Fursey Pilgrims Occasional Paper
‘The Life of St Fursey: what we know and why it matters?'
by Michelle P. Brown


Foreword by the Bishop of Norwich

One of the unexpected delights following my appointment as Bishop of Norwich was to discover St. Fursey. I have to admit that my knowledge of him prior to my arrival here was minimal. Discovering him, however, made me feel immediately at home. As a Cornishman exercising episcopal ministry in the Diocese of Truro, I thought that a move to East Anglia would take me well away from a land of Celtic saints. But those Celtic missionaries travelled quite as much in their own day as we do now, and the Christian tradition of East Anglia, looking back as it does to both St. Fursey and St. Felix, combines both the Celtic and Roman traditions - and, as far as we can tell, fairly harmoniously as well.

My enthronement progress around the diocese included Burgh Castle, and I was glad to return later in the year 2000 for the St. Fursey Pilgrimage there in October. Now the Fursey Pilgrims have been able to print Dr. Michelle Brown's stimulating inaugural lecture about St. Fursey. There is more to be known than I had imagined, and much more to be pondered. Perhaps East Anglia could yet provide a necessary counter to the way in which Celtic and Roman traditions of centuries past are seen as polarised rather than complementary. There is an ecumenical imperative in this research, and not just in the narrower church sense. The Christian tradition of those early centuries saw a unity between the created order and revealed Christian faith, a unity derived from Him in whom all things found their origin, even Jesus Christ our Lord.

+graham norvic:
May 2001

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