Norfolk Pilgrim

 .........   he that makes a pilgrimage does well if he makes it at a time when no others are doing so, even though the time be unusual. I should never advise him to make a pilgrimage when a great multitude is doing so; for, as a rule, on these occasions, people return in a state of greater distraction than when they went. And many set out on these pilgrimages and make them for recreation rather than for devotion. Where there is devotion and faith, then, any image will suffice; but, if there is none, none will suffice. Our Saviour was a very living image in the world; and yet those that had no faith, even though they went about with Him and saw His wondrous works, derived no benefit from them. Ascent of Mount Carmel. Book 3. Chapter 36

Sitting with the ancestors in   Advent’s long   dark   night, I sense   existential angst.  Photo Attribution: Geni CC BY-SA 4.0  On display in Norwich's Castle Museum, t his rare figure, dates from the  5 th Century; one of the very few known  3D,   Anglo- Saxon images.  It once formed the   lid of a cremation urn.   For 1300 years it lay buried in the dark, close to the  heart of Norfolk, on hill above the Wesum Valley.   You might say that the Spong Hill Cemetry was once  the dead centre of Norfolk; and the river like a long and winding artery that connected it to the encircling sea. 

Edmund is patron saint of several parishes in the Norwich Diocese Many are near the coast or rivers; and situated at the top of rising ground, sometimes on mounds, natural or man-made. On the Ely side of the diocecesan border St. Edmund, Downham Market looks out across the fens from the top of the escarpment  Some have speculated that the churches marked the burial places of those who fell beside Edmund in the final series of battles against the Great Heathen Army.   After his death,  St. Edmund the King  seems to have been revered by the defeated Anglo-Saxons as a tragic hero;  and by the Danes as,  in some sense their father His death had brought Danes and Anglo Saxons together in Christian Faith and now championed their cause in heaven.   Poppies around  a  war memoria l, within the  churchyard of St. Edmund's, unite two acts of remembrance within one semi-circular boundary .  Both have days of remembrance that fall in November, 11th for Armistice Day, the 20th

30 years after the death Edmund - the  last Anglo-Saxon king of  East Anglia,  at the hand of the invading, Viking, Great Heathen Army in 869 CE - he was heralded as a saint! http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=8714&CollID=8&NStart=4826 The conquering Danes had turned to Christ and they issues  memorial coinage commemorating his death.  E ach was inscribed with the caption, “O, St. Edmund the King”. © The Trustees of the British Museum Edmund's refusal to disown the High King of Heaven and face a martyr's death impressed the Danes.   None more than Cnut, the first Christian, Danish, King of England. It was Cnut who endowed and re-founded the monasteries at St.Benet's and Bury St Edmund  as Benedictine houses .  In homage to the saint, Cnut  went on pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Edmund, in Bury Abbey. A suitable saint for the 21st Century?  A suitable Hero of Faith ?  You could find none better!   He live

Hilda's sister, Hereswith was already a widow when Hilda came searching for her in East Anglia in the year 647. Their father a Prince of the Kingdom of Deira had been poisoned. They came under the protection of Edwin of Northumbria; and were befriended by the widowed kings new queen,  Ethelburh of Kent, herself the daughter of a Merovingian princess, Bertha of Kent;  the girls were baptised as young women, with the whole of  Edwin's court, by St. Paulinus - who had travelled north from the Kingdom of Kent to York -  in the year 626. In spite of their failure to meet up,  both women pursued vocations to the religious life.  Hilda, famously,  becoming Abbess of Whitby and Hereswith entering the monastery founded by St. Bathilde at Chelles.  There are reasons to suspect Bathilds's home parish may have been Postwick , just outside Norwich.  Finally, my former colleague Ray Simpson , late of the Parish of Bowthorpe, headed north to follow in Hilda's footsteps. "

At first glance, St. Edmund is not the first saint one would turn to when looking for a patron today. And that begs the question, Why bother with a patron anyway?  How might 9th Century life and death of the last king of East Anglia be relevant ? Edmund regarded himself as a Christian monarch. We can only guess at his education and understanding of Christianity, but the Latin speaking churchmen around him, were well versed in the Psalms and Old Testament. A great deal of the Old Testament, for example, King David and the Book of Psalms - had roots in a very similar contexts to those of 8/9th East Anglia. It was Old, rather than, New Testament narratives, that gave rise to their ideas about Christian Monarchy. From a modern Christian perspective, such an approach would seem to produce a Christian Monarch who is rather less than Christ-like. Yet, this has been the way of things until our recent history. One does not need to go any further back than Victorian times and the heyday of t

 Sometimes, doing pilgrimage professionally gets one's nose too close to the grindstone. Paying close attention to routes, history, accessibility and a host of other things it is easy to lose focus. Busy! Busy! I was in danger of losing it last month.  Then Wasingham. A welcome. Cups of tea and pieces of cake.  "Pilgrimage is all about connecting ." said Mgr. John Armitage  to delegates visiting as  part of last month's Interreg Green Pilgrimage Conference. He had it in a nutshell! Good to connect with you Fr. John! Green Pilgrimage has to be as much about connecting with landscapes and the natural world; as with making contact with to the past  on well trodden paths to pilgrim places.  For a pilgrim, making such  connections can never be ends in themselves, they are ways to connect with  deeper reality.  Describe  deeper reality as you will  - the spiritual, one's higher power, God, or gods.  Deeper reality   is the mystery that draws pilgrims on. Not

Prof Susan Oosthuizen's Emergence of the English redirected my attention to Prof Tom Williamson's interesting view of the North Sea and its waterways published in East Anglia and Its North Sea World . In relation to the Conversion of the English, not only do I have to accept the likelihood of the continuation of  Christianity in East Anglia in the post-Roman era, for example, at Norfolk's two places named Eccles; but also the ongoing links with Europe once the Church had rooted itself in Anglo-Saxon society, St.Felix came to East Anglia from in 630 or thereabouts, with King Sigeberht who had been in exile in Merovingian lands. The next generations of church leaders gave us Botolph, who had his monastic formation at Faramoutier (not far from Paris), where Saethryth (sister of Withburga of Dereham and Elthelburga of Ely) was abbess. Hilda of Whitby's sister, Hereswith, who had married into the East Anglian royal family, became abbess of Chelles; a house which was

The standard story is of  rape and pillage as in Marie de France - Life of St.Audrey    Felix built first a church at Soham. th en a church at Reedham where people worshipped God. But the pagan Danes, w ho despised God and his laws, r obbed it and destroyed it and took away the servants of God……. Felix had lovingly baptised King Anna and his people and caused the whole region to be born again through baptism. A different story is told in  John Lydgate's Life of St Edmund and Fremund   and perhaps the church Felix had founded just fell into disuse and disrepair. Read about it here  and in Eleanor Parker's excellent Dragon Lords. According to Lydgate  Lothbrok and Edmund were mates until something went wrong! They used to go hunting together as here in British Library   Harley 2278   f. 42  Whatever, Lydgate's tale does reflect Norfolk's pre  Norman Conquest  confident Anglo-Norse society. Reedham and St. Felix feature on the Norfolk Saints Way

St.Bridget of Sweden pic by JMC4 Church Explorer The Norwich Benedictine monk, subsequently Cardinal, Adam Easton promoted the cult of St. Bridget. Some have suggested that Adam was Mother Julian's Spiritual Director and have noted similarities between St. Bridget and Mother Julian. The Passion of Christ was central to both - both were visionaries, both  were writers. The Carmelite friar and friend of Margery Kemp, Alan of Lynn , also promoted St. Bridget. Veneration of St. Bridget and other female saints  was popular in the 15th C. The screen at Horsham St.Faith's   has a quiver full! The picture opposite is a panel from the screen. For further reading - Benedictines in the Middle Ages on-line -  https://sites.google.com/site/cardinaladameaston/home

Re-badging pagan places of worship as churches, as outlined in Gregory the Great's 7th C Letter  to Mellitus , made a great deal of sense in the conversion of  East Anglia. To what extent modern church dedications reflect the choice of a feast days to coincide with and replace pagan festivals is a moot point.  The spandrels above the west door  -  a lamb and flag on one side and the eagle on the other - a and the two empty niches of St. John the Baptist, Coltishall   reveal its original dual dedication.  That would have been very handy if  there was a pre-existing tradition of marking midwinter (St. John the Evangelist) and midsummer (St. John the Baptist). We cannot know, but we might guess,  that the tradition of midsummer fires that continues in some parts of the U.K, was part of a wider (pre-Christian?) tradition marking  all the solstices and equinoxes with fire. So one can imagine our yet to be converted Anglo-Saxon forebears having their festivals at

A Humpty Dumpty word - Pilgrimage !  " When I use a  word ,"  Humpty Dumpty  said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean— neither more nor less."  The British Pilgrimage Trust .......  believes that pilgrimage in Britain today should not attempt to imitate Medieval forms of religious exclusivity. Instead, we are aiming to renew the tradition to fit with modern needs. To this end, the BPT aims to help pilgrimage become a spiritual activity open to all, without religious prescription. The path is open to everyone. (  http://britishpilgrimage.org/the-bpt/ )  This begs several questions. Even when turning a blind eye on what is meant by " Medieval forms of religious exclusivity" and a renewed tradition that fits with modern needs;  what turns a journey into a pilgrimage? or a long distance walk into a walking pilgrimage? Spiritual is another Humpty Dumpty word!  So I'll try and avoid it. Connecting across

I am intrigued by my reading of Blair The Church in Anglo Saxon Society , i)  re minster sites and the vallum or septum  monasterii and how lost features in the landscape might be reconstructed from the road system as at Bisley p197 ii) And on p 199  several churches in an enclosure and aligned churches Could it be that the Close Norwich (and Great Hospital) are the fossil of an earlier minster?   Occupying an area on as bend in the river? The original site of St.Helen's is in line with the Cathedral, but the churches within the imagined vale are widely dispersed. On the plus side - the site does seem to tick the boxes that Blair suggests for a minster site !

"Pilgrims On The Way"  are in a state of Liminality,                           The time and miles of a pilgrimage, however long or short, are a threshold. The pilgrim travels                           From       A                                                  Through     a landscape and a time apart from the work-s-day world  -                                                  To              B.   The time and the miles of a pilgrimage provide an opportunity to reflect and reach a new understanding. This is why pilgrimages are often given as a penance.  They allow for amendment of life! All Christian Life is Pilgrimage                                  From          in  the waters of baptism we embark on a new life.                                                  Through      the path of life, following Jesus who is " the Way, the Truth and the Life.  " Here we have no abiding city, but we look for one that is to come. ( Hebrews 13.14).

There were three children at Family Service at Coltishall today. We had a good time retelling the Easter story in a slick 45 minute all age worship format. I hope that it was simple and profound, something that everyone could engage with in their own way. Afterwards I found myself contrasting and comparing  how it is now and how it was back in the day, during the 1970s when I was a curate in a Surrey suburban parish.  I remember, we had over 120 at Sunday School and our own version of St. Matthew,  sitting at the seat of customs, marking their attendance on their record book. And, yes, once a year they got a prize -  but only if they had attended a minimum number of Sundays! Ahhh! Happy Days!?  Well, not really!  Attendance at Sunday School seemed to inoculate children against adult involvement. The passing out ceremony, before they went up to big school, was the great dismissal service. After which we never saw them again! 

Once, long ago, many would come on this feast day to St. Mary, Hautbois . Today, there was just me and, if not a host, there was a least, "a scattering of golden daffodils, beneath the trees". I came and prayer and remembered using the Hail Mary of Raymond Lull And I am not sure that I was wandering lonely. I had, rather, strode manfully, through the village and along the disused railway line with plenty of time to ponder on the way. Thoughts about: predestination and the permanents way The primrose path that leads to the everlasting bonfire.  And about the Lamb of God

I was looking for clues to give me a better understanding of what I think of as "my Hautbois font-base." Detail from Hautbois font-base. Bingo! I think I got the chap!  He turns up on a grit stone tomb slab from beneath York Minster (YorkM: 1993.713) I imagine that it is on the basis of the next picture that the scene depicted is interpreted as slaying of the dragon Fafnir by Sigurd as recorded in the Volsunga Saga. At this alarm bells should ring!  The Volsunga Saga is late 13th C. The earliest German versions of the story, in which Sigurd is called Siegfried,  begin in 12th C!  A parallel story is told in the Anglo Saxon epic,  Beowulf -  a text that J.R.R. Tolkien argued must have come from the Conversion period, perhaps some date close to 700 C.E.. The York sculptures above are dated to the 10th C. Consequently they pre-date Scandinavian visual depictions of the story from 11th C onward by 100 years and the Volsunga Saga by 300 years. The J

It  is 9 years since I launched the Churches Together on the Broads web page to promote our heritage churches . By 2016 it had done its job and run its course.  Both  Norwich Diocese and Broads Tourism had taken up the baton Today I picked up the wonderful, new, Visit the Broads Pocket Guide The future looks good! Many thanks to everyone who has shared in the journey and has picked up the baton. I'll allow myself a glass of something tonight and drink your health! Tomorrow I'll crack on!  There's work to be done on  https://norfolksaintsway.wordpress.com/

It was great to meet an old Norfolk friend, in pride of place, welcoming visitors to the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms Exhibition at  the British Library!  He represents the old East Anglia. East Anglia before Christian missionaries began the conversion in the 7th C. Made of clay, the model of Spong Hill Man forms the stopper of a cremation urn ' Looking at him in a new light, he seemed less like one of the three monkeys, perhaps somewhere between Rodin's Thinker and Edvard Munch's The Scream , as he contemplates the mysteries of life and death.  For such as him St.Felix established a church close to Spong Hill at North Elmham. A church that was to become the centre of the diocese until it transferred to Norwich in 11th C.  Another Norfolk treasure  - the  (the newly acquired)   Whinfarthing Pendant   - was displayed nearby. It dates from a time when the East Anglian elite was beginning to turn towards Christianity. Like St.Felix, who accompanied King Sigeber