Over the last few days the Church calendar has remembered two great Archbishops of Canterbury. One was from the beginning of the 11th century and the other was at the end of that century. And in two days time we will celebrate another great saint.

On Friday we commemorated Alphege, perhaps not one of the best known saints outside of Canterbury. He was a monk, even a hermit for a while, and was called by another great Archbishop, Dunstan, to be Abbot of the abbey at Bath. He later became Bishop of Winchester and in 1005 Alphege was made Archbishop of Canterbury. He is remembered for his lavish almsgiving.

It was his misfortune to be Archbishop at the same time that Danish invaders overran south-east England and Alphege was taken prisoner. The Danes demanded an enormous tribute payment, his captivity also made it a ransom and was designed to encourage them to pay up. The amount demanded was £48,000 a staggering amount especially a thousand years ago. The money was not paid and in a drunken frenzy Alphege was battered to death at Greenwich. One account records him being beaten to death with cattle bones. He was immediately regarded as a martyr because he had refused to allow the money to be paid, knowing it would impoverish the people. After his death though it seems that full payment was paid and the menaces had paid off.

Alphege was an Anglo-Saxon saint. When William the Conqueror became king in 1066 he brought his own Archbishop Lanfranc who decided to reinforce Norman rule by getting rid of a number of Saxon saints - among them Alphege. He decided that being killed in a drunken frenzy over a ransom was not a good enough reason to be canonised. This did not go down at all well with the monks of Canterbury who were very attached to their Saxon saint. An Abbot from Bec was visiting, Anselm, whose day is today. He suggested that to die for justice was to die for truth, since justice was truth in action, and therefore he was worthy of being called a martyr. This logic got Alphege reinstated and Lanfranc out of a jam. Anselm himself succeed to the see of Canterbury after Lanfranc.

Anselm’s logic that to die for justice is to die for truth because justice is truth in action and that this constitutes martyrdom seems apt at the moment. I woke up this morning to hear the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds talking on Radio 4. He was defending his call on the people of Harehills, just down the road from here, not to vote for the British National Party in the local elections because of their racist platform. Here we have church leaders making a stand for justice, for truth in action, for racial harmony. St Paul talks of everyone being united in Christ, that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek but all are one in him. The racism which the British National Party tries to stir up is an attempt to bring disharmony and a false view of what it is to be English and even human, of falsehood in action which is injustice therefore, if we follow Anselm’s logic, the antithesis of what Christianity is about and stands for.

Tuesday will be St George’s day. What could be more English? Well, if we look at St George we find that he is not as straight forward as me might think. Far from being English, this 3rd century saint was probably a Roman Officer who was persecuted for his faith either somewhere in Palestine or perhaps in Turkey. He was far from unique, in that literally thousands were put to death for their faith in these early days of Christianity, but something must have made him stand out to be remembered at all.

What is more the traditions of George have been embellished over the centuries, so much so that aspects of it bear striking similarities with those for other saints. He has become an amalgam of bits and pieces, partly because we know so little about him. If we want to appeal for racial purity, which as an ideal is a distorted and suspect one, we will not find St George the champion we might want him to be.

The traditions of George also have their shadow side. The story of the slaying of the dragon has George wounding and subduing the dragon first so that the princess can lead it by her belt like a puppy into the heart of the city. The people are frightened out of their whits by this and tremble with fear. George seizes the opportunity and says that if they will all convert to Christianity and be baptised he will rid them of the dragon once and for all. Presumably the implication is that if they don’t he will let the dragon loose on them! Hardly a fair argument and rather smacking of coercion! Is this really conversion we might ask? The story is allegorical in that the dragon stands for evil, so true Christianity destroys evil, as justice being truth in action destroys injustice and falsehood in action.

The fear of what might happen if we don’t go to church has largely abated now and been replaced with an attitude of so what. If we are to follow George we have to appeal to something much more convincing than shallow threats. The kind of thing perhaps that made both George and Alphege popular saints in the first place. Both had a deep conviction for their faith so much so that they were prepared to die for it. In Alphege’s case, he had such a sense of truth being shown in justice that he would not allow his own safety to come at the expense of everyone else’s hardship. Perhaps he also knew that paying ransoms justifies the hostage taking and makes us less secure in the long run. In the case of George, though the details are largely obscure, we can assume that his faithfulness in the face of persecution inspired others - otherwise why remember him.

These three saints - Alphege, Anselm and George - point to the truth of justice being a working out of Christian living, truth in action. George additionally challenges us to avoid false views of purity and to recognise that the richness of our traditions and values comes from some surprising places.

© Ian Black 2002

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