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ST Bega
ST Bega
ST Bega
The name St Bees is a corruption of the Norse name for the village, which
is given in the earliest charter of the Priory as "Kyrkeby becok", which can
be translated as the "Church town of Bega". It's well known for the Norman
St Bees Priory dating from 1120 dedicated to Saint Bega.
Saint Bega was reputedly a saint of the Early Middle Ages. Her life was
described in a medieval manuscript "The Life of St Bega", part of a
collection of various English saints' lives that belonged to Holmcultram
Abbey and is dated to the mid-13th century. According to this manuscript,
she was a virtuous Irish princess who valued virginity. She was promised in
marriage to a Viking prince who was "son of the king of Norway". On
hearing this, Bega, fearing for her virginity, fled across the Irish sea to land
at St. Bees on the Cumbrian coast. There she settled for a time, in a virgin
cell which she built herself in a grove, leading a life of exemplary piety.
Then, the Viking pirates started raiding the Cumbrian coast, and fearing
(again) for her virginity, she moved over to Northumbria.
The place where she fled was Bassenthwaite, only a short distance away
from St Bees peninsula, in the Lake District, where we find church
dedicated to St. Bega.
13th century, when an oath was taken by John of Hale "having touched the
sacred things ... and upon the bracelet of St Bega". An account roll from as
late as 1516/1517 records offerings of 67s. 9d to the bracelet of St Bega;
so the cult and the relic were still a going concern at that late time.
The phraseology of the early charters indicates a pre-Norman church at St
Bees dedicated to St Bega. At the granting of the first charter of the
Benedictine priory one of the witnesses was Gillebecoc; meaning devotee
of Beghoc, indicating a Bega cult already in existence when the Normanera Priory was built in St. Bees in the 12th Century, around 1120. The
remains of a 10th century high cross from the graveyard of the St. Bees
church confirm that the Norman-era Priory was built on the site of an older
church, pre Norman church.
Cult or person?
Present day scholarship tends to treat St Bega not as a historical
personage but a cult. As one scholar states; "The discovery of
inconsistencies between these medieval texts, coupled with the
significance attached to her jewellery (said to have been left in Cumbria on
her departure for the north-east), now indicate that the abbess never
existed. ... More plausible is the suggestion that St Bega was the
personification of a Cumbrian cult centred on 'her' bracelet (Old English:
beag)". The 1999 edition of the Dictionary of National Biography includes
that during the Norwegian immigration into England all the brown people of
Norway were precluded from leaving their country because they were brunettes, or
that the Wends, who undoubtedly settled in England in considerable numbers, were
none of them of a brunette type.
The survival of some people with broad heads and of a brown type in parts of
Drenthe, Gelderland, and Overijssel appears unmistakable. They present a
remarkable contrast in appearance to their Frisian neighbours, who are of a
different complexion in regard to hair and skin, and are specially characterized as
long-headed.
It was in Gelderland that ancient Thiel was situated, and the men of Thiel and
those of Brune were apparently recognised as different people from the real
Frisians, for in the later Anglo-Saxon laws relating to the sojourn of strangers
within the City of London it is stated that `the men of the Emperor may lodge
within the city wherever they please, except those of Tiesle and of Brune.
The consideration of the evidence that people of Brunette complexions were among
the Anglo-Saxon settlers in England leads on to that of people of a still darker hue,
the dark, black, or brown-black settlers. Probably there must have been some of
these among the Anglo-Saxons, for we meet with the personal names Blacman,
Blaecman, Blakeman, Blacaman, Blac`sunu, Blaecca, and Blachman, in various
documents of the period. The same kind of evidence is met with among the oldest
place-names. Blacmannebergh is mentioned in an Anglo-Saxon charter;
Blachemanestone was the name of a place in Dorset, and Blachemenstone that of a
place in Kent. Blacheshale and Blachenhale are Domesday names of places in
Somerset, and Blachingelei occurs in the Domesday record of Surrey. The name
Blachemone occurs in the Hertfordshire survey and Blachene in Lincoln. Among
the earliest names of the same kind in the charters we find Blacanden in Hants and
Blacandon in Dorset. The places called Blachemanestone in Dorset and
Blachemenestone in Kent were on or quite close to the coast, a circumstance which
points to the settlers having come to these places by water rather than to a survival
of black people of the Celtic race having been left in them.
Among old place-names of the same kind in various counties, some of which are
met with in later, but still old, records, we find Blakeney in Glouceatershire ;
Blakeney in Norfolk; Blakenham in Suffolk; Blakemere, an ancient hamlet, and
Blakesware, near Ware in Hertfordshire. This Hertford name is worthy of note in
reference to what has been said concerning the brunettes in that county at the
present time. Another circumstance connected with these names which it is
desirable to remember is the absence of evidence to show that the Old English ever
called any of the darker-complexioned Britons brown men or black men. Their
name for them was Wealas. So far as I am aware, not a single instance occurs in
which the Welsh are mentioned in any Anglo-Saxon document as black or brown
people ; on the contrary, the Welsh annals mention black Vikings on the coast, as if
they were men of unusual personal appearance.
There is another old word used by the Anglo-Saxons to denote black or brownblack the word sweart. The personal names Stuart and Sueart may have been
derived from this word, and may have originally denoted people of a darker-brown
or black complexion. Some names of this kind are mentioned in the Domesday
record of Buckinghamshire and Lincolnshire. These may be of Scandinavian
origin, for the ekename or nickname Svarti is found in the Northern sagas. Halfden
`the Black` was the name of a King of Norway who died in 863. The so-called
black men of the Anglo-Saxon period probably included some of the darker
Wendish people among them, immigrants or descendants of people of the same
race as the ancestors of the Sorbs of Lausatia on the border of Saxony and Prussia
at the present day.
Some of the darker Wends may well have been among the Black Vikings referred to
in the Irish annals, as well as in those of Wales, and may have been the people who
have left the Anglo-Saxon name Blavmanne-berghe, which occurs in one of the
charters, Blachemenestone on the Kentish coast, and Blachemanstone on the
Dorset coast. As late as the time of the Domesday Survey we meet with records of
people apparently named after their dark complexions. In Buckinghamshire,
blacheman, Suartinus, and othersare mentioned; in Sussex, one named Blac; in
Suffolk, Blakeemannus and Saurtingus; and others at Lincoln. The invasion of the
coast of the British Isles by Viking of a dark or brown complexion rests on
historical evidence which is too circumstantial to admit of doubt. In the Irish
annals the Black Vikings are called Dubh-Ghenti, or Black Gentiles. These Black
Gentiles on some occasions fought against other plunderers of the Irish coasts
known as the Fair Gentiles, who can hardly have been others than the fair Danes
or Northmen. In the year 851 the Black Gentiles came to Athcliath i.e., Dublin.
In 852 we are told that eight ships of the Finn-Ghenti arrived and fought against
the Dubh-Ghenti for three days, and that the Dubh-Ghenti were victorious. The
black Vikings appear at this time to have had a settlement in or close to Dublin,
and during the ninth century were much in evidence on the Irish coast. In 877 a
great battle was fought at Loch-Cuan between them and the Fair Gentiles, in
which Albann, Chief of the black Gentiles, fell. He may well have beena chieftain
of the race of the Northern Sorbs of the Mecklenburg coast.
The Danes and Norse, having the general race characteristics of tall, fair men,
must have been sharply distinguished in appearance from Vikings, such as those of
Jomborg, for many of these were probably of a dark complexion. There is an
interesting record of the descent of dark sea-rovers on the coast of North Wales in
the `Annales Cambriae,` under the year 987, which tells us that Gothrit, son of
Harald, with black men, devastated Anglesea, and captured two thousand men.
Another entry in the same record tells us that Meredut redeemed the captives from
the black men. This account in the Welsh annals receives some confirmation in the
Sagas of the Norse kings, one of which tells us that Olav Trygvesson was for three
years, 982-985, king in Vindland i.e., Wendland where he resided with his
Queen, to whom he was much attached ; but on her death, whoses loss he greatly
felt, he had no more pleasure in Vindland. He therefore provided himself with
ships and went on a Viking expedition, first plundering Friesland and the coast all
the way to Flanders. Thence he sailed to Northumberland, plundered its coast and
those of Scotland, Man, Cumberland, and Bretland i.e., Wales during the years
985-988, calling himself a Russian under the name of Ode. From these two
separate accounts there can be but little doubt, notwithstanding the differences in
the names, of the descent on the coast of North Wales at this time of dark searovers under a Scandinavian leader, and it is difficult to see who they were if not
dark-complexioned Wends or other allies of the Norsemen. It is possible some of
these dark Vikings may have been allies or mercenaries from the south of Europe,
where the Norse made conquests..."
So at the time of the arrival of the Saint Bega to Cumbria, Dark Vikings,
probably of Danish Slavic (Serbian) origin, were in Controll of Dublin, but
they were at war with the White Vikings, probably of Norse origin. These
Dark Vikings were also the ones who attacked Cumbria during the same
period and Settled there as well. At the same time when these Dark Danish
Slavic Vikings were in the East of Ireland and plundering Cumbria, Cumbria
was part of the Angle kingdom which, according to the Origin of the AngloSaxon race, had a large Dark Wendish (Serbian) minority population.
This is what we can find in the history of Cumbria and Northumbria:
"At the end of the period of British history known as Roman Britain (c. A.D. 410)
the inhabitants of Cumberland were Cumbric-speaking native "Romano-Britons"
who were probably descendants of the Brigantes and Carvetii (sometimes
considered to be a sub-tribe of the Brigantes) that the Roman Empire had
conquered in about A.D. 85. Based on inscriptional evidence from the area, the
Roman civitas of the Carvetii seems to have covered portions of Cumbria. The
names "Cumbria", "Cymru" (the native Welsh name for Wales), "Cambria" (the
medieval Latinization of Welsh Cymru) and "Cumberland" are derived from the
name these people gave themselves, *kombroges in Brittonic, which originally
meant 'compatriots'. During the Early Middle Ages Cumberland formed the core of
the Brythonic kingdom of Rheged. By the end of the 7th century most of
Cumberland had been incorporated into the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of
Northumbria. The Kingdom of Northumbria was a medieval Anglian kingdom in
what is now northern England and south-east Scotland, which subsequently
became an earldom in a unified English kingdom. The name reflects the
approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory, the Humber estuary. In 867
Northumbria became the northern kingdom of the Danelaw, after its conquest by
the brothers Halfdan Ragnarsson and Ivar the Boneless who installed an
Englishman, Ecgberht, as a puppet king. Despite the pillaging of the kingdom,
Viking rule brought lucrative trade to Northumbria, especially at their capital
York. The kingdom passed between English, Norse and Norse-Gaelic kings until it
was finally absorbed by King Eadred after the death of the last independent
Northumbrian monarch, Erik Bloodaxe, in 954. After the English regained the
territory of the former kingdom, Scots invasions reduced Northumbria to an
earldom stretching from the Humber to the Tweed. Northumbria was disputed
between the emerging kingdoms of England and Scotland. The land north of the
Tweed was finally ceded to Scotland in 1018 as a result of the battle of Carham.
Yorkshire and Northumberland were first mentioned as separate in the AngloSaxon Chronicle in 1065. In 1092 Cumberland was invaded by William II and
incorporated into England."
So it is possible that the "Irish" princess which fled (bega) to Cumbria was
one of the Dark Vikings (Wends, Serbs?) of Dublinia. It is also possible that
she was a Gaelic princess from Leinster who fled the Viking invasion and
who arrived to Anglian coast populated by the Dark Angles (Wends,
Serbs?). It is also possible that it could have been both? Either one of
these people could have used the word "bega, bei, bii" to describe
someone who is escaping, running away, hiding, taking refuge. In this case
the dialectic version "bei" of the word "bega" would have produced "bees"
(originally pronounced "bez"). So bees would have been "be", the place of
refuge, and "bega" would have been the one who ran away to "be", the
place of refuge.
What is very interesting is that the Norman church of Saint Bega contains
several grave stones and grave slabs with a "Serbian cross".
This is a Serbian cross. It is an ancient symbol first time found among the
Vina symbols. It then inermittentnly pops out in Evroasia and Egypt
throughout then next 7000 years until it finally appears on the Serbian
medieval heraldry. It is still disputed what the meaning of the four arcs in
the symbol is. I will dedicate a whole post to resolving this dispute
(hopefully once and for all).
And these are carved grave stones and grave slabs from the St Bees
priory.
The above stone also has a "Serbian cross", with looped objects, which
have been identified as stirrups, in the two upper quadrants of the head
centre. Below, a bowman stands on the left of the shaft, with on the right a
sword. The bowman, has a quiver slung over his shoulder.
The above stone has a "Serbian cross" formed by four sunk quadrants
within a circle, with a cross pate at the centre; on the left of the incised
cross shaft is a clasped book, possibly signifying the Gospels.
The above stone has a "Serbian cross" formed by four embossed arcs tied
together to form a cross, with lozenge-shaped buds breaking the circle. On
the right of the cross shaft, carved in relief within a sunk panel, is a sword.
The stone is chamfered.
The above stone has a "Serbian cross" formed by four embossed closed
arcs tied together to form a cross, with lozenge-shaped buds breaking the
circle. Sword on right of shaft, with down-curved quillons.
The above stone has a cross formed by four overlaping embosed arcs.
This is basically a deformed "Serbian cross". This is also a representation
of a solar year which is confirmed by the fact that the cross shaft has an
overlay with a small disc or ring, which symbolises a solar year, sun circle.
This is an interesting "solar" cross built into the structure of the Norman
church. I have no information what period this cross was dated to, but it
definitely postdates the Norman church.
Again you see the four arcs (formed by deep gouges) radiating from the
center of the cross formed by the line connecting the five circles.