Bridei followed the strategy of his ancient Caledonian ancestors when they retreated in front of Agricola’s legions in AD 83 but he was a great deal more successful when the inevitable battle came.
[King Ecgfrith] rashly led an army to ravage the province of the Picts. The enemy pretended to retreat, and lured the king into narrow mountain passes, where he was killed with the greater part of his forces on the 20th of May in his 40th year and the 15th of his reign.
Despite Bede’s scathing assessment, the expedition did show both the reach and power of the Northumbrians but not their tactical acuity. Historians have argued over the location of the battle and it seems very likely that it took place near Dunnichen. The English name was Nechtansmere, cognate with Dun Nechtan, or the modern Dunnichen. In Old Welsh, Ecgfrith and his war bands were slaughtered at Linn Garan, ‘the Heron Lake’. At the supposed battle site, old maps show a moss or shallow lake – the sort of place where herons wade and fish. And it seems that, like the rout at the Winwaed, one army was trapped between the enemy and the water.
Only three miles away stands the remarkable Aberlemno Stone, the sculptural record of this signal conflict. Even though the carvings were made at least a century later, memories of the great Pictish victory at the Heron Lake will not have dimmed. And it is beyond credibility that the patron who paid the sculptor will have had the stone erected in the wrong place. In any event, defeat at Dunnichen marked an abrupt end to Northumbrian suzerainty in the north And it also prompted Cuthbert to advise his Queen to take urgent action and leave Carlisle in case her husband’s death sparked a palace coup. Here is more from Bede:
Tomorrow being Sunday you cannot travel. Monday morning at daybreak leave in your chariot for the Royal City [Bamburgh]. Enter quickly for perhaps the king has been slain. Tomorrow I have been invited to a neighbouring monastery to dedicate the chapel but as soon as the dedication is over I shall follow you.
It is known that Cuthbert and Queen Eormenburh travelled on the Stanegate, the Roman road to the south of Hadrian’s Wall. By the time they had gained the safety of the fortress at Bamburgh, news may have arrived from the north that the king was dead and his army destroyed. In any case, it may have been Cuthbert who steadied the dynastic ship. Ecgfrith’s brother Aldfrith had entered the monastery at Iona as a scholar rather than a monk and had travelled extensively in Ireland and the west – as far from Ecgfrith as possible for Northumbrian kings could be ruthless about the elimination of potential rivals. Cuthbert may have sent word recalling Aldfrith and, when the wandering scholar arrived at Bamburgh, he certainly enjoyed the Bishop of Lindisfarne’s support in the crucial early stages of his reign.
Ecgfrith’s defeat marked the end of Northumbrian domination in the north. Bede again:
Henceforward the hopes and strengths of the English realm began to waver and slip backward ever lower. The Picts recovered their own lands that had been occupied by the English, while the Irish living in Britain and a proportion of the Britons themselves regained their freedom, which they have now preserved for about 46 years. Many of the English were at this time killed, enslaved or forced to flee from Pictish territory. Among them, the most reverend man of God Trumwine, who had been appointed their bishop, withdrew with his people from the monastery of Abercurnig [Abercorn], which was situated in English territory but stood close to the firth that divides the lands of the English from those of the Picts.
This is a key passage to any clear understanding of the impact of the defeat at Dunnichen and the subsequent history of Northumbria. And, as he often does, Bede summed up the situation succinctly when he observed that, after 685, the new king Aldfrith ‘ably restored the shattered fortune of the kingdom, though within smaller boundaries’.
Bede’s support and obvious approval are scarcely surprising. As a scholar-monk Aldfrith was a royal version of the historian himself and Bede awarded him the superlative of vir doctissimus, ‘a most learned man’. Others were also enthusiastic. The great European ecclesiastic, Alcuin of York, tutor to Charlemagne and one of the leading figures of the Carolingian Renaissance, called Aldfrith rex et simul magister, ‘both a king and a teacher’. And it was true.
Having been educated in exile in the Celtic west, most notably under the pious and learned Abbot of Iona, Adomnan, Aldfrith was also known by the Gaelic name of Flann Fina mac Ossu. It says something of his parentage and means, approximately, ‘a Prince, son of Fina, son of Oswiu’. Fina was an Irish princess and her lineage might well have been welcoming to the exiled Northumbrian prince. Taught to speak and write fluently in Gaelic (there being little difference between Irish and Scots dialects in the seventh century), Aldfrith produced a collection of aphorisms which often hint at his Celtic heritage. Echoing the contemporary development of a soul-friend, a confessor, the king wrote:
A teacher deserves honour,
Wisdom should be revered,
The beginning of wisdom is mildness,
Wisdom is a good gift,
Which makes a king of a poor man,
And a wise one of the foolish,
Good its beginning,
Better its end.
* * *
The Strasbourg Oaths
When the Deiran cleric, Alcuin of York, went to become head of a new academy of scholars at the court of Charlemagne, he became centrally involved in a fundamental language shift in Europe. Not only did Alcuin invent the difference between upper and lower case letters, he also produced a standard form of the pronunciation of Latin for all of the vast Carolingian Empire. This meant that different dialects were not used and that a distinction between Latin and what came to be called ‘vulgar speech’ developed. French, Italian and Spanish date the beginnings of their independent development from Alcuin’s reforms. A moment in this fascinating process was caught in 842 when two of Charlemagne’s grandsons had publicly to swear to support each other in front of their supporters. Charles the Bald spoke a very Latinised version of Early French whereas Ludwig the German and his men spoke Early German. Each man needed a crib sheet and they have survived. Here is Ludwig’s and what he read out in Early French. Versions in Latin and English follow:
Pro Deo amur et pro Christian poblo et nostro commun salvament, d’ist di in avant, in quant Deus savir et podir me dunant, si salvarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo et in ajudha et in cadhuna coas, si cum om per dreit son fradra salvar dift . . .
Pro Dei amore et pro christiano populo et nostro communi salvamento, de hoc die in posterum, in quanto Deus sapientiam et potentiam mihi donabit, sic servabo ego hunc meum fratrem Carolum et in adiumento et in re quaque, ut quis iure suum fratrem servare debet . . .
For God’s love and the Christian people and our common salvation, from this day forward, insofar as God gives me knowledge and power, I shall so keep this my brother Charles both in aid and in every thing as when a man in right his brother should keep . . .
* * *
The great scholar, Aldhelm of Malmesbury (an Irish foundation) carried on a correspondence with Aldfrith and sent him the Epistola ad Acircium, a treatise on numerology, specifically the power of the number seven. The depth of the king’s curiosity and learning is demonstrated in a remarkable exchange. In return for an estate of eight farms, Aldfrith was given a book on cosmology by Abbot Ceolfrith of Bede’s monastery at Monkwearmouth – Jarrow. No doubt Aldfrith gained spiritually but the story comes from a near-contemporary source and the substance may well be accurate.
While in exile in the Atlantic west, it seems that the future king had been a pupil of Adomnan of Iona, whose diplomacy was to produce another book for the royal library. In 688 the abbot travelled to Northumbria, to Jarrow, where Bede was a young monk. He came to plead for the release of captives taken in war in the north in the time of King Ecgfrith. Aldfrith agreed and was rewarded with a copy of Adomnan’s De Locis Sanctis (On the Holy Places), a gazetteer of places of pilgrimage in the Near East (the abbot was not discouraged by the fact that he had never visited any of them). It was becoming
an expensive library. Aldfrith himself may have added to it for one of his surviving groups of aphorisms might serve as a commentary on his aspirations as – according to one scholar – his status as a philosopher-king:
Learning merits respect.
Intelligence overcomes fury.
Truth should be supported.
Falsehood should be rebuked.
Iniquity should be corrected.
A quarrel merits mediation.
Stinginess should be spurned.
Arrogance deserves oblivion.
Good should be exalted.
However banal or everyday these saying might sound to a modern ear, they are the words of a very early king who ruled in Scotland and northern England and they do offer some sense of how he and his contemporaries thought. Aldfrith’s literacy and learning may have dazzled fellow intellectuals like Bede and Alcuin but these talents will have meant nothing to rival claimants to his throne. And the transition after the sudden death of Ecgfrith appears to have been bloodless or at least no reports of conflict have survived. Aldfrith probably had the support of the Scottish and Irish Celtic kings, especially if he had agreed to renounce the aims of Ecgfrith’s disastrous expedition in the north.
The kingdom of Northumbria seemed to settle within accepted boundaries, and despite Bede’s barb about retreat and retrenchment, these still compassed a vast area of Britain, at least a quarter of the landmass, much of it fertile farmland. The Firth of Forth and the Lothian coastline were as far north as Aldfrith’s writ ran while, to the west, the old realm of Rheged, from Dumfriesshire to Galloway, was falling under Northumbrian control. Greater Bernicia also included Carlisle, much of lowland Cumbria, and the Lancashire Plain down to the Mersey. In the east all of the Lothians, the Tweed Basin, Northumberland and Durham down to the Tees, and most of modern Yorkshire were part of Aldfrith’s powerful kingdom. This period of stabilisation may well be underlined by the excavation and refurbishment of long boundary ditches which can still be clearly seen. Between Doncaster and Sheffield, in the Don Valley, the Roman Rig Ditch almost certainly divided Northumbria from Mercia. Its line was carried on westwards over the high moors, where the modern A628 now runs, and is picked up on the outskirts of Greater Manchester by a six-mile-long earthwork known as Nico Ditch. It still marks the boundary between Stockport and Manchester.
While Aldfrith’s undoubted but unreported political skills pacified his kingdom, his intellectual interests appear to have set a fertile ground for the flowering of what historians have called ‘Northumbria’s Golden Age’. For almost a century after the new king’s accession, great art was made in the monasteries of the north and the first masterpieces began with the death of a saint.
Bede’s account of Cuthbert’s last days is both moving and very atmospheric – and, as far as it is possible to tell, it is also accurate. Unusually the scrupulous historian made use of the testimony of a witness and introduced it verbatim into his text. Herefrith was Abbot of Lindisfarne at the time he was writing and, while much of Bede’s irritation at interference in his Life of Cuthbert may have stemmed from the criticisms made by those monks who cared for the saint at his death, there can be no doubting their devotion and piety.
Sensing that he would not be long for the world, Cuthbert resigned his bishopric and retreated to his beloved hermitage on Inner Farne. Its cliffs rise out of the turbulent tide rips of the North Sea. One of a scattered archipelago, the island lies closest to the shore, directly visible from the royal fortress at Bamburgh. On stormy nights, as the waves lashed the black rocks of Inner Farne, the kings of Northumbria could look out eastwards over the sea and marvel at the faith and fortitude of their holy men and their willing suffering in search of perfect communion with God. Perhaps a guttering candle could be made out through the darkness. At the risk of introducing a sour note of cynicism, it may be that part of the attraction of Inner Farne was its visibility from the principal seats of the kings of Northumbria, faithful patrons of Holy Mother Church.
Cuthbert was rowed out to the little island in the January of 687, when the winter weather was at its worst and he endured a life of welcome solitude for two months before he fell ill. It seems that, in the bitter chill of the hardest months, Cuthbert starved himself to death. For five days, a storm prevented any of the Lindisfarne monks from reaching Inner Farne and, when Herefrith finally came ashore, he asked:
‘But my lord, how can you live like this? Have you gone without food all this time?’
He turned back the coverlet on which he sat and showed me five onions.
‘This has been my food for the last five days. Whenever my mouth was parched or burned with excessive hunger or thirst I refreshed and cooled myself with these.’
One of the onions was less than half nibbled away. He added: ‘My assailants have never tempted me so sorely as they have during the past five days.’
I did not enquire what kind of temptations they were but contented myself with asking him to let himself be waited on. He consented and let some of us stay . . .
During his long fasts Cuthbert had thought a great deal about his death and gave instructions that he should be buried near his oratory on Inner Farne, to the east of the cross he had himself raised. When Herefrith and his brother monks asked the saint’s permission to take his body for burial to Lindisfarne, the dying man refused, saying:
‘[I]t would be less trouble for you if I did stay here, because of the influx of fugitives and every other kind of malefactor which will otherwise result. They will flee for refuge to my body, for, whatever I might be, my fame as a servant of God has been noised abroad. You will be constrained to intercede very often with the powers of this world on behalf of such men. The presence of my remains will prove extremely irksome.’
It seems that Cuthbert knew he would become the focus of a cult and, as such, a place of sanctuary for criminals and fugitives and he recoiled from the worldiness and commerce attached to that likelihood. But, after many entreaties, he ultimately agreed to allow himself to be buried in the monastic church at Lindisfarne. At last the end came.
‘I went to him,’ Herefrith continued, ‘about the ninth hour and found him lying in a corner of the oratory, opposite the altar. I sat down beside him. He said very little, for the weight of affliction made it hard for him to speak.’
But Cuthbert did manage to warn against schism in the church and to exhort his brethren to piety, kindness and obedience.
These and like sayings he uttered at intervals . . . He passed the day quietly till evening, awaiting the joys of the world to come, and went on peacefully with his prayers throughout the night. At the usual time for night prayer I gave him the sacraments that lead to eternal life. Thus fortified with the Lord’s Body and Blood in preparation for the death he knew was now at hand, he raised his eyes heavenwards, stretched his arms aloft, and with his mind rapt in the praise of the Lord sent forth his spirit to the bliss of Paradise.
I went out and announced his death to the brethren, who were themselves spending the night in prayer and vigil . . . One of the monks went without delay and lit two torches and went up, with one in each hand, to a piece of high ground to let the Lindisfarne brethren know that Cuthbert’s holy soul had gone to the Lord. They had decided amongst themselves that this should be the sign of his holy death. The brother in the watch-tower at Lindisfarne, who was sitting up all night awaiting the news, ran quickly to the church where the monks were assembled for the night office . . .
In 698, eleven years later and on the anniversary of his death, Cuthbert’s body was disinterred by the monks and, in the monastic church, they witnessed a miracle. The corpse was entirely uncorrupted, its joints flexible and skin unbroken. The winding sheets were pristine and, to the amazed brothers, it looked as though Cuthbert was not dead but only sleeping.
The news of the miracle was rowed across the water to Inner Farne. There Bishop Eadberht had passed Lent ‘in prayer and severe fasting, shedding tears of devotion’. He ordered that
Cuthbert’s tomb be elevated – that is, not reburied but placed above ground by the altar of the monastic church. It was the first stage of canonisation. As Cuthbert had foreseen, pilgrims would come to visit his tomb and indeed to touch it. Closeness to sanctity meant closeness to God and, as the cults of saints developed, many came to pray by the tomb for intercession on their behalf or for others. Bede’s Life of St Cuthbert lists several miracles which took place in the church at Lindisfarne. And, when Eadberht died, he was buried, according to his wishes, in a casket under the sarcophagus containing the saint’s uncorrupted corpse.
More marvels were to come. Some time around 698, Bishop Eadfrith began work on the magnificent achievement known as the Lindisfarne Gospels. Several accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus had been in circulation amongst early Christian communities but in 325 the Council of Nicaea authorised four, the work of the Four Evangelists, generally recited as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Eadfrith set to work on the immense labour of writing them all into a single volume and illuminating their stories of Christ with gloriously coloured and conceived miniature paintings.
The Faded Map: The Lost Kingdoms of Scotland Page 24
