p. 139 “Columanus’s spirital guidance “held out – humanely, intimately, personally – a lifeline to the individual members of an aristocratic society that was violent, guilty and fearful. The violence and the guilt we can read about in the the pages of Gregory of Tours …. fear of treachery, fear of revende, fear of shame, fear of pain, and above all fear of death and what might be beyond it. Penance healed guilt and drove out fear … could not the offering to God – in a society in which every cog of social intercourse was oiled by rthe giving of gifts – of a monastery, richly endowed, splendidly furniches, peopled by the founder’s own kin turned monks expert in praryer, buy His favour?
p. 140 One of the earliest Frankish converts to the Clumbanian monastic life was a young man named Chagnoald… belonged to an aristocratic family then settled near Meaux, to the east of Paris, although it had originated in Burgundy…While staying with Chagneric (his father), Columbanus blessed his young daughter Burgundofara (Fara, Fare) and “dedicated her to the Lord”. … When she grew up she entered monastic life and founded a nunnery upon one of the family’s estates, Eboracum, later to take its name from her, Fara’s monastery, Faremoutier, now Faremoutiers-En-Bric.
p. 141. her brother Chagnoald left Luxeuil to become bishop of Laon, … a third, …after service in the royal chancery of Dagobert I (d. 639) had become bishop of Meaux. Burgundofaraa’s will, dated 633 or 634, has survived. It shows how well endowed her nunnery was and how the different members of the family had contributed to these endowments… Faremoutiers later received endowments from Queen Balthild, wife of Clovis II (d. 657). Balthild was of English birth…. According to Bede the Kentish princess Eorcengota, great granddaughter of Ethelbert and Bertha, became a nun at Farenoutiers, and two East Anglian princesses became successive abbesses there.”
p. 181 In Gaul, the monastery of Nivelles was founded by Itta, widow of Pippin I – ancestors of Charlemagne – in 640, on advice from St Amandus. Its first abbess, Gertrude, was her daughter, and successive abbesses were also drawn from this high-ranking, aristocratic family often known from its most famous sons as the Pippinids. In England, Whitby was founded by King Oswy in 657. Its first abbess was Hilda, great-niece of Edwin of Northumbria; on her death in 680 she was succeeded by Eanflaed, widow of Oswy, daughter of Edwin and early patron of Wilfridl she in her turn by her daughter Alflaed. It is somehow appropriate that there should survive a letter which passed between Alflaed and Abbess Adela of Pfazel, near Trier. For Pfalzel was another Pippinid house and Abbess Adela unsurprisingly connected to the Pippinid dynasty; she was the sister-in-law of Pipppin II, grandson of Pippin I.
p. 183 “Bede tells a story .. involving the nunnery of Coldingham… like Whitby, was closely associated with the Northumbrian royal family. Its abbess at this time, about 680, was Abbe, sister of King Oswy.. As Bede tells it, the nuns of Coldingam were too given to a secular manner of life… “they occupy their spare time in weaving more delicate clothes with which to adorn themselves like brides, and make friends with visiting men. When the nunnery was accidentally dsetroyed by fire, Bede saw in this the manifestation of divine displeasure. Aldhelm uttered similar condemnations of worldly dress in writing to the nuns of Barking, founded by Bishop Eorcenwald of London for his sister. Excavations at the site have brought forward fragments of gold thread and some silver-gilt pins, which could have formed part of the elaborately decorated headdresses… women’s dress among the Franks and the English changed under the influence of Mediterranean and especially Byzantine models in the wake of the coming of Christianity”. A telling example of this is furnished by the so-called “Chemise of Sainte-Bathilde”, preserved in Bathild’s monastery of Chelles: a fragment of a linen shirt, with embroidery in four colours round the neck to simulate a necklace with a cross pendant from it. We cannot tell whether this garment really did belong to Balthild, though it would seem to date from her lifetime… the Empress Theodora, Justinian’s wife, is depicted wearing on ein the mosaics of San Vitale in Ravenna.”
p. 217 “The dissemination of Bede’s historical works in the Frankish kingdom provided food for thought and models for action in the mission field. King Alhred of Northumbria and his queen Osgifu assured Lul in 773 that “We have been careful to do as you asked about yourself and authority they are commended with everlasting memorial of writing and offered daily to God with the help of prayers. A bond of prayer … transcended space and time, had bridged not only the sea which divided England and Germany but also that other sea which divided the living from the dead… at some point between 765 and 774 King Alhred convened a synod which despatched another Northumbrian, the priest Willehad, across the sea. He worked initially in the north Frisian area where Boniface had perished. Later, in about 780, he was recruited by Charlemagne to work further east among the Saxons. When his work was interuppted by Widuking’s recolt he managed to escape … settled for two years of prayer and study at Echternach … presided over at this time by Abbot Beornrad, another Englishman … who was later to become archbishop of Sens and one of Charlemagne’s leading counsellors.”
p. 241 “from Ireland … St Brigit of Kildare. Although dates in the 5th century were later allotted to Brigit, it is practically certain that she never existed… Many scholars consider it likely that Brigit’s cult was the continuation of the cult of a Celtic fire-goddess. .. feast day on 1 February conincides with the pre-Christian festival of spring called Imbolg… the old Irish word erlam, “patron saint”, had the original meaning of “god of the tribe” or “tutelary deity”.
p. 247 “Columba’s grandest encounter on this journey took place at the court of the Pictish king Bridei (or Brude). The king’s chief magician – who was also his foster-father – was named Broichan. Columba had come to the Pictish court to seek the release of a captive Irishwoman, who to have occasioned these laborious journeyings and high-level diplomacy was probably a person of some considerable standing.”
p. 259 We now know that the practice of furnishing graves was maintained well into the Christian period. Among the Franks of northern Gaul, the Anglo=Saxons of eastern England, the Bavarians, and a little later the Slavs of Moravia, the men and women of the aristocracy continued to be laid to rest clothed, armed, bejewelled and equipped with the necessities of life in the Hereafter.
p. 261 At Eglwys Gwmyn in modern Dyfed, looking out over Carmarthen Bay, … stands a stone pillar commemorating in both Latin and ogham script a woman named Avitoria, daughter of Cunignos. It is difficult to assign even approximate dates to stones such as this, but the most expert modern enquirers would be inclined to place the inscription somewere in the sixth century. … We cannot be absolutey certain that Avitoria was a Christian .. however the feeling that what we seem to have … is an early Christian cemetery is strengthened by the widespread occurence of similar physical features in many more such graveyards in the western parts of the British Isles.”
p. 275 It is now clear that literacy among the laity in the 9th century was more widespread than once was thought, a tribute to the educational energies of the Carolingian reformers… a new emphasis on the non-Romance vernaculars for literurgical and homiletic uses (hymns, prayers, creeds, sermons etc)… We have works of Christian devotion composed for the use of the laity… Most remarkable of all, we even possess one such work composed by a member of the laity, the manual of advice for her son written in about 840 by a southern French lady named Dhuda. Such evidence tells us little directly about the quality of belief, but its mere existence and survival encourage the feeling that at least in some laity quarters Christian observance was taken seriously.”
p. 277 “Baptism gave life and salvation. .. Stephen’s biography of Wilfrid tells a heart-rending story of a mother who beought the bishop to baptise her dead son and thus “to save him from the lion’s mouth”… a rare and precious glimpse of a lay perception of baptism in the England of the 670s…. Infants could not receive the instructions which had traditionally preceeded baptism, nor could they make the renunciations and promises which were a part of the baptismal ritual. Sponsors had to act on their behalf. Hence the institution of godparenthood.”
p. 309 al-Andalus in the 850s “Flora’s story was particularly harrowing. She was another child of a mixed marriage, her father a Muslim and her mother a Christian. Her father died when she was very young and her mother brought her up a Christian. However, this had to be kept secret from her elder brother, who was an extremely zealous Muslim. Glora would later recall how difficult it had been to fast secretly in Lent. Eventually she ran away from home with her sister and the two young women took refuge in a nunnery. However, her brother tracked Flora down – we don’t know what happened to the sister – and handed her over to the authorities as an apostate. She was imprisoned, which was when Sabigotho met her. Refusing to renounce Christianity, Flora was executed in November 851.”
p. 343. “The geographical position of Bavaria meant that her relations with the Italian powers to the south were as significant as those with the Franks to the west. Agilolfing lorship reached deep into the Alps and intermittently beyond them, a force to be recokoned with by Lombard kings at Pavia, Byzantine officials at Ravenna and popes at Rome. The Bavarian princess Theodelinda married, around the year 600, two successive Lombard kings and was the mother and regent for another, King Adaloald… The last of the Agilofings, Tassilo III, also married a Lombard princess.”
p. 402 The medieval settlements in Greenland produced no native historians… We know just enough to sense a certain vitality in the Christian culture of the settlements during the 12th and 13th centuries. The cathedral at Gardar was rebuilt on a larger scale by Bishop Jon Smyrill, Jong th Hawk, whose episcopate fell between 1189 and 1209. It had glass windows and three fireplaces. The bones of a man who may have been Jon Smyrill have been excavated in the north transept. They were identifiable as the remains of a bishop by his gold episcopal ring and the crozier which had been placed across his body. This crozier had a finely carved head of walrus ivory, probably Icelandic work of the late 12th century. It has been speculated that it could have been carved by the celebrated Icelandic artist Margret hin haga, Margaret the Dextrous, who worked to commissions from Bishop Pall of Skalahoir, whom Bishop Jon Smyrill is known to have visited in 1202-3.”
p. 409 These 11th-century Danish bishops may have been, some of them, a roughish lot. Egilbert of Odense was an ex-pirate, Avoco of Roskilde was another drunk who met the same fate as the bibulous Henry of Lund. Christian of Aarhus was one of the leaders of a raid on England in 106970. One can readily imagine the reactions to them of smooth prelates like Fulbert of Cartres. Yet it was the lead given by these bishops that enabled the Danish church to become firmly rooted in its native soil”
p. 425 “As far as we can tell, Christianity entered Poland from Bohemia. It appears to have done so, as so often elsewhere, as the result of a dynastic marriage. In about 964 the Polish ruler Mieszko married Dobrava, the daughter of BoleslasI of Bohemia. It was a name of happy omen, commented Thietemar of Mersebeurg, airing his knowledge of Slavonic, because Dobrava meant “good”. She brough Christian priests and books with her to Poland, and soon the heathen husband was brought to god by his Christian wife. .. He established a new residence for himself at Gniezno (Gnesen) which had a chapel dedicated to St George. In this choice of saintly patron we might detect the influence of Dobrava, whose sister Maria was abbess of the nunnery of St George in Prague. … Mieszko’s second wife was a German girl of very high family, the daughter of Dietrich, margrave of the north-eastern frontier. The alliance was so important to both parties that she had to be hauled out of the nunnery of Kalbe to exchange a heavenly for an earthly bridegroom. Theitmar was shocked at this, though he admitted that she subsequently performed many Christian good works.”
p. 431 The abandonment by the Magyars of a nomadic way of life and the permanent settlement in the Pannonian plain was followed by the expansion of east-west trade through the region and the gradual consolidation of power in the hands of a single princely dynasty, the Arpads. It is a familiar pattern. This does not mean that conversion to Christianity would follow as the night the day; but we may, ny now, be unsurprised to learn that it do so follow. The earliest ruler of the settled Magyars to adopt Christianity was Geza, probably around 980. The adoption took the form – again, not unfamiliar – of simply adding the Christian deity to his pantheon of traditional gods. When his bishop taxed him with this Geza is said to have replied “that he was a rich man and well able to afford sacrifices to all his gods”, so at least Thietmar of Merseburg had heard. Theitmar had also heard tales about Geza’s wife [Sarolt], that she was a hard drinker, rode like a night and had killed a man with her bare hands. Bruno of Querfurt reported that Adalbert’s missionary dealings were more with her than his husband, because “she held the whole kingdom in her hands”. Thietmar knew her by a Slav name, not a Magyar one. He rendered it Beleknegini and tells us that in Slavonic this means “beautiful lady” (more acccurately, actually, ‘white lady’). Had Geza married into a Christian Slav family – like Mieszk of Poland – and this was one means by which Christianity got a toehold at the Magyar court? If so, then the coming of Christianity to Hungary was evidently a rather more complicated matter than the Passau version would have had it; or, for the matter of that, the Constantinopolitan version”.
p. 469 It is not often that we can witness the foundation of a parish. But … in the year 922 a church was consecrated in the name of St John the Baptist at the village of Mundarn in the district of Berga, high in the Pyrenees to the borth of Barcelona. It had been built on the order of a lady named Emma, who was abbess of the nunnery of San Juan de las Abadesas, Emma Barcelona, the daughter of Count Wifred the Hairy of Carvelona (d. 898) who had been the uncrowned king of the SPanish March (though nominally subject to the king of West Francia. Wifred had founded the nunnery in about 892 and installed his daughter as its first abeess, a familiar arrangement. Emma president over San Juan de la Abadesas for 50 years. Evidently an active and decisive woman, she devoted her considerable energies, among other things, to the orgnaisation of pastoral ministry on the monastic estates… whatever rural pastoral organisation had existed in the Romano-Visigothic period (if any) had been disrupted during the period of Islamic rule, which had come to an end only during Emma’s father’s lifetime and to some degree owing to his efforts… So she commissioned the building of the church at Mundarn and then invited the local bishop Rudolfo (or Ralph) or Urgel – who was her brother – to come and dedicate it…. She provided the new church with vestements and bookss: a chasuble, stole, maniple and alb; a missal, lectionary, psalter, antiphonal and a selection of ‘uplifting homilies from the holy Fathers of the Catholic church’… she also gave a house on the south side of the church as a residence for the parish priest together with various plots of land for his support” … On gets a sense, in studying these rare survivals, that setting up a new parish in Catalonia in the early 10th century was something that people knew how to do. It was not some unfamiliar new departure.”
p. 504 “Raiding brough Christian captives into Lithuania… A writer of the mid13th thought that the Lithuanian aristocracy would be easy to convert because so many of its members had been brought up by Christian wet-nurses and nannies. Foreign merchants brough theiir faith with them, just as they had done in earlier centuries to the ports of the north German and Danish coastlines. .. A complicated web of diplomact bound the Lithuanian ruling dynasty into the princely houses of Christendom. “
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