Christianity in Albion—The Feast of St. Aidan, August 31

18th century map of ancient Albion

In the latter part of the first century, a strange new religion began emerging on the island of Albion.  This odd religion had little organization in spite of the zealous fervor of its believers.  But its foothold on the island was inexorable. Part of the oddity derived from its arrival that coincided with the pantheistic Romans.  This religion spoke of one Christ whose life, death and resurrection serves as redemption for the whole world. It spoke of religious law being that from Christ, rather than the law of Moses.  As Christianity was being introduced to Albion (today, the island is more commonly known as Great Britain), so was it gathering a following on the other Gallic isles—particularly Ireland.

By the end of the third century a.d., Ireland was a stronghold for Christianity, even while it clung hard to its pagan past. This is important because Celtic Christianity developed concurrently but independently of Roman Christianity.  Celtic Christianity grew in Ireland and Scotland, establishing a number of convents and monasteries.  One such monastery was St. Columba founded on the Isle of Iona.  In the meantime, Albion was subjected to wave after wave of invaders from the main continent.  The Roman Empire’s insidious spread through Europe brought the first of the underground Christians.  By the end of the third century, Emperor Constantine had made Christianity legal, so Christians in Albion were able to build churches with little fear of retribution.  As the Roman hold over Albion weakened, the next wave of invaders, the Anglo-Saxons brought their version of Christianity to the island, augmenting the already established Roman Christianity.  But it wasn’t until King Edwin of Northumbria converted to Christianity and was baptized on April 11, 627a.d. that Christianity gained any true legitimacy in Britain.  

St. Aidan

King Edwin, full of his new birth in Christianity, wanted to evangelize his kingdom.  So he petitioned to a number of monasteries in the south to supply monks for his churches.  But Edwin fell in battle and left a succession controversy in his wake.  Eventually and with much fratricide and patricide, Oswald, a nephew who had been exiled, became the King of Northumbria.  During his exile, Oswald had spent time at St. Columba on Iona and himself converted to Christianity—the Celtic version.  (Can you see the inevitable religious conflict arising?)  King Oswald sent to St. Columba to provide a bishop for the episcopate of Northumbria.  St. Columba sent a monk named Cormán.  But his method was harsh and tactless—he claimed the people were “stupid and unteachable.”  When Aidan, another monk criticized Cormán, suggesting that perhaps it was his methods that were the fault, Aidan was sent in his stead.

King Oswald appointed Aidan as his Bishop, and Bishop Aidan chose the isle of Lindisfarne as his see.  For Lindisfarne is similar to Iona, and once the Abbey was established must have felt very much like his former home.  Lindisfarne is a tidal island and twice daily is accessible by foot via its causeway.  Once the Abbey was built and functioning, the island became known simply as Holy Island and still referred to as such today.  Aidan did not hide out on his island.  He was brought there to evangelize the people and so he did.  He walk among the villages of Northumbria, teaching Christianity in a way that applied to their lives.  In his early years, King Oswald had to serve as Aidan’s interpreter because Aidan knew no English.  But it wasn’t long before the bishop learned.  He became well-loved and accepted among the people.  He accepted twelve lads into the monastery to learn how to do what he did and to become “Northumbrian Apostles.”  Aidan walked everywhere he went—even as far as London to the south.  He walked because every time the King gave him a horse, Aidan gave it away to a beggar or farmer or fellow traveler.  Bishop Aidan is venerated today as the Apostle of Britain.  Wherever he went, Aidan presented a practical and attractive representation of Christianity so that it was easy for people to convert.  

Bishop Aidan, remember, was of the Celtic Christianity tradition.  Roman Christianity that had been established in the south and to the west occasionally rubbed against the Celtic form.  Aidan’s affability while he was alive kept conflict between the two forms fairly minimal.  But when Aidan died (legend has it he leaned against the buttress of the church in Bamborough on August 31, 651 and let the angels guide his spirit heavenward), the differences between the two traditions came to a head.  The principal argument was the dating of Easter. (There were numerous petty arguments, including that of the Celtic practice of tonsure which eventually became universal.)  The Synod of Whitby was convened in 660a.d. to unify the two traditions.  As a result, the practice of Roman Christianity was established as the norm and the see of Northumbria was moved from Lindisfarne to York. 

ruins of Lindisfarne Abbey

St. Bartholomew--The Cheerful Apostle

Jusepe di Ribera's St. Bartholomew

The name Bartholomew is more a description than the Saint’s name.  In the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, the disciple is referred to by this patronym.  But in the gospel of John, he is called Nathanael.  The Hebrew Bar-tolmai translate to mean “the son of a farmer” (bar means “son” and tolmai being “one with many furrows” referring to a farmer), and would be used as a title of respect in lieu of a first name.  Bartholomew is rarely referred to in the gospels, and in the few instances he is, it is in conjunction with Philip.  No special deeds or conversations are attributed to Bartholomew.  But in John’s gospel, Nathanael (who is the only disciple who can be the same as the Bartholomew of the other gospels) is more than a mere name.  

Philip introduces Nathanael to Jesus, imploring him to come meet this great man who hails from Nazareth.  Nathanael scoffs, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” It is this wisecrack, along with Jesus’ later comment about Nathanael that establishes the disciple as the jokester of the group. He is viewed as the lighthearted balance to the intense and serious natures of the others. Yet, when he meets Jesus, Nathanael is somewhat taken aback at how Jesus seems to know him. Jesus said of Nathanael upon his approach with Philip, “Now here is a true Israelite, with no deceit in him.” From Nathanael’s perspective, there are two ways to take this comment.  First, either Jesus is speaking tongue-in-cheek and is making fun of Nathanael, or second, the man has a rare gift for insight into the character of others.  Nathanael shows his skepticism when he asks Jesus how he knows him.  And here follows one of the more peculiar and enigmatic conversations in the gospels.  It is recorded in the gospel of John, chapter 1, verses 49-51, a mere three verses to convey a wealth of meaning so easily misinterpreted or confused some 2000 years later! Jesus explains to Nathanael that before Philip spoke to him, Jesus “…saw him under the fig tree.”  To which Nathanael’s response seems to be blown all out of proportion: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.”  You can almost hear the smirk when Jesus replies, “Because I saw you under the fig tree?  You will see much greater things than that.”  

Arthur Custance sheds a little insight on the significance of the fig tree in Israel’s history in his book Time and Eternity: Vol. 6 of the Doorway Papers Series (1977, published by Zondervan Publishing Co.). The fig tree is a symbol of Hebrew study and wisdom and learning.  For in Hebrew tradition, the fig tree represents a scholarly intent.  The fig is an unusual tree in that its fruit begins to appear before new leaves.  Thus the symbolism is that the true and important part of knowledge and wisdom is witnessed without the trappings of ritual and regalia.  Given this understanding of the symbol of the fig tree, it is not remarkable that Jewish scholars would sit beneath a fig tree to pray and study.  It is not remarkable that the phrase “sitting under a fig tree” became a euphemism for “deep spiritual contemplation”.  When Jesus said “I saw you under the fig tree” he was not necessarily being literal.  What he implied was, “I see in you a true prayerful scholar of the way of Israel.  I recognize you as a true believer.”  Imagine the joy and deep feeling of gratitude at being intimately recognized and understood upon a first introduction.  Suddenly, Nathanael’s reaction is not so overblown.  Surely only someone with divine connections can know another so intimately! 

 

But other than being mentioned by name at various events, nothing else is said of Bartholomew in the synoptic gospels.  There is very little mention of his later life either.  Bartholomew is said to have traveled to India to convey to them the Gospel of Matthew.  Bartholomew’s own writings (M.R. James of the Gnostic Society Library refers to it not as a gospel, but as The Questions of Bartholomew) include Christ’s commission of the apostles to go out into the world and preach.  Historians, including Eusebius of Caesarea, place Bartholomew in India as well as Armenia.  One story tells of Bartholomew’s presence at a temple of Astaruth in India.  Now, folks used to come to the temple for healing, but with Bartholomew’s arrival, Astaruth no longer seemed to be in residence.  When questioned, Bartholomew explained that the one true God had rid the temple of the demon and true healing would come only by believing in Jesus Christ.  It seems only those who chose to convert displayed any signs of real and long-term healing.  Word spread of Bartholomew’s power and King Polymius of Armenia pleaded with Bartholomew to come and heal his daughter who was possessed by a demon.  When he did, Polymius was so grateful that he offered anything Bartholomew wanted.  Bartholomew wanted no more than for Polymius and his household to convert to Christianity.  Polymius promised that not only his household, but his entire kingdom would convert. 

Sainted Kings and Queens

The two saints honored this week played significant roles in establishing and forwarding the Christian faith as true apostles.  St. Stephen established Christianity in Hungary.  St. Helena is credited with finding relics of the cross of Jesus and thus establishing the cross as the predominant symbol of Christianity. What follows is a paltry, simplistic snapshot of these two lives, for the further one delves into historic lives, the more those lives are wrapped in speculation, hearsay and legend and myth.  The truth of these lives regardless, they are saints of God.

St. Stephen, First King of Hungary

St. Stephen of Hungary, King and Confessor (August 16)—Until around the year 1000, Hungary was ruled by rival pagan “hordes” or tribes, including the Magyars.  Stephen was the son of Géza, the chieftain of the Magyars. He was given the name Vajk when he was born, but at his baptism and conversion to Christianity, he took the name István (Stephen).  When his father died, Stephen wrested control of Hungary from his rivals, united the warring tribes and established Christianity as the religion of the land.  At the age of twenty, he married the sister of Henry II, the future Holy Roman Emperor.  Gisele aided her husband in his efforts bring Christianity to Hungary.  Stephen developed a plan for ecclesiastic order, founding five dioceses and the archdiocese at Gran.  He decreed that one in every ten towns must build a church and support a parish priest.  He pleaded with Pope Sylvester II for confirmation of his foundation and to confer the title of King to him.  The Pope was so impressed with Stephen’s efforts and humble request that he agreed  to all of Stephen’s requests and sent him a Holy crown and an apostolic cross.  On Christmas day, 1001, Stephen was crowned King of Hungary.  Tradition says he raised the crown and offered it to the Virgin Mary, thus sealing the divine contract to the crown. 

Holy Crown of Hungary

The Veneration of Friars and Nuns

This coming week, there are a number of friars and nuns venerated with Holy days.  The men and women under discussion in this week’s blog have each founded a monastic order.  Each has been canonized in the Catholic faith, and as such, are included in our Anglican / Episcopalian calendar as well.

St. Dominic

Dominic, 1220 (August 8)—Dominic was the founder of the Dominican Order of Priests. He received his calling while on a trip with his bishop to visit the Albigenses in southern France.  The Albigenses were dualists who believed in one god of light and good and another god of darkness and evil.  The party stopped at an inn and Dominic stayed up all night talking with the innkeeper who, by morning was ready to convert to orthodox Christianity.  Dominic knew that his calling was to convert the Albigensis people.  All seemed to be progressing until one of the Albigensis murdered a papal legate and the Pope called for a crusade against the people.  Dominic, who by this time had formed a familiar relationship with these people, was upset by this crusade.  He founded an order of priests and friars, whose constitutional belief was to combat false doctrine by studying philosophy and theology for the use of logic, not force.  One of Dominic’s most famous pupils was Thomas Aquinas who studied and wrote reconciling Christianity with Aristotle’s philosophy.  Ironically, it was the Dominican Order that was significantly involved in the interrogations and tortures of the Inquisition. The Dominicans are often referred to as Domini Canes, or “the Hounds of God” and St. Dominic is often portrayed in art with a dog bearing a torch in its mouth.  The Dominicans were also known informally as the Blackfriars after the color of their robes. 

St. Clare of Assisi

Clare of Assisi, 1253 (August 11)—St. Clare founded the Order of the Poor Ladies, an order for women in the Franciscan tradition.  Clare was born to a wealthy family and at 18 heard a sermon given by Francis of Assisi.  She was so inspired by his sermon that she ran away from home and begged Francis to allow her to follow him.  She was provisionally housed with nearby Benedictine nuns (as the Franciscans did not have an order for women).  Her father, a Count, had arranged a lucrative marriage for his daughter and was furious with her desertion.  He tried to retrieve her but was unable to enter the convent.  Francis soon acquired a somewhat dilapidated house for her that would become the Order of the Poor Ladies.  Clare’s younger sister Agnes soon joined her, as did several other beautiful young women of wealthy households.  It was said with tongue-in-cheek that the “Poor Clares,” as they became familiarly known, accepted only the most beautiful daughters. The newly formed order did not have a written rule, so while Francis was away, Cardinal Ugolino, with an agenda of his own contrary to the Franciscans, develop a rule for the order.  Clare stood in opposition to a number of its tenets, particularly those that removed the Franciscan intent.  Pope Gregory offered to absolve the order from their vow of poverty, but she felt that kind of absolution tantamount to removing the obligation to follow Christ.  She wrote a rule for the order and submitted it to the Pope who was so impressed by her that he granted her request.  Thus the first monastic rule of order written by a woman was established. Clare is frequently depicted in art as carrying a ciborium.  There is a miracle attributed to her that tells of a raid upon the convent of St. Damiano.  She is said to have calmly, in the midst of panic all around her, picked up the ciborium from her private prayer chapel and taken it to the window where invaders were attempting to break in.  They saw the ciborium with the Host of Christ resting within and fled in terror. She gathered her sisters and together they prayed for salvation.  A great storm descended and raged until the invading army left Spoleto altogether.

St. Maximilian Kolbe

Maximilian Kolbe, 1942 (August 14)—Kolbe was Franciscan friar from Poland, dedicated to the Immaculate Mary and who was martyred.  He became a friar of the Conventual Franciscans in 1911 and was ordained a priest in 1918. In 1915, while still in seminary, he founded Militia Immaculata, known in America as the Knights of the Immaculate.  This foundation was created in response to protests made by the freemasons against Pope Puis X, its intent to convert sinners and enemies to the Catholic faith by intercessions through Mary. The Militia Immaculata created a daily newspaper with a circulation of over 230,000. Because of its content, Kolbe was accused of anti-Semitism, which is ironic because he frequently harbored Jews escaping the Nazi regime. He established a number of monasteries throughout the world, including Krakow, Poland and Nagasaki, Japan (which escaped destruction by virtue of having been built on the protective side of the mountain).  During WWII, Kolbe sheltered over 2,000 Jews who successfully escaped to freedom.  He was arrested by the Gestapo and eventually was sent to Auschwitz.  The wardens at Auschwitz developed a particularly ruthless plan for discouraging escape attempts: for every prisoner who attempted escape, whether successful or not, ten others would be executed in their stead.  When this inevitably happened while Kolbe was there, a young man cried out in fear for his wife and children, so Kolbe offered to take his place, saying he was old and had no loved ones who needed him. As the Nazis preferred young, strong prisoners able to work, they agreed to the switch.  The execution was to be one of slow death by starvation.  Kolbe celebrated Mass and sang hymns every night in that execution chamber, and after two weeks of starvation and dehydration, only he remained alive and conscious.  In the end, he was given a lethal injection of carbolic acid and his remains were cremated on August 15—the Assumption of Mary. His death was not in vain, for the fellow whose place he took, Franciszek Gajowniczek, was released after five years of imprisonment and lived to be 95 years old. He honored and revered the ragged stranger monk for the rest of his life.  Gajowniczek was a guest of Pope John Paul II on October 10, 1982 when Kolbe was canonized.

The Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Siege of Belgrade, 1456

Pope Calixtus III was one of the Borgia dynasty Popes.  He was old, feeble and widely considered incompetent if not actually corrupt. He was most renowned for his attempts to urge a crusade against the Turks to reclaim for Christendom the city of Constantinople.  When Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453, the sultan was determined to increase his realm by annexing Hungary.  Pope Calixtus III feared the might of the Ottoman army would be too great for the Christians holding the fort at Nándorfehérvár (we know it today as the city of Belgrade).   To be sure, his fears were not unfounded, for the invading Ottoman army was said to have between 60,000 and 70,000 highly trained warriors, while  Janos Hunyadi, a Hungarian warlord charged with the defense of the fort, managed to raise an army of poorly armed but enthusiastic peasants amassing to about 25,000.  So in 1456, Pope Calixtus III delivered a papal bull ordering prayers to be said and church bells to be rung each noon.  The prayers must have worked, because after a surprise attack from the arriving Christian reinforcements, the Ottoman army slipped away in the night on July 22.  The significance of this victory was that the Christians were able to hold off Byzantine advancement for another 70 years.  (In 1521, Sultan Suleiman conquered Hungary and began the spreading of the Ottoman Empire which retained its range of power well into the Victorian period.)  Sadly for the Christian army, this victory came at a great cost.  Bubonic Plague spread through the encampment, killing their general, Janos Hunyadi.

Pope Calixtus III

You may be wondering what this has to do with the Transfiguration of Christ.  When news came to him of the Ottoman withdrawal, Pope Calixtus III ordered that the feast of the Transfiguration of Christ be established on August 6, forever commemorating the victory at the Siege of Belgrade.  Perhaps it was because of Calixtus’ perceived incompetence, but for whatever reason, his papal bull became known as “The Excommunication Bull.”  Legend has it that Pope Calixtus III viewed the appearance of what we call Halley’s Comet in June of 1456 as a bad omen for the Christian defenders in Hungary.  So he excommunicated it.  While this is utter nonsense--for how can one excommunicate a thing that was never in communion in the first place—and there is no reference at all to the comet in his bull, the myth persists.  To this day, church bells are rung at noon on August 6 in Hungary to remember the victory of the Siege of Belgrade.

Still, why would the Pope connect the victory at Belgrade to the Transfiguration? Some speculation indicates that the fires caused by the Christian army to separate themselves from their attackers illuminated the defenders in a way reminiscent of Christ’s illumination during the transfiguration.  Thomas Aquinas considered Christ’s transfiguration as the greatest of all the miracles.  So perhaps the Pope felt the greatest miracle should commemorate what he considered the greatest victory for Christianity. Perhaps he felt that as the disciples witnessed God’s glory in the transfigured Christ, so too may we see His glory in the victory at Belgrade.

Giovanni Bellini - Transfiguration of Christ

The Transfiguration of Our Lord is one of the five milestones in Jesus’ life as described in the gospels, along with his baptism, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension.  The transfiguration is the moment when things change.  Jesus stands with Elijah and Moses at the top of the mountain—a clear bridge between the corporeal world and heaven.  He, who has claimed to be the light of the world, shines with heavenly light on the world below.  It is this conversation that Jesus learns the path he is to take.  Everything changes after the transfiguration.  Where before he taught of how we were to live with one another, of more earthly issues, after the transfiguration, now he teachings become more abstract in nature.  He refers to himself using all those “I AM” phrases: I am the true vine, I am the Way, the Truth, the Light, I am the door, I am the resurrection and the life.  He refers to himself as the Son of God.  Thomas Aquinas considers the transfiguration as the greatest miracle because this is the miracle in which Jesus truly accepts being the Christ.  In 1475, Pierre-Simon LaPlace ridicules Pope Calixtus III by forever tagging him as the incompetent pope who thought to equate a forgettable, unimportant battle with the greatest miracle of all!  Yet, until Pope Calixtus III's 1456 papal bull, the miracle of the Transfiguration of Our Lord was not venerated with a feast day.