Читать книгу Blessed Peacemakers - Robin Jarrell - Страница 58

ca. 1008—1095

A Medieval Abolitionist

One of the many changes wrought by William the Conqueror’s 1066 invasion of England was the gradual replacement of all the island’s native Anglo-Saxon bishops with Normans. Only one was left standing: Wulfstan of Worchester. That he survived spoke to his great reputation for holiness. He had been a confidant of King Harold, slain on the field at Hastings, and this alone would have made him persona non grata to the Normans.

From an early age, Wulfstan was renowned for his great dedication to prayer. One of the stories about his early life has it that he was once so distracted from prayer by the aroma of a roasting goose that he forswore meat for the rest of his life—the reason he’s acknowledged as the patron saint of vegetarians. Although ordained a priest, Wulfstan left active parish ministry to live as a cloistered monk. But he was pulled back into the world in 1062 when he was consecrated bishop of a diocese whose seat was the town of Worchester.

During his episcopate, Wulfstan revealed himself as a social reformer who defended the poor and stood up to the Norman conquerors who oppressed them. Every day he washed the feet of twelve homeless men brought in from the street and distributed alms to them. He did this as both a reminder to himself of Christ’s teaching and as an example of compassion to those around him. Concerned about the number of hungry people in Worchester, he once invited the town’s wealthiest citizens to a banquet at the bishop’s palace. As they arrived, they were told that the bishop was running late and would soon arrive. When he eventually showed up, he brought with him several hundred of the town’s poor and quickly shamed the assembled dignitaries into serving them food and drink.

But Wulfstan’s greatest nonviolent effort at restoring justice had to do with the slave trade carried out in Bristol, the busiest seaport in his diocese. The town was the center of a thriving slave industry. Anglo-Saxon peasants who fell into debt were sold as slaves there and shipped off to Ireland to spend the rest of their lives in miserable servitude. Apparently no one thought much one way or another about the practice until Wulfstan stepped up to condemn it. Perhaps living under the domination of the Normans sensitized him to the cruelty of slavery. Correctly viewing it as an evil inflicted on an already oppressed peasantry, the bishop was relentless in his denunciation of it, preaching sermon after sermon in Bristol exhorting slave traders to abandon their distasteful line of business. Whether because he touched the slavers’ hearts or they wearied of listening to him, Wulfstan finally succeeded in stopping their traffic in human beings, making him one of the world’s first abolitionists.