Northumberland
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Northumberland’
The more that pioneering engineer George Stephenson understood of the world around him, the more his sense of wonder grew.
Many Victorian scientists rebelled against the Church, at that time dominated by a colourless Calvinism that stifled wonder and mistrusted enthusiasm. But in private, many retained a powerful sense of the reality of God through wondering at his creation, as railway pioneer George Stephenson did.
Wonder spread through a Tyneside monastery after Bishop Cuthbert asked for a drink of water.
St Cuthbert was Bishop of Lindisfarne for just two years, but his overwhelming popularity did not come from high office. It came from his tireless journeys to forgotten villages in Northumbria’s bleak high country, taking the Christian message and a fatherly affection to every corner of the kingdom.
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.
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.
The Northumbrian saint warned of an enemy who would stop at nothing to silence the good news.
While he was a monk at Melrose in the Scottish Borders, then part of the Kingdom of Northumbria, St Cuthbert used to visit lonely villages to tell people about a God very different from the capricious pagan spirits they feared and worshipped. He became a popular figure, able to draw surprising crowds.
One of England’s most precious artefacts, the Lindisfarne Gospels, was nearly lost at sea.
Just before the Danes sacked the monastery at Lindisfarne in 793, the monks smuggled out the body of St Cuthbert, carrying it on their shoulders all over Northumbria in the hope of finding a place free from violence. Eventually, their successors led by Bishop Eardulf and Abbot Eadred lost heart, and decided to take refuge in Ireland.