Saint Edmund
01/11//2006The Knights of St Edmund lead the way: while the BBC and Borough Council screw-up..again!!!
The Knight's of St Edmund are justly proud of their central role in promoting the person, cult and town of St Edmund. Less than a year ago we were vilified and mocked for even suggesting that St Edmund was more important for Bury St Edmunds than a shopping scheme.How times have changed! Not due to any labour of ours we must add, but as a direct result of the agency of our most blessed Saint and Holy Martyr St Edmund. Now the BBC has finally woken up to the fact that one of the most important Saints in England is still in our town. They are also supporting our campaign to re-establish the cult and shrine of St Edmund at Bury St Edmunds. Even the Borough of St Edmundsbury Council, whose spokesman wrote to the local paper a little over a year stating they would burn us at the stake, has done a 180 degree about-face.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/suffolk/5381956.stm
Despite it all the good news, the BBC have 'done an Andrew Gilligan' and got their facts spectacularly wrong, not once but twice.
- The first church dedicated to St George was not built in Doncaster in c.1061 and St George did not become patron saint of England at that time.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/suffolk/content/articles/2006/09/21/st_edmund_2006_feature.shtml
- The obsession with a single national saint of the English would have been a concept completely alien before c.1066.
Before the Norman Conquest England was unofficially divided between two 'patron' saints, an eastern saint: St Edmund, and a western saint: St Aethelbert. Like St Edmund (d. 869) Aethelbert was a youthful King of East Anglia. St Aethelbert was brutally murdered c.793 on the orders of King Offa of Mercia and he was buried at Hereford Cathedral, where his shrine became a place of miracles.
Like St Edmund, Aethelbert was brutally murdered by his political enemies for standing up to those who sort to take-over his Kingdom in order to rob and enslave his people. The original cult centre in East Anglia for St Aethelbert was at Hoxne, but this was destroyed during the Danish occupation. Later Hoxne was set up by the Bishop of Norwich as a rival cult centre dedicated not to Aethelbert, but St Edmund, in a dodgy attempt to get some of the glory and pilgrims donations that were flooding into Bury St Edmunds Abbey.
So why didn't the Mayor of Bury St Edmunds, Borough Councilors, Town Councilors, Centros Miller's PR man Mr Bryson, the Bury Free Press, nor the Borough's unofficial historian Mr Paine, correct these errors by the BBC?
The answer is simple - they know nothing about St Edmund, they couldn't care less about the history or heritage of Bury St Edmund, but they all love free publicity.
However, it remains disappointing that the BBC still refuse to investigate the Cattle-market development scandal, Centros Miller's Scottish links with New Labour, the failure by the Borough to follow PPG 15 & 16, the role of Centros Miller's Mr Laker and his 'champions', the role of Johnston Press PLC's newspaper titles in promoting Centros Miller's developments, the Manor House Museum scandal and so forth. At least after the Andrew Gilligan fiasco you would think that someone at the BBC would at least check their facts first!
Disinformation campaigns or false information about St Edmund, his person, his cult, his Knights or his town will never be tolerated and any attempt to do so will be rigorously resisted!
DEUS LO VOLT!