I am not expert in history of religions so I would love to know more about your vision on the influence of the Benedictine order against those wild saints you are writing on. Or maybe some reading about it …
My Italian side of the family comes from the very local mountains of Monte Cassino in Lazio ( DH Lawrence stayed a while in another village of the region by the way) where Saint Benedetto started his order and cultural conquest of Europe…
St Edmond and St George were both martyrs, who refused to renounce their faith in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ despite threats of extreme violence. In both cases, in the face of their continued refusal, these threats were eventually cruelly implemented. They both resisted rabidly anti-Christian oppressors. Both are worthy Saints in the face of what has befallen England, and indeed all of Europe's historically Christian nations, today. To reject the paganistic values of the 21st century, the complete 'normalisation' of pre-natal infanticide being just one of many tragically sad abominations which characterises the values of this era, requires courage.
However, with God's help and the prayers of His saints "this too shall pass". I accept though, sadly, perhaps not in our lifetimes, Paul. There are,
as yet small, but nevertheless hopeful green shoots of a spiritual rebirth and revival appearing everywhere in our much loved historically Christian nations. All of us,through openly declaring our belief in Christ, are helping water these glimpses of growth emerging from the cold brown earth of secularism and 'rationality' . Openly returning to these Saints both in prayer and veneration, is not some quaint 'retro' revival of the past, but a declaration that these holy martyrs conscious rejection of paganism, is as real and as challenging a choice for us today, as it was for them.
I do hope, one day, you’ll write about my patron saint, Theneva of Glasgow. She’s so dear to me. I’m very much looking forward to your Wild Saints book.
Much to be grateful for here. I'm glad to hear your bees survived the winter, are hard at work, and that you're tending them when you can. And the mysteries of Old England are still very much alive in those martyrs and holy ones who know the land so well. I particularly love hearing St. Arsenius' prophecy, and look forward to your upcoming book to know these wild saints better.
Thank you, Paul, for this great historical insight! I'm sorry you're feeling old at 53! (I'm 81 -- that, I think, can be called old!). Speaking of writing books -- I've recently signed a contract to publish my translation of a wonderful Russian book of daily scriptural meditations written by an anonymous author in 1908, and read by the last Russian empress in exile, before she and her family were executed by the communists. The book seems to be quite popular now in Russia, and, and many of the parishioners of my church have thanked me for my video recordings of these meditations.
And I'm very much looking forward to reading your new book, having previously read what you wrote about St. Seraphim of Sarov.
It is a new publisher, Spruce Island Books (ring any bells?), under the auspices of the Orthodox Church In America, and dedicated to supporting the indigenous Orthodox population of Alaska.
Thanks for this....my first name is George, I was baptized at Saint George's Episcopal Church in Tennessee (The then Anglican Church in America), and my birthday is May the 6th, which on the Old Orthodox Calendar (Julian) is April 23rd, which of course is the Feast Day of Saint George.
Pretty obvious who my Saint is.......!
Hope you are feeling better these days now that Spring has sprung!
I have tried to 'like' some comments on here but it's not working. It's probably my Luddite approach to technology (I'm still on Windows 7!). Resisting the machine means sometimes stuff doesn't work!
Please consider yourselves 'liked'!
I remember as a child/teenager loving the King Arthur stories, and as I grew up, wishing more and more that we had a king like him. Noble, truthful and courageous. It has taken me a long time to realise that we already do! He is a King that has been here since before time began, and will be here until the ages of ages, always with us.
Thank you Paul for a very hopeful essay. Great stuff!
Dear Paul: my Facebook postings are all aglow with, what appears to be, a dramatic growth of Orthodoxy across the British Isles with pictures of conversions, baptisms, etc. New Orthodox parishes springing up. What do you make of all this?
It is certainly happening. I hear it especially in the US, but in Britain too it is going on. Maybe I will write about it. My quick take is that as we head deeper into the spiritual void of the Machine, more and more people seek (or are sought by) the truth. Younger people especially are looking for real meaning, and the Orthodox church is a strong, unchanged Christian tradition which has not caved into modernity. Despite being 'eastern' it also takes us back to our roots.
It was encountering the lives of several contemporary saints (Saint Seraphim of Sarov, Saint Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia, Saint Paisios of Mount Athos, Saint Silouan the Athonite) who are discussed in "The Mountain of Silence" by Kyriacos Markides that opened my heart to Christ. These holy individuals showed me through their extraordinary love for God and man that Christ was very real and very much alive. CHRIST IS RISEN!!!
Thank you for this wonderful post! I would also be curious to know how St. George became the patron Saint of England. As an Orthodox convert, I thought I was choosing my own patron saint, but as few years down the line I can see that the saint was actually choosing me.
Yes, I had a similar experience. I underwent a Roman Catholic infant-baptism, and as I prepared for Orthodox Chrismation, I really, really didn't want to keep the same patron-saint. I really felt her shoes were "way too big for me." But that's how Saints make us feel when we're actually close to them, right? I looked into names from "big" dreams I'd had over the years, I looked into varied spellings of my first name. Just didn't find anything. But little by little, I could see the effect of the presence of my patron saint all along, all my life. Once I accepted I "belonged" to her in a unique way all my own, and was finally Chrismated in her name, all that research very soon led to revealed new saints I hadn't yet found -- like a gift just waiting for "after I got it right!"
I also think huge problems were caused before the “Great Schism” when, at the Council of Whitby (663), the older, wilder Celtic church lost out to the Roman one.
Ever since my first visit to Lindisfarne years ago, I’ve had a love of Cuthbert, Aidan, and the rest. (Have you ever visited Cuthbert’s tomb at Durham Cathedral?) Cuthbert was a wild saint — even if Bede over-egged the pudding a little when he wrote his “Life of St Cuthbert”. I think we have lost the connection to the saints of the past a little at our peril (whilst remembering that those who are in Christ are all saints; that’s the beauty of the gospel).
PS: Loved the little TH White reference; “The Once and Future King” is a sublimely beautiful book.
Very much enjoyed this, and even finally subscribed (despite my soft spot for the Tudors & Reformation 😉). Brought to mind Shelley’s famous quote: "History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man."
Sorry for commenting so late. I overlooked this post when it first went out and just heard about it this morning watching Jonathan Pageau and Fr Josiah Trentham. Some fascinating stuff, especially the Edward the Confessor prophecy, but I was struck by your comparison of the iconoclasm of the English Reformers to the Taliban. Granted a lot of heads were knocked off statues, stained glass smashed and wall paintings whitewashed over but looking across the border from Scotland I look with envy at so much that survived. The Scottish Reformers, were the most thorough (read 'fanatical') in Europe. The first wave was around 1560 when the Mass was first banned by the Scottish parliament despite the fact that Mary, Queen of Scots, remained a Catholic. James Macmillan, the great Scottish Catholic composer, got into trouble at his 1999 lecture at the Edinburgh Festival when he called 1560 'Year Zero' referring to Pol Pot's reign of terror in Cambodia, but he wasn't far off. Most what little survived the first wave of iconoclasm was destroyed by a second wave in the mid seventeenth-century during the British Civil Wars. More than anywhere else, whole buildings were either actively destroye or allowed to fall into ruin and to serve as quarries. The result is that only two pre-Reformation cathedrals survived more or less intact, at Glasgow and Kirkwall, with the greatest at St Andrews, built to house relics of St Andrew, on a scale to rival Old St Peter's and Santiago di Compostela, reduced to a fragmentary ruin. There are only two tiny fragments of Scottish pre-Reformation stained glass surviving, in the Magdalen Chapel in Edinburgh, which is now, ironically, the HQ of the Scottish Reformation Society. A handful of pre-Reformation churches survive. Only one, St Marnock's, Fowlis Easter, retains some of its pre-Reformation painted furnishings. It was made redundant by the Church of Scotland in 2024, reflecting the catastrophic decline of Christian religious practice in Scotland and indifference to its heritage. There are now glimmers of hope in the rise in the numbers of reception into the Catholic and Orthodox churches in Scotland, but it is in the face of hostility across the board from the Scottish state and institutions. Saint Andrew and all saints of Scotland, pray for us!
Hello Paul,
I am not expert in history of religions so I would love to know more about your vision on the influence of the Benedictine order against those wild saints you are writing on. Or maybe some reading about it …
My Italian side of the family comes from the very local mountains of Monte Cassino in Lazio ( DH Lawrence stayed a while in another village of the region by the way) where Saint Benedetto started his order and cultural conquest of Europe…
St Edmond and St George were both martyrs, who refused to renounce their faith in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ despite threats of extreme violence. In both cases, in the face of their continued refusal, these threats were eventually cruelly implemented. They both resisted rabidly anti-Christian oppressors. Both are worthy Saints in the face of what has befallen England, and indeed all of Europe's historically Christian nations, today. To reject the paganistic values of the 21st century, the complete 'normalisation' of pre-natal infanticide being just one of many tragically sad abominations which characterises the values of this era, requires courage.
However, with God's help and the prayers of His saints "this too shall pass". I accept though, sadly, perhaps not in our lifetimes, Paul. There are,
as yet small, but nevertheless hopeful green shoots of a spiritual rebirth and revival appearing everywhere in our much loved historically Christian nations. All of us,through openly declaring our belief in Christ, are helping water these glimpses of growth emerging from the cold brown earth of secularism and 'rationality' . Openly returning to these Saints both in prayer and veneration, is not some quaint 'retro' revival of the past, but a declaration that these holy martyrs conscious rejection of paganism, is as real and as challenging a choice for us today, as it was for them.
May it be so. Through the prayers of St. Edmund.
I do hope, one day, you’ll write about my patron saint, Theneva of Glasgow. She’s so dear to me. I’m very much looking forward to your Wild Saints book.
I've actually never heard of her! I will have to do some digging ...
Much to be grateful for here. I'm glad to hear your bees survived the winter, are hard at work, and that you're tending them when you can. And the mysteries of Old England are still very much alive in those martyrs and holy ones who know the land so well. I particularly love hearing St. Arsenius' prophecy, and look forward to your upcoming book to know these wild saints better.
Thank you, Paul, for this great historical insight! I'm sorry you're feeling old at 53! (I'm 81 -- that, I think, can be called old!). Speaking of writing books -- I've recently signed a contract to publish my translation of a wonderful Russian book of daily scriptural meditations written by an anonymous author in 1908, and read by the last Russian empress in exile, before she and her family were executed by the communists. The book seems to be quite popular now in Russia, and, and many of the parishioners of my church have thanked me for my video recordings of these meditations.
And I'm very much looking forward to reading your new book, having previously read what you wrote about St. Seraphim of Sarov.
Dimitry Zarechnak
That sounds an intriguing book. Keep us updated here.
It is a new publisher, Spruce Island Books (ring any bells?), under the auspices of the Orthodox Church In America, and dedicated to supporting the indigenous Orthodox population of Alaska.
Thanks for this....my first name is George, I was baptized at Saint George's Episcopal Church in Tennessee (The then Anglican Church in America), and my birthday is May the 6th, which on the Old Orthodox Calendar (Julian) is April 23rd, which of course is the Feast Day of Saint George.
Pretty obvious who my Saint is.......!
Hope you are feeling better these days now that Spring has sprung!
I have tried to 'like' some comments on here but it's not working. It's probably my Luddite approach to technology (I'm still on Windows 7!). Resisting the machine means sometimes stuff doesn't work!
Please consider yourselves 'liked'!
I remember as a child/teenager loving the King Arthur stories, and as I grew up, wishing more and more that we had a king like him. Noble, truthful and courageous. It has taken me a long time to realise that we already do! He is a King that has been here since before time began, and will be here until the ages of ages, always with us.
Thank you Paul for a very hopeful essay. Great stuff!
Dear Paul: my Facebook postings are all aglow with, what appears to be, a dramatic growth of Orthodoxy across the British Isles with pictures of conversions, baptisms, etc. New Orthodox parishes springing up. What do you make of all this?
It is certainly happening. I hear it especially in the US, but in Britain too it is going on. Maybe I will write about it. My quick take is that as we head deeper into the spiritual void of the Machine, more and more people seek (or are sought by) the truth. Younger people especially are looking for real meaning, and the Orthodox church is a strong, unchanged Christian tradition which has not caved into modernity. Despite being 'eastern' it also takes us back to our roots.
It was encountering the lives of several contemporary saints (Saint Seraphim of Sarov, Saint Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia, Saint Paisios of Mount Athos, Saint Silouan the Athonite) who are discussed in "The Mountain of Silence" by Kyriacos Markides that opened my heart to Christ. These holy individuals showed me through their extraordinary love for God and man that Christ was very real and very much alive. CHRIST IS RISEN!!!
Truly he is risen!
That is a great book!
A truly moving,heartfelt and beautiful post. A voice that needs to be more widely heard in that post Christian desert
Thank you for this wonderful post! I would also be curious to know how St. George became the patron Saint of England. As an Orthodox convert, I thought I was choosing my own patron saint, but as few years down the line I can see that the saint was actually choosing me.
Amazing how that works. May that connection deepen with the years. One day at a time.
Yes, I had a similar experience. I underwent a Roman Catholic infant-baptism, and as I prepared for Orthodox Chrismation, I really, really didn't want to keep the same patron-saint. I really felt her shoes were "way too big for me." But that's how Saints make us feel when we're actually close to them, right? I looked into names from "big" dreams I'd had over the years, I looked into varied spellings of my first name. Just didn't find anything. But little by little, I could see the effect of the presence of my patron saint all along, all my life. Once I accepted I "belonged" to her in a unique way all my own, and was finally Chrismated in her name, all that research very soon led to revealed new saints I hadn't yet found -- like a gift just waiting for "after I got it right!"
This is beautiful. Thank you.
I also think huge problems were caused before the “Great Schism” when, at the Council of Whitby (663), the older, wilder Celtic church lost out to the Roman one.
Ever since my first visit to Lindisfarne years ago, I’ve had a love of Cuthbert, Aidan, and the rest. (Have you ever visited Cuthbert’s tomb at Durham Cathedral?) Cuthbert was a wild saint — even if Bede over-egged the pudding a little when he wrote his “Life of St Cuthbert”. I think we have lost the connection to the saints of the past a little at our peril (whilst remembering that those who are in Christ are all saints; that’s the beauty of the gospel).
PS: Loved the little TH White reference; “The Once and Future King” is a sublimely beautiful book.
Very much enjoyed this, and even finally subscribed (despite my soft spot for the Tudors & Reformation 😉). Brought to mind Shelley’s famous quote: "History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man."
I appreciate you educating me on matters of the saints I look forward to your upcoming book!
Sorry for commenting so late. I overlooked this post when it first went out and just heard about it this morning watching Jonathan Pageau and Fr Josiah Trentham. Some fascinating stuff, especially the Edward the Confessor prophecy, but I was struck by your comparison of the iconoclasm of the English Reformers to the Taliban. Granted a lot of heads were knocked off statues, stained glass smashed and wall paintings whitewashed over but looking across the border from Scotland I look with envy at so much that survived. The Scottish Reformers, were the most thorough (read 'fanatical') in Europe. The first wave was around 1560 when the Mass was first banned by the Scottish parliament despite the fact that Mary, Queen of Scots, remained a Catholic. James Macmillan, the great Scottish Catholic composer, got into trouble at his 1999 lecture at the Edinburgh Festival when he called 1560 'Year Zero' referring to Pol Pot's reign of terror in Cambodia, but he wasn't far off. Most what little survived the first wave of iconoclasm was destroyed by a second wave in the mid seventeenth-century during the British Civil Wars. More than anywhere else, whole buildings were either actively destroye or allowed to fall into ruin and to serve as quarries. The result is that only two pre-Reformation cathedrals survived more or less intact, at Glasgow and Kirkwall, with the greatest at St Andrews, built to house relics of St Andrew, on a scale to rival Old St Peter's and Santiago di Compostela, reduced to a fragmentary ruin. There are only two tiny fragments of Scottish pre-Reformation stained glass surviving, in the Magdalen Chapel in Edinburgh, which is now, ironically, the HQ of the Scottish Reformation Society. A handful of pre-Reformation churches survive. Only one, St Marnock's, Fowlis Easter, retains some of its pre-Reformation painted furnishings. It was made redundant by the Church of Scotland in 2024, reflecting the catastrophic decline of Christian religious practice in Scotland and indifference to its heritage. There are now glimmers of hope in the rise in the numbers of reception into the Catholic and Orthodox churches in Scotland, but it is in the face of hostility across the board from the Scottish state and institutions. Saint Andrew and all saints of Scotland, pray for us!