Norfolk Pilgrim

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