DOCTORAL THESIS Nature Rituals of the Early Medieval Church in Britain
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
DOCTORAL THESIS Nature rituals of the early medieval church in Britain Christian cosmology and the conversion of the British landscape from Germanus to Bede Mayhew-Smith, Nick Award date: 2018 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 28. Sep. 2021 Nature rituals of the early medieval church in Britain Christian cosmology and the conversion of the British landscape from Germanus to Bede by Nicholas Mayhew-Smith, BA A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD Department of Humanities University of Roehampton 2017 ABSTRACT This thesis studies ritual interactions between saints and the landscape, animals and elements during a three-hundred year period from 410 AD. Such interactions include negotiations about and with birds and other animals, exorcism of the sea, lakes and rivers, and immersion in these natural bodies of water for devotional purposes. Although writers of the period lacked a term such as 'nature' to describe this sphere of activity, it is demonstrated that the natural world was regarded as a dimension of creation distinctively responsive to Christian ritual. Systematic study of the context in which these rituals were performed finds close connection with missionary negotiations aimed at lay people. It further reveals that three British writers borrowed from Sulpicius Severus' accounts of eastern hermits, reworking older narratives to suggest that non-human aspects of creation were not only attracted to saints but were changed by and participated in Christian ritual and worship. Natural bodies of water attracted particularly intense interaction in the form of exorcism and bathing, sufficiently widely documented to indicate a number of discrete families of ritual were developed. In northern Britain, acute anxieties can be detected about the cultural and spiritual associations of open water, requiring missionary intervention to challenge pre-Christian narratives through biblical and liturgical resources, most notably baptism. Such a cosmological stretch appears to have informed a 'Celtic' deviation in baptismal practice that emphasised exorcism and bodily sacrifice. Nature rituals were a systematic response to the challenges of the British intellectual and physical landscapes, revealing the shape of an underlying missionary strategy based on mainstream patristic theology about the marred relationship between humans and the rest of creation. St Ambrose emerges as the most influential theologian at the time when the early church was shaping its British inculturation, most notably led by St Germanus' mission in 429. i ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis is the culmination of a decade spent exploring the sacred landscapes of Britain, a journey during which many people have enabled and encouraged me, for which thanks are due. However far I've travelled, my wife Anna and daughter Sasha have remained closest to heart, with my parents Richard and Christine, my brothers Peter and Alex and their families. Out in the holy places themselves, the company of Ifor ap Glyn, Nia Dryhurst, Emyr Jones and Rhys Edwards gave fresh inspiration for the promotion of these stories to the wider public, with the input of Philip Carr-Gomm on the way. Support from the AHRC through the TECHNE consortium has sped this project forwards, with particular thanks due to Carol Hughes and Jane Gawthrope, along with my fellow students, colleagues and university teaching staff including Mandie Iveson, Neal Cahoon, Kaveh Abbasian, Lia Shimada, Sue Miller and John Eade. For patience and realism in equal measure I owe my friends, Warren Pearson, Donal Lawler, Hamish Macdonell, Bill Taylor, Martin MacConnol, Peter Dzendrowskyj, John Frater, Jane Porter and Louise Wilson, and fellow travellers Michael Sarni and Fran Hollinrake. Among numerous priests, ministers and other workers in the field I owe particular debt to John and Scilla Ansell, Chris Palmer, Alison Judge, Jackie Cockfield, David Pennells, Daniel Eshun, Mark Garner, Robert Green, Myra Nichols, Wendy Robins and Stuart and Alison Wallace. Bishop Christopher Chessun of Southwark and bishop Michael Ipgrave of Lichfield have been charitably supportive as I ventured to the edges of Christian tradition. Academically I must thank Marion Gray, John Bimson, and above all others my supervisors Tina Beattie and Charlotte Behr, unfailingly graceful in the application of their wisdom to the challenges of this research. Finally this thesis is dedicated to the memory of Rev'd Dr Moyna McGlynn (1950- 2016), whose exemplary love for one holy place will linger forever in the landscape of Govan, where she served as minister for the Church of Scotland. This work was supported by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (grant number: AH/L503940/1) iii Table of contents Chapter Pages 1. Introduction 1 1.1 Previous academic interpretation 4 1.2 The primary research material 6 1.3 Thesis structure 9 2. Methodology and literature review 13 2.1 Liturgical and ritual studies 14 2.2 Hermeneutics: reading hagiography 17 2.3 The ‘criterion of embarrassment' and historical revisionism 19 2.4 Bodily enactment in a physical landscape 22 2.5 Literature review 25 3. Early medieval concepts of nature 35 3.1 De excidio: the earliest indigenous description of popular belief 35 3.2 Application of the term 'nature' in early medieval Britain 37 3.3 Bede's theological formula regarding interaction with nature 41 3.4 Creatureliness: participants in a cosmological liturgy 50 3.5 Celtic Christianity and ethnic identity in early medieval Britain 54 4. Missionary theology 57 4.1 Using the criterion of embarrassment to interrogate the conversion process 57 4.2 Three conversion incidents that record criticism of Christianity 60 4.3 Towards an understanding of missionary theology 71 4.4 Practical consequences of early British missiology 74 4.5 Conversion without conflict: king Edwin in the Historia ecclesiastica 77 4.6 The function of the holy man and woman in conversion theology 85 5. Sulpicius Severus: a major source for nature rituals in British hagiography 89 5.1 Felix's citation of an unnamed source text: 'have you not read...?' 91 5.2 Sulpicius Severus: Dialogi book one 95 5.3 The naked hermit of Mount Sinai 99 5.4 The anonymous Vita sancti Cuthberti 102 5.5 Bede's error in citing the Life of St Benedict 107 5.6 The function and effect of obedience 111 5.7 Missionary engagement with the crow family 117 5.8 Towards a theology of nature interventions 119 6. Ritual interaction with water: asceticism, exorcism, and the challenge to pre-Christian attitudes 125 6.1 The origins of cold-water bathing for religious purposes 127 6.2 Other contexts for devotional bathing: healing, baptism and exorcism 136 6.3 Columba in Pictland: bathing and exorcism in the British landscape 141 6.4 Exorcising and anointing the sea: a lesson from Germanus 154 6.5 The missionary context for rituals directed towards natural water 159 6.6 Ritual precedent for exorcising water 161 6.7 Font rituals in Ambrosian liturgy 167 iv 7. Columba, Cuthbert and the ritual shapes of devotional bathing 173 7.1 Columba: early devotional bathing 174 7.2 Cuthbert: devotional bathing in the anonymous account 177 7.3 Foot washing and Cuthbert's sea creatures 186 7.4 The missionary context for Cuthbert's bathing in the anonymous account 189 7.5 Bede's two versions of Cuthbert's bathing ritual at Coldingham 195 7.6 Two families of bathing ritual: partial and complete 198 7.7 The depth of immersion: contrasts between Ionan and other descriptions 208 7.8 Foot washing, sin and the cosmology of baptism 214 7.9 The typology of Cuthbert's bathing 218 8. What was at stake: the Celtic baptismal dispute 223 8.1 Current interpretations of the Celtic baptismal dispute 224 8.2 The font: womb or tomb in patristic exegesis 227 8.3 The Celtic baptismal dispute: 'incomplete' baptism 232 8.4 Nakedness: contested baptismal practice 236 8.5 Baptismal dispute in the later 7th century 239 8.6 Bathing inhibitions and the inculturation of Christianity 245 9. Foot washing: An Ambrosian counterpart to the font 255 9.1 Ambrosian and Roman baptismal practices 256 9.2 Cuthbert's foot washing in an Ambrosian theological context 260 9.3 The Celtic baptismal deviation 263 9.4 Baptismal immersion as suffering, crucifixion and penitence 265 9.5 The cosmological function of Christ's baptism 269 9.6 Ambrose and the early church in Britain and Ireland 275 9.7 Cosmological aspects of Germanus' mission 280 9.8 Foot washing: an anti-Pelagian ritual 284 9.9 Humans and creation in Pelagian cosmology 287 10. Conclusions: the conversion of the British landscape and its afterlife 293 10.1 The conversion of the landscape 295 10.2 Ethnicity, Celtic Christianity and the cosmos 298 10.3 Memories in the landscape: the legacy 300 Appendix A: devotional bathing incidents 304 Appendix B: conversion incidents in Bede's Historia ecclesiastica 307 Bibliography 315 v Abbreviations CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum DLS De locis sanctis HE Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum MGH SS rer.