Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.
I shouldn’t be surprised by the practice of placing children out and into situations for learning at an early age. That is when a precocious nature of a child reveals itself. I’ve seen it happening through my own generations as a parent. I’ve seen infants sparked to learn new things by an insatiable curiosity. It does seem to be a gift of angels. Or in some places, with girl children particularly, it’s seen as a devil’s curse. When it is blamed on devils the spark for literacy in a girl child seems hardly a blessing.
My wife, Ana, from another time, was such a girl child. Named Anatase, after a stone laid loose in the mines, she was given up by her mother to a pagan tribe for fear she was cursed because she was discovering, without any tutoring at all, the use of letter sounds on a sign posts. Her mother saw it as frightening and abnormal and gave her up to the pagans.
One son, from an earlier generation, found her with this pagan tribe and arranged for her to be the student and the assistant to his sister, my daughter, Eve, who was a gifted healer. I knew Anatase when she was a child, and she was a great help to Eve. Then I met Ana again in the generation when she was a young woman. We were wed, and she I had a very fine family of our own. Some of our children were precocious also. All of our children were literate, eventually, as Ana and I were able to bring them through the rigors of learning to read and write and reason sensibly. When they were in their teens they were able to choose their own paths, but we continued to gather often as family. We were fortunate. I know, even since the time of Samuel, as was told in the ancient scrolls, parents have surrendered children to be educated by priests.
My frustration with the Benedictine Rule, (or here, just called “The Rule” as though the Celtic option never existed) is that it was designed for a bishop or an abbot to manage groups of young boys. It was not really about the wandering spirits of desert fathers in tune with God. The nurture of mysticism just happens by the grace of God and the redundant practices of worship. It is God who lets themself be known, regardless of human plans or the rule.
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 