Speaker unverified: belief

Transcript context

…So the word of it has spread. Like there’s a- there’s a bunch of accounts, like the monk Alcuin wrote about this event in a letter to King Ethelred of Northumbria, quote, “It is nearly 350 years that we and our fathers have inhabited this most lovely land, and never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race, nor was it thought that such an inroad from the sea could be made.” What made this race so psychologically devastating to this monk and to the many other monks on the island and then to all of Britain? That’s a great quote. Alcuin was not just a regular scholar, he was Charlemagne’s favorite scholar and he’s largely responsible, as much as one person can be, for the Carolingian Renaissance that had done so much to elevate the early medieval world. In fact, the spaces we have, the punctuation we have, spaces between words are likely a result of Alcuin’s work. He was an extremely literate man, and you can hear the terror creeping into that. And part of that has to do with monastic communities, the Church and the- what they thought a monastic community was. So the Church was viewed as a sacred place. Everyone in Europe, everyone in quotes, is nominally Christian, and the Church is an area of safety. It’s a literal ark from the troubles of the world that you can flee to. I believe there are even rules in England, for example, that if you had killed someone, you could flee to a church and the civil authorities were not allowed to enter for up to 40 days. So you could have sanctuary there. And to violate this would’ve been the worst possible offense you could have given, which is why, you know, Thomas Becket’s murder is so, so horrible in England. And the monks had dedicated themselves to a life of studying the Bible, to copying scriptures to prayer, to removing themselves literally from the temptations of the world. And so they would seek monasteries that were remote, and the most remote locations you could find were islands in the North Atlantic, because it’s just so difficult to get there…. So the ocean was considered a place of safety. Not sailing on the ocean, but these- these islands were- were literal havens of peace and security and closeness to God. And so the fact that the Vikings hit this place of all places you could hit was the worst, the most terrifying kind of offense against medieval sensibilities. So there’s a kind of line that you understand you don’t cross. Like, everybody agrees.…

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