The Celtic Saints Of Britain (5) - Saints Cuthbert & Chad – w_ Florian Geyer & Sven Longshanks
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
164.1126
Summary
In this final episode of the series on St. Cuthbert, host Sven Longshanks is joined by his co-host, Johan Gynning, to discuss the life and miracles performed by the man who united the Danes and Saxons.
Transcript
00:00:30.000
hello and welcome to the fifth and final episode of the celtic saints of britain you're listening
00:00:42.920
to me sven longshanks and of course i'm joined today by my co-host florian gaia florian how you
00:00:49.640
doing we've reached the fifth and uh and final episode have you enjoyed it so far i think it's
00:00:54.860
just been wonderful it's been a great blessing to be back on to do this uh series with you it's
00:00:59.100
and i think our listeners are going to enjoy it very much yeah it's been uh great to speak with
00:01:05.400
you again i think it's been i can't can't think how long it's been probably at least half a year
00:01:10.120
too long yeah way too long well today we're going to be talking about saint cuthbert
00:01:14.760
and he united the danes and the saxons remember we were saying earlier about how christianity united
00:01:22.000
these these disparate tribes cuthbert was born perhaps it says into a noble family i would
00:01:28.580
suggest probably since most of them were in dunbar now in east lothian in the mid 630s
00:01:35.080
some 10 years after the conversion of king edwin of northumbria to christianity in 627 which was
00:01:42.020
slowly followed by that of the rest of his people the politics of the kingdom were violent and there
00:01:47.780
were later episodes of pagan rule while spreading understanding of christianity through the kingdom
00:01:53.740
was a task that lasted throughout cuthbert's lifetime edwin had been baptized by paulinus
00:02:00.240
of york an italian who had come with the gregorian mission from rome but his successor oswald also
00:02:06.700
invited irish monks from iona to found the monastery at lindisfarne where cuthbert was to spend much of his
00:02:12.680
life this was around 635 about the time cuthbert was born the tension between roman and irish traditions
00:02:22.000
often exacerbated by cuthbert's near contemporary wilfrid an intransigent and quarrelsome supporter
00:02:28.960
of roman ways was to be a major feature of cuthbert's lifetime cuthbert himself though educated in the
00:02:35.920
celtic tradition followed his mentor iata in accepting the roman forms apparently without
00:02:41.900
difficulty after the synod of whitby in 664 the earliest biographies concentrate on the many
00:02:48.260
miracles that accompanied even his early life but he was evidently indefatigable as a traveling priest
00:02:54.520
spreading the christian message to remote villages and also well able to impress royalty and nobility
00:03:00.840
unlike wilfrid his style of life was austere and when he could he lived the life of a hermit
00:03:07.500
though still receiving many visitors have you heard of this uh saint wilfrid before florian uh
00:03:14.840
saint wilfrid certainly by by reputation but i've never done any deep research into his
00:03:20.220
to his life why don't you tell us about him uh swan well i i heard that uh he was he was you know i
00:03:26.100
always thought he was he was saint wilfrid apparently he uh taught people how to fish
00:03:30.680
i think uh in the south of england and then reading in bead you learn that um he was actually he
00:03:37.900
wasn't very well liked and he was as it says here he was an intransigent and quarrelsome supporter of
00:03:44.280
roman ways and i think there was one instance where the people actually rejected him and said no we
00:03:50.040
don't want wilfrid we want one of these celtic uh celtic priests to come and be a missionary to us
00:03:55.940
um and and it must have been about this time because he does turn up quite a lot actually
00:04:01.080
you've heard of cuthbert haven't you yeah of course well this was the sort of jumping off our
00:04:06.080
whole story was yeah we were talking that's what i was thinking yeah that's when i first first read
00:04:11.260
about him one night while still a boy employed as a shepherd he had a vision of the soul of aiden
00:04:17.260
being carried to heaven by angels and later found out that aiden had died that night he appears to
00:04:23.900
have undergone military service but at some point he joined the very new monastery at melrose under the
00:04:29.900
prior boisel upon boisel's death in 661 cuthbert succeeded him as prior cuthbert was possibly a second
00:04:37.440
cousin of king aldfrith of northumbria and that's according to irish genealogies which may explain his
00:04:44.100
later proposal that aldfrith should be crowned as monarch cuthbert's fame for piety diligence and
00:04:51.040
obedience quickly grew and he spent much time among the people ministering to their spiritual needs
00:04:56.940
carrying out missionary journeys preaching and performing miracles after the synod of whitby cuthbert
00:05:03.360
seems to have accepted the roman customs and his old abbot iata called on him to introduce them
00:05:09.040
at lindisfarne as prior there his asceticism was complemented by his charm and generosity to the
00:05:15.380
poor and his reputation for gifts of healing and insight led many people to consult him gaining him
00:05:21.460
the name of the wonder worker of britain this reference here to um uh the synod of whitby i'm
00:05:29.860
wondering if that was the time when uh the celtic church said okay we'll we'll do the baptism thing we'll
00:05:35.800
do the easter thing but we do have to go back and check it with our people first so saying that
00:05:40.860
that's the proof that they needed the unanimous consent of their people to make any changes in
00:05:45.560
religion which proves that christianity in the first place could never have been forced upon them
00:05:50.340
because that um that tradition went back went back to the druids if you wanted to make any changes in
00:05:56.360
religion you had to have unanimous consent that that was one of the the most ancient laws of britain
00:06:03.240
which shows you that this this was an evolution of religion right absolutely clear development and
00:06:09.920
so that's exactly what the synod of whitby was where there you there was these discrepancies between
00:06:14.400
the roman and the celtic forms of christianity which were considered to be very important at the time
00:06:18.700
although not issues of of dogma or the faith um but people took them very very seriously and so
00:06:26.280
what happened is that the major section of celtic christianity dissenters especially in
00:06:33.020
northern britain where they had the most contact with the more romanized south came to a point of
00:06:40.260
reconciliation with the romans where they basically just decided well you know um it's not a problem to
00:06:48.260
adopt the roman dating for easter or even the roman style monastic tonsure and um certain sacramental
00:06:55.720
forms because well the romans the same faith as us legacy of the apostles of course and the
00:07:01.920
impeccable orthodoxy in this time period but it was as you see a very conciliar synodal communal process
00:07:08.880
um which was heavily disputed by some sections of uh celtic christianity some monks were completely
00:07:16.580
intransigent and so it was the efforts of saint cliff birth and uh people who would come after him
00:07:22.760
like saint chad and these kind of celtic germanic um um apostles who kind of synthesized the two
00:07:31.680
traditions and really began to form um uh something some not something new but really something uh a
00:07:39.860
development you know a real like british sort of um english if you want to use the term but even
00:07:46.460
these are a little um anachronistic but as you could say you know british christianity which was
00:07:52.960
um incorporated all of the elements which had developed in that land up until the point so
00:08:01.060
but the thing is they could be very very um intense about these issues where i can't remember if it's
00:08:10.540
saint cuthbert or saint chad though he had a reputation for intense uh kindliness and generosity
00:08:16.800
uh and there was certainly a synodal understanding after the synod of whitby when it had been decided
00:08:23.380
that they were going to adopt especially the date to easter the the roman date of easter over the
00:08:29.040
the anatolian the jonah and date of easter um he he instructed his spiritual children not to have
00:08:36.540
any association with people that kept to the the other date of easter because it was a departure
00:08:42.860
from the communal understanding the catholicity of the church and that you had to be united especially
00:08:50.240
when it came to the keeping of the lord's resurrection and your initiation into the monastic
00:08:54.960
life you had to be united with the body of the church as that had been locally developed and accepted
00:09:01.180
and understood uh in these places in northeastern britain what was the difference in the in the
00:09:07.820
tonsure then because i mean what they're talking about here is shaving their heads basically they
00:09:11.660
were the first skinheads right so i can't i'm not an expert in the in the rite of tonsure so i can't
00:09:18.200
give you specific details and i wouldn't want to to mislead anybody um so i'm not 100 sure as far as
00:09:24.240
the actual formal differences i think it has to do with um just just because the monastic traditions
00:09:31.300
are are so different where what is coming in from rome is a very um you know certainly like an orthodox
00:09:40.920
traditional form of monasticism but the latin benedictine style of of cenobitic monasticism uh you
00:09:48.020
know has its own kind of tightly uh regimented uh modes of monastic tonsure which are fairly
00:09:55.520
similar to byzantium there's minor differences you know how much hair you take and all of this kind
00:10:00.220
of thing i think it's quite different from nazarenes isn't it i mean they they would not cut their hair
00:10:05.980
at all they would not cut their hair for a certain amount of years well so in it yeah again it would
00:10:11.940
really depend on the time period and on the style right um because you know some monks would shave the top
00:10:17.860
of their head to maintain their tonsure someone shaved four corners of their head to maintain
00:10:21.520
their tonsure some like in the east what happens is that you do have the four corners of your head
00:10:26.880
there is some hair cut away uh and then they don't cut their hair after that um such similar to the
00:10:35.340
nazareno so these sort of different things but it's the thing is that the tonsuring it's not so much
00:10:41.140
because of you know like a haircut people that go well it's you know they're arguing over haircuts
00:10:44.940
these christians but it's because um monastic tonsuring was considered to be almost like a
00:10:51.560
sacrament it was almost like a mystery of the church um and that you were being initiated into
00:10:57.000
this mystical path of of the saints of your of your church of your tradition and it really isn't even in
00:11:04.760
orthodoxy it's considered to be you know there's a fluidity of the mysteries that the mysteries
00:11:08.380
there's at least seven but maybe more and monastic tonsuring is one of these things that some saints
00:11:14.440
impart with a sacramental significance and so changes to the form of the monastic tonsure are
00:11:22.140
symbolic expressions of changes to the whole monastic ascetic life which um you know for these people
00:11:29.020
this is the foundation of their faith this is this is where every this is everything and so a figure like
00:11:34.240
saint cuthbert such a holy man one of the holiest men to have ever been born in england to accept and
00:11:43.160
to be a partisan of this without compromising on his own indigenous celtic styles and um traditions
00:11:50.380
while adopting the forms of roman monasticism is really a very kind of conciliar synthesis of both
00:11:59.940
traditions once you get to about the the 10th century you actually see a a synthesis not just
00:12:07.700
of celtic christianity and anglo-saxon christianity but but danish christianity as well i mean i've seen
00:12:14.660
uh the tall stone crosses that they have and they've had uh celtic knot work at the bottom then they've got
00:12:22.440
uh the anglo-saxon work which is uh more geometric and then at the top it's got the danish stuff with
00:12:29.680
um you know like dragon's heads or weird animals heads and then they've got the cross at the top
00:12:35.440
which shows you that all three of them eventually formed into one church and celtic was played a
00:12:41.900
large part in that he continued he continued his missionary work traveling the breadth of the
00:12:47.560
country from berwick to galloway to carry out pastoral work and founding an oratory of dull scotland
00:12:54.080
complete with a large stone cross and a little cell for himself he is also said to have found a
00:13:00.500
saint cuthbert's church in edinburgh after cuthbert's death numerous miracles were attributed to his
00:13:06.740
intercession and to intercessory prayer near his remains in particular alfred the great king of wessex
00:13:12.940
was inspired and encouraged in his struggle against the danes by a vision or dream he had of cuthbert
00:13:19.560
thereafter the royal house of wessex who became the kings of england made a point of devotion to him
00:13:25.560
which also gave a useful political message as they came from opposite ends of the united english
00:13:31.300
kingdom cuthbert was a figure of reconciliation and a rallying point for the reformed identity of
00:13:37.360
northumbria and england after the absorption of danish populations into anglo-saxon society
00:13:44.160
cuthbert's cult had appealed to the converted danes who now made up much of the population of
00:13:49.900
northumbria and was also adopted by the normans when they took over england so that actually after
00:13:55.520
his death that uh the danes were influenced by him but uh so that's you know pretty amazing after
00:14:02.420
the guy's death he's still uniting people together and also again you see that style of nationalism there
00:14:09.060
um where accepting uh cuthbert shows that the north of england is associated with the south of england
00:14:17.380
according to bead's life of the saint when cuthbert sarcophagus was opened 11 years after his death
00:14:23.300
his body was found to have been perfectly preserved or incorrupt this apparent miracle led to the steady
00:14:30.300
growth of cuthbert's posthumous cultus to the point where he became the most popular saint of northern
00:14:35.420
england numerous miracles were attributed to his intercession and to intercessory prayer near his
00:14:41.840
remains in 875 the danes took the monastery of lindisfarne and the monks fled carrying saint
00:14:48.220
cuthbert's body with them around various places including melrose abbey after seven years wandering
00:14:54.540
it found a resting place at the still existing saint cuthbert's church in chesterle street until 995
00:15:01.480
when another danish invasion led to its removal to rip on then the saint intimated as it was believed
00:15:08.900
that he wished to remain in durham a new stone church the so-called white church was built the
00:15:15.220
predecessor of the present grand cathedral in 1104 cuthbert's tomb was opened once again and his
00:15:21.980
relics translated to a new shrine behind the altar of the recently completed cathedral when the casket was
00:15:28.640
opened a small book of the gospel of john measuring only 5.4 by 3.6 inches now known as the saint cuthbert
00:15:36.840
gospel was found this is the oldest western book to have retained its original book binding in finely
00:15:43.620
decorated leather also recovered much later were a set of vestments of 909 to 916 made of byzantine silk
00:15:51.200
with a nature goddess pattern with a stole and decoration in extremely rare anglo-saxon embroidery
00:15:58.660
or opus anglicanum which has been deposited in his tomb by king ethelstan 920c to 939 on a pilgrimage
00:16:08.860
while cuthbert shrine was at chesterle street cuthbert shrine was destroyed unfortunately in the
00:16:14.560
dissolution of the monasteries but unusually his relics survived and are still interred at the
00:16:21.000
site i think where they say there that it's a nature goddess pattern um that's probably just
00:16:25.940
celtic knotwork i don't think they'd have a picture of a goddess on his well i think it's yeah that's a
00:16:32.320
euphemism sort of thing yeah yeah no well and i would definitely encourage you know we're going over
00:16:38.800
the broad strokes of saint clithbert's life i mean it's impossible to get into super detail but if
00:16:44.020
anybody is interested you can find full um his full life online and he it's just he's marvelous it's
00:16:51.320
really some of the these miracles that he did his type of ministry um if i could maybe before to leave
00:16:57.720
them there's a few stories that stick out to be most poignantly from his mind um where
00:17:04.040
for instance one time he was with one of his disciples and they were uh wandering through the
00:17:11.060
forests of northumbria um they kind of got lost on their way to visit someone and so after a couple
00:17:18.100
of days they began to starve to death and his disciple was quite concerned because he was expected
00:17:25.180
to die and saint clithbert was completely unconcerned and he just chided his disciple and he told him you
00:17:32.160
know you need to trust in god more if god wants us to die thus we'll die but if not he will provide
00:17:36.880
for his servants and at this so he began to pray for some food and an eagle flies out of the heavens
00:17:44.220
and sort of strikes down into the river in front of them and pulls out this you know massive salmon
00:17:50.440
you know 50 pound salmon something like this out of the river and so saint clithbert then takes the
00:17:57.300
salmon and cuts it in two and gives half of it to the eagle and then takes half of it and by the
00:18:03.160
providence of god wanders with his disciple into a country house a cottage where a hunter and his
00:18:08.520
family are staying and then they share the meal with them you know so these sorts of things uh there's
00:18:14.420
he's often depicted with otters because otters were obedient to him and would come and pray with him
00:18:20.280
when he was praying and linds fought him uh so many many tales such as this i think you often hear
00:18:27.300
about um deer as well i think there was there was one that was was involved with the deer there
00:18:32.360
lots of birds that appear that that are associated with them lots of uh nature really i mean it's such a
00:18:40.120
shame that um you know they had the reformation and destroyed all this stuff i mean that's probably why
00:18:46.460
they don't really want people to learn about it and learn about our history because it it's you know
00:18:51.720
it just looks badly on the people that are ruling now that that they did that to it all they they
00:18:56.720
destroyed it all the uh the next one is chad of mercia and i think he's got a great name saint chad
00:19:04.640
and it's all about yeah and it's all about his humility saint chad was one of four brothers all
00:19:12.280
active in the anglo-saxon church the others were ched chenibal and chaelin chad seems to have been
00:19:20.320
ched's junior arriving on the political scene about 10 years after ched it is reasonable to suppose that
00:19:26.720
chad and his brothers were drawn from the northumbrian nobility they certainly had close connections
00:19:32.340
throughout the northumbrian ruling class however the name chad is actually of british celtic rather
00:19:38.380
than anglo-saxon origin it is an element found in the personal names of many welsh princes and nobles
00:19:44.320
of the period and it signifies battle this may indicate a family of mixed cultural or ethnic
00:19:50.660
background with roots in the original celtic population of the region the only major fact that
00:19:56.940
bede gives about chad's early life is that he was a student of aden at the celtic monastery
00:20:02.160
at lindisfarne in fact bede attributes the general pattern of chad's ministry to the example of aden and
00:20:09.300
his own brother ched who was also a student of saint aden so by this time we're starting to get um
00:20:15.880
the the the celts interbreeding with the saxons and and they're they're forming this um you know the
00:20:22.920
english basically and and england is is starting to become a nation through christianity chad later
00:20:31.180
traveled to ireland as a monk before he was ordained as a priest in 653 when he was sent to work
00:20:37.620
among the middle angles chad's companion was egbert who was of about the same age as himself
00:20:43.140
and of the anglian nobility although the monks sent to ireland were of all classes
00:20:49.000
bead places egbert and therefore chad among an influx of english scholars who arrived in ireland
00:20:55.320
while finian and colman were bishops at lindisfarne this meant that egbert and chad must have gone to
00:21:00.640
ireland later than the death of aden in 651 bead gives a long account of how egbert fell dangerously
00:21:07.320
ill in ireland in 664 and vowed to follow a lifelong pattern of great austerity so that he might live to
00:21:14.540
make amends for the follies of his youth his only remaining friend at this point was called ethel hun
00:21:20.020
who died in the plague hence chad must have left ireland before this in fact it is in 664 that he
00:21:26.660
suddenly appears in northumbria to take over from his brother chad also stricken by the plague
00:21:32.220
imagine that you've got people that are dying by the plague all the time you know and they're not
00:21:37.800
cursing god they're not blaming god for this plague coming they're just wanting to make amends for the
00:21:43.420
stupid things that they that they've done in their past and it this really comes across in this i think
00:21:48.880
that the the regret that they have for going out and killing people or going out and committing crimes
00:21:55.580
and barbarous behavior and there's something within them that says that they want to atone for that
00:22:01.160
and they they want to have that guilt taken from them and and the priest says well you know what
00:22:06.640
you've got to do is make penitence you've got to go out and convert people you've got to live humbly
00:22:10.280
you've got to be become a monk you've got to live the christian life and and that's how they converted
00:22:18.060
people by actually living it not not by speaking to them because if you think most most of the population
00:22:23.420
were uneducated so they weren't sort of reading to them bits from the bible they were they were
00:22:28.320
living like that and and uh performing miracles yeah absolutely well that was a much greater
00:22:35.360
consciousness of the importance of the next life right i mean the rates of deaths or death is much
00:22:42.360
higher and so naturally people are focused on the spiritual world upon what happens after their death
00:22:47.860
and these sorts of things but more than this i think it is the process of you know the man is the
00:22:52.600
embodiment of the nation right and so these nations are being converted and it takes that's
00:22:57.980
difficulties it takes time hundreds of years for a nation to really convert and every man in some
00:23:03.380
sense has to do this in the microcosm but the problem is as we see in our own times that nations
00:23:09.080
can convert and they can unconvert they can deconvert and so um what has gone on is that we've had
00:23:15.500
hundreds of years of degeneration rather than an improvement of our christianity and this is one of the
00:23:21.220
the hallmarks of the spiritual life generally speaking is that if you're not continually
00:23:25.580
struggling to go forward you begin to go backwards um and so saint chad is a great example of this
00:23:32.420
and it just it occurs to me now and i wanted to mention it before it slips my mind is that saint chad
00:23:37.940
was a very very intense and holy monastic and he was known for especially the strictness of his
00:23:44.880
um aremetic of his ascetic life where he would go and asceticize in like holes in the ground for
00:23:51.440
weeks months at a time and in this is of particular interest for those of you who are familiar with
00:23:59.280
gregory palamas who lived some uh 600 years later 600 years later in thessaloniki where he writes about
00:24:08.420
the uncreated light well it's traditionally in saint chad's hagiographies it said that after a
00:24:14.340
sufficient period of purification when he was like asceticizing these holes in the ground he did see
00:24:18.580
the uncreated mystical light of god the light of the kingdom of heaven of god's grace so these are the
00:24:25.240
sort of levels of monastics that you have these hesicast monastics that you have in um the british
00:24:32.000
isles at that time is that they're you know they're just they're seeing the uncreated light of god
00:24:35.180
right well incredible feats of endurance that would go through i mean remember earlier in the
00:24:40.180
series we talked about the guy that was that was hanging on these scythes you know and today you
00:24:44.620
have these indian fake ears that do stuff like that you know we we had early christians that were
00:24:49.860
doing things like that going through these feats of endurance and just rejecting the the sensation of
00:24:56.440
pleasure basically and you're talking about death there as well in bead it comes across a lot that when
00:25:02.280
these people came close to the time of death that you know they were looking forward to it because
00:25:06.600
they knew that they were going on to eternal life they were like these these early marchers that
00:25:12.180
if we didn't have the early marchers we wouldn't have christianity today because they knew that if
00:25:16.780
they died they were going to get eternal life so it didn't matter if they were being tortured and
00:25:21.080
and there were cases of that they didn't feel the pain when they were being tortured you know it's
00:25:25.280
like in in the old testament when uh daniel and the rest of them were put in the uh in the lion's den
00:25:30.600
and nothing happened and and they were put in the uh uh in the kiln oven with with the flames in
00:25:36.280
there and they weren't burned you know this is the sort of thing that these these monks and these
00:25:41.700
these preachers that they were doing and and this would convert the people along with these miracles as
00:25:48.140
well and these healings bead makes clear that the wandering anglian scholars were not yet priests
00:25:54.140
at this time an ordination to the priesthood generally happened at the age of 30 the age at
00:26:00.600
which jesus commenced his ministry the benedictine rule was slowly spreading across western europe with
00:26:07.000
encouragement from rome chad was educated in an entirely distinct monastic tradition indigenous to
00:26:14.500
western europe itself and tending to look back to the saint and monastic founder martin of tours as an
00:26:20.880
exemplar although not as founder of an order as bead accounts make clear the irish and early anglo-saxon
00:26:28.380
monasticism experienced by chad was peripatetic stressed ascetic practices and had a strong focus on
00:26:35.540
biblical exegesis which generated a profound eschatological consciousness what how would you
00:26:44.560
explain that uh florian profound eschatological consciousness because i always thought eschatology
00:26:50.120
was like um end times yes that's correct so i think for for them their monastic tradition um
00:27:00.480
emphasizes closeness to the holy scripture and the reality of holy scripture in their daily lives and
00:27:06.420
this is combined with a very very intense rejection of the world it uh it leads to the
00:27:13.880
the reality of the coming kingdom of heaven earth which is a thing that we see across monasticism in
00:27:22.060
all disciplines but in some places particularly intensely either because of the particular styles
00:27:28.540
and modes of life of the people or um circums you know like sometimes things get really really bad
00:27:33.740
people are about the state of the world sort of like what we have today and so in
00:27:40.180
uh the you know celtic style monasticism i think is you know you can characterize it as being um perhaps
00:27:54.120
benedictine monasticism right where benedictine style monasticism is all about stability organization
00:28:01.940
uh monastic rule but it's very very roman celtic monasticism is much more um there are certainly
00:28:14.360
many many uh group monasteries and obidic monasteries much more almost similar to the the
00:28:21.480
palestinian versions which focus on individual asceticism on relationships between um
00:28:30.720
learned uh monastics and their disciples uh focuses much more on the reading the exposition of
00:28:39.020
scripture the meditation the contemplation of scripture right these are in fact i would say
00:28:43.320
very almost egyptian or palestinian characteristics um which is in keeping with
00:28:49.760
the traditional origin of irish uh and celtic monasticism from egypt through southern france
00:28:57.360
march on the plutus and all that so we still see it there uh six or seven hundred years later you
00:29:03.480
still see this this uh eastern influence there egbert recalls later that he and chad followed the
00:29:10.940
monastic life together very strictly in prayers and continents uh chastity and in meditation on holy
00:29:18.900
scripture some of the scholars quickly settled in irish monasteries while others wandered from one
00:29:24.240
master to another in search of knowledge bead says that the irish monks gladly taught them and fed them
00:29:30.300
and even let them use their valuable books without charge since books were all produced by hand with
00:29:36.580
painstaking attention to detail this was astonishingly generous the practice of loaning books freely seems
00:29:43.640
to have been a distinctive feature of irish monastic life it was a violent dispute over rights to copies of a
00:29:49.740
borrowed psalter which had allegedly led to columbus exile from ireland many years before so it seems
00:29:56.060
that that was quite an important um event there that actually changed the way that they did things
00:30:01.900
chad's first appearance as an ecclesiastical prelate occurs in 664 shortly after the synod of whitby
00:30:08.460
when many church leaders had been wiped out by the plague among them ched who died at lastingham itself
00:30:14.240
on the death of his elder brother chad succeeded to the position of abbot at lastingham bead seldom
00:30:20.400
mentions chad without referring to his regime of prayer and study so these clearly made up the
00:30:25.840
greater part of monastic routine at lastingham study would have been collective with monks carrying
00:30:31.680
out exegesis through dialectic yet not all of the monks were intellectuals bead tells us of a man called
00:30:38.400
owen who appeared at the door of lastingham owen was a household official of ethelfrith
00:30:44.080
an east anglian princess who had come to marry egfrith ozio's younger son he decided to renounce the
00:30:51.620
world and as a sign of this appeared at lastingham in ragged clothes and carrying an axe he had come
00:30:57.980
primarily to work manually he became one of chad's closest associates so you have example there of them
00:31:05.040
sort of renouncing royalty basically to go and join the church chad's eschatological consciousness and
00:31:12.940
its effect on others is brought to life in a reminiscence attributed to trumbert who is one of
00:31:17.740
his students at lastingham chad used to break off reading whenever a gale sprang up and call upon god
00:31:24.120
to have pity on humanity if the storm intensified he would shut his book altogether and prostrate himself
00:31:30.300
in prayer during prolonged storms or thunderstorms he would go into the church itself to pray and sing
00:31:36.220
psalms until calm returned his monks obviously regarded this as an extreme reaction even to
00:31:43.140
english weather and asked him to explain chad explained that storms are sent by god to remind
00:31:48.920
humans of the day of judgment and to humble their pride the typically celtic christian involvement with
00:31:55.440
nature was not like the modern romantic preoccupation but a determination to read in it the mind of god
00:32:02.980
particularly in relation to the last things so that's almost like a form of science that they had there
00:32:09.800
looking at nature right well for them for them they see nature as an expression of christ's personality
00:32:15.800
um and that nature you know is an icon into into heaven into the spiritual world right and so that
00:32:23.080
the world has a definite cosmological origin and uh destination just to say the eschaton
00:32:30.980
this is the consummation of all things is where salvation is to be found the return of christ
00:32:34.860
and so the purpose of the monastic life is to prepare oneself in this in this life for that moment
00:32:41.000
that return which for us it has like a it's uh co-terminus with our death which we have to reach
00:32:47.880
before we can be resurrected and so this is sort of for them the whole the natural world monastic life
00:32:55.160
these are uh all wrapped up in this mythological process of of waiting of being initiated into the
00:33:04.140
risen christ as he is on earth as he is in his their in themselves in their nation in their country
00:33:10.200
right in other peoples in order to be fully consummate to be united with him when he returns
00:33:16.260
in glory at the end of time they're resurrected and so it all it's all ties together for them right
00:33:22.720
is that the the resurrection the eschaton scripture these are one unified reality and it all all ties
00:33:30.580
together that i mean that's that's the way that you should see things is is all fitted in together
00:33:35.900
you know if if you do something kind for somebody you don't expect them to do something kind back some
00:33:41.720
somebody else will do something kind back you know i think you have to have to look at uh look at us
00:33:47.180
all together as as individuals and also as as all parts of the same body and and the world itself
00:33:54.460
right that's the way providence works isn't it you know it um well that's exactly it when you go to a
00:33:59.720
church um you know it's not just yourself who's praying there and so if you're praying badly in a
00:34:04.980
church then that spiritual atmosphere can affect everyone else's prayer and so it's the same thing with
00:34:10.760
anything else is is that you know our own uh virtue and our own spiritual cultivation it has a radiating
00:34:17.760
effect of people around us right and so if we're if we're at least struggling to improve struggling to
00:34:24.180
be decent christians right then that that that inspires people around us you know it as uh it builds
00:34:30.460
people up generally speaking rather than having a destructive deleterious effect and so
00:34:35.520
that's the the church fathers everything that they have to do with their lives there sort of is a
00:34:42.520
moral um implication for it all and so whether it's our our fathers and the celts and the angles of the
00:34:50.840
danes or in the east one of the slavs and greeks and the latins for them you know how you you live
00:34:57.040
your life and the mysticism this is all bound up with the religion and mostly it's about just struggling
00:35:03.160
to deny the self but to manifest christ to manifest virtue uh for the betterment of the neighbor and
00:35:08.660
the worship of god primarily so and set a good example that's that's the most important thing
00:35:15.460
chad was invited then to become bishop of the northumbrians by king ozuyu and he set off to seek
00:35:21.460
ordination amidst the chaos caused by the plague b tells us that he traveled first to canterbury where he
00:35:27.180
found that archbishop deus dedet was dead and his replacement was still awaited from canterbury he
00:35:33.340
traveled to wessex where he was ordained by bishop winnie of the west saxons and two british i.e welsh
00:35:40.840
bishops so the welsh bishops were were down there in wessex none of these bishops was actually recognized
00:35:47.700
by rome bead points out that at the time there was no other bishop in all britain canonically ordained
00:35:53.600
except winnie and the latter had been installed irregularly by the king of the west saxons
00:35:59.580
bead describes chad at this point as a diligent performer indeed of what he had learned in the
00:36:05.960
scriptures should be done bead also tells us that chad was teaching the values of aden and chet his life
00:36:12.420
was one of constant travel bead says that chad visited continually the towns countryside cottages
00:36:19.140
villages and houses to preach the gospel clearly the model he followed was one of the bishop as
00:36:25.040
prophet or missionary in 669 a new archbishop of canterbury theodore of tarsa sent by pope vitalian
00:36:32.620
arrived in england he immediately set off on a tour of the country tackling abuses of which he had been
00:36:38.500
forewarned he instructed chad to step down and let wilfrid take over according to bead theodore was so
00:36:45.580
impressed by chad's show of humility that he confirmed his ordination as bishop while insisting
00:36:51.400
he stepped down from his position chad retired gracefully and returned to his post as abbot of
00:36:57.080
lastingham leaving wilfrid as bishop of the northumbrians at york later that same year queen
00:37:02.900
wilfrid of mercia requested a bishop wilfrid and the other sons of pender had converted to christianity
00:37:09.380
although pender himself had remained a pagan until his death in 655 pender had allowed bishops to
00:37:16.060
operate in mercia although none had succeeded in establishing the church securely without active
00:37:22.380
royal support shows you how important it was to um have have the kings behind you but at least he was
00:37:29.080
allowing them to to act and uh try to convert the people archbishop theodore refused to consecrate a
00:37:36.680
new bishop instead he recalled chad out of his retirement at lastingham according to bead theodore
00:37:42.140
was greatly impressed by chad's humility and holiness this was displayed particularly in his
00:37:47.420
refusal to use a horse he insisted on walking everywhere despite his regard for chad theodore
00:37:53.840
ordered him to ride on long journeys and even went so far as to lift him into the saddle on one occasion
00:38:00.200
chad then proceeded to carry out much missionary work and pastoral work within the kingdom
00:38:05.780
bead tells us that chad governed the bishopric of the mercians and of the people of lindsay in the
00:38:11.220
manner of the ancient fathers and in great perfection of life the area he covered was very large
00:38:17.380
stretching across england from coast to coast it was also in many places difficult terrain with woodland
00:38:23.740
heath and mountain over much of the center and large areas of marshland to the east bead does tell us
00:38:30.840
that chad built for himself a small house at lichfield a short distance from the church
00:38:35.500
sufficient to hold his core of seven or eight disciples who gathered to pray and study with
00:38:41.280
him there when he was not out on business chad worked in mercia and lindsay for only two and a
00:38:47.180
half years before he too died during a plague yet saint bead could write in a letter that mercia came to
00:38:53.640
the faith and essex was recovered for it by the two brothers ched and chad in other words bead
00:39:00.480
considered that chad's two years as bishop were decisive in christianizing mercia according to
00:39:06.820
bead chad was venerated as a saint immediately after his death and his relics were translated
00:39:12.180
to a new shrine he remained the center of an important cult focused on healing throughout the
00:39:18.120
middle ages the cult had twin foci his tomb in the apse directly behind the high altar of the cathedral
00:39:25.260
and more particularly his skull kept in a special head chapel above the south isle the relics some
00:39:32.600
long bones are now enshrined on the altar of saint chad's cathedral they were examined by the oxford
00:39:38.340
archaeological laboratory by carbon dating techniques in 1985 and all but one of the bones which was a
00:39:45.800
third femur and therefore could not have come from bishop chad were dated to the 7th century and were
00:39:52.120
authenticated as true relics by the vatican authorities so those relics are still genuine
00:39:59.900
they're they're still there i mean that's a really holy man there he did a lot and i think his like his
00:40:06.840
again his life shows us that the celtic church was right the way across britain and it was the celtic
00:40:13.840
church really that that converted the people because all the all the roman church had there was
00:40:17.800
was one bishop and and he hadn't even been made into bishop properly it was it was all the celts that
00:40:24.300
converted them pretty much i think absolutely absolutely that was the major missionary effort
00:40:31.340
uh the successes of the major missionary efforts was by by the the celtic peoples and we see
00:40:36.260
to a lesser degree this is also true in mainland but the celtic missionaries were extremely successful
00:40:42.660
at this time period and later at converting the germanics um the saxons who had come into
00:40:49.040
northwestern germany and the rhino as well and that was where the importance of um the boat technology
00:40:56.560
came in that we were talking about at the beginning and the fact that these were these were good sailors
00:41:01.900
and and even when the saxons had uh had most of england they were still able to make their way from
00:41:07.820
wales to cornwall and then across to the continent without actually crossing over any of the saxon
00:41:13.200
lands in england so that they could uh convert the people in gaul and as you say eventually over there
00:41:20.100
to the to the germanic tribes as well well that that brings us to the end of the series florian thank
00:41:25.700
you very much for coming on thank you very much to listeners for listening i hope uh you got as much
00:41:30.220
out of that as we have i will be back on monday of course with the daily nationalists for you