Janina lovely to have you here to see you again.
Oh so good to see you cuz we go back a long way don't we? We do rather too long!
It's a long time indeed. I'm so pleased because again with everything you've
done and all your research you're moving into the world of saints and the
anglo-saxons which we have in common, that's like my area too. Pilgrimage, cult
of saints, medievalism and anglo-saxonism. I'm very happy to be here talking
about these things with you. Lovely to have you here today thank you.
Okay so first of all can you provide a sort of brief overview of St. Cuthbert
and his life. Well St. Cuthbert, I wrote a book about the saints, of all of the saints
Cuthbert for me is the one that reconciles the the the disparate aspects of what it
meant to be an anglo-saxon saint most completely because he has an early life
possibly as a warrior possibly it was certainly in a secular world he's
probably from a noble family and from this life he then enters a Celtic
monastic environment which is different to the Benedictine rules that we see
rolled out on the continent but he he develops within this this context and
then he goes to Lindisfarne at a point really that that Lindisfarne is
having to redefine itself having to set itself up as a place where Roman and
Celtic ideas can be merged together and what we hear about Cuthbert we don't get
it from him we get it from the people that write about him that write about his
his life and the art works that survive associated with him which is all very
carefully coordinated in order to present him in a certain way what we
learn is that he is this wonderful kind of point of reconciliation he is all
things to all men he's the perfect saint the
the perfect bishop of course that isn't possible as a living breathing
individual but but that's the impression we get from him through down the ages
and actually the stories you do read about him there's a lot of stories
associated with him in nature lovely stories about him talking to the Ravens
and took it to the otters and those things kind of humanized him in a way
but we always had to be a bit careful that we are getting a secondhand account
who he is. Absolutely yes so you mentioned actually the creation
of the arts and the literature so how do you think this sort of the power of the
art and literature has shown to be an influential propagandist tool in the
creation and promotion of his cult in the later years and the early early
years too in fact? Well it was very there was quite clear guidelines within
anglo-saxon England of how you developed a cult of saints. Saints were big
business they meant masses of income tourism investment and relics were
changing hands as to equivalent of fine artworks they were a big big
business but when it came to anglo-saxon cult of Saints you've got these
different groups particularly in the north of England who are all slightly
different they're all offering alternative setups so over at Jarrow and
Monkwearmouth if you've got a hotbed of scholarship of subscribe script Oriole
activity more Roman than Rome with its glass windows with stone buildings and
its massive Bibles over at hexam and Ripon you've got Wilfred and he is
modeling himself much more on the all-powerful Bishop monks of Gaul so he
has in purpled manuscripts he has yet caskets that replicate our ivory caskets
that's his setup Lindisfarne develops its own brand its own unique approach to
the cults of copper which is deliberately blending Celtic art Celtic
ideas with Raymond influences and very self-consciously so as yeah let's do it
let me know can look at it and say right those
swirls and spirals are Celtic that Germanic pattern let there is
anglo-saxon that's really but they are doing that deliberately it's like
graphic design you know there's their cultivating it to show that the saint
himself but also the community is bringing all these ideas together yes
and do you think it's particularly significant that ed fruss of Bishop of
Lindisfarne created the Lindisfarne Gospels himself well we think he did
himself do you think that's particularly significant absolutely absolutely so
I've worked with amazing scribes that window semi and we took him to an
anglo-saxon Hall and tried to get him to recreate part of the little Swan Gospels
in the right environment with the right equipment so inking shelves and I'm
sitting on a bench he set off around hour and a half it was he was in pain
because the conditions he was freezing cold the vellum was curling up the inks
were drying up if you close the window shutters you didn't get the light if you
open the shutters the wind came through he said the idea that Eric did this at
all was remarkable almost miraculous but we do you can see the consistency in the
painting in the artwork and in the text right the way through the hand of one
man and not just any man a bishop so on top of making this this manuscript he's
got his duties as a bishop of this community it's a huge investment and and
a real sense of personal sacrifice I think so what do you think then made a
saint a saint with in the anglo-saxon area and how do you think or do you
think that differed in the medieval era yeah yeah that's why I wrote the book
that's the point it's a completely different set of criteria what we
currently associate with sanctity it goes to the congregations of the states
in the Vatican I have to perform certain miracles they have to have lived a
certain life and it's incredibly critical and difficult to be declared
the same now going back through the medieval period it becomes increasingly
more more centralized and organized but going back to the annual saxxy period
early the seventh eighth century anything goes
because the community declares somebody st. so you've got this incredible
variety on front and you've got mad individuals like God flick what am i
favorite who who is famous for fighting invisible
demons which really just means there's a man in the fence waving his arms around
at nothing but he gets to Glennis a base community then you've got everything up
to princes princesses nobility royalty who are having cults contrived
for them but you've got men you've got winning you what both genders
represented and you've got all of society represented because everybody
from a pauper to a prince could be a saint in the anglo-saxon period and it's
that that beautiful variety that I find so fascinating and we lump them all
together we give them halos stick among you know two-dimensional icons and we
dehumanize them but the human beings behind these names are fascinating why
do you think God granted Aidan and his companions that small tile tidal island
itself why they're - found that monastery why or location location
location it's all about the locations so that Island is opposite Barbara castle
and bamboo castle is the stronghold of the northumbrian royal family an
incredible natural plateau with petrol fortifications on it that date back to
Iron Age but that has become the the the powerhouse of these and Northumbrian
Kings who are toying with different types of Christianity they're poised on
a moment of great change so we talked about Edwin if North Amarillo is the
first christian Northumbrian King but this is a point when they don't know
which direction to go in Christianity comes with a sort of two-pronged attack
- the anglo-saxons say Columba and the Irish from mysticism is establishing in
Iona and then of course with Aden it starts to creep over to a sinless one
but simultaneously almost Oh st. Augustine arrives with the missionaries
from Rome in Kent and Northumbria is that a wonderful melting pot where the
two parties meet and have to negotiate which is Orthodox which is the right way
to go and so granting Linda's pond to a German to
the Celtic movements it's quite a radical decision by the Northumbrian
royal family but the location was important too because one of the things
you see in Celtic monasticism is this idea of leaving the world behind trying
to find a desert the closest thing into a desert which is often an island or a
mountain or something inaccessible so the fact that Linda's file is tidal and
an island makes it the perfect location for a Celtic monastery absolutely you
mentioned location location location and obviously st. Cuthbert lived on the
tidal islands out of the st. Cuthbert's Isle and then he also lived at in a farm
- now do you think therefore that the aeromedical lives that they lived on
them affected the Saints and therefore their behavior I mean you talk about
goth work and his behavior odd behavior as we would put it today do you think
that affected them I get asked a lot about how retrospectively from a modern
point of view looking backwards if these people have non mental health issues or
if yeah what medical terms from a modern perspective could we apply to these
people now they have no conception of this as a metahuman mental health or or
medical issue - a lot of these people there must be a spiritual reason if
they're seeing things or if they're experiencing things it has to be either
from God or the devil and that is difficult for us to deal with from a
modern point of view but I do think that just the conditions under which these
hermit Saints are living they must have been deeply affected on an emotional and
a physical level one of the things I found recently interviewing the
archaeologists that worked on skellig michael the cemetery it's going Michael
was the extreme physical trauma that the skeletons displayed so the monastic
community there dates to about 800 AD and they're on the top of this sub
aquatic mountain in a sets of cells hundreds of feet up a mountain that
shear like this and all of the skeletons in the cemetery showed extreme trauma to
the bones the shoulders and the back from carrying things but most upsetting
leave the feet bones the bones on these peoples feet will actually sort of cut
through shredded to ribbons from walking up and
down this mountain and what what is that what is it that is making them leave
behind the comfort of the shore go to this place of isolation and then punish
their bodies that is the intention is to suffer like Christ but it also becomes a
cult of pain in many ways that you do they are there being more extreme than
the next person and comfort can't do that he can't go to scale ache he can't
cut himself off completely but taking himself too far and we know in the farm
and we know that he had a cell that sort of shut out the world and just looked at
the sky and that is all in emulation of these these these site sites that are on
these mountain islands so the dura monks returned to Lindisfarne with st.
Cuthbert's relics as we know by the early 12th century and they then
established a permanent cell of the Durham community there its purpose as we
know was to reaffirm the link between anglo-norman Durham and anglo-saxon
Lindisfarne and to establish the right of the Norman monks of Durham to be the
guardians of st. Cuthbert's legacy so how do you think this was then enacted
and there is a tricky question it's sometimes politics isn't it because I
think that yeah when we get the Viking incursions seven line three and into
Spanish sacked the community is decimated but they managed to retain
this their their primary relics Belinda Swan Gospels the coffin and
remains of Cuthbert would also the head of Oswald as well and that mode in
mobility that movement of those relics is in a way documented much later as
being about the survival of the community as long as those objects are
with a handful of the surviving monks there is still a Linda's one a concept
of Lindisfarne but what we have been is the reappropriation of that concept when
the Normans arrived and radically transformed everything from States and
and religious politics down to micro level once they're redoing all of the
redesigning society they had to embrace cults of saints and there's two ways
that they do this one is to reject Saints to declare them null and void
there were many many anglo-saxon cults that have been lost the other way is to
Rio to appropriate them so we see them appropriating all the losing them
appropriating Edmond martyr different sites of different locations and burrows
and Edmunds but we see them doing that with comfort and at Durham and Durham is
I mean anyone that feeds down procedural the way that West front is designed it
is castle architecture a castle cathedral and that is a powerhouse again
of how Romans want to be perceived and validating it with the remains of
Cuthbert and Mead and also earth that is all about supporting and bolstering that
place yep so finally then a lot of what we see on
Linda's one today land in a farm - was actually built in the late medieval
period 14th century so it isn't contemporary with cuspids life kind of
we therefore look at it as a bit of a sort of tourist attraction theme park
for the for the medieval pilgrims what do you think about that oh I first got
taken to Lindisfarne by my now husband then boyfriends for Valentine's Day when
we don't even known each other for a few months and I remember thinking if he
thinks that a valentine's trip to Linda's body February is a good idea
then clearly he knows me well but he's a keeper
the first time and it's like any of these but it's a bit like I owner as
well although I don't know has a purity to it because it's so sparsely populated
around there um there is a sense in which the whole place is focused on
these particular characters this particular perceived Celtic Christianity
that actually is quite intangible and there is a such Disneyland aspect to it
but I think that what is what you do get is the sense of the tides and actually
every time I've been you know you there's you be tripping you are fighting
the tides if you miss the tides you are stranded either on or off the island and
that hasn't changed for millenniums so that takes me back
and there is an authenticity to the space and actually archaeological digs
going on at the moment the archaeology that's coming out of the ground at the
moment about the anglo-saxon community at Lindisfarne is is really exciting and
it shows that we're that where we do have that later medieval building the
community itself is very nearby and actually that site was the site of
comfort and Aidan's community so so there is there is continuity and with
anything anglo-saxon it's very hard to reconstruct the space realistically in a
genuine way because they built in timber predominantly and a lot of it is lost so
yeah it is a bit of a Disneyland for medievalists but but again it's about
the site you could say the same at Whitby couldn't you you've got with the
abbey that iconic kind of Gothic structure on the landscape and yet the
space goes back to Hilde it goes back to the 7th century and I still feel that
you get that essence of continuity of use from the place there's more about
the inherent psychology than I think and the importance of location again you
know why are they on headlands why are they on tidal Islands there's a choice
and they've they're chosen because there's their beautiful spiritual
special places yes absolutely well thank you very much that was absolutely
fantastic it's been lovely to a concealer
you
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