St Hilda might turn in her grave if she saw the trendy Yorkshire town she helped to placed on the map within the seventh Century, but there continues to be enough light to encourage a pilgrimage.
Pottering across the quaint streets of Whitby, a visitor’s senses are bombarded: the attractive little old houses, the sound and the smells of the ocean and the majestic cliffs that contain it, crowds of British holidaymakers at various stages of drunkenness, and an awful lot of images of Dracula.
The fictional vampire’s entry to the UK via Whitby in Bram Stoker’s late Victorian novel has made this small Yorkshire town right into a haven for goths and seekers of the supernatural.
It probably wasn’t the writer’s intention to create such a fascination and interest in darkness – he said the name “Dracula” meant “devil” and his intentions were probably to warn moderately than entice.
With all of the occult imagery that exists today, it’s hard to assume that this was once a crucial centre in the inspiration of Christian England. Yet towering over the town is evidence: the impressive ruins of Whitby Abbey, and the Anglican church round the corner, which continues to be lively, though only just. On the Saturday I visited, there had been just nine worshippers attending that morning.
Whitby Abbey’s demise was brought on by the nemesis of all of our ancient abbeys: Henry VIII and his desire to get divorced and so create his own church to permit it. But the visible stone ruins were in-built the thirteenth Century and so should not the remnants of the positioning’s most vital era. For that, we’ve to return to a much earlier time in Anglo Saxon England that occurred even before destructive Viking raids caused a hiatus in worship there – to the seventh Century and the very beginnings of Christendom on this land.
This era is related to a girl whose name has been adopted by each CofE and Catholic churches within the North Yorkshire town: St Hilda. We do not know much about her, not due to a patriarchal conspiracy, as some might prefer to imagine, but because our historical sources from that point are limited. We depend on the monk Bede and his “Ecclesiastical History of the English People” – written in 731 and preserved through the ages – to study her and the early spread of the religion in England. He spends quite a lot of time discussing Hilda, and he clearly values her influence on the church that he inherited only a generation later.
St Hilda was born in 614 into royalty, Bede writes, in the dominion of what’s now generally known as Northumbria, although borders modified and merged recurrently on this turbulent time within the country’s history. Her life spanned the seventh Century as various kings and kingdoms were converted to Christianity – or not. Her faith was sparked by her relative King Edwin of Northumbria, who married a Christian woman after which converted together with all his court. They were baptised at a site near today’s York Minster, well before the grand stone cathedral was built.
But an invasion by a pagan rival forced them to flee south. Hilda was subsequently influenced by the mission from Pope St Gregory the Great in Rome, led by the primary Archbishop of Canterbury, Augustine, in 597, to convert the pagans here. When she became a nun on the age of 33, she got here under the authority of St Aidan, the Irish monk who founded a monastery on Lindisfarne and helped to spread the religion within the North. She then ran a monastery in Hartlepool called “Heruteu” which had been arrange by one other woman who had been the primary nun in the realm, in response to Bede.
The historian continues:
“Hilda, the handmaid of Christ, being set over that monastery, began immediately to order it in all things under a rule of life, according as she had been instructed by learned men; for Bishop Aidan, and others of the religious that knew her, ceaselessly visited her and loved her heartily, and diligently instructed her, due to her innate wisdom and love of the service of God.”
She was then asked to begin a monastery in Whitby, where she would lead until her death at 66-years-old, and influenced many towards Christ. Bede writes:
“[She] taught there the strict observance of justice, piety, chastity, and other virtues, and particularly of peace and charity; in order that, after the instance of the primitive Church, nobody there was wealthy, and none poor, for that they had all things common, and none had any private property. Her prudence was so great, that not only meaner men of their need, but sometimes even kings and princes, sought and received her counsel; she obliged those that were under her direction to present a lot time to reading of the Holy Scriptures, and to exercise themselves a lot in works of justice, that many might readily be found there fit for the priesthood and the service of the altar.”
Bede writes that five Bishops originally got here from her monastery under her influence, and she or he encouraged the hymn author Caedmon too. As she became in poor health and suffered within the last years of her life, she never failed to point out because of God.
Perhaps it was this stellar fame that led her monastery to turn out to be the positioning of one of the necessary events of the Christian faith in 664.
England had been blessed by each the Roman Christian mission from the south and a Celtic mission from the north – originally from Ireland, which itself was evangelised by the British St Patrick.
It is the contrast between these two church traditions that led to Whitby taking its place within the history of Christian England. The Synod of Whitby – then generally known as “Streanaeshalch” – was the meeting that decided for adopting Roman traditions comparable to the dating of Easter in England moderately than the Celtic way. Our modern perceptions of this historical event are somewhat tainted by whichever ‘side’ we sit on the post-Reformation acrimonious divisions of Christianity. But in point of fact it was a practical matter of creating Christian practice uniform on this country.
The names of those ancient saints are still recurrently evoked within the names of churches, streets and Christian schools throughout the realm and so they are still venerated by each the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches today. Perhaps if the churches get well St Hilda, St Augustine, St Patrick and St Aidan’s desire for holiness, unity and the conversion of pagans, we would see a recent transformation on this land, as they worked for thus way back?
Seeking God at Whitby today
There are quite a few monasteries in the realm that receive visitors, though just one in Whitby itself, the Anglican community at St Hilda’s Priory. The relatively recent Orthodox monastery St Athanasius shouldn’t be too distant, nor are Christian communities in Scarborough and York.
Most visitors to Whitby will traipse up the 199 steps that result in the Abbey, though you may reach it by automotive, too. Adjacent is the Anglican church with gift shop, some houses, a caravan site and a brewery.
English Heritage owns the positioning of the Abbey itself, and like at Rievaulx, charges adults £15 to enter unless you might be a member. However it’s possible to walk across the partitions of the positioning and get a great view of the majestic ruins. The Abbey’s gift shop mostly sells Dracula memorabilia, wine and revisionist histories – but there was a minimum of a duplicate of Bede’s history, by which pilgrims may be inspired by the dedication of the faithful missionaries who converted England.
