Bible and Saints
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Bible and Saints’
As Christian is making his way along the highway that leads to the Celestial City, he finds his way barred by a foul fiend.
In John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian has left his home, knowing it will be destroyed, and set out for safety in the Celestial City. Barring his way is Apollyon, a hideous, scaly monster with a dragon’s wings and a lion’s mouth, wreathed in smoke and fire. Christian’s polite request to let him pass so he can pay his respects to the Prince of all the lands only makes the fiend more angry.
When literary critics decide that a book is not worthy of their notice they expect the public to follow their lead, but ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ was different.
In 1672, Charles II relaxed the Conventicle Act that had imprisoned preachers who were not members of the Church of England. The authorities duly released John Bunyan (1628-88) from Bedford gaol, and at once he returned to preaching. Six years later he published ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’, an immensely popular allegory of the Christian life for which literary experts had nothing but scorn.
Back in the 6th century, Mary was consumed by an addiction so compulsive that she would use and discard anyone to satisfy it.
St Mary of Egypt was a hermit of the Holy Land who made such an impression on England that Abbot Elfric (?955-?1022) left us a lengthy sermon on her extraordinary life. Her story remained a favourite long after the Norman Conquest, and the following account comes from a Martyrology customarily read out in Syon Abbey (long vanished, a victim of the Reformation) and printed in 1526.
John’s enduring influence is evident today in the rich sights and sounds of Christian liturgy.
St John Damascene (676-749) was Syrian monk and a contemporary of our own St Bede, both of them highly respected scholars with a deep love for Church music. John left us an exposition of Christian theology of enduring importance throughout east and west; he compiled a wealth of hymns, collects and prayers; and he saved Christian iconography everywhere from the hands of extremists.
Cynewulf encourages his listeners to remain committed to the Christian life, by reminding them of the reward that awaits them.
What shines out of every page of the New Testament is the promise of eternal life. In Christ, a narrative poem written in Old English sometime around 800, the poet Cynewulf drew together a number of Scriptural quotations to remind his listeners of the reward that awaits those who do not turn aside.
The lives of men are like voyages across stormy seas, but we no longer have to sail them as if they were uncharted waters.
Christ is a long narrative poem by Cynewulf, a poet writing in Old English at the turn of the ninth century, about seventy years after the death of St Bede. In the following extract, he likens human life to the tossing of ships on stormy seas, and the Christian gospel as a chart to bring our ‘sea-steeds’ safely to heaven’s harbour.