David I, King of Scotland, died on the 24th of May 1153 in Carlisle. Soon afterwards St Aelred, who in his youth had served at David's court, wrote the celebrated Lament in his honour. That same year in England, King Stephen, under pressure from an invading army and from public opinion in his own realm, agreed to name his second cousin Henry of Anjou as his successor. Thus ended a long and devastating war fought between the supporters of Stephen and the supporters of Empress Matilda, Henry's mother, over the English throne. King David of Scotland had taken an active part in this war, on Matilda's side, as he was her Uncle. On hearing of this nomination of Henry, St Aelred promptly wrote another work. It was dedicated to young Henry and entitled The Genealogy of the Kings of the English.
This is very interesting from all sorts of angles, forgive the pun. Just like King Stephen, young Henry was a Norman through and through, but unlike Stephen he did actually also descend from the pre-conquest Anglo-Saxon royal line through his mother, Empress Matilda. Now bear with me, though you probably know all this from school. Matilda was called Empress because her first husband was a Holy Roman Emperor. She was crowned, age 15, together with him in Rome by the Pope himself in the year 1117. But her husband died a few years later, and the young widow married the Count of Anjou, Henry's father. Matilda was a granddaughter of William the Conqueror, but her maternal grandmother was St Margaret of Scotland. And St Margaret was Anglo-Saxon along the paternal line, in turn. Her grandfather was Edmund Ironside, the penultimate Anglo-Saxon king of England, half-brother of St Edward the Confessor. This Ironside fought one Cnut, the king of the Danes, all his life. And Cnut's mother was a Polish princess, as I never tire of saying. They called her Gunhilda, but that's purely because they couldn't pronounce her real name.
Anyway, don't worry if you can't follow any of this. The point is that there was a link, and yet you would be forgiven for thinking that Henry's Anglo-Saxon credentials were a bit tenuous. He was just as Scottish as he was Anglo-Saxon, which is to say – a bit, but not too much. I'm sure that he never thought of himself as being English. He was descended from William the Conqueror, that's enough of a claim surely? His mother left England for Germany at the age of 12 and only gave birth to him some two decades later in what we call France, where he grew up, visiting England once as a boy, and then a few more times in his teens, usually as one of the commanders of a hostile army. So what was St Aelred trying to do?
In the introductory letter, he addressed the 20-year-old Duke as “the glory of the Angevins, the protector of the Normans, the hope of the English, and the ornament of the Aquitanians” as well as expressing great joy at the fact that “the spirit of the most Christian king David” of Scotland rested on him. But in the Genealogy itself he focused solely on the “hope of the English” part. There he first traced Henry's maternal lineage back to Edmund Ironside, then down a line of Anglo-Saxon kings, more and more legendary as he went along, at length even including the pagan god Woden, the divine ancestor, the “allfather” of this royal line. Then suddenly Shem the son of Noah appeared as the father of the first king, and from there St Aelred took it all the way down to Adam, only to spring back up again, but this time stopping and dwelling at length on the virtues, great deeds, speeches, pilgrimages to Rome and other acts of Christian piety of some of the kings, and on their wars with the evil Danes.
As one historian observed, St Aelred's book “artfully created a new myth of royal descent”, integrating the young prince into this beautiful, if somewhat mythical and exotic, Anglo-Saxon royal history. They may have been defeated, the book seems to be saying, but they still have a lot to offer: antiquity of lineage, nobility, examples of Christian virtue, and so on. There is something to be proud of here, something to imitate; more importantly, there is something to identify with. St Aelred invites the young Duke and his English subjects, for the sake of peace, to convert to a new way of seeing things, to think in terms of continuity with the past – and that about a reality which looked rather more like a series of ruptures and constant strife.
Cynical modern historians would say that St Aelred simply invented a new tradition for Henry, allowing him to strengthen his grip on the throne. And that this process would culminate in 1161 with the canonization of Edward the Confessor, and the solemn translation of his relics to a new shrine at Westminster Abbey two years later, for which St Aelred was commissioned to write a new life of the Saint. The Anglo-Saxon past was thus accepted and integrated into the mythology of the new ruling class. It became something one inherited rather than something one supplanted on gaining the English crown. And St Aelred was instrumental in achieving this shift. In fact, that was his main claim to fame as far as mediaevals were concerned: for a long time he was a primarily known as an historian.
But it was a double-edged sword, of course. Henry was allowed to inherit the Anglo-Saxon past, even though he was French, but this heritage would from then on also exert a pressure on him and on his successors. And as mythology, this heritage was arguably far more attractive than whatever Henry had before. More importantly, it was also much more profoundly Christian, and Rome-oriented: and St Aelred made sure that this aspect shone out. Thus the Anglo-Saxons would win that battle, the battle for the deep past, at least in their own country. Thanks to people like St Bede, their story was by then already well-integrated into salvation history – as opposed to being merely a series of heroic exploits and conquests (which last only until some more powerful group comes along). The Anglo-Saxons were firmly rooted in their soil and, more importantly, in Christ and in his Church, which meant that they would always spring back up again.
But what does it all mean for us? On this day in 1913 our mother in monastic terms, the community on Caldey Island, entered into the full communion with the Catholic Church. Think of all those short and mid-term ruptures and upheavals, all these contradictions, endured by them for the sake of re-entering a broader, all-encompassing continuity. We couldn't ask for a better heavenly patron than St Aelred for that, and him specifically as a historian – someone who can help us write a new story, yes, but a story that's both true and part of something incomparably older and nobler than what we had before, ultimately Christ himself. And think of us here, at Pluscarden, think of all the ruptures and contradictions of our past. Humanly descended from Caldey and Prinknash, our mother, our flesh; on our father's side we go back to 1230, a Scottish royal foundation, with Caulite monks coming all the way from Burgundy. This paternal line suffered many setbacks through the centuries, and almost died out childless after the Reformation: but here we are, a child of an old father, a miracle. Let's hope that our own children come sooner than that; let's pray to St Aelred for vocations!
And finally, each one of us, how do we think of our own lives? How do we tell our own stories, to ourselves and to others? Have you lost direction in life perhaps? Are you confused? Well, remind yourself of the stories you are part of, integrate your own little story into something greater and nobler. You will not become smaller yourself in the process, I assure you. On the contrary, you will find yourself walking with kings, queens, heroes and saints. If you do it right, with the help of someone like St Aelred, you will find Christ this way also. “All time belongs to him and all the ages. To him be glory and power through every age and for ever. Amen.”
DSP