By Nicholas Rhea

NEXT Monday, November 17, is the Feast Day of St Hilda, one of the best known saints in the North-East of England. History indicates she spent her entire life in this region but I have no statistics which tell me how many churches and chapels bear her name. Both Catholic and Protestant churches honour her as their patron and there is no doubt she was formidable and clever, but also a very religious person.

Some hint of her enormous power and personality can be gauged from the symbolism shown in artistic representations. She is generally shown wearing the black habit of a Benedictine nun, sometimes with a rich and colourful robe over it. She may also be shown with a pastoral staff in one hand while cradling Whitby Abbey in her other arm. In some cases, there is a crown either at her feet or upon her head.

Those symbols are representative of her life. First, her Benedictine habit. St Benedict, founder of the Benedictine order of monks and nuns was born near Rome around 480. He became known as Father of Western Monasticism as monks and nuns of abbeys and convents followed the traditions of his Benedictine order. That tradition continues in foundations like Ampleforth Abbey in Ryedale.

The crown in illustrations of St Hilda represents her noble birth. She was born 1,400 years ago in 614, the daughter of Hereric, who was a prince of the House of Northumbria. His wife was Breguswith, and they ensured that Hilda was baptised by Paulinus, later known as St Paulinus of York. Pope Gregory the Great had sent Paulinus to England to help Augustine with the task of converting the English.

Paulinus left Rome in AD 601 and settled in York. His results were astonishing; among his many achievements was to convert King Edwin of Deira and Coigi the Druidic high priest, along with thousands of others. At that time, the Kingdom of Northumbria stretched from the River Humber northwards into what we now know as Scotland.

Images of Whitby Abbey being cradled by St Hilda result from her unforgettable responsibility of nurturing an abbey on the cliffs at Whitby. While spreading the faith in the region, she earned a high reputation for her piety, learning and ability to govern a religious institution containing both men and women on the same site.

Whitby was then known as Streonshalh but Hilda’s abbey looked nothing like the present ruin. It would have been a collection of wooden buildings which included the abbey church and cells for the brethren. One of its buildings was an infirmary and there must also have been busy kitchens, domestic quarters and in this case, accommodation for students and novices in addition to stables and shelters for livestock.

Streonshalh Abbey was unusual because it contained not only monks and nuns but also students of both sexes as well as a large number of lay helpers, craftsmen and others to tend the livestock, prepare the food and generally keep the abbey self-supporting and successful. It also accommodated guests from both England and overseas.

Streonshalh was not Hilda’s first task of running a busy religious establishment. At the age of 33, she had established a nunnery on the banks of the River Wear near where Monkwearmouth now stands. Soon afterwards, she was appointed abbess at a monastery in Hartlepool which was founded by St Aidan in 640; he was first bishop of Lindisfarne and Hilda was appointed abbess in 646 before moving to Whitby to establish its now famous abbey. The 13th century church in Hartlepool is dedicated to St Hilda and contains the grave of its founder, Robert Bruce, whose family were lords of the manor from the 11th to the 14th centuries.

It seems Hilda’s abbey at Whitby was a success from the start because in 664 it was selected to host the renowned Synod of Whitby whose task was to draw together the two traditions of Christianity in England. It was the eloquence of Wilfred of Ripon who persuaded the synod to follow the lead of the Pope in Rome, and this led to the date of the English Easter being calculated according to the system established by Pope Gregory the Great. That system is still used despite calls for the Easter to be a fixed date in the calendar.

Streonshalh Abbey is also known for producing the first English poet, Caedmon. The story of how he, an uneducated cowherd, composed and sang the astonishing Song of Creation is widely reported, but Hilda had other work ahead.

In 680, the year of Hilda’s death, she founded a new monastery at Hackness near Scarborough and the Venerable Bede relates how a nun at Hackness dreamt of Hilda’s death and saw a vision of her soul being carried to Heaven by a band of angels. It was established that Hilda’s death in Whitby had occurred at that moment.

However, a mystery remains – where is St Hilda buried?

LATE FLOWERING

Regular readers may be interested in an excellent new book by the Bainbridge artist Janet Rawlins. It is a large format book of 185 pages comprising her watercolours of wild flowers found in Wensleydale.

This is an important work because the unstoppable march of progress and unwelcome developments could obliterate for ever some of those plants and flowers.

In fact, as the foreword by John Craven states: “Some of the flowers in this book have probably now disappeared.” As he points out, it would be dreadful if the only place where such flowers might in the future be found would be in the pages of a book. Janet’s work will help to keep these delights in our thoughts and hopefully in our countryside.

Costing £20 and available from all good bookshops, every copy sold will result in a donation of £3 to aid the work of the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust. This supports the charity’s Hay Time project which aims to safeguard the future of wild flower meadows in the Dales. As well as working with landowners and farmers to restore upland hay meadows, the charity also provides opportunities for people to learn about and experience these rare and beautiful habitats.

The book’s title is the puzzling A Grass Tope to Catch a Unicorn. This arises because Janet’s house is called Unicorn House and there is a legend that the only way to catch a unicorn is by using a grass rope in the hands of a maiden.

If anyone has never heard of a unicorn, it is a mythical horse-like animal which is sometimes used in heraldry. It has a white body but the main identifying feature is a single long and sharp pointed horn protruding from its forehead. It was once claimed it was the only animal that dare attack an elephant while another belief was that if a unicorn dipped the tip of its horn into a liquid, it could determine whether or not it contained poison.

Reports of actual sightings occurred in Florida in 1564 and on the Canadian border in 1673, but the creature is generally believed to have become extinct in Noah’s great flood.