Lady Godiva: A Righteous Englishwoman

Cloisters Cross (King of the Confessors), walrus ivory, carved by Master Hugo, mid-12th century

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According to a well-known tradition, Lady Godiva was a noblewoman who rode naked through the streets of Coventry, covering her modesty with her long hair. She did this to free the townspeople from the taxation that her husband imposed on them. Although postmodernists doubted this story, we see no reason to doubt the backbone of the tradition, which does date from at least the twelfth century. Of course, we should avoid modern misunderstandings… for example, Coventry was then a settlement of only a few hundred people and not a major city.

Godiva  (in Old English Godgifu) was a popular name, meaning “gift of God”. Lady Godiva was probably a widow when she married Leofric, Earl of Mercia. They had one known son, Aelfgar. Both were generous benefactors to monasteries. In 1043, Leofric founded and endowed a monastery in Coventry on the site of a convent destroyed by the Danes in 1016, Godiva being the moving force behind this act. In the 1050s, her name and her husband’s were on a grant of land to the monastery of St Mary in Worcester and on the endowment of the minster at Stow Mary in Lincolnshire.

 She and her husband are also commemorated as benefactors of other monasteries in Leominster, Chester, Much Wenlock and Evesham. Lady Godiva also gave Coventry a number of works in precious metal by the famous goldsmith Mannig and bequeathed a necklace valued at 100 Marks of silver. Another necklace went to Evesham for the figure of the Virgin accompanying the life-size gold and silver rood she and her husband gave, and St Paul’s Cathedral received a gold-fringed chasuble. She and her husband were among the most generous Old English donors in the last decades before the Norman Conquest.

Wulviva and Godiva (usually held to be Godiva and her sister) gave the manor of Woolhope in Herefordshire, along with four others, to the Cathedral in Hereford before the Norman Conquest. Her signature appears on a charter purportedly given by Thorold of Bucknall to the monastery of Spalding. It is possible that this Thorold, the Sheriff of Lincolnshire, was her brother. Leofric died in 1057, but Lady Godiva lived on, dying sometime between 1066 and 1086. The Domesday survey mentions her as the only Englishwoman to remain a major landholder shortly after the Norman Occupation. There seems little reason to doubt that her grave is with her husband’s in Coventry.

3 July 2018

Archpriest Fr Andrew Phillips

Orthodox England

http://www.events.orthodoxengland.org.uk/lady-godiva-a-righteous-englishwoman/

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30 April 2014. If True, This is Disgusting… Maymon Spits On Our Heritage

To spit on a parish’s customs… now, that’s BENEATH the salt

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One of the Cabinet wrote:

Someone on the OCA Metropolitan Council said that Mark Maymon told a parish not to greet him with bread and salt, as that’s not his custom. The people no longer matter.

Mark Maymon is a disobedient and opinionated parvenu who doesn’t belong as a ruling bishop. Do remember how he spat on the late Philip Saliba’s orders. He’s a nasty legacy of JP… he should never have become ruling bishop of a diocese heavy in old ethnic parishes. Let’s keep it simple… Maymon should realise that he’s the bishop of people who consider themselves Russian Orthodox or he should resign, if he doesn’t like our customs. Why did he settle amongst a group that’s primarily Russian in identity if he doesn’t like Russian culture and customs? This is truly too much. There is NO such thing as “American Orthodoxy”… a discarnate will o’ the wisp that doesn’t even go bump in the night. If he wants that, well, he should leave the Diocese of Eastern PA, as that’s full of old-time old-school Rusin parishes with real coalmine and steelmill roots. Some of the konvertsy are too much. They should realise that our customs aren’t up for negotiation. To them, we’re just ignorant little Slavs who’re to be condescended to by superior Anglo-Saxons, I guess. I have to walk away from this one… if he said such gnarly rubbish, Maymon deserves a Cossack horsewhipping…

BMD

BBC Buys Into Junta Lies About Sashko Bily… WHY?

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Firstly, read this. That was fibs from stern to stern; now, pour yourself a drink, knock it back, and say, “To hell with the Beeb!” Sometimes, you have to read repulsive shit to stay informed… this is one such time. However, the important question is, “WHY is the Beeb acting as an apologist for the Timoshenko junta?” Firstly, its presenters and writers don’t have a scrap of character amongst them, they all know that if they don’t repeat the Party Line of the moment, their ass is grass. They’re relatively innocent, as things go. I believe that the Anglosphere governments are lining up behind the junta just as the EU’s getting cold feet. You see, the rest of the world has to bow down at the feet of the superior Anglo-Saxons and kiss their bare ass at every opportunity… otherwise, the Anglos get their nose out of joint. In this case, the neoliberals in the Anglosphere (both “Libertarian” and “Liberal”) are so stupid that they don’t realise that the rest of the world is attending to its interests, not to their dictates.

Indeed, it may signal the end of the 25-year run of American Exceptionalism on the world stage. Mind you, the USA will still be there, but it’d be cut down to size to what it was during the Cold War… one of the actors on the stage, a major one, but not the only major one. As for the lies published by the Beeb… well, they’ve deteriorated, that’s all that one can say of it. Don’t be too harsh… any of the Western media whores would’ve done likewise (or worse)… if it wasn’t the Beeb, it would’ve been Christiane Amanpour, Serge Schmemann, Ann Coulter, or Sophia Kishkovsky… they’re all cousins under the skin, aren’t they?

Pass the jug… the world hasn’t got any less crank in the last 24…

BMD

America, “Their” America

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The just-ended OAS summit in the Columbian resort of Cartagena de Indias was doomed to fail from the beginning. On the eve of the opening of the summit, two powerful explosions rocked Columbia, one close to the American embassy, but the summit went ahead anyway. The pre-summit preparations exposed deep-seated differences and intractable contradictions between Anglo-Saxons and Latin Americans in that region.

Vladimir Davidov, Director of the Institute for Latin American Studies of the Russian Academy of Science, said, “None of the documents from the previous summits have been ratified, and no one expected tangible results from the current sixth summit of the Americas. The statements by President Barack Obama are evidence that the USA hasn’t found the right solution to the evil that’s dogging the Americas. The issue isn’t about a one-off solution of the distribution of narcotics by illegal drugs barons. The solution to this problem requires joint efforts from the states involved, but any solution should take into account the historical-cultural traditions of Latin America. Therefore, you can’t wave aside the idea of legalising narcotics, it has grassroots support spearheaded by Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina, and it’s backed by several of the regional heads of state”.

The summit in Columbia convened behind closed doors because of the sharp differences between Latin American states on one hand, and the USA and Canada on the other, over the role of Cuba in the contemporary life in the region, as well as over the Malvinas. Central and South American leaders supported the inclusion of the Cuban issue and the Argentine (Malvinas) matter in the final communiqué, but Washington and Ottawa blocked the issue, and, in protest, leaders of the so-called “Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America” refused to take further part in the two-day summit. Davidov continued, “Now, inter-America relations can’t be on the same level as they were during the cold war era. Keeping Cuba out in the cold is unacceptable to Latin American states, and they’ve made it clear at the latest summit of the Americas. In his pre-election campaign, Obama promised to turn a new page in dealing with Havana. Latin American countries are frowning on his attempt to renege on that promise”.

There are several burning issues, including grinding poverty, the illegal drug trade, and natural disasters, to mention a few, which call for concerted efforts to be solved, but which unfortunately are being neglected because of wrangling over political supremacy.

16 April 2012

Aleksandr Sudnishnikov

Voice of Russia World Service

http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_04_16/71933127/

Editor’s Note:

There’s a cause célèbre in the American media concerning 11 Secret Service agents supposedly shacking up with hookers in their hotel rooms. That’s old news… everybody knows that such frisky hijincks were going on for years. I think that the real shocker was the bomb going off near the US Embassy, but for some reason, the US media doesn’t want to talk about THAT… could it be that our little Latin bros don’t like us as much as official propaganda has it? Could be…

Note well that the Republicans are equally deep in the cover-up… no one wants to admit that Latin Americans have had it with Yanqui condescension and nastiness. Indeed… the gringos may have patted their “little brown brothers” on the head once too often (which is often a cover for American multinational corporations kicking Latin American states in the arse).

Which is more important? Is it a bunch of Secret Service agents tomcatting around or is it a bomb going off near the embassy? I think that every grounded person knows the answer to that one…

BMD