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Authors: Geoffrey Hindley
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For twelve months the British king revenged the rapine, slaughter and rape his people had suffered at the hands of Æthelfrith, the pagan, years before. No doubt the aim was ‘to wipe the entire English nation from the land of Britain’. 6 Retribution would follow. Later in the century the monastery of Ripon received endowments of holy places abandoned by British clergy ‘fleeing the hostile swords’ of the English.
Bishop Paulinus fled Deira, by ship, with Queen Æthelburh and her children for her brother’s court in Kent. Deacon James held out at York, and in fact was to live to a ripe old age. Expert in church music, he taught ‘after the manner of Rome’. Liturgical music was an important vehicle for spreading the Roman way. But in that dreadful year of 633, as Deira and Bernicia fell apart and their shortlived kings, Osric and Eanfrith, reverted to paganism before being killed by Cadwallon, it must have seemed that the Christian flame in Northumbria was extinguished. Events at the other end of the world would threaten Christendom itself. The death of Muhammad in Medina just four months before Hatfield had opened the way to the tsunami of Islamic conquest that was to wash away the East Roman Christian empire in North Africa, Egypt and Syria.
Heavenfield and renewal under the Irish influence
Oswald, Edwin’s nephew, returned from exile in 634 and demolished Cadwallon and his army at the battle of Heavenfield near Hexham the following year. He claimed to have won with divineaid, in the sign of the wooden cross that he had raised before the battle with the aid of his soldiers. Oswald was now lord of the two northern kingdoms.
With the flight of Bishop Paulinus, Roman Christianity in Northumbria was in disarray. A Christian baptized into the Irish tradition, Oswald sent to Iona for a monk bishop who would refound the Northumbrian church there. They sent Aidan and in 635 the king gave him the tidal island of Lindisfarne as the seat of his bishopric. Thus was inaugurated the monastery on Holy Island, destined to be the numinous heart of Northumbrian golden age culture. For the next thirty years the Irish clergy, with growing ranks of Northumbrian acolytes, were to prove an essential ingredient in the mix of Northumbria’s golden age.
The first Irish mission to Britain had been that of St Columba or Colm Cille (c. 520–97), who was probably of royal kin and descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages of Meath. He was ordained at an early age and was associated for a time with Kells, then a royal residence, before founding monasteries in Ireland at Derry and Durrow. Then, in his mid-forties, he crossed the North Channel on a personal pilgrimage, possibly of penance, and together with twelve companions established a monastery on the island of Iona. The Book of Durrow is one of the inspirational manuscripts associated with what is sometimes called the Hiberno-Saxon tradition of illuminators, of which the two masterpieces are the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels. Sometime in the 660s the Anglian churchman Ecgberht crossed over to Ireland and established himself at Rath Melsigi (probably Melfont in County Louth). This monastery attracted Englishmen such as Wilfrid and Willibrord, interested in the ways of the Irish missionaries or peregrini , as they are commonly termed in a technical sense (see below). Probably the most famous of these was St Columbanus, who had founded such monasteries as Luxeuil in the Vosges mountains and, most famously, Bobbio, near Piacenza in Italy.
Aidan’s monastery on Lindisfarne recruited English boys for training as missionaries among their still largely pagan compatriots. Aidan himself, though he did travel his diocese on foot, had little English and he seems to have been most effective in his mission at court, where the king, a fluent Irish speaker, interpreted for his ealdormen and thegns. But top down conversion was the Anglo-Saxon royal way, as well as the Roman way. Being
Bishop Paulinus fled Deira, by ship, with Queen Æthelburh and her children for her brother’s court in Kent. Deacon James held out at York, and in fact was to live to a ripe old age. Expert in church music, he taught ‘after the manner of Rome’. Liturgical music was an important vehicle for spreading the Roman way. But in that dreadful year of 633, as Deira and Bernicia fell apart and their shortlived kings, Osric and Eanfrith, reverted to paganism before being killed by Cadwallon, it must have seemed that the Christian flame in Northumbria was extinguished. Events at the other end of the world would threaten Christendom itself. The death of Muhammad in Medina just four months before Hatfield had opened the way to the tsunami of Islamic conquest that was to wash away the East Roman Christian empire in North Africa, Egypt and Syria.
Heavenfield and renewal under the Irish influence
Oswald, Edwin’s nephew, returned from exile in 634 and demolished Cadwallon and his army at the battle of Heavenfield near Hexham the following year. He claimed to have won with divineaid, in the sign of the wooden cross that he had raised before the battle with the aid of his soldiers. Oswald was now lord of the two northern kingdoms.
With the flight of Bishop Paulinus, Roman Christianity in Northumbria was in disarray. A Christian baptized into the Irish tradition, Oswald sent to Iona for a monk bishop who would refound the Northumbrian church there. They sent Aidan and in 635 the king gave him the tidal island of Lindisfarne as the seat of his bishopric. Thus was inaugurated the monastery on Holy Island, destined to be the numinous heart of Northumbrian golden age culture. For the next thirty years the Irish clergy, with growing ranks of Northumbrian acolytes, were to prove an essential ingredient in the mix of Northumbria’s golden age.
The first Irish mission to Britain had been that of St Columba or Colm Cille (c. 520–97), who was probably of royal kin and descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages of Meath. He was ordained at an early age and was associated for a time with Kells, then a royal residence, before founding monasteries in Ireland at Derry and Durrow. Then, in his mid-forties, he crossed the North Channel on a personal pilgrimage, possibly of penance, and together with twelve companions established a monastery on the island of Iona. The Book of Durrow is one of the inspirational manuscripts associated with what is sometimes called the Hiberno-Saxon tradition of illuminators, of which the two masterpieces are the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels. Sometime in the 660s the Anglian churchman Ecgberht crossed over to Ireland and established himself at Rath Melsigi (probably Melfont in County Louth). This monastery attracted Englishmen such as Wilfrid and Willibrord, interested in the ways of the Irish missionaries or peregrini , as they are commonly termed in a technical sense (see below). Probably the most famous of these was St Columbanus, who had founded such monasteries as Luxeuil in the Vosges mountains and, most famously, Bobbio, near Piacenza in Italy.
Aidan’s monastery on Lindisfarne recruited English boys for training as missionaries among their still largely pagan compatriots. Aidan himself, though he did travel his diocese on foot, had little English and he seems to have been most effective in his mission at court, where the king, a fluent Irish speaker, interpreted for his ealdormen and thegns. But top down conversion was the Anglo-Saxon royal way, as well as the Roman way. Being
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