‘And did those feet …?’ we may find ourselves singing. It would be pleasant to think that Jesus did indeed visit Britain/Britannia/England. Blake is asking a good question. It takes us back beyond the England of King Alfred, beyond the Roman occupation and Alban, beyond the Celtic days of Caratacus (aka Caradoc). In CE 314 British bishops attended a council in Arles and a congregation in Colchester based in the 100-seater remains of a church building and dated to 302 CE may have taken an interest in proceedings.
We are talking of days when the population of our islands was as mixed as it has ever been. There were pagans worshipping Faunus and other local deities, Latin-speaking Roman-British Christians, Dumnonians and their tribal kings and later, of course, King Arthur, who exercised a spell-binding influence on later generations including Malory, Milton and Tennyson.
If we think we have grown out of all that and are content to restrict our interests to what English Christianity has become since the days of Henry the Eighth, we should think again. We have the calendar to remind us of the lingering influence of Norse and Greek gods and goddesses. The origins of the names of the days of the week similarly pre-date Christian influence – Sunday, Moon Day, Tiw’s day, Woden’s day etc.
Lud was a pre-Roman king who gave his name to Ludgate Circus. Leir came from a similar era and became a familiar figure to theatre-goers thanks to Shakespeare. Mellitus has emerged out of obscurity to become the figurehead of a training scheme for the clergy in the 21st century. He arrived in Britain with others to support Augustine and was made bishop in 604 CE. As Bishop of London he found that the pagan citizens of London did not take to him and he was chased out of the city. He fled to Gaul and later returned to become Archbishop of Canterbury. By then Continental Christianity was being naturalised in a country that was a mix of pagan and Romano-British people and would go on to become a glittering Anglo-Saxon Christian society.
After the Norman conquest English Christianity, just like Christianity in the days of Langland, Chaucer and Wycliffe, was very different from the Christianity we are familiar with today. Before the watershed of the Reformation there was a mix of paganism, ribaldry and feudalism that is epitomised in the ballad of Friar Tuck and the Bishop of Hereford. We should not, however, forget that others than Chaucer had a great respect for the honest and hard-working poor parson of a town that we meet in ‘Canterbury Tales’. Goldsmith viewed his village preacher ‘passing rich with forty pounds a year’ in the same light.
We make a mistake when we forget our ancestry.
MAGGOT
We all know Arne’s ‘Rule Britannia’ but few of us are familiar with his maggot. Martin Penrose, organist at Lymington parish church, has unearthed an organ solo by Arne called ‘The Maggot’, meaning a whimsical item, and has added it to a recital he is performing. He explains his find in ‘Lymington Parish News’.
FEELING FINE
If you happen to be in Alnwick and are feeling fine, then phone the Vicar, Paul Scott. He explains in his parish magazine that feeling fine can be interpreted as feeling frustrated, insecure, neurotic and exhausted. He sometimes feels that way himself and has a listening ear for any who wish to talk about it.
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