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Another book being prepared
As those of you who know me can testify, I am English through and through. I have been tracing my ancestors for years and all of them are English, except for one distant great-great-grandfather who was French. So technically I am 3% French. I can't even find any Irish ancestry.
But this does mean that I have a great attachment to the history of England, and the British Isles in the widest sense, even including Brittany. I have always wanted to know about the Christian history of the British Isles, and so much of it is still present in the material and cultural landscape all around me. If I drive just 20 miles from my home in one direction I find one of the oldest Christian places of worship in the country. It is found in the well-preserved ruins of Lullingstone Roman villa, in which one wing of the large property was converted in the 4th century into a Church with an external entrance. So it was being used by the local community. (In fact the small Anglo-Saxon Church which served the area was built just 50 feet from the old Roman chapel).
If I drive 20 miles in the other direction there are the ruins of St Augustine's Abbey where one of my patron saints, St Theodore of Tarsus, was buried, and perhaps still is, since it seems likely the 'Reformers' missed his tomb when they destroyed everything else. It is a great blessing to visit the ruins in the better weather and spend some time sitting quietly in prayer at the place where is grave is marked. There is a good chance he is still buried there as he was not so popular when the Abbey was rebuilt and so was not placed with St Augustine and the other missionary saints whose relics were all desecrated.
This great love for the English and British Christian heritage has encouraged me to spend plenty of time during the last couple of years in putting together and editing a collection of Orthodox British Saints, that is, those Christian figures who lived roughly before the Norman Conquest.
I have written other things before, and published them, but this volume will be self-published by a friend of mine through his local company called Getting Yourself Published, so that it will be available on Amazon and other online retailers and allow me to concentrate on writing it. I have decided to call it, Holy People, Holy Places of the British Isles, since it will also describe many of those places associated with these saints which can still be visited.
I hope that the manuscript will be completed in the new year, and then work its way through the publishing process to be ready for Pascha 2011.
Father Peter
But this does mean that I have a great attachment to the history of England, and the British Isles in the widest sense, even including Brittany. I have always wanted to know about the Christian history of the British Isles, and so much of it is still present in the material and cultural landscape all around me. If I drive just 20 miles from my home in one direction I find one of the oldest Christian places of worship in the country. It is found in the well-preserved ruins of Lullingstone Roman villa, in which one wing of the large property was converted in the 4th century into a Church with an external entrance. So it was being used by the local community. (In fact the small Anglo-Saxon Church which served the area was built just 50 feet from the old Roman chapel).
If I drive 20 miles in the other direction there are the ruins of St Augustine's Abbey where one of my patron saints, St Theodore of Tarsus, was buried, and perhaps still is, since it seems likely the 'Reformers' missed his tomb when they destroyed everything else. It is a great blessing to visit the ruins in the better weather and spend some time sitting quietly in prayer at the place where is grave is marked. There is a good chance he is still buried there as he was not so popular when the Abbey was rebuilt and so was not placed with St Augustine and the other missionary saints whose relics were all desecrated.
This great love for the English and British Christian heritage has encouraged me to spend plenty of time during the last couple of years in putting together and editing a collection of Orthodox British Saints, that is, those Christian figures who lived roughly before the Norman Conquest.
I have written other things before, and published them, but this volume will be self-published by a friend of mine through his local company called Getting Yourself Published, so that it will be available on Amazon and other online retailers and allow me to concentrate on writing it. I have decided to call it, Holy People, Holy Places of the British Isles, since it will also describe many of those places associated with these saints which can still be visited.
I hope that the manuscript will be completed in the new year, and then work its way through the publishing process to be ready for Pascha 2011.
Father Peter
Comments
and it's great to have you around to advise on how to be english
:)