Bed burials evidence of double monasteries?

Having looked through some of the archaeology, admittedly rather briefly at this stage, I have formed the theory that the 13 bed burials discovered in Britain are possible evidence of double monasteries (ie male and female residents) run by a woman.  They are scattered across the country and several have been found in the East which gives the lie to the idea taught to me in school that on the arrival of the Saxons in the East the Brits all upped sticks and moved to the West.  These settlements are British not Saxon although they may have included Saxons among their number.  The key features I am looking for are

• a bed burial
• other Christian Druid symbolism eg the cross found at Trumpington, the coins found at Street House, glass beads indicating the woman may have been holding a rosary, orientation of the graves
• mixed burials - double houses were for both men and women
• a British settlement nearby as at Collingbourne and Coddenham - the servants and tenants of the monastery would not live within the enclosure but a couple of miles away
• is the cemetery within an Iron Age enclosure - this is the case at Coddenham and Street House and fits the pattern of monastic foundation within the Celtic Church
• does the cemetery end use around 700 AD? - this seems to be the case with most of them and is most illuminating - after the Synod of Whitby the double monasteries were closed, moved to wholly Christian sites and segregated - the women Abbots who had been accorded equality within the Celtic Church were downgraded by the Roman Catholic Church to an inferior status - one explanation for the bed burials is that there was no precedent for the funeral of a woman Abbot or Bishop so they invented one marking their high status

One outcome of this research is that I can refine the date of The Wonderful History of the Sword in the Stone slightly as somewhere between 454 AD and 650 AD but as all the burials are around 650 AD possibly it is later than I thought.  However there is a cemetery at Great Chesterford which fits the bill which is dated between 450 and 600 AD, precisely my period, and it will be interesting to see what evidence if any turns up there which might bring the dating of the book forward again.  Lots to think about!

Coddenham bed burial

Further to my investigation into Anglo-Saxon bed burials and my theory that they are not in fact Saxon at all but Christian Druid burials of the early Celtic Church I have looked into two more and again found tantalising tangible links to The Wonderful History of the Sword in the Stone. Very enticing is the burial at Coddenham in Suffolk.  Here the cemetery was unknown until its discovery during investigation of an Iron Age site - so another link between the burials and the re-use of Iron Age/Druid sites.  50 burials were discovered dated to the latter part of the 7th century/early 8th century through the discovery of coins of that date on the site making the dating pretty certain.  They lay around a probable prehistoric barrow and barrows were raised over 3 of the burials. This raises a question mark over whether they were Saxon.  I would respectfully suggest not.  Saxons went in for cremation not burials and it is unlikely they would choose to site a cemetery on an old Iron Age site. The bed burial indicates that the body was laid on a bed inside a wooden chamber over which there was a 'curved wooden cover' reminiscent of the cabin of a ship of the period.   A high-status woman certainly and probably a religieuse as she is being sent to eternal rest in a replica of the cabin of the Ship of Faith although there seem to be no other Christian objects among the grave goods apart from beads which might be the remnants of a rosary.  Nevertheless there is something which points up the dangers of identifying these cemeteries too closely as Anglo-Saxon per se.  A pendant is among the grave goods reusing a Frankish gold coin of Dagobert 1 suggesting that at least some of those buried in the cemetery are not Saxons but Franks.  The Celtic Church, despite the name we give to it, was a broad church embracing all ethnicities and by the late 7th century there were a large number of Columban monasteries on Frankish territories (see my book Columbanus: Poet, Preacher, Statesman, Saint for the spread of the Celtic Church in Europe).  The Coddenham site again reveals some evidence linking it to the Sword story and to a British rather than a Saxon provenance.  At Collingbourne Ducis in Wiltshire there were few grave goods but the archaeologists do note that the fact that the cemetery contains burials rather than cremations suggests a strong British influence pointing to a nearby settlement which was occupied at the same time.  Further investigations are called for but I do think there is enough to suggest a re-assessment of these sites is called for.  My detective work continues...

Street House Bed Burial

Following up the Trumpington Meadow discovery (see earlier blog) I decided to do a bit more research into the other Anglo Saxon bed burials discovered in the UK to see if there is any more tangible evidence to back up my theory set out in The Wonderful History of the Sword in the Stone that there was a merger between Druids and Christians in 454 AD.  My first stop is at Street House in Teeside where excavations within an Iron Age enclosure produced the discovery of a cemetery including a bed burial. 

The archaeologists conclude the east-west orientation of the graves and the symbolism on the bracteates, coins and pendants they also discovered suggest the deceased were Christian but they are puzzled as to why the cemetery is within an Iron Age/pagan enclosure.  I can answer that.  In the two centuries between 454 AD and the Synod of Whitby at the end of the seventh century it was the common practice for Christian Druid monasteries of the Celtic Church to be set up using Iron Age sites - Finian in Ireland for example used an Iron Age fort and Columbanus continued the practice on the continent but there using Roman forts changing the shape of a monastic settlement from circular to rectangular or square.  Partly this was practical but it was also a visible sign of the collaboration between Christian and Druids. The lack of Iron Age artefacts is accounted for by the fact that the new religious occupants would have cleared away any military detritus as unsuitable for a Christian settlement. I note that they also mention that the site was in use between 650 and 700.  In other words after the Synod of Whitby the monastery was moved away from a pagan/druid site to a site that was wholly Christian breaking with the idea of continuous occupation. 

 Among the coins the archaeologists found were a number were of reused coins of the Corieltauvi tribe dated AD43 which had clear Christian symbolism engraved into them.  The date is significant.  According to The Wonderful History of the Sword in the Stone Christianity comes to Britain independently of Rome being brought by Joseph of Arimathea directly from the Holy Land.  Whether Joseph of Arimathea was personally concerned or not the book gives us a date.  Christianity comes to Britain around AD40.  The coins indicate the date at which Christianity arrived in the north-east which is perhaps why they are to be found among the burials.  This is exciting because the archaeology again backs up the documentary evidence of the book. 

St Patrick's Day

To celebrate St Patrick's Day the Daily Mail reports that an expert in ancient and medieval history from Cambridge University, has asserted that St Patrick, whose father was a Decurion, a Roman tax collector, was not captured and taken to Ireland as a boy-slave as he claimed but that he emigrated to avoid becoming a tax collector. 

Patrick was born around 390 AD and Roman rule was abandoned when he was about twenty so it's likely this career was in any case closed to him before he reached maturity.  Was his story of the slave shepherd boy who received his calling while watching his flocks by night  invented by the saint himself.  This may well be true.  Aside from Patrick's own account there is no reason to believe he ever went to Ireland prior to taking up the post of Bishop there in 432 AD.  What we do know is that he studied at the monastery of Lerins on the French Riviera where he would have been influenced by the monastic ideals of John Cassian and then at the monastery of Auxerre under St Germanus.  Auxerre is very interesting as it seems to be the focus of a movement to create an independent church in northern Gaul and Britain.  Patrick's pupil, Dubronius or Dyfrig, who is my prime suspect as the author of The Wonderful History of the Sword in the Stone, also trained at Auxerre. 

The collapse of the Roman Empire meant that Gaul was ruled by the Franks - whose name means free people - who had never been subject to Roman rule.  The same was true of the Irish and the Romans had abandoned the Britons in 410 AD.  You have to remember that at this time the Pope was only one of five patriarchs all answerable to the Emperor in Constantinople.  To the people of northern Europe the Roman Catholic Church was highly suspect.  Having thrown off the yoke of the Roman Empire they had no desire to be indirectly ruled from Constantinople through the dictates of the Roman Church. 

Patrick came to Britain on two preaching tours with St Germanus. On the second tour while in Britain they heard that Palladius the Bishop of Ireland had died.  Patrick immediately went to Ireland and took over his position.  This is interesting because in the first place he was not the first person to bring Christianity to Ireland or attempt to establish the church there.  Secondly Palladius was a Metropolitan Bishop.  Patrick had been trained in monasteries - monks were not necessarily priests and were outside the episcopalian system.  How then did he manage to get himself appointed Bishop of Ireland?  This would normally have been an appointment in the gift of the Pope.  It is entirely possible that Patrick did invent the story of his days as a slave in Ireland and his mystical calling on the hillside to justify taking over the position of Palladius without authorisation.  After all a divine appointment trumps one even by the Pope. 

However there is a slight suggestion that his story may not have been entirely baloney.  At Caermead, just outside Llantwit Major in South Wales, there are the remains of a Roman villa.  Excavations in 1888 uncovered the skeletons of forty-three humans and three horses and evidence of burned masonry suggesting that the estate was attacked by Irish raiders in the fourth century and its inhabitants massacred backing up Patrick's story of abduction by Irish raiders.  Was this villa at Caermead Patrick's birthplace?  His place of birth is uncertain but it would explain why in 500 AD a decade or so after his death, Illtud chose to site his great monastery beside the ruins of the villa.

Whether Patrick's story of his early life is true or not all of us in the British Isles, not just in Ireland, owe a great debt to this wandering scholar.  Llanilltud Fawr, as it should be properly known, became one of the great centres of scholarship in the early middle ages and sent its scholars out across Europe challenging imperial power and changing the way we think and our ideas about who we are.

Happy St Patrick's Day.

Trumpington Meadows Burial

Very exciting news in the Daily Mail today reporting on the finding of a grave site at Trumpington Meadows near Cambridge.  The headline reads  "Buried wearing her cross 1,400 years ago, is this girl one of our first Christians?"  Well the answer to that is no and as usual the Daily Mail, which is such a stickler for historical accuracy, manages to get it all wrong by suggesting that there were no Christians in Britain before the arrival of St Augustine in 595 AD.  And that on the day before St Patrick's Day! Horrified!

Nevertheless the burial is very exciting not least because it suggests that St Augustine had nothing to do with it.  The cross depicted in the paper is studded with garnets and dated to between 650 AD and 680 AD.  It is a small treasure in itself but its significance is not in its value but in its shape.  It is the Greek cross of St John not the straight Roman crucifix.  This suggests to me that the young lady who is reckoned to be around 16 years old was a member of the Celtic Church. The Celtic Church regarded St John as their founding apostle rather than St Peter who is regarded as the founder of the Roman church. 

The value of the cross suggests the girl might have been destined for a high position within the Celtic Church which accorded equality to women and since she appears to be of noble birth it is possible that she had already been appointed an Abbess or Bishop since these positions were generally given to high-born young ladies of good family and education and their monasteries (still monasteries and not convents) sponsored by their wealthy families.  She may have been educated at Faramoutiers in what was then Austrasia, founded by the protogee of Columbanus, Fara, a girl of similar background or at Hild's famous double monastery at Whitby.  In my book Columbanus: Poet, Preacher, Statesman, Saint (Imprint Academic) you will find details of the position of women within the Celtic Church.

There is an assumption that she is Saxon but she could just as easily have been a Frank or a native Brit.  The bed burial is a very exciting link to a druid past. In my book The Wonderful History of the Sword in the Stone I have presented a translation of the 5th century book contained in Malory's Mort Darthur which tells the story of the merger between the druids and the Christians in 5th century Britain to create the Christian Druid Celtic Church.  In this story a bed is at the very heart of the story, the centrepiece of the Ship of Faith, and Percival's sister and the mother of Galahad, the model of perfection and the only character to achieve the Holy Grail, is laid to rest on a bed.  She is the druid equivalent of the Virgin Mary although a goddess in her own right. The exciting aspect of the bed burial at Trumpington Meadows is that, taken with the St John's Cross, this is a mark that the girl is not just a Christian but a Christian Druid, preserving some rituals of the druid past and blending them with Christianity. 

I am so excited because there is little archaeological evidence for this period but it does demonstrate that there is some out there. Too often archaeologists skip over the transitional period and jump from Roman to Saxon (as I hope they have not done in this case - I am hoping that the mistakes are all the Mail's!).  Here we have some tangible evidence that links a burial, mid 7th century, to what documentary evidence we have.  By 680 AD the Synod of Whitby saw the Roman Church acquiring official backing from the Saxon ruling class (although interestingly despite being nominally Roman Catholic to preserve their international alliances almost all the Saxon nobility had their children educated by the Celtic Church as, if the Trumpington girl is a Saxon, they did in her case) and the old habits of the Celtic Church, crossing oneself on the forehead, praying with the palms upwards in the old Roman fashion, the use of the St John Cross rather than the straight Roman cross (although it remained in use as the basis of the dual Christian Druid Celtic Cross and has never disappeared) and the bed burials all died out.  There are no bed burials after the 7th century. The Synod of Whitby appears to have put an end to that practice too.

The Shadow Prince

A new book is being published this week - The Shadow Prince by Terence Morgan.  I've not had a chance to read it yet but it tells the story of Perkin Warbeck/Richard of York before the rebellion of 1491.  Mr Morgan has based his story on documentary evidence and concludes that Perkin Warbeck and Richard of York were indeed the same person and that Richard's claim was genuine. I'm particularly interested to read it because I have wirtten a book on a similar theme.  In my book Master Merryman I have come to a slightly different conclusion - that Richard of York was who he said he was and Perkin Warbeck was a talented Flemish musician.   You will have to read the story to find out how their lives became intertwined.  Master Merryman is available in a Kindle Edition and in paperback from www.createspace.com and www.amazon.co.uk.  The Shadow Prince is out now published by MacmIllan for £12.99.

Bel Ami

The film Bel Ami opens in cinemas across the UK this weekend.  Starring Robert Pattinson and Uma Thurman it is adapted from the classic novel of the same name by 19th century French novelist Guy de Maupassant. The film critic in the Daily Mail complains that the hero Georges is not a very likeable character but he was not intended to be.  The book is not, as many people thought and evidently still do, autobiographical although it was set in a world that Maupassant knew well - the world of the 'free press' with its seedy relationships with politicians and the corrupt world of bankers who were only interested in turning a profit and lining their pockets - all of which sounds painfully familiar today.

Maupassant's own life - which is the theme of my book The Lady in Grey was very different.  I have sneakily used the subtitle 'The story of the Real Bel Ami' to suggest the 'smart,sexy and scandalous' tag used by the film-makers but I am guiltily aware that he would not like it.  He got quite cross when people called him Bel-Ami as if he and his eponymous hero were one and the same.  Georges is a satirical portrait of a social climbing type that he did not personally like.  The 'De' in his name was genuine although his rather odd up-bringing was more middle-class than aristocratic.  Georges makes his background up. 

From the Franco-Prussian war to the glitz and glamour of the Riviera Maupassant's life was dramatic and fascinating.  If you want to read more The Lady in Grey is available in a Kindle Edition and in paperback from www.createspace.com or www.amazon.co.uk