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Pagan Christianity?
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hotaire
43 posts

Re: Pagan Christianity?
Oct 18, 2009, 16:09
Hello Branwen,

Hmm! - Yes, I see what you mean. I don’t want to say too much about Berresford-Ellis as I’ve only read one of his books (’Celts & Saxons’?) and that fifteen years ago. The problem I found with him was that he talked about the ‘Celtic church’ as though it was one coherent entity – and it was anyting but. (Very briefly – because it’s not TMA stuff really – southern Ireland accepted the Dionysiac system of calculating Easter [bringing it more in line with Rome] in 632, Gaul in c635, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which had been converted by Iona conformed in 664, northern Ireland in 704, some of the Cornish in 705, Pictland in 710, Iona and its few remaining satellites in 716 [note the interesting split between Pictland and Iona there. I don’t know anything about that, but you might have come across it]. Wales and some of the northern Britons didn’t conform until the second half of the c.8th – 150 years after southern Ireland! So coherent, it wasn’t. To put it in a nutshell, St. Cedd’s establishment at Bradwell-on-Sea, in Anglo-Saxon Essex, was more representative of ‘Celtic’ Ionan policy than ‘Celtic’ Kildare ever was).

He says : “… both sexes inhabited abbeys and monastic foundations, which were known as conhospitae, or double houses, where men and women lived raising their children in Christ's service.” And he’s right – little boys brought up in these places include St. Cedd, St. Chad, Bishop Eata, and Bede. But that doesn’t mean monks and nuns physically spawned them. Aelfflaed was raised from infancy by St. Hilda personally, first at Hartlepool, then at Whitby. But that’s not the same as saying she was Hilda’s daughter. She was unquestionably the daughter of King Oswy and Queen Eanfled.

Some of these children were slaves bought by monasteries. Others, like Bede (we think) were handed in by families who couldn’t afford to feed them. Yet others were sickly or orphans.

Some little girls were donated to the church shortly after birth in thanks for a victory or other favour – Eanfled, daughter of King Edwin was one. (She left the church, thus breaking her father’s vow, to marry Oswy, c.642), Aelfflaed, was given in thanks for King Oswy’s victory at Winwaed, c.655. Others, from lower social levels, were given simply because they weren’t pretty enough to bring a decent dowry, and might as well be ditched early rather than feeding them for years for nothing – whoa, their view, not mine, I hasten to add!

The only example I know of a ‘fruity’ double monastery was Coldingham (Berwickshire) where nuns were said to wear bright clothes in order to attract strange men. It was later destroyed by fire (at the instigation of God, of course). Such were the shock waves from the Coldingham affair that St. Cuthbert ordered a separate church – the Green Church – to be built at the farthest extreme of Lindisfarne specifically for the use of women. Thereafter, he wouldn’t tolerate monks and nuns mixing even in church! The general reaction to Coldingham suggests that such behaviour was not common in other double houses.

Berresford-Ellis either hasn’t understood this, or hasn’t sufficiently explained it. I don’t know which is the case, and am not prepared to bad-mouth the man until I do. It may even be that he’s found records of another ‘Coldingham’ somewhere in Ireland – who knows? But it would be foolish to generalize on the basis of a single ‘fruity’ house.
In reply to:
Re: Pagan Christianity? (Branwen)		 Replies:
Re: Pagan Christianity? (moss)
Re: Pagan Christianity? (Littlestone)
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