Dumbarton
Dumbarton has the longest recorded history of any castle in Scotland, and back in the era we are talking about, it was actually controlled by the Welsh. Dumbarton actually means “Fortress of the Britons” in Gaelic. Dumbarton Rock, on which the fortress is built, is an in-filled crater of a volcano that was active 350 million years ago. The first mention of Dumbarton is by St. Patrick, whom you may recall was a native Briton, who mentions it in a letter written in the 5th century. It was also named by Nennius, whom we discussed in our video about King Arthur, as one of the 28 cities of sub-Roman Britain. According to legend, both Merlin and Arthur visited, and Geoffrey of Monmouth (who we also mentioned in the context of the Arthurian legend) writes that the castle was besieged by Read more…
Lindisfarne
Lindisfarne is an island off the northeastern coast of Britain, and accessibly only when the tidal flats are exposed. The island started out, as all of England once did, as a British settlement. But by the 6th century, the Angles had taken it over, and the Historia Brittonum recounts the last attempt of the British, led by Urien of Rheged, to retake the island. The British were defeated, and the Saxons maintained control of the island ever since. As we talked about in the introduction to Saxon religion, the initial conversion to Christianity of the Saxons of northern England and Scotland was led by Christian missionaries from Ireland, having been converted earlier by the British Saint Patrick. The monastery at Lindisfarne was actually founded by the Irish saint, Aiden, and became the seat of Christian evangelism stretching all the way Read more…
St. Mary’s in Castro (Saxon Church at Dover)
We talked about Dover Castle last season, but it’s worth revisiting, in large part for the same reason we devoted a video to it before: the long history of occupation. Specifically, in regards to the Saxons, Dover was one of the first places William the Conqueror conquered—and thankfully, he left the original Saxon church intact for us to visit to this day and, according to English Heritage, is the ‘largest and finest Saxon building in Kent’. The first record of the church at Dover is around 630 AD, when the records talk about a church built within the castle, which is where it gets its name Saint Mary in Castro. This is in the time of Eadbald, son of Æthelberht, the first Saxon king to convert to Christianity. Credence is given to the idea that the structure we see today Read more…
Saxon Religion
Are you saying the Saxon religion wasn’t Christianity? Not initially. We’ve spent the last ten videos or so talking about Christianity, but as I discussed way back in the beginning of last season, Britain was conquered by waves of ethnic groups. I mentioned five at the time: Celts, Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans. The Romans brought Christianity to Britain, after which a significant number of Britons converted to it. By the time the Romans left, there were enough Christians in Britain to create a contrast to the Saxon invaders who were polytheistic. This contrast between pagan and Christian was highlighted by the Britons themselves at the time and after the fact. The worst crime, according to the annals, was that, in the middle of the 5th century, the British Christian king Vortigern invited these pagan Saxons into Britain, as a Read more…
Tintagel
We are talking about Tintagel today because it is associated with King Arthur as the place he was conceived. This comes only, however, from Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wrote his highly fantastical History of the Kings of Britain in the early 12th century. Honestly, Geoffrey’s work is so ahistorical that the fact he claims Arthur was there is reason enough to doubt the veracity of the legend. As he tells it, Arthur’s father was turned into the likeness of Gorlois, Igraine’s husband, and thus he slept with her, and she conceived Arthur. Even with the unlikeliness of this particular aspect of the story, Tintagel does have a fascinating history. The castle, as it exists today, was begun in the 12th century by Earl Reginald, brother to Robert of Gloucester, for whom Geoffrey wrote his history to justify the Norman Read more…
King Arthur: did he exist?
I have A LOT to say about King Arthur, most of which can’t fit into a five minute video. But we can make a start. Perhaps the most important question everyone wants answered about King Arthur is: did he exist? Whether or not King Arthur was a real person is an either/or query. He either lived or he didn’t. Many scholars, researchers, and Arthurophile’s have strong opinions on this topic, both for and against. Because of the paucity of written records, much of the academic work has come down on the side of ‘didn’t—or at least if Arthur was a real person, his name was not ‘Arthur’ and he possibly wasn’t even a king. I, however, look at the poetry and tales from the early Middle Ages, and choose to believe he did actually exist. Medieval people certainly thought he did, and throughout Read more…
Kentigern and Asaph
Today we’ll be talking about St. Kentigern’s Monastery in St. Asaph. Wait a minute, that’s two saints. Yes, it is, and in the case of this particular monastery, it’s a bit confusing because the monastery was founded by St. Kentigern, and then it was taken over by a second saint, Asaph, for which the town was named. In fact, unless you do some research, you might never know that the monastery in St. Asaph was initially founded by Kentigern at all. In my introduction to early monastic houses, I explained that they weren’t organized along the lines that we have come to know from the later Middle Ages, in that each would belong to a particular order: Benedictine, Cistercian, Augustinian, Franciscan, or Dominican. Each had their particular ‘rule’ they followed, the monks wore different colored robes, had different tonsures, as Read more…
Gwenffrewi
Today we’ll be talking about Gwenffrewi, an early Welsh saint, who endowed an abbey and a sacred well. She is the only woman so credited, which seems a woeful gap in the record. Still, the legend of Gwenffrewi, or Winifred in English, follows a similar pattern to that of her male counterparts in that she was born noble. After that, her story takes quite a dark turn. As was written down in the 12th century, she had a suitor who was enraged at her rejection of him to the point that he decapitated her. A healing spring flowed from the spot upon which her head fell, and then St. Bueno, her uncle, restored her head to her body. After this miracle Beuno turned to her suitor, Caradog, who is described as leaning on his sword and unrepentant, called up to Read more…
Priories and Abbeys
Churches and wells were used by the general population for worship. Priories and abbeys–monasteries in other words–in early Christianity served the same purpose they did in the later middle ages, in that they were places where actual monks and nuns lived. However, these monasteries were often founded by the same saints as the churches and wells. If you recall from the video about St. Cybi two weeks ago, he is credited with the creation of a healing well on the Llyn Penninsula, but he established a monastery at Holyhead on Anglesey. The same was true of St. Seiriol, who had a well at Penmon but also established a monastery there and on Puffin island. Also working in the same time period on Anglesey alone were St. Meched and St. Caffo, both of whom founded monasteries of their own. In this Read more…
St. Seiriol’s Well
Seiriol lived in the 6th century, and, according to legend, regularly used to meet St. Cybi at a central rendezvous on Anglesey. As the story goes, Seiriol traveled with his back to the sun in the morning and returned with his face to the east in the afternoon, and thus became known as Seiriol the Pale, while Cybi became known as Cybi the Tanned. Seiriol himself was a younger brother of King Cynlas of Rhos and King Einion of Ll?n. His cell adjacent to the well is said to have been rebuilt by his brothers, as they didn’t think his humble residence was good enough. The well lies in a small chamber and the building adjacent to its remains might have once been part of the lower stone walls St. Seiriol’s church in the 6th Century. If so, this would make it the oldest remaining Christian building Read more…
St. Cybi’s Well
St. Cybi’s Well is one of many sacred wells in Wales. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, this period of time in Wales is known as the Age of Saints. I also talked a little bit about how the church in the 6th century wasn’t organized in the same way as it is today. While there was officially only one ‘Church’, what we know today as the Catholic Church, the way people practiced Christianity in these early centuries after the death of Christ was different depending upon where they lived. Celtic Christianity, meaning Christianity in Cornwall, Brittainy, Wales, and Ireland specifically, developed its own, somewhat isolated, trajectory with small groups of people following the teachings of a ‘saint’, and the common people, who were Christian, worshipping in parish churches with possibly little connection to any other church. Even though Read more…
Healing Wells
Healing wells are part of an ancient tradition dating back possibly thousands of years. Water itself, is, of course, the stuff of life, and the idea that a spring or well would have the power to heal is an ancient one. Holy wells and healing waters played an important part in worship before the advent of Christianity. In a previous video, I talked about the healing spring at Glanum, that was dedicated initially to native Celtic gods, and then went on to become sacred to Roman gods as well. A similar situation occurred, as I also talked about, in Bath, where the holy pool was dedicated to the Celtic goddess Sul, and then to Minerva. Neither of these sacred spots continued to be sacred to the inhabitants after the Roman period. In Wales, however, healing wells were just getting started. Read more…
^