David's Daily Diversions

Make Bones About It

As you will note from the information in the grey column to your right, I have been reading The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millenium by Robert Lacey & Danny Danziger. Just to clarify things, it has the sub-sub-title An Englishman's World. So it's what life was like in England at the turn of the first millenium.

It takes the year month by month, not in the specifics of what happened that month (as that would result in a pamphlet rather than a book), but around the themes of drawn on a perpetual monthly calendar (called the "Julius Work Calendar" for complex historiographical reasons) created around the year 1020. The January chapter, entitled "For All the Saints" discusses the importance of the Christian year at the beginning of the 11th century.

The authors close the chapter with some very perceptive comments.

This was an age of faith. People believed as fervently in the powers of saints' bones as many today believe that wheat bran or jogging or psychoanalysis can increase the sum of human happiness.

Then down a bit further:

You were not on your own. That was the comforting message of the little Julius Work Calendar with its twelve monthly recitations of saints' festivals. God was there to help, and so was a whole network of fellow human beings from the distant past up to your own era. In the year 1000, the saints were a presence as vital and dynamic as any band of elves or demons. They were a living community to whom one prayed , and among whom one lived.

The authors never show where the Christians of the 11th century particularly believed in elves. I'm sure they believed in demons. Clearly the authors themselves have little understanding of spiritual things, but they do capture the essence of Orthodox Christianity.

If I had to choose between the Holy Spirit-energised bones of saints on the one hand and wheat bran or jogging or psychoanalysis on the other, I think I would have to go with the bones. After all, bran may keep you regular and jogging may keep your circulation flowing (psychoanalysis having no valid function), so they may keep you alive, but they have never brought anyone back from the dead.