Our fathers among the saints, Cuðberht the Wonderworker of Lindisfarne and Venerable Hereberht of Derwentwater

St Herbert’s Island, Cumbria

If thou in the dear love of some one Friend
Hast been so happy that thou know’st what thoughts
Will sometimes in the happiness of love
Make the heart sink, then wilt thou reverence
This quiet spot; and, Stranger! not unmoved
Wilt thou behold this shapeless heap of stones,
The desolate ruins of St Herbert’s cell.
Here stood his threshold; here was spread the roof
That sheltered him, a self-secluded man,
After long exercise in social cares
And offices humane, intent to adore
The Deity, with undistracted mind,
And meditate on everlasting things,
In utter solitude. – But he had left
A Fellow-labourer, whom the good Man loved
As his own soul. And when, with eye upraised
To heaven he knelt before the crucifix,
While o’er the lake the cataract of Lodore
Pealed to his orisons, and when he paced
Along the beach of this small isle and thought
Of his companion, he would pray that both
(Now that their earthly duties were fulfilled)
Might die in the same moment. Nor in vain
So prayed he;—as our chronicles report,
Though here the Hermit numbered his last day
Far from St. Cuthbert, his belovèd Friend,
Those holy Men both died in the same hour.

- William Wordsworth
‘For the spot where the hermitage stood on St Herbert’s Island, Derwent-Water’ (1800)

The twentieth of March commemorates the repose of the great wonderworker of England’s holy isle and patron of Northumbria, Cuðberht of Lindisfarne, as well as of his spiritual son and dear soul-friend, the hermit Hereberht of Derwentwater, both of whom – as their later admirer William Wordsworth writes above – were given to die in the same hour on the same day. (For Three Kingdoms fans, you know how close that demonstrates they were!)

Ecgfrið King of Northumbria – brother of the venerable Abbess Ælfflæd of Whitby and son of Oswiu King – despite having a frightful foreign policy of attacking his inoffensive Goidelic neighbours, did at least one good thing during his reign. To wit, he appointed the holy hermit Cuðberht as Bishop of Lindisfarne. Unfortunately, Ecgfrið promptly ignored Bishop Cuðberht’s wise rede to him not to attack the Irish, and was hewn to pieces with his whole army at Nechtansmere. Although Ecgfrið’s reign as Northumbria’s king was short and ignominious, that of his bishop was neither. As the Venerable Bede relates in his History of the English Church and People (though he also wrote an entire Life of Cuðberht some years before):

In the year of his death, Ecgfrið King appointed as Bishop of Lindisfarne the holy and venerable Cuðberht, who for many years had lived a solitary life in great austerity of mind and body on a tiny island known as Farne, which lies off the coast about nine miles from the church. From his earliest boyhood he had always longed to enter the religious life, and was clothed and professed as a monk when a youth. He first entered the monastery of Melrose on the banks of the River Tweed, then ruled by Abbot Eata the gentlest and simplest of men, who later became Bishop of the church of Hagulstad or Lindisfarne, as already noted: the prior of Melrose was Boisil, a priest of great virtues and prophetic spirit. Cuðberht humbly submitted himself to the direction of Boisil, who gave him instruction in the Scriptures, and showed him an example of holy life.

When Boisil departed to our Lord, Cuðberht was made prior in his place, and trained many men in the monastic life with masterly authority and by his personal example. He did not restrict his teaching and influence to the monastery, but worked to rouse the ordinary folk far and near to exchange their foolish customs for a love of heavenly joys. For many profaned the Faith that they professed by a wicked life, and at a time of plague had even abandoned the Christian sacraments and had recourse to the false remedies of idolatry, as though they could expect to halt a plague ordained of God by spells, amulets and other devilish secret arts.

Following Boisil’s example, in order to correct such errors he often used to leave the monastery, sometimes on horseback but more frequently on foot, and visit the neighbouring towns, where he preached the way of truth to those who had gone astray. In those days, whenever a clerk or priest visited a town, English folk always used to gather at his call to hear the Word, eager to hear his message, and even more eager to carry out whatever they had heard and understood. But Cuðberht was so skilful a speaker, and had such a light in his angelic face, and such a love for proclaiming his message, that none presumed to hide their inmost secrets, but openly confessed all their wrong-doing; for they felt it impossible to conceal their guilt from him, and at his direction they made proper atonement for the sins that they confessed.

He used to visit and preach mainly in the villages that lay far distant among high and inaccessible mountains which others feared to visit, and whose barbarity and squalour daunted other teachers. Cuðberht, however, gladly undertook this pious task, and taught with such patience and skill that when he left the monastery, it would sometimes be a week, sometimes two or three, and occasionally an entire month before he returned home, remaining in the mountains to guide the peasants heavenward by his teachings and virtuous example.

When this venerable servant of our Lord had spent many years in the monastery of Melrose and become renowned for his acts of virtue, the most reverend Abbot Eata transferred him to Lindisfarne to instruct the brethren there in observance of regular discipline, both in his official capacity and by his personal example. For the most reverend Father Eata was then Abbot of Lindisfarne as well. And in ancient times, the bishop and his clergy used to reside at Lindisfarne with the abbot and his monks, the latter being regarded as part of the bishop’s household. For Aidan, first Bishop of Lindisfarne, himself a monk, brought monks with him and established the regular life there. The blessed Father Augustine is known to have done the same earlier in Kent, which is shown in the letter addressed to him by the most reverend Pope Gregory, which I included earlier:

Since you, my brother, are subject to monastic rule and may not live apart from your clergy of the English Church, which by God’s help has lately been brought to the Faith, you are to follow the way of life practised by our forefathers of the primitive Church, who did not regard any property as personal, but shared all things in common.

Saint Cuðberht was given seriously to prayer and to fasting, which he observed with great rigour. He supported himself as a hermit on the isle of Farne with both prayer and hard work, by which with the help of his brother-monks at Lindisfarne he cleared the island of evil influences, built his humble dwelling, dug a well, and began to farm. The prayers of Saint Cuðberht caused a fresh spring to flow out of the dry ground. The hermitage flourished under his care, and he lived there for several years before being asked by Ecgfrið – many times by missive, and once in person alongside the Bishop Trumwine – to become a bishop. Again, it was a case of nolo efiscofari: the king, the bishop and the assembled monks all begged him with tears to assent to become a bishop, and with great heaviness of heart and tears of his own, he was prevailed upon to leave his hermitage. Of his service as bishop, Bede says:

As is most valuable in a teacher, he first practised whatever he taught others to do. Above all else, he was afire with heavenly love, unassumingly patient, devoted to unceasing prayer, and kindly to all who came to him for comfort. He regarded the labour of helping the weaker brethren with advice as equivalent to prayer, remembering that he who said, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God’, also said, ‘Love thy neighbour.’ His self-discipline and fasting were exceptional, and through the grace of contrition, he was always intent on the things of heaven. Lastly, whenever he offered the sacrifice of the Saving Victim to God, he offered his prayers to God in a low voice, and with tears welling up from the depths of his heart.

The narrative of Saint Bede also recounts his friendship and last meeting with the hermit Saint Hereberht, also celebrated today and commemorated in the poem by Wordsworth. Saint Cuðberht only spent two years as Bishop of Lindisfarne; after this, he retired again to his island hermitage. However, he was given to know the hour of his death by divine grace and by the insight he had acquired by his humility, and he spoke of it to others only in veiled terms. The only person he told directly of it was his fellow-hermit and ‘priest of praiseworthy life’ Hereberht, who was then living on an island in the River Derwent in Cumbria, which today goes by his name. When Hereberht heard it from Saint Cuðberht, he was deeply distressed, because Hereberht was Cuðberht’s spiritual son and friend, and relied on him often for spiritual advice and reassurance. In God’s name, Hereberht begged Cuðberht not to leave this life before him – at which Cuðberht prostrated himself prayerfully and then said to Hereberht: ‘Rise, my brother, and do not weep. Be glad, for God in His mercy has heard our prayer.’ Sure enough, the two of them did repose on the same day – the twentieth of March, 687.

When the brethren went to the isle of Farne to uncover Cuðberht’s bones, they expected to find a body in the advanced stages of decay. However, when they found him at last, his body was still intact and incorrupt, his limbs still flexible, and although he was dead he looked merely as though he was sleeping. The brethren bore him back to Lindisfarne, where Bishop Éadberht upon beholding his garments kissed them, and commanded the brethren to dress Cuðberht in new garments and have him buried within the precinct of the monastery. Éadberht himself soon departed this life and was buried next to Cuðberht; the tomb where the two of them were lain became the site of many miraculous healings and deliverances. Holy fathers Cuðberht and Hereberht, venerable monastics and humble hermits, entreat with Christ God that our souls may be saved!

While still in your youth, you laid aside all worldly cares,
And took up the sweet yoke of Christ,
And you were shown forth in truth to be nobly radiant
In the grace of the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, God established you as a rule of faith and shepherd of His radiant flock,
Godly-minded Cuðberht, converser with angels and intercessor for men.

Saint Cuðberht of Lindisfarne

Tao Xingzhi and Sâti‘ al-Ḥuṣrî, part 2: sæcularism in education

In the first part of this series, I noted several points of convergence in the biographies and the pædagogical-political views of the ‘national’ teachers of Iraq and China. Now I feel is a good opportunity to note a singular and important point of divergence. Sâti‘ al-Ḥuṣrî ساطع الحصري has an approach to education which is straightforwardly, aggressively sæcular and even laïcist, very similar in fact to the French approach to public education. (And here we must remember that French was one of al-Ḥuṣrî’s primary languages of childhood instruction, coming even before Arabic!) On the other hand, Tao Xingzhi’s 陶行知 understanding and approach to religion in education is far more complex and deserves careful unpacking, because it engages both his Ru 儒 philosophical leanings and his social-gospel Anglican religious sympathies. There is a certain sense in which Tao Xingzhi is sæcular, and another in which he is almost Milbankian in his religious approach to pædagogy.

Sâti‘ al-Ḥuṣrî is deeply devoted in his writings to the German idealists: Fichte in particular, and Hegel and Herder less prominently (but no less importantly). However, very typically of the Ottoman intellectuals of his generation (including Atatürk, for whom al-Ḥuṣrî maintained a deep respect in his Arabist phase), in his thinking he is far less German than he is French. As William Cleveland notes: ‘Al-Ḥuṣrî was exposed to the scientific method and positivist doctrines from his earliest school days in Istanbul. His first career was that of a natural science teacher during which he was influenced by French literature on the subject rather than by the debates of Muhammad ‘Abduh or the Ottomans of pan-Islâmic persuasion.’ This early inculcation in French positivism deeply colours his view of the rôle of religion in education. For him, the most important moral task of education is to provide students with a basis of solidarity (or more accurately, ‘asabiyya عصبيّة: a concept for which he turned, not to Hegel or to Fichte, but instead to ibn Khaldûn بن خلدون).

As minister for education under his close friend King of Iraq Faysal I, the son of the Sharif al-Husayn ibn ‘Alî who led the 1916 revolt against the Ottomans, Al-Ḥuṣrî unfortunately made himself a number of enemies among the majority-Shi‘ite population of Iraq by insisting on a sæcular, pan-Arabist curriculum to be adopted in Iraqi schools. Al-Ḥuṣrî’s reasoning was clear and his intentions were good: he wanted to inculcate a feeling of nationalist loyalty among Iraqis that would place loyalty to their Sunnî, Christian and even Jewish neighbours over sectarian religious divisions. As a result, he would be attacked as an ‘enemy of God’ by Shi‘i clerics, and popular (though somewhat inaccurate) depictions of al-Ḥuṣrî as an atheist abounded. But even in these aspects of his career we can begin to see the contours of his philosophical commitments as a theorist of education.

Having been raised in the Ottoman Empire and also having thoroughly believed in an imperial Ottomanist idea, Sâti‘ al-Ḥuṣrî took a very dim view of what he considered ‘religious sectarianism’ from the start. True, the Ottoman Empire did function on an imperial ideology that held the Sultân to be also a caliph and the natural leader of the Islâmic ummah. But the Ottoman Empire also prided itself on being a multi-national and multi-confessional imperial polity. Al-Ḥuṣrî had been an Ottomanist in his bones long before he became an Arabist. Though neither of them was by any stretch of the imagination a fundamentalist, the earlier theorists of Arabism like Jamâl ad-Dîn and ‘Abd ar-Rahmân al-Kawâkibî did confess a faith in Islâm as a force for political unity that simply is not present for al-Ḥuṣrî. The last simply could not conceive there being in Islâm any sort of true political unifying force, though the awareness of Islâm as a Rawlsian ‘comprehensive doctrine’ was frightening to him: a yawning Ungrund within which Arabness would be doomed to oblivion. As such, for him, any hint of positive religious claim in an educational curriculum was a kind of intolerable subversion of what he believed the proper loyalty of the Arab should be: to al-urubah, to ‘Arabness’. This is the basis of the ‘asabiyya he seeks after.

Looking specifically to the nationalist awakening in the Balkans – and to Bulgaria, with which he is intimately familiar – al-Ḥuṣrî considers that religion is a much weaker force for unity than the solidarity-ties of kinship and friendship that bind together the thede. Al-Ḥuṣrî’s social thought leans close to Orthodoxy in this aspect: that he separates considerations of the people from those of the state. Good Ottoman that he is, he looks the model of the ‘nation-state’ that developed in the West as a kind of historical accident, and – very unusually for a nationalist of his sort – does not believe nations in the popular sense are naturally inclined to statehood. He looks in particular at how Bulgarian thede-consciousness was as much shaped by its opposition to Greek ecclesial domination as by its opposition to Ottoman oppression.

Ironically, this leads al-Ḥuṣrî to an ever-greater appreciation of Arab Christians, and in particular Eastern Orthodox Arabs, as an example of this kind of ‘asabiyya. When the ancient Antiochian Church took the bold step of insisting on the local election of its own Patriarchs, with the consequence that a Syrian Arab was named to the position, al-Ḥuṣrî cheered the event in retrospect as the ‘first true victory of Arab nationalism’. In the Antiochian Church’s quiet rebellion against both sæcular Istanbul and religious Constantinople, he saw the first hints of a community long subject to a dual oppression (the first to a political Turkification, and the second to a religious Scylla-Charybdis choice between apostasy and assimilation to Hellenism) standing up against both. Even though al-Ḥuṣrî could in no sense be mistaken for an activist of the left, and William Cleveland notes firmly that his pædagogical instincts are firmly ‘top-down’, here his idea of solidarity became a strong insistence on taking the side of the oppressed masses.

Tao Xingzhi has similar instincts, but a very different attitude toward the relationship between religion and education. Tao was educated as a Christian, and continued to consider himself a Christian through much of his career. As a theorist of education, however, Tao stands fairly firmly in the tradition of Song-Ming rationalism 宋明理學 or what philosopher Jiang Qing 蔣慶 calls ‘heart-mind Ru learning’ 心性儒學. As such, he considers Ru to be a tradition of philosophy and not religion (very much like his comrade Liang Shuming 梁漱溟, both of them being devotees of the philosophy of Wang Yangming 王陽明). He therefore considers that the primary purpose of learning the Confucian Books in school is moralistic rather than politically-inculturating; and he applies this descriptive analysis to a survey of the Chinese education system during the Republican period. He claims – somewhat provocatively – that, even though the Classics and the Christian Scriptures are taught in Chinese missionary schools and universities (and to a greater degree than in contemporary Britain or Germany), the overall character of the Chinese education system is actually laïcist, because Ruxue, as a code of conduct taught in schools, makes no sectarian claims on public space or resources, and thus does not conflict with any religious claims upon the same.

But here’s where Tao Xingzhi’s theory of moral education gets really interesting, and where the political differences between him and al-Ḥuṣrî begin to manifest themselves. When turning to the normative question of educational psychology, he notes that mere formal education in the concepts of Ru ethics is insufficient, and he points as evidence of this to the fact that such conflicts between Christian and Confucian instruction do not exist. Simple repetition, rote memorisation of concepts and meditation are insufficient in themselves to generate actual moral knowledge. Instead, political inculturation is precisely what is required of moral education. Here Tao Xingzhi begins sounding much more like Jiang Qing, to the point where he begins quoting from Xunzi 荀子 against Mencius 孟子 (and implicitly also against the Zhu-Xi school of rationalism):

When a six-year-old child begins to study Mencius or [the epistles of Saint] Paul he may appear to understand something, but in fact [his understanding] is but skin-deep. Xunzi, in criticising formal education, says:

小人之學也，入乎耳，出乎口；口耳之間，則四寸耳。

The common people’s education comes into the ears and goes out through the mouth, and therefore it is only four inches deep—the distance between the ears and the mouth.

We may safely say that ideas about morality do not guarantee the conduct we desire, and any instruction based on this ideo-motor theory [a concept borrowed from Edward Thorndike’s educational psychology] will surely find disappointment. One reason why we find little or no conflict between the instruction in Christian religion and Confucian ethics in missionary schools is because the formal instruction in both religion and morality without actual participation is without much effect on conduct.

After that, it gets even better! Tao Xingzhi even borrows from the ‘political Ru’ hermeneutical tradition of the Gongyang Commentary, and also the developmental posture which is implied by the Gongyang Commentary itself, and which is explicated by the New Text school. Even though the developmentalist framework Tao Xingzhi uses is borrowed from British-American psychologist William MacDougall’s Introduction to Social Psychology, and even though he frames the developmental posture in individual-psychological terms rather than social-historical ones, his use of classical Chinese concepts within that framework does point back to a Ru pædagogy. Ironically, this leads him to embrace a position of Christian moral independence and even kenoticism indicated by his Anglican social-gospel upbringing!

In the exertion of such an influence, we must also recognise the four stages of the development of conduct. First, we have the stage of instinctive behaviour, at which the child’s conduct is modified only by the influence of pains and pleasures. […] is the stage at which the operation of the instinctive impulses is modified by the influence of rewards and punishments, administered more or less systematically by the social environment. Third, we come to the stage where conduct is controlled in the main by the anticipation of social praise and blame [贊揚與指責; cf. the classical 褒貶 of Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒]. Finally, there is the highest stage of moral development, at which conduct is regulated by an ideal that enables a man to act in a way that seems to him right, regardless of the praise or blame of his immediate social environment.

This fourth stage suggests to me ‘the Good Shepherd’. It reads: ‘I am the good shepherd… and I lay down my life for the sheep… Therefore does my Father love me because I lay down my life, that I might take it up again.’ Up to this place nothing sounds very extraordinary, but watch that which follows: ‘No man takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again.’ It is such high moral power that we must take as our final goal of development. Those who take the responsibility of shaping the child’s conduct must keep in mind the progression from the first to this highest stage.

Tao Xingzhi’s basic moral instinct here is virtue-ethical, and (obviously) it is only very ambiguously sæcular. For Tao, education cannot have as its sole purpose the transmission of ‘knowledge about’, but instead must provide ‘knowledge for’ the development of excellence in character. ‘All knowledge is related to conduct’, and ‘life itself is education’. These are concepts, by the way, that he borrows straight from Wang Yangming. And the punchline of his theory of education is that political and religious inculturation is absolutely necessary. He casts this in explicitly Christian terminology – in fact, I would say explicitly Eastern Orthodox, as the language is taken from the General Intercession in our prayer-book:

In all cases, the psychological nature of the child must be recognised; social significance must be attached and opportunity for actual participation must be provided. The child, according to his stage of development, must be led to get into contact with all sorts of social needs—the poor, the sick and the suffering … In a word, he must be put in the social hot-bed of love, service and sacrifice, and educated to love, to serve and to sacrifice on his own initiative.

Now, a thoroughgoing New Text scholar like Jiang Qing is likely to find a great deal to nitpick in Tao Xingzhi’s pædagogical theory—which is absolutely fine. Tao Xingzhi has little to no fear or hope of Ru as a ‘comprehensive doctrine’; it is a mere body of ethical habit accrued among Chinese people. He is very clearly and explicitly deeply indebted to Dewey’s American pragmatism from a philosophical perspective, and his invocations of Ru social theory, even though they are clearly meaningful and deliberate, are nonetheless occasional. He is promoting a model of education that can be readily adapted to sæcular Chinese realities. Typically of the ‘heart-mind Ru’ of his time, Tao does not hold up the way of Confucius as a ‘comprehensive doctrine’, as is made abundantly clear by his recourses to the Greek Scriptures of the Christian tradition and to modern behavioural psychology. But it is equally clear that, in sterling contradistinction to Sâti‘ al-Ḥuṣrî, Tao is by no means a thoroughgoing supporter of the Franco-American laïcist educational model from a normative perspective, even though he understands full well that such a model is his ‘starting point’ in China.

Speaking personally, and again as an Orthodox Christian deeply influenced by Confucius, I confess I find myself in greater sympathy with Tao Xingzhi than I do with the sæcular Ottoman Muslim al-Ḥuṣrî – even though the Ḥuṣrîan-Khaldûnian concept of ‘asabiyya is one I find naturally intriguing and useful. On questions of religious and moral education, Tao’s mode of pædagogical explication is far more engagé, more activist and more radical than al-Ḥuṣrî’s, because it is less positivist and sæcular. But it is still an interesting point of divergence. Despite his sæcularity, as an Ottoman Arab al-Ḥuṣrî seems far more sensitive to the seductive power of ‘comprehensive doctrines’ than Tao is. Even though Tao is explicitly Christian in his religious sentiments (and explicitly Confucian in his philosophical ones), we only get to see brief flashes of awareness of the total reorienting, transformative and subversive power either of his own creed or of his own ethical habits. More often in his writing, he comes across as a kind of naturalist-evolutionary philosophical-religious eclectic.

Still, the Arab teacher and the Chinese teacher both have the same goals: the transformation of their societies into independent, self-reliant and unified polities which are capable of successfully resisting imperialist domination. And to some extent, the two of them even have similar instincts and methods! Neither of them is driven by hatred of the West to the extent that they are willing to fully turn their backs on the intellectual resources offered by it; instead the first instinct of each of them is a revolutionary kind of love for their people – a deep, burning desire for their good.

Holy and Right-Believing Éadweard, Martyr-King of England

Saint Éadweard King of England

Today in the Orthodox Church we commemorate one of England’s saintly and martyrific princes, Éadweard (Cerdicing) of England, King and Martyr. The son of Éadgár the Frithsome by Æþelflæd the Fair (who died soon after his birth), the grandson of Éadmund Æðeling and the great-grandson of Saint Ælfrǽd the Great, Éadweard unfortunately did not live long enough to match the sæcular achievements of his great, good and illustrious forebears – though in his death he earned a crown with greater sheen than any earthly.

His father, Éadgár, was a great patron of the Church – in particular of the reformers like Saint Æþelwold of Winchester and Saint Osweald of Worcester. This set him at odds with many of his wealthier and high-born subjects. Saint Dúnstán of Canterbury, the leader of the monastic reform party, was the one who baptised and christened Saint Éadweard. According to a pious legend, before Æþelflæd gave birth to Éadweard, his father had an eerie dream in which it was prophesied to him that his elder son would be killed by his younger; and that although his younger son would reign on earth, his elder would reign in heaven. After Éadweard was born, in his youth he was reared for some years by Bishop Sidemann of Crediton, who was also Abbot at Exeter and another member of the Benedictine reform party. Meanwhile Éadgár, whose wife Æþelflæd had died, remarried twice: to Saint Wulfþr‎ýð (who bore him a daughter, Saint Éadgýð – both became nuns) and later to the beautiful but wicked and sadistic Ælfþr‎ýð, who bore him two sons, Éadmund and Æþelræd (known to history as Æþelræd Unrǽd).

Éadgár reposed in the Lord in 975, and Saint Dúnstán and Saint Osweald supported Éadweard as his successor. Having been raised in the abbey at Exeter, he was a young man of only thirteen when his father died, and yet already he was possessed of many virtues. Hospitable, open-handed to the poor, observant of the Church and stalwart in shielding the powerless from the powerful at law, he was considered an ideal candidate for kingship by most of the Benedictine reformers and they lobbied heavily to have him installed as king, even though the nobles preferred Æþelræd. Saint Dúnstán and Saint Osweald had Éadweard anointed and crowned at Kingston upon Thames on the eighth of July that same year.

His reign was ill-fated. The official histories recount various omens in his early reign. A comet appeared in the sky, a famine struck the whole of England, and England’s nobles began quarrelling anarchically among themselves, and also attacking and seizing monastic lands for their own enrichment. A dissension occurred between Saint Dúnstán and Saint Æþelwold, with the latter joining with Ælfþr‎ýð and her son Æþelræd. The boy’s mother had laid plans to seize power for herself through her son, by placing him on the throne.

Éadweard King was slain in his third year. His stepmother was indeed responsible for his murder. The king had ridden out to visit them at a barrow near Corfe Castle in Dorset with the intention of making peace with them. However, as he was dismounting from his horse, he was stabbed by Æþelræd’s men. He was then buried ‘without any royal honours’ at Wareham, at Ælfþr‎ýð’s insistence. One tale has it that Ælfþr‎ýð ordered the dead king’s body to be thrown into a tiny thatch hut near Corfe that belonged to a woman born blind. The night after this was done, the woman felt a holy dread and an unearthly light that flooded her little house – and in the morning she found to her amazement that she could see. Going to where the light had come, she found the stabbed body of Saint Éadweard. The tale soon spread around Corfe Castle, and came to the ears of the wicked queen – who then ordered Æþelræd’s men to take the body and throw it into a fen in Wareham to be forgotten forever.

Even this was not enough to keep Saint Éadweard’s death hidden from sight, because at Wareham an eerie tower of light began to shine from the stead where the young martyr had been thrown. Some of the townsfolk went out and dug up Saint Éadweard, whose relics were found whole and unharmed. That same day a spring of clean water sprang up from the fen where they had found him, and that stead became a holy well with healing waters for many centuries after. A church dedicated to the Most Holy Theotokos was built upon that same spot, which is still in use by the Church of England – and many wonders were wrought by the bones that lay there. A local cultus of veneration of the slain king arose in Wareham. Eventually it was decided to move the king’s body to Shaftesbury Abbey, which had been righted by Éadweard’s great-grandfather Ælfrǽd King. Éadweard’s half-sister Abbess Éadgýð was present at Shaftesbury when his body was translated; and along the way two lame men were healed. Shaftesbury Abbey thereafter became the single largest convent for Benedictine nuns in all England, and many wonders were wrought there – Shaftesbury was even renamed Edwardstowe after the slain king.

Here is what the Worcester Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ‘D’ has to say about Éadweard’s death:

There has not been ‘mid Angles a worse deed done than this was, since they first Britain-land sought. Men him murdered, but God him glorified. He was in life an earthly king; he is now after death a heavenly saint. Him would not his earthly kinsmen avenge, but him hath his heavenly Father greatly avenged. The earthly murderers would his memory on earth blot out, but the lofty Avenger hath his memory in the heavens and on earth wide-spread. They who would not erewhile to his living body bow down, they now humbly on knees bend to his dead bones. Now we may understand that men's wisdom and their devices, and their councils, are like nought ‘gainst God's resolves.

Ne wearð Angelcynne nan wyrse dead gedon, þonne þeos wæs, syþþan hi ærest Britenland gesohton. Menn hine ofmyrþredon, ac God hine mærsode. He wæs on life eorðlic cyning, he is nu æfter deaðe heofonlic sanct. Hyne noldon his eorðlican magas wrecan, ac hine hafað his heofonlic fæder swyðe gewrecan. Þa eorðlican banan woldon his gemynd on eorðan adilgian, ac se uplica wrecend hafað his gemynd on heofonum ꝥ on eorþan tobræd. Þa ðe noldon ær to his libbendan lichaman onbugan, þa nu eadmodlice on cneowum gebugað to his deada banum. Nu we magan ongytan ðæt manna wisdom, ꝥ heora smeagunga, ꝥ heora rædas syndon nahtlice ongean Godes geðeaht.

Éadweard’s younger half-brother Æþelræd took the throne after him. Only twelve at the age of his crowning, although the boy was innocent of his brother’s slaying, Saint Dúnstán warned him that for his mother’s sin of regicide, his reign would be afflicted with many sorrows and troubles. Indeed, his reign would see a fresh wave of Danish raids all along the coast, and his chaotic reign and early misguided policies would lead later historians to view him unfavourably.

The English Reformation under Henry VIII saw a widescale suppression of the veneration of saints and of monasteries, and for a long time the relics of the holy English king were thought destroyed by the Protestants. However, they were unearthed in 1931 by John Edward Wilson-Claridge, who donated the relics to ROCOR, which then translated the ancient relics of Saint Éadweard to an Orthodox cemetery in Woking. There is a particular veneration of Saint Éadweard among Russian Orthodox Christians, both for this reason and because the wrongful political murder of Saint Éadweard so closely resembles that of the murdered Russian princes Saints Boris and Gleb. Holy and Right-Believing Éadweard, King and Martyr, we beseech your prayers to Christ God for the salvation of our souls!

Celebrating the newly-manifest commemoration
Of the holy King Éadweard who shone forth of old
In the virtues and suffered undeservedly,
And bowing down before his precious image,
In gladness we cry out:
Truly wondrous art Thou in Thy saint, O God!

Holy Hierarch Padrig, Bishop of Armagh, Enlightener of Ireland

Saint Padrig of Ireland

Saint Patrick’s Day is a far better-known saintly feast day in America than many others I’ve covered here. It hardly needs saying that it is also commemorated in the Orthodox Church, and I did make a deliberate point of wearing my nice green button-down shirt to church today. The seventeenth of March is indeed the commemoration of Saint Padrig, the Bishop of Armagh.

Saint Padrig was born in the late fourth century, around the year 385, to a Romano-British family living in a settlement called Bannavem Taburniæ. There are numerous and sundry claimants for this site of Saint Padrig’s birth, which is the subject of a good deal of scholarly dispute. Some of the likely contenders, though, are the broadly-dispersed modern towns of: Ravenglass in Cumbria; Norton in Northampton; Auld Kilpatrick in Dunbarton; and Banwen in Glamorgan. His father was a Christian deacon and low-ranking Roman guard named Calpurnius; his mother Concessa, a Gallo-Roman, may have been a kinswoman of Saint Martin of Tours. His baptismal name, Maewyn Succot, was wholly Brythonic. He was not a particularly observant Christian in his early life, however.

When he was sixteen years old, he was kidnaped by Pictish pirates who brought him down Watling Street to the coast, shipped him to the Irish kingdom of Dál Riata, and sold him into slavery. He was bought by a wealthy landowner who owned a sheepfold in Antrim, and Padrig was sent to guard the flocks from predators as they grazed on the slopes of Mount Slemish. He spent six cold and hungry years in this servile occupation, and while he served he gained a knowledge of the Gælic tongue which would come to serve him in good stead as a missionary. One night, an angel of God appeared to Padrig, and told him of a ship on the coast which would bear him back to Britain. Padrig fled his master and walked on foot two hundred miles from Slemish to the coast near Dublin, where he found the ship just as the angel had told him, and stowed away on it.

During his captivity, Padrig – who by his own admission had not been particularly pious – increasingly believed in Christ and turned increasingly to prayer for deliverance. As he was leaving Ireland, he had another vision in which all the Irish people clamoured to him and begged him to return, to give them the Gospel of Christ. Padrig did not heed this vision right away, though. Although he believed and trusted in God, the various accounts of him including his own Confessions demonstrate that he could often be a stiff-necked, stubborn and argumentative servant – much like the Prophet Jonah. His ship home to Britain seems to have had a rough landing, and his ship-mates found themselves alone in a deserted stretch of land; food soon became a problem. Saint Padrig prayed to God, and of a sudden the crew and passengers came across a herd of wild pigs, some of which they slew and ate. The crew no longer thought of him as a mere stowaway, and came to respect him. They did arrive at a settlement, and from there Padrig made his way home.

An angelic vision and the recurring ‘Voice of the Irish’ pleading with him to return came again to him several years after he had come home. For this reason, some years after reuniting with his family, Saint Padrig sought out the great Gallo-Roman bishop Germain of Auxerre, to study under him. Saint Germain tutored the British youth in Latin, Gallic and Frankish, taught him the Scriptures and especially the Psalms, and acquainted him with other matters of sæcular knowledge. While in Gaul, Saint Padrig studied primarily at Auxerre. However, he also paid at least one visit to l’Abbaye de Marmoutier in Tours – possibly as part of a family obligation. It was Saint Germain who consecrated Padrig a priest, and he was later given the omophor and sent to Ireland. Even his attainment of this was not without trouble. In his Confessions he speaks of a certain sin he committed in secret when he was fifteen years old, which he then confided to a friend, believing himself to be unworthy of taking orders. At the time, this friend of his gave him encouragement, assured him of God’s forgiveness and encouraged him to seek the omophor. However, this friend later turned against him and publicly denounced him for his youthful transgression, which had been told to him in confidence. Although it did not ultimately hinder Saint Padrig’s becoming a bishop, he still grieved long after for the friend that he had lost.

Saint Padrig was a boy of sixteen when he first came to Ireland, and a young man of twenty-two when he first left. He did not answer the ‘Voice of the Irish’ and return there, until he was already a middle-aged bishop of forty-six. He had come to Ireland to relieve the frustrated missionary efforts of Saint Palladius, who retired from his see in 431 possibly under political pressure from the King of Leinster, and went to preach the Gospel among the Picts. Saint Padrig picked up where Palladius left off, and began preaching, teaching and healing among the Gælic people of Ireland.

The fact that he had a command of the Irish tongue aided him in his task, but his efforts were often opposed by local kings and lords, or by the pagan druids. His position outside the œconomy of kinship and patronage in præ-Christian Ireland rendered his position politically-precarious. They would often seek to discredit him in public with the fact that he was a Brythonic foreigner, or that he had once been a slave. He was attacked with stones and clubs and staves more than once, and cast into prisons and left to die by more than one petty lordling whom he’d managed to offend, but he always eluded a fruitless death and continued to teach the Gospel. Many times, a well-placed gift or a significant act of mercy was what turned the key for him to freedom. He made it a point never to accept payment for the Holy Mysteries, and indeed his harsh criticisms of the practice of simony made him a few powerful enemies within the Church.

There are a number of folktales that surround Saint Padrig. His clearing Ireland of snakes is very likely one such pious fiction. The traditional tale that he used a sprig of green clover – thereafter one of the most iconic symbols of the Irish nation, three leaves from a single stem – to illustrate the nature of the Holy Trinity, may or may not be true, but it does illustrate about Saint Padrig that he took pains to speak profound truths to simple folk, and was not given to academic abstractions.

By the time of his blessed repose, Saint Padrig had founded a great number of churches and monasteries throughout Ireland, and had established a permanent see of the Church in the county of Armagh. His relics were thought to have been found by Saint Colum Cille, the founder of Iona, and interred at Down Cathedral. Holy father Padrig, enlightener of the Irish people, pray unto Christ our God for us!

Holy Bishop Patrick,
Faithful shepherd of Christ’s royal flock,
You filled Ireland with the radiance of the Gospel:
The mighty strength of the Trinity!
Now that you stand before the Saviour,
Pray that He may preserve us in faith and love!

Down Cathedral, Downpatrick, Northern Ireland

Tao Xingzhi and Sâti‘ al-Ḥuṣrî, part 1: two ‘national’ teachers

This aims to be the first part in a multi-part blog series on two Third World educators, Tao Xingzhi 陶行知 and Sâti‘ al-Ḥuṣrî ساطع الحصري. I have been reading William Cleveland’s biography of al-Ḥuṣrî alongside Tao Xingzhi’s book Education for Life, and am quite thunderstruck by the, as far as I know, substantial but solely serendipitous similarities between the two men. I am not aware from either of these two men’s biographies that they ever met each other, and I find it unlikely that the two of them had any direct exchanges of ideas or scholarly intercourse. But the similitude of the two men, in their biographies, in their temperaments and in their thought, I think deserves to be remarked upon.

I already get mostly-friendly ribbing on the Orthodox circles on social media for being a weeb (which, you know, fair enough). So here’s the ‘full disclosure’ from a personal standpoint. I am an Orthodox Christian largely because of Chinese and Arabic influences. Tao Xingzhi actually gives a really good voice to this, but to live in China is to live in a society where linear time has relatively little meaning, and where the most venerable traditions can live alongside and in the shadow of the gaudiest glass-and-steel high modernism; my attraction to Orthodoxy was likewise a pursuit of the traditional thread within my own culture. On the other hand, my first and strongest direct exposure to Orthodoxy was through the Antiochian tradition, through Saint Mary’s Church in Pawtucket – which is still my beloved ‘home away from home’ parish whenever I go to visit my parents. To this day, I still owe the Syrian-, Lebanese- and Armenian-American folks of that parish a great debt I can never truly repay, for legally reuniting me with my family when I came home from abroad.

I also came to an awareness of the gæopolitical, trade and cultural connexions between China and the Arab world through the Judge Dee novel Murder in Canton, and through the classes on Chinese religion and material culture at Capital Normal University taught by Dr An Yanming and Dr Ma Zhao. The Chinese Hui Muslims of today are the descendants of Persian traders along both overland and sea trade routes, as well as of Arabic cavalry sent by al-Mansûr to put down the An Lushan Rebellion, and the Nestorian Christians (including Tang general Guo Ziyi 郭子儀) who came to China to spread the Gospel, originated in the Persian and Assyrian communities of what is now Iraq. Nowadays, as I noticed when I was living next to and among Hui Muslim neighbours in Baotou, there is a conscious awareness of this history that may not have been there two or three generations ago.

The more modern connexions between China and the Arab world through the Non Aligned Movement, and the prominent friendship between Jamâl ‘Abd an-Nâsr and Mao Zedong 毛澤東, however, seem to have another basis. To explore that basis, a basis in the second-world ideology of Marxism-Leninism seems insufficient, since both Nâsr and Mao were revisionists, from a Marxist-Leninist perspective. This is why examining the similarities between the non-Marxist leftists Sâti‘ al-Ḥuṣrî and Tao Xingzhi seems to be important. Both of them took a syncretic approach to pædagogy, œconomics and culture integrating (respectively) Islâmic and Confucian indigenous knowledge with Western methods. In al-Ḥuṣrî’s case, this involved a selective appropriation of historical and social concepts from Herder, Hegel and especially Fichte for use in a classicalist, solidarist pædagogy borrowed from ibn Khaldûn. In Tao Xingzhi’s case, this involved a selective appropriation of Dewey’s pædagogy, placed at the service of a Confucian reformism inspired by Ming dynasty neo-Confucian Wang Yangming 王陽明. More to the point, al-Ḥuṣrî’s ideas informed both Nâsrism and Ba‘athîyya; and the Mass Education Movement spearheaded by Tao Xingzhi and Jimmy Yen was a formative influence on Mao Zedong, who did a stint as a volunteer teacher.

To begin with, though, for this blog post I will note only a handful of the parallels in their biographies. The two men were contemporaries: Sâti‘ al-Ḥuṣrî was born to wealthy Syrian parents in Yemen, in the Ottoman Empire, in 1880; Tao Xingzhi was born in Anhui to poor village schoolteachers in the Qing Empire in 1891. Both men were, for lack of a better word, cosmopolitans. Sâti‘ would always feel ‘out of place’ among his own people – his first language was Turkish and his parents had him tutored in French. He learnt Arabic later in life and always spoke with a heavy Turkish accent. He was deeply distrusted at first in Arab nationalist circles for his prior Ottoman associations and loyalties, and his later emphasis on ‘al-‘urubah’ gives credence to a certain degree of psychological compensation on his part. Xingzhi, like his Democratic League comrade Fei Xiaotong 費孝通, was educated in missionary schools and later sent to America for college at the University of Illinois and Columbia University. Like al-Ḥuṣrî to ‘al-‘urubah’, he felt ‘robbed of [his] Chineseness’ and thereafter revolted against the Western-looking elements in his own class.

Each of them also experienced a great political upheaval in his early life. Al-Ḥuṣrî lived through the constitutional upheavals, the First World War and the collapse and partition of the Ottoman Empire. The Qing Empire fell, too, when Tao Xingzhi was still a student; during much of his professional career, he lived in a country torn between various warlords in addition to the invading Japanese. The response of these two men to the social upheavals afflicting the Arab world on the one hand, and the Chinese world on the other, was to begin educating, with particular emphasis on popular self-respect, self-reliance and adoption of modern science. Both of them were committed pædagogues.

Neither of them was, to begin with, particularly political in orientation – like the Slavophils, they saw themselves not as political movers-and-shakers, but stewards and transmitters of culture. As such, even though both of them were committed at some level to egalitarianism, the cultivation of good civic habits and strident opposition to Western imperialism, neither of them was particularly attached to democracy as an ideology. Cleveland relates, in his discussion of Sâti‘ al-Ḥuṣrî’s thought, that he is not concerned in his Arabist phase with ‘political liberties’, ‘the rights of individuals’, ‘constitutionalism’ or ‘democracy’, but instead with the historical forces that give rise to healthy polities. Likewise, even though Tao Xingzhi has deep democratic-socialist convictions about the educational potential of every student and the need for proportional œconomic outcomes, he nonetheless sharply rebukes (in a way which much more resembles the old Confucian conservatives like Zhang Zhidong 張之洞 rather than the other followers of John Dewey) the May Fourth intellectuals for their ‘lack of discipline’, their cultural deracination and their bourgeois fixation on policy-making procedure rather than content. (Tao Xingzhi’s scepticism of democratic ideology appears to be informed, interestingly enough, by both Plato and Confucius.)

Tao Xingzhi and Sâti‘ al-Ḥuṣrî, though they belong to a younger generation, can certainly be seen to stand in the same multifaceted tradition as the modernising Asian intellectuals highlighted by Pankaj Mishra in his recent book: Sayyid Jamâl ad-Dîn, Liang Qichao 梁啓超 and Rabindranath Tagore. But there’s a great more to the similitude here than simply a shared reaction against Western imperialism – and I suspect the answer has something to do with the fact that these two were more involved in education and pædagogical pursuits than directly in politics. Thus far I’ve explored only a few points in their biographies where their experiences run parallel; in future blog posts I hope to explore more of the substantive specifics of their comparative thought, as well as their contributions to the guiding principles of the Non Aligned Movement.

Holy Apostle Aristobulus of the Seventy, Bishop of Britain

Saint Aristobulus of the Seventy

The sixteenth of March is the feast day in the Orthodox Church of Saint Aristobulus, a Cypriot Second Temple Jew who was the brother of Saint Yousef bar-Nehmâ. Both men were among the Seventy Apostles mentioned in the Gospel of Saint Luke. Saint Aristobulus would also, by this tradition, have been the uncle of Saint Mark the Evangelist. He was a diligent servant to the Apostles Paul and Andrew, and continued their work of spreading the good news of Christ to the remotest parts of the world. He is mentioned in the Coptic martyrologies as having preached in a city called Abratabias – which may or may not have been in Britain.

Aristobulus [also Arwystli Hen in Welsh] is mentioned by name in Saint Paul’s epistle to the Romans, as the head of a certain household. We may infer from this that he was married; some sources identify his wife as Salome, one of the Myrrh-Bearing Women, and the Welsh tradition names a son he brought with him to Britain, named Manaw. He went at Saint Paul’s urgings to the Roman province of Britain to spread the Gospel there, as attested by Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos of Constantinople and Abba Dorotheos of Gaza. He preached in the Isles of Scilly and in Cornwall. These areas of Britain were inhabited, so the Greek Martyrologies tell us, by a ‘very warlike and fierce race’, and Saint Aristobulus suffered much tribulation among them. He was beaten, taken as a criminal and dragged in chains through the streets, mocked and scourged. But, strengthened by Christ, he bore all with grace, and soon even the mockers were stilled.

Certain traditions hold that he reached Glastonbury and may have briefly settled there. There is still a parish in Wales called Bro Arwystli which appears to be named for Saint Aristobulus. This parish is located in Powys, near the headwaters of the Severn. Archpriest Andrew Phillips of Orthodox England tells us that a pious tradition in Wales names this as the place of his martyrdom. Holy father Aristobulus, faithful apostle and first bishop in Britain, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Holy Apostles of the Seventy:
Stachys, Amplias, Urban, Narcissus, Apelles, and Aristobulus,
Entreat the merciful God
To grant our souls forgiveness of transgressions.

Venerable Benedict of Nursia

Saint Benedict of Nursia

The most holy and venerable father of Western monasticism, Saint Benedict, father of the Benedictine Order to whom most of the Western (and specifically English and German) saints I’ve been highlighting these last five months have belonged – and the spiritual grandfather, through the monastic Saints Gregory Dialogos and Augustine of Canterbury, of English Christianity as such. He also should be, as I have explained a bit before, something of a folk-hero for the Christian left: not only for his rejection of private property, but also for his insistence that monks subordinate their own will to the service of Christ, particularly to His image in the person of the poor, the orphan, the widow and the traveller.

Saint Benedict was born in Nursia (modern Norcia), and was a member of one of the old families there, and thus likely of Sabine heritage, who had been members of the Roman polity – both Republic and Empire – since its earliest days. According to the Dialogues of Pope Saint Gregory, he had a sister, Saint Scholastica, an infant oblate to the monastic life who is commemorated on the tenth of February; Saint Bede puts forward a tradition that she was his twin sister. The two holy siblings, Benedict and Scholastica, would meet once every year to converse on spiritual topics, to pray and to study together. In her old age, and knowing her death was nigh, when the day came Saint Scholastica asked her brother to stay and pray with her a little while longer than usual. Benedict wanted at first to return to his abbey, but Scholastica prayed to God with all her heart, and a great storm arose with such terrible thunder and lightning that Benedict could not leave their meeting-place, and thus the two siblings stayed together and conversed through the night. Saint Gregory relates this story to show the sister’s great love for her brother and the power of her humble prayers to God.

Saint Benedict spent his youth in Rome, a pupil among the great sæcular tutors in that city, at the behest of his parents. However, he soon saw that many who gained a little of the sæcular knowledge fell into ‘dissolute and lewd life’. Saint Gregory implies that it was the manners of the scions of the Roman élite among whom he lived – their greed, their lust, their desire to dominate others, their willingness to live lives of comfort and security while others starved – that utterly galled him. From them, he ‘drew back his foot’, as Saint Gregory relates, and sought out an entirely different way of life. The first miracle he performed was for his governess, who had broken a sieve for cleaning grain, restoring it by prayer to its whole state. When he had the chance, however, Saint Benedict fled from his governess and sought out a desert place, which he found in a grotto in Subiaco. There, he made the acquaintance of a hermit named Romanos, who kindly provided him with bread from his hermitage.

The early years of Benedict’s eremitical days were marked by temptation and ascetical heights: at one point he threw himself in a briar-patch to avoid the temptations of his own lust. He gathered several monks around him, and was not loath to beat them with a switch if they were found idle in their prayers. In his early rule, several disgruntled monks attempted to poison him, but by making the sign of the cross from afar off he shattered the vessel from which he was supposed to drink the atter, and bade the evil monks to reform themselves and seek another master. Later, an envious competitor – a false monk and vagrant named Florentius, tried to poison Saint Benedict with a tainted loaf of bread; this, however, was borne off by a crow which visited Saint Benedict and who ate bread from his hands. When the bread had been taken away, Saint Benedict rewarded the loyal bird with a good loaf. Yet Benedict did not return evil for evil. When he received news later that Florentius had been killed in an accident, Saint Benedict not only wept for him, but also rebuked a monk who had rejoiced at the news.

Saint Benedict had not only renounced the pleasures of the flesh and the false securities of mammon, but also the political divisions of late Rome. He made no distinction among the brothers between those who had been citizens and those who had been slaves. He also made no distinction from what race or country they came. Far from being anti-Gothic, as many Roman patricians were in those days, he welcomed Goths among his monastic community; one wonder he worked was to restore the head of a bill-hook, which a Gothic brother had been using to prune the trees when it broke and fell into a deep lake. Another miracle he worked was to restore to life a certain oblate from a noble family, who had been crushed to death by a wall that had fallen upon him as he was building it.

Saint Benedict was given, as later saints such as Saint John of Kronstadt would be given, the gifts of spiritual insight and foresight. He could tell at a glance when the brethren had eaten outside of the monastery, made improper visits outside, or even entertained proud or delusional thoughts. At another time, a monk hid a wooden flagon of wine for himself in the bushes outside; before he went back to take it, Saint Benedict told him to be wary of what may have gotten inside. As it turned out, an asp had gotten into the flagon and drunk the wine. And at yet another time, Saint Benedict foresaw that one of the abbeys he had built would one day fall to the Langobards. When he was brought before Totila King of the Ostrogoths, who had heard of this gift of Saint Benedict’s, the King had exchanged robes with one of his heretogs, Riggo, in order to fool the saint. However, Benedict was able to see at once that Riggo who greeted him was a false Totila. When Totila himself came to greet Benedict, the Gothic warlord feared greatly; Benedict prophesied to him the things which would befall him, including the loss of his kingdom and his death, and entreated him to repent of his former wickedness. Saint Gregory does not tell us whether Totila truly mended, but he did say that the Gothic king ‘from that time forward was nothing so cruel as before he had been’.

Saint Benedict became renowned from great distances for the wonders that he worked: he cured lepers, raised a child from the dead, and whenever wealth came into his hands, he did not keep it for himself but used it to aid the poor. Despite the severities of his early life, his popularity grew when word of the miracles he worked became known. Just as God promised to Abraham a great nation of sons, so too did God provide to Saint Benedict a great nation of spiritual sons, which had to be divided – like the sons of Jacob formed twelve tribes – into twelve separate monasteries, with twelve monks each. In each of the monasteries he appointed an abbot to rule; however, he himself undertook the instruction only of the youngest novices. At this point Saint Benedict undertook to write his famous Rule, which was composed based on his own study of the Desert Fathers and particularly on the model of Abba Cassian. Saint Gregory describes the Rule as being not marked for its ascetical severity, but instead ‘excellent for discretion and eloquent for the style’.

The Rule of Saint Benedict has been the great model and the golden mean, the standard by which all of Roman Catholic and Anglican monastic spirituality has been measured. Again, the emphasis in the Rule is not so much upon severities and mortifications of the flesh, as it is upon strict obedience to the abbot and the mortification of the will, the latter of which Benedict found more dangerous, particularly in older monks, than the flesh. It cannot be emphasised enough, that the great danger Benedict saw in sæcular Roman life was neither its sexual perversion nor its cultural decadence. No, to his mind these were only symptoms of a greater root evil: the will to dominate others, the temptation to set oneself up as one’s own ‘little god’, which even after its Christianisation continued to afflict the spiritual life of Rome. The ‘lust of the eyes and the pride of life’ was what Benedict aimed to staunch and destroy in the lives of his spiritual children. And to this end, the Rule that Saint Benedict laid down is truly communistic in its total renunciation of property and in its insistence on the equality of brothers under complete subjection to the abbot; any distinctions that there are among the brothers, are not distinctions of rank but rather the fruits of spiritual cultivation and willingness to serve.

To this truly-peerless starets of the West, to this great and shining spiritual grandfather and Abraham to the Western churches and to the church in England especially, we truly owe a great debt of gratitude. And in the modern day especially, we need to take up the spirit of Saint Benedict. Not in an attitude of fear, unless that be the holy fear of God, and certainly not in an attitude of withdrawal; but instead in an attitude of service, bearing in mind particularly how Benedict treated foreigners and the poor in an age of spiritual and material ruin. Our father among the saints, Holy and Venerable Benedict, entreat with Christ our God that our wretched souls may be saved!

By your ascetic labors, God-bearing Benedict,
You were proven to be true to your name.
For you were the son of benediction,
And became a rule and model for all who emulate your life and cry:
Glory to Him who gave you strength!
Glory to Him who granted you a crown!
Glory to Him who through you grants healing to all!