early saints of the British Isles, 400 - 1000 AD

an introduction

Today’s post is an introduction to a new series that I will be starting in a couple of weeks. This series will be a bit different from my usual content on motherhood, and will be focused on some of the early saints who lived in what we now call Great Britain. I plan to publish one essay in this series each month, and each essay will focus on the life of a saint who lived between 400 - 1000 AD. Some will be quite well known, others more obscure. I want to integrate this series with the liturgical calendar, so I have planned it so that each essay will be released in the weeks leading up to that Saint’s feast day, so that readers can venerate and celebrate that Saint if they wish to. Initially I wasn’t sure if anyone else would share my interest in this subject, but after some encouragement from

Catie

and

Kristin Haakenson

I have decided to share what I am learning here.

An illustration of St Milburga, engraved in 1632

My interest in early medieval saints initially began as a result of curiosity about local holy wells.

Paul Kingsnorth

’s series on Irish holy wells had intrigued me, and although I couldn’t really understand why Paul kept writing about them, I kept reading the weekly posts he put out. Eventually I began wondering whether there were any holy wells in Devon, the south west corner of the UK where I live, and soon discovered that the county was littered with them.¹ Many of these wells were connected with local saints from the early medieval period, so I began trying to find out more about their lives. I quickly became fascinated, especially by some of the female saints I discovered, including St Sidwell, the patron saint of my local city. The stories of these women were unexpectedly compelling, and surprisingly varied. Some were solitary ascetics, others queens. Some were martyred as teenagers, others lived out their days in peace. Some were widely venerated, others had more locally centred cults. The diversity and depth of these women and their stories challenged the assumptions I unwittingly carried about the role of women in the church and society in this period. We live in a culture that is increasingly unmoored from its historical and religious roots. All the old cultural norms and mores have been destroyed, and there is no longer a clear and widely accepted answer to the question of how do I be a good man or a good woman? Discourse on the nature of men and women, what their relation to each other should be, and what their respective roles in a healthy society should look like rages fiercely online. I do not wish to wade into those choppy waters, but I have personally found it illuminating and edifying to contemplate the models of manhood and womanhood that these early saints exemplify. I’m not entirely sure whether I will focus just on female saints, or whether I will also incorporate the stories of some male saints as well.

I’ve chosen to focus on saints who lived between before 1000 AD because in a very real sense these saints belong to all Christians. The Great Schism between Rome and Constantinople occurred in 1054, and prior to this there was only the Church. There were differences between regions, and those differences are an important part of the history of the early medieval period and should not be glossed over, but nevertheless the Church retained a level of meaningful and visible unity that is sadly lost today. During my recent and somewhat reluctant journey back to Christianity, I have realised how little I know about the early church, what they believed, or how they worshipped. These questions feel important to me now in a way that they never did growing up as a Reformed Baptist.² Regardless of which denomination you find yourself in, these saints are part of your Christian heritage, and they can and should be celebrated and remembered by all Christians. The saints I have chosen have traditionally been venerated in the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Anglican traditions, although not all are still included in the official liturgical calendar.³

Regardless of whether you think the details of the tales told about them are true, these early saints left an outsize impression on their world, giving their names to hundreds (if not thousands) of churches, towns, and holy wells across the British Isles. The stories that have been handed down to us about them are so extraordinary and full of miracles that modern historians tend to assume that they must have been heavily embellished and exaggerated by later generations. I want to approach the lives of these saints in a different spirit, one that doesn’t automatically discount the supernatural and strange, and that instead focuses on getting to know these saints as individuals. As we journey through the year my hope is that we will get to know these saints together.

In next week’s essay I will provide a brief historical overview of early medieval Britain, and explore how the veneration of the saints fits into the broader worldview of early medieval men and women. The following week the series will start with a look at the life of St Winifred of Holywell.

Becca x

Stained glass depiction of Winifred, designed by William Burges, at Castell Coch, Cardiff

1. More than 200 holy wells have been recorded in Devon, although details about many of them are brief, obscure or a little sketchy. This website has compiled details about over 30 Devonian holy wells, and includes locations for anyone wishing to visit.

2. I was raised in a Reformed Baptist church. Although baptised as a teenager, I left the church in my mid 20s and it wasn’t until I was pregnant with my second child that I began to experience a reawakening of spiritual interest. I began attending Mass with my mum, who had converted to Roman Catholicism a few years ago. More recently, my husband has had a spiritual awakening of his own, and we have begun attending our local Orthodox church.

3. In the early church there was no formal canonization, but the cult of local martyrs was widespread and was regulated by the bishop of the diocese. The translation of the martyr’s remains from the place of burial to a church was equivalent to canonization. Gradually, ecclesiastical authorities intervened more directly in the process of canonization, and by the 10th century, appeals were made to the pope. Pope Alexander III (1159–81) began to reserve the cases of canonization to the Holy See, and this became general law under Pope Gregory IX (1227–41).