I recently visited Dorchester Abbey (see the accompanying photos). It is situated in the village of Dorchester-on-Thames, near Oxford. The present Abbey began building from the mid-1100’s. However, Dorchester-on-Thames is the site of one of the oldest Christian foundations in what became England, dating back to 634/5. The original was associated with one Bishop Birinus. In my book, “The Mustard Seed”, I call him “Man of Mystery”.
It was Birinus who, in 635, along with Saint King Oswald of Northumbria*, baptised the then pagan royal family of Wessex into Christian Identity. Today’s UK royal family traces back to that Wessex royal family. As I say elsewhere on this website and in the book, King Oswald was its originating godfather. Birinus was its originating Christian teacher and the one who brought it to baptism.
Dorchester-on-Thames nowadays is a quiet and leafy village nestled between two rivers. In Birinus’s time it was the front line of a war zone. What brought him there? The bald statement of the history books is that Birinus was sent on Christian mission to the pagan Anglo Saxon peoples by Pope Honorius in 634, and ordered to go where no other had gone before him. This means that he had to avoid Kent, where the team of monks seeded from the mission of St Augustine of Canterbury in 597 was already in place. Working his way northwards from the south coast, Birinus found favour with the pagan royal family of Wessex**. That was a small Saxon warrior band in those days, at war with pagan Mercian Angles to the north (the Mercian King Penda had recently wrestled lands away from Wessex). Birinus stayed on in Wessex to impart Christian teaching. His message was warmly received. It would have been a strenuous and dangerous journey. Following which Birinus settled in a location which may now be quiet and leafy but was then the front line of Wessex’s war with Mercia***.
That is the outline. Joining the dots calls for a certain amount of reasoning. Here is my take on it.
The first thing to recover is the general perspective into which Birinus came. The pagan Anglo Saxon people groups were entering into one of history’s greatest ever Christian Awakenings. In 597, in Kent, after the arrival from Rome of St Augustine of Canterbury, 10,000 people – a significant proportion in those days – had been baptised, and all voluntarily. Bede stresses that King Ethelbert of Kent compelled no-one. The royal family of Kent were greatly taken with Augustine. He exercised miraculous powers which the Christian Bible teaches would have been available to him from the Christian God. King Ethelbert went on to testify his new found Christian faith in London and in East Anglia. In 624, his daughter, Ethelburgha, went north to York, to marry the pagan King Edwin of Northumbria. She took with her the monk Paulinus, from Augustine’s team. In 627 Paulinus led Edwin to Christ. At that time, Paulinus exercised high Christian prophetic powers. They played out the model which the Apostle Paul had taught, in the Christian Bible, would arise when Christian prophetic powers were working as they should. Following which, again, many thousands were baptised by Paulinus. And again, King Edwin compelled no-one, all were given free choice. What Christians would call “Great Awakening” or “Revival” powers, manifesting via the realms of the Christian miraculous and the Christian prophetic, were entering the spiritual atmosphere.
Moving forward just a few years to the time of Birinus, 634/5, that Awakening power broke out Big Time, in three locations at once, Northumbria, East Anglia and Wessex.
In Northumbria, the phenomenal Saint King Oswald, Early England’s Lost Christ Figure, took the throne. Having received Christ at Iona when a young refugee, Oswald as an adult King sent to Iona for help with Christian mission to his people. At second time of asking, Iona sent St Aidan, a Gaelic Celt, and an all-time great of Christian history. In Aidan’s wake came a stream of Gaelic monks on fire with the Holy Spirit of the Christian God.
Meanwhile, in East Anglia, a Christian King called Sigeberht had come to the throne. Out of what is now Ireland, at that time, he received a band of dynamic Celtic Christian monks. He also sent to Canterbury for help with Christian mission to his people. At that time, a bishop named Felix, a Frank**** displaced by political upheaval in Frankish Burgundy, had just so happened to arrive at Canterbury seeking a role. He was sent on to East Anglia, hit it off with King Sigeberht, and had a ministry as successful as his name, Felix, which means, “happy”.
So what of the one who came to Wessex at that time then, Birinus, or Bishop Birinus as he became known, Man of Mystery? His origins and background really are shrouded in mystery; even how he came to Wessex is unclear. I suspect Wessex had put out feelers to Rome to send a Christian mission, but they didn’t want a hand-me-down from Kent. I can’t prove it. However, to the point: Birinus was a Christian Frank, like Felix. So, to give us a clue about Bishop Birinus, let’s look more closely at Bishop Felix.
Frankish Felix was the product of a monastic way of life on the European mainland. Its Christian spirituality had recently been reinforced by a Celtic Saint whose significance has been almost entirely lost to the modern English. We have heard about the Gaelic Celt, St Columba, of Iona fame. But we have lost the similarly named Pictish Celt, St Columbanus. He came out of what we now call Ireland into mainland Europe not long before St Augustine of Canterbury set out from Rome to the Anglo Saxons. Columbanus was spiritual dynamite, and quite fierce too. He set up monasteries in Frankish territories which had Life in the Holy Spirit of the Christian God.
Felix emerged from this background into East Anglia in 634 more or less at the time that Birinus also came to Wessex. I would surmise that Birinus, given how successful he was, and given the extent of Christian Awakening which took place in his ministry, was of the same spiritually reinforced version of the Frankish Christian ways – via St Columbanus – as was Bishop Felix. Shortly after, by 635, Saint King Oswald had taken the throne in Northumbria. Oswald’s Christian Life was also rooted in the Life in the Holy Spirit, from the Iona monastic life set up by St Columba. In 635, King Oswald received St Aidan from Iona. So both East Anglia and Northumbria received Christian mission seeded or strengthened out of vibrant Celtic Life in the Holy Spirit at much the same time, in 634/5. Which was also when Birinus just so happened to arrive in pagan Wessex.
These coincidences were not being orchestrated by human hand, for there were few means to liaise in those days…
One other coincidence to note as well, and not of human hand. My book “The Mustard Seed” shows you this more fully: the Christian Franks, and the Gaelic St Columba of Iona, and the Pictish St Columbanus of the Frankish monasteries, had a common spiritual root: a lost all-time-great of Christian history, St Martin of Tours. It was through Martin-modelled monastic foundations that the Life in the Holy Spirit which had been in Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul descended into the West after the fall of Rome in the West.
Returning to Birinus, his chief powers seem to have been as a clear and compelling teacher. Attempts were made in later Medieval times to attribute notable miracles to him – I highlight a major one in my book – but I rarely buy into later Medieval embroidering. In Bede, who was many hundreds of years nearer to the events, Birinus comes across as a gifted Christian teacher. Also, one must say, a brave and courageous one, settling in a war zone. The fashion these days is to overlook the courage and instead imply superstition: as if Birinus were put there by superstitious Wessex to pray for war victories. However, Christian prayer is not superstitious if there really is a Christian God to respond to it with the powers he says he has. Birinus no doubt did pray. And in Christian faith, it would seem, and with an answering Christian God, it would also seem. Because, in the short term, along came Saint King Oswald with treaty of alliance from Northumbria. And in the long term – two hundred and fifty years, not long really for the Christian God – the warring powers of Mercia and Wessex integrated as one around the shared Christian Identity which Birinus was actively at work to seed.
Now, with the advent of Saint King Oswald of Northumbria to Wessex in 635, let’s complete the picture for Bishop Birinus. Why did Oswald come to Wessex in 635? How did he even get there? Down the North Sea and up the Thames, perhaps? By land would have been difficult and would have meant crossing Mercia, which hated Northumbria.
Oswald came for a reason we can see on the surface. But also, for a reason we can see under the surface, if we will so permit ourselves. The surface reason? – To ally against King Penda of Mercia, he who had annexed Wessex lands in 628, and helped to bring down the Northumbrian King Edwin in 633. Oswald also came in order to marry into the Wessex royal family to seal the alliance. When he got there, he just so happened to find that Birinus was also prevailing to lead the Wessex royals to Christ, so Oswald sealed that deal as well, by godfathering them.
In my book, “The Mustard Seed”, I have a great deal to say about King Penda of Mercia. A pagan Germanic King, he became a serial killer of the newly Christian Germanic Kings in the other small Anglo Saxon kingdoms. The Christian God did reply to Penda in the next two hundred and fifty years, seven times over, as I show you in my book, overwhelming like a flood all that Penda had stood for. But as at 635, Penda was a most formidable foe for Wessex and Northumbria. Hence the alliance of those two within treaty.
That was the surface reason. But what was under the surface? The Christian Bible says this of Jesus Christ: the light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it. As at 634/5, in Penda, the dark was prevailing. But Christian light was about to break out in a Great Awakening and would not be stopped. Put simply, I would say that the Christian God, as well as his own motives, sent Oswald to meet up with Birinus in Wessex in 635. The Christian treaty which emerged between Wessex and Northumbria became the first building block of what became the Nation of the Christian English.
I note this too. It was a spiritually as well as militarily polarised world into which Birinus arrived. A near equivalent in modern times might be to consider South Korea. That nation in recent times has had the highest proportion of Christians in it of any nation in the modern world. On its border meanwhile has been a nation breathing threats of nuclear destruction upon it. Birinus ministered in the equivalent borderland. Brave, very brave. And, given that the Christ in Birinus won, one would infer strong Christian faith in Birinus, great faith.
What a pity that our modern culture has lost ancestors such as him. What a joy it is to recover him: light in the darkness, I should say.
*Northumbria was broadly the north east of what is now England, plus what we now call the Scottish Borders.
** Wessex was broadly the Thames Valley of what is now England.
*** Mercia was broadly the Midlands of what is now England.
**** The Franks were a Germanic people who had settled in much of what we now call France; indeed, they gave their name to it, “France” derives from “Frankia”. The custom these days is to call them “French”, a practice which obscures what was really going on. They were not French; there was not only no nation of France but also no French language. The Franks had common ancestral ties with the Anglo Saxons, and a similar Germanic tongue. The Anglo Saxons of Kent were particularly closely related to the Franks, trading with them across the Channel. Queen Bertha of Kent was a Frank. From 580 onwards, with a tiny team of monks with her in pagan Kent, Bertha became the lost-from-sight original seed figure of the vibrant Christian life which would come to the Anglo Saxons from 597 onwards.