| Anois agus Arís By Peter Berresford
Ellis
One hundred Irishmen and women, pilgrims returning from Rome attacked
and killed in Somerset! The bodies dumped secretly in a marsh!
Early English historians generally agree that the date of this infamous
event took place on May 8, AD 690. The location of the exact spot where
it happened near Glastonbury has been debated though it is usually accepted
that place named Hiwisc (household) in early accounts is now Huish Episcopi
on the A372, south of Glastonbury.
Glastonbury — the abbey to which the Irish were making — was already
a place of pilgrimage. It was an ancient site. At this time the native British
Celts had recently been driven out of the area and it had become part of
the West Saxon (Wessex) kingdom ruled by Ine (AD 688-726). Ine was a Christian
but influenced by his bishop St. Aldhelm adhered to Roman rule and not the
rituals of the Celtic Church.
This was still border country. King Geraint of Dumnonia (Devon) still
ruled the lands to the west and south. In AD 706, Ine and Aldhelm provoked
a new war with Geraint, using the differences in religious ritual as an
excuse. When Geraint was killed in AD 710 in a battle at nearby Longport,
the Dumnonia kingdom fell to Ine.
William of Malmesbury and William of Worcester are clear about what happened
to the Irish pilgrims in AD 690.
An Irish religious named Indrechtach (Indract to the Saxons) and his
sister Drusa (Dominca) had led a group of Irish pilgrims to Rome. They had
left Ireland in the previous year. On their return journey they had decided
to visit the abbey of Glastonbury where, it was supposed, Joseph of Arimathea
founded a Christian community.
Indrechtach (the name means ‘attacker’) was not an uncommon Irish name
at this time. It appears as the names of some 8th Century kings of Connacht.
As Indrechtach was said to be the brother of an Irish king, one could speculate
that he was a Connachtman.
Later accounts confuse Indrechtach with another of his name who became
abbot of Iona. Saxons murdered him on March 12, AD 854, while on his way
to Rome. However, it is clear that the Indrechtach associated with Glastonbury
was a different individual than the unfortunately abbot of Colmcille’s abbey
in Scotland.
One of the later accounts of the events in Somerset was that written
by an Augustinian friar John Capgrave (1393-1464) from Lynn, Norfolk who
revised a work called Nova Legenda Angliae written earlier by the Benedictine
John of Tynemouth.
The band of Irishmen and women were nearing Glastonbury. On their travels
to Rome they had collected various items to take back to Ireland, specifically
bags of seeds for their abbey gardens.
They reached Huish Episcopi as night fell and camped ready to go on to
Glastonbury the next morning.
They had been observed by Hona, leader of a local Saxon warband. He persuaded
his men that the bags carried by the pilgrims were filled with treasure.
The warband surrounded the sleeping Irish and murdered them in their beds,
both men and women.
The bodies were hastily dumped in a marshy area of the nearby moorland
— many rivers criss-cross the area around Huish Episcopi.
William of Worcester says that Hona’s crime was soon discovered and Ine
had the bodies recovered and reburied in Shepton.
William of Malmesbury, however, introduces a supernatural element in
having a miraculous pillar of light from heaven shine down on the spot where
the bodies of Indrechtach and his sister Drusa had been dumped.
King Ine then had the bodies transported to Glastonbury itself for burial.
He erected a small stone pyramid tomb for the Irishman to the left of the
altar in his new church of SS Peter and Paul.
Thereafter, Indrechtach became St. Indract the Martyr. He was certainly
greatly venerated in the Middle Ages as a saint of importance. A Life Of
St. Indract existed at Glastonbury Abbey in 1248 when it was noted in a
catalogue. Alas, this is lost but John a monk of Glastonbury wrote about
him at the end of the 13th Century, and this text survives in Bodleian Library,
Oxford.
The old church at Glastonbury was destroyed by fire in 1184 and the location
of St Indract's tomb was lost.
A quotation by John of Glastonbury states: “Every year on the eighth
of the ides of May when the feast of St. Indract the martyr is celebrated,
during the night preceding the festival a pillar of light is seen over his
grave rising from earth to heaven: And many people come together to gaze
at the spectacle but, although they carefully mark the spot where it is
seen, they can never find it again next day, and so the place where the
saint lies is still unknown to anyone.”
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