A Light to Lighten the English
Even before he was born, St Dunstan was marked out to lead the English Church and nation to more peaceful times.
909
King Edward the Elder 899-924
Even before he was born, St Dunstan was marked out to lead the English Church and nation to more peaceful times.
909
King Edward the Elder 899-924
In 793, Vikings swept across Northumbria and extinguished the beacon of Lindisfarne, symbol of England’s Christian civilisation. Much of the land lay under a pagan shadow for over a century, but St Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of King Edgar (r. 959-975), helped to rekindle both Church and State.
DUNSTAN was born near Glastonbury, in the reign of Edward the Elder;* one of his uncles was Primate,* another Bishop of Winchester,* and he was remotely allied to the royal family.
A short time before his birth, his parents, Heorstan and Cynethryth, were at church on the festival of the Purification, known in this country by the name of Candlemas, because all who attended it carried lighted candles, with which they walked in procession after the service.* In the midst of mass, the lamps and tapers were suddenly extinguished; the church, though at mid-day, was filled with a preternatural darkness; and while the whole congregation, in fear and trembling, wondered what this might portend, a fire descended from heaven, and kindled the taper in Cynethryth’s hand, thus miraculously foreshewing how great a light should from her be born into the world.
Dunstan was probably born in 909; he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 959, and died in 988. Edward, son of Alfred the Great, reigned from 899 to 924; Edgar the Peaceful came to the throne in 959. Dunstan, Ethelwold of Winchester and Oswald of Worcester were largely responsible for rebuilding the English Church after the ravages of Viking paganism. Some of their reforms owed too much to Continental fashions, notably clerical celibacy (on which Dunstan was much less rigorist than some of his contemporaries); but times were desperate and the need for reform and revitalisation was real.
That is, Archbishop of Canterbury, the first hierarch of the English Church. Dunstan’s father Heorstan was the brother of Athelm, the first bishop of Wells (909-?923) and briefly Archbishop of Canterbury; Athelm presided at the coronation of King Athelstan on September 4th, 925.
Ælfheah, Bishop of Winchester from about 934 to 951.
The Feast, which falls on February 2nd, is known by as many as four names. It commemorates the day, forty days after his birth, when Jesus was ‘redeemed’ from the Temple authorities on payment of a small fee, hence it is called the Presentation of Christ. It also commemorates Mary’s return to Jewish society after childbirth, hence it is called the Purification of the Blessed Virgin. In England it is called Candlemas, as Southey says. In the East it is called the Meeting, as it recalls Mary’s meeting with the prophet Simeon in the Temple at Jerusalem, when Simeon declared that Mary’s newborn child was destined to be the glory of Israel, and ‘a light to lighten the Gentiles’. See our post on Candlemas.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Why did Cynethryth go to church on that day?