Bible and Saints
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Bible and Saints’
The young monk taught some hard-hearted pagans a lesson they’d never forget.
The historian Bede (c.672-735) was a monk at Jarrow, a short distance up the River Tyne from Tynemouth in North East England. It was at Jarrow that Bede heard this story, as told by one of those who had seen it a few years earlier.
St Wilfrid finds comfort during his tussle with the King of Northumbria
St Wilfrid was made Bishop of York, capital of the ancient Kingdom of Northumbria, in 665. He was involved in constant controversy as he resented King Ecgfrith’s interference, but he was also a key figure in keeping the English Church in close contact with the Orthodox churches of Rome and Greece, for which Bede praises him.
The chapel of Bede’s monastery in Sunderland was full of the colours and sounds of the far-off Mediterranean world.
In 678, the new Pope, a Sicilian Greek named Agatho, decided to continue a recent trend of introducing Greek elements into Roman worship. St Benedict Biscop, an English abbot who visited Rome for the fifth and final time the following year, brought the sights and sounds of the eastern Mediterranean back home.
Hild founded an abbey that poured out a stream of priests and bishops for the revitalised English Church.
Hild or Hilda was a seventh-century Northumbrian princess who at the age of thirty-three became a nun. Taught by St Aidan, she was one of the early English Church’s most respected figures and was given the care of a monastery for men and women at Hartlepool, moving to Whitby in about 657. There she trained clergy to preach the gospel and lead church services for Christians all over the kingdoms of the English.