The Fates of the Sons of Ragnar

Publication day is fast approaching for my book, Dragon Lords, which explores a range of medieval legends about the Vikings in England. These legends - some well-known, others not at all - offer a kind of alternate history of the Vikings, as they were perceived by medieval English readers and story-tellers long after the end of the Viking Age. How did medieval writers imagine the Vikings intervening in English history, and where, and why? The answers to those questions are sometimes very surprising. I discovered all kinds of wonderful stories in the course of researching this book, and over the coming weeks and months I'll share a few of my favourites here...

Some of these legends were very popular in medieval England, and are widely recorded from across the country - for instance, the story of Havelok, a Danish king of England who (legend said) was brought up in poverty in Grimsby, is attested in a large number of sources and was generally accepted as historical fact. Other stories are recorded in detail, but only from one or two sources - so we know a version of the legend, but can't guess where else, or in what different forms, it might have been known. And then there are some which have to be reconstructed from scattered references and allusions, which attest to widespread interest in and tales told about particular Viking warriors, but don't give us anything like as detailed a story as we would wish to have.

In the last category, the most interesting example is the English legends about the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok, one of the best-known Vikings in Old Norse literature - especially famous today, of course, because of Vikings. That show and most modern tellings of the story are based (roughly) on the detailed legends of Ragnar and his many famous sons - Ivar the Boneless, Ubbe, Bjorn Ironside, and all the rest - recorded in medieval Scandinavian sources, texts which mostly date from the twelfth century and later. The historical origins of Ragnar himself are very uncertain, but Ivar and Ubbe and some of the other sons were certainly real people (not necessarily all brothers, nor 'Ragnarssons' in the earliest sources), who invaded, raided, and ruled in Ireland, England and elsewhere during the second half of the ninth century. They made a huge impact at the time, and in later sources they were among the most celebrated warriors of the Viking Age - famous for their notorious cruelty and wickedness as well as for their successful conquests.

A 19th-century version of Ragnar's death

England, especially Northumbria, features prominently in the Scandinavian legends about Ragnar and his sons, because it was not only part of the Ragnarssons' area of rule but also the site of Ragnar's death. However, most of the stories you may know about Ragnar - how he got the name 'Lothbrok', his fights against serpents, his succession of warrior wives, his defiant last words as he lay dying in a snake-pit - are only recorded in the Scandinavian texts, and are not found at all in English sources. Medieval English writers do, however, record some different variations of the 'Lothbrok legend', and there are also stories attached to individual sons. It's clear from the surviving evidence that there's a connection between the Scandinavian traditions and the English ones, but we can't be sure exactly what that connection may be; since we're dealing with what was in origin almost certainly a collection of oral traditions, not written down until many years after they were first told, the surviving textual record doesn't necessarily help us to reconstruct where and when these stories developed. (Though there have been various theories!)

One key idea the traditions do have in common is that Ragnar - who is never actually called by that name in English sources, where he's only 'Lothbrok' - was killed, cruelly and perhaps unjustly, in England, and that his sons invaded England to avenge his death. In the book I look in detail at the different versions of this story, and explore what it seems to suggest about how medieval writers in eastern England - particularly East Anglia - interpreted Viking invasion rather differently from the standard view of most medieval historians.

Ivar and Ubbe invading England to avenge Lothbrok, from a 15th-century English manuscript (BL Harley 2278, f. 47v); 

note the names 'Lothbrok', 'Hyngwar' and 'Ubba' in the surrounding text

But just as interesting are the scattered references to the fates of Lothbrok's sons, which connect them with particular places in England in some surprising ways. One of my favourites comes from a brief note, written on the blank leaf of a twelfth-century manuscript of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica - a later writer adding a bit of 'extra history' of which Bede could never have dreamt! The manuscript now belongs to Pembroke College, Cambridge, but it was probably written at Tynemouth Priory, a monastery on the coast of Northumbria which was once a place of great royal connections. Several of the early kings of Northumbria were buried there, and one of the additional notes in the manuscript records information on that subject.

The ruins of Tynemouth Priory (Picture: JohnArmagh)

Other notes, however, deal with the sons of Lothbrok, in English and in Latin. In English we get a little bit of verse:

Yngvar and vbbe beorn wæs þe þridde
loþebrokes sunnes loþe weren criste

Which means 'Ivar and Ubbe, Beorn was the third, Lothbrok’s sons, hateful to Christ.'

That's all - if there was ever more, it's lost! In Norse legend Lothbrok has at least eight sons, sometimes more, but in English sources, as here, he usually has just two or three: most often Ivar and Ubbe, with or without the addition of Beorn (i.e. the equivalent of Bjorn Ironside). There's some alliterative wordplay in this verse on the name Lothbrok and the Middle English word loþe, which means 'hateful' or 'hostile' (both seem possible translations here). Old Norse sources have an elaborate story about the name Lothbrok which interpret it to mean loðbrók, 'shaggy breeches', and explain that Ragnar got that name because he wore woollen breeches coated with tar to defend himself from venom-breathing serpents. This may, however, be a post-hoc interpretation, and scholars have suggested other possible non-serpent-related etymologies for the name (which is not recorded until the late eleventh century, long after the lifetime of the historical Ragnar and his sons). But to medieval English ears, the loth bit must have seemed very appropriate for a Viking so famously loathsome, and this two-line verse is not the only place where the name is interpreted in that way.

In addition to this verse, the Tynemouth manuscript also offers a note in Latin which gives some information on the supposed fates of Ubbe and Beorn. Some English sources are fairly sympathetic towards the sons of Lothbrok, but not here - they are characterised as very wicked, hostile to Christianity, and richly deserving of the punishments which struck them down. Ubbe, we are told, caused terrible devastation and slew many Christians, and was then punished by being killed by God at a place called 'Ubbelawe' in Yorkshire. Ubbelawe is also mentioned by an earlier source (Gaimar's early twelfth-century Estoire des Engleis) which instead locates it in Devon, and says that Ubbelawe was actually the name of Ubbe's burial-mound - the name means Ubbe's hlæw, an Old English word for a burial-mound which is also preserved in names like Cwichelmeshlæw. Anglo-Saxon sources record that one of the brothers of Ivar was indeed killed in battle in Devon in 878; apparently later sources decided (or knew) that brother was Ubbe, and that Ubbelawe was the site of his burial. There have been attempts to identify Ubbelawe with a landmark near Appledore, on the Devon coast, which has now been lost to the sea, but which in the eighteenth century was known as Ubbaston or Whibblestan.

And meanwhile - the Tynemouth manuscript goes on - Beorn attacked a nunnery on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, and violated the nuns there. But he too was suddenly struck down by an act of God, swallowed up by the earth – horse and armour and all – as he was riding at Frindsbury, near Rochester. To this day, the note says, there is a deep fissure in the road at Frindsbury, twenty feet wide, where Beorn was engulfed by the earth, and the water at the bottom of it is always tinged red, as if with Viking blood. (Isn't that amazing!) It's not at all clear where this story might have come from, especially since Tynemouth is a long way from Rochester; in the Scandinavian sources, Bjorn Ironside retired from raiding to live happily ever after as a prosperous king of Sweden - but that's not so satisfying a moral...

So, that's what happened to Ubbe and Beorn. What of Ivar? Ivar's name usually appears in medieval English texts as Inguar or Hinguar, and this explains another story not unlike the one of Beorn, though recorded in a different source. This is a late fourteenth or early fifteenth century collection of texts from Hyde Abbey in Winchester, which says that it was Ubbe who was swallowed up by the earth with his horse while he was riding, and Ivar (Hinguar) was drowned while crossing a ford in Berkshire. The place where he died came to be named after him, Hyngarford – modern Hungerford.

A pretty and peaceful river in Hungerford today...

The name of Hungerford probably, alas, has nothing to do with Ivar; but we might link this supposed etymology to the fact that Hungerford is one of the places known to have celebrated the late-medieval festival of Hocktide, often explained at the time as a commemoration of victory over the Danes. These are both retrospective - and very late - explanations of existing names or customs which account for them by linking them to the Vikings, whom late-medieval writers knew had indeed fought battles in this area of Wessex. Since there were few things medieval writers liked more than speculating about etymology, especially names, it's not surprising that some bright spark spotted a link between Hungerford and Ivar. What's important about these details is not whether they tell us anything about the real Ivar, Ubbe and Beorn - almost certainly not, though you never know! - but what they suggest later medieval writers found interesting about them. Here, it's explaining local names or landscape features by connecting them to famous Vikings, whose names clearly meant something to a contemporary English audience, even without the elaborate legends which were attached to them in Scandinavia.

In recent years, archaeologists have been exploring the possibility that one of the men among the Viking army buried at Repton in Derbyshire may in fact be Ivar the Boneless himself. That's a fascinating idea, and Ivar's death and grave were apparently of as much interest to medieval historians as they are to modern archaeologists, since we have not only this reference to Hungerford but also, more importantly, the Old Norse legend about 'Ivar's howe'. This is the story of Ivar's burial-mound on the coast of Cleveland in Yorkshire, from where the spirit of this fiercest of Vikings posthumously guarded the English coast against invasion. Until, that is, William the Conqueror got wise to this, and went north to burn his bones and break the spell...

Repton

A Story of St Thomas Becket

The site of St Thomas' shrine, Canterbury Cathedral

Today is the summer feast of St Thomas Becket - the feast of his translation, which took place on 7 July 1220. On that day (in the fiftieth year after his murder in 1170, a carefully chosen date), his relics were moved into a splendid new shrine in Canterbury Cathedral, where for three centuries they remained the destination of many pilgrims' journeys.

This would be a good day to read some of the medieval English songs and poems in Becket's honour, but here's a more modern Becket-themed story for the day. I found it in a fabulous book, The Lore of the Land, by Jacqueline Simpson and Jennifer Westwood - a magnificently comprehensive guide to English legends and local folklore which has given me many happy hours in the past few months. They say this story comes from a guidebook of 1907, and I suspect it is no older than that, though it's set in medieval Canterbury! Here's the story:

It seems that in the days when Canterbury was a great centre for pilgrimage, its inhabitants grew so rich and sinful that the Devil reckoned he would be justified in carrying the whole town off to Hell. On the other hand, so long as prayers were being said at the shrine of Thomas Becket he did not dare go near the place.

Eventually, one night the cathedral priests were too tired to keep vigil round the shrine, so the Devil swooped down, seized a large number of houses, and dropped them into the sea off the north coast of Kent. He then returned for a second armful, which he treated in the same way. But then St Thomas himself roused the Sacristan in a vision, urging him to ring Great Harry, the largest of the cathedral bells. This he did (the bell miraculously becoming so light that one man alone could move it), and the sound frightened the Devil into dropping his third armful of houses on the coast. Those whose inhabitants were more good than bad formed the town now called Whitstable, but the homes of the wicked fell into the sea just offshore and can still be seen there underwater.

Good work, St Thomas (and congratulations to the virtuous people of Whitstable!). Drowned villages and bells go together in legend - think of all those stories of villages drowned by lakes or the sea where the ghostly church bell can still be heard ringing beneath the waves - and perhaps that was part of the inspiration for this little story. On the topic of bishops and bells, I have to point out that the largest of Canterbury Cathedral's bells is actually not called Great Harry, but Great Dunstan - and since medieval sources tell us that St Dunstan was a bell-maker and a devil-fighter himself, the devil might well falter at the sound of his bell. Here he is on Youtube, even. (Bell Harry is the name of one of the smaller bells and of the tower where it hangs; it's named after the medieval prior Henry of Eastry.)

The other part of the inspiration for this story is probably the fact that the north Kent coast, where Whitstable lies, is prone to erosion, and the remains of drowned villages can indeed be seen out at sea. In 1907, when this story was recorded, the lost village of Hampton-on-Sea, between Whitstable and Herne Bay, was in the process of being rapidly swallowed up by the sea - though what can be seen there are not the wrecked homes of the wicked inhabitants of medieval Canterbury, but an ill-fated attempt to develop the local oyster industry.

 Reculver

A little further down the coast are the remains of another drowned settlement, in this case one which goes back thousands of years. The towers above are the ruins of the medieval church of Reculver, which was the site of a Roman fort, and then by the seventh century a royal estate belonging to the kings of Kent. An abbey was founded there in 669, where some of the early Christian Kentish kings were buried. By the later Middle Ages it was a thriving town, but already losing a battle with the encroaching sea. The town dwindled to a village, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century the church had to be pulled down - only these towers remain, standing on a shore which is still being eaten away beneath them. Out at sea, somewhere, are the remains of the Roman fort and the medieval town. It's a faintly spooky place, at the end of a long and narrow road which leads here and nowhere else; persistent local legends tell stories of ghostly Roman soldiers on patrol, or the cries of unseen babies heard among the ruins.

The church bell doesn't sound beneath the waves; instead, Reculver's bell now hangs in the sweet little church at Badlesmere. Two columns from the original church - said to date from the 670s - were left for a while in an orchard, but were eventually rescued and translated to the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral. They don't hold anything up, but stand stranded near the place where Thomas Becket's body lay in the years between his death in 1170 and his own translation on this day in 1220. They are a relic of a church five years hundred years older than Becket - and they bring us full circle.

The Death of King Ethelbert

Worth, Kent

Today is the 1400th anniversary of the death of Ethelbert, king of Kent, the first English king to convert to Christianity. Ethelbert died on 24 February 616, around twenty years after receiving the mission of St Augustine and his companions, who had been sent from Rome to spread Christianity to (what they thought) a 'barbarous, fierce, and unbelieving nation'. So today is a good day to read Bede's account of Augustine's meeting with Ethelbert in 597, and what came after it. This is how Bede describes Augustine's coming, in Book I of his Historia Ecclesiastica (beginning at chapter 25, taken from here):

Augustine, thus strengthened by the confirmation of the blessed Father Gregory, returned to the work of the word of God, with the servants of Christ, and arrived in Britain. The powerful Ethelbert was at that time king of Kent; he had extended his dominions as far as the great river Humber, by which the Southern Saxons are divided from the Northern.

On the east of Kent is the large Isle of Thanet containing, according to the English way of reckoning, 600 families, divided from the other land by the river Wantsum, which is about three furlongs over, and fordable only in two places, for both ends of it run into the sea. In this island landed the servant of our Lord, Augustine, and his companions, being, as is reported, nearly forty men.

Augustine landing (St Laurence, Ramsgate)

They had, by order of the blessed Pope Gregory, taken interpreters of the nation of the Franks, and sending to Ethelbert, signified that they were come from Rome, and brought a joyful message, which most undoubtedly assured to all that took advantage of it everlasting joys in heaven and a kingdom that would never end with the living and true God.

The king, having heard this, ordered them to stay in that island where they had landed, and that they should be furnished with all necessaries, till he should consider what to do with them. For he had before heard of the Christian religion, having a Christian wife of the royal family of the Franks, called Bertha; whom he had received from her parents, upon condition that she should be permitted to practice her religion with the Bishop Luidhard, who was sent with her to preserve her faith.

The traditional site of Augustine's landing, Thanet

Some days after, the king came into the island, and sitting in the open air, ordered Augustine and his companions to be brought into his presence. For he had taken precaution that they should not come to him in any house, lest, according to an ancient superstition, if they practiced any magical arts, they might impose upon him, and so get the better of him. But they came furnished with divine, not with magic virtue, bearing a silver cross for their banner, and the image of our Lord and Saviour painted on a board; and singing the litany, they offered up their prayers to the Lord for the eternal salvation both of themselves and of those to whom they were come.

When he had sat down, pursuant to the king's commands, and preached to him and his attendants there present the word of life, the king answered thus: ­ "Your words and promises are very fair, but as they are new to us, and of uncertain import, I cannot approve of them so far as to forsake that which I have so long followed with the whole English nation. But because you are come from far into my kingdom, and, as I conceive, are desirous to impart to us those things which you believe to be true and most beneficial, we will not molest you, but give you favourable entertainment, and take care to supply you with your necessary sustenance; nor do we forbid you to preach and gain as many as you can to your religion."

Augustine preaching to Ethelbert (Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford)

Accordingly he permitted them to reside in the city of Canterbury, which was the metropolis of all his dominions, and, pursuant to his promise, besides allowing them sustenance, did not refuse them liberty to preach. It is reported that, as they drew near to the city, after their manner, with the holy cross, and the image of our sovereign Lord and King, Jesus Christ, they, in concert, sung this litany: "We beseech Thee, O Lord, in all Thy mercy, that thy anger and wrath be turned away from this city, and from the holy house, because we have sinned. Hallelujah."

Augustine processing to Canterbury (St Augustine's, Ramsgate)

As soon as they entered the dwelling­-place assigned them they began to imitate the course of life practiced in the primitive church; applying themselves to frequent prayer, watching and fasting; preaching the word of life to as many as they could; despising all worldly things, as not belonging to them; receiving only their necessary food from those they taught; living themselves in all respects conformably to what they prescribed to others, and being always disposed to suffer any adversity, and even to die for that truth which they preached. In short, several believed and were baptized, admiring the simplicity of their innocent life, and the sweetness of their heavenly doctrine.

There was on the east side of the city a church dedicated to the honour of St. Martin, built whilst the Romans were still in the island, wherein the queen, who, as has been said before, was a Christian, used to pray. In this they first began to meet, to sing, to pray, to say mass, to preach, and to baptize, till the king, being converted to the faith, allowed them to preach openly, and build or repair churches in all places.

A statue of Queen Bertha in the church of St Martin's

When he, among the rest, induced by the unspotted life of these holy men, and their delightful promises, which, by many miracles, they proved to be most certain, believed and was baptized, greater numbers began daily to flock together to hear the word, and, forsaking their heathen rites, to associate themselves, by believing, to the unity of the church of Christ. Their conversion the king so far encouraged, as that he compelled none to embrace Christianity, but only showed more affection to the believers, as to his fellow­-citizens in the heavenly kingdom.

For he had learned from his instructors and leaders to salvation, that the service of Christ ought to be voluntary, not by compulsion. Nor was it long before he gave his preachers a settled residence in his metropolis of Canterbury, with such possessions of different kinds as were necessary for their subsistence.

Ethelbert and the towers of Canterbury Cathedral

Later on, in Book II:

In the year of our Lord's incarnation 616, which is the twenty-first year after Augustine and his companions were sent to preach to the English nation, Ethelbert, king of Kent, having most gloriously governed his temporal kingdom fifty-six years, entered into the eternal joys of the kingdom which is heavenly. He was the third of the English kings that had the sovereignty of all the southern provinces that are divided from the northern by the river Humber, and the borders contiguous to the same; but the first of the kings that ascended to the heavenly kingdom...

King Ethelbert died on the 24th day of the month of February, twenty-one years after he had received the faith, and was buried in St. Martin's porch within the church of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, where also lies his queen, Bertha. Among other benefits which he conferred upon the nation, he also, by the advice of wise persons, introduced judicial decrees, after the Roman model; which, being written in English, are still kept and observed by them.

The ruins of St Augustine's, Canterbury;
in the foreground is the porticus where Ethelbert was buried

...post regnum temporale, quod L et VI annis gloriosissime tenuerat, aeterna caelestis regni gaudia subiit...

In telling of the king's death, Bede carefully (though not perhaps accurately) notes the length in years of Ethelbert's reign and the geographical extent of his kingdom, as if to underline the point that the king is departing from these temporal and territorial limits to a kingdom without boundaries and without time. Here in the realm of time and space, we make a virtue of these limits by commemorating the when and where of history: keeping anniversaries and marking sites. Most of the images in this post are of physical memorials to Ethelbert and Augustine from the area where they are most plentifully memorialised, in Canterbury and the Isle of Thanet. In this region a disparate collection of memorials, many more than are pictured here, commemorates not just the people in this story but the places where it played out, the meaning-rich landscape of island and mainland, marginal shore and royal capital, which is symbolic as well as real. Thanks to a combination of folklore, genuine continuity, and dedicated local history-making, you can visit most of the sites mentioned in Bede's story, from the shore where Augustine landed to the well where he baptised the king, to the city where Queen Bertha's church still stands, the cathedral soars, and the foundations of King Ethelbert's burial-place are neatly marked out in English Heritage stone. If so inclined, you can now walk the way (or even canoe it) in Augustine's footsteps.

St Augustine's Cross, Cliffsend

Some of these memorials also mark anniversaries. This cross, erected in 1884, is near the supposed site of Ethelbert's meeting with Augustine, and was the focus of celebrations for the 1300th anniversary of Augustine's arrival in 1897. One of my own first encounters with Anglo-Saxon history was witnessing the commemoration of the 1400th anniversary in Ramsgate in 1997 (I was eleven years old, and it would be nice to say that this event fired me with a love of Anglo-Saxon history and inspired me then and there to become a medievalist - but actually I don't recall being especially clear on what we were commemorating...). Ethelbert is the first Anglo-Saxon king whose date of death we know in part because the coming of Augustine, of Christianity, also brought to the English new ways of marking time and of recalling and commemorating history. Like the making of memorials, the marking of anniversaries is a creative act, a work of the historical imagination through which we can locate ourselves in time as well as place, with ever-richer possibilities as the passage of time adds more and more layers. So perhaps it's a good day to celebrate not only Ethelbert but the historian who gives him to us. Bede looked back on Ethelbert from the distance of 140 years, and we're now 1400 years away; but with even the historian's history under threat, it's all the more important to go on telling his stories.

A memorial of a memorial (St Laurence, Ramsgate)

St Clement's, Sandwich

St Clement (Westhall, Suffolk)

23 November is the feast of St Clement, the first-century pope and martyr who was, rather incongruously, a favourite saint with Vikings. (He was martyred by being tied to an anchor and thrown into the sea, therefore he is often shown with an anchor, therefore he is the patron of seafarers, and therefore of Vikings. Impeccable logic!) This is only tangentially related to the subject of today's post, but it is one of my favourite Viking facts. Churches dedicated to St Clement often correlate with areas of Scandinavian settlement and, especially, with Danish military garrisons dating to the reign of Cnut; this probably accounts for the dedication of St Clement Danes in London, St Clement's here in Oxford, and many churches dedicated to St Clement in the former Danelaw.

Today's post is also only vaguely related to St Clement himself, because it's not really about him but about something which happened in the eleventh century in a church dedicated to him. It occurs in a curiosity of Anglo-Saxon literature known as 'The Vision of Leofric', a short Old English prose text which recounts several visions experienced by Leofric, Earl of Mercia, probably in the 1040s or 1050s (Leofric died in 1057). This text tells of four visions attributed to Leofric. The first is a dream in which he sees St Paul saying Mass before a crowd of people, in a beautiful field. The second and third episodes take place inside the church at Christ Church, Canterbury: in one Leofric, seeking to pray in the church at night, finds the locked door miraculously opened for him (even though the sacristan is too drunk to let him in), and in the other he goes to pray close to the tomb of St Dunstan and experiences miraculous noises and lights. And this is the last:

Not long afterwards the king was at Sandwich with his ships. It was [Leofric's] custom that every day he would hear two masses (unless it was more) and all the office too, before he went out. He was going about some necessary business, and Mass was being said before the king in St. Clement’s church. He said to his companions that it would be better if they went to Mass. He went in, and someone called to him at once; he went straightaway inside the sanctuary on the north side, and the king was standing on the south side.

There was a triple-threaded wall-hanging there, very thickly woven, which hung behind the altar, and a moderate-sized cross standing on the floor in the north-east corner; there was as much as a good hand's breadth of the cross visible below the hanging, and the rest was between the hanging and the wall. The priest was saying Mass beside the cross. Then [Leofric] saw above the cross a hand, as if it were blessing. At first he thought that it was someone blessing him, because the church was very full of people, but it was not so. Then he looked at it more carefully, and he saw the whole cross as clearly as if there were nothing in front of it, and the blessing hand was moving and going upwards. Then he was afraid, and doubted whether it could really be as it seemed to him. Then as his mind doubted, the hand became visible to him as clearly as he could see his own: its beautiful fingers were slender and long, and the nails distinct, and the large part below the thumb was all visible, and from the little finger to the arm and part of the sleeve. Then he dared not look at it any longer, but hung down his head, and then it ceased from blessing. That was near the time when the Gospel was being read.

What Leofric sees above the cross seems to be a living embodiment of the 'hand of God' motif which is often a part of Anglo-Saxon crucifix scenes - as, for instance, in the Romsey crucifix, made about twenty years before Leofric had his vision. Leofric's vision in Sandwich was later connected with the hagiography of Edward the Confessor and taken to be related to the saintliness of the king, but there's no sign of that here (the king isn't even named); this is all about Leofric.

It's hard to know quite what to make of this text; without it we would not think of Earl Leofric as anything other than an ordinary eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon nobleman, perhaps a little more pious than the average, but not a visionary. The specificity of the details of the setting is unusual - in the two visions which take place within Christ Church, too - and produces an incredibly vivid impression. (Although you might like to compare these roughly contemporary visions which also took place within Christ Church.) For this reason, among others, I find the text very interesting, but it also intrigues me because it takes place in a location I know well - Sandwich in Kent. This vision is the first reference to a church in Sandwich dedicated to St Clement, a church which today looks like this:

Sandwich, on the easternmost point of the Kent coast, was an important port in the medieval period, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that King Edward was regularly there with his fleet in the troubled years of the 1040s and 1050s - so this is probably when Leofric's vision took place in St Clement's. Of Sandwich's several medieval churches, this is the one closest to the harbour, an appropriate place for a church dedicated to the seafarers' saint.

The fact that the church is first mentioned in Leofric's vision, plus the dedication to St Clement, suggests it was founded in the early eleventh century - probably during the reign of Cnut, as I discussed here. St Clement's today is not the building Leofric would have known, but it's still a lovely church, so let me show you some pictures of it. (You can read a detailed description of the church fabric here, should you be so inclined.) The church's most distinctive feature is its massive central Norman tower, built in the twelfth century:

Just look at that thing! It's more like a castle keep than a church bell-tower.

(This is the only picture I have of St Clement's in the sunshine - but this golden light is what I associate most with Sandwich.)

Inside the church, the tower completely dominates the space:

It's a big church for a little bit of the town (especially since, as I said, there are several medieval churches in Sandwich), but once they'd built that massive tower I suppose they couldn't keep things on a small scale. Also the nave was rebuilt and extended in the fifteenth century, after it was destroyed when the French attacked the town. Because that's the kind of thing that happens in Sandwich.

It's a strange feeling to stand within the huge tower and look up; it's really not like being in a church at all.

But the best bit is around the corner behind the tower, above a little door which leads up to the belfry:

This is Norman carving of the loveliest kind - dated to the mid-twelfth century, I believe.

This is recognisably akin to the decoration on the Norman font now in St Martin's, Canterbury, which originally came from the cathedral.

And best of all:

Isn't that wonderful? It's a deer and a duck, I think - maybe a hunting scene of some kind. So lovely, and so tiny, and just hidden away around a corner.

The cathedral priory of Christ Church was given the port of Sandwich in the eleventh century, by grant of Cnut (or so they said), and they measured their control in a particularly memorable and vaguely Scandinavian way:

I, Cnut, by the grace of God king of England and of all the adjacent islands, lay the royal crown from my head with my own hands upon the altar of Christ in Canterbury for the benefit of the said monastery, and I grant to the said monastery for the sustenance of the monks the harbour at Sandwich with all the landings and dues on either side of the river from Pepperness to Marfleet, extending as far as a small axe can be thrown from a ship onto the land, when the ship is afloat and the river is in full flood.

And if there is anything in the great sea beyond the harbour, their rights shall extend as far as the sea at the utmost recedes, and [as far as] the length of a man holding a pole in his hand, and stretching himself as far as he can reach into the sea."

(Full text here).

I wonder what St Clement, the sailors' saint, would think of this kind of watery dominion.

The eastern end of the church has been rebuilt, and we can only imagine the cross and the triple-threaded wall-hanging of Leofric's vision - but it's not hard to imagine them. The Saxon church may have looked different, but it was on this spot that Leofric saw whatever it was he saw.

So that's St Clement's. For more on the Vision of Leofric, see the following articles:

Peter A. Stokes, 'The Vision of Leofric: Manuscript, Text and Context', Review of English Studies 63 (2012), 529-550.
A. S. Napier, 'An Old English Vision of Leofric, Earl of Mercia', Transactions of the Philological Society 26:2 (1908), 180-188.
Milton McC. Gatch, 'Miracles in architectural settings: Christ Church, Canterbury and St Clement's, Sandwich in the Old English Vision of Leofric', Anglo-Saxon England 22 (1993), 227-252.

'An earthy flavour'

Rochester in the rain

Not only is the day waning, but the year.  The low sun is fiery and yet cold behind the monastery ruin, and the Virginia creeper on the Cathedral wall has showered half its deep-red leaves down on the pavement.  There has been rain this afternoon, and a wintry shudder goes among the little pools on the cracked, uneven flag-stones, and through the giant elm-trees as they shed a gust of tears.  Their fallen leaves lie strewn thickly about.  Some of these leaves, in a timid rush, seek sanctuary within the low arched Cathedral door; but two men coming out resist them, and cast them forth again with their feet. 

In the waning days of October, I've been re-reading Charles Dickens' final, unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. I first read it nearly two years ago, at a particularly impressionable period, and it hit me hard, the way novels sometimes can. It strikes some personal chords, since it's set in the kind of place where my imagination often wanders (and my work often takes me), within a cathedral community burdened by a half-remembered past.

For sufficient reasons, which this narrative will itself unfold as it advances, a fictitious name must be bestowed upon the old Cathedral town. Let it stand in these pages as Cloisterham. It was once possibly known to the Druids by another name, and certainly to the Romans by another, and to the Saxons by another, and to the Normans by another; and a name more or less in the course of many centuries can be of little moment to its dusty chronicles.

An ancient city, Cloisterham, and no meet dwelling-place for any one with hankerings after the noisy world. A monotonous, silent city, deriving an earthy flavour throughout from its Cathedral crypt, and so abounding in vestiges of monastic graves, that the Cloisterham children grow small salad in the dust of abbots and abbesses, and make dirt-pies of nuns and friars; while every ploughman in its outlying fields renders to once puissant Lord Treasurers, Archbishops, Bishops, and such-like, the attention which the Ogre in the story-book desired to render to his unbidden visitor, and grinds their bones to make his bread.

A drowsy city, Cloisterham, whose inhabitants seem to suppose, with an inconsistency more strange than rare, that all its changes lie behind it, and that there are no more to come. A queer moral to derive from antiquity, yet older than any traceable antiquity. So silent are the streets of Cloisterham (though prone to echo on the smallest provocation), that of a summer-day the sunblinds of its shops scarce dare to flap in the south wind; while the sun-browned tramps, who pass along and stare, quicken their limp a little, that they may the sooner get beyond the confines of its oppressive respectability. This is a feat not difficult of achievement, seeing that the streets of Cloisterham city are little more than one narrow street by which you get into it and get out of it: the rest being mostly disappointing yards with pumps in them and no thoroughfare—exception made of the Cathedral-close, and a paved Quaker settlement, in colour and general confirmation very like a Quakeress’s bonnet, up in a shady corner.

In a word, a city of another and a bygone time is Cloisterham, with its hoarse Cathedral-bell, its hoarse rooks hovering about the Cathedral tower, its hoarser and less distinct rooks in the stalls far beneath. Fragments of old wall, saint’s chapel, chapter-house, convent and monastery, have got incongruously or obstructively built into many of its houses and gardens, much as kindred jumbled notions have become incorporated into many of its citizens’ minds. All things in it are of the past.

This description is recognisably Rochester in Kent, which Dickens knew very well, but it could apply to many ancient cities. The setting of the novel is cathedral crypt and churchyard, amid the dust of graves and masonry, and the whole novel is obsessed with death; it is, after all, a murder mystery, of sorts, and Dickens died before it was completed. In the description above, it is (you won't be surprised to learn) the monastic graves which most appeal to me. As a lover of medieval monks, I'm always very aware when visiting cathedrals and monastery ruins that the dust of their former inhabitants is mingled with the ground you walk on and the air you breathe. Cathedrals are full of the tombs of kings and late-medieval archbishops, but the early medieval monks who mean the most to me rarely have anything to show where they were buried; at Rochester I tread unaware on the graves of Gundulf and Paulinus, at Canterbury I breathe the dust of Dunstan and Anselm, Eadmer and Osbern. (For some reason I always associate the latter with The Mystery of Edwin Drood, since it's the story of a troubled young cathedral precentor!) This is not an unpleasant or a morbid thought - actually I find it comforting. I have far more attachments among the dead than among the living, and am sometimes more at home there, too.

Durdles is a stonemason; chiefly in the gravestone, tomb, and monument way, and wholly of their colour from head to foot.  No man is better known in Cloisterham.  He is the chartered libertine of the place.  Fame trumpets him a wonderful workman—which, for aught that anybody knows, he may be (as he never works); and a wonderful sot—which everybody knows he is.  With the Cathedral crypt he is better acquainted than any living authority; it may even be than any dead one.  It is said that the intimacy of this acquaintance began in his habitually resorting to that secret place, to lock-out the Cloisterham boy-populace, and sleep off fumes of liquor: he having ready access to the Cathedral, as contractor for rough repairs.  Be this as it may, he does know much about it, and, in the demolition of impedimental fragments of wall, buttress, and pavement, has seen strange sights.  He often speaks of himself in the third person; perhaps, being a little misty as to his own identity, when he narrates; perhaps impartially adopting the Cloisterham nomenclature in reference to a character of acknowledged distinction.  Thus he will say, touching his strange sights: ‘Durdles come upon the old chap,’ in reference to a buried magnate of ancient time and high degree, ‘by striking right into the coffin with his pick.  The old chap gave Durdles a look with his open eyes, as much as to say, “Is your name Durdles?  Why, my man, I’ve been waiting for you a devil of a time!”  And then he turned to powder.’  With a two-foot rule always in his pocket, and a mason’s hammer all but always in his hand, Durdles goes continually sounding and tapping all about and about the Cathedral...

He lives in a little antiquated hole of a house that was never finished: supposed to be built, so far, of stones stolen from the city wall. To this abode there is an approach, ankle-deep in stone chips, resembling a petrified grove of tombstones, urns, draperies, and broken columns, in all stages of sculpture. Herein two journeymen incessantly chip, while other two journeymen, who face each other, incessantly saw stone; dipping as regularly in and out of their sheltering sentry-boxes, as if they were mechanical figures emblematical of Time and Death.

Erthe oute of erthe is wondirly wroghte,
Erthe has geten one erthe a dignite of noghte,
Erthe appon erthe hase sett alle his thoghte
How that erthe upon erthe may be heghe broghte.

Erthe upon erthe wolde be a kinge
Bot how erthe to erthe sall, thinkes he no thinge.
When erthe bredes erthe and his rentes home bringe
Thane shall erthe of erthe have full harde parting.

Erthe upon erthe winnes castells and towrres;
Thane sayse erthe unto erthe, "This es al ourres!"
When erthe upon erthe has bigged up his bourres
Thane shall erthe for erthe suffere sharpe scourres.

Erthe gos upon erthe as molde upon molde
He that gose upon erthe, gleterande as golde,
Like as erthe never more go to erthe scholde
And yitt schall erthe unto erthe ga rathere than he wolde

Now why that erthe luffes erthe, wondere me thinke
Or why erthe for erthe sholde other swete or swinke
For when erthe appon erthe has broughte within brinke
Thane shall erthe of erthe have a foul stinke.

(For more on this poem, see this post.)

You might mistake this for a Halloween post, but it's not; as I think I've said before, I'm not a big fan of Halloween. I do like winter rituals of the kind described in this article (East Kent's hoodening tradition is wonderfully scary) and I have happy childhood memories of Bonfire Night, but when I was growing up Halloween was only celebrated by teenagers who had seen it on American TV and wanted an excuse to intimidate the neighbours. Consequently I'm one of those people who dislikes and slightly resents it, or at least the social pressure that comes with it. Over the past few months I've been thinking a lot about the seasons as they are represented in medieval literature - witness, for instance, this growing series of posts on the Anglo-Saxon year - and the more I do this, the more I object to the media forcing their shallow, ersatz constructions of seasonal ritual upon us, in their own version of trick-or-treat intimidation. Festivals of light and darkness, and seasons for remembering the dead, are too important and too beautiful to be monopolised in this way, or reduced to one homogeneous holiday which pushes aside the rich diversity of other traditions and practices. Nothing will ever stop the media doing this, but we don't have to pretend to like it, or go along with it ourselves.

As a medievalist, I'm particularly uncomfortable with co-opting medieval art and literature into the day as it's now celebrated, as if the grinning skeletons of medieval art had anything to do with plastic pumpkins and kids dressed up as Disney characters. Almost every feature of modern Halloween is later than the medieval period, and pretending there's any such thing as 'medieval Halloween', even just in fun, is pretty misleading - one of those occasions where we remake the past in our own image, for our own entertainment, rather than making an imaginative effort to perceive the ways in which the medieval world was different from our own. There's been a lot of this circulating on Twitter this week, and it makes me squirm. I don't care what people do with manuscript images of black cats and spiders, but I have to demur at the grinning skeletons, and especially at co-opting The Three Living and the Three Dead, which has nothing whatsoever to do with Halloween. In medieval literature there is no season more appropriate than any other for a memento mori; you get them in season and out of season, in spring as much as in November, and the whole point of an image like the Three Living and the Three Dead is that at any moment you are close to death - not just on 31 October. If anything, it's an anti-Halloween image; yet I've seen one particular version (Arundel MS 83, f. 127v) posted by five different people today, without context but with some jokey comment about how it's 'seasonal'. This is a distortion. To a modern audience such images may seem strange and comic - and grim humour forms part of their power, as it does in 'Erthe upon erthe' (and the works of Dickens, for that matter) - but I don't like the idea of laughing at them; they are supposed to be strange, and disquieting, and they deserve to be taken seriously. Allow them to scare you. We're all children in the face of death, 'growing small salad in the dust of abbots and abbesses', but the purpose of such images is to teach us to be wiser, to remind us what we are:

'Quid est homo?'
Man is dethys underlyng
Man is a gest in hys dwellyng
Man is a pylgrym in his pasyng.

It's nice that there are people happy and secure enough to make a joke of this, who are so full of life that they find it easy to giggle at other cultures' representations of death; but I'll never be one of them, I think.

St Paulinus and the Sparrow

Paulinus in Rochester Cathedral

Paulinus, a member of St Augustine's mission to the Anglo-Saxons who became the first bishop of York, died on 10 October 644, and was commemorated as a saint on this day. Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica gives us a wealth of fascinating detail about Paulinus' missionary work in Northumbria after he accompanied Ethelburga, daughter of the king of Kent, when she went to marry the pagan King Edwin. I wrote about Ethelburga here, but Paulinus deserves a post of his own too. When I post about Anglo-Saxon saints I generally attempt to do more than just reproduce extracts from the relevant sources, but in this case there's really no substitute for reading Bede's account of Paulinus, Edwin and Ethelburga; it's one of the most memorable parts of the Historia Ecclesiastica, and needs no embellishments. So here are some extracts from HE Book II, taken from this site.

At this time the nation of the Northumbrians, that is, the nation of the Angles who live on the north side of the river Humber, with their king, Edwin, received the faith through the preaching of Paulinus... The occasion of this nation's embracing the faith was their aforesaid king being allied to the kings of Kent, having taken to wife Ethelburga, otherwise called Tate, daughter to King Ethelbert. He having by his ambassadors asked for her in marriage from her brother Eadbald, who then reigned in Kent, was answered, "It was not lawful to marry a Christian virgin to a pagan husband, lest the faith and the mysteries of the heavenly King should be profaned by her cohabiting with a king who was altogether a stranger to the worship of the true God." This answer being brought to Edwin by his messengers, he promised in no manner to act in opposition to the Christian faith, which the virgin professed; but would give leave to her, and all that went with her, men or women, priests or ministers, to follow their faith and worship after the custom of the Christians. Nor did he deny but that he would embrace the same religion, if, being examined by wise persons, it should be found more holy and more worthy of God.

Hereupon the virgin was promised, and sent to Edwin, and pursuant to what had been agreed on, Paulinus, a man beloved of God, was ordained bishop, to go with her, and by daily exhortations, and celebrating the heavenly mysteries, to confirm her and her company, lest they should be corrupted by the company of the pagans. Paulinus was ordained bishop by the Archbishop Justus, on the 21st day of July, in the year of our Lord 625, and so he came to King Edwin with the aforesaid virgin as a companion of their union in the flesh. But his mind was wholly bent upon reducing the nation to which he was sent to the knowledge of truth; according to the words of the apostle, "To espouse her to one husband, that he might present her as a chaste virgin to Christ." Being come into that province, he laboured much, not only to retain those that went with him, by the help of God, that they should not revolt from the faith, but, if he could, to convert some of the pagans to a state of grace by his preaching.

The opening of Book II of the Historia Ecclesiastica, in a 12th-century Rochester MS (BL Harley 3680, f.36v)

The next year there came into the province a certain assassin, called Eumer, sent by the king of the West Saxons, whose name was Cuichelm, in hopes at once to deprive King Edwin of his kingdom and his life. He had a two-edged dagger, dipped in poison, to the end that if the wound were not sufficient to kill the king, it might be performed by the venom. He came to the king on the first day of Easter, at the river Derwent, where then stood the regal city, and being admitted as if to deliver a message from his master, whilst he was in an artful manner delivering his pretended embassy, he started suddenly, and drawing the dagger from under his garment assaulted the king. Lilla, the king's beloved minister, observed this, and having no buckler at hand to secure the king from death, interposed his own body to receive the stroke; but the wretch struck so home, that he wounded the king through the knight's body. Being then attacked on all sides with swords, he in that confusion also slew another soldier, whose name was Forthhere.

On that same holy night of Easter Sunday, the queen had brought forth to the king a daughter, called Eanfled. The king, in the presence of Bishop Paulinus, gave thanks to his gods for the birth of his daughter; and the bishop, on the other hand, returned thanks to Christ, and endeavoured to persuade the king, that by his prayers to Him he had obtained that the queen should bring forth the child in safety and without much pain. The king, delighted with his words, promised that if God would grant him life and victory over the king by whom the assassin had been sent, he would cast off his idols and serve Christ; and as a pledge that he would perform his promise, he delivered up that same daughter to Paulinus, to be consecrated to Christ. She was the first baptized of the nation of the Northumbrians, on Whitsunday, with twelve others of her family.

(Which gods would a pagan Northumbrian have thanked for his wife's delivery in childbirth, I can't help wondering...)

At that time, the king, being recovered of the wound which he had received, marched with his army against the nation of the West-Saxons; and having begun the war, either slew or subdued all those that he had been informed had conspired to murder him. Returning thus victorious unto his own country, he would not immediately and unadvisedly embrace the mysteries of the Christian faith, though he no longer worshipped idols, ever since he made the promise that he would serve Christ; but thought fit first at leisure to be instructed, by the venerable Paulinus, in the knowledge of faith, and to confer with such as he knew to be the wisest of his prime men, to advise what they thought was fittest to be done in that case. And being a man of extraordinary sagacity, he often sat alone by himself a long time, silent as to his tongue, but deliberating in his heart how he should proceed, and which religion he should adhere to.

 

Paulinus (St John the Baptist, Norwich)

Bede's lengthy and detailed account of Edwin's conversion includes Paulinus' preaching, long letters from the Pope, and a miraculous vision - and this, one of the most famous sections in Bede's history, and in all Anglo-Saxon literature:

The king... answered [to Paulinus] that he was both willing and bound to receive the faith which he taught; but that he would confer about it with his principal friends and counsellors, to the end that if they also were of his opinion, they might all together be cleansed in Christ the Fountain of Life. Paulinus consenting, the king did as he said; for, holding a council with the wise men, he asked of every one in particular what he thought of the new doctrine, and the new worship that was preached? To which the chief of his own priests, Coifi, immediately answered, "O king, consider what this is which is now preached to us; for I verily declare to you, that the religion which we have hitherto professed has, as far as I can learn, no virtue in it. For none of your people has applied himself more diligently to the worship of our gods than I; and yet there are many who receive greater favours from you, and are more preferred than I, and are more prosperous in all their undertakings. Now if the gods were good for any thing, they would rather forward me, who have been more careful to serve them. It remains, therefore, that if upon examination you find those new doctrines, which are now preached to us, better and more efficacious, we immediately receive them without any delay."

Another of the king's chief men, approving of his words and exhortations, presently added: "The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad. The sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, this new doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed." The other elders and king's counsellors, by divine inspiration, spoke to the same effect.

But Coifi added that he wished more attentively to hear Paulinus discourse concerning the God whom he preached; which he having by the king's command performed, Coifi, hearing his words, cried out, "I have long since been sensible that there was nothing in that which we worshipped; because the more diligently I sought after truth in that worship, the less I found it. But now I freely confess, that such truth evidently appears in this preaching as can confer on us the gifts of life, of salvation, and of eternal happiness. For which reason I advise, O king, that we instantly abjure and set fire to those temples and altars which we have consecrated without reaping any benefit from them." In short, the king publicly gave his licence to Paulinus to preach the Gospel, and renouncing idolatry, declared that he received the faith of Christ: and then he inquired of the high priest who should first profane the altars and temples of their idols, with the enclosures that were about them, he answered, "I; for who can more properly than myself destroy those things which I worshipped through ignorance, for an example to all others, through the wisdom which has been given me by the true God?" Then immediately, in contempt of his former superstitions, he desired the king to furnish him with arms and a stallion; and mounting the same, he set out to destroy the idols; for it was not lawful before for the high priest either to carry arms, or to ride on any but a mare. Having, therefore, girt a sword about him, with a spear in his hand, he mounted the king's stallion and proceeded to the idols. The multitude, beholding it, concluded he was distracted; but he lost no time, for as soon as he drew near the temple he profaned the same, casting into it the spear which he held; and rejoicing in the knowledge of the worship of the true God, he commanded his companions to destroy the temple, with all its enclosures, by fire. This place where the idols were is still shown, not far from York, to the eastward, beyond the river Derwent, and is now called Godmundinghan, where the high priest, by the inspiration of the true God, profaned and destroyed the altars which he had himself consecrated.

The Old English translation of the nameless adviser's speech is a beautiful piece of prose (hear it read here):

Þyslic me is gesewen, þu cyning, þis andwearde lif manna on eorðan, to wiðmetenesse þære tide þe us uncuð is, swylc swa þu æt swæsendum sitte mid þinum ealdormannum 7 þegnum on wintertide, 7 sie fyr onælæd 7 þin heall gewyrmed, 7 hit rine 7 sniwe 7 styrme ute; cume an spearwa 7 hrædlice þæt hus þurhfleo, cume þurh oþre duru in, þurh oþre ut gewite. Hwæt he on þa tid, þe he inne bið, ne bið hrinen mid þy storme þæs wintres; ac þæt bið an eagan bryhtm 7 þæt læsste fæc, ac he sona of wintra on þone winter eft cymeð. Swa þonne þis monna lif to medmiclum fæce ætyweð; hwæt þær foregange, oððe hwæt þær æfterfylige, we ne cunnun. Forðon gif þeos lar owiht cuðlicre 7 gerisenlicre brenge, þæs weorþe is þæt we þære fylgen.

"O king, it seems to me that this present life of man on earth, in comparison to that time which is unknown to us, is as if you were sitting at table in the winter with your ealdormen and thegns, and a fire was kindled and the hall warmed, while it rained and snowed and stormed outside. A sparrow came in, and swiftly flew through the hall; it came in at one door, and went out at the other. Now during the time when he is inside, he is not touched by the winter's storms; but that is the twinkling of an eye and the briefest of moments, and at once he comes again from winter into winter. In such a way the life of man appears for a brief moment; what comes before, and what will follow after, we do not know. Therefore if this doctrine offers anything more certain or more fitting, it is right that we follow it."

(Worcester Cathedral)

King Edwin, therefore, with all the nobility of the nation, and a large number of the common sort, received the faith, and the washing of regeneration, in the eleventh year of his reign, which is the year of the incarnation of our Lord 627, and about one hundred and eighty after the coming of the English into Britain. He was baptized at York, on the holy day of Easter, being the 12th of April, in the church of St. Peter the Apostle, which he himself had built of timber, whilst he was catechising and instructing in order to receive baptism. In that city also he appointed the see of the bishopric of his instructor and bishop, Paulinus. But as soon as he was baptized, he took care, by the direction of the same Paulinus, to build in the same place a larger and nobler church of stone, in the midst whereof that same oratory which he had first erected should be enclosed. Having therefore laid the foundation, he began to build the church square, encompassing the former oratory. But before the whole was raised to the proper height, the wicked assassination of the king left that work to be finished by Oswald his successor. Paulinus, for the space of six years from that time, that is, till the end of the reign of that king, by his consent and favour, preached the word of God in that country, and all that were preordained to eternal life believed and were baptized.

This prosperous state of affairs ended when Edwin was killed in battle on 12 October 633 (or 634), and Paulinus and Ethelburga had to flee back to Kent. Paulinus "brought with him many rich goods of King Edwin, among which were a large gold cross, and a golden chalice, dedicated to the use of the altar, which are still preserved, and shown in the church of Canterbury." (Sadly, no longer!) While Ethelburga went to Lyminge, Paulinus was made Bishop of Rochester; "and held it until he departed to heaven, with the glorious fruits of his labours."

His successor at Rochester was Ithamar, the first English-born bishop since the conversion. Although Paulinus' achievements at York are more significant than the years he spent in Rochester, in his latter see he was commemorated as Rochester's first and for a long time its only saint. His cult was particularly important in the period after the Norman Conquest, when Archbishop Lanfranc, having installed Gundulf as bishop of Rochester, arranged for the translation of Paulinus' relics to a grander shrine. A marginal note in this twelfth-century manuscript of the HE (BL Harley 3680, f.31) draws attention to the first appearance of Paulinus, as a matter of local interest:

I wrote about beautiful underrated Rochester and its memorials to its medieval bishops, Paulinus included, here.

'St Paulinus rests at Rochester' (BL Stowe 944, f.38)