Pre-Anglican Church in Britain

[VincitOmniaVeritas]

Does anyone know anything about the Celtic Christians that were in Britain before the first Arch-Bishop of Canterbury (St Augustine, but not the same one that wrote "City of God")? What were their beleifs like, Have any of their beleifs carried over into the Anglican Church? Were their beleifs any different than the Roman Catholic Church?

[PaladinValer]

The Celtic Church is the Anglican Church.

[AngCath]

there are many books on Celtic Christianity for sale and although I do not count myself an expert by any means I do know that if you browse Amazon.com you can find an abundant supply of info.

[Polycarp1]

Look up Sts. David of Menevia, Illtyd, Aidan of Lindisfarne, Patrick, Columba, Adamnan, Martin of Tours, Palladius, Kevin of Glendalough, Brigid (but be careful not to get her confused with her namesake Celtic pagan goddess), Colman, .... there are a bunch more, but resources are not that hard to find! (I know I'm omitting a Cornish and a Breton saint of some fame, too, but I'm drawing a blank on names.)

[Naomi4Christ]

Here's quite a nice little site from Holy Island:
Celtic Christianity (http://www.openheaven.com/library/celtic/traditions.htm)

[ebia]

The Celtic Church is the Anglican Church.
Care to substantiate that?

[gitlance]

To quote our moderator Pmcleanj:

Just a little bit about "the start of the English Church".

The English Church was started in the middle of first century to early in the second century. The Venerable Bede quotes a letter dated 153 making reference to an indiginous Christian Church. This was about a century and a half before the conversion of Constantine, before their was any hierarchy in Rome with any power or imperial connections to extend the influence of the Roman See over other jurisdictions. Oral history in the Isles is that the missionary who founded the church was sent by Saint John the Evangelist. Oral tradition from Lindisfarne is that the missionary in question was Saint Joseph of Arimethea. Either of these traditions would point to the date of the English Church's inception being no later than the latter half of the first century. By the time of the Council of Arles in 314 the English Church was sufficiently stable and had sufficient resources to send three bishops, a priest, and a deacon. This church also sent missionaries to Northern Europe to evangelize their Celtic cousins in those lands.

The Church in Britain thrived for centuries with its own usages and rites. When the Bishop of Rome was finally able to send missionaries to Britain in the fourth century, they found a Church already there. And they came into conflict with the British church, because the ancient usages and rites of that church weren't the Roman use. Probably, in fact, they were more ancient than the Roman use, since in the distant frontier Christians were protected by distance from imperial persecution and were able to practice their religion and celebrate their rites with relative security. The Roman missionaries, however, took the perspective that different was wrong and embarked on a campaign of coercion to bring the British Church into line with Rome.

In the seventh century, the Council of Whitby was called, where a majority of British Bishops agreed to adopt the Roman rite and Roman dating of Easter, for the sake of Christian unity. Bishops in the North dissented and retained the Celtic use. Religious houses were exempt from the ruling of Whitby, and also preserved the ancient Celtic use. And all the Bishops, whether they adopted the Roman liturgy or not, retained their ancient and historic independance.

In 1066, the Bishop of Rome resorted to force of arms to carry his influence into Britain, and sponsored William the Conqueror's invasion of Britain. In William's train came proper Roman clerics, who over the years of Plantagenet rule ousted the abbots and abbesses of the old Celtic religious houses, outlawed the old Celtic order of Canons, and gradually established Roman dominion in Britain. And it was not particularly welcome. Have you never wondered why fat, rich abbots featured so prominently among the Norman villians that were opposed by the Saxon Robin Hood? (Or don't children read Louis Rhead any more...)

In 1215, the Saxon barons rose up against their papally-sponsored hated Norman overlord, and forced King John to sign the Magna Carta that included the famous line "The Church in England always shall be free." Disestablishmentarians would argue that this declaration referred to the King's influence over the church, not to the Church's freedom from foreign influence. But in fact the King himself was a foreigner, and his affairs were so tangled in his relationship with Rome that there was very little difference between the two.

The House of Tudor gained the throne by marrying into the distaff Plantagenet line, but Henry VII also claimed descent from the Celtic kings, and based on that claim he was able to position himself as the people's King, rather than a foreigner. When his son had a falling out with the Bishop of Rome, three local English bishops were able to step up and remind Henry VIII of the English Church's historical independance. Henry's own Celtic and British roots were fuzzy at best, but he could see for himself the weakness of Rome's claim to authority over Britain.

In taking the power of the Pope to himself, Henry acted completely outside the tradition and temperament of the Celtic church. His illigitimatized-and-relegitimized-alternately-commoner-and-noble daughter Elizabeth, however, had a much stronger understanding of the people she ruled. She never reinstituted her father's Act of Supremacy that her Roman Catholic sister had revoked. Elizabeth's Act of Supremacy declares her NOT the "supreme head of the church" but rather "supreme governor of the realm" and makes very clear that no other person, no foreign power, no prelate from another See, has the right to wield power over Britons, temporally or spiritually.

[gtsecc]

The Celtic Church is the Anglican Church.

Care to substantiate that?

It is prima facie.

[karen freeinchristman]

It is prima facie.
gtsecc, can you speak English, please? If it's good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for you! (In my Bible, Jesus speaks in English!)



:sorry:

[gtsecc]

gtsecc, can you speak English, please? If it's good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for you! (In my Bible, Jesus speaks in English!)



:sorry:
Jesus speaks Latin in my Bible. ;)
Prima Facie is Latin for self-evident.

[DarthDigger]

gtsecc, can you speak English, please? If it's good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for you! (In my Bible, Jesus speaks in English!)



:sorry:

He speaks English in mine, but i am also having to learn French, German and Latin at school!!!!!!

(Ok - i had a choice if i wanted to do Latin or not - but i have to do the others!)

I want to do Latin so that I can understand the latin songs that we do in the choir ( E.G. Gaudete or Cantate Domino or even In dulci Jubilo!?!?!)

DD

[karen freeinchristman]

Jesus speaks Latin in my Bible. ;)
Prima Facie is Latin for self-evident.
Thanks!

(and I am in agreement)

[karen freeinchristman]

I want to do Latin so that I can understand the latin songs that we do in the choir ( E.G. Gaudete or Cantate Domino or even In dulci Jubilo!?!?!)

DD
:thumbsup: that is really great, DD!



(I wish I knew Greek or Hebrew :sigh: )

[ebia]

Jesus speaks Latin in my Bible. ;)
Prima Facie is Latin for self-evident.
And it's far from self-evident that the Anglican Church is Celtic in any meaningful sense.

So, can you back it up or is it just something you wish to believe is true? Or better still, can PalidinVader back it up instead of yet again making an unsubstantiated assertion and then ignoring all requests for him to substantiate it.

[Aymn27]

Does anyone know anything about the Celtic Christians that were in Britain before the first Arch-Bishop of Canterbury (St Augustine, but not the same one that wrote "City of God")? What were their beleifs like, Have any of their beleifs carried over into the Anglican Church? Were their beleifs any different than the Roman Catholic Church?
here's an article I received in email yesterday!! it is long but an interesting read - not sure how reliable, but seems to be pretty well written:

TO THE ISLES AFAR OFF

Traditions of the Early British Church

by The Rt. Rev. Robert C. Havey



And I will set among them, and I will send those that escape
of them unto the nations, to Tarshish . . . to the isles afar off that
have not heard my fame, neither have seem my glory; and they shall
declare my glory among the Gentiles. (Isaiah 66:19)

If your knowledge of the English Church has been taken from
the standard histories, you likely think of Christianity as having
reached Britain in 597 A.D. with St. Augustine of Canterbury and his band of
forty monks. It is well known that a Celtic Church flourished there
for centuries before that date, but the assumption among historians,
at least for the books they write, is that Christianity came to the
British Isles some time in the second century. Supposedly the Gospel
was carried across the Channel by soldiers or traders from a
Gallican Church that had been established some time earlier. St. Alban is
described cautiously as the first British martyr, suffering under
the Diocletian persecution of 304.

Nothing seems farther from the truth. There is a great mass
of tradition that, because it falls short of enabling historians to
make unqualified statements, has been altogether ignored. It is quite
certain that, far from being one of the last nations to receive the
Gospel, Britain was on of the first. There is evidence, in fact,
that Britain was the first nation in the world to become officially
Christian; the Venerable Bede declares that this took place about
176 A.D. It was in the reign of "Good King Lucius," who was a
great-grandson of the warrior Caradoc, and himself the grandfather
of Coel of Colchester ("Old King Cole"), who in turn was the
grandfather of Constantine the Great.

Whatever be the truth of Britain's Christian beginnings, it
is well known that in the Middle Ages the English bishops were given
the first order of seating at every council because of the understanding
that Britain had been the first Christian country in the world.
(France, by the way, was second; the oldest Christian state in the
East was Armenia, dating from 309.)

[Aymn27]

Although there is little documentary proof, there are ancient
traditions that several of the Lord's disciples visited Britain. One
was Peter, who is said to have preached on the sites of Westminister
Abbey and of St. Peter's, Cornhill, built later by King Lucius as
London's oldest church. St. Paul is supposed to have preached at
Paul's Woods, to the west of Portsmouth harbor, and to have founded
the great Abbey at Bangor in Wales, whose twentieth abbot in 395 was
the heresiarch, Pelagius. An even earlier visitor was St. Peter's
father-in-law, Aristobulus, who was on of the seventy referred to in
Luke 10, and who is said to have been followed to Britain by his
brother Barnabas. Like the others, Barnabas returned, but
Aristobulus is said to have met a martyr's death in the mountainous heart of
Wales. Another martyr was Simon the Zealot who, after evangelizing
in North Africa and Spain, is said to have gone to Britain and to have
been crucified by the Romans at the village of Caistor in Norfolk.

But what about documentary proof of the Church itself?
Fortunately there is plenty. Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Hilary,
Athanasius, Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine of Hippo - all scholars
and prelates of the early Church - wrote about the Church in Britain,
and all referred to it as catholic and in union with themselves.


The most important writing, perhaps, is one of Gildas the Wise, a
British monk and historian who died in 512. Among Gildas' writings
is this note, "These islands received the beams of light - that is, the
holy precepts of Christ, the true Sun, as we know - in the last year
of the reign of Tiberius Caesar." That year was 37 A.D., only four
years after the Resurrection; it matches what we are able to piece
together of Joseph of Arimathea, who was the true Apostle
to the British.

But first let us speak of several first and second century
missions from the British Church; these will surely attest to its
presence. I shall mention the names of four missionaries to the
continent from the early Church. One was Beatus, who is supposed to
have been baptized in Britain by St. Barnabas, and who went to the
heart of the Alpine region as Apostle to the Swiss. The cell where
he died in 96 A.D. is still shown at Unterseen on Lake Thun. Another
was Mansuetus, an Irishman baptized in Britain, who founded the Church
in Lorraine and was martyred about 89 A.D. in the eastern Adriatic
region of Illyria. A third was Macellus, who founded the Archbishopric of
Treves and died a martyr in 166. The fourth was St. Cadwal, who in
170 founded the Church in Tarentum in southern Italy.

[Aymn27]

With the citation from Gildas we have fixed upon a year for
the Church's beginning in Britain - and this means establishment, not
visits from itinerant preachers. The permanent mission can only have
come with Joseph of Arimathea, for no other claim has ever been
made. If Joseph came in 37 A.D. it squares with what we know of the
persecutions that took place in the Holy Land in that year, and with
the tradition that Joseph, along with Philip the Apostle, Lazarus,
Martha, Mary Magdalene and seven other refugees came to the south of
France. From that point, Philip is said to have sent Joseph to
Glastonbury in Somerset, where he established the Church, where he
formed a community of monastics or anchorites, and where he died in
the year 82.

The Bible describes Joseph as a rich man, a just man, a
disciple of Our Lord, and a councillor, i.e. a member of the
Sanhedrin. St. Jerome, who was evidently onto some extra-biblical
tradition about Joseph, described him in his Vulgate translation as
a "noble decurion" - an entirely different thing. Other tradition says
that Joseph was the uncle of the Virgin Mary, a dealer in metals
who, as a younger man, had been in charge of Rome's tin mines in Spain,
and who, after those mines played out, had made many trips to Britain
for the purchase of Cornish tin. On one of those trips Joseph is
supposed to have taken Jesus - either as a boy or as a young man. There are a
dozen places in Cornwall where local tradition tells of that visit.

In addition, there are three such places in Somerset, and I
understand one each in Gloucestershire and Ireland. I know nothing
about the last two, but have visited the places where these claims
are made in Cornwall and Somerset. Each has its local and very simple
recollection, and each has two things in common with the rest.
First, the central character in the tradition is not Jesus, who was a
youthful stranger, but Joseph, was already know in all the places
where they went. Second, each of the sites was one where, in the
first century, metal was either mined or shipped. In Cornwall it was tin.
In Somerset it was lead and copper.

It is historically certain that most of the tin trade between
Cornwall and the Mediterranean lands was carried on by Jewish
traders in Phoenician vessels. There exist written descriptions of that
trade dating from the sixth century B.C. By the first century of the
Christian era the outreach of Roman power had made it necessary for
traders to protect their sources, and the Jewish dealers were
reduced to carrying their ingots from Cornwall to Brittany, and thence by
horseback from France to the Mediterranian ports. It was the only
alternative to a sea passage through Gibraltar, where every cargo would have been subject to tracing by the Roman authorities.

[Aymn27]

HOW MUCH ASSURANCE CAN WE HAVE about these traditions, and
especially about those concerning Jesus? For one thing, the local
traditions are almost too simple to doubt. There has been no attempt
to capitalize upon them, or to elaborate, spinning them out into
legend. For another, we find that foreign traditions tend to match
those held in England. In Maronite villages in northern Galilee, for
example, there is a tradition that, as a young man, Jesus went as a
ship wright on a vessel of Tyre to the west coast of Britain and
spent the winter there because of inclement weather. A Jewish Talmud
confirms that Joseph of Arimathea was indeed the uncle of Jesus'
mother; he is described as the younger brother of Joachim, her
father I have also been told that similar traditions of Jesus and Joseph
and of the tin trade exist in France.

I should say that I had heard these traditions existed in
France. But for some years I wrote to libraries and museums in that
country without success, and began to have my doubts. They were
confirmed when in New York I met a French priest who had gone to
seminary in Morlais, in Brittany, and who had never heard of the
tradition. I found this baffling, since Morlais - as I had been
told - was the place where the transshipments began; that fact of the trade
had further been confirmed by the writings of Diodorus Siculus in 60
B.C.

Then I checked my map. There is no easy way across France
running from Brittany. There are no portages, and the Massif Central
in the heart of France rises several thousand feet. But across the
south of France there is a remarkably easy water route. It begins
with the Garrone estuary on the west coast and leads past the modern
cities of Bordeaux and Toulouse all the way to Carcassonne. Then there
would have been a short portage form the Garonne to the Aude River and a
brief trip to the Mediterranean coast near Narbonne. At no point
would the travelers have been more than two hundred feet above sea level.

This, to be sure, was a guess; there was no documentation to
support it. But it paid off a few years ago when I met an elderly
Frenchman who, as a Parisian lad in World War I, had been taken by
his mother to live with an uncle who was a priest in a tiny village near
the Garonne. There he learned all about the tradition of Joseph and
Jesus and the tin trade. It was common knowledge in the region of
the Garonne. Joseph and Jesus had come that way!

[Aymn27]

SO MUCH FOR LOCAL TRADITIONS which, in settings like these,
can hardly be described as myth or legend. But our greater interest is
in Glastonbury, which had been the heart of pre-Christian Druidism, and
which was to become the center of Celtic Christianity. Touching
Glastonbury - the famed Isle of Avalon, where King Arthur later
died - we have one fascinating bit of correspondence between Augustine of
Canterbury and the pope who established the Saxon mission. In his
letter to Gregory, Augustine confided, "In the western confines of
Britain there is a certain royal island of large extent, surrounded
by water, abounding in all the beauties of nature and necessaries of
life. In it the first neophytes of Catholic Law, God beforehand
acquainting them, found a Church constructed by no human art, but by
the hands of Christ Himself, for the salvation of His people. The
Almighty . . . continues to watch over it as sacred to Himself, and
to Mary, the Mother of God."

As I have said, we do have a tradition of Jesus as having
been at Glastonbury, but apart from Augustine's letter, there is no
recollection of His having built any edifice there. But we have a
tradition of Joseph; he is said to have built, at the foot of
Glastonbury Tor, a rectangular church of wattles and thatch. It was
built, moreover, to the exact dimensions of the tabernacle in the
Temple at Jerusalem. This building was probably the first church to
have been built in Christendom. It is one, I am glad to say, on
which we have a few handy dates. In 620 the then-Bishop of York, St.
Paulinus, was invited to visit the Glastonbury community and its
Ealde Chirche - as the wattle structure by then was know. Not only did
Paulinus come, but he ultimately rebuilt it. He built of wood,
overlaying the wattle building inside and out and sealing it with
lead. In later centuries the wood church was several times overlaid
with stone; nevertheless, the Ealde Chirche remained at the heart -
the holiest shrine in Britain. In 1184 it was destroyed by fire.

We now turn to British Christianity in an entirely different
part of the world - in Rome itself. In the year 52, after many years
of combat in Britain, Rome's most dreaded adversary was captured and
carried with his family to the Imperial City. He was Caradoc, the
king of the Silurian nation of South Wales and pendragon of the British
armies. Because he had lived in Rome as a boyhood hostage, he knew
many of its leaders and, during a pause in the triumphal procession,
Caradoc was taken to the Senate, bound in chains, to address them.
So flawless and impassioned was the address he gave - Tacitus records
it for us - that the Senate offered him and his family the freedom of
the city. There were only two conditions, and both were accepted: that
during their seven years' captivity they were not to attempt to
escape, and upon their return home were never to wage war upon Rome
again. The combat, of course, continued, for Caradoc had been
betrayed into the Romans' hands by a cousin, but he and his family were true
to their word.

[Aymn27]

While in Rome the royal family enjoyed great favor. Caradoc's
daughter Cladys was adopted by Claudius Caesar, and changed her name
to Claudia. She later was known as the most beautiful woman in Rome
and its most gracious hostess. In the second year of their exile she
was married to a wealthy Roman, Rufus Pudens, who had been military
tribune of the occupying forces at Chichester, and who with Claudia
and the rest of the family became Christian. When Caradoc and the
rest of his family returned to Britain, Claudia and Pudens remained
behind - as well as her brother, Linus, who became Bishop of Rome with the
death of St. Peter. In the years to come, both Linus and Pudens were
to die as martyrs, along with the latter's four children. Their
palace on Mons Sacris is the oldest church in Rome, named after one of the
four, Saint Pudentiana.

No one know how or why the British royal family was
converted. It may have been by Joseph of Arimathea, to whom, on his arrival at
Glastonbury, Caradoc's cousin Arviragus had given sixty acres of
tax-free land. Others have suggested it was by Aristobulus, who was
known to Caradoc's grandfather, King Lear. but I think it may well
have been St. Paul. Not only was Paul well acquainted with Pudens,
Claudia and Linus (see 2 Tim. 4:21), but tradition tells us that
Paul was Rufus Pudens' half-brother. This is also suggested in Romans
16:13, where Paul say, "Salute Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his
mother and mine."

Whatever the fact be, there can be no question that, nearly
two hundred years before Rome became officially Christian, there were
British Christian in the city. When Paul wrote from Rome to the
Philippians (4:22), "All the saints salute you, chiefly they that
are of Caesar's household," he could have been referring to none other
than the captive royal family.

It has been thought by many that one reason for the early
conversion of Britain was a similarity of doctrine between Druidism
and Christianity. An early bishop of Syria tells us that Druidism
also believed in a Triune God, and in a Vicarious Atonement, and in the
immortality of the soul. Moreover, we are told that the name of the
third person of the Druid godhead was a coming and incarnate one
whose name was Yesu! If true, the Druids would have had to look upon their
purely intuitive religion as a preparation for the Revealed and True.

But it is equally likely - and more plausible - that the
speed of Britain's conversion was due to the fact that the country was
evangelized from the top down, rather than from the bottom up. The
impact of conversion in the family of the people's greatest hero
could hardly have been less than enourmous. But whatever the reason, in
little more than a century after Caradoc's return the whole land was
Christian.

[Aymn27]

WHAT MEANING OR VALUE, one may ask, can this narrative have
for Anglicans today - or for that matter, for Episcopalians or Church of
England Fold or Irish Catholics or Scottish Calvinists? All are
descended largely from these Celts of whom we have spoken. There is
no denying that the frail and tiny Anglican Catholic Church can stand
with English-speaking Christians elsewhere - all under pressure from
the categorical imperatives of the pagan present. But there are things

about the ancient Church that are worth our attention for themselves.

Consider the power of monasticism in the converting of pagan violence.

It is commonly taught that Christian
monasticism began with St. Anthony in fourth century Egypt. No such
thing! I began with Joseph of Arimathea and with Caradoc's second
daughter, St. Eurgain, in first century Britain. And because we know
that Druidism was monastic, it is likely that the Britons took over
the form, if not the substance, of the earlier Druid practice.
Whatever the start, it is said that by the second century there were
three monastic cors, or choirs, where the Divine Office was sung
twenty-four hours a day. The monks, offering their worship in
watches, gave the best imitation possible on earth of the praise of the
heavenly choir. They did this at the old Druid centers of
Glastonbury, and of Ambresbury near Stonehenge, and they did it at Llan Illtyd
near Caerleon, the foundation established by St. Eurgain after her return
from Rome.

It was because of that piety that is native to the Celts that
early Britain was called the Isle of Saints. The power of that piety
was shown in the missions that I have described as springing from
Britain in the very first century. That light and that power were
dimmed in those years when the Angles and the Saxons were pushing
the Celts into the crannies of Cornwall and Wales. But is was renewed in
the conversion of Ireland and Scotland, followed by that of north
Saxon tribes, beginning with such men as Patrick, Columba and Aidan.
After the Synod of Whitby, when the monastic piety of the Celtic
Church was linked with the administrative genius of Rome, the light
burned so brightly as to lead to the conversion of all Northern
Europe to the farthest Scandinavian lands.

Above all, Celtic Christianity was mystical. It was catholic
indeed, but it ever gave a higher emphasis to the mystical than to
the sacramental. During those centuries of Druidism there was never any
idol-worship, as a more incarnationally-minded people might have
done. (In fact, no religious figures have ever been unearthed in Britain.)
And whether because of attachment to the Word (which is the
disposition of mystical religion) or because of an innate Celtic
individualism, it is also notable that every part of Europe that
broke from Rome at the Reformation had first received the Gospel from the
British Church. This is true almost to county and village lines.

[Aymn27]

Much of what has been related here hangs on the most slender
traditions. In Cornwall for example, the places claiming a visit
from Jesus and Joseph describe it in no more than a sentence or two. At
St. Just-in-Roseland it is said that they came in a boat and anchored in
St. Just's Pool and came ashore. At Falmouth it is recalled that
they landed at the Strand, crossed a brook and climbed up Smithick Hill.
In Priddy in Somerset it is said only that Jesus came to Priddy and
walked across the green. Yet for centuries that fact has been held
as an absolute in certitude; when someone wants to swear to something,
he says, "As sure as Christ was at Priddy," or "As sure as Jesus walked
on Priddy's earth."

Concerning what may one day be documented, there are no end
of possibilities. As I have pointed out, the history books have failed
to tell more of the Celtic Church than the fact that it existed. But
there are reasons for this. Like other people from the near East,
the Celts were more drawn to oral than to written tradition; like other
theistic peoples, they were loath to set down sacred words and names
where they could be physically desecrated. When finally they did
begin to build libraries, in the time of Columba, their treasures were
destroyed by predatory raids. It is well known that, because of the
Vikings, the libraries at Iona and elsewhere were carried to Rome
for safekeeping, and that these ancient volumes have lain in the Vatican
Library ever since. But to this day they have been neither
translated not catalogued.

Some years ago I had a brief correspondence with Margaret
Deanesly, then a retired Professor of History at the University of
London, and the leading authority on the pre-Norman Church. I had
asked Miss Deanesly to give me an appraisal of writings I had
collected on the early Celtic Church, which she did. She then added
that the opportunities for research in this field were limited
because there was so little knowledge of what was actually in the Vatican
Library, and because there were no major historians who were
acquainted with the ancient British tongues. I would hope that by
making known what we do have on that period - even at the expense of
accuracy - we can give delight to our lay people and stimulate the
imagination and curiosity of our scholars.

[Aymn27]

I think it is likely that we are held back by more than the
difficulty of access to the ancient references. The traditional
British reserve has also inhibited the sharing of this knowledge.
Those who care may be few in number, but they care deeply, and they
tend to guard their information as a precious secret. While on the
north coast of Cornwall I decided to look for an ancient well called
the Jesus Well. It is near the estuary of the Camel River, which is
one of the few anchorages on that whole rocky coast. I asked many
people, and was finally directed to the one woman in town who might
know its location. When I finally reached it, it turned out to be in
the middle of a pasture, protected by a small stone wellhouse. The
spring that may have served Our Lord is now visited only by lowly
cattle.

Let me give a better illustration. When I visited Priddy - a
tiny village with no more than a dozen houses - I found behind the
hilltop church a parish school whose children were playing at
recess. The schoolmistress, who was standing near them, turned out to be a
devout and enthusiastic churchman. Yet when I asked if she had heard
of the local tradition, her eyes widened and she said, "Oh, no." She
had not, in fact, even heard of the tradition that Christ had come
to Britain. But she quickly added, "I've only lived here five years.
Let me ask the other teacher; she's lived here all her life." And she
disappeared into the schoolhouse.

Presently she returned, bubbling with excitement. "Yes, she
knows all about it. And it's true. It's a tradition that has come
down, she says, from the time of Christ. She says if you'll go down
to the village and call at the house next to the store you will find
Mr.Bertie Weeks. He can tell you more than anyone in Priddy." And he
did.

Its a curious thing, the British reticence. More than
anything else, it makes me think these traditions are probably true. (The
Jesus Well, for example; if it were in Spain or Italy it would be the site
for a cathedral.) And yet, must we not light a bonfire under those
who know something about Christ and are not eager to tell?

Even the national hymn of the English recalls the visit of
Jesus I have described. Yet if you ask the average Englishman if
he's heard of Christ's visit to Cornwall, he'll say he never has. Then if
you ask if he know the national hymn, he'll say, "Of course." And
then, after a moment of reflection, he'll add, "But I never thought
about what it meant."

The hymn was written by William Blake in 1803. It is not
altogether satisfying, since it reflects Blake's feelings all too
well. (He was a Christian only be sentiment, and in conviction a
pre-Marxist Marxist.) Yet it still has its splendor, and may finally
serve the ultimate purpose of all national symbols. That is, it may
tide a dispirited people over to a future that may more truly than
the present reflect a glorious past. Here is the hymn as Blake wrote it,
and as all the English sing it:

And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England's mountains
green? And was the holy Lamb of God on England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the countenance divine shine forth upon our clouded
hills? And was Jerusalem builded here among those dark satanic mills?

[Thomas2618]

I want to do Latin so that I can understand the latin songs that we do in the choir ( E.G. Gaudete or Cantate Domino or even In dulci Jubilo!?!?!)




Yeah it is great to be able to translate those songs.
Cantate Domino
Sing to the Lord
Canticum novum
A New Song
Cantate Domino
Sing to the Lord
Omnis Terra
All the earth
Et benedicite nomine eius
And bless his name
Anuntiate de die in diem salutare eius
Tell from day to day of his salvation
Cantate Domino
Sing to the lord
Canticum novum
a new song
Cantate Domino
Sing to the lord
Omnis terra
all the earth

It's nice to know what you are singing as you sing it. Helps you pray as you sing and really connect with the song...:crossrc: