it was probably not a very good thing for him to have done.
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Anyway, he, he clearly felt guilty about this because in 563, he traveled to Scotland with
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12 companions said to include Odran of Iona in a Wicca curricle covered with leather.
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Aside from the services he provided guiding the only center of literacy in the region, his
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reputation as a holy man led to his role as a diplomat among the tribes.
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There are also many stories of miracles which he performed during his work to convert the
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The most famous being his encounter with an unidentified animal that some have equated with a Loch Ness
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It is said that he banished a ferocious water beast to the depths of the river Ness after
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it had killed a Pict and then tried to attack Clumkill's disciple named Lugni.
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He visited the pagan King Bridie, King of Fortrio at his base in Inverness, that's right at the
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top of Scotland, winning Bridie's respect, although not his conversion.
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He subsequently played a major role in the politics of the country.
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He was also very energetic in his work as a missionary, and in addition to founding several
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churches in the Hebrides, he worked to turn his monastery at Iona into a school for missionaries.
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He was a renowned man of letters, having written several hymns and being credited with having
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One of the few, if not the only times he left Scotland, was towards the end of his life when
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he returned to Ireland to found the monastery at Durro.
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So that shows you the important role that the church played in educating people, in bringing
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peace between the tribes and the diplomacy that he was involved in.
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And I think this is probably the first mention of the Loch Ness monster.
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And when you see him, they usually have a picture of it.
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It's almost difficult to know what to say with this fellow because it really is, his
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whole life is like an icon of this, of the re-evangelization of Britain, where you have
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these deeply, deeply pious, monastic, evangelistic people who kind of radiate this very intense
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form of apostolic Celtic Christianity back into the extremities, both with Picts and other
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types of Scotto-Celtic peoples, but also, you know, Germanics as well that we will see
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And so this norm, and you can see even the form that it's done, this is not some sort
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of, you know, military conquest, some imperial expansion.
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It is a very typical manner of Christian evangelism where monastics go and set up a monastery and
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live the monastic life and travel around preaching the gospel and people become interested because
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they're impressed by these characters, by their seriousness, by their zeal, by their holiness,
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by the miracles that follow them around, and they, you know, this interest draws them and
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I think Augustine was sort of telling people what to do, whereas the Celtic saints were really
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I mean, there was also a saint called Wilfred, I think, and he was an Anglo-Saxon one, and
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he got a really bad name for being really stuck up, whereas these Celtic saints, they lived like
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They rejected all riches and lived in poverty, and they were humble, and yet they were highly
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educated, really, really educated men that were a great help to have around.
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And I've got another quote here which tells us what Christianity was like in the 7th century,
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which gives us an idea of the differences between the Celtic church and the Roman church.
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Christianity in the south of Britain, which is basically Kent, was closely associated with
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Rome and with the church in continental Europe.
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This was because its organisation had developed from the missions of Augustine of 597, sent by
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Pope Gregory I. However, the churches of Ireland and of Western and Northern Britain had their
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own distinct history and traditions, as we said going right back to the 1st century.
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The churches of Wales and Cornwall had an unbroken tradition stretching back to Roman times.
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Ireland traced its Christian origins to missionaries from Wales, while Northumbria looked to the Irish
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monastery of Iona in modern Scotland as its source. Although all Western Christians recognised Rome
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as the ultimate fount of authority, the semi-independent churches of Britain and Ireland did not accept
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actual Roman control. Considerable divergences had developed in practice and organisation.
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Most bishops in Ireland and Britain were not recognised by Rome because their apostolic succession
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was uncertain, and they condoned non-Roman practices. Monastic practices and structures
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were very different, and I would suggest they were much more similar to the Eastern Orthodox
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church. Moreover, monasteries played a much more important role in Britain and Ireland
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than on the continent, with abbots regarded as de facto leaders of the church. Many of the differences
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related to disputes over the dating of Easter and the cut of the monastic tonsure, which were
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markedly and notoriously different in the local churches from those in Rome. These political and
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religious issues were constantly intertwined and interacted in various ways. Christianity in Britain
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and Ireland largely progressed through royal patronage, while kings increasingly used the church to
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stabilise and to confer legitimacy on their fragile states. A strong local church with distinctive
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practices could be a source of great support to a fledgling state, allowing the weaving together of
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political and religious elites. Conversely, the Roman connection introduced foreign influence beyond
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the control of local rulers, but also allowed rulers to display themselves on a wider European stage
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and to seek out more powerful sources of legitimacy. Now there are two ways this could go. If you've got,
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you know, you've got the church closely intertwined with the politicians. Now the church can either influence
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the politicians and, you know, they can be good politicians, or the politicians can influence the church
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and they can corrupt the church. And I would argue that at this time, the church was having the greater
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influence on the politics, and these kings were good kings, and the nobles were good nobles, and it was only
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later on that that changed around. Would you agree with that, Florian?
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Florian I think that's, generally speaking, true in this time period, although it's always
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definitely a mix of forces, as we see in Eastern Rome, right? Where you have a notorious force, you have
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very pious kings, heretical kings, tyrants, just men, saints, all that kind of thing, back to back.
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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
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there's many more lower level rulers. So really a much more direct societal rule, much closer to the
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people, although both of these are far cries away from our own current forms of government. You know,
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before going a little bit further, I want to emphasize as well that it's important to understand that,
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while there is definitely a serious distinction between Celtic Christianity and Roman Christianity,
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and that there is a certain level of conflict because of the original traditions and politics
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and these kinds of things, it's not a dialectic, which is important to note that they both had the
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same faith in this kind of thing. We went back to, you know, Bede's history and Augustine's observations
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in his dialogues with Pope St. Gregory. But, you know, that it can sometimes be set up, you know,
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that the Church of Rome is just this ravenous sort of, you know, power-hungry monster that's
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constantly looking to suppress and to imperialize, you know, the poor denizens of the British Isles.
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And while it may be, there is some truth to that, I don't think, I think that's a bit of a
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characterization is a caveat I wanted to make. Well, I think they underplay the role of Constantinople
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as well. I'm sure I remember reading later on in the life of Alfred the Great, they said that the
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Court of Last Appeal was in Constantinople. So you could take your appeal to the Church and then they
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would take it on to Constantinople. Rome was used for something else, because you had the two power
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bases, didn't you? Both Constantinople and Rome. And at this time, they were all still
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linked up together. I mean, we're only talking about the 7th century here. It's only like sort of
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50 years, if that, from Muhammad starting to invade in the Byzantine world. So they were all still
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together. Well, I think we've got time to get into St. Aidan and Lindisfarne. Sure.
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Here's another very famous one. He's mentioned in Bede quite a lot, actually, St. Aidan. And
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Lindisfarne, again, is a very famous monastery. Aidan of Lindisfarne, who died 31st of August, 651,
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was an Irish monk and missionary credited with restoring Christianity to Northumbria. He founded
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a monastic cathedral on the island of Lindisfarne, known as Lindisfarne Priory, served as its first
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bishop and travelled ceaselessly throughout the countryside, spreading the gospel to both the
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Anglo-Saxon nobility and the socially disenfranchised, including children and slaves. He is known as the
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Apostle of Northumbria and is recognised as a saint by the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church,
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the Anglican Communion and others. So that gives us, you know, it gives us an idea of the fact that
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all those churches were together at once. They're calling it the Anglican Communion there, but really
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that was the Celtic Church. In the years prior to Aidan's mission, Christianity, which had been
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propagated throughout Britain, but not Ireland, by the Roman Empire, as because the Welsh propagated it
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in Ireland, was being largely displaced by Anglo-Saxon paganism. In the monastery of Iona,
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founded by Columba of the Irish Church, the religion soon found one of its principal exponents in Oswald
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of Northumbria, a noble youth who had been raised there as a king in exile since 616. Baptised as a
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Christian, the young king vowed to bring Christianity back to his people, an opportunity that presented
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itself in 634 when he gained the crown of Northumbria. Owing to his historical connection to Iona's
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monastic community, King Oswald requested that missionaries be sent from that monastery instead
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of from the Roman-sponsored monasteries of southern England. At first they sent him a bishop named
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Cormon, but he alienated many people by his harshness and returned in failure to Iona, reporting that the
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Northumbrians were too stubborn to be converted. Aidan criticised Cormon's methods and was soon sent as his
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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
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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
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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
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know, this must have happened more than once, I would have thought, these kings being brought up in the monasteries.
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Yeah, well, I think it's a rather standard and regular occurrence, you know, both for religious
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reasons, but also for educational reasons, is that especially in these sort of fringe areas of the Roman
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Empire, these hinterlands, you know, centers of scholarship are almost exclusively limited to monasteries, and
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maybe you have continuing centers of Roman urban life, you know, which are pretty uncommon outside of
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like southern France, you would have, you know, sort of secular scholarship. But no, if you wanted to
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become an educated person, like read and write and become acquainted with whatever classics were in the
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library at the monastery, that's where you had to go. And so, it's quite a common practice.
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Well, this area as well, Northumbria, it's sort of in the middle to the north of Britain, this was the
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last bit that still had the pagans in it, basically. Everywhere else was Christian, and again, it was the
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Celtic Christians that they preferred. They didn't want the Roman Christians to convert them. In his years
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of evangelism, Aidan was responsible for the construction of churches, monasteries, and schools
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throughout Northumbria. At the same time, he earned a tremendous reputation for his pious charity and
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dedication to the less fortunate, such as his tendency to provide room, board, and education to orphans,
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and his use of contributions to pay for the freedom of slaves. The monastery he founded grew
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and helped found churches and other religious institutions throughout the area. It also served
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as a centre of learning and a storehouse of scholarly knowledge, training many of Aidan's young charges
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for a career in the priesthood. Though Aidan was a member of the Irish branch of Christianity instead
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of the Roman branch, his character and energy in missionary work won him the respect of
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Pope Honorius I and Felix of Dunwich. So, you know, they weren't just looked on as being great people
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in the Celtic church, but, you know, even the Pope appreciated what was being done. It just shows you
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that there was communion between these different branches. When Oswald died in 642, Aidan received
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continued support from King Oswine of Dera and the two became close friends. As such, the monk's ministry
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continued relatively unchanged until the rise of pagan hostilities in 651. At that time, a pagan army
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attacked Bamberg and attempted to set its walls ablaze. According to legend, Aidan saw the black smoke from
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his cell at Lindisfarne Abbey, immediately recognised its cause, and knelt in prayer for the fate of the city.
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Miraculously, the winds abruptly reversed their course, blowing the conflagration back towards the
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enemy, which convinced them that the capital city was defended by potent spiritual forces.
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Around this time, Oswin was betrayed and murdered, and two weeks later Aidan died on the 31st of August
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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
00:30:15.640
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
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.