Exploring Medieval Monasteries, part 4

Hello. I'm continuing to follow clues to the establishment of the earliest monasteries. We began in Ireland, then went to the west coast of Scotland, into Wales and south-west England. There's a parish in Cornwall that is known as Peran Zabulo. In modern English that translates as Pyrrhon in the Sands. And Pyrrhon is the patron saint of Cornwall and of Tinners, arrived in the area and founded a monastery in the 5th century. He may have come from Ireland, he may have come from Wales. The abbey he founded was known as Llanpiran, the Church of Pyrrhon. And it's recorded in Doomsday Book, so the 1080s, but it is soon abandoned after that. And we don't know the exact location of Llanpiran, but logic suggests that it would be around the remains of a church which is known as St. Pyrrhon's Oratory, that was buried under Gears Sands to the north of Peremporth. It's one of the most important early Christian sites in Britain. It was built of local stone, been dated to the 7th century, so after Pyrrhon's time, would have replaced an earlier wattle and daub building. An inscribed memorial stone has been found that does date back to the 5th century. It's a very compact rectangular building, with a very small nave and a small chancel. It's only about 30 feet by 15 feet, and the walls survive to a height of around 8 feet. The shifting sands led to it being buried and replaced by a new church in the middle of the 12th century, a little further inland. That in turn fell victim to drifting sands and was abandoned in 1804. Foundations are still visible. And then that very first early site, there was partial clearance in the 1830s. It became a visitor attraction. There was vandalism, there were environmental problems, so first of all some railings were put around it, and then a concrete wall was built. But in 1980, a decision was taken to protect the site, to rebury it. And then five years ago, a group of people who'd formed St Pyrrhon's Trust, re-excavated the building. It is still locked, there are occasional open days, but you can get good views from outside. There's also an early medieval cemetery that's associated with this site, also subject to the windblown sands and bones sometimes pop up. And burials have been found in both stone and slate kists. And the foundations of another building at the west end of the little oratory, so probably a baptistry, also lost beneath the dunes. And an annual procession to the site on St Pyrrhon's Day, which is the 5th of March. And at other sites in the southwest, we have a little place called St Kew. It's north of Wadebridge, the site of a possible early monastery founded by St Docco, who was a Welsh monk. We have a Life of St Samson, written around about 700, that records a visit by Samson to a monastery in the early 6th century, founded by Docco. There he is met by a man called Junavius, which implies that he's a already passed on. Why do we associate St Kew with Docco? Well, Kew was Docco's sister. The church, local church, is now St James and St Kew. It was rededicated in the Victorian period. Now you might think that's little hard evidence for an early monastery, but there's also an inscribed stone in the church. On it is written the name Justi. It is written in Latin. It's also written in Ogham. Almost certainly a memorial to a 5th century monk. Now what we can see by these early sites that we've been looking at in the last few videos, is that when Pope Gregory sends Augustine and his companions on their mission to convert the Anglo-Saxons in 597, there's already a significant number of monasteries established. But they're chiefly in Wales and the West and the West Coast of Scotland. What I've been calling Celtic Christianity, a more precise term might be British Christianity. And British Christianity has been cut off from Rome. It is still practicing its original observances. Rome has evolved and changed, so now there are differences. In Britain, the monks don't do the tonsure on the head. They have different rites of baptism. Importantly, their calculation of the date of Easter, Christianity's most important holy day, is different from Rome. All this will lead to the Synod of Whitby in 664, which establishes Roman practice, and that will prevail. But it's a long time before it's adopted everywhere. It's not adopted in Cornwall and Devon for around 40 years, 50 years before it's accepted on Iona, over 100 years before most of Wales accepts Roman traditions. Even in the 1180s, Gerald of Wales is describing British Christian practice still being observed on the monastery on Bardsey Island at Bethgelert. Now, Augustine himself founded a monastery just outside the walls of Canterbury in 598, originally dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul, later became St. Augustine's. It was dissolved in 1538. The ruins can still be seen. That was followed by a religious house for nuns at Liminge, which was abandoned after Viking raids. And there were other early foundations by Augustine and his team at Reculver, at Thanet, and at Sheppey. And this process of Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England, that is begun by Augustine and his companions, is then continued by missionaries operating in the main from the monastic bases. There are one or two people working from cathedrals under bishops, but most of the work is undertaken by the monasteries. Lindisfarne was founded by St. Aidan in 635. St. Aidan was a monk on Iona. He was probably invited to Northumbria by the King Oswald, who then made Lindisfarne, probably uninhabited or virtually so at the time, offered that as a base. And this began a remarkable period of monastic development in the north-east of England. Wide influence throughout Britain and beyond. Great centre of learning Northumbria in the 7th and 8th century. The site of that first monastery, at least the heart of it, is assumed to be beneath the later medieval Benedictine Priory. This is an impression of what the site might have looked like from the evidence that we have. And the most famous monk on Lindisfarne, St. Cuthbert, in the 7th century. Just off Lindisfarne, which is accessible twice a day at low tide, there's a causeway today, there is a little islet called St. Cuthbert's Island, and you can scramble across to that at low tide, across a pebbly beach. On the islet there are the foundations of an enclosure, a small chapel and a hut. And this is where Cuthbert reputedly spent time on retreat from the main community. And what we can see here is Cuthbert struggling to reconcile the desire of monks for physical isolation with being part of a monastic community and a missionary centre. It's this paradox of both detachment from the secular world and engagement with it. And Cuthbert even lived for a time on the more remote Innerfarne Island, seven miles from Lindisfarne. And there is a very nice mural, which is part of it, at Wallington Hall in Northumberland, a National Trust property. And this part of the mural shows King Edfrith and Bishop Trumline visiting Cuthbert on Innerfarne, and they're there to try and persuade him to leave and become the Bishop of Hexham. And from Lindisfarne, monasteries are established across the North East and then beyond. And that is where I'm going to start next time. If you've enjoyed this video, hit the like and subscribe buttons and click on the notification bell to be informed when the next video is released. Or you can subscribe by clicking on the rose window over my shoulder.