Filename: saxonss.txt Title: Saxon Sisters Author: oosh@gmx.net Keywords: lesbian,history,true 25 June 2002 --- I am publishing this seven and a half years after I wrote it. I don't think I can write any more. But this, from the time when I could write, is perhaps interesting. It was originally written in response to the question below. --- What date would be appropriate for the annual celebration of women who love women? Katie McN asked me this question, quite by coincidence, on 23 June 2002. Naturally, I looked to history to provide us with some sort of significant anniversary. My researches took me back 1,323 years - almost to the day! The Silence of History We take our name from Sappho, and the Greek island where she lived; yet we know almost nothing about her - certainly no dates. Her memory, and most of her work, have been all but extirpated by millennia of suspicion, repression and - well, patriarchy. The invention of the illegitimate word "herstory" points to a still greater illegitimacy. Of course, looking for Lesbians in antiquity is doubly difficult: women in history are shadowy enough, defined by their relationship(s) with men or their impact on the men's world. So when we opt for the company of our own sex, we are almost sure to vanish from the record. Some, following Michael Foucault, have theorized that "homosexuality" is a culture-relative category, one that has appeared only in modern times. This seems mistaken, given that homosexual practices were apparently widespread - and treated as scarcely worthy of comment - in ancient Greece. But more exactly, what Foucault seems to say is that in the ancient world, humankind was not classified into "straight" and "gay": relationships might be same-sex, but people were people. There is some evidence to the contrary, notably in Plato's /Symposium/. In Aristophanes's speech, he explains love (eros) by means of a delightful myth. Originally, he tells us, people were joined in pairs, man/woman, man/man or woman/woman. As a punishment for misbehaviour, the gods cut every one in half and mixed them up, so that now humans are compelled to search throughout humanity for their missing half. This does seem to suggest that in the ancient world, people were regarded as having a specific orientation to one sex or another. While Foucault may not be entirely correct, it is probable that "Lesbianism" as an orientation only became truly noticeable when it came into conflict with a world-view that saw women's role as mother of a nuclear family, the lifelong exclusive possession of one man. Perhaps "Lesbianism" only became an alternative lifestyle when society presented women with no alternative. If, to the normal heterosexual, Lesbianism seems something artificial or "unnatural", then perhaps it is because for some, it is the only possible response to a norm that is equally artificial and unnatural. Arguably, the lesbian community is most sharply defined in the Protestant west. While I don't doubt that WLW have always existed everywhere, it is in the Protestant west that we have been coerced into a binary choice - for or against an exclusive heterosexual relationship. In polygamous societies, and wherever the truly extended family exists, there are opportunities for women to experience tenderness with members of their own sex. Even in Tudor England, before the Reformation, it was commonplace for women and girls to sleep naked together. The Alternative But until quite recently, and ever since the advent of Christianity in the west, there has been an alternative role for women, an alternative lifestyle that was not only respected but celebrated in legend. The records of early Christianity, overlaid though they are with fantastic elaborations, clearly show that the advent of the new religion brought in its wake the promise of a freer lifestyle for those women who sought to go beyond their existing role as breeding-machine and as chattel. The escape route was monasticism, and the enthusiasm and constancy with which some women sought it suggests that for them, it presented the only path to personal survival. Could I perhaps find, among their number, one who might stand out as a noble representative for those of us who prefer the intimacy of our own sex? Into the Past And so I took a look in the calendar of saints, to see if I could find a suitable feast day there. And I'm glad to say that I found a couple of suspects - from seventh-century England, as it happens. Whether they recommend themselves to you as much as they do to me is another question, but I hope and believe that you will find them interesting. The seventh century was a turbulent time for the church in England. I have been able to piece together from some of the lives a fairly clear picture, and before I focus in upon an interesting couple, I should perhaps give a very cursory overview of the religious and political situation at the time. England was not a single state in those days. Different areas (Mercia, Cumbria, Kent, Wessex) were each administered by kings. Bishops jostled with kings for land and power - although on the whole it was the kings who called the shots. England had been evangelized twice. The first wave of evangelization was in the third and fourth century, and didn't make a great impression. It seems that Christianity succeeded more with the Celts than with the Saxons (the sassenachs): the Celts tended to trade more with one another than with the Germanic invaders. The first evangelizers of Ireland seem to have been Welsh missionaries, and Ireland swiftly became a bastion of Christian culture and learning. We owe much early history (and the invention of lower-case letters) to the monastic chronicles of old Ireland. But perhaps because of its isolation, Celtic Christianity began to get out of joint with Head Office in Rome. And then, in 537, S. Augustine's mission to England brought with it a different, more Roman, version of the faith. Augustine based himself in the far south, at Canterbury. Meanwhile, missionaries from Ireland were working along the western seaboard, setting up monasteries and cathedrals such as S. David's in Pembroke, Whitby in Northumbria and of course Lindisfarne. By the seventh century, the political situation in England was relatively stable. Commerce with the continent was increasing, and the discrepancy between continental Christianity and the old Celtic version became an issue. Some began to feel that if it were to be truly Catholic and part of the universal church, then the Celtic church should conform itself to the ways of Rome. The discrepancy was most noticeable in England, where the two traditions came into conflict - and particularly over the matter of the Christian calendar. The Celts had a different system for reckoning the date of Easter (and it is now believed that it was closer to the system used by the Jews at the time of Christ for fixing the date of Passover). One bastion of the Celtic tradition was Northumbria, where King Oswy sought to resist the Roman influence. He was the champion of S. Hilda, abbess of Whitby - a Celtic foundation. Oswy was particularly keen to see matters resolved, because his queen was from the south and adamantly accepted the Roman calendar. so while Oswy was feasting, his queen was still fasting. The protagonist of Rome was S. Wilfrid, a young and dynamic organizer who had visited Rome and was keen to promote closer fidelity to - and better communications with - the See of Rome. Things came to a head with the Synod of Whitby in 664. Wilfrid appealed to the authority of the See of Peter and the Council of Nicaea, and it was the Roman view that prevailed. Oswy adopted the Roman calendar, and from that time on the Celtic church became progressively Romanized. But in the period of interest, we can see that there were two cultural traditions, with the Celtic grudgingly and gradually ceding to the Roman. Saint Etheldreda S. Etheldreda was of the family of the Uffings, the royal race of East Anglia. Her father, King Anna, married a sister of S. Hilda, of Celtic Whitby in Northumbria. She was famous for her beauty and for her love of jewellery, particularly adornments of the neck. Her name was really Aethelthryth; she is better known today by her Latinized name, and also by the popular contraction "Audrey". Tombert was prince of the Grwyians, a Saxon marshland colony on the border of Anglia and Mercia. He is reputed to have been tender and generous, and he obtained from King Anna the hand of his lovely daughter. Etheldreda, however, being resolved to follow the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and to consecrate herself wholly to God, resisted to the utmost the will of her father, and succeeded in preventing the consummation of her marriage. After three years, Tombert died, and Etheldreda thought herself free for ever. But this was not to be. Egfrid, son of Oswy, Prince of Northumbria, became enamoured of her in his turn; and in 659, Etheldreda was compelled by her uncle (now king of Anglia) and her family to marry again, since they were anxious to ally themselves to the powerful Northumbrians. And so, in turn, Egfrid was to learn to his cost that he had married not a wife, but a nun. Succeeding his father Oswy as king, he showered her with gifts - including Hexham, which Etheldreda gave to S. Wilfrid (now Bishop of York). This was a smart move: York was the ecclesiastical capital of Northumbria. Etheldreda sought Wilfrid's protection, and he secretly encouraged her to stand firm and insist on her virginity. Meanwhile, the frustrated Egfrid sought Wilfrid's support and asked him to intercede for him with his recalcitrant wife. Wilfrid pretended to go along with this, while secretly conniving with Etheldreda and encouraging her to hold fast to her virginity. (A number of commentators have drawn attention to Wilfrid's rather unsaintly duplicity, and have felt understandable sypathy for the unfortunate Egfrid.) Eventually, after twelve years of /mariage blanc/, in 671 Egfrid grudgingly agreed to a separation, and Etheldreda skipped off to the monastery at Coldingham, which was governed by Egfrid's aunt Ebba. But Egfrid changed his mind, and came to Coldingham to reclaim his wife. Ebba, realizing that she wouldn't be able to stand up to her nephew, advised the queen to flee. So, disguised in the dress of a poor woman, and accompanied by two nuns, Etheldreda left Coldingham on foot. She could not very well seek refuge at Whitby, because her aunt Hilda was not exactly friends with Wilfrid, who had acted as Etheldreda's protector. Instead, she passed southward. Legend has it that she first went to Colbert's Head, hotly pursued by the king. It is said that the tide rose so high as to render it inaccessible for seven successive days, until the king abandoned his pursuit. After a thousand such difficulties and adventures (of which I long to learn more), she crossed the river out of Northumbria. Now Etheldreda had some land granted her by her first husband in the marshland between Anglia and Mercia. It was quite extensive, supporting some six hundred households. Their position was almost that of an island, surrounded by fens, which could be crossed only by boat. The island was known as Ely, or the Island of Eels. Etheldreda built a monastery there, among the native alders, and it thrived. Many Anglo-Saxon virgins joined her there, including many of her sister princesses. Mothers confided their daughters to her to education. Men, too, came to Ely, and Etheldreda found herself in charge of those remarkable double monasteries of men and women that were not uncommon in Saxon times. Few details exist of this period of her life; but it is said that she was surrounded by an odour of sanctity, so that she took a hot bath only on the vigils of the four great feasts of the year, and even then only after she had with her own hands washed the rest of the community. Wilfrid was a frequent visitor at Ely. Egfrid never forgave him, and in 678, with the consent of the Archbishop of Canterbury, deprived Wilfrid of his see and divided the diocese into three. Etheldreda predicted her own death. There was a swelling in her throat: "God has sent me this suffering to expiate the frivolity of my youth, when I remember wearing with so much pleasure necklaces of pearls and gold on the neck now so swollen and burned by illness." At the end, surrounded by the sisters of the community, "she implored them never to let their hearts rest on the earth, but to taste beforehand, by their earnest desires, that joy in the love of christ which it would not be given to them to know perfectly here below." She submitted to a painful operation in the throat, but three days later she died, on 23 June 679. Sixteen years later, in 695, her sister (more of her anon) caused her remains to be unearthed from her simple wooden coffin and rehoused in a marble mausoleum of stone from Grantchester (an old Roman city near Cambridge). Her body was found incorrupt. She seemed to be asleep. The surgeon who had opened the tumours in her neck was present, and was able to recognize the incisions that he had made. So I give you Saint Etheldreda, Virgin, Queen and Abbess. Her feast day, 17 October, is the supposed date of the translation of her relics in 695. Now for the sister. She was the elder by some years, and was married to Ercombert, king of Kent. She had two daughters, Ermenilda and Earcongotha, both numbered with the saints. (Ermenilda was to become third Abbess of Ely, and Earcongotha abbess of Faremoutier in Brie.) After 24 years of conjugal life, her husband left her a widow in 664. Her son Egbert was not yet old enough to reign, so she became regent. When, in 668, she was able to resign in favour of her son, she founded a monastery in the Isle of Sheppey, where she was clothed and veiled by Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury. She there ruled a community of 77 nuns, until she heard that her sister had founded the community at Ely. But when, in 671, she heard that Etheldreda had founded the community at Ely, she at once became consumed with a longing to live under her sister's crosier as a simple nun. "Farewell, my daughters," she is reputed to have said, "I leave you Jesus for your protector, His holy angels for companions, and one of my daughters for your superior... I go to East Anglia where I was born, in order to have my glorious sister Etheldreda for my mistress, and to take part immediately in her labours here below, that I may share her recompense above." I conclude by quoting from Baring-Gould's /Lives/, upon which scholarly work I have relied throughout: "She was received with enthusiasm at Ely; the whole community came forth to welcome her, and the two sister-queens wept for joy when they met. They lived togther afterwards in the most tender union." After Etheldreda's death, the sister became the second Abbess of Ely, where she reigned for twenty years. And her name? I give you Saint Sexburga, Queen and Abbess - feast day, 6 July.