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Pagan Christianity?
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hotaire
43 posts

Re: Pagan Christianity?
Oct 14, 2009, 23:09
Can I put a slightly different hypothesis here? The Canterbury mission led by St. Augustine that enterred Kent in 597 triumphed at first by converting kings, and leaving those kings to order a general conversion among their people. It worked, at least nominally – for a while. But, by 632, Essex had rejected it, East Anglia had rejected it, Northumbria had rejected it, and the mission even came within a few days of being kicked out of Kent (source : Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica).

Enter St. Aidan of Iona, who founded his monastery on Lindisfarne in 635. Now some of Aidan’s guys were real toughies. The Celtic mode of Christianity, followed by the Britons, Irish, Scots and Picts, was very different from the Roman model. It perhaps arose via a fusion of Christian teaching and the rigours of Druidic training.

Nothing was allowed to distract one’s mind from God. The monks and nuns had no possessions, everything inside the monastery being held in common (Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, Book iv, Chapter 23). There were no frills ; diet was frugal, and inmates drank only water or milk (Simeon of Durham’s Historia Regum Angliae, part 2, at 854 a.d.). They slept in their habits and shoes. Indeed, as an anchorite on Farne, Saint Cuthbert is said sometimes not to have taken off his shoes from one Maundy Thursday to the next, and, even then, only for the solemn foot-washing ceremony (Bede’s Vita Sancti Cuthberti, Chapters 18 and 35). And yet, he was seen as “neither remarkably neat, nor noticeably slovenly” (Bede’s Vita Sancti Cuthberti, Chapter 16).

Everything possible was done to raise the devotee above all trials of the body, and to concentrate the mind on God. Drycthelm, a monk of Melrose, would stand up to his loins, or sometimes up to his neck, in the river Tweed, reciting prayers and psalms, even breaking the ice in winter to go in, and allowing his freezing garments to dry upon his body. Saint Cuthbert is said to have done the same as an anchorite on Farne. Indeed, so severe were Cuthbert’s self-inflicted privations that he frequently had hallucinatory battles with demons.

Another monk of Melrose, Heimgils, who eventually retired to live in seclusion in Ireland, ate only bread and cold water. But this was luxurious fare compared to that of Adamnan at Coldingham, who only touched food of any description twice a week, on Sundays and Thursdays. Like Cuthbert and Drycthelm, he had occasional hallucinations.

Could it be, perhaps, that post-Roman Druids were not of the calibre of earlier ones, and that the Ionan/Lindisfarne hard lads took them on at their own traditional game – and won? Perhaps the people merely accepted the standards of old, as performed by the only modern practitioners – monks like those above. Hence the failure of Canterbury and the success of Iona/Lindisfarne. They were preaching the same gospel, but the Iona/Lindisfarne boys did it in a way that the people could respect.

Could be, y’know. Old religions tend to get flabby – just look at Christianity today for example.
In reply to:
Re: Pagan Christianity? (Hugo Hellfire)		 Replies:
Re: Pagan Christianity? (Branwen)
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