That is how I had first thought to describe the maker of a suggestion in the Times newspaper, that the United Kingdom should have a Patron Saint. Ian Bradley is a presbyterian minister who has worked in the University of St Andrews (founded by the Antipope Benedict XIII). Since the cultus of the Saints is not one of the most deeply-rooted characteristics of the daily life of the Presbyterian Church, I will concede that Bradley may not enjoy a Catholic or an Orthodox instinct in these matters. So I won't describe him as Profoundly Silly. But that hasn't stopped him from lecturing the rest of us; and Profoundly Silly neatly characterises his suggestion.
England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, of course, have their respective Patron Saints, woven into the histories of those great Countries. But never the Yewkay.
Because the Yewkay is a fragile and unstable and unreal construct. Invented in 1707, it subsumed Ireland less than a century later; lost most of Ireland little more than a century after that. In the eighteenth century, the exiled de jure monarchs, and their adherents in both Scotland and England, as well as foreign powers, declined to accept the validity of "the Union". It is now beset by separatist movements in Scotland, Ulster, Wales, Cornwall, and (most recently) the Orkneys. (I await up-to-date intelligence from the Isle of Wight and the Goodwin Sands.) The Yewkay resembles an inhabitant of a medieval leper colony ... bits dropping off all the time. It must be just about the most protean and ridiculously misdescribed "Nation State" in the world.
It is not a real country. It actually consists, of course, of England and the few other portions of this Atlantic Archipelago which England's colonial mentality has managed to hang onto.
Bradley's nominee is S Aidan. With no disrespect to him, one might think of S Theodore ... a Greek Syrian appointed by a Roman pope to be Archbishop of Canterbury. With him as Patron, all those thousands of young Middle Eastern men who daily flood across the Channel under Mr Sunak's benevolent eye might feel even more patriotically British.
I am going to nominate S GERMANUS, in the Martyrology for today, who in the declining days of civilisation in Britannia restored Catholicism to a country ravaged by Pelagian heresy ... the perennial error of this country ... and won a massive victory over the invading Barbarians. Alleluia!! (Observing liturgically S Germanus today in the diocese of Portsmouth seems to me in accordance with the provision that "The Mass of any third-class feast that is displaced by a higher-ranking third-class feast may be said instead of the higher-ranking third class feast, with a commemoration of the higher-ranking feast at low Mass". Would you really miss S Ignatius??)
The age of S Germanus was, in many ways, less a decadent than a Golden Age; when a bishop would be a Big Man and part of the political as well as of the religious elite, and possess even militatary capabilities; when S Prosper left us his aphorism about the priority of the lex supplicandi and S Leo negotiated the barbarians out of his hair and perfected the Roman Canon and defined the Hypostatic Union; and S Vincent wrote magisterially about what is, and what is not, 'Development'. That generation bequeathed to us the building blocks for our own necessary refutation of, and resistance to, the current ecclesial regime.
Sancte Germane, Sancte Lupe, orate pro nobis.
But Bradley's entire notion is, indeed, most profoundly silly. It fails, as a poor Presbyterian may be expected to fail, to understand that Patron Saints engage with their clients diachronically as well as synchronically; they bear us through the passing centuries, standing for us before the Throne of Grace in bad times as well as in good.
This is not an institution for smart little transient poppets with clever ideas, to mess around with.
12 comments:
If lecturers are not allowed to lecture, who is? Professor Bradley, moreover, has written excellent books on hymnody, pilgrimage and St Columba, as well as myth-busting studies of Celtic Christianity. He is more knowledgeable about the cult of saints than most Catholics.
Doesn't Edmund have a prior claim?
Had a strong idea of patron saints of places been a thing in the Roman and sub-Roman eras of the British Isles, perhaps the patronage of St Michael the Archangel would have appealed to the Christians, given how quickly popular his cultus became once that idea did become a strong thing.
Ian Bradley is known for his writings on "Celtic" Christianity. From the little I've read, he seems not to be infected with ahistorical notions and a view from the rose-tinted specs.
If we were to have a patron saint of the UK, St Magnus of Orkney would be by far the best candidate. Born, raised and ultimately martyred in Orkney (then a colony of Norway), he was forced to leave the Norwegian king's service after piously refusing to fight in a sea battle off the Welsh coast (against the Norman earl of Chester). He then spent time in exile at the English court, before claiming his rights as earl of Norwegian Orkney and Scottish Caithness. I am not sure whether he ever visited Ireland, but his brother died in Ulster. Culted as far afield as Iceland, Russia and Bohemia, and even inspiring a recent Eurovision Song Contest entry, Magnus's appeal is international enough for our diverse nation in 2023.
So good! I can add nothing more! :)
Securus iudex orbis terrarum: The United Kingdom is everywhere outside itself called "England". Hence, St. George is The Patron of the United Kingdom.
Scots don't like that, of course, but then do the like being part of the United Kingdom? Northern Irish do like that, those Northern Irish that is who wouldn't rather be part of the Republic. And Wales has been a byland of England, part of construct called by the very precise "England-and-Wales", from almost time immemorial.
... all the more since St. George originally was the Patron of the Royal House of England and its order of chivalry, or so it seems, and only afterwards gradually slipped into the rôle of patron of the country (or so it seems). Now, the Royal House actually is what unites the United Kingdom. - If England in the sense of Actual England needs a patron distinct from St. George, there's always St. Augustine.
(I'm not entirely serious, but I think more than just steaming off nonsense.)
Is not England Our Lady's Dowry? Surely therefore she is the Patroness of England and its successor state, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In a better age, the King after his coronation would have humbly laid his crown at her feet.
My good St. Thomas More - no doubt about it. Although I think St. George is a fine patron saint, St. Thomas More is a bit more modern and relevant in these days of wokeism. He was courageous, intelligent, faithful, and humble, as befits a Franciscan. And he is a native-born Englishman, who was not only an outstanding attorney and diplomat, but an exemplary husband and father.
St. David is a good patron saint of Wales, as is St. Patrick of Ireland and St. Andrew of Scotland. Perhaps, as was suggested, St. George for the United Kingdom, with St. Thomas More taking his place as the patron saint of England?
God bless and protect all here.
If we're going to have a patron saint of the UK, surely our glorious Protomartyr, St. Alban, would be the obvious choice?
Fun fact: St Lupus of Troyes, St Germanus' companion, whom you invoke above, is thought to have been the brother (in blood as well as in religion) of St Vincent of Lerins. His visit to Britain with St Germanus must have left quite an impression in Wales, where a village still bears his name: Llanblethian (from blaidd, the Welsh for wolf/lupus).
What about King Arthur? Santo Subito!
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