Joining St Paul’s monastery from the previous chapter to its sister monastery, St Peter’s, in Sunderland, this chapter explores the most personally significant terrain in the book: the ‘hinge’ between the Rivers Tyne and Wear, where the author is from and spent most of his life. The chapter detours into two other parish churches to think about the Arts and Crafts Movement, and it pauses at Bede’s Cross at Roker Beach to contemplate memorialisation. The chapter considers the imminent demise of the National Glass Centre, which is set against the heritage of glassmaking on Wearside, before concluding with a re-evaluation of the importance of Bede to a local, national and international audience.
The book is an intimate pilgrimage in search of the soul of Northumbria. After inheriting his great-grandfather’s Davy lamp, poet Jake Morris-Campbell sets out on a pilgrimage through his homeland. Travelling from the Holy Island of Lindisfarne to Durham Cathedral, he asks what new ways might be made through the old north. This region, once a hub of early Christian Britain and later strongly defined by industry and class, now faces an uncertain future. But it remains a unique and starkly beautiful part of the country, with a deep history that is intimately entwined with the idea of Englishness. Jake’s journey along the ‘Camino of the North’ sees him explore the shifting nature of individual and regional identity across 1,300 years of social change. At the same time, it challenges him to reconsider his own trade as a writer and how it relates to the lives of the people he meets along the way. Between the salt and the ash asks what stories the North East can tell about itself in the wake of Christianity and coal. Rejecting the damaging trope of ‘left behind’ communities, Jake uncovers neglected seams of culture and history, while offering a heartfelt celebration of the place he calls hyem.
This final full chapter is based on the author’s visit to the Durham Miners’ Gala in 2023. Taking a coach from Boldon, where his great-grandfather worked in the early to mid-twentieth century, to Durham, the narrative is based around the carnivalesque feeling of the day and the collective solidarity espoused by the event. One of the world’s biggest demonstrations of trades unionism, the Gala is framed here as a mass coming-together, contrasting the solo pilgrimage initiated at the beginning of the book. The author examines a number of miners’ lodge banners and considers the music of the coalfield: from folk and brass to punk. Closing with the author reading a poem at the blessing of the banners service at Durham Cathedral, the book concludes by echoing its Introduction, with the miners’ memorial being shown to be in symbolic dialogue with the coastal connections to Cuthbert.
This chapter sees the journey begin in earnest as the author travels with a friend from Bamburgh to Craster on the north Northumberland coast. Meeting with the poet Katrina Porteous to learn about the fishing heritage of Beadnell, the chapter explores Bamburgh as the former administrative centre of the ancient kingdom of Northumbria, exploring how traditions have changed in the subsequent centuries.
This is an epilogue in which the author pays his respects at the grave of Nick, his great-grandfather, at Harton Cemetery in South Shields. The short commentary on the significance of visiting a working-class grave after having made a pilgrimage to a well-established one counterposes the ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultural values explored elsewhere in the narrative. The book ends with the image of the author leaving the beach behind to walk into the future.
The chapter is an exploration of Lindisfarne, Holy Island, point ‘A’ in the bigger A–B narrative. It explores the ongoing appeal of Lindisfarne, a tidal island in the North Sea which was home to Saint Cuthbert, whose incorrupt body and relics were carried off the island in the ninth century. Lindisfarne is here framed as a ‘thin place’, tapping into Celtic Christianity. The idea of the ‘sea cure’ is also explored in relation to the author’s anxiety, contextualised within the history of the island as a spiritual enclave. Emmanuel Head, a daymark, acts as a touch stone for contemplating the littoral, while memorials at Lindisfarne Priory and in the extant church allow for a rumination on memory and the persistence of religious and industrial iconographies. Poetry as a presiding theme of the book is introduced, with the idea of poems as talismans in themselves contrasting to the totemic Davy lamp the author carries.
The conclusion presents the main findings of the book, centred around three major themes. The first is the return to gold in western Europe. By examining the simultaneous spread of the florin in other non-commercial realms during its early years, specifically within the public finances of the Angevin Crown and the papacy, a more nuanced understanding of this phenomenon is gained. This is presented as an historical process with strong political and social dimensions and consequences so far disregarded. The second theme is the nature of money in the Middle Ages. Neither the metallist nor chartalist approaches alone adequately capture its complexity. Only the combination of these theories allows for a comprehensive understanding of the florin’s diverse role and function in the historical context it inhabited. The third theme addresses the social life of money, illustrating that the florin was more than an economic artefact operating beyond social ties. Crucially, it succeeded not only as an economic vehicle facilitating state-controlled resource extraction (both the papacy and the Angevin kingdom) and force projection (Sicily) but also as an agent of political and social change in its own right, making kings and elevating the status of its operators, particularly the Florentine merchants, whose influence grew through the widespread use of their currency.
This book offers an innovative study of the Florentine gold florin, presenting it as a product of human activity and a dynamic medium with significant political, social, and cultural dimensions. Departing from the traditional view of the florin as a neutral economic means of exchange, the book explores its role in the acquisition of power and as an instigator of social and political change. By providing a holistic appraisal of the interplay of human agents and political institutions and combining data from archaeological material and archival evidence, it demonstrates that the florin’s early success was not driven only by long-distance trade, as often assumed in existing scholarship. Instead, the florin’s influence should be understood through its integration into networks of power within political, diplomatic, military, and ecclesiastical spheres. It follows that the early history of the florin needs to be inscribed within the interactions between Florence and its merchants (Chapter 2), the Angevin Crown in the Kingdom of Sicily (Chapter 3), and the papacy (Chapter 4). Through a detailed account of the florin’s diffusion and use in both commercial and non-commercial contexts, this book will challenge and refine interpretations of the ‘Commercial Revolution’, emphasise the crucial role of human agents in the study of medieval coins, and demonstrate how monetary history is a lively and organic part of medieval studies, rather than an exoteric and self-contained branch of economic historiography. In so doing, this book reconceptualises the relationship between material culture and economic practice, providing a framework for future studies.
Chapter 3 investigates the role of the Florentine florin in the financial systems and military expenditures of medieval rulers and how the latter contributed to its early diffusion. By examining the surviving registers of the Angevin chancery during the reign of King Charles I of Anjou (1266–85) in Sicily and southern Italy, the chapter reveals that by the late 1270s Florentine florins circulated widely in the Angevin territories. These were collected through direct and indirect forms of taxation (i.e., subventio generalis, grain export taxes) and were also used by order of the king to pay mercenaries and royal officials within the Kingdom and in Mediterranean dominions, as well as to cover the expenses of the royal court. Despite its foreign nature, the florin functioned as a domestic gold currency on par with locally minted denominations. The chapter then illustrates how the significant role of the Florentine coin in the Angevin military spending, likely rooted in Charles’ military venture to southern Italy in the 1260s, was driven by the demand from mercenary troops. In this context, the florin acted as both an economic and political instrument, supporting the king’s ambitions by ensuring essential military support. This, in turn, created new opportunities for Florentine merchants in the political arena of the time, making them a valuable asset for foreign rulers and their finances.