#72.2, Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Lindisfarne

     Depending on the king or the earthly power, whether patriots or rebels, Lindisfarne is known either for its sin or its mercy all over one issue. And now the bishop is bringing an entourage to hear the reading of Alcuin’s letter to be read as the king’s men come to tour the damage and the material losses here.

     This community is supported by the shrine of St. Cuthbert, which is reached by the wealthy patrons and pilgrims who walk the land bridge at low tide.  Like the shrine of St. Martin, in Tours, Lindisfarne is a monastery supported by the gifts of pilgrims. Here, the incorrupt sanctified remains of St. Cuthbert are enshrined. In the last century this holy man was a lone mystic building his hermitage on the island of Farne, until he was called back here to be a bishop.  He accepted the call, but soon went back to his solitary life. [Footnote 1]

     The unusual “miracle” that led to his veneration as a saint was discovered when his body was being exhumed and prepared for moving him to this shrine.  The miracle or amazing oddity was that his body did not have the stiffness of death or the decay of his flesh despite a passage of time after his burial. [Footnote 2]

     If I were one to take part in the cult of saints, I would surely choose to have Cuthbert as my patron.  It would explain a lot about my own oddity of deaths, and for me, life and life again.  Of course, I was assigned this by my friend, who only wanted an earthly sign for the spiritual truth of everyone’s resurrection.  And I can only assume Cuthbert’s resurrection was purely spiritual, even though his body is still in-tact.

     Like a sometimes land bridge from the island shrine to earthly mainland, the invisible mystical bond between heaven and earth is set aside and sealed in a vault as “sacred” and untouchable by human simplicity. The constant demand for physical evidence to explain mystical reality to all of us of earth seems to demand a physical miracle. Maybe the spiritual reality that hears common prayers is not an oddity at all, to be relegated to saints. Maybe it is simply the everyday love of God, a Spiritual embrace for anyone to know — no saint is required.

     There are many paths to Lindisfarne – by land or water, or on the wings of angels.

[Footnote 1] https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/bede-cuthbert.asp (retrieved 1-3-2025)

[Footnote 2] Ibid.noted here as described in the hagiography by Bede

(Continues tomorrow)

#72.1, Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Lindisfarne

     I arrive back at Lindisfarne to find Brother Ealdwin and several of the others still chipping images into sandstone to make markers for the graves of the monks who were slaughtered in the raid. They don’t allow my intrusion to stop their work. Even though the work they are doing is timeless there really is no hurry to make grave markers. The dead will be dead forever — maybe.

     My message to them is that Bishop Higbald, along with an entourage of other prominent supporters of the monastery, will be crossing the land bridge at low tide the day after tomorrow. These could even include the king’s envoy.

     The monks continue working in silence, barely flinching with the annoyance of my disruption. Is a visit from this local king’s representatives not regarded as important here? Or do they not need to prepare?  Things in the priory are still in a brash state of dishevelment. And what food have we here for guests?

     “Perhaps, while you are doing this important work of preparing the graves for all the world to understand this tragedy, I could be useful in making preparations for guests.”

     “Let the king’s men fast with us.” One answers.

     “In two days, those who fast would be fainting. We should have some food here. The peas left in that one bag are nearly gone.”

     The daily chores yield milk and eggs. The cow grazes on fresh growing grasses and the chickens still find wild seeds and perhaps a leftover crust. But other food will be needed.

     The garden is ready for harvest. I know because we removed vines of squash plants to make room for the new graves. We had to create a new area for these burials to set them apart from the old cemetery, due to that concern over the sinful novice who was buried here after he had taken part in the regicide then in his remorse committed suicide.  In the opinion of the king’s men, Lindisfarne became corrupted in sin. It may have been a political error to bury his body here, but only God knows if it was actually a sin. As for me, friend of Jesus and perhaps the abbot, now deceased, and for Bishop Higbald as well, forgiveness and grace — unconditional love—are more holy than retribution and punishment. So, the gracious burial of a sinner may not be sin, rather an act of grace. Of course, grace isn’t the way of politics.

(Continues tomorrow)

#71.12, Thursday, August 28, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Lindisfarne
 

         Returning across the North Sea, I have passage on a merchant ship, an old-styled galley, not as fast and fit as the ships of the marauding Norsemen but crosses the waters then hugs the coast all the way back to Lindisfarne.

         Arriving on the island, I find the bishop is currently at his quarters on the mainland. Brother Ealdwin isn’t alone here though. The few monks who had left with the bishop have returned and are keeping the hours and grieving together over the great losses here.

When it is high tide this monastery is like any other, a place of daily work and prayer, smothered in the tranquility as a thin place for listening to God.  But when the tide recedes, pathways open to all that is of earth: pilgrims and blessing seekers bringing golden gifts and earthly woes come and go on the land path. The thin space between the mystical realms isolates into a clearer distinction between earth and heaven.

         Seeking the bishop to deliver his message from Alcuin, I await the low tide to cross over to the mainland.

         Bishop Higbald has a fine home befitting any earthly nobleman, as do all the bishops I have encountered in Gaul. His guards are not monks, but military guards who guide me to his library where I wait with the message from his friend, Alcuin.

         “Ah, Brother Eleazer, was it?”

         “Close enough. I have been with your friend, Alcuin, the king’s teacher, who is grieving with you over the sad news from Lindisfarne. He took a few days of thoughtful prayer and study, apart from his teaching duties, to prepare this answer.”

         The bishop chooses to read it privately so I’m excused to wait outside. He emerges from his study with the message for me to take back to the monks and pilgrims at Lindisfarne announcing a public reading of Alcuin’s letter following the third low tide. That will be the day after tomorrow in the morning.

         At this time of the rising tide now, I am ferried back to the island by the rower with the bishop’s skiff.

         Here on the sandy beach in the wash of the tides, are several of the monks, including Brother Ealdwin.  They are doing the task Ealdwin began, of carving sandstone grave markers for the monks we buried. The motifs are eschatological – the coming of the Christ – the resurrection of all saints.  It looks to be a long 9th century before us, always in awe and maybe in fear of the millennium.

(Continues Tuesday, September 2)

#71.11, Wednesday, August 27, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Past lives on the Loire

This horse was borrowed for a fee from the public stable on this edge of the sea. He goes wherever I lead him, while an owned horse only seems to know his way back to his own stall. If there is a fire, the horse who knows his stall will go back in even if it is his own hay that is burning. 

And here, Christianity is an owned horse that only knows its own stall.  In a crisis it goes back to the old barn even when it’s burning to make things the same as they were before. What is discovered in tragedy? Is it sin or grace?

Riding toward the sea, along the Loire from Marmoutier Abbey, I pass the Christian-basilica at Tours tucked among the ancient Roman stones. The old paganism of the Romans flavors all this burning hay of Christianity, so the bishop asks the teacher to find the sins so that the Christians may offer due penance and make amends with some kind of angry god crafted from the very ancient, sometimes pagan, root of a wrathful faith. 

In danger Christianity returns to the old ways that built this barn from paganism. If only Christianity had a petty little god that could be appeased with gifts and ritual — good people could more easily manage a god like that. It would only require good behavior not the deep love for even an enemy.

I come now to the place on the Loire where I raised a family – taken back from paganism after the Justinian plague. All these centuries later the foundation stones of Eve’s house are still in place.  This was Eve’s little cottage, with critters on one side of the central wall and people on the other. In this family Christianity was snatched back from paganism.

When the horse who is owned, Christianity, comes back to the burning barn of paganism he might not even notice that the depths of the foundation are a different kind of god – God, invisible, unspeakable, gracious, forgiving, with us, longing for love. This God who is God, whom monks whisper too in secret, and who answers back with voice and touch, is not just an ancient human totem appeased with gifts and rituals and superstitious sorrows.

Here is where my grandchildren once played. They noticed the rainbow and chased after dragonflies. Ezra’s vineyard was here where the vines grow wild into the trees now.

Thank you, God, for the meadows where the horses graze together.  Amen. 

(Continues tomorrow)


#71.10, Tuesday, August 26, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Past lives on the Loire

         I know the teacher toiled over what to say to the bishop, distressed and grieving. I fear Alcuin failed to curb the tone of didactic instruction. Or maybe it isn’t a failure to subdue the instructor’s voice, but an intention to offer reprimand. That could be considered a fine quality in teaching in these post-Greek times without dialogue.  Here, the instruction was for “correction,” maybe away from “gentleness,” he encourages them to “fight bravely.” And so much for the Jesus pacifism.

Then by addressing the material losses, lecturing the grieving churchmen over their victimization by stranger Pagans, Alcuin is giving them a means or a demand to change themselves, thus to control these circumstances going forward – blaming the victim kinds of instructions –similar to demanding a woman to wear unattractive clothing so not to appeal to the lusts of rapists. 

“Do not glory in the vanity of dress; … Let your dinners be sober, not drunken. Let your clothes befit your station. Do not copy the men of the world in vanity for vain dress and useless adornment are a reproach to you before men and a sin before God. It is better to dress your immortal soul in good ways than to deck with fine clothes the body that soon rots in dust.” [Footnote 1]

This is the teacher’s response to what I had witnessed of the tragedy? I had seen the fine silks and dyed linens stolen from the naked martyrs of Lindisfarne — the clothing was heaped on the beach to be hauled off by Vikings for trade in distant markets.

The scholar continued, “Redemption is a man’s true riches. If we loved gold, we should send it to heaven to be kept there for us. We have what we love: let us love the eternal which will not perish. Let us love the true, not the transitory, riches. Let us win praise with God, not man. Let us do as the saints whom we praise. Let us follow in their footsteps on earth, to be worthy to share their glory in heaven.” [Footnote 2]

So today I ride away on the borrowed horse with the message of God’s love, also a chastising of the sins of monks.  I know Alcuin searched the ancient church fathers for these answers. It follows the assumption that bad things happen because of the wrathful and punitive god, who loves abusively. That is a god that can be manipulated by human behavior. 

[Footnote1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170506102223/https://classesv2.yale.edu/access/content/user/haw6/Vikings/higbald.html   Retrieved 12-5-24 Source: Alcuin of York, Letter to Higbald, trans. by S. Allott, Alcuin of York (York, 1974). Reprinted in Paul Edward Dutton, Carolingian Civilization: A Reader (Ontario, 1993). Scanned and proofread by Eric C. Knibbs, 2006.

This text is part of Viking Sources in Translation. Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No permission is granted for commercial use.© 2006 Anders Winroth

[Footnote 2] Ibid.

(Continues tomorrow)

#71.9, Thursday, August 21, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Marmoutier

         He says, “No doubt, Bishop Higbald is begging my answer on this matter of Lindisfarne’s sins because he is in need of a statement that he can read to both the surviving monks and also the political foe that will address this matter of sin from a scholarly distance. It needs to be a matter of sin but also allow for a heavenly peace.”

         The scholar is contemplative, thoughtfully studying the letter he is preparing to answer, then he goes to his row of books, and draws down St. Augustine’s City of God. [Footnote1]

         “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful. I will have the answer to the bishop’s letter for you to carry back to him tomorrow at first light.”

         I’ve been dismissed to await the response.

         This new morning the king’s children are turned away from lessons while the scholar is in solitude. Taking his time, responding to his friend’s need for better words, is his priority. Surely, Alcuin will take the story of this raid to the King and it will be entered into the chronicles of history.

The dangers of the Norsemen Vikings in their stealth vessels, raiding villages along the rivers and the coasts were probably already known.  It’s been going on for some time, rumored among all who have heard the howling in the night and the cries of women taken captive then in the dawning, burying the dead. It has been known to the broken communities left in plunder. But only when it is written is it known to history. So, these letters exchanged make the danger of the Vikings officially historical.

I’m summonsed back to the scholar’s study and I receive the letter to carry back to Lindisfarne. The children are left waiting again, while Alcuin invites me to listen to his answer through the ears of the people who will gather to hear it read.

It begins with his personal greeting, then he speaks his words of woe for all of Britain’s Christendom. And then there is the issue of Christian pacifism.  He offers his opinion on that right up front. He expects the fight to come from the bones of the saints rising up.

“What assurance can the churches of Britain have, if Saint Cuthbert and so great a company of saints do not defend their own? Is this the beginning of the great suffering, or the outcome of the sins of those who live there? It has not happened by chance, but is the sign of some great guilt.”[Footnote2]

[Footnote1] http://unamsanctamcatholicam.blogspot.com/2021/06/alcuin-to-higbald-and-christian-view-of.html Retrieved 10-8-24 Blog subtitled, “Defending the goodness, truth and beauty of Catholicism  “The letter is interesting because Alcuin’s method of consolation is to remind Higbald that calamities are a reminder of God’s love.” This ref. is the source connecting Alcuin’s letter to Higbald with the work of Augustine of Hippo’s, “The City of God” [apparently this page disappeared into the blogisphere so I will quote the whole section here] Alcuin is here offering a classical explanation for evil that comes from St. Augustine: temporal misfortunes fall equally on the good and evil; the difference is not in what befalls, but in how people respond to it. The purposes for suffering amongst persons are distinct, despite the external similarity in the nature of the ills. In City of God, St. Augustine says: There is, too, a very great difference in the purpose served both by those events which we call adverse and those called prosperous. For the good man is neither uplifted with the good things of time, nor broken by its ills; but the wicked man, because he is corrupted by this world’s happiness, feels himself punished by its unhappiness. Retrieved 12-5-24

 [Footnote2] https://web.archive.org/web/20170506102223/https://classesv2.yale.edu/access/content/user/haw6/Vikings/higbald.html   Retrieved 12-5-24 Source: Alcuin of York, Letter to Higbald, trans. by S. Allott, Alcuin of York (York, 1974). Reprinted in Paul Edward Dutton, Carolingian Civilization: A Reader (Ontario, 1993). Scanned and proofread by Eric C. Knibbs, 2006.

This text is part of Viking Sources in Translation. Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No permission is granted for commercial use.

© 2006 Anders Winroth

(Continues Tuesday, August 26)

#71.8, Wednesday, August 20, 2025

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,

#71.7, Tuesday, August 19, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Marmoutier

         The king’s teacher, Alcuin, is considering his response to Bishop Higbald particularly asking what he meant by “sins of Lindisfarne.” The bishop referred to “sins” as though the Viking Raid was God’s retribution for the monastery’s sins.

         Alcuin says, “It seems unlikely the sins were the peaceful nature of any monastery, though that did leave the monks unarmed and vulnerable. No, I think he was referring to a specific incident that he assumes I know all about.  I do not. So, I ask, do you know of any such incident?”

         “I was only there a short time to help bury the dead… But now, as I recall, Brother Ealdwin did mention something very dark, as though it was a sin.”

         “What?”

         “When I started to prepare the graves in the burial grounds for monks, Brother Ealdwin stopped me, suggesting we find another area away from a recent burial place.”

         “Why?”

         “Apparently the monastery became caught up in a political issue. He said a novice died and was buried in that place and a controversy arose. This fellow had come to the monastery seeking tonsure following the death of a Northumbrian king.”

         “Is this related to a long running rebellion and the regicide of King Aelred by a group of rebels?”

         “Apparently so. This man was one of the rebels. Brother Eldwin said this fellow brought a terrible burden of conscience, but before he accepted the holy orders and even as he was asking for penance, he killed himself. The abbot, since murdered in the Viking raid, took pity on this man because he had begged for mercy. There was an on-going debate about the burial of such a sinner among the monks. The bishop handled the situation acknowledging the abbot’s mercy and recognizing God who is love. But, Brother Ealdwin said, the political supporters of the king were still critical of the bishop for leniency given in the burial of this rebel.  Some who were secular patrons of the monastery wouldn’t let this issue go.”

         Alcuin says, “So, apparently the bishop finds these political supporters of Aelred are using the sin of regicide and one repentant but unpardonable suicide to smudge the whole community and the earth it stands on, now continually corrupted in sin.”

         “Yes. It put the bishop in a hard place.” I personally never appreciated the need for bishops, but here, a bishop in his fine silks and two-pointed hat, one of earth and the other heaven, bears the incongruence between omnipotence and omniscience — power and love. 

(Continues tomorrow)


#71.6, Thursday, August 14, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Marmoutier on the Loire

         I was called to meet with Alcuin at this, the matins hour. He is anxiously seeking someone who can listen to the letter he is writing in response to Bishop Higbald’s letter. And he is particularly concerned about an issue that Higbald refers to, as the “sins of Lindisfarne.”

         “My dear friend talked of signs of God’s judgment on the monastery, both in heaven and on earth leading up to this heathen attack.”

         “I was aware of the signs and portends seen in the heavens. Often the northern skies are brilliant with colors just appearing with no apparent source. As the heavens prepared for the raid these brilliant markers in the skies came as columns of light that moved in a pattern of soldiers marching to battle. This was after some months of drought when there also came dry flashes of lightening until finally, there was a deluge.”

         “You saw these signs and portents?” he asks.

         “When the skies are ablaze in such brilliance, everyone notices. In the north the Pagan marauders on one shore of the North Sea shouted war chants and believed Thor was sending the best winds to carry them, and the lights to guide them. They believed that Odin had extra places set for them in Valhalla, so they didn’t need to fear any army of brutal monks the Christian God might send.”

         He smiles at my use of the Norsemen’s image of “brutal monks of Lindisfarne,” knowing what we both know having been to the holy island.  I continue.

“But the Vikings prayed to their own gods for courage, believing they were in danger from the monks.” 

“Maybe the sin was that the monks weren’t prepared with proper weapons.”

          “It is an enduring argument: are Christians an earthly army, or are we following Jesus, forgiving the enemy all the way to the cross?”

         “I know that debate well. So maybe the bishop believes he failed to prepare his followers for warfare.”

         “Failure?” I ask.

         “It may be so. And I see you are a messenger who comes with a horse and yet no sword.”

         “It’s my personal choice to carry no weapon.”

         “But, a bishop can’t make such a ‘personal choice.’ He speaks for many. My friend may feel his encouragement here, but in facing danger only with prayer he may have given leeway to the heathen invaders.”

 “So, you are suggesting, by not preparing monks with weapons, the deaths are on the conscience of Higbald?”

“That was likely not what he was referring to as the ‘sins’ of Lindesfarne.”

(Continues Tuesday, August 19)

#71.5, Wednesday, August 13, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Marmoutier on the Loire

         Tonight, I’m staying in a guest room at the monastery near the shrine of St. Martin of Tours waiting here for the king’s scholar, Alcuin, to prepare his answer to Bishop Higbald’s letter with news of the Lindisfarne raid.

         It is the dark of morning, the prayer time when monks stagger from sleep with their worries to hear God’s answers and receive anew the creative “ah-ha.” In this thin space of night before dawn the teacher Alcuin has been mulling the tragic words in the letter I delivered here from Bishop Higbald. 

I was awake and reading the psalm for this day by candlelight when a monk came to the door of this guest cell. He said Alcuin requests the presence of one who knows the depth of the sin Bishop Higbald spoke of in his letter.

         “Depths of sin” isn’t normally my morning nourishment. I am friend to Jesus whose message was love, though it is often wedged awkwardly amid human fears of sins, hates and end times. And Jesus was a follower of John, who preached the turning, the repentance and the cleansing in baptism. So, the popular rise in sin-wallowing doesn’t much appeal to me. Maybe it is spoken often by holy men in these times because it lays the emphasis on human control of our own circumstances. By blaming our own behavior, we can blame sin as a reason for things we otherwise can’t control. Then human beings are empowered to heal the woes of the world, simply by un-sinning, confessing, repenting…

         As I follow the monk down the hall to Alcuin’s chamber, I am thinking through the details of blame/sin in Higbald’s letter.

         Here at his door –

         “Ah, good messenger for my dear friend the bishop. I apologize for waking you at this hour.”

“I was already awake for prayers.”

“I’ve not slept with my worries over my friend’s plea. And I need a listener to hear my words as Higbald would hear them.”

         “I know he wrote to you to hear words of God’s forgiveness for what he called the sins of Lindisfarne.”

         “Please try to listen to my answer with his way of hearing it.  He speaks so much of God’s retribution for a particular sin. What possible sins are there, that could be committed by a whole monastery?”

         “I do know of the incident that concerned Bishop Higbald.”

(Continues tomorrow)