Celebrating St. Wilfrid at the Battle of Hastings
Bringing Religion to the Battleground
Special thanks goes to REGB Films for recording the video of this occasion.
The morning of 14 October was pleasantly sunny. It was the morning, and I had just arrived at Battle Abbey: the immortal ground of the Battle of Hastings (unless you believe the naysayers who say it happened somewhere else). All around me reenactors were waking up and preparing their kit for two days of intense warfare, albeit the fun, pretend kind. It was possible in that mass of tents to imagine the camp of an English army preparing to meet a doom they did not know was coming. I wondered if it was also pleasantly sunny on that same morning 957 years ago, and whether anybody thought to enjoy it.
I joined my local group that morning, the wonderful Haestingas, at their camp or wic. The majority of our group members that day would sally forth to join the reenactment of the Battle of Hastings. I, on the other hand, would have a different job. Thanks to the kindness of another reenactor, I was able to don some priestly robes and fulfil an ecclesiastical role. Or, in other words, say some prayers and send the warriors out to die on God’s behalf.
The timing of the Battle of Hastings historically meant it coincided very closely with the feast day (gemynddæg) of Saint Wilfrid (c. 633-709/10) on 12 October. This Saint, born in Northumbria, was extremely well travelled, well-known, and at times, very controversial. His legacy is to be found in the great many religious communities he founded, his missionary activities across England and Frisia, and his contributions to ecclesiastical life in 600s England (encyclopaedia source: 496). The choice to involve him in our reenactment that weekend was based on his conversion of the Kingdom of Sussex to Christianity, the territory now containing Hastings, and by extension, our very own local reenactment group.
In order to have a physical set of items to display at our reenactment, we set up a table (pictured above) with two principle relics based on the artistic and ecclesiastical history of the period. The first relic (picture below) was a stunning icon carved and painted by our group leader, Russell, featuring both Jesus Christ and a rendition of Saint Wilfrid. The second relic, slightly more humorous in nature, was a plate of dirt said to have been walked on by Saint Wilfrid on his pilgrimage to Rome. Such relics were two of many possibilities in the period alongside the bones and bodies of the saints themselves (encyclopaedia source: 400)). In fact, an industry of cults surrounding saints gave these relics serious political, not just religious, significance (ibid).
To give the whole event some life, we decided to host an oath-swearing ceremony, incorporating the religious element of the Feast Day with the militaristic setting of the war camp (a video of which you can watch below). I took the role of having the warriors kneel and swear an oath before Lord Wulfnoth, our group leader’s reenactment persona, and then come up to say a word before the relics and shake Wulfnoth’s hand. We do not know much of what this ceremony would look like, other than the fact that people did indeed swear oaths on relics (encyclopaedia source: 401), as King Alfred did with the Vikings. I prepared a single line of Old English to have the warriors recite on the day, which went as follows:
‘Wé þanciaþ Gode ælmihtegum, ond, on ðam háligdómæ Sancti Wilfrithi, sweriaþ ure hlāforde Wulfnoth hyldáþ.’
‘We thank God Almighty, and, on the relics of Saint Wilfrid, swear an oath of fealty to our Lord Wulfnoth.’
I hope the small event brought an extra layer of life to our wic, and allowed us to explore a different part of early medieval society.