St Sernin

29^th November is the saint’s day of Sernin of Toulouse, a 3^rd century martyr.

Sernin was born in Rome in about 245. He was sent as a Christian missionary to Spain but then moved to France where he became Bishop of Toulouse. His activities in the area were very successful, but, not surprisingly, his success made him many enemies among the local pagan priests.

Sernin made himself particularly unpopular by building a house on one side of the pagan temple in Toulouse and a church on the other side, thus surrounding the temple with Christian influences. The effect was that the pagan oracles stopped working.

The pagan priests depended on the oracles for their income so they decided to take the only action that seemed reasonable in the circumstances, namely to get rid of Sernin. Without this Christian bishop queering their pitch, perhaps their gods would return to the temple and speak through the oracles again, thus restoring the priests’ cushy lifestyle.

The priests grabbed hold of Sernin as he was walking past the temple and dragged him inside, where a bullock was about to be sacrificed. However, they had a better use for the animal, which was to tie Sernin’s feet to it and send it charging down the hill outside the temple. The result was that Sernin’s brains were dashed out on the cobbles.

Presumably the priests then claimed that it was business as usual at the temple.

© John Welford

St Hilary of Poitiers

January 13^th is the saint’s day for Hilary of Poitiers (in western France), who was a 4^th century bishop, theologian and hymn-writer.

Hilary was a relatively late convert to Christianity, and only reluctantly accepted the bishopric of Poitiers in 350. He fell foul of Emperor Constantius in 356 due to the latter’s support of Arianism and Hilary’s opposition to it.

Arianism is, at heart, the belief that Jesus was subservient to God the Father and had not existed for all time, whereas the Trinitarians, including Hilary, maintained that all three elements of God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – had existed as equals for all time. Despite the inherent oddity of the latter view, it was the one that prevailed and which is maintained by most Christian churches down to the present day.

Hilary’s punishment was to be exiled to Phrygia (in Asia Minor) for four years. While there he argued the Trinitarian case so vehemently that the Phrygians petitioned the Emperor to send him back to Poitiers, which is what happened.

One thing that impressed Hilary about the Arians of Phrygia was their use of hymns in their worship. He therefore introduced hymn-singing in his own diocese and wrote a number of his own, although only three of these have survived to the present day. One of them, a hymn to the Trinity, runs to 70 verses and presumably does not get sung very often!

© John Welford

St Narcissus

The official Patron Saint of the Elderly is St Anthony of Padua, who is in some ways a strange choice, given that he died at the age of 35 or 36. A more convincing candidate for the job might have been St Narcissus of Jerusalem, whose saint’s day falls on 29^th October. As he appears by some accounts to have been around 117 at the time of his death, he surely knew a heap more about old age than St Anthony!

Narcissus, who was apparently born in around 99 AD, was a Greek who was appointed to lead the Christians in Jerusalem at the age of 80, being the 30^th bishop to hold this office. He was a strong bishop who, despite his age, did the job very well and had no time for slackness on the part of either clergy or laity.

During his time in office he presided over a council of bishops that decided that Easter would always be celebrated on a Sunday, thus breaking the direct link with the Jewish Passover.

After some years in the role he decided that he wanted some time to meditate and pray in seclusion so he resigned his office and left Jerusalem to lead a hermit’s life in the desert. There had been some dissatisfaction with his rule, including a false accusation of a terrible crime, and this may also have been a reason for wanting to get away.

However, without him in charge things did not go so well for the Jerusalem Christians and, when Narcissus came back to the city after several years’ absence, he was persuaded to become bishop once again, despite his extreme old age at this time.

Narcissus needed help with his duties and so he appointed a deputy named Alexander to do most of the donkey-work. Narcissus died in office in around the year 216, after which Alexander continued as bishop on his own.

Saints need to have performed at least one miracle (preferably two) before they are allowed to be so named. Narcissus apparently turned water into oil in order to keep the church lamps burning at Easter-time (see picture). He was therefore a practical as well as a very long-lived saint!

© John Welford

St Lucy

13^th December is the saint’s day for St Lucy, a 4^th century martyr under the persecutions of Emperor Diocletian.

Lucy lived in Syracuse on the Italian island of Sicily. She was a dedicated Christian who had no intention of marrying. However, she had a suitor who was angered by her refusal to accept him. He took his revenge by betraying Lucy to the governor of Syracuse, who was a pagan.

Lucy’s initial punishment was to be consigned to a brothel but, according to legend, she could not be moved from where she stood, even when a team of oxen came to drag her away. The governor then ordered that she be burned to death on the spot. However, this did not work because the wood that was piled around her would not burn. She was then killed by a sword thrust to the throat.

Various stories grew up around Lucy in later years, one being that her eyes were gouged out but later miraculously restored. The reason for the eye-gouging varies between accounts, one being that she did this herself so that she would not be attractive to men.

Whatever the truth of these stories, and there must always be a huge element of doubt in medieval “lives of the saints”, St Lucy came to be regarded as having special care for the blind, and also for people suffering from throat infections.

© John Welford

St Sabas

5^th December is the feast day of St Sabas, which is a strange term to use for this particular saint, given that feasting would have been a very rare event on his agenda!

Sabas was a “desert father” of the 5^th/6^th centuries. Born in 439 in what is now central Turkey, he determined at an early age that he wanted to live the life of a monk and, aged eighteen, he journeyed south to seek out the famous hermit Euthymius, who lived in a desert cave between Jerusalem and Jericho. Sabas hoped to be allowed to join the small group of disciples that Euthymius allowed to live close by.

However, Euthymius thought that he was too young to make such a commitment and sent him instead to a nearby monastery run by an abbot named Theoctistus. Euthymius reckoned that Sabas would receive good training there for his intended life as a desert father.

When Sabas was thirty Euthymius gave him permission to live in a cave near his own for five days a week, returning to the monastery for the other two. While in the cave, Sabas was commanded not only to pray but to weave baskets, making ten a day. He then had to take his fifty baskets back to the monastery.

Euthymius died in 473, when Sabas was 34, and the latter spent the next four years living alone in the desert. He then built a monastery of his own, along the lines of that run by Theoctistus in that other solitaries could visit it for prayer and worship when they felt so inclined.

Eventually Sabas was put in charge of all the desert monks in the region and was also sent further afield by the Patriarch of Jerusalem. He founded several other monasteries and hospitals, one of the monasteries, Mar Saba in the Kidron Valley of Palestine, still being occupied to this day by Orthodox monks.

Sabas died in 532 at the age of 94.

© John Welford

St Hubert

3^rd November is St Hubert’s Day. Hubert is the patron saint of hunting, and he gained this role by virtue of having been a hunter who was converted to Christianity when he saw a stag with a crucifix between its antlers. Hubert had been hunting on Good Friday, and he took this as a sign that he had better mend his ways. Perhaps he should therefore be the patron saint of anti-hunt protestors instead!

Hubert was probably born around 656 in south-west France, but became a courtier at the palace of the Frankish King Pepin at Metz (eastern France). After his conversion he entered the service of Bishop Lambert at Maastricht (southern Netherlands). The bishop sent him to live as a hermit in the Ardennes Forest.

Lambert was murdered around the year 705 in what was then the small village of Liège. Hubert was elected as his successor and moved the seat of his diocese (along with Lambert’s bones) from Maastricht to Liège, which then grew to become, eventually, a major city. Lambert is today recognised as the patron saint of the diocese and Hubert as patron saint of the city. Hubert died in 727, having performed much missionary work within the Ardennes region.

There is a very interesting addendum to this story, in that a tiny church dedicated to St Hubert stands, all alone, in a field in southern Hampshire (see photo above). This is the parish church of Idsworth, but there is no village of that name. The original Idsworth House was demolished in the mid 19^th century when the London to Portsmouth railway was built, and a new house was built several miles away.

The church is Saxon in origin (dating from 1053) and was originally dedicated to St Peter, but in 1864, during a restoration, extensive 14^th century murals were discovered that showed scenes that were believed to be of the life of St Hubert (although this is now doubted). The church was re-dedicated to St Hubert, and it continues to be used for worship to this day, although it has to be approached via a path through the fields!

A personal note – when I first met my wife she was living at the new Idsworth House (converted into flats and other accommodation units) and was a member of the Parochial Church Council of St Hubert’s church. She was looking after a horse at the time (which I tried riding but fell off!) and I have a vivid memory of mucking out its field, which was on the site of the old Idsworth House, as the trains roared by not far from the church that had been there for more than 900 years!

© John Welford

St Thomas Becket

On 29^th December 1170 Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was hacked to death in his cathedral, apparently on the orders of King Henry II.

Henry came to the throne in 1154 and appointed Thomas Becket as his Chancellor, the nearest thing that medieval England had to a Prime Minister. Becket was very good at the job and he and the king became firm friends. Becket was particularly astute at ensuring that Henry’s power overrode that of the barons – who controlled vast estates in England and were thus extremely wealthy – and the Church.

There were two sources of authority in the land at the time, namely that of the king and the Church. The problem with the latter was that it derived from the Pope in Rome and was delegated via the bishops, who held the power of excommunication over anyone who offended them. As this condemned the victim to an eternity in Hell, it was taken very seriously and gave the Church the upper hand in any Church/state conflict.

Henry had the bright idea that, if he had his own man appointed as Archbishop of Canterbury, he would have both the secular and sacred sources of power at his command. He therefore appointed Thomas Becket as Archbishop of Canterbury with this end in view.

Unfortunately for Henry, Becket started to take his religious duties far more seriously than Henry had anticipated. Having been the scourge of the Church when Chancellor, Becket now became its chief defender.  He also “got religion” in a personal sense and spent many hours in prayer and meditation.

It may well be that Becket, having tasted power as the king’s right-hand man, now realised just what a weapon he had in his hands and became determined to make the most of it. In other words, power went to his head.

At any event, he started to do things that brought him into direct conflict with his former friend. These included excommunicating people who were closely allied with King Henry and insisting on the “benefit of clergy” whereby priests who were suspected of committing a crime could only be tried in ecclesiastical courts and not civil ones, thus placing them above the law of the land.

Henry banished Becket from England, only relenting after Becket had been in exile for six years. However, this did nothing to “tame” the archbishop who, on his return in early December 1170, immediately excommunicated three bishops whom Henry had appointed in his absence.

When news of this defiance reached Henry, who was in Bayeux in Normandy at the time, he expressed his anger in words that he was later to regret. These were: “What cowards have I about me – will no-one rid me of this turbulent priest?” Four noblemen heard what the king said and took him at his word, setting off for Canterbury to prove the king wrong as far as the “cowards” remark was concerned.

Henry soon became aware of their intentions and, horror-struck at what the consequence of his outburst would be, sent a messenger off with orders to stop the knights in their tracks. However, he acted too late and the messenger was not able to catch up with them.

The knights (now five, as they had recruited another en route) on reaching Canterbury firstly confronted Thomas Becket at the Bishop’s Palace, where they demanded that he flee the country again. This he refused to do. They left, but then appeared in the Cathedral shortly after Becket had arrived for vespers.

All the other clergymen bar one fled on seeing the armed men striding towards them. The first blow wounded Becket’s brave supporter, who was then powerless to defend the archbishop who was then felled and had his head split open while one of the knights stood on his neck.

King Henry was genuinely sorry for what his intemperate words had led to and he became one of the many thousands of pilgrims who made their way to the shrine that was soon erected in Becket’s memory. Becket was canonised within three years and many miracles were later claimed as being due to St Thomas Becket. Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” used a fictional 14^th century pilgrimage to Canterbury as the framework for one of the greatest works in English literature.

The shrine was eventually destroyed by another King Henry, namely Henry VIII, who also had ambitions to control the power of the Church. However, the later Henry’s solution was more radical than that of the earlier – by making himself head of the English Church he combined both roles in the same person.

© John Welford