A forum for comments of any sort dealing with the study of religions in history. While primarily directed to students of the history of religion at the university of Guelph, and the University of Guelph/Humber, it is open to anyone interested.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
An Anglo-saxon monastery
I stayed up too late tonight to watch an episode of Time Team, a British archaeology show that has been running on Channel 4 there since 1994 - this episode was from about 1999, I believe. I stayed up because long ago I wanted to focus my academic work on Anglo-Saxon Christianity. This monastery in Northumbria - at Hartlepool to be exact - is very early, dating to the period ca. 600s-800s. As was fairly common in Anglo-saxon monasteries it included both monks and nuns under the headship of an Abbess - for a time the famous St. Hild, or as she came to be called, Hilda.
One line interested me most - the older burials had the corpses laid north/south in the pagan manner, rather than east/west in the Christian - evidence of syncretism - a holding onto pagan customs even after conversion.
Here is the link to the show on TVOntario [I tried to download the app for Channel 4, but it is not available in the Canadian iTunes store - more evidence of how far out of sync copyright is to the 21st century's normal practices - maybe I can find it on Pirate Bay!]
St. Hild's Monastery, Hartlepool
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