History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘History’
Anglo-Saxon poet Cynewulf imagines the farewell between Jesus and his Apostles, forty days after his resurrection.
Cynewulf (possibly the 8th century bishop Cynewulf of Lindisfarne) imagines Christ’s last words to his Apostles, before a cloud came and took him from their sight, never to be seen again – and yet, somehow, never to leave them.
A Roman commander facing court martial took refuge in politics, and for ten years London was an imperial capital.
Roman Britain was no backwater: it was prosperous and civilised, and its people were critical of Rome’s bungled wars in the East and porous borders in Europe. In fact, her people felt ready to govern themselves, making Britannia a good place to start for would-be Emperors.
The earliest Christians longed to celebrate the resurrection together at Passover, but that was not as easy as it sounds.
To keep Easter together during the Biblical festival of Passover was the shared dream of all the earliest Christian churches. But everyone seemed to have questions about how and when to celebrate the most important feast of the year, and no one seemed to have answers.
King Ecgfrith of Northumbria dismissed repeated warnings about his imperial ambitions.
The location of ‘Nechtansmere’, the Old English name for a crucial battle in 685 between Northumbria and the Picts of Scotland, is uncertain, though it appears to have taken place in mountainous country north of the Tay. Its result, however, could not be more clear: Northumbria would now begin its slow decline.
An Irish princess fled to Cumbria to escape the Vikings, clutching her precious silver bracelet.
St Bega gave her name to the former Priory at St Bees, on the Cumbrian coast. Later biographers buried her life under conventional mediaeval romance, and confused her with St Begu, founder of a monastery at Hartlepool in the 7th century. But beneath it all lies a ninth-century Irish princess, and a mysterious bracelet.
The long-lost monastery at Crayke in North Yorkshire was home to two saints with different but equally valuable gifts.
Crayke in North Yorkshire was at one time home to a thriving monastic community, founded by St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne (634-687), and blessed with two eighth-century saints, St Echa (or Etha) whose feast is kept on May 5th, and St Ultan, commemorated on August 8th.