| Venerable Mothers Ermenburgh, Mildred, Edburgh, and their Minster-in-Thanet Monastery Dmitry Lapa Saint Ermenburgh A stained glass of St. Ermenburgh (Domneva) of Thanet Our Holy Mother Ermenburgh (also known as Domna Ebba or Domneva) is commemorated on November 19/December 2. Most of what we know of this woman saint was recorded in the so-called Kentish Royal Legend in the eleventh century. She was a great-granddaughter of the holy King Ethelbert of Kent (560-616), the first early English king to become Christian, converted by St. Augustine of Canterbury, the Apostle of the English. Ermenburgh was most probably a daughter of the Kentish ruler Ermenred who reigned over this kingdom from 640 to about 664. It seems that for some time Ermenred ruled together with his brother, the pious king Erconbert, who also died in 664. The latter’s successor was his son named Ecgbert who was king of Kent until 673. Ermenburgh was a very devout Christian who was always inclined to the ascetic way of life. Her husband was the western Mercian ruler named Merewald (also known as Merewalh). Under the influence of his wife, Merewald himself became a committed Christian and founded a number of monasteries in his sub-kingdom. This royal couple had one son, who died very young, and three daughters, all of whom were later venerated as saints: Milburgh, Mildred, and Milgyth. According to tradition, a tragedy happened in the kingdom of Kent in about 670 (some sources give the year 669): an adviser of king Ecgbert cruelly murdered two very devout and very young brothers Ethelbert and Ethelred—the latter were sons of king Ermenred and younger brothers of Ermenburgh, therefore, cousins of Ecgbert. It is not known if the brothers were killed by order of Ecgbert himself in order to get rid of any rivals to the throne, or on his adviser’s own initiative. However that may have been, there was a serious political dispute within the royal family at that time and the innocent youths were its victims. 1 Learning about the murder, the holy queen Ermenburgh demanded a wergild , that is, an atonement for her close relatives’ killing, as was the custom of that time. As she never thought of money or any riches, she asked King Ecgbert to bestow land to found a monastery in Kent. Significantly, Ermenburgh wanted to build her monastery on the Isle of Thanet in northeastern Kent, where St. Augustine with other Italian monks had arrived in 597 to convert the Angles. King Ecgbert was full of grief and repentance and gladly consented. The queen requested that the land that her tame hind was to walk around would be allotted to found a monastery. The hind walked around a vast area in Thanet and it was decided to found a nunnery there. The hind ever since became the symbol of this abbey. |
| Vladimir Moss 95. SAINTWERBURGA, ABBESS OF CHESTER Our holy Mother Werburga was the daughter of King Wulfhere, first Christian king of Mercia and his wife, St. Ermenhilda. At a young age she was dedicated by the queen, her mother, as a chaste virgin to Christ. And, says an early chronicler, «thinking scorn of her royal wooers, and recoiling from the pompous splendour and pride of all worldly glory, as a violet, she bloomed in the beauty of unsullied youth, and as a lily, adorned the Garden of the Lord in the brightness of her virginal purity.» On the death of her father, in about 673, she and her mother became nuns in Ely. There she remained under her mother " s direction until her uncle, Aethelred, who had succeeded her father on the throne of Mercia, placed her in charge of all the convents in his kingdom. St. Werburga is especially associated with the convents of Hanbury in Staffordshire and Threckingham in Lincolnshire. But it was on her father " s royal estate at Weedon, in Northamptonshire, that the most famous incident in her life took place. Goscelin tells the story: «When the royal virgin was spending some time in her house at this same Weedon, a huge flock of wild geese. ravaged the fields, as is their wont. A domestic servant, a countryman, told his mistress of the damage that was being done. Then with great faith she told him to bring them all and shut them up just as one does with animals who eat other peoplés corn. «Off you go,» she said, »and bring all the birds in here.» The man went, greatly amazed and wondering whether this command was nonsense or madness. For how could a person, unfamiliar to the geese and of whom they would be suspicious, compel so many winged creatures to walk into captivity, when they could fly off and escape? «How,» he said, »am I to direct the birds towards this place, when they will fly into the air at my first approach?» Then the virgin, reiterating her demand, said, «Go, the sooner the better, and bring all the geese into my custody in accordance with my order.» He was afraid to neglect even a useless command of his saintly mistress, and went behind all the geese and said to them, »Off you go then to our mistress.» He drove them all in front of him as if they were a tame flock. Not one bird from all that gathering raise a wing, but like wingless chicks or as if they their wings cut off, they moved on foot, walking with bowed heads as if ashamed of their bad behaviour. So they assembled within the courtyard of their judge, trembling and subdued as if found guilty. They were shut up as captives, or more precisely, they were preserved to be the object of her kindness. |
| Vladimir Moss 97. SAINT WITHBURGA, HERMITESS OF EAST DEREHAM Our holy Mother Withburga was the daughter of King Anna of the East Angles and sister of St. Aethelthryth. For many years she lived as a hermitess at Holkham, Norfolk, and then at East Dereham. She used to be fed with milk by a tame doe. Once a man killed the doe, and very soon died himself. At East Dereham St. Withburga founded a community, but died before the buildings were completed, in 743. She was buried in the churchyard. In 798, her body was found to be incorrupt and was translated into the church. A holy well, which is still in existence, sprang up at the point where her body was exhumed. In 974, Abbot Brithnoth of Ely went secretly at night to Dereham and removed the body on waggons to the river Brandun, hotly pursued by the men of Dereham. On the waterways the ship lost its course, but a column of fire appeared from heaven and showed the way to the shore. In 1106, the incorruption of St. Withburgás body was again confirmed. The translation of St. Withburga is commemorated on July 8. Holy Mother Withburga, pray to God for us! (Sources: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, IV, 184; David Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Oxford: Clarendon, 1978, p. 411) Читать далее Поделиться ссылкой на выделенное |
| —What particular problems did you have in translating this book? Odd or outdated turns of phrase, hard to translate metaphors, symbolism, and so on? —As to problems in translation, there were some things, like humor, of a serious idea wrapped up in a funny turn of expression, that had to be footnoted, or were just plain lost. One great example that I could not save (though I fought to do so) was from these lines towards the end of the book: “The point of divorce reform, it cannot be too often repeated, is that the rascal should not only be regarded as romantic, but regarded as respectable. He is not to sow his wild oats and settle down; he is merely to settle down to sowing his wild oats. They are to be regarded as tame and inoffensive oats; almost, if one may say so, as Quaker oats.” The humor changes the tone of the writing, and shows a man capable of maintaining a sense of humor even in such serious thought. The connection between the euphemism for fornication (sowing wild oats), Quaker pacifism, and oatmeal is really funny, and gives a picture of a man with a balanced mind. But Russian doesn " t have that euphemism. Russians hardly know who the Quakers were, and have never seen the breakfast cereal, which, ironically, already existed and was well-known in Chesterton " s time. So the editor found a Russian idiom (“наломать дрова,” “nalomat drova”) which speaks of the general mistakes of youth, but is not specific to fornication and drops the humor altogether. Also, there were a few obscure references; a couple I was able to get help on, and one which we are left to speculate on the meaning of (a reference to a crusade in Russia). —You wrote on Facebook that people have seen you as eccentric or kooky for your love of Chesterton. What core message is it that you believe Chesterton has for our modern world that makes you persevere through this opposition and through any snags you had along the way in getting the book into publication? —Like I said, Chesterton keeps me pointed toward the Church. Plus, he has taught me invaluable tools of thinking, how to see history, politics, literature, and the rest, which really enlightens and explains, which always takes into account the opposing ideas, and strives for appreciation of one’s opponent. He loved his enemies, and so, in his lifetime, didn’t have any; he converted them (the ones that didn’t retreat into insults or silence) into his friends. He never thought much of himself; he cared about both the ideas he spoke of, and the people he was speaking them to. He was generous to a fault (he drove his wife crazy at times), and lived a life that I can only describe as saintly. He had his lapses, and what I believe to be his mistakes, but he is the kind of man I would like to be: fully engaging both his mind in thinking, and dealing with disagreement and challenge, and his heart in loving his neighbor. |
| When Christ is betrayed by Judas, He is arrested by the guards of the Sanhedrin, the highest governing organ of the Judean religious community. He is taken to the house of a high-priest for hasty judicial proceedings that employed false witnesses and false accusations. Trying to silence the conscience of those present, the high-priest says: “… it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” The Sanhedrin wishes to show the Roman rulers that it can tame the “troublemakers” on its own in order to give the Romans no reason for repressions. The events that follow are described in the Gospel in detail. High-priests reached a verdict. The Roman procurator (locum tenens) Pontius Pilate does not find Jesus guilty of any charge presented by the Sanhedrin: “Corruption of the people, refusal to pay taxes to Caesar, the Roman Emperor, attempts to seize power over the Jewish people.” The high-priest Caiaphas, however, insisted on an execution, and eventually, Pilate agrees. Note the part in the sentence where the Sanhedrin says: “He makes Himself God.” Thus, even those who were not at all sympathetic to Christ’s preaching thought that He made Himself equal to God, asserted for Himself divine dignity. Therefore, it was only natural that in the eyes of pious Jews who confessed the oneness of God, this was true blasphemy—but not at all calling oneself the Messiah. For example, Bar Kaaba, who around the same time also contested a messianic title, was not crucified, and his fate was much better. So, the sentencing is over and thus begins the night before the execution. Golgotha, a small hill outside of the Jerusalem city walls, was a traditional place for public executions. It is for this purpose that several posts always stood at the top of that hill. Customarily, the one to be crucified had to carry a heavy beamfrom the city which served to make a cross. It was such a beam that Christ also had to carry, but as the Gospel says, could not take it all the way to Golgotha. He was too weak. Prior to this, Christ had already been punished once: He was flogged. |
| When the Incarnation is made to by (?) a ‘myth ’ or a symbol, when the Resurrection of course was not the bodily resurrection of Christ but some sort of spiritual event within the hearts of the disciples, when everything is translated in non-historical terms, in imagery, then the Gospel becomes one more fairy tale. I could quote fairy tales which are more entertaining than the Gospel, if it is entertainment we want rather than a doctrine that can give shape to life. So I do believe that the Church must give very earnest thought to what it has got to proclaim. The Gospel is a harsh document; the Gospel is ruthless and specific in what it says; the Gospel is not meant to be re-worded, watered down and brought to the level of either our understanding or our taste. The Gospel is proclaiming something which is beyond us and which is there to stretch our mind, to widen our heart beyond the bearable at times, to recondition all our life, to give us a world view which is simply the world upside-down and this we are not keen to accept. And as the West has not yet had the courage on the whole to say that all this makes no sense and to reject it, many of its people find a way of explaining away the things which are too hard, too unbearable, and make of the Gospel something tame. But the trouble is that when you add too much water into a glass of wine, it gradually becomes water tainted with wine, and it gives you none of the kick which a glass of wine could give. Indeed, if there is nothing more to the Gospel than a moral tale of a rather unsuccessful young prophet who ended badly on the cross, really there is very little to follow. St Paul said a long time ago that unless a trumpet blows clearly, no soldier will make ready for the battle. Who among us is prepared to launch into battle for nothing but a fairy tale? The other point is that in Christianity in earlier days there was a discipline of life, that restructures the mind and the will towards God. When I say ‘discipline’, I do not mean something like military drill or a conventional way of doing things. The word ‘discipline’ comes from the same root as ‘disciple ’ ; discipline is the condition of a disciple, of someone who has chosen a teacher, a master, and is prepared to learn from him at a cost, and the very point of having a teacher or a master is to be confronted with a mind greater than ours, a heart deeper and wider than ours, a will greater than ours, a way of life which is worth living. But all this is a costly exercise. |
| Where does this universal sinful impurity in people come from if they were created in the image and likeness of God, and God is the most pure and the most holy? It comes from the devil, my brothers, from the devil, who is most often called by the Scripture, the unclean spirit. In the church prayers, especially in the exorcism part of baptism, he is named the «crafty, impure, vile, loathsome and alien» spirit. And that was he, the unclean spirit, who fell from God and became the vile vessel for every impurity of sin. That was he who defiled the hearts of the first man and woman with his impure breath, infected their very being, soul and body with his impurity, and now, like a hereditary disease, it is transmitted to all their successors, and ourselves, and so it will be passed on to the careless and unbelieving ones until the end of the world, as the holy angel said to the holy apostle John in the Apocalypse: “The time of fulfillment is near. Meanwhile, let the evildoers persist in doing evil and the filthy-minded continue in their filth, but let the good persevere in their goodness, and the holy continue in their holiness. I am coming soon and bringing with me my recompense to repay everyone according to what he has done!” (Revelation 22:11–12). And so, the impurity of the heart comes from the devil or from the first sinful human fall after which all people became his captives and slaves. This sinful impurity is so great and so deeply ingrained in human hearts. It is so difficult to get rid of that even the holy saints of God, who always kept vigil over all the thoughts and movements of their hearts, would also sometimes find themselves in an inundation of evil, in a storm of wicked, nasty and blasphemous thoughts. Then they prayed the Lord and the Most Holy Mother of God to tame those fierce and impure waves, to calm this demonic storm. It was so great that some men who had already reached the summit of holiness and purity would swiftly fall into the sin of impurity. It was so great that despite all our frequent prayers, the grace of the Sacraments and our instruction in the word of God and all the punishments the Lord sends on us for our sinful impurity, but it still remains in us. It will be there until we are dead. And to the great shame of humanity, in some of us, it only reveals itself right before the grave with particular brazenness and audacity. |
| Without doubt terrestrial animals are devoid of reason. At the same time how many affections of the soul each one of them expresses by the voice of nature! They express by cries their joy and sadness, recognition of what is familiar to them, the need of food, regret at being separated from their companions, and numberless emotions. Aquatic animals, on the contrary, are not only dumb; it is impossible to tame them, to teach them, to train them for man " s society. The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master " s crib. Isaiah 1:3 But the fish does not know who feeds him. The ass knows a familiar voice, he knows the road which he has often trodden, and even, if man loses his way, he sometimes serves him as a guide. His hearing is more acute than that of any other terrestrial animal. What animal of the sea can show so much rancour and resentment as the camel? The camel conceals its resentment for a long time after it has been struck, until it finds an opportunity, and then repays the wrong. Listen, you whose heart does not pardon, you who practise vengeance as a virtue; see what you resemble when you keep your anger for so long against your neighbour like a spark, hidden in the ashes, and only waiting for fuel to set your heart ablaze! 2. Let the earth bring forth a living soul. Why did the earth produce a living soul? So that you may make a difference between the soul of cattle and that of man. You will soon learn how the human soul was formed; hear now about the soul of creatures devoid of reason. Since, according to Scripture, the life of every creature is in the blood, as the blood when thickened changes into flesh, and flesh when corrupted decomposes into earth, so the soul of beasts is naturally an earthy substance. Let the earth bring forth a living soul. See the affinity of the soul with blood, of blood with flesh, of flesh with earth; and remounting in an inverse sense from the earth to the flesh, from the flesh to the blood, from the blood to the soul, you will find that the soul of beasts is earth. |
| XXIII. Shall I reckon up for you the differences of the other animals, both from us and from each other – differences of nature, and of production, and of nourishment, and of region, and of temper, and as it were of social life? How is it that some are gregarious and others solitary, some herbivorous and others carnivorous, some fierce and others tame, some fond of man and domesticated, others untamable and free? And some we might call bordering on reason and power of learning, while others are altogether destitute of reason, and incapable of being taught. Some with fuller senses, others with less; some immovable, and some with the power of walking, and some very swift, and some very slow; some surpassing in size or beauty, or in one or other of these respects; others very small or very ugly, or both; some strong, others weak, some apt at self-defense, others timid and crafty and others again are unguarded. Some are laborious and thrifty, others altogether idle and improvident. And before we come to such points as these, how is it that some are crawling things, and others upright; some attached to one spot, some amphibious; some delight in beauty and others are unadorned; some are married and some single; some temperate and others intemperate; some have numerous offspring and others not; some are long-lived and others have but short lives? It would be a weary discourse to go through all the details. XXIV. Look also at the fishy tribe gliding through the waters, and as it were flying through the liquid element, and breathing its own air, but in danger when in contact with ours, as we are in the waters; and mark their habits and dispositions, their intercourse and their births, their size and their beauty, and their affection for places, and their wanderings, and their assemblings and departings, and their properties which so nearly resemble those of the animals that dwell on land; in some cases community, in others contrast of properties, both in name and shape. And consider the tribes of birds, and their varieties of form and color, both of those which are voiceless and of songbirds. |
| A good friend of mine from Church was lamenting that many of her friends are getting married, and she’s starting to feel anxious because she’s still single. It made me think: what do these people have in common that they’re willing to commit their lives to each other, and at such a young age? The classes they shared in college? A propensity for sleeping in late on Saturdays? A few nights of passion? Do those things really create a strong enough foundation to build a marriage upon? Especially given the painfully high rate of divorce, it seems that now, more than ever, marriage has become (thanks to society) a two-fold downfall: the thrill of a wedding and the attempt at fulfilling our own selfish desires. A wedding today is an event, not a sacrament. There’s the garments, the flowers, the linens, the rings, the bridal party, the place settings, the showers, the gifts, the cake, the invitations, the menu, the engagement party, the honeymoon, the music selection and the list goes on and on and on. It’s no wonder women turn into “Bridezillas:” they become so focused on the details of the event and on everything being “perfect” that they lose sight of the entire point! I’m not saying that those choices aren’t important: everyone wants their wedding day to be special (and yes, I too have some idea of what I think I would like it to look like some day), but we can’t lose sight of the fact that the person you are choosing to unite yourself to under God is much more important than what type of cake you have. Society certainly doesn’t help the case: a Google search for the term “wedding” brought up about 219,000,000 hits (“marriage”, on the other hand, brought up about 50 million fewer). There are entire blocks of time allotted on television for shows about finding the perfect dress, comparing your wedding to other women’s, and how event caterers tame insane brides. Bachelor and bachelorette parties focus on “enjoying your last night of ‘freedom’” through alcohol and adult entertainers instead of preparing for an upcoming union. Even the vows written for those getting married outside of the Orthodox Church are sappy and clichй! They focus on how one person makes the other happier, not on following the examples set for us by Christ and the saints (the most Divine Love of obedience and self sacrifice). Let’s face it: what should be a sacrament has become a complete and utter spectacle! With so much pressure (and money) being placed on “the perfect wedding,” it’s not surprising that so many people seem to eschew marriage altogether. |
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