6/16/2023
Matthew Hartley
On Monday of Holy Week the Church commemorates the holy Patriarch Joseph of Egypt. His story is one of the most familiar and beloved in the entire Old Testament.
The last period of Normandy’s history relevant to this discussion falls in what can properly be called its Norman era.
Many women of outstanding holiness of life graced its soil, and their prayers help sustain it to this day.
Two monasteries of particular note, both from the area of Rouen, were especially important, and the saints who founded them rank among the greatest saints of which the West can boast.
To this day, their deeds of prayer and ascetic self-denial inspire reverent awe in all who read of them with piety.
From early on and up nearly to the very end of its Orthodox history, the region of northwestern France now known as Normandy was graced with a veritable pleiad of holy hierarchs.
The time period under consideration in this article covers three major epochs which can be roughly divided according to the major power controlling the region at the time.
Great courage and perseverance were called for in the evangelization of those lands, and God raised up saints more than equal to the challenge.
For many centuries after the time of Christ and the establishment of His Church, and even after the Christianization of much of Western Europe, the Scandinavian lands remained inveterately pagan.
Many of the greatest holy people to ever grace Western Europe labored in the Low Countries, rescuing the ancestors of today’s residents from the very darkness which seems once more to have enveloped the land.
These holy hierarchs, with which the lands of the Low Countries were once gloriously adorned, shine across the centuries as great beacons of holiness.
Among the greatest adornments of the Low Countries during the period of their Orthodox history is their holy women.
We now turn to some of the great monastic figures of the Low Countries.
Although, as noted previously, a Christian presence and Church structure had been present in the areas of the Low Countries from Roman times, the widespread evangelization of these lands would be a phenomenon mainly of the seventh to eighth centuries.
These essays will attempt to trace in broad strokes the Orthodox history of this unique region of Europe.
The Orthodox history of the German lands (present day Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) is quite ancient and boasts a multitude of saints.
