Medieval Saints Week

This is a week full of veneration for minor Saints from the Middle Ages.  There’s a king, a queen and a princess.  There are bishops, priest and abbesses as well.  They lived over a 600 year period between 600ad and 1250ad.  It’s a week that suggests a deep reverence and piety among the educated classes during the medieval period.  Either that or Popes of that age wanted to promote such reverence in the laity by canonizing role models!  But regardless, this week, we’ll survey these medieval saints.

   

November 15: Albert the Great, Friar and Bishop of Ratisbon (c. 1200 – 1280ad)—Albert was one of the great thinkers of the Middle Ages who is famed for his advocacy of the coexistence of natural science and religion and his vast breadth of knowledge.  His interests and innovations ranged over a liberal spectrum of ideas including theology, philosophy, psychology, natural sciences and arts.  He was a tremendous influence on his student Thomas Aquinas and other great thinkers of his age, including Roger Bacon, and was beloved for his gift of teaching.  Albert became a friar in the Dominican Order in 1223. During his life as a friar of the order, he was given three major tasks.  The first was an appointment as regent of studies at a newly created Dominican University in Cologne.  Later, he was made provincial prior for the German-speaking province of the order because, oh yeah, he also was fluent in a number of languages.  This task required a great deal of travel, visiting each abbey, convent, monastery and parish within the order.  The third great task was to become Bishop of Ratisbon and to reform the abuses of that diocese.  Through the urging of Pope Urban IV, Albert became a major proponent for the Crusades.  He was canonized and made a Doctor of the Church (one of only 35) in 1931. He’s listed on the Anglican calendar only in some places.

November 16: Margaret, Queen of Scotland (c. 1045 – 1093ad)—Most of us are probably more familiar with Margaret’s husband, Malcolm III, who was made famous in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth.  Margaret is arguably Scotland’s favorite of saints.  She was the daughter of the exiled King of Wessex and born in Hungary.  She grew up in the very religious environment of the Hungarian court, and the piety she developed in those formative years remained a defining aspect of her character throughout her life, and even her children’s lives.  Her family returned to England, when her father became heir presumptive to Edward the Confessor.  When he died shortly after their arrival, the family’s safety was once again threatened by the Norman Conquest of 1066. This was when Margaret arrived in Scotland. Her mother and siblings sought refuge from King Malcolm III, and the introduction of Margaret to the king is one of the great romances of English/Scots history. Together, the king and queen raised a happy family of eight children (six sons and two daughters, many of whom became kings and queens in their own right).  Margaret was responsible for a number of religious reforms and charities in Scotland, and indeed the greater Church, including establishing the beginning of Lent with Ash Wednesday (where previously, Lent began the Monday following Ash Wednesday).  She introduced the Benedictines to Scotland and had built the Abbey of Dunfermline.  She died a mere three days after being told of the death of her husband and eldest son in the battle of Alnwick in 1093.  She was canonized in 1250 and is venerated as a saint in the Anglican Church.

November 17: Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln (c. 1135 – 1200ad)—Until the Reformation, Hugh of Lincoln was the most well-known English Saint after Thomas Beckett.  Although Hugh was born into a royal family in France, he  literally grew up in a Benedictine Abbey and became a member of the Carthusian Order and joined the Grande Chartreuse (the mother house of the Carthusians, an order that takes a vow of silence and observes strict statutes).  When Henry II of England agreed to pay penance for the murder of Bishop Thomas Beckett in 1170, he was supposed to go on a crusade.  But since that proved an unviable option, he agreed instead to establish a  Carthusian Charterhouse—the first in England—in Lincoln.  He insisted the Grande Chartreuse sent Hugh.  When Hugh arrive in Lincoln, it was to monks living in shacks and no sign of a charterhouse in the works.  He chided the king for not living up to his promises.  Hugh called for a council of bishops to review the state of the church in England and advocated the empty bishoprics be filled, one of them being the Diocese of Lincoln.  Hugh, then was made bishop in 1186. Hugh was rather instrumental in keeping Henry II in line.  Hugh did not suffer the same fate as Thomas Beckett primarily because he was far more tactful and diplomatic in his dealings with the king.   But the bishop and king agreed on very little. Saint Hugh is often depicted in art with a swan.  This is in reference to a sweet story of how a swan took to following Bishop Hugh everywhere he went.  The swan had imprinted on the bishop and followed him from Stowe to Lincoln and was his constant companion, even keeping guard over the bishop while he slept.  The legend says that assassins sent by King Henry II were thwarted by God’s swan.  Hugh died from complications from an illness in 1200 and was canonized in 1220ad.

November 18: Hilda, Abbess of Whitby (614ad – 680)—Hilda was born into the nobility and raised in a king’s court.  She was instructed by Paulinus and Augustine in preparation of her baptism when she 13.  She spent 33 years of her life living a secular life in the court of East Anglia.  Upon the king’s death, she fled to live with her sister and planned to enter a convent in Gaul.  But Bishop Aidan of Lindisfarne called her to Northumbria and it was there that she became a nun in a small monastic order.  Bishop Aidan soon appointed her as Abbess of Hartlepoole as she was gifted in areas of administration and teaching.  Hilda had a joyous enthusiasm for learning that was infectious.  Most of the monks under her tutelage were eligible to become ordained priests, and she was responsible for the education of three bishops.  But she also had strong feelings about educating the common folk as well.  She encouraged a young herder to pursue his poetry, and Caedmon became one of the greatest poets of the Gospel of his time. Hilda founded the Abbey of Whitby in 657 and lasted until Henry VIII ordered the dissolution of monasteries in 1540.  Originally called Streoneshalh, the Abbey followed the Celtic tradition of monastic life.  But in  664, the Synod of Whitby determined that the order of the Church would follow the Roman style and abolish the Celtic style.  Abbess Hilda agreed for expediency, but continued to adhere to her favored Celtic traditions whenever possible.  Hilda died in 680 and was canonized “pre-congregation,” that is, before investigative practices for canonization were observed.

November 19: Princess Elizabeth of Hungary (1207 -1231ad)—Elizabeth was the daughter of King Andrew II of Hungary.  Even as a young child, Elizabeth keenly felt the plight of the destitute and needy.  She gave whatever she could, whenever she could to those who had nothing.  At the age of 14 she was married to 20-year-old Louis, Landgrave of Thuringia (“Landgrave” is a title given to a count who answers directly to the Holy Roman Emperor rather than a ducal intermediary).  By all accounts, theirs was a happy marriage wherein her charitable whims were not only indulged but encouraged by her husband.  They had three children together in the short nine years of their marriage, which ended when Louis died from plague incurred during his travels to Italy.  Elizabeth would periodically empty the coffers in order to build social and charitable institutions, mainly hospitals but also schools, orphanages and shelters for the homeless and impoverished.  Her husband allowed her to spend her dowry on her charities, believing that giving away his wealth would bring eternal reward in Heaven.  When her husband died, life changed dramatically for Elizabeth.  Louis brother, Heinrich, was infuriated by the “waste of her dowry” and by her “extravagances” and ordered Elizabeth cast out of the court and her children removed from her care.  With nowhere to go, Inquisitor Konrad von Marburg was appointed to her defense. His treatment of her held her to standards of behavior impossible to maintain.   Ultimately, the last few years of her life after Louis’ death were harsh and extremely limited.  Her family was ordered to give her a subsistence allowance, but that too was under Konrad’s control.  When she had nothing material to give to her charitable causes, she gave her time and her labor, working with the sick and the needy in the hospitals she had established.  She died from illness brought on by deprivation in 1231 and was canonized four years later.  To this day, St. Elizabeth is one of the most beloved Saints in Hungary.

November 20: Edmund, King of East Anglia (841 – 870ad)—England has some truly wonderful and comic place names like Tongue-of-Gangsta, Newton Unthank, Cockup Bottom and Assloss.  Most names have a reason and meaning behind them that is more than mere sport.  Like Bury St. Edmunds.  In this case, “bury” derives from the Viking Danelaw that was established by the annexing of England by King Alfred the Great.  Along the border, fortifications were built and given names with suffixes like –borough, -burg and –bury.  These suffixes are rooted in the old Germanic word that means “fortress, shelter, protection.”  It is from this same root that the word “bury” (as in what one does with a corpse) derives.  So it’s not entirely tongue-in-cheek that the town of Bury St. Edmunds is so called because there rests the body of King Edmund the Martyr.  Edmund was king of East Anglia just before Alfred the Great became King of Wessex.  Little is known of King Edmund other than the story of his martyrdom perpetuated by Abbo of Fleury, a French monk born nearly 200 years after Edmunds death.  The invading Vikings raided and pillaged their way through England until they came to East Anglia where young Edmund ruled.  Edmund was a very devout Christian and ruled with equity and piety.  The Viking leader, Hinguar, offered Edmund the chance to continue to rule in peace if he would acknowledge the Viking supremacy and renounce Christ.  Edmund refused.  He told Hinguar the story of Jesus’ Passion and said that like Christ, he would lay down his arms.  Hinguar had Edmund beaten with cudgels.  Still, Edmund would not renounce Christ.  The Viking leader had Edmund tied to a tree and flayed with whips.  But Edmund remained faithful, calling for Jesus’ mercy.  Like Sebastian, Edmund was riddled with arrows from the Viking army, yet he would not renounce his faith in Christ Jesus.  Finally, in blind fury, Hinguar ended Edmund’s ceaseless praising of Christ by striking the young king’s head from his body.  Rather than quelling the Christian community, the death of their king caused the people of East Anglia to rise against the invaders.  It made it easy for them to ally with King Alfred to force back the Vikings into what became the Danelaw.  Edmund was buried in Beodericsworth which became Bury St. Edmunds.  

From this week’s plethora of saints, we learn of the fortitude of Christian faith in the first millennium of Western Christianity.  We see that it is a faith of action and growth. Each saint lived the words of Christ in learning, charity and love of neighbor.  Each saint is venerated as a model for Christians of all times to emulate, a model of Christian devotion.  While their stories have softened and become romanticized through the ages, the foundation of truth in their histories is easily seen in what remains important in the telling.