Past events

Saturday 12 May 2018 (iij Kal Mai)

Pan Orthodox Pilgrimage to Barking Abbey, east London.

I was able to go to this pilgrimage this year, and was amazed at the large numbers attending, compared to the handful in the early years. There was an Eastern Rite Liturgy in St Margaret's church at 10.30. This was followed at 2pm by a talk by Father Melchisedec of the Monastery of St John on Monasticism, which was very interesting and inspiring, and the pilgrimage finished with Vespers at 3pm. This should have appeared under Forthcoming Events, and I will try to ensure that next year's date is posted.

3 December 2017 (xij Kal Dec, Halig Eadmundes Mæssedæg by the Englisc Calendar)

Pilgrimage to the Church of St Andrew at Greensted-juxta-Ongar, Essex, where St Eadmund's body rested on its return to Bury from London in 1013.

St Andrew's church at Greensted is the oldest wooden ecclesiastical building in the world to have survived in continuous use and is unique. It is a very tiny church, and is somewhat cluttered with a pulpit and box pews that have, of course, been installed since the church was first built. However we fitted ourselves and our icons in and celebrated a beautiful mass in honour of St. Eadmund, the Patron Saint of England.

The 950th Anniversary of the Battle of Senlac (Hastings) on Prid Id Oct (14th of the month in modern parlance) 1066

This event occurred on the 27th October 2016 owing to the interference with the civil calendar in the eighteenth century, stripping eleven days to bring the then Orthodox date into line with the schismatic Gregorian calendar used by nations under the Roman Catholic obedience. The Guild, which still uses the original Englisc calendar celebrated the day by holding a service of remembrance in St Mary's church, Whatlington, about three miles north of the battlefield, where King Harold Godwinesson stopped to pray the evening before the battle.

Whatlington church is not approachable by car, and so we walked up the lane in glorious autumn sunshine and up the short path that approaches it, carrying the carefully wrapped items that we would be using for the service. I had never been here before, and did not know what to expect, but Father Andrew Phillips was surprised when the church door was opened revealing a crowd of expectant people, waiting for the service to start. There were nearly thirty souls, and we had only seven definite attenders. He did not take long to unpack the icons that he had brought and stand them on the altar: one of them was of all the saints of England; the other was of King Ælfræd the Great. He then started to intone the Panikheda, the eastern memorial service for the dead, including the canon for Orthodox warriors slain on the field of battle for the faith and the fatherland. He also remembered each one of the few warriors whose names have come down to us.

In his brief homily he mentioned also the many who perished after the battle, especially in the north and in the troubles at Ely. He also mentioned all those who had fled, taking ship to the Black Sea, where they established a community. He emphasized that these not just numbers in a history book, but were real people: fathers, sons and brothers, commending them to our prayers. He also mentioned Gytha, King Harold's daughter, who escaped to Russia and married a prince of Kiev.

There used to be a yew-tree in the churchyard, unfortunately blown down in the hurricane that swept over Kent and Sussex in the 1980s. It was found to be over a thousand years old, so it would have been a young tree under whose shade Harold Godwinesson might have passed before he left to fight his last battle. The wood was used to make various items, amongst which were many crosses, and a number of us took these home with us to provide a lasting memory of the king and of Englisc England.

We then went back to our cars and drove the half mile or so to The Royal Oak, where a splendid meal awaited us. Then, refreshed and reinvigorated, we listened to a talk by Eadmund, which is reproduced elsewhere on this site. Unfortunately we had taken so long over our meal that there was not enough time to have the expected meeting of the Guild, but that will happen at some future time.

Report on the Lectures on Britain and the Early Church held on Kalendæ Iulius [Sat 14th July] 2012 at the Greek Orthodox Church of St Nicholas, Bernard Street, Southampton by the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius

This was a disappointingly small, but nevertheless select gathering. Apparently the lectures are to be put on U-Tube, which will I hope give them a greater audience, for they were very interesting and informative. The myth of the Celtic Church as an organized jurisdiction was universally exploded, although it was generally agreed that Christianity survived from Roman times, especially in the west of the Isles. In the east it was practically eliminated by the advent of the pagan Englisc. However with the concerted missionary efforts from the west (Columba and others) and the south (Augustine and others) the Englisc soon became Christian, producing a remarkable number of saints. This happy situation was ended by the Norman Conquest.

Dr Michelle Brown told us some very interesting new facts connected with her work in the Monastery of St Katherine on the Sinai peninsular in Egypt. There is a considerable influence from this area on the Irish monastic tradition, and it has been speculated by a few that this was so considerable that it might have been from actual contact with the tradition rather than simply through travelling merchants etc. This idea was considered far-fetched by most, however, until Dr Brown discovered in the Monastery of St Katherine several palimpsests. One of these in particular had been written in Arabic script, then erased and subsequently written in Insular script, and then that too had been erased and overwritten again with Arabic. This would seem to suggest that an insular scribe had been actually working in the monastery, and gives valuable evidence for a far greater contact than had previously been thought likely or even possible.