Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Marmoutier
Alcuin has the difficult task of answering Bishop Higbald’s need to address the earthly political power struggle in a time of the bishop’s own personal grief and loss at Lindisfarne. This teacher is asking me about my brief few days in that grieving land and I don’t have any happy ending to tell him. It seems he wants to speak for God and say God doesn’t punish a monastery by sending heathen marauders. He asks about sins. I can only describe fears that envelope the place that was simply founded for the purpose of receiving and spreading God’s love.
What was taken? What was left?
He asked me about valuables that were taken in the raid. But we both know the real loss – the lives, and the peace that a community shares as holy purpose.
I know the attackers found no value in the gospel. They sent it back after discovering it wasn’t a marketable chest of treasure. Had the Pagan invaders kept the holy book, it would have allowed an imagined happy ending: like, maybe, the marauders read the gospel and were changed to Christian. But that’s not what happened.
We know it takes more than words and beautiful pages to change a people from the worship of many distant and demanding gods, to one (or three) who is love. Pope Gregory the Great knew that when he sent Augustine to the people of East Angles to change a people. Human touch was needed. And that was how that island first met Christianity centuries before there were monasteries on the British Island.
As much as Alcuin values literacy and books, he also knows that it is the human touch of God’s love for which a heathen tribe longs. There is also a hope in the possibility that monks were captured so the Vikings would have the human Christians to teach them. But no one could name anyone who wasn’t accounted for. And I know from my own release, these Norsemen often find enslaving men more trouble than it is worth.
So, what was it that the Christians had that the marauders wanted? It was simply goods: fine fabrics, silks and dyed linens, gold and silver, jewels and the like. They raided the vestry and the pantry and the wine cellar.
The weighty bell stayed in the tower so Brother Ealdwin who went to ring the warning, was safe. But we buried other monks, murdered for the market value of their robes.
(Continues tomorrow)
#God’s love, #human touch, #sin and repentance, #Alcuin, #St. Augustine — missionary, #heathen Vikings,
Lazarus Ink 