8: TETTA WRITES TO ALCUIN *
July 28, Year of Our Lord 792
To Alcuin of York, venerable servant of God, endowed with many spiritual gifts, evangelist to the Germans, most worthy Priest of God:
Tetta, an unworthy wretch, a lowly house-maid for Christ, sends her most affectionate greetings.
I have no words to express my thanks for the abundant affection you have shown to me in the letter brought by your messenger from beyond the sea.
When I heard Your Reverence was well and prosperous, I confess I was glad in my heart. God has indeed rewarded your life-long teaching efforts! First, the Lord inclined His Holiness, our beloved Pope Hadrian, of the Glorious See in Rome, to grant the desire of your heart by sending you on such a vital mission to Germany, with so many pagan souls at stake, so many souls starved for Truth. Now, you write that He has laid low before you Rothbod, that once-proud enemy of the Church. It saddens me to think of any soul, even a pagan one, sinking to the hell-horrors your letter vividly described; but cruel Rothbod, surely, is due little pity from any Christian, considering his many outrages against us.
I am concerned to read that your eyesight is worsening. Although loss of vision is a common companion to growing older, along with white hairs and lined skin, yet treatment of this malady is not impossible; the ancient physician Galen, in his treatise On Fluids, advised frequent blood-letting from the neck artery to relieve eye-strain. Yet perhaps religion is sufficient consolation for any physical malady. Have you ever considered that you are losing your sight for a greater purpose? I say that Most Merciful God has permitted you to be afflicted in this way so that you may gaze with the "eyes of the spirit" on those things which God loves and commands, while seeing less of the things God hates and forbids. After all, what are our bodily eyes but windows through which we observe sins and sinners, or, worse still, observe and desire them and so fall ourselves into sin?
Having read with joy that you are interested in our insignificant labours here at Lindisfarne, I will inform you, as best as I am able, through this unpolished letter. I fear writing to you, a true scholar -- your compilations On Grammar and On Rhetoric are both well-used here; I must rely on the grace of Him, Who puts Truth in the mouths of the speechless, and Who makes eloquent the babbling of babes, to convey my most secret of worries to you, my most-esteemed Alcuin.
It is the usual custom for women who are in trouble and anxiety to seek the consolation and advice of those on whose wisdom and affection we can rely. And so it is with me. As I am the only daughter of my parents, and as my only natural brother has gone to his Eternal Reward, I regard you, dearest Alcuin, as my brother in spirit; for there is no man anywhere in whom I have such confidence as in you. Relying on your friendship and experience, I come to lay before you all my difficulties and vexations of mind, and I beg you to support me with your comfort and advice. My labour here seems like that of a guard-dog that sees robbers breaking into and plundering his master's house; but, because he has none to help him in defence, can only bark and complain.
Beloved brother in spirit, renowned across all of Christendom for the abundance of your spiritual graces, to you alone have I desired to impart -- and God is our only witness -- by this tear-stained letter, under what a load of misery and what a crushing burden of worldly distractions we are weighted down. As when the whirlpools of the foaming sea send giant waves crashing onto shore-rocks, and when the force of the wind and the violence of the storm overturn and shatter and sink ships -- so the frail vessels of our souls are shaken by the mighty engines of our miseries and misfortunes. I am worried, not only by the thought of my own soul, but, what is still more difficult and important, by the thought of the many frail souls entrusted to my authority as Abbess; all these girls and women whom I serve now, and for whom, one awful and glorious day, I shall be called to make account before the blazing throne of Christ; to account not only for my many and obvious failings, but also temptations and doubts hidden in my heart, known to God alone.
To the burden of responsibility for so many frail souls, there is added the difficulty of our internal administration, our poverty, the disputes over our lack of temporal goods, the meagreness of the produce of our fields, and the never-ending demands for money for the government -- demands usually based upon the spiteful accusations of those who envy us. Most of our problems arise from our obligations to the king, to the queen, to Bishop Higbold, and to the barons and counts. They see the gold and silver letters in our books, and the beauty of our tapestries, and our modern church of stone walls and lead roof, and the size of our land-holdings on the mainland, and proceed to wrongly assume that we are rich and tax us accordingly.
Yet despite all, I try to forgive them. From my own experience here, I know how difficult is to rule justly and in full accordance with Christ's teachings.
Since my election as Abbess, I have struggled to be neither lenient nor harsh in my punishments, following as closely as possible to The Rule of Benedict, with necessary modifications for our circumstances here. I make effort to never ignore the smaller sins -- immoderate laughter, gossip, dancing, celebration of a birthday, etc -- which, if unaddressed, inevitably lead to more serious ones. The corrosive effect of clothing fashions is a constant problem. All Nuns know Benedict's Chapter LV -- "Worry not about the colour or the texture of these things, but let them wear what can be bought most cheaply ... It is sufficient to have two tunics and two cowls" -- but few here can resist vain innovations in personal appearance. I have found it necessary to ban the following items: golden hairpins, laced shoes, fur collars, silver-buckled belts, long trains, jewelled rings, gowns cut low in front, many-coloured vestments, Nuns adorning themselves as if they were brides, many-coloured ribbons. Although every Nun knows that her veil should reach down to her eyebrows, if I do not pay attention, many Nuns will gradually let their veil rise little by little, day by day -- just so that she can display the skin of their forehead! Some Nuns last summer actually shaved their hair over their forehead, just to make their foreheads look higher! Why? Fashion, of course! Since you left England, this fetish of the forehead, as I call it, has obsessed almost all Northumbrian noblewomen; many of the girls of the convent were also infected. This forehead nonsense has been strictly dealt with here, but soon there will be some new folly, I am sure.
If your holy struggle is against the spiritual fickleness and Faithlessness of Germans, my Alcuin, then it seems that mine is against the vanity and frivolity of English Nuns! Every day, I try to remind my girls of the warning of Saint Paula of Bethlehem: "A clean body and a clean dress mean an unclean soul." Or, I remind them of Saint Uncumber, who miraculously grew a beard on her wedding-day, to defend her virginity; or Saint Agatha, who sacrificed her beauty by cutting off her own nose with a knife, to deter a lustful kidnapper; or the Abbess Hilda, who wildly loved expensive gems as a youth, before her call to the cloister -- in particular, a red ruby on a short neck-chain -- and how, many decades later, when Abbess Hilda was old, a tumour grew inside her throat, and upon it being removed from her body by a surgical physician, it was the exact size and shape and colour of that ruby!
Bishop Higbold has criticised me for "excessive zeal" against modern fashion. It is understandable that he takes such a position. Brother Alcuin, please forgive me for speaking critically of a Bishop, but I cannot hide my feelings. Bishop Higbold likes to dress much too finely for a man of God. He should set a proper example. The last time I saw him, at the Court at Bambury, Bishop Higbold was wearing a fine linen shirt, under a sky-blue tunic; his neckline and sleeves were generously embroidered with silk; his shoes were trimmed with red-dyed le
ather; the curls in his hair on his forehead and by his temples came from a curling iron; fingers glittering with many rings, and ending with sharpened finger-nails -- which he sometimes actually paints!
My latest controversy involving Bishop Higbold has nothing to do with fashion, however. It has to do with oil for church services. There is a scarcity of olive oil in England, and it is almost impossible to find. We need to use olive oil for orthodox services, of course -- we are not in the days of Saint Cuthbert anymore, when fish oils were acceptable substitutes! The convent had a large supply of olive oil; enough to last all this year, and some of next. I wrote that we had a large supply, using the past tense; for Bishop Higbold, I am sad to report, has taken almost all of our supply -- for his own use at Bambury Cathedral. Now, we have only a few small amphorae left. I have prayed so many times to the Immaculate Virgin for the patience and fortitude to accept such treatment without complaint or obstinacy. It is not easy to remain a virtuous woman in times like ours (as I sometimes remind the Lord in my frantic prayers).
With so many problems -- which I have recounted at too great length -- my life is a weariness; it is a burden to live. Everyone who is unequal to his own task, such as I, must seek a faithful friend, upon whose counsel she can rely, and in whom she can have such confidence that she will lay open to him every secret of her heart. On account of all these miseries, I am compelled to seek a friend in whom I can confide better than I can confide in myself, who will consider my pain and sorrow and want, who will sympathize with me, console and sustain me by his virtue and eloquence, and uplift me by his most wholesome discourse. Long have I sought, and now I know that I have found in you the friend whom I have wished, prayed and hoped for.
I have sent, along with this letter, Winbert's copy of The Universal History Against the Pagans, as your failing eye-sight and successful scholarship require; also, a few affectionate gifts of spices: small measures of nutmeg, dill, pepper, sugar, and cinnamon -- to assist (if only slightly) in your struggles with German meals. This tribute of my heart, I know well, is a very small gift in comparison to your love and guidance; given to you, God knows, of my deep and heartfelt gratitude.
I have ventured to send you these little gifts -- not as if they deserved even a glance from you -- but so that you may have a reminder of my obscure insignificance, to stop my being forgotten by you on account of our wide separation, and the long time that has passed since we were together. May the bond of our true affection be knit ever more closely for all time.
I beg you to overlook the many errors of grammar and rhetoric in this unlearned letter, and to send me a few of your own sweet words, soon, which I shall eagerly await.
I also beg you, O Most-Faithful Priest, to keep the departed sisters of Lindisfarne in your memory and in your powerful prayers. The bodies of the Nuns who have died in this holy place -- all the humble sisters who over the decades have guarded the shrine of Saint Cuthbert -- shall rest side-by-side under the dust of our grass-grown graveyard, as if merely asleep, until to rise again on the Day of Judgment, when the Lord's trumpet shall sound, and all the dead shall come forth from lonely tombs to render their accounts to Him, and the spirits of the righteous shall be lifted on the arms of angels and shall forever reign with Christ where sorrow shall vanish, envy shall fade away, and pain and lamenting shall flee before the shining faces of the Saints.
Farewell, my friend.
Tetta