Whatever good there was in paganism, the Church baptized it and made it her own. This is true of the concept of patron deities of the cities and countries of pagan antiquity. Athena, for instance, was considered the patroness of ancient Athens.1 Christians, recognizing that there was something good and right in the practice, purified it and adapted it to their own use. Thus, throughout Church history, we find nearly every Christian city and country with a patron saint, who protects his or her people from the evils that threaten them, whether spiritual or physical. From St Agatha saving Sicily from the fires of Mt Etna,2 to St Demetrios of Thessaloniki saving his city from barbarians, to St Genevieve of Paris saving her city from flood and famine – Christendom is replete with patron saints and their acts of protection and deliverance.
Which makes Dixie an outlier. We boast that we are a Christian people, yet we have no patron saint. We ought to remedy that.
A patron saint for the South should embody the main elements of Southern life, so that all Southrons would feel a kinship with him or her. Now, the South is the offspring of English culture:
‘Gifted novelist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston underscored the common elements of white and black southern culture, calling the South as a whole “the purest English section of the United States”:
‘“What is actually the truth is, that the South, up until the 1930s was a relic of England. . . . and you find the retention of old English beliefs and customs, songs and ballads and Elizabethan figures of speech. They go for the simile and especially the metaphor. As in the bloom of Elizabethan literature, they love speech for the sake of speech. This is common to white and black.”’3
But the English culture Dixie received as her patrimony was not just any old generic English culture. Part of it does indeed come from the border lands with Scotland. But Southern culture in the main springs from the areas associated with the Old English kingdom of Wessex in southwestern England.
Professor David Hackett Fischer speaks to this. About the area from whence came the early settlers of Virginia – who were to stamp the South with her particular character – Prof Fischer says, ‘It more nearly resembled the ancient historical Wessex of Alfred and Athelred, which with its Mercian protectorate reached east as far as Canterbury, and north beyond Warwick and Northampton.’4 And again, ‘Its language and laws were those of the West Saxons [i.e., of Wessex, the short form of West Saxon--W.G.], rather than the Danes who settled East Anglia, or the Norse who colonized the north country, or the Celts who held Cornwall and Wales.’5
Dixie’s patron saint, then, ought to be the best representative of old Wessex culture. Is there anyone who does that sufficiently? There is, and Prof Fischer has actually already mentioned his name: King Alfred the Great of Wessex, England’s Darling (849-899). But his achievements were so momentous that their effects extended beyond Wessex, leavening all of English culture, as Father Andrew Phillips, a priest in England, reveals:
‘ . . . all that has come to pass, in the eleven hundred years and more of England since Alfred, would never have come to pass without him. Nothing can be understood without him, nothing can be seen without his presence. Yes, it is true that after the silver age of the tenth century, England would sink again under the yoke of other Northmen, but even they would never be able to erase Alfred's example, his memory and his achievements. Although the details of Alfred's English Kingdom were later modified, its structure was lasting and has never been destroyed.
‘ . . . And all the great moments of our history are Alfredian. His presence is a constant, haunting our history, a beneficent ghost down all the ages. Embodying Faith and Truth, Wisdom and the Law, Alfred is England's Darling and England's Shepherd, and his Christ is England's only Greatness.’6
St Alfred’s influence on Southern culture is therefore quite inescapable.
Having established this much, let us look now more specifically at how King Alfred embodies some of the major aspects of Southern culture and history.
He was born into a large Christian family, not a rarity for the pre-modern South:
‘Alfred was the youngest of five children, four sons and one daughter, of Ethelwulf, King of Wessex and his wife Osburh. Both were reputed for their piety, it is even said that in his youth Ethelwulf had wanted to become a monk in Winchester. Osburh is recorded as 'a most religious woman, noble in character and noble by birth'. Alfred was the youngest of all King Ethelwulf's six children - the King had already had by a first union a son, Athelstan, who was to die relatively young.’7
He displayed good manners, and loved and recited poems:
‘Alfred was greatly loved by his parents and indeed by all who encountered him. He was brought up at the royal court and was “more comely in appearance than his other brothers, and more pleasing in manner, speech and behaviour”. From childhood his noble mind was characterized by the desire for wisdom, more than anything else. He was a careful listener and at that time he used to learn English poems by heart, memorizing them from recitals.
‘One day his mother, showing him and his brothers a book of English poetry, said: “I shall give this book to whichever one of you can learn it the fastest”. Then aged only five or six, Alfred, was attracted by the beauty of the first letter, which was illuminated. He at once took the book from her hand, went to his teacher, and learnt it by heart. Then he took it back to his mother and recited it, thus winning the book from his brothers, who though older, did not show the same abilities as Alfred.’8
King Alfred was a skilled rider and hunter, who saw nature as a wonderful mystery rather than as something evil or devoid of meaning (as Yankees tend to see it), and he had an intense love for God:
. . .
The rest is at https://identitydixie.com/2024/10/06/patron-saints-in-christendom-and-the-south/.
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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
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