How the encounter with the Norse gods changed Christianity and created Christendom
Francis J. Thompson was one the minor poets of the Victorian era and a devout Roman Catholic who became addicted to opium and though considered by some to be a mystic was also said to suffer from religious mania. In so far as he is remembered at all it is probably for his poem The Hound of Heaven in which he reflects on the sense of being pursued by God whose presence is immanent in all things. Not long ago, in 2002, the Boston Globe (USA) described it as, ‘perhaps the most beloved and ubiquitously taught poem among American Catholics for over half a century.’
Thompson was born in Preston, Lancashire, in 1859. A very withdrawn and bookish youth for a time he aspired to the priesthood and studied at the diocesan seminary before dropping out, then studying anatomy at a Manchester medical college from which he also dropped out. Becoming increasingly unstable mentally from his addiction to opium he moved to London for treatment where, between periodic homelessness and vagrancy, he continued to write poems.
A Monastic Experience
Realising Thompson’s increasingly distressed state his publisher and acquaintance, the well-known Catholic propagandist Wilfrid Meynell, arranged for him to stay at a monastery in a remote part of rural Sussex near to where his wife had recently purchased a country retreat. It was whilst living at Storrington Priory that Thompson had a particularly creative period and amongst his many poems was the Ode to the Setting Sun. This is in part reflects the impression made upon him of the large crucifix that stood in the monastery grounds, on which the graphic figure ‘hangs in dreadful pomp of blood.’
This is indeed a large and impressive figure, at over 8ft high, that captures the death throes of Christ in a most gruesome and realistic way. One feature is the right index finger pointing to heaven and to which Thompson makes oblique reference in his poem, ‘Long beam lies steady on the cross. Ah, me!/ What secret would thy radiant finger show.’ At the time the crucifix stood in the monastery grounds so in the evenings, from a certain perspective, could well have seemed to be pointing at the setting sun.
Just in case you are wondering how I know all this it is because for over a decade I too lived at the same monastery. By then the figure of which Thompson wrote was affixed to the cloister wall where it had been repositioned from its outside setting after an attempt, so I was told, by local youths trying to cut it down. I would often take visitors and pilgrims to view the crucifix and even had a handout made with a photo of the cross and the ode as keep sake of their visit and this central icon of the Catholic faith and devotion.
Like Thompson, in the evenings I would often wander on the low hill outside the monastery which afforded spectacular views over the Sussex countryside as well as a panorama of the heavens in which view the glorious spectacle of the setting sun, sublime enough to trigger mystical ecstasy. This did indeed provide a cosmic setting for the poetic imagination.
Communing with a Crucified Body
In this context we may note a particular detail of Catholic ritual. Though the Mass was traditionally the central ritual of the church, in eighteenth-century France this was becoming eclipsed at the royal court in Versailles and in popular devotion by Benediction, the rite in which the consecrated host is exposed and venerated in a monstrance. This ceremony lent itself to theatrical displays and ceremonial processions with the monstrance providing a show-stopping centrepiece, often being a marvellous work of craftsmanship in gold and silver depicting a radiant sun with the consecrated host placed in the centre. It does not take too much imagination to see the symbolic symbiosis of the Son King who reigns in heaven and the Sun king who reigns on Earth.
This whole ritual had begun to appear in the twelfth century as a way of linking the imagined presence of the figure on the cross to a real presence of that same body in our midst. The link is made between the sacrificial death on the cross made real through the sacrifice of the Mass so that the living body of Christ can remain amongst his people to worship.
It can come as something of a shock to realise that for a thousand years there was no such thing as a crucifix in the church – a cross yes, but a crucifix, or cross with a body (corpus) on it, no. A dead Jesus is nowhere to be found. The emergence of the representation of the dead Christ reflects a decisive Christological and cultural shift of understanding that took place in Western Europe in the centuries immediately prior to the eleventh century.
One may wonder why this change had come about. We may hazard a guess. Central to the beliefs and mythology of the Germanic tribes of Northern Europe that existed beyond the frontiers of the Roman Empire was the ‘World Tree’ or ‘great pillar’, the Irminsul (in Old Saxon). This was the cosmic tree – also known as Yggdrasil – which, according to shamanic lore, linked the Earth to the heavens and is the tree on which the supreme Nordic god, Odin, (also known as Irmin, Yggr or Grimm) sacrificed himself to gain all-knowing wisdom.
In his military campaign to ‘convert’ the Saxons Charlemagne destroyed the Irminsul that stood in the Holy Wood (Osnina) in the great Teutoburg Forest replacing it in 783 with a church. (Likewise, in Sussex many of the parish churches dating back to Saxon times were built on the sites of previous ancient British groves and at Ditchling one can see the old sacrificial stone of the Druids set in the church-yard wall.)
This was confrontational conversion in a most dramatic mode. But it was not the only method. Another more subtle way had been advocated by Pope Gregory the Great (590–604) in advice given in a letter to Mellitus, the first bishop of London, Epistola ad Mellitum (601) suggesting pagan shrines be cleansed and converted to Christian use rather than destroyed. It does not take much imagination to link ‘The wood of the cross on which hung the savior of the world’ (according to the Good Friday Liturgy) with Odin (also known as Irmin or Yggr) who was believed to have done exactly the same thing on the Irminsul.
And this is exactly what we find in the seventh century Anglo-Saxon poem The Dream of the Rood, where the tree (rood) is depicted as being felled to be the instrument of the saviour’s death and goes on to describe how it suffered the nail wounds, spear shafts, and insults along with Christ to fulfill God’s will. This poem is attributed to the poet Caedmon whom Bede describes in his seminal work Ecclesiastical History of the English People as the country’s first poet. After the tenth century the writhing figure on the cross, depicted in ever more gruesome detail and with ever more paranoid obsession, becomes the central icon of what was entailed in the struggle against the evil of this world.
So the similarity with which Odin on the Irminsul and Christ on the cross could be viewed should come as no surprise. In fact such synonymity of seemingly different figures and events has been a feature of belief throughout the history of Christianity. For example it is no coincidence that the cult of Mary as theotokos (God bearer) should be centred on Ephesus that was also the ancient cult centre of the goddess Artemis with even their great festivals being on the same day (August 15, the Feast of the Assumption) with many of the liturgical texts almost identical.
The Coming of the Warriors of the Cross
It is no coincidence that at this time in the eleventh century we see the emergence of a new phenomenon, encouraged by monastic leaders of militarised monastic orders of warriors of the cross or crusaders, though the term ‘crusade’ was not invented until the end of the fifteenth century. The First Crusade was launched by the former abbot, Pope Urban II, in 1095. This marks a significant escalation in the militarisation of Christianity. If sentiments once devoted to Odin and the Irminsul could so easily be transferred to Christ on the cross, then so too could those of his frenzied warriors seeking glory in Valhalla be transferred to their Christian liege-lord. The hammer of Thor could now be replaced by the cross of Christ which now became interchangeable with the sword. The emergence of the auto da fe marks the creation of a persecuting society, Christendom, remote from anything that Christ may have actually preached.
It is often difficult, and controversial, to question or challenge the imaginary narratives (myths) that have become linked to specific historical, or supposedly historical accounts. So familiar can we become with things that we no longer really ‘see’ them. So, the suggestion that historically, Jesus did not die for us, nor did he even just die, a word that indicates a natural process, may seem preposterous. But the reality is that he was murdered! His death resulted from a surprise abduction and then arraignment before a kangaroo court resulting in a pseudo-judicial execution that was itself a crime. At a basic level the crucifix is the reminder and symbol of a crime.
The only remaining records of the crime is of course the gospels. Though these were written well after the event and each carry indications of a distinctive and often complex formation – with their authorial ascription only being attributed in the third century BCE – within their theological elaboration they do retain evidence of an original and common record of the crucifixion. When we look at the overall nature of the first of the gospels, Mark, we see a simple twofold structure of a record of the events and sayings of Jesus as he journeyed in and around Galilee and the record of his death in Jerusalem to which one third of the text is devoted.
In this composition one thing that has often been noted is its rather disturbing abrupt ending with the finality of a body being laid in a tomb. It knows nothing of any further events, or resurrection narrative, that would become seminal for the new faith of Christianity. In this text the last recorded words of Jesus on the cross are of crucial importance: Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani. What is clear and noteworthy of the final words of Jesus is that they are a poignant expression of abandonment and even despair.
The words indicate a self-understanding by Jesus that others have obscured: that his death in Jerusalem was indeed unexpected and took him by surprise. His expectation and teaching had been that, ‘The time has been fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.’ (Mk 1:15). These are apocalyptic words that the current age has run its allotted course and its end was imminent. The last words from the cross indicate that the new messianic era for the restoration of the kingdom of David had proved an illusion.
Back to the beginning
I began this reflection with reference to the poet Francis Thompson and the Ode he wrote that was partly inspired by the crucifix he saw in the monastery in Storrington and also by the dramatic sunsets that can be observed from the cemetery hill. Before that, as a child, he lived for some years, between 1864 and 1885, in the small Lancashire mill town of Ashton-under-Lyne just a few miles from Manchester, then a great industrial town. This was in fact the first great industrial town of our modern industrial age and where its workers lived and died in almost unimaginable poverty and squalor, highlighted in the tract of Frederick Engels, On The Condition of the Working Class. This work fed into the more famous writings of Karl Marx promoting a new vision of radical communism.
No doubt Thompson would have visited this vibrant new city and if so he would have passed along the Ashton Old Road and past the newly established catholic parish (1846) of St. Anne’s Fairfield. It was here, alongside the road, an imposing new church was then being built, a distinguishing feature of which is its fine brick spire rising over 100ft and into which is embedded a large stone crucifix of similar size and remarkably similar to the one at Storrington.
I know this because I grew up in a house on Ashton Old Road. Subsequently my parents moved to another house just a little further up the road and opposite the new parish school with its adjoining playing field. This is where I now live and in the evenings I often like to wander across the field, which is at a slightly higher elevation than the surrounding area, to marvel at the panoramic vista of the heavens that the site provides. Beyond the surrounding tree line and across the roof tops of the terraced houses one can gaze upon the setting sun as the blood red orb, surrounded with its glowing cauldron of clouds, sinks below the horizon. The only other noticeable feature is the church spire that pierces the horizon like a giant figure pointing to the heavens! Sometimes it is as if the setting sun is pinioned by the slender steel cross that tops the spire. But to what now does it point?
In the light of what I have written above one may think its time is past, its message obsolete, and that the heavens are now empty: ‘God is dead’. But this would be a mistake. If anything, our modern understanding helps to refocus our attention not on the significance of a death, or murder, but of a life – a whole new way of human interaction based on an attitude of respect, service, generosity and care that have seldom characterised the affairs of human societies. They remain an almost unattainable ideal, as distant as the glowing orb of the setting sun.
As I conclude this reflection I am struck by a front page headline in the paper after a church survey that states, ‘Britain isn’t a Christian nation now.’ I demur. Rather I would say that the whole epoch of Christendom is slowly coming to a term, like the ebbing tide of a sea of faith, but that this itself paves the way for us to return to face the challenge of the original teachings of Christianity. It is to this that the finger on the crucifix still points with its warning of the cost of discipleship.