Posts Tagged ‘Dark Ages’

And Today’s Saint Is….

Posted in General, On This Day on March 1st, 2011 by Eugene Finerman – 2 Comments

March 1st:  Happy St. David’s Day.

St David of Wales silverIn honor of the Patron Saint of Wales, it is customary to wear and eat a leek. This would also make David the patron saint of halitosis.

Living in the sixth century, David should have had a few legends in which he fought dragons and evil wizards. He was a contemporary of King Arthur, but David was apparently immune to excitement. His life reads like a human resource manual. The drab, charisma-free man would have been a disaster as a missionary, but he was ideal for doing a pew inventory. And that is exactly what Wales needed.

The impoverished, mountainous region had been inundated with refugees, the survivors of Roman Britain. Fleeing the Angles-Saxons, these Britons had lost their classical culture, their knowledge of Latin, even an awareness of vowels. They had regressed to a more primitive Celtic society. The Church feared that they would lose their Christianity too.

The methodical David prevented that by making the Church unavoidable. He founded churches and monasteries throughout Wales. These ecclesiastical franchises were the foundations on which society could stabilize and begin to rebuild. David’s bureaucratic nature may well have saved Wales. Without him, the dispossessed, despairing Britons might well have skipped off the nearest cliff. (Lemming does sound like a Welsh name.)

So remember St. David. He is the closest that a saint will ever get to a MBA.

How the Irish Created Catholicism

Posted in General, On This Day on August 5th, 2010 by Eugene Finerman – 3 Comments

August 5, 641: A sainthood is always a nice consolation gift

On this day in 641, King Oswald of Northumbria became a martyr. He died attacking another English kinglet–Penda of Mercia—who evidently could defend himself. Since Penda was a pagan, that qualified Oswald for a sainthood. If Penda had also been Christian, then the slaughter would only have been intramural–and Oswald’s death would not have scored a halo.

But Penda’s victory was really the last Valhalliday for British pagans. The Angle-Saxon kingdoms were succumbing to the power and organization of an indominable Church: the Church of Ireland. Yes, at the time when the Pope was a threadbare Byzantine flunky–with the social standing of an assistant postmaster in Macedonia–the autonomous Church of Ireland was thriving, sending out its missionaries throughout the British Isles and onto the European continental. Britain, the Low Countries and Germany were being converted to the brogue.

By contrast, Rome’s organization in western Europe was a tenuous and nepotic network of patricians who served as bishops to protect themselves and their estates from barbarian encroachments. (The barbarians showed a superstitious deference to the Church; that was one way you could tell that they were barbarians.) This Church was hostage to the moods of barbarian princes as well as Byzantine magistrates. (Popes had been hauled off in chains to Constantinople.) So any claim to Rome’s primacy would have been a joke.

Yet, Rome persistently made that claim. Of course, it would have been effortless to ignore the pretensions of a figurehead of a theoretical church. But the Church of Ireland did not. By the mid-seventh century, it had grown and now was adminstering the ecclesiastical policies of all Britain. Yet a number of its prelates felt their British Church should abandon its autonomy and become subordinate to Rome. They were willing to cede their power and independence for the sake of a spiritual idea. Perhaps that was Christianity in action. The Celtic/British Church convened at a council in Whitby in 661 and, in effect, voted itself out of existence. The most organized and dynamic ecclesiastical system in Western Europe had submitted itself to a powerless, precariously balanced bishop in Rome.

And with that recognition, the Roman Church had become Catholic.

How the Irish Created Catholicism

Posted in General, On This Day on August 5th, 2008 by Eugene Finerman – 2 Comments

August 5, 641: A sainthood is always a nice consolation gift

On this day in 641, King Oswald of Northumbria became a martyr. He died attacking another English kinglet–Penda of Mercia—who evidently could defend himself. Since Penda was a pagan, that qualified Oswald for a sainthood. If Penda had also been Christian, then the slaughter would only have been intramural–and Oswald’s death would not have scored a halo.

But Penda’s victory was really the last Valhalliday for British pagans. The Angle-Saxon kingdoms were succumbing to the power and organization of an indominable Church: the Church of Ireland. Yes, at the time when the Pope was a threadbare Byzantine flunky–with the social standing of an assistant postmaster in Macedonia–the autonomous Church of Ireland was thriving, sending out its missionaries throughout the British Isles and onto the European continental. Britain, the Low Countries and Germany were being converted to the brogue.

By contrast, Rome’s organization in western Europe was a tenuous and nepotic network of patricians who served as bishops to protect themselves and their estates from barbarian encroachments. (The barbarians showed a superstitious deference to the Church; that was one way you could tell that they were barbarians.) This Church was hostage to the moods of barbarian princes as well as Byzantine magistrates. (Popes had been hauled off in chains to Constantinople.) So any claim to Rome’s primacy would have been a joke.

Yet, Rome persistently made that claim. Of course, it would have been effortless to ignore the pretensions of a figurehead of a theoretical church. But the Church of Ireland did not. By the mid-seventh century, it had grown and now was adminstering the ecclesiastical policies of all Britain. Yet a number of its prelates felt their British Church should abandon its autonomy and become subordinate to Rome. They were willing to cede their power and independence for the sake of a spiritual idea. Perhaps that was Christianity in action. The Celtic/British Church convened at a council in Whitby in 661 and, in effect, voted itself out of existence. The most organized and dynamic ecclesiastical system in Western Europe had submitted itself to a powerless, precariously balanced bishop in Rome.

And with that recognition, the Roman Church had become Catholic.