Holy and Righteous Prince Richard of Wessex

Saint Richard of Wessex

Saint Richard of Wessex, also called Richard the Pilgrim by our Catholic brothers and sisters, is one of those English saints about whom we know comparatively little, but whose holy influence managed to leave a deep and long impression – in this case, in the form of his children by Winna (descendant of Cerdic and sister of Saint Boniface), all of whom would go on to become saints themselves: Saint Wealdburg, Saint Willibald and Saint Wynnebald.

But what we know about Saint Richard personally is rather sketchy; in fact, Richard is unlikely even to be his true name. We know that he was English, that he was high-born, and that he ruled over the West Saxons, likely from somewhere in Devon. He was apparently fairly devout. When his eldest son Willibald fell deathly ill, Richard wrapped him up in a blanket and took him by nightfall out to a rood righted at a crossroads near their West Saxon hamlet. Trusting in God, he lay his son at the foot of the rood, and by his faith in Christ the young boy was healed of his bane. Two years later, by way of thanks for the miracle, Richard entrusted the young boy to the care of Ecgbald abbot of Waltham, who gave him an education in preparation for the monastic life.

When Willibald grew to be a man, he returned to his home with a zeal for mission work on the Continent, and won over his father and brother to accompany him to Rome and Jerusalem. Richard’s daughter Wealdburg was entrusted to the care of the nuns at Wimborne, where she too took the veil. Richard himself renounced his estate and undertook both the monastic cowl and the life of a pilgrim along with his sons, travelling first to Gaul and then to Italy. He spent some time at Rouen, and then later came to the Tuscan town of Lucca. Richard, who by this time was well on in years and whose body was frail from travel, fell to an illness in the summer heat from which he did not recover. He reposed in the Lord in the year 722, in Lucca – where indeed he still has a local cultus of veneration, his relics being housed in the Basilica di San Frediano there.

Again, Richard’s legacy of holiness was mostly carried on through his children – all of whom became celebrated monastics and missionaries on the European Continent. Saint Willibald completed his father’s pilgrimage to Rome, to the Holy Land and to Constantinople – in some accounts the first Englishman ever to set foot in Jerusalem. Later, at the behest of his uncle Saint Boniface, Saint Willibald and his brother took up residence in the German town of Eichstätt, as the head of a Benedictine abbey.

Holy and Righteous Prince Richard, pray to God for us sinners!

Holy Hierarchs Eborius, Restitutus and Adelphius of Britain

The Constantinian Baths in Arles, France

The sixth of February is the feast day of three saintly bishops of Britain who attended, at the behest of Emperor Saint Constantine, the Synod of Arles in 314. This council was concerned with condemning the hæresy of Donatism, as well as several other issues of Church discipline and ecclesiology such as baptism, the consecration of bishops and the dating of Pascha. The three Orthodox Romano-British bishops commemorated today are Eborius of York, Restitutus of London and Adelphius, possibly of Caerleon. Eborius, at least, is a Latinised Brythonic name which in modern Welsh would be rendered Ifor, a diminutive of the name Ifan or John.

The theological stakes of that fourth-century local council were quite high, and the disillusionments that give rise to Donatism are still very much with us. There is nothing new under the sun. Even now, even today, in both the Latin and in the Greek wings of the Church, it is hard indeed to dismiss the sorts of temptations that go into this form of hæretical impulse. The Church has had within it, and has been led by, horrendously wicked sinners – abusers, blasphemers, violent, drunken, depraved, opportunistic, greedy, traitorous – and has somehow managed to survive two millennia. Bishops like Eborius and Restitutus and Adelphius of Britain were able only to restore some level of trust in the Church, on the one hand by tightening the reins firmly on what was and was not morally allowed in the Church, particularly by clergy; and on the other hand by disavowing any pretensions to absolute moral perfection in this fallen world. These three, and the forty others present at Arles, earned their saintly haloes by making known to all their own sinful ordinariness.

The Synod of Arles was also politically and ecclesiologically significant, in part, because it was the first time that issues of canon law had been discussed in the Western Church outside the personal purview of the Bishop of Rome, and it had been called by a Christian emperor ruling in the East. It was very much so a forerunning and type of the First Œcumenical Council at Nicæa, which would also be convoked by the Emperor Constantine.

The mention of these three bishops at the Synod of Arles is, in addition, one of the few firm indications we currently have from primary sources that any sort of organised Christian community existed in Roman Britain, which would have been established by Saint Joseph of Arimathæa and Saint Aristobulus of the Seventy. Holy fathers Eborius, Restitutus and Adelphius, pray unto Christ our God on behalf of us sinners!

Holy Bishops of Britain taught us true faith,
And attended church councils in order to defend it.
Eborius, Restitutus and Adelphius,
Pray for us now in our time of need.

Lihkku beivviin, Sápmi!

A very happy National Day to the Sápmi nation and to the Sámi people! Today marks the 102^nd anniversary of the first Sámi Assembly, which met across the Norwegian and Swedish borders to address certain problems, including: Sámi rights to herd reindeer (and their recognition in Norwegian courts, which had been severely curtailed under Norwegian law); as well as the cultural problem of education for young Sámi in Norway and Sweden. It was the first time that local Sámi communities had come together as a single unified body. The success of the first Sámi Assembly was limited, but it did set the precedent not only for unified political action, but also for the organisation of reindeer herders for collective bargaining and for the active preservation of the Sámi languages and cultural practices. (For many years, Norway banned the use of the Sámi language by law.)

Coincidentally, the first Kuelnegk Sobbar Куелнегк Соббар, or Kola Sámi Assembly, had been arranged some decades before on this same date in Russia, by the Skolt Sámi of the Kola Peninsula with the coöperation of Tsar Aleksandr II of Russia. (The Skolt Sámi, one of the Eastern Sámi peoples, had been converted to Orthodox Christianity by the mission of Saint Tryphon of Pechenga in the 16^th century.) For the decades leading up to 1917, this Eastern Sámi deliberative body in Tsarist Russia was the only one of its kind recognised by a Western-style nation-state. (Sadly, this deliberative body did not survive the Russian Revolution, and the Eastern Sámi were severely repressed under the Soviets.) As a result, this historical coincidence was unknown to the Sámi when the first National Day was commemorated. Today, the Eastern Sámi have reëstablished, on their own initiative, the Kuelnegk Sobbar, and they are still attempting to achieve recognition from the Russian government. If the Russian government were to recognise this body, it would be a welcome return to one of the more positive aspects of the Tsarist period, as well as a positive affirmation of Russia’s commitment to the principles of federalism.

Today, Sámi National Day is fully recognised in Norway, with the national anthem of the Sámi being played publicly from the City Hall in Oslo; and it is recognised as a flag-day in Sweden and Finland. The Sámi themselves celebrate the day as a festival with flags, joik singing and traditional handicrafts.

Those of us on this continent have reason to celebrate and defend Sápmi as well. The Sámi people have stood with the Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux of Standing Rock since the beginning of the pipeline protests there, and were even the first to successfully pressure a public fund to divest from the pipeline by way of indigenous solidarity. On their own ground, too, they also fight for the right to clean water and air: against mining concerns and also against climate change more broadly, which stands to affect their traditional livelihoods in a direct and immediate way.

逐年快樂！

閤家歡樂！身體健康！嵗嵗平安！年年有餘！祝大家新年快樂！

Holy Bishop Rimbert of Bremen

The cathedral at Bremen, where Saint Rimbert served

On the fourth of February, in the Orthodox Church, we remember the feast of Saint Rimbert, a beloved saint among the Frisians and second apostle of the North after Saint Ansgar, whose companion in missionary labours he was, whose hagiography he wrote himself, and who was entrusted with the monastic rule of Bremen and Hamburg upon that saint’s repose.

Born in or near Bruges in Flanders, little is known of Rimbert’s early life before he joined a Benedictine community at Turholt. He was called upon by Saint Ansgar to serve as part of his northern missions, and before Saint Ansgar reposed in the Lord he recommended his brother Rimbert with these self-beshedding words of praise: ‘Rimbert is more worthy to be archbishop, than I [am] to discharge the office of his deacon.’

Saint Rimbert was thereupon chosen by all, in a moot held on the fourth of February in 865, to become archbishop of Bremen and Hamburg, and oversaw all of the churches in those two cities as well as the missions in Sweden and Denmark and among the Saxons. He also broadened his Christian witness and bore it among the Western Slavs (Sclavi and Vendeli). This was around the same time as Saints Cyril and Methodius were bearing the Gospel among the Rusin people and the Southern Slavs – now the Serbs and the Bulgarians. It must be noted here when considering the Orthodox remembrance of Saint Rimbert, that even though the Frankish (later German) and Byzantine Empires may have been in gæopolitical competition with each other even at this early date, the missions of the saints associated with West and East among the Slavic peoples were originally not in competition.

As with the later Saint Bernward, the threats to the Christianised Saxon people came as much from the East but from the West. The proud, spiteful and vengeful attitude of the sæcular Frankish conquerors toward the beaten Saxons actually hampered the missionary efforts of Saint Rimbert as it did those of Saint Bernward. Only through the gracious and peaceable witness of the churchmen were the souls of the Saxon folk spared from a relapse into heathenry. In addition, the Normans of northern Francia long continued to pester the Saxons on the continent with raiding and plunder, even after their conversion. Saint Rimbert even sold the chalice and ornaments of his cathedral church in order to ransom back innocent Saxons who had been taken as thralls or as gisels by raiding Normans. (In a similar story, Saint Rimbert traded the horse he rode on to redeem a young Saxon maiden who had been taken for wicked purposes by heathen Wends to the east.)

The good Benedictine Rimbert was always attentive and kept the offices of his monastic discipline with great regularity and seriousness. He was careful not to waste any of his time or attention when he kept the prayers and vigils of the Rule. He wrote down the life of his predecessor Saint Ansgar, which was noted for both its historical accuracy and for the great love which he bore for Ansgar. He reposed in the Lord on the eleventh of June, 888. Holy Father Rimbert, pray to Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Saints Laurence, Wærburg and Ansgar

The third of February is a good day for English and Western European pre-schismatic saints, it seems – no less than three of them celebrate a feast-day today: Laurence of Canterbury and Wærburh of Ely of the seventh century, and Ansgar of Bremen of the ninth.

Our father among the saints, Holy Hierarch Laurence of Canterbury

One of the clergy who accompanied Saint Augustine from Rome on his mission to Kent, Laurence – also an Italian by birth – was deeply trusted by Saint Augustine and was the one sent back to Pope Saint Gregory in Rome to establish a correspondence between Rome and the new English Church in the wake of Æþelberht cyning’s baptism. Together, Augustine and Laurence worked assiduously to strengthen the new Church and to shore up the Roman rite among the newly-baptised Saxons, as well as to establish a uniformity between the Celtic traditions of the native Britons and their own Roman customs. Shortly upon his return, also, Saint Augustine consecrated Saint Laurence as a coadjutant bishop and successor, worried that the Saxons might revert to heathenry upon his repose.

Saint Augustine’s worries were not groundless. Éadbald of Kent had not been baptised along with his father Æþelberht, and it was he who took the throne when Saint Æþelberht reposed. And the saintly Laurence’s admonitions to him to do so had the opposite effect of the one intended, for he stubbornly persisted in his heathenry. Furthermore, Éadbald had married his own stepmother in contravention of Church law, and refused to put her aside.

The entire mission in England being in danger of failure, in 617 or 618 Saint Laurence’s companions Mellitus of London and Justus of Rochester had already left for Gaul. Saint Laurence, in a state of despair at his predecessor’s work coming to ruin, himself made preparations to join them. On the night before he was to quit England altogether, though, he was visited in a dream by Saint Peter. Saint Peter asked Laurence his reasons for leaving England, chastised him for lightly abandoning his charge and leaving the souls of the entire English flock to the wolves, and then began beating him with a heavy whip.

In the morning after this terrible dream, Laurence arose with the welts and stripes of the whip still upon his body. He showed himself before Éadbald King, who himself was roused to fury and fear that someone would dare to lay hands on a man in his care. Then Saint Laurence related to him the dream that he had seen, and by this token Éadbald finally came to believe. Éadbald thereupon put aside his incestuous liaison and consented to be baptised in the name of the Holy Trinity.

Saints Mellitus and Justus were then called back to England from Gaul, and the mission work among the English nation continued. When Saint Laurence met his repose on the 2^nd of February, 619, his relics interred near to his friend and superior Saint Augustine in the abbey church.

Holy Mother Wærburg the Venerable of Trentham

The daughter of Wulfhere King of Mercia and his wife Saint Eormenhild of Ely, born at Stone in 650, Wærburg’s life, like that of a number of other English saints of her time, is something of an enigma. It is known that she was pious from a very early age, and that – though a beauty of some renown, as well as a politically-advantageous match – she rejected the suits of all would-be husbands and resolved instead for the life of contemplation of God. After obtaining her father’s consent, she went to the convent at Ely (which had been founded by and was then under the rule of her great-aunt Saint Æþelþrýð) and there took holy orders as a nun.

The family of Saint Wærburg was to be prominent among the leadership of the convent. After Saint Æþelþrýð’s repose, Saint Wærburg’s grandmother Saint Seaxburg became abbess. After her father Wulfhere’s death, Saint Wærburg’s mother Eormenhild would enter Ely and become abbess in turn. And after her mother’s blessed repose she herself became abbess at Ely. As abbess, and as advisor to her royal uncle Æþelræd, she embarked on an ambitious reform of all the monasteries in Mercia, and indeed founded new monastic houses of prayer at Trentham, Weedon Bec and Hanbury.

Several miracles are attributed to Saint Wærburg. In one farm close to Weedon Bec, a flock of wild geese was harassing a farm and eating the crop. Saint Wærburg went to the farm and ordered the wild geese to be penned up for the night – and they meekly obeyed. In the morning she scolded them for having stolen from the farmer and eaten his wheat. However, the geese continued to eat from the farmer’s wheatfields. In frustration, the farmer’s steward slew one of the birds, cooked it and ate it. Saint Wærburg went to the steward and ordered him to show her the goose’s bones, which he did. Thereupon Saint Wærburg laid a hand on the bones, restored the poor bird’s flesh and feathers and brought it back to life. The whole flock of wild geese then left gratefully, and did not trouble the farmer’s household again.

Saint Wærburg, having lived an active and fruitful life as a nun and as an abbess, reposed in the Lord on the 3^rd of February, 700. She had chosen to be buried at Hanbury, but was at Trentham when she met her repose. The nuns at Trentham were loath to part with her relics, and kept them under lock and key. However, when a deputation from Hanbury arrived to take her relics back thither, the guards that kept Saint Wærburg’s relics were overcome with sleep, and the locks over her relics sprang open to the touch of the Hanbury nuns. Thus was Saint Wærburg translated to her wonted final rest. Her relics were found to be incorrupt when they were again translated within Hanbury some nine years later. In order to protect her relics from the heathen Danes, they were translated again in the 870s to the city of Chester, where they remained until the destruction of the monasteries under Henry VIII.

Our father among the saints Ansgar, Apostle of the North and Enlightener of the Danes

Born in 801 in Amiens, Picardy to a noble Frankish family, Saint Ansgar was orphaned at a young age and raised in the Abbey at Corbie which had been founded by the English Saint Bealdhild. He was apparently a fairly rowdy child, not interested at all in spiritual matters, until he beheld an image of his mother in a dream, in the company of the Most Holy Theotokos. He thereupon bent his concentration upon holy matters, and soon became a monk himself there. This happened at a time when France was coming under threat from heathen invaders from the north, yet young Ansgar was bold enough to volunteer to be sent to Christianise the heathen all the same.

Saint Ansgar was among several missionaries who were responsible for founding and strengthening another monastery named Corbie among the newly-baptised Saxons in Westfalen. At one point the king of Denmark, Harald Halfdanarson, who was newly-baptised and allied to King Louis the Pious, requested that the king send monks into his country to found a school and to take up the work of converting his people, the Danes, to Christianity. Ansgar was sent on this mission by the Frankish king with a companion, and the two of them accompanied Harald King back to Denmark. They did as they had been bidden to do, set up a school in Jylland and even made some headway in conversions, but Ansgar’s companion died shortly afterward. Ansgar himself was obliged to leave when another request was made by Björn af Haugi, king of the Swedes, for a missionary.

Ansgar set out for Sweden, but his ship was attacked by heathens in viking, who took all of his churchly goods and left him for dead on a desolate beach. Ansgar was obliged to go on foot across Scania and northward until he reached the town of Birka, in a small island in Uppland. Björn king welcomed Ansgar there, and allowed him to preach the Gospel freely as he would. Apart from the Christians that were there as thralls and gisels to the heathen, many Swedes were intrigued by the new faith, and bent their ears to hear Ansgar’s preaching. He spent half a year there, and founded a small Orthodox church which he left in the care of the king’s steward Hergeir and a rich widow named Frideborg.

Upon his return, Ansgar was consecrated bishop at Hamburg – the first bishop of that title and diocæse – and was entrusted with the care of the abbey at New Corbie. From there, for fourteen years, he conducted more missions into Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and further among the half-converted Saxons. In 845, however, heathen heres and ships from Denmark destroyed Hamburg and overran the Christian church there. Saint Ansgar was given the see of Bremen in its place, but he was forced for the time being to flee the northern reaches of the Frankish march.

The saintly bishop relentlessly resumed his preaching in Denmark, despite the destruction of his school at the hands of the heathen in 854 and despite near-constant setbacks and political intrigues among the Nordic nobility which constantly threatened his life and the success of his preaching. He created a lasting foothold: a small church in Schleswig. And he pursued his preaching even in Sweden. Olof king, who now reigned there, cast lots to determine whether or not he should allow missionaries within his sway – which Ansgar lamented as an arbitrary act unworthy of a king. God saw to it that the lot, however, fell in his favour, and he was able to preach uninhibited for the rest of Olof king’s reign.

Bishop Saint Ansgar was renowned for his great charity to the poor, and for his ascetic disciplines: which included rigorously keeping the fasts (even on bread and water), and wearing a hair shirt. He also added his own short prayers when reciting the Psalms. He reposed in the Lord at the age of sixty-four and was buried in Bremen. Though the work he did in Christianising the northern Germanic peoples did not bear immediate fruit – only with Sigefrið of Växjö would Christianity retain its hold in Sweden – the Germanic peoples of Scandinavia still remembered Bishop Ansgar with deep fondness and considered him for a long time their particular patron.

Holy Hierarch Laurence, Holy Venerable Mother Wærburg and Venerable Bishop Ansgar, pray to God for us sinners!

Ever moved by love for God and man, O Ansgar,
Like the apostles thou didst journey afar to bring salvation to the benighted,
Offering up thine afflictions upon the altar of thy heart,
In thy toils and distress bearing witness unto thy Saviour,
Like a martyr, enduring perils on land and at sea for His sake,
Undaunted by temptations and tribulations.
Wherefore, pray with boldness, that our souls be saved.

The light of London

Saint Eorcenwald, Bishop of London

At London in Englonde noʒt fulle longe tyme
Sythen Crist suffride on crosse and cristendome stablyde
Ther was a byschop in that burghe blessyd and sacryd
Saynt Erkenwolde as I hope that holy mon hatte
In his tyme in that ton the temple aldergrattyst
Was drawen don that one dole to dedifie new
For hit hethen had bene in Hengyst dawes…

　　- From the Middle English poem St Erkenwald, written ca. 1386

The first of February is the feast of the translation of the relics of Saint Eorcenwald, Abbot of Chertsey and Bishop of London – one of the saints of Barking.

We don’t know much about the early life of Eorcenwald, except that he was probably of high birth and was an early convert to Christianity, probably under Saint Mellitus of Canterbury. He took holy orders, and was appointed by Saint Theodore of Tarsus as bishop for the East Angles at London. He sold away his share of his family’s wealth in order to establish two Benedictine houses of prayer – in this way anticipating the great Benedict of the North, Saint Biscop. For men, he established the abbey at Chertsey over which he himself presided as Abbot; and for women he established the cloister at Barking, over which his sister Æþelburg was placed as Abbess, with the saintly Mother Hildalíþ as her tutor. The two monastic siblings remained very close lifelong, and would accompany each other on journeys when the occasion arose. Saint Eorcenwald suffered from gout, and was not able to stand or walk for long distances without great pain – he had to be carried on a rickshaw by one of his brother-monks when the need arose for him to journey.

A Middle English poem, of which the first verses are quoted above, survives, recounting one of the miracles Saint Eorcenwald performed at Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London. When repairs were being made to the building, the workers uncovered the body of a man wearing a crown and holding a sceptre. Saint Eorcenwald then held a Liturgy and prayed for the soul of the man whose corpse had been disturbed – and later asked the man who he was. The man’s soul replied that in life he had been a great lawgiver among men, renowned for the fairness of his judgements, but that he was kept out from the gates of the Heavenly City because he had died a heathen, without the laver of regeneration. At this Saint Eorcenwald began to weep piteously over the body, saying that he wished he could have baptised the man in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Upon saying this, the soul of the man leaped up in joy, and he thanked Saint Eorcenwald for washing him with his tears in the name of the Holy Trinity – and thereupon the soul of the righteous judge departed and the body crumbled away into dust.

A peacemaker by temperament, the most significant duty Saint Eorcenwald had as Bishop of London under Archbishop Saint Theodore was one of reconciliation. He attempted firstly to reconcile the differing religious customs of the native Celtic Britons (who had their own long-held religious tradition) with those of their newly-Christianised invaders, the Saxons (who largely adopted Roman customs under the patronage of Pope Saint Gregory of Rome). Further, Saint Eorcenwald was instrumental in healing the long and abiding grudge over ecclesiastical jurisdictions in the English North between Archbishop Saint Theodore of Canterbury and Bishop Saint Wilfrið of York. That dispute was settled and the two saintly men forgave each other in the Abbey at Chertsey where Saint Eorcenwald ruled, shortly before Archbishop Theodore reposed. Saint Eorcenwald himself would repose in the Lord at his sister’s cloister at Barking around the year 690.

In the time of Saint Bede the Venerable, Eorcenwald’s relics had already gained a reputation for working wonders, and custody over them was a matter of some dispute between the three great houses of worship which he had favoured – St Paul’s in London, St Peter’s at Chertsey and St Mary’s at Barking. As the monastics of the three houses were arguing, a heavy storm broke. In the midst of the rain, the sun shone through a gap in the clouds, pointing the way to St Paul’s in London – and by this wonder the dispute was settled, and thither were his relics moved. The relics of Saint Eorcenwald were translated twice – the first time on 14 November 1148 into a new shrine in the Cathedral, and the second time on 1 February 1326.

Holy and Righteous Bishop Eorcenwald, pray to God for us sinners!