A martyr of Christ the King

Fr Crean remembers Edmund of East Anglia

This year sees the 100th anniversary of the institution of the feast of Christ the King, and also, not coincidentally, the 1700th anniversary of the definition of the true divinity of the Son of God at the Council of Nicaea. It’s often said that Pius XI placed this new feast on the calendar in 1925 because he was concerned by the rise of fascism in Italy, and wished to place before men’s eyes the true model for earthly rulers to follow: Christ reigning in humility, and from the Cross. While this may be correct, it is not quite the reason he himself gave in Quas primas, the letter by which he promulgated this liturgical celebration of our Lord’s kingship. Here, the pope simply says that the feast will be an excellent remedy for a contemporary social plague, which he designates by the Latin word laicismus. Sometimes translated ‘anti-clericalism’, the term might be better rendered as ‘secularism’. Mankind has the duty, Pius explained, to recognise Christ’s authority, as God made man, over both private and public matters.

It so happens that the ancient patron saint of England, Edmund of East Anglia, illustrates this Christian principle. King in East Anglia during the 9th century, his martyrdom is one of the most interesting, as well as one of the most moving, events in the history of the English Church. While we know next to nothing of his earlier life, we possess a vivid account of his death in 869, one written down in the lifetime of men who had been able to speak to eye-witnesses.

Let’s first recall the circumstances of that year. The various kingdoms in England, like many other realms of Christendom, were being ravaged by Vikings, who at that time were still fully pagan: the English referred to their enemies simply as ‘the great heathen army’. The victory of Alfred at Ethandune, which would turn the tide in favour of the Christians, lay nine years in the future.

The heathen army had been killing and pillaging in Northumbria and Mercia; the following year they would turn their attention to Wessex. But they had decided, before heading west, to winter in East Anglia. Under the leadership of their king Hinguar, they took up their quarters in Thetford.

Hinguar knew that Edmund was the local ruler, but rather than go into battle against him, he sent him a message, inviting him to abdicate. Perhaps Hinguar wished to spare himself and his men the trouble of another campaign; even Vikings, no doubt, sometimes need to rest. But probably he just wished to humiliate his Christian adversary. He knew that Edmund had already lost many of his men, slain in their own homes by marauding Vikings, and that it was impossible for the Christian king to put into the field a body of soldiers who could even begin to stand up against the invader.

The message that Hinguar sent may surprise us, since, at least as it has come down to us, it is surprisingly politic.

The chronicler writes thus:

Then came the messenger to King Edmund and quickly delivered the message of Hinguar to him: “Hinguar our king, brave and victorious on sea and land, has power over many peoples and now has come suddenly with the army here to this land so that he may have here winter quarters. He commands you quickly to share your hidden hoards of gold and the wealth of your ancestors with him, and you be his under-king, if you wish to be alive, because you do not have the power that you can withstand him.”

Notice that the heathen king doesn’t tell the Christian one that he will certainly be killed, like so many of his subjects; nor that he will become a beggar, or an exile. Nor does he directly bid him renounce his faith in Christ. He actually invites St Edmund to carry on as he is, still governing, only now as subject to the Viking suzerainty: “You be his under-king, if you wish to be alive.”

The chronicler goes on:

Lo, then King Edmund summoned a bishop who was his secretary, and considered with him how he ought to answer the fierce Hinguar. Then the bishop was afraid because of the sudden misfortune and for the life of the king, and he said that it seemed advisable to him that the king submit to that which Hinguar commanded. Then the king fell silent and looked at the earth.

How vivid it is: the young king –maybe about twenty-eight – uncertain what to do, and calling on the wisdom of his ghostly father; this bishop, with a worldly prudence that may not altogether surprise us, advising him to come to terms; the young man troubled by the advice yet not wishing to contradict it, and looking down at the ground.

But note also that what galls the king is the prospect not just of losing his independence, but of having to receive again from a heathen what he has already received from God. For according to the Passion of St Edmund written in the 10th century by Abbo of Fleury from information received from King Athelstan, Edmund at this crisis called to mind the promise he had made when anointed king, that he would rule for his people’s good under Christ alone. “Shall I now begin to serve two masters?”, he asks the bishop. Then, turning to the Viking ambassador, he declares: “Go now very quickly and say to your cruel lord, ‘Edmund will never yield to Hinguar alive, to the heathen commander, unless he first submits with faith to Christ the Saviour in this land’.”

When Hinguar came with his men, Edmund put up no resistance, wishing, the chronicler says, to imitate the example of Christ, who forbade Peter to fight those who arrested Him. Like his Master, St Edmund was scourged, confessing his faith the while; then he was pierced with many arrows, and finally beheaded. Though the Vikings cast his head into the thickest part of a forest, the Christians found it with miraculous help and hastily buried it with the body.

To quote the chronicler once more

After a time, after many years, when the harrying ceased and peace was given to the afflicted folk, they joined together and splendidly made a church for the holy one, because there were frequently wonders at his grave. They wished then to carry the holy body with public honour and to lay it within the church. Then was the great wonder, that he was just as whole as if he were alive, with a clean body, and his neck healed, that before was cut through, and there was as it were a red silken thread about his neck, as a sign to men of how he was slain. His body shows to us, which lies undecayed, that he lived here without wantonness and did with a clean life travel to Christ.

Thirty years after his death, the Vikings of East Anglia, now Catholics, started to venerate him and even to mint coins in his honour. In 1020, Canute, the Danish king of England, built an abbey at Bury St Edmund’s offering his own crown to the shrine in atonement for the crimes of his forebears.

What makes this a deeply interesting, as well as a moving story, is that the point of faith for which St Edmund dies is one that will hardly be articulated in set terms until about a thousand years later. Had Edmund, an anointed ruler, renounced his rights in order to receive them again from a pagan, he would have been professing that Hinguar rather than Jesus Christ was the true king in East Anglia. By refusing this lie, he died a martyr for ‘the social kingship of Christ’: what Pius XI described as the right of our Lord to rule over societies as well as over individuals.

We today may sometimes feel ourselves confronted with a great heathen army that is less brutal but hardly less effective than the one wintering in Thetford in 869. If so, we can take heart from the story of the young king Edmund. Not only because his life is, as the poet says, ‘a symbol perfected in death’, but also because he is now living in glory, and interceding for the Church in this land. May he assist us to avoid all unworthy compromises and so, ‘with a clean life travel to Christ’.