September 2002

Parish History Episode 17

A New Cathedral

Before the Viking Age, Northumbria had been in the van of European culture and civilization.

One of her greatest scholars, Alcuin, had, as mentioned before the Fury of the Northmen", March number of the "Signpost”), moved to Aachen, where Charlemagne, the son of Pepin (see Danelaw, in the May issue) was establishing a capital city for an expanded Frankish realm, covering much of Western Europe. The "Holy Roman Empire as it became known. There he attempted to create an improved system of education for the Empire, and had also won fame as a liturgist, developing the shape of the Latin Mass, so as to create a uniform rite for all of Western Europe. Building on that form of the Mass already used by the Franks, he brought in elements from Italy I mostly recent innovations to the Roman Mass, such as the 'Kyries" and the "Agnus Dei" which had been borrowed from the Byzantine Rife during the period when Rome had been attached to the Eastern Empire and from Spain (the Athanasian Creed and the "Filioque" clause on the Nicene Creed, and from England I particularly the penitential system, itself of Celtic origin I. Thus he grafted onto the Frankish core something of the more sentimental and heartfelt adoration of the Italians, of the doctrinaire orthodoxy of the Spaniards used to defending their Catholic heritage against Arian Goths and Moslem Moors), and o the more personalised approach to Salvation in English Christianity. Alcuin also developed new forms of choral music, and wrote the music for eighteen votive masses.

But that was in the past. The Vikings had swept over Charlemagne's empire and over England, and though, in the Tenth Century, a new Holy Roman Empire I largely limited to the German-speaking lands I and new Kingdoms of France and of England were emerging from the wreckage, and new forms of Benedictine monasticism, based on the usages of Cluny and of other revived abbeys, were also spreading throughout the West of Europe, this revived monasticism had not yet reached Northumbria. The married monks of the "Family of Saint Cuthbert" still served the cathedral at Chester-Ie-Street, and had also reoccupied the sites of the ancient abbeys of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow. Their piety was of a type long out of fashion in most of Europe.

They seem to have been reasonably wealthy. They had been granted direct control of the lands between the Tyne and the Wear, and they had come to possess many estates South of the Wear. There is, as stated before, no evidence of any cultivated land, in either church or lay ownership, in the Houghton area. This district still seemed to be lying derelict, following the devastation caused by Halfdane’s Vikings during the previous century.

England had however by now emerged as a united kingdom. During the fifty years from the accession of Angeles n 925) to the death of Edgar the Peaceable 975), the Anglo-Saxon state was perhaps at its apogee. But Edgar's elder son, Edward the Martyr, was soon murdered, and then, in 978, there succeeded Ethelred the Unready the most gormless king in English history. It was his misguided policies that brought the Danes back to England.

The Danes, like the other Scandinavian nations, had been partially evangelised during the course of the Tenth Century. King Harald Bluetooth, in the second half of the century. gave some encouragement to missionaries, and found that literacy made it easier to control his nation and to make it more powerful. He succeeded in conquering most of Norway before his death in 985.

His martial activities, however, caused new waves of Danish and Norwegian seamen, committed to paganism, to leave their homes and to seek their fortunes in the West. These soon began raiding, after the fashion of their ancestors, but sometimes, having landed, they retrained from pillaging the countryside but instead accepted a ransom, money raised by at the neighbouring land-owners, and returned to their homeland with silver and gold, obtained without fighting.

Ethelred then concluded that paying a ransom was more economical than maintaining an army and navy to repel invaders. He began a disastrous policy of paying ransom money - known as danegeld - to every Scandinavian seafarer who approached his shores. This resulted in more and more of them coming to collect their cash, and so the English people became ever more heavily taxed in order to provide the Danes with their danegeld. Such Scottish raiders began appearing hopefully in Northern England, expecting to get similar payment to go away.

In 993, it seems, there was a great ravaging of the North, by both Danes and Scots. and the bishop, Aldhun, together with the whole Family of Saint Cuthbert, fearing an attack on Chester-le-Street fled from the town. carrying the coffin of Cuthbert with them, and took refuge in Yorkshire, just as their predecessors had done, over a century before. They settled at Ripon for a couple of years, and then, as things seemed safe again, they emerged from hiding, and set off North again.This time they loaded the coffin onto a cart, to save having to carry it all the time.

They never reached Chester-le-Street. Instead, the story goes, the cart broke down, while ascending Warden Law hill. The monks tried to get it going again, but found it irreparable. They prayed for help, but no succour came. Aldhun was, however, told by a Heavenly Voice that Cuthbert did not wish to return to Chester-le-Street, but would prefer to be reburied at Dunholm; unfortunately, neither Aldhun nor any of his party had any idea where Dunholm was.

Then, while foraging in the neighbourhood, a young monk called Eadmer overheard one woman asking another about a lost cow. She was informed that a stray cow had been seen at Dunholm, and so Eadmer interrupted them, asked where Dunholm was, and was informed that it was a peninsula a few miles away, set in a loop of the River Wear. He took this information to Aldhun, and loading the coffin on their shoulders, the party of monks set off for the place indicated, now known as Durham, where they built a shrine to contain the body of The saint.

That is the story. It is remembered in heroic verse, such as Walter Scott's epic iMarmioni, recounting ancient hostilities between Scots and English:

Seven years Saint Cuthbert's
corpse they bore;
Chester-le-Strest and Rippon saw
His holy corpse. ere Wardilaw
Hail'd him with joy and fear;
And after many wanderings past
He chose his lordly seat at last
Where his cathedral. huge and vast
Looks down upon the Wear.

But is it true? The story is not mentioned by Simeon or any of the earlier chroniclers of Durham's history. It is said that the first mention of it comes in a book, iThe Rites of Durhami, describing the pre-Reformation worship in Durham Cathedral, written by a former choirboy, and first published in 1593, six centuries after the event (though I cannot find any reference to the story in my 1985 edition of the book).

But, besides the objections commonly made to the story on the grounds of improbability, we might also query what the monks thought they were doing, on the top of Warden Law, when they were meant to be on the road from Ripon to Chester-le-Street. Could it be that they were intending to build a shrine to the saint upon the hill-top, just as, nearly nine centuries later, an Earl of Durham was commemorated by a monument on nearby Penshaw

That they then, with or without any Heavenly Voice, thought that in such dangerous times, such a shrine would be better concealed within a loop of the River Wear, than placed upon a hill-top, visible from the sea, where it would attract the attention of every passing pirate?

Warden Law is now part of our parish. If it were not for that wretched lost cow, there might have been a shrine to one of England's greatest saints within the parish bounds. Would that have been a source of income, as pilgrims flocked here with rich gifts? Or would it have been a financial liability, for which the Parochial Church Council would have been responsible?

Dick Toy

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