A Little History of Lammas

BL Harley 603, f.66

Today is Lammas, an Anglo-Saxon harvest festival celebrated on 1st August. Its name comes from Old English hlaf, 'loaf' and mæsse, 'mass', and it may have been a day when loaves of bread made from the first corn were blessed. Much about the origins of Lammas is obscure, but it's a festival with a long, interesting, and somewhat unusual history.

I said 'may have been' because we really don't know much about how Lammas might have been celebrated in Anglo-Saxon England. It's mentioned a number of times in Anglo-Saxon texts, but most of those references simply treat it as another name for August 1st, with no indication of any particular customs associated with the day. The name and the timing of the feast suggest a link to the wheat harvest and the blessing of bread, but we have no evidence to suggest what form that might have taken. However, it's often suggested that since the date of Lammas corresponds to recorded Irish and Welsh festivals, and there are no close continental parallels for a harvest festival on that date, 'Lammas' may be a Christian name given by the Anglo-Saxons to a pre-Christian festival celebrated in Britain and Ireland.

This means Lammas is often said to be a pagan festival (and it has been adopted as such by Neo-Paganism, where it seems to be considered as interchangeable with Lughnasadh). Though this is a plausible supposition, there is no firm evidence to support it. Despite its possible pre-Christian origins, the name 'Lammas' is both Christian and English: the second element -mæsse ('mass') was borrowed into Old English from liturgical Latin, and is only used to refer to Christian or Jewish festivals. In the Anglo-Saxon period and long afterwards it was endlessly productive as a suffix, giving us not only names we still use, like Christmas and Candlemas, but an almost limitless variety of Christian festivals with comparable names: Childermas, Michaelmas, Martinmas, Marymas, Ellenmas, Hallowmas, Roodmas, Crouchmas, and so on. It's very unlikely that it would be used for a festival which was perceived to have a substantial non-Christian component.

Similarly, our few references to Lammas are from fairly late Anglo-Saxon texts, and survive in a learned Christian context (as you would expect from the nature of the surviving sources). Lammas doesn't regularly appear in Anglo-Saxon calendars or liturgical books, where August 1st is instead the feast of St Peter ad Vincula and/or the Maccabees, but there are various intriguing references to it. The earliest may be in the Old English Martyrology, probably dating to the ninth century, which doesn't use the name Lammas but does refer to 1st August as the day of hlafsenunga, 'blessing of bread'. In this word senung, which is related to the verb segnian, 'to make the sign of the cross', is another borrowing from ecclesiastical Latin (signare), so we're no closer to finding any pre-Christian terminology here.

Harvest, from an Anglo-Saxon calendar for August (BL Cotton MS Tiberius B V/1, f. 6v)

The first recorded use of the word Lammas itself is probably in the Old English Orosius, which refers to 1st August in passing (while telling the story of Antony and Cleopatra) as 'the day that we call Lammas'. This text likely comes from the last decade of the ninth century, and that late date is interesting - it's already a good few centuries later than our usual authority on pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon customs, Bede (who doesn't mention Lammas). All the references to Lammas in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle - again, simply as another name for August 1st - are from the tenth, eleventh or twelfth centuries. The homilist Ælfric, usually such a helpful guide to the cycle of the church year, also only mentions Lammas as an alternative name for 1st August: he refers to it it in passing in a homily about St Peter, telling his congregation that 1st August is the day 'you [not 'we'] call Lammas'. This might suggest he thought of it as primarily a secular rather than a religious occasion (though not a pagan one, or he probably wouldn't mention it at all). Perhaps by this time it was an extra-liturgical custom, adopted and supported by the church but not incorporated into the liturgy. If it was a day when people brought loaves to church to be blessed, we don't have any record of specific blessings attached to Lammas, though there are general blessings for bread and crops which might have been used.

Alternatively - though it's impossible to say for sure - it might be that by this date Lammas was for some people just a name for 'the beginning of harvest', rather than a festival with any particular customs. (Something like 'Boxing Day' in modern Britain, a name for 'the day after Christmas' which everyone knows and uses but can't really explain, and which bears no relationship to how anyone now actually spends the day.)

Lammas appears just once in Old English poetry, in the beautiful calendar poem known as the Menologium. In the section for August, Weed-month, this poem describes Lammas and the coming of autumn:

And þæs symle scriþ
ymb seofon niht þæs sumere gebrihted
Weodmonað on tun; welhwær bringeð
Agustus yrmenþeodum
hlafmæssan dæg. Swa þæs hærfest cymð
ymbe oðer swylc butan anre wanan,
wlitig, wæstmum hladen. Wela byð geywed
fægere on foldan.

And [after the feast of St James] after seven nights
of summer's brightness Weed-month slips
into the dwellings; everywhere August brings
to peoples of the earth Lammas Day. So autumn comes,
after that number of nights but one [i.e. on August 7],
bright, laden with fruits. Plenty is revealed,
beautiful upon the earth.

According to the system of dating used by this tenth-century poem, the season of autumn began shortly after Lammas on August 7th - a date calculated by its position halfway between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox. I've written about this dating system before, and I wrote about some Old English harvest poetry in a post last year. This poem unfortunately tells us nothing about Lammas except that it comes 'to peoples everywhere' (which is actually far from true, since it was such a localised festival!). But you can see how closely it coincides with the coming of harvest/autumn - the Old English name for autumn is hærfest, so they're the same thing here. The link between autumn and harvest is one thing which makes the Anglo-Saxon view of this season quite different from our modern perspective. Think of autumn and you might think of reddening leaves, dewy chilly mornings, darker shorter days - probably not of harvesters working under a blazing August sun. But in Old English, linguistically speaking at least, autumn and harvest are indistinguishable.

Harvesting (BL Add. 50000, f. 4v)

Our final and perhaps most interesting Anglo-Saxon reference to Lammas appears in a ritual, intended to protect harvested corn from mice and other pests:

[...] lange sticcan feðerecgede 7 writ on ægðerne sticcan[...] ælcere ecge an pater noster oð ende 7 lege þone [...]an þam berene on þa flore 7 þone oðerne on [...] ofer þam oðrum sticcan. þæt þær si rode tacen on 7 nim of ðam gehalgedan hlafe þe man halgie on hlafmæssedæg feower snæda 7 gecryme on þa feower hyrna þæs berenes. þis is þeo bletsung þærto. Vt surices garbas non noceant has preces super garbas dicis et non dicto eos suspendis hierosolimam ciuitate. ubi surices nec habitent nec habent potestam. nec grana colligent. nec triticum congaudent. þis is seo oðer bletsung. Domine deus omnipotens qui fecisti celum et terram. tu benedicis fructum istum in nomine patris et spiritus sancti. amen. 7 Pater noster.

[Take two] long pieces of four-edged wood, and on each piece write a Pater noster, on each side down to the end. Lay one on the floor of the barn, and lay the other across it, so that they form the sign of the cross. And take four pieces of the hallowed bread which is blessed on Lammas day, and crumble them at the four corners of the barn. This is the blessing for that; so that mice do not harm these sheaves, say prayers over the sheaves and do not cease from saying them. 'City of Jerusalem, where mice do not live they cannot have power, and cannot gather the grain, nor rejoice with the harvest.' This is the second blessing: 'Lord God Almighty, who made heaven and earth, bless these fruits in the name of the Father and the Holy Spirit.' Amen. And [then say] a Pater Noster.

Quoted from Karen Louise Jolly, 'Tapping the Power of the Cross: Who and For Whom?', in The Place of the Cross in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Catherine E. Karkov, Sarah Larratt Keefer, and Karen Louise Jolly (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press), p. 79; my translation.

The manuscript from which this charm comes, British Library, Cotton Vitellius E xviii, is a psalter, written in a monastery at Winchester in the middle decades of the eleventh century. This charm survives alongside other prayers and rituals and an assorted collection of highly useful information: good and bad days for bloodletting, how to cure sick cattle and sheep, how to keep people from stealing your bees, the most lucky days for childbirth, and so on. A list can be seen here. Although to modern eyes this kind of ritual often looks like pagan folk-magic, it's part of a complex picture of popular and learned devotion in early medieval England; this particular ritual might well have been performed by a priest, and it's made up of explicitly Christian symbols and practices - the cross, the Pater Noster, and the consecrated bread. This charm suggests that there was something special about the bread blessed at Lammas, but it might plausibly refer to the Eucharist consecrated at a mass said on Lammas Day rather than to specific Lammas loaves.

(If you'd like to read more about these kinds of fascinating texts and the people who used and recorded them, I refer you to the brilliant blog For the Wynn - on modern ideas about Anglo-Saxon paganism see especially this post.)

Harvesting sheaves of corn (British Library, Lansdowne 383, f.6v)

Well, that was an exhaustive history of the Anglo-Saxon sources! Let's skip over the next seven centuries a bit more quickly. Later in the medieval and into the early modern period Lammas seems to have retained this kind of quasi-official status, acting mostly as a fixed date for various secular customs rather than being celebrated as a festival itself. It was still commonly used as a name for August 1st and sometimes for the whole month of August; often it seems to be simply another name for 'the season of harvest'.

Some later medieval writers understood the name to be 'Lamb-mass' (festum agnorum) and thought it had something to do with lambs, which suggests they didn't recognise the 'loaf' element or the connection with bread. Others treat 'Lammas' as if it were a name for the feast of St Peter in Chains, the feast more widely celebrated in medieval Europe on this day. In the fifteenth century John Lydgate, summarising the festivals of summer, includes in his poetic list 'Petrys cheynes wer brooke in prysoun, / The feeste therof callyd Lammesse', while his contemporary John Capgrave writes of 'the feest of Seynt Petyr, whech thei clepe in Latyn, 'ad vinculam', in Englisch, 'Lammesse''.

Given the time of year and the huge importance of getting in the harvest, Lammas was a popular date for fairs and local feasts. It was also one of the regular dates on which rents would be paid, debts settled, contracts made, and labourers hired. Because it was associated with such payments, 'latter Lammas' became a humorous phrase for 'a day which is indefinitely delayed', or 'never', as in these wonderful OED citations (note how late the dates are!):

latter Lammas, a day that will never come. at latter Lammas: humorously for ‘never’.

1567 GASCOIGNE Instruct. Making Verse Posies (1575) Many writers...draw their sentences in length, & make an ende at latter Lammas.

1576 GASCOIGNE Steele Glas. This is the cause (beleue me now my Lorde)...That courtiers thriue, at latter Lammas day.

1642 FULLER Holy State. IV. xv. 316 This your will At latter lammas wee'l fulfill.

a1734 NORTH Lives of Norths (1826) I. 4 The very expectation of them puts me in mind of latter Lammas.

1805 W. TAYLOR in Ann. Rev. III. 244 This convocation was somewhat unbecomingly postponed to latter Lammas.

1857 KINGSLEY Two Years Ago vii, A treatise...which will be published probably...in the season of Latter Lammas, and the Greek Kalends.

In some English towns you still find fields and meadows called 'Lammas land', areas of common land where people could pasture their animals for a fixed season running from Lammas until the following spring. Above and below are the Lammas Lands at Godalming in Surrey, looking particularly beautiful in August last year.

I love those two phrases, 'latter Lammas' and 'Lammas lands' - while mundane enough in their definitions, both have an irresistibly poetic ring! And there's also the beautiful phrase 'Lammas growth' (also called 'Lammas leaves' or 'Lammas flush'), which is the name given to a renewed spurt of growth which occurs in some trees around early August - a second shoot of greenness following after the first burst of spring. A flush of fresh growth in a mature tree - isn't there a poem waiting to be written in that?

This is a wonderful puzzle of a festival. On the one hand, we have abundant evidence for its history over many centuries, from the Anglo-Saxon monk who wrote the Menologium to the keen eye of the gardeners looking out for 'Lammas growth', from the witty sixteenth-century courtiers joking about 'latter Lammas' to the cherished land-rights of medieval villagers. On the other hand, we have very little evidence for the celebration of the festival itself. But however obscure its origins, it's a day which has had meaning, of many different kinds, to a variety of people and communities for more than a thousand years.

It's worth concluding by emphasising that variety, because it adds some nuance to the way Lammas is often popularly presented these days. Having been almost entirely forgotten in our less agricultural society, it's now frequently characterised as a 'pagan festival' (often a 'Celtic pagan festival'), as if that were the beginning and end of its history. As with much of what's said about Eostre, this is largely the product of 19th-century scholarly speculation, much of which is based on false assumptions or an imperfect understanding of the Anglo-Saxon sources. Specialists in the period now take a different view - but since these speculations of Victorian scholars were very influential in the development 20th-century Neo-Paganism, they are repeated uncritically all over the internet and elsewhere. Here's a typical example, from the BBC's Religions subsite:

Lammas, also called Lughnasadh, comes at the beginning of August. It is one of the Pagan festivals of Celtic origin which split the year into four. Celts held the festival of the Irish god Lugh at this time and later, the Anglo-Saxons marked the festival of hlaefmass - loaf mass or Lammas - at this time. For these agricultural communities this was the first day of the harvest, when the fields would be glowing with corn and reaping would begin. The harvest period would continue until Samhain when the last stores for the winter months would be put away. Although farming is not an important part of modern life, Lughnasadh is still seen as a harvest festival by Pagans and symbols connected with the reaping of corn predominate in its rites.

Notice how this elides everything between early paganism and modern pagan practice (and how 'still seen' suggests an unbroken continuity of practice which isn't there; the modern version is a complete reinvention, of course). That's a huge period of time just skipped over, jumping more than a thousand years from the pre-Christian period to the twentieth century - and what's ignored is everything in the sources discussed above, including all the Anglo-Saxon sources. A purportedly historical account of a festival which ignores every single documented source for its history is... shaky, to say the least. Typically, this also treats 'Lammas' and 'Lughnasadh' as if they are interchangeable names for the same thing, which is not just an oversimplification but also culturally tone-deaf; even if they have linked origins - and that's a big if - the Irish and English festivals have very different histories, and have to be understood within their different cultural contexts. (The cynical part of me wonders if English people like to use the name 'Lammas' instead of 'Lughnasadh' just because they find it easier to pronounce and spell...)

I'm very glad that there are people today who celebrate Lammas, and for whom it has a sacred significance - I don't want to disparage that at all. But from a historical point of view, we shouldn't ignore such a great swathe of recorded history just because it doesn't fit with modern black-and-white ideas of what is 'pagan' and what is 'Christian'. To modern eyes, a harvest festival somehow looks pagan - but that doesn't mean it is, and the assumption that it must be reveals more about us, and our impoverished view of the natural world, than it does about the past.

I'm conscious of this danger because I write fairly often about the seasons and the natural year in medieval literature, and although many readers seem to find this subject as interesting as I do, a small minority react very oddly and aggressively to it. For me, it's fascinating to see how medieval writers thought about and wrote about the seasons, and especially to try and tease out the kinds of meaning - poetic, religious, spiritual, philosophical or scientific - which they found in seasonal cycles. This is the theme of some of the loveliest poetry in Old and Middle English, as well as some intriguing examples of medieval science.

Because almost all surviving medieval English literature (my particular interest) was written down in a Christian culture, such poetry and science are often framed in explicitly Christian terms. This upsets some people very much. These people take the view that interest in natural cycles, or the natural world as a whole, is by definition solely 'pagan' (according to their understanding of that term, usually a markedly 20th-century one), and that Christian writers have no business caring about it. In their view, the Christian nature of a festival like Lammas is a kind of false shell within which a 'real' festival is somehow hiding. The nastier ones accuse me of deceitfully concealing this 'real' paganism for my own nefarious ends - they demand that I produce the secret pagan texts I'm hiding, and are never put off by the inconvenient fact that such texts simply don't exist. There is an presumption of bad faith, and they are determined to believe the worst both of me and of the medieval writers. In their imagination, someone like the Anglo-Saxon monk who wrote down the Lammas charm becomes part of some vast and wicked Catholic conspiracy, rather than a fairly ordinary product of his time, place and education.

What they can never seem to accept is that much of what modern audiences view as 'pagan' - solstices, the healing power of plants, astrology, and so on - were standard parts of medieval science, religion, and medicine. They were subjects of learned as well as popular interest, which even the most orthodox Christian writers accepted without question. (Not because they were too stupid to know better, but because their view of such learning and its sources and purpose was simply different from our own.) When people object to medieval Christians 'stealing' concepts they think of as pagan, it's often because they are projecting back onto the past a very modern view of such matters, one ingrained with suspicion of the catholic (and Catholic) nature of the medieval church.

I wouldn't mind this so much if it came from people who identify as pagans, but in fact it mostly comes from self-proclaimed atheists, who see it as a stick with which to beat Christianity. For them the idea that a conspiracy of Christians 'stole' seasonal feasts from paganism is a check-mate, proving that religion is a big fraud and they're the only ones smart enough to spot it. Having read a lot of Dan Brown and not much else, they wield a pub-bore armoury of 'facts', which are either very basic or entirely inaccurate (of the idiotic Ishtar/Easter variety); and my goodness, there are a lot of them about. Some of them even write for national newspapers. There's almost no point trying to talk to these people; they don't want to learn anything which might disrupt their existing prejudices, and all they want from historians is confirmation of what they already think they know. (People often ask me 'how did the Anglo-Saxons celebrate Easter?', to which the honest answer is 'well, what we know best from the surviving sources is that they went to church. Let me tell you about liturgical drama and some interesting Good Friday popular customs!' That answer, while true, isn't the one they want - they want an easy story about eggs and bunnies, and they don't much care whether it's accurate or not.)

The truth is, of course, that though the roots of a festival like Lammas, or other frequently cited 'pagan festivals' like Easter, are likely to be pre-Christian, we have very little (if any) firm evidence for how they may originally have been celebrated. That doesn't mean their pre-Christian history doesn't matter - not at all - but it's important to be clear about what evidence we do and don't have, and what it does and doesn't tell us. In the case of Lammas, what we do have is evidence for a harvest festival in Christian Anglo-Saxon England, on a date which continued to be marked for many centuries after the end of the Anglo-Saxon period. Lammas lands and 'latter Lammas' are not pagan by any definition, but they're part of the history of Lammas too - not more or less important than the putative pre-Christian festival, but much better attested. It doesn't make sense to argue about what the 'real' Lammas is - it's all real.

BL Add. 54179, f. 4v

The idea that interest in the natural world is inherently pagan is one which would have made no sense at all to most medieval writers, or for that matter to most people for centuries after the end of the medieval period. It's a feature of an urban and post-industrial society to think that noticing and caring about natural cycles is an optional extra, or some esoteric magical secret - in fact, it's a modern luxury to be able to ignore them. We have light available to us, every hour of the day, at the flick of a switch, and so some people fiercely believe that only super-spiritual cosmos-attuned pagans could ever have thought to care about full moons and solstices. Go back even a hundred years and that's nonsense, of course; there was a time (and there are still many places) where solar and lunar cycles were unavoidably important, where moonlit nights were the only time it was feasible to go out in the evening and the lengthening or shortening of the days made a huge difference to the routines of daily life. Of course people knew when Midsummer was, and found ways to celebrate it  - it's not exactly a mystery! It's a failure of imagination not to realise that this is one of the ways in which the past (even the quite recent past) was very different to the present, and it's a very modern kind of arrogance to think that it takes some special deep insight to notice or care how the cycle of the year works.

This is especially true of the harvest and a festival like Lammas. In an agricultural society the harvest affects everyone - it's not an optional extra or a mystic observance. You don't even have to go back to the Middle Ages to become aware of this - think of Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park, oblivious that it's unreasonable to expect to hire a cart in the countryside in harvest-time because she holds 'the true London maxim, that everything is to be got with money'. Today many of us are more like than Mary Crawford than the farmers she offended; we're fortunate enough to be able to obtain food of whatever kind we like, all year round, without having to worry about scarcity or season, and that makes harvest festivals seem like nothing more than a nice decorative adornment to the calendar. But we shouldn't forget this is a modern and a privileged perspective, and we shouldn't impose it back onto the past.

Everywhere you look at the moment, you see people projecting their fantasies back into history, rather than allowing the past to be different from the present. This comes from people across the political spectrum, but what they all have in common is that they only really care about history as far as it serves modern political goals. They're only interested in the past to the extent that it supports their modern prejudices, whatever those happen to be; they can't or won't face it on its own terms and by its own lights. What doesn't fit, they choose to ignore. The people who angrily object to the idea that Lammas has a Christian history as well as a pagan one have their own fantasy, of a homogeneous, 'pure' paganism, and they want me to provide for them a version of Anglo-Saxon culture with the nasty Christianity taken out - not because they care one jot for pagan beliefs or the mystery and glory of the cycles of the earth, but because they want grist to the mill of their political opinions. Of course I don't demand that such people take an interest in the later history of the festival - they can be interested in whatever they like! - but I do object to them insisting that I, in writing about medieval texts, suppress or distort what the sources actually do give us because they don't fit with a modern fantasy. The past - at any particular place and any particular moment - was very different from the world you know. Let it be different. Let it be what it was, and not what you want it to have been.

If you'd asked your average Anglo-Saxon monk or medieval villager whether celebrating the harvest was a Christian or pagan thing to do, I wonder whether they would even have understood the question. It's the harvest; it matters to everyone. No one stole it from anyone, because it belongs to everyone. Of all British festivals, Lammas is perhaps simultaneously the most local and the most universal. Throughout its long history, and in its different forms, it has been a name which honours what we all need ('peoples everywhere', as the Menologium says): the fruits of the earth, and our daily bread.

Harvesters, in an Anglo-Saxon calendar for August (BL Cotton Julius A VI, f. 6v)

'That time was a blessed and happy one...'

Swithun in the Benedictional of St Æthelwold (BL Additional 49598, f.97v)

Today is St Swithun's Day, when the weather-gods obey the saint of Winchester - 'St Swithun's day if thou dost rain / For forty days it will remain', and all that. So let's look at a few extracts from an Old English homily for St Swithun's Day, written by Ælfric in the last decade of the tenth century.

Ælfric had a personal connection to Swithun's story, and in this homily he adds in one or two comments to remind us of it. Swithun was an obscure ninth-century Bishop of Winchester whose fame is almost entirely the work of Æthelwold, his successor at Winchester more than a century later. Winchester was the royal city of Wessex but it was surprisingly short on saints, so Æthelwold did his best to elevate some of his predecessors to that status, including Swithun and St Birinus (a better-attested saint, though his popularity never caught on as Swithun's did). On 15 July 971, Æthelwold had Swithun's remains translated to a new shrine inside the Old Minster, Winchester. Ælfric, who was educated at Winchester under Æthelwold and had a great respect for his bishop, would have witnessed much of this, and by the time he wrote about it, around 25 years later, he had come to see Æthelwold's time - his own youth - as a kind of golden age for the English church, when the king and holy bishops worked together and religion and peace flourished in the land. By the 990s, with the Vikings suddenly once more a pressing threat, this seemed to him like a bright but vanished world.

The opening of Ælfric's homily on Swithun, in an 11th-century manuscript (BL Cotton MS Julius E VII)

Today Swithun is really only famous for his weather-lore, because we know very little about what he did as Bishop of Winchester. (The weather-lore is a late development, not found in the Anglo-Saxon sources.) Ælfric didn't know either, as he tells us plainly:

On Eadgares dagum ðæs æðelan cynincges
þaþa se cristendom wæs wel ðeonde þurh God
on angel-cynne under ðam ylcan cynincge,
þa geswutelode God þone Sanct Swyðun
mid manegum wundrum þæt he mære is.
His dæda næron cuðe ærðan þe hi God sylf cydde,
ne we ne fundon on bocum hu se bisceop leofode
on þysre worulde ærðan þe he gewende to Criste.
Þæt wæs þæra gymeleast þe on life hine cuþon,
þæt hi noldon awritan his weorc and drohtnunge
þam towerdum mannum ðe his mihte ne cuðon;
ac God hæfð swa þeah his lif geswutelod
mid swutelum wundrum and syllicum tacnum.
Đes Swyðun wæs bisceop on Winceastre,
swa þeah ofer Hamtun-scire, gesælig Godes þeowa
and eahta bisceopas wæron betwux him and Sancte Æðelwolde.
Nu næs us his lif cuð, swa swa we ær cwædon,
butan þæt he wæs bebyrged æt his bisceop-stole
be westan þære cyrcan and ofer-worht syððan
oþþæt his wundra geswutelodon his gesælða mid Gode.

In the days of the noble king Edgar, when by the grace of God Christianity was thriving among the English people under that king, God revealed St Swithun, showing by many signs that he is glorious. His deeds were not known until God himself made them known, and we do not find written in books in what manner the bishop lived in this world before he went to Christ. Such was the carelessness of those who knew him in life, that they did not write about his deeds and conduct for the benefit of future generations who did not know his virtue; but God nonetheless made known his life with manifest miracles and wonderful tokens. This Swithun was Bishop of Winchester, that is, over Hampshire, a blessed servant of God; there were eight bishops between him and St Æthelwold. Now, as we said before, nothing about his life is known to us, except that he was buried at his episcopal seat, to the west of the church, and a tomb was built over him, until his miracles revealed that he was blessed by God.

Those miracles are the main subject of Ælfric's homily, showing how Swithun's holiness was revealed by visions and signs (you can read the full homily here). Ælfric goes on to describe how Swithun's existence was miraculously made known, leading to the moving of his body into the cathedral on 15 July, 971:

Þrym gearum ærðan þe se sanct into cyrcan wære gebroht
of ðære stænenan þryh þe stent nu wið-innan
þam niwan geweorce com se arwurða Swyðun
to sumum gelyfedan smyðe on swefne æteowiende
wurðlice geglencged and ðas word him cwæð to:
“Canst þu ðone preost þe is gehaten Eadzige
þe wæs of ealdan mynstre mid ðam oðrum preostum adræfed
for heora unþeawum þurh Æðelwold bisceop?”
Se smið þa andwyrde þam arwurðan Swyðune þus:
“Gefyrn ic hine cuðe, leof, ac he ferde heonon
and ic nat to gewissan hwær he wunað nu.”
Þa cwæð eft se halga wer to ðam ealdan smyðe:
“Witodlice he wunað nu on wincel-cumbe ham-fæst
and ic ðe nu halsige on þæs hælendes naman
þæt ðu him min ærende ardlice abeode
and sege him to soþan þæt Swiðun se bisceop
het þæt he fare to Æðelwolde bisceope
and secge þæt he ge-openige him sylf mine byrgene
and mine ban gebringe binnan ðære cyrcan
forðan þe him is getiþod þæt ic on his timan
beo mannum geswutelod. And se smið him cwæð to,
“La leof, Eadzige nele gelyfan minum wordum.”
Đa cwæð se bisceop eft, “Gange him to minre byrgene
and ateo ane hringan up of ðære þryh
and gif seo hringe him folgað æt þam forman tige,
þonne wat he to soðan þæt ic þe sende to him.
Gif seo hringe nele up þurh his anes tige
þonne ne sceall he nates hwon þinre sage gelyfan.
Sege him eac siððan þæt he sylf geriht-læce
his dæda and þeawas to his drihtnes willan
and efste anmodlice to þam ecan life.
Sege eac eallum mannum þæt sona swa hi
geopeniað mine byrgene þæt hi magon ðær findan
swa deorwurðne hord þæt heora dyre gold
ne bið nahte wurð wið þa fore-sædan maðmas.”
Se halga Swyðun þa ferde fram þam smiðe up
and se smið ne dorste secgan þas gesihðe ænigum menn
nolde beon gesewen unsoðsagul boda.
Hwæt ða se halga wer hine eft gespræc
and git þryddan siðe and swyðe hine þreade
hwi he nolde gehyrsumian his hæsum mid weorce.
Se smið þa æt nextan eode swa ðeah to his byrgene
and genam ane hringan earhlice swa ðeah
and clypode to gode þus cwæðende mid wordum:
“Eala þu drihten god, ealra gesceafta scyppend,
getiða me synfullum þæt ic ateo þas hringan
up of ðysum hlyde, gif se lið her on innan
seðe me spræc to on swæfne þriwa.”
He teah ða þæt isen up swa eaðelice of ðam stane,
swilce hit on sande stode, and he swyðe þæs wundrode.
He ða hit eft sette on þæt ylce þyrl
and þyde mid his fet and hit swa fæste eft stod
þæt nan man ne mihte hit þanon ateon.
þa eode se smið ge-egsod þanon
and gemette on cypincge þæs Eadzies mann
and sæde him gewislice hwæt Swyðun him behead
and bæd hine georne þæt he hit abude him.
He cwæð þæt he hit wolde cyðan his hlaforde
and ne dorste swa ðeah hit secgan æt fruman
ærþan ðe he beþohte þæt him ðearflic nære
þæt he ðæs halgan hæse forhule his hlaforde,
sæde þa be ende-byrdnysse hwæt Swyðun him bebead
þa onscunode se Eadsige Æðelwold þone bisceop
and ealle ða munecas þe on ðam mynstre wæron
for þære ut-dræfe þe he gedyde wið hi
and nolde gehyran þæs halgan bebod
þeah ðe se sanct wære gesib him for worulde.
He gebeah swa þeah binnan twam gearum
to þam ylcan mynstre and munuc wearð þurh god
and þær wunode oðþæt he gewat of life.
Geblætsod is se ealmihtiga god þe ge-eadmed þone modigan
and ða eadmodan ahæfð to healicum geðincþum
and gerihtlæcð þa synfullan and symle hylt ða godan
þe on hine hihtað forðan þe he hælend is.

Three years before the saint was brought into the church from the stone coffin which now stands inside the new building, the venerable Swithun appeared to a certain faithful blacksmith in a dream, richly adorned, and said to him: "Do you know the priest called Eadsige, who, with the other priests, was driven out of the Old Minster by Bishop Æthelwold because of their sinfulness?"

The smith answered venerable Swithun, "I knew him long ago, sir, but he went away from here, and I don't know for certain where he lives now."

Then the holy man spoke again to the old smith: "Truly, he is now settled at Winchcombe, and I command you now, in the Saviour's name, to swiftly tell him my message, and tell him truly that Bishop Swithun orders him to go to Bishop Æthelwold and say that he should open my tomb himself and bring my bones inside the church, because it has been appointed that in his time I should be made known to men."

And the smith said to him, "But, sir, Eadsige will not believe my words."

The bishop said, "Let him go to my tomb and pull a ring out of the coffin, and if the ring comes away at the first try, then he will know for certain that I sent you to him. If the ring will not come away by his effort alone, then he should not put any faith in what you have said. Tell him, also, that he should amend his behaviour and conduct to the will of his Lord, and hasten with a single purpose towards eternal life. And tell everyone that as soon as they have opened my tomb, they will find there a hoard so valuable that their precious gold will be worthless compared to those treasures."

The holy Swithun then left the smith. The smith did not dare to speak of that vision to anyone, not wishing to be thought a liar. But the holy man spoke to him again, and yet a third time, and severely challenged him why he would not obey him and put his commands into action. So the smith went to the tomb, and took hold of a ring on it - though he was terrified - and cried out to God, saying, "O Lord God, Creator of all things, grant to me, a sinful man, that I may be able to pull this ring out of the coffin, if he who has spoken to me three times in a dream lies within here."

He drew the iron out of the stone as easily as if it stood in sand, and he marvelled greatly at that. Then he placed it back in the same hole, and pressed it down with his foot, and it was again attached so fast that no one could pull it away.

The smith, awestruck, went out and found Eadsige's servant in the marketplace, and told him exactly what Swithun had told him, and asked him earnestly to tell it to Eadsige. The man said he would tell his lord, but he did not dare to tell him straight away. Then after a time he realised that it would not be good for him if he concealed the saint's commands from his lord, so he told him all that Swithun had commanded. Eadsige was angry with Bishop Æthelwold and all the monks in the monastery, because they had driven him out, and he would not heed the saint's commands, although that holy man [Æthelwold] was a kinsman of his. But, within two years, he returned to the monastery and became a monk, through God's grace, and lived there until his death. Blessed is Almighty God, who humbles the proud and exalts the humble to a high place, and corrects the sinful and ever protects the good who hope in him, because he is the Saviour.

This is a great story - Swithun granting his own sword-in-the-stone moment! After this a number of miraculous cures take place, and Bishop Æthelwold is convinced to follow the command of the vision and bring Swithun inside the cathedral.

Swithun at St-Swithun-upon-Kingsgate, Winchester

In another miracle-story, Ælfric concludes by mentioning his own involvement:

Æþelwold þa se arwurða and se eadiga bisceop
þe on ðam dagum wæs on Winceastre bisceop
bead his munecum eallum þe on ðam mynstre wunodon
þæt hi ealle eodon endemes to cyrcan
and mid sange heredon þæs sanctes mærða
and God mærsodon swa on þam mæran halgan,
swa oft swa ænig wan-hal mann wurde gehæled.
Þa dydon hi sona swa and sungon þone lofsang
oðþæt heora laðode eallum þæt hi swa oft arisan -
hwilon þrywa on niht, hwilon feower syðum -
to singenne þone lofsang þonne hi slapan sceoldon
and forleton ealle endemes þone sang
forðam þe se bisceop wæs bysig mid þam cynincge
and nyste butan hi sungon þone lof-sang forð on.
Hwæt ða se halga Swyðun sylf com on swefne
wundorlice geglencged to sumum godan menn and cwæð,
“Gang nu to ealdan mynstre and þam munecum sege
þæt Gode swyðe oflicað heora ceorung and slæwð
þæt hi dæg-hwamlice geseoð drihtnes wundra mid him
and hi nellað herian þone hælend mid sange
swa swa se bisceop behead þam gebroðrum to donne,
and sege gif hi nellað þone sang gelæstan
þonne geswicað eac sona ða wundra,
and gif hi þone lofsang willað æt þam wundrum singan
swa oft swa wanhale menn þær wurðað gerihte
þonne wurðaþ mid him wundra swa fela
þæt nan man ne mæg gemunan on life
þæt ænig man gesawe swylce wundra ahwær.”
þa awæcnode se wer of þam wynsuman slæpe
and swyðe be-sargode þæt he geseon ne moste
ne nan læncg brucan þæs beorhtan leohtes
þe he mid Swiðune hæfde ða gesewen.
He aras swaðeah and swiðe hraðe ferde
to Æþelwolde bisceope and him eall þis sæde.
Æþelwold þa asende sona to þam munecum
of cyninges hyrede and cwæð þæt hi sceoldon
þone lof-sang singan swa swa he ge-set hæfde
and se þe hit forsawe sceolde hit mid fæstene
seofon niht on an swarlice gebetan.
Hi hit heoldon þa syððan symle on ge-wunon
swa swa we gesawon sylfe for oft
and þone sang we sungon unseldon mid heom.

Æthelwold, the venerable and blessed bishop, who in those days was Bishop of Winchester, commanded all his monks who lived in the Minster that every time a sick person was healed they should all go in procession to the church, and praise in song the merits of the saint and glorify God because of the saint's holiness. They began to do this straightaway, and sang the song of praise, until it grew tiresome for them to have to get up so often - sometimes three times a night, sometimes four - to sing the Te Deum, when they could have been asleep. At last they all left off singing the hymn, because the bishop was busy with the king, and did not know that they had ceased their custom of singing.

But then St Swithun himself appeared to a certain good man in a dream, richly attired, and said, "Go to the Old Minster, and say to the monks that God is greatly displeased by their grumbling and sloth, that every day they see the miracles of God performed among them, but they do not want to praise the Saviour with hymns as the bishop commanded the brothers to do. Tell them that if they do not sing the hymn, the miracles will soon cease; but if they sing the Te Deum for the miracles, as often as sick people are healed there, then so many wonders will be performed among them that no one alive will be able to remember when any man saw such wonders anywhere."

The man woke up from his sweet sleep, and mourned that he could no longer see and enjoy the beautiful light which he had seen accompanying Swithun. Nonetheless he got up and quickly went to Bishop Æthelwold, and told him all this. Æthelwold straightaway sent a message from the king's court to the monks, and said that they should sing the Te Deum just as he had set down for them, and that anyone who neglected to do this should heavily atone for it by fasting for seven nights continuously. Afterwards they always kept this custom, as we have very often seen for ourselves - and we have often sung that hymn with them.

The replacement for the destroyed tomb of St Swithun in Winchester Cathedral

Ne mage we awritan ne mid wordum asecgan
ealle þa wundra þe se halga wer Swiðun
þurh God gefremode on ðæs folces gesihþe,
ge on gehæftum mannum ge on unhalum mannum,
mannum to swutelunge þæt hi sylfe magon
Godes rice geearnian mid godum weorcum
swa swa Swiþun dyde þe nu scinð þurh wundra.
Seo ealde cyrce wæs eall behangen mid criccum
and mid creopera sceamelum fram ende oð oþerne
on ægðrum wage þe ðær wurdon gehælede
and man ne mihte swa ðeah macian hi healfe up.
þyllice tacna cyþað þæt Crist is ælmihtig God
þe his halgan geswutelode þurh swylce wel-dæda...
We habbað nu gesæd be Swiðune þus sceortlice
and we secgað to soðan þæt se tima wæs gesælig
and wynsum on angel-cynne þaþa Eadgar cynincg
þone cristen-dom ge-fyrtðrode and fela munuclifa arærde
and his cynerice wæs wunigende on sibbe
swa þæt man ne gehyrde gif ænig scyp-here wære
buton agenre leode þe ðis land heoldon
and ealle ða cyningas þe on þysum iglande wæron,
cumera and scotta, comon to Eadgare
hwilon anes dæges eahta cyningas
and hi ealle gebugon to Eadgares wissunge.
þaer-to-eacan wæron swilce wundra gefremode
þurh þone halgan Swyðun, swa swa we sædon ær,
and swa lange swa we leofodon þær wurdon gelome wundra.
On ðam timan wæron eac wurð-fulle bisceopas:
Dunstan se anræda æt ðam erce-stole
and Aþelwold se arwurða and oðre gehwylce,
ac Dunstan and Aþelwold wæron drihtne gecorene
and hi swyðost manodon menn to godes willan
and ælc god arærdon Gode to cwemednysse
þæt geswuteliað þa wundra þe God wyrcð þurh hi.

We cannot write, nor recount in words, all the miracles that the holy man Swithun performed, by the power of God, in the sight of the people, for prisoners in chains and for sick people, to show to everyone that they themselves may earn the kingdom of heaven by good works, just as Swithun did, who is now made glorious by his miracles. The old church was hung all round with the crutches and stools of cripples who had been healed there, from one end to the other on either wall - and even so they could not put half of them up. Such tokens declare that Christ is Almighty God, who revealed his saint by such good deeds...

We have now spoken thus briefly of Swithun. We say, truly, that time was a blessed and happy one in England, when King Edgar fostered Christianity and built many monasteries, and his kingdom ever continued in peace, so that no ship-army was heard of, except that of the people who ruled this land. All the kings of the Welsh and Scots in this island came to Edgar in one day - that was eight kings - and they all submitted themselves to Edgar's rule. And, moreover, many miracles were performed through St Swithun, as we have said, and as long as we have lived frequent wonders have been done in that place. At that time there were worthy bishops, Dunstan the resolute, in the archbishopric, and Æthelwold the venerable, and others like them; Dunstan and Æthelwold were chosen of God, and they, most of all, exhorted men to do God's will, and advanced everything good, to the pleasure of God, as is testified by the miracles which God works through them.

This last paragraph is a reminder of the fraught times in which Ælfric was writing: the last decade of the tenth century, the reign of King Æthelred, when England was being attacked by Viking fleets. - hence his reference to the happy time when 'no ship-army was heard of'.) The reign of King Edgar, guided by Archbishop Dunstan and Bishop Æthelwold, was to Ælfric 'a blessed and happy time' of peace and prosperity, such as had faded under Edgar's unfortunate son Æthelred. He looks back to the example of Edgar, Dunstan and Æthelwold as an implicit rebuke to the king and bishops of his own days, but I think he might have been disappointed to know that a thousand years later - and only because of some weather-lore - Swithun's fame outshines any of the other three...

Eynsham and Ælfric

One of the most valued regular contributors to this blog is the prolific Anglo-Saxon monk Ælfric, who lived in the second half of the tenth century. Ælfric is best known for his two great collections of English homilies, which aimed to provide sermons for the whole cycle of the church's year, as well as another large collection of saints' lives - more than 160 homilies in all, which display the full range of his remarkable talents as a communicator. He translates and explains an impressive variety of Biblical extracts, patristic texts, liturgical customs, and historical and theological material of many different kinds. This was an incredibly ambitious project, but it was only one part of Ælfric's extraordinary body of work: he also composed letters of pastoral guidance and instruction on various subjects, and a range of works for use in the monastic classroom, including English 'textbooks' on Latin grammar and science.

Almost all Ælfric's writing is educational or pastoral in purpose, and he was a teacher to his fingertips, constantly engaged with the question of how best to communicate complex and challenging ideas to his audiences. He was a fluent writer of English prose, and later in his career he developed a beautifully measured blend of prose and alliterative verse which falls melodiously on the ear. His Life of St Edmund is a nice example of that style; I'm also fond of his poetic Christmas homily, and there are lots more in the archives. He was a popular as well as a prolific writer, and his works were still being read and reused as late as the thirteenth century - he had provided an invaluable resource for others to draw on, and while political upheavals in the centuries after his death altered other aspects of Anglo-Saxon literature and culture, the pastoral work of the church for which Ælfric had laboured still went steadily on.

Ælfric was educated at Winchester, under the influential reforming bishop St Æthelwold, and then spent nearly twenty years at Cerne Abbey in Dorset, where he wrote most of his homilies between 987 and 1005. He ended his life as abbot of Eynsham, a village about five miles from Oxford. I recently visited Eynsham for the first time, and this post is really an excuse to share some of my pictures from that visit - there's nothing left of Eynsham Abbey, but it's a lovely village, and it's possible to stand on the site where Ælfric's abbey once stood.

Eynsham was 'Ælfric's abbey' in more ways than one, since it was founded - in a way - for him. He was its first abbot, and it was founded in 1005 by his patron Æthelmær, the head of one of the leading families of Anglo-Saxon England. Æthelmær and his father Æthelweard had supported Ælfric's work for many years, and his collection of Lives of Saints was written for them (you can read the preface addressed to them here). They were a powerful and well-connected family, descended from one of the brothers of Alfred the Great, who were proud of their roots in the royal line of the kings of Wessex and were involved in contemporary politics - as ealdorman of the 'western shires', Æthelweard governed part of the south-west (probably Somerset, Devon and Dorset), and was a counsellor to King Æthelred. Both father and son had sophisticated literary and spiritual interests: Æthelweard was the author of a chronicle in Latin - a remarkable achievement for a layman at this date - and the family's patronage of Ælfric must have been a great help and protection to him.

Æthelweard probably died around 998, and a few years later his son Æthelmær founded Eynsham Abbey and installed Ælfric as its abbot. There may have been a monastic community of some kind at Eynsham earlier in the Anglo-Saxon period, but under Ælfric - with his impeccably Benedictine education - it became a Benedictine monastery.

Eynsham lies near the Thames, a little way south of what was once the great forest of Wychwood, and divided from Oxford by the green hills of Wytham Woods, which you can see in the distance here. This view can't have changed much since Ælfric's day:

This is a quiet corner of Oxfordshire now, but when the abbey was founded in 1005 England was in turmoil, under near-constant attack from Viking armies, and riven by internal conflict too. Three years earlier there had been a horrific incident just a few miles away in Oxford, when on St Brice's Day 1002, in response to an edict from King Æthelred, a group of Danes living in the city were chased into a church (on the site of what is now Christ Church Cathedral) which their pursuers burned down. In 1005, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle also records a 'great famine in England, such that no one ever recalled one so terrible before'. The following year a Viking army burned Wallingford - less than twenty miles away from Eynsham - and flaunted their dominance over Wessex all along the Berkshire Downs (I'll tell you that story another day), finishing up by parading their stolen booty past the very walls of Winchester, Ælfric's former home.

Æthelmær seems to have founded Eynsham around the time he left Æthelred's court for a few years, perhaps escaping the violent factionalism which reigned there in the early 1000s. (He came out of retirement in 1013, to lead the submission of Wessex to the Danish king Svein Forkbeard.) Eynsham was perhaps a kind of retirement post for Ælfric, too; most of his writings were composed in the 990s, so when he came here his life's work was almost all behind him, and he is thought to have died around five years later.

But Ælfric was anything but unworldly - though he was 'in the world but not of the world' - and medieval abbots were expected to be practical people, so it can't have been entirely a sinecure. There are plenty of reminders of industrious abbots at Eynsham, dating mostly to the centuries after Ælfric: while the first abbot probably never had the chance to do much here, the village is criss-crossed by signs of later monastic fishponds, building programmes, water engineering - all the practical things which leave marks on a landscape over many centuries of daily life.

It's a pretty village of honey stone, quiet and friendly, an oasis between the noisy A40 to the north and to the south the 'warm, green-muffled hills' which separate it from busy Oxford. It feels like another world - a peaceful, pleasant world. When Ælfric came here a thousand years ago, Oxford was already a town (a burh) but not yet a university city; in him, little Eynsham can claim an older scholarly heritage than its neighbour, the oldest university in England.

If you like going in search of medieval abbeys in England you have to use a fair bit of imagination, because most of the time you'll be looking at ruins - or empty space. For various reasons, in the past few years I've visited several sites of what were once great abbey complexes, and they all have their own stories to tell about the way later centuries have managed to accommodate the traces of their monastic past. I've been to St Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury, now an English Heritage site with an entrance fee and guidebooks and the footprint of the abbey carefully marked out; Crowland, a dream of a Gothic ruin; Bury St Edmunds, a large and well-kept public park where children play on the graves of the abbots; Abingdon, where the stones of the abbey led by Ælfric's teacher St Æthelwold are rearranged into tasteful Victorian follies; Peterborough, where the town has largely eaten up whatever remained of the monastery; and Reading, where the abbey's former precincts now contain modern skyscrapers more ghostly in their glittering emptiness than any medieval ruin could be. Most of these towns once revolved around their monasteries, and losing them must have been like having their heart ripped out. But places grow back, and build in different ways upon the ruins.

Eynsham was never on the scale of those great monasteries, but what stands on its site now is more appropriate than any of them. It's a churchyard, of the rambling shadowy rural kind, which lies between the (Anglican) church of St Leonard's on one side and the (Catholic) church of St Peter's on the other. Their two adjoining graveyards cover the space where the abbey church once stood. The site has been well investigated, and a neat little collection of signs point out the exact spot of each of the abbey's buildings; if you exercise a bit of imagination you can see church, cloisters, refectory, rising up out of the ground before you.

This sign on the wall marks the site of the high altar of the Anglo-Saxon church, and it points out that Ælfric - as the first abbot, entitled to a place of honour in death - was probably buried very close by. I hadn't expected that. If this is the site of his now-vanished tomb, it's a beautiful one - surrounded by well-tended graves just a few years old, bright with flowers and tokens of love. On this July day it was like an informal rose garden, with a view of the green hills beyond, still and quiet except for the occasional shriek of a red kite. A resting-place among Eynsham's parishioners seems fitting for this most pastorally-minded of monks - the shepherd amid his flock.

Fitting too that the site should span the grounds of both the Catholic and Anglican churches - however it turned out that should happen, it's a lovely thing. When you stand on the site of a destroyed medieval abbey - and if you are, as I am, fond of medieval monks and their ancient, industrious, imperfect but very human communities - it's hard not to think of the wanton violence which laid waste to them and all that unnecessary loss. But this is something more peaceful and rather beautiful, a belated healing of wounds. (A very recent one; the Catholic church was only built in the 1960s.)

Some remains found during the excavation of the abbey are buried in the Catholic cemetery.

The Anglican church, St Leonard's, was (and is) the parish church for the people of the town, and dates to the thirteenth century. The abbey church in its heyday would have been quite a bit larger.

Inside the church, I was pleased to find Ælfric in glass:

The church also displays various bits of stone which are supposed to have come from the abbey buildings when they were destroyed, such as this stranded above the doorway:

And the base of the font, said to have been a capital in the abbey church:

And some fragments of medieval stained glass, reassembled into a kaleidoscope of colour:

The Catholic church, on the other side of the abbey-now-churchyard, is very different, and has an interesting history of its own which you can read about here.

Though plain on the outside, inside it's elegant in its simplicity, and warmly welcoming.

This church adjoins the site of the abbey buildings, and behind the church is a meadow where the refectory and kitchens used to be:

It's called the Tolkien Meadow, after Tolkien's eldest son, Fr John Tolkien. He was the priest here when the archaeological excavations were going on in the early 1990s, and apparently took an enthusiastic interest in the project to discover more about the abbey. It's wonderful to think of Tolkien's son in Ælfric's abbey - Tolkien (the elder) must have taught Ælfric's work many times, and there's even a brilliant little nod to Ælfric in The Lord of the Rings...

The meadow contains a limestone boulder which was discovered under the foundations of the abbey when they were excavated. According to the guide, it was in a deep ditch which was dug over 3000 years ago, and 'the archaeologists think that the builders of the abbey decided to incorporate the stone into the wall foundations rather than move it'. It's a solid reminder of the ancientness of this site - Ælfric, living here a thousand years ago, is closer to us than he was to the people who dug the ditch where this stone lay.

And the hills are older still, of course, and he would have seen them.

After inspecting the site of the abbey church, it's possible to walk the perimeter of the medieval abbey - boundaries change slowly in the English countryside, and the modern roads still follow the lines of their medieval predecessors. It's the kind of place where the guide says 'the main road was diverted west in 1217 to expand the abbey precincts', and there the road still is, as if 1217 was really just the other day.

Another set of useful signs trace the path to the south of the village, around the sweep of the abbey's fishponds. This was the grand plan of a thirteenth-century abbot, and the land has hardly been touched since the abbey was destroyed; it's now an extensive green meadow, with weeds and waterfowl, still watery after eight centuries.

I do like a good heritage trail, and this is a very good one - a kind of secular Stations of the Cross, or Rogation procession of the kind Ælfric preached about. Part of the idea of a Rogationtide procession is that by walking the borders of your community you come to know it better, to feel its shape, and to remember what (and who) falls within its bounds. That has a practical and a spiritual function, at one and the same time. I wonder if Ælfric took a Rogation procession out into the fields the first spring he was at Eynsham, as he got to know the lands and souls entrusted to his care.

There are lots of things to think about here, in an empty meadow on a sunny July day. I was thinking about service. In his Preface to the Lives of Saints, Ælfric addresses his two noble patrons and summarises for them some of the characteristics of the collection which is to follow:

Ælfric gret eadmodlice Æðelweard ealdorman, and ic secge þe, leof, þæt ic hæbbe nu gegaderod on þyssere bec þæra halgena þrowunga, þe me onhagode on Englisc to awendene, for þan þe ðu, leof swiðost, and Æðelmær swylcera gewrita me bædon, and of handum gelæhton eowerne geleafan to getrymmenne mid þære gerecednysse, þe ge on eowrum gereorde næfdon ær...

We writað fela wundra on þissere bec, for þan þe God is wundorlic on his halgum, swa swa we ær sædon, and his halgena wundra wurðiað hine, for þan þe he worhte þa wundra þurh hi. An woruldcynincg hæfð fela þegna and mislice wicneras; he ne mæg beon wurðful cynincg buton he hæbbe þa geþincðe þe him gebyriað, and swylce þeningmen þe þeawfæstnysse him gebeodon. Swa is eac þam ælmihtigan Gode þe ealle þincg gesceop: him gerisð þæt he hæbbe halige þenas, þe his willan gefyllað, and þæra is fela on mannum anum, þe he of middanearde geceas, þæt nan bocere ne mæg, þeah þe mycel cunne, heora naman awriten, for þan þe hit nat nan man. Hi synd ungeryme swa swa hit gerisð Gode; ac we woldon gesettan be sumum þas boc mannum to getrymminge and to munde us sylfum, þæt hi us þingion to þam ælmihtigan Gode swa swa we on worulde heora wundra cyðað.

[Ælfric humbly greets ealdorman Æthelweard, and I say to you, my beloved man, that I have now gathered in this book the Passions of the saints which it was appropriate for me to translate into English, because you, my dearest man, and Æthelmær asked me for such writings, and received them from my hands in order to strengthen your faith by means of these stories, which you never had in your own language before...

We will write about many wonders in this book, because God is wonderful in his saints, as we said before; and the wonders of his saints bring honour to him, because he worked those wonders through them. An earthly king has many thegns and various officers; he cannot be an honourable king unless he has the things which are fitting to him, and such attendants to offer him their obedience. So it is also with Almighty God who created all things: it is fitting for him that he have holy thegns, who carry out his will, and of these there are many among mankind, whom he chose out of the world, so that no learned person – even if he knows many things – can write down their names, because no one knows them. They are beyond number, as is fitting for God. But we wanted to compile this book about some of them, for the encouragement of people and as security for ourselves, so that they could intercede for us with Almighty God, just as we make their wonders known in the world.]

The metaphor of the saints as God's 'thegns' is obviously one chosen to suit Ælfric's audience: Æthelweard and Æthelmær knew very well that 'an earthly king has many thegns and various officers', since they had fulfilled such a role themselves. The king's court was as apt a metaphor for them as it was for Alfred the Great when he used it in a text all three may have been familiar with, talking about how everyone at the king's court - from the highest to the lowest, from the royal chamber to the jail-cell - is in some sense in the presence of the king, just as everyone in the world is to some degree in the presence of divine wisdom, though some may be closer and others further away. There is a suggestion of that diversity here too in the reference to the mislice 'diverse, various' kinds of servants who serve God, and it's a theme Ælfric develops at greater length in his sermon for All Saints' Day - there are many different kinds of saints, who by their different lives and deaths bring glory to God.

This doesn't only apply to saints, of course. One of the most attractive themes which crops up in several places in Old English poetry is the 'gifts of men', celebrating all the many and various skills which different people contribute to society. When Ælfric addresses this theme he does so in an explicitly Biblical context, in his homily for Whitsun, where he describes the gifts of the Holy Spirit:

He sylð his gife ðam ðe he wile. Sumum men he forgifð wisdom and spræce, sumum god ingehyd, sumum micelne geleafan, sumum mihte to gehælenne untruman, sumum witegunge, sumum toscead godra gasta and yfelra; sumum he forgifð mislice gereord, sumum gereccednysse mislicra spræca. Ealle ðas ðing deð se Halga Gast, todælende æghwilcum be ðam ðe him gewyrð; forðam ðe he is Ælmihtig Wyrhta, and swa hraðe swa he þæs mannes mod onliht, he hit awent fram yfele to gode.

[He gives his gifts to whomever he will. To some men he gives wisdom and eloquence, to some good knowledge, to some great faith, to some the power to heal the sick, to some the power of prophecy, to some the power to distinguish between good and evil spirits; to some he gives various languages, to some interpretation of various sayings. The Holy Ghost does all these things, distributing to everyone as seems good to him; for he is the Almighty Maker, and as soon as he enlightens the mind of a man, he turns it from evil to good.]

But other Anglo-Saxon writers elaborated on the theme with a wider range of very practical skills, including climbing trees, sailing ships, architecture, swimming, looking after horses, hunting and hawking, and much more. Here's an example from the poem Christ II:

Sumum wordlaþe wise sendeð
on his modes gemynd þurh his muþes gæst,
æðele ondgiet. Se mæg eal fela
singan ond secgan þam bið snyttru cræft
bifolen on ferðe. Sum mæg fingrum wel
hlude fore hæleþum hearpan stirgan,
gleobeam gretan. Sum mæg godcunde
reccan ryhte æ. Sum mæg ryne tungla
secgan, side gesceaft. Sum mæg searolice
wordcwide writan. Sumum wiges sped
giefeð æt guþe, þonne gargetrum
ofer scildhreadan sceotend sendað,
flacor flangeweorc. Sum mæg fromlice
ofer sealtne sæ sundwudu drifan,
hreran holmþræce. Sum mæg heanne beam
stælgne gestigan. Sum mæg styled sweord,
wæpen gewyrcan. Sum con wonga bigong,
wegas widgielle. Swa se waldend us,
godbearn on grundum, his giefe bryttað.

To one he sends wise speech
into his mind’s thoughts through the breath of his mouth,
fine perception. One whose spirit is given
the power of wisdom can sing and speak
of many things. One can play the harp well
with his hands loudly among men,
strike the instrument of joy. One can tell
of the true divine law. One can speak of the course of the stars,
the vast creation. One can skilfully
write with words. To one is granted success in battle,
when archers send quivering arrows flying
over the shield-walls. One can boldly
drive the ship over the salt sea,
stir the thrashing ocean. One can climb
the tall upright tree. One can wield a weapon,
the hardened sword. One knows the expanse of earth’s plains,
far-flung ways. Thus the Ruler,
God's Son on earth, gives to us his gifts.

I love these catalogues of skills. They are celebratory and generous, finding something to praise in gifts of many different kinds, and valuing them all. All require skill and labour, all are important to society, all have a beauty of their own. In this context it's an explicitly Christian viewpoint, but a distinctively Anglo-Saxon one too - fitting for a culture for whom Weland the Smith was a hero. I can't really imagine what a modern version of this poem would look like ('One can phrase snarky Tweets so they fit within 140 characters...'); we just don't value craft in the same way, and our hierarchy of skills is quite a bit more rigid.

Within this view of the world, all gifts can be not only valuable in themselves, but a service to others and to God. Eynsham made me think of that. Æthelweard and Æthelmær had practical gifts of their own ('wise speech', they must have hoped, whether Æthelred listened to them or not) and they nurtured Ælfric's gifts as a writer and teacher, and Ælfric in his turn spent his life sharing those gifts with the world. Think of all the skills, too, which built and maintained an abbey like Eynsham - the labourers and craftsmen, the abbot with his fishponds, the cooks in the kitchen which is now Tolkien Meadow. Building and running a community takes so much dedicated labour - just read this touching history of Eynsham's Catholic church and see all the years of work which went into getting that church built, and all the very different but clearly much-loved parish priests whose diverse gifts are affectionately remembered by their parishioners. Such work is rarely celebrated and is often lost to history, because it's not dramatic or self-aggrandising - it's incremental, collaborative, self-giving, and it does an unfathomable amount of good.

A Story of St Thomas Becket

The site of St Thomas' shrine, Canterbury Cathedral

Today is the summer feast of St Thomas Becket - the feast of his translation, which took place on 7 July 1220. On that day (in the fiftieth year after his murder in 1170, a carefully chosen date), his relics were moved into a splendid new shrine in Canterbury Cathedral, where for three centuries they remained the destination of many pilgrims' journeys.

This would be a good day to read some of the medieval English songs and poems in Becket's honour, but here's a more modern Becket-themed story for the day. I found it in a fabulous book, The Lore of the Land, by Jacqueline Simpson and Jennifer Westwood - a magnificently comprehensive guide to English legends and local folklore which has given me many happy hours in the past few months. They say this story comes from a guidebook of 1907, and I suspect it is no older than that, though it's set in medieval Canterbury! Here's the story:

It seems that in the days when Canterbury was a great centre for pilgrimage, its inhabitants grew so rich and sinful that the Devil reckoned he would be justified in carrying the whole town off to Hell. On the other hand, so long as prayers were being said at the shrine of Thomas Becket he did not dare go near the place.

Eventually, one night the cathedral priests were too tired to keep vigil round the shrine, so the Devil swooped down, seized a large number of houses, and dropped them into the sea off the north coast of Kent. He then returned for a second armful, which he treated in the same way. But then St Thomas himself roused the Sacristan in a vision, urging him to ring Great Harry, the largest of the cathedral bells. This he did (the bell miraculously becoming so light that one man alone could move it), and the sound frightened the Devil into dropping his third armful of houses on the coast. Those whose inhabitants were more good than bad formed the town now called Whitstable, but the homes of the wicked fell into the sea just offshore and can still be seen there underwater.

Good work, St Thomas (and congratulations to the virtuous people of Whitstable!). Drowned villages and bells go together in legend - think of all those stories of villages drowned by lakes or the sea where the ghostly church bell can still be heard ringing beneath the waves - and perhaps that was part of the inspiration for this little story. On the topic of bishops and bells, I have to point out that the largest of Canterbury Cathedral's bells is actually not called Great Harry, but Great Dunstan - and since medieval sources tell us that St Dunstan was a bell-maker and a devil-fighter himself, the devil might well falter at the sound of his bell. Here he is on Youtube, even. (Bell Harry is the name of one of the smaller bells and of the tower where it hangs; it's named after the medieval prior Henry of Eastry.)

The other part of the inspiration for this story is probably the fact that the north Kent coast, where Whitstable lies, is prone to erosion, and the remains of drowned villages can indeed be seen out at sea. In 1907, when this story was recorded, the lost village of Hampton-on-Sea, between Whitstable and Herne Bay, was in the process of being rapidly swallowed up by the sea - though what can be seen there are not the wrecked homes of the wicked inhabitants of medieval Canterbury, but an ill-fated attempt to develop the local oyster industry.

 Reculver

A little further down the coast are the remains of another drowned settlement, in this case one which goes back thousands of years. The towers above are the ruins of the medieval church of Reculver, which was the site of a Roman fort, and then by the seventh century a royal estate belonging to the kings of Kent. An abbey was founded there in 669, where some of the early Christian Kentish kings were buried. By the later Middle Ages it was a thriving town, but already losing a battle with the encroaching sea. The town dwindled to a village, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century the church had to be pulled down - only these towers remain, standing on a shore which is still being eaten away beneath them. Out at sea, somewhere, are the remains of the Roman fort and the medieval town. It's a faintly spooky place, at the end of a long and narrow road which leads here and nowhere else; persistent local legends tell stories of ghostly Roman soldiers on patrol, or the cries of unseen babies heard among the ruins.

The church bell doesn't sound beneath the waves; instead, Reculver's bell now hangs in the sweet little church at Badlesmere. Two columns from the original church - said to date from the 670s - were left for a while in an orchard, but were eventually rescued and translated to the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral. They don't hold anything up, but stand stranded near the place where Thomas Becket's body lay in the years between his death in 1170 and his own translation on this day in 1220. They are a relic of a church five years hundred years older than Becket - and they bring us full circle.