Guthlac, Pega and the Blind Boatman
St Pega welcomed a royal servant with a serious eye condition to the monastery founded by her brother, St Guthlac.
714-716
Anglo-Saxon Britain 410-1066
St Pega welcomed a royal servant with a serious eye condition to the monastery founded by her brother, St Guthlac.
714-716
Anglo-Saxon Britain 410-1066
After the death of St Guthlac in 714, his sister St Pega was left in charge of his hermitage at Crowland in modern-day Lincolnshire. For many years, exiled Mercian prince Æthelbald had been a frequent guest, so when one of his servants developed an eye problem which had all the doctors baffled, Crowland was their first thought.
THERE was a boatman of the aforesaid exile Athelbald* whose eyes had been for twelve months overspread with the white speck and dimness. When his physicians had long treated him with salves, and this no whit effected his healing, he was divinely admonished within, that if they brought him to Guthlac’s resting-place, he should recover his health and sight.
Not long after his friends brought him to the place Crowland, and they spoke to Christ’s servant Pega; and she was informed of the firm and fast faith of the man. Then she led him to the church wherein the venerable body of Guthlac was; she took some of the hallowed salt which Guthlac himself had formerly hallowed, and wetted it, and dropped it on his eyes; and ere she put a second drop on the second eye he was able to see with that eye, and he readily perceived what there was in the room, and he went home whole and sound.*
* From 709 to 716, when his second cousin Ceolred wore the crown, prince Æthelbald was not welcome at the Mercian court, and spent much of his time in the Fens with Guthlac. Æthelbald came to the throne of Mercia in 716, and ruled until his assassination in 757.
* See also 2 Kings 2:19-22, in which Elisha somewhat counter-intuitively purifies the irrigation waters at Jericho by throwing salt into the springs, causing the crops to grow abundantly. Salt was an essential addition to the sacrifices of the Temple: Leviticus 2:13.
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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.