Supremacy and Survival: The English Reformation

St. Claude at the Court of St. James

2012-02-15T00:19:00.000-08:00

St. Claude de la Colombiere, SJ died on February 15, 1682. In a way, he is a victim of the Popish Plot, according to this biography published on the Vatican website:

After a year and half in Paray, in 1676 Father La Colombière left for London. He had been appointed preacher to the Duchess of York - a very difficult and delicate assignment because of the conditions prevailing in England at the time. He took up residence in St. James Palace in October.

In addition to sermons in the palace chapel and unremitting spiritual direction both oral and written, Claude dedicated his time to giving thorough instruction to the many who sought reconciliation with the Church they had abandoned. And even if there were great dangers, he had the consolation of seeing many reconciled to it, so that after a year he said: "I could write a book about the mercy of God I've seen Him exercise since I arrived here!"

The intense pace of his work and the poor climate combined to undermine his health, and evidence of a serious pulmonary disease began to appear. Claude, however, made no changes in his work or life style.

Of a sudden, at the end of 1678, he was calumniously accused and arrested in connection with the Titus Oates "papist plot". After two days he was transferred to the severe King's Bench Prison where he remained for three weeks in extremely poor conditions until his expulsion from England by royal decree. This suffering further weakened Claude's health which, with ups and downs, deteriorated rapidly on his return to France.

During the summer of 1681 he returned to Paray, in very poor condition. On 15th February 1682, the first Sunday of Lent, towards evening Claude suffered the severe hemorrhage which ended his life.

On the 16th of June 1929 Pope Pius XI beatified Claude La Colombière, whose charism, according to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, was that of bringing souls to God along the gospel way of love and mercy which Christ revealed to us.

Blessed John Paul II canonized St. Claude in 1992.

Book Review: Tudors and Stuarts on Film: Historical Perspectives

2012-02-14T00:17:00.000-08:00

This book is edited by Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman. From the publisher: Film can be an invaluable teaching resource. Tudors and Stuarts on Film provides analyses of films about the Tudor and Stuart period from leading historians. The accuracy of each film is assessed, and they are also placed within the context of the period in which they were made, and the influence they have had on popular conceptions of early modern England.

Contents:

List of Illustrations (14)
Acknowledgements
Notes on the Contributors

1. Introduction: It's Only a Movie--T.Freeman & S.Doran
2. A Tyrant for All Seasons: Henry VIII on Film--T.Freeman
3. Saints and Cinemas: A Man for All Seasons--P.Marshall
4. Anne of a Thousand Days--G. Richardson
5. Lady Jane Grey on Film--C.Levin
6. From Hatfield to Hollywood: Elizabeth I on Film--S.Doran
7. Ladies in Waiting: Young Elizabeth Tudor on Film--J.Richards
8. Kapur's Elizabeth--C.Haigh
9. Mary Queen of Scots (1971)--J.Guy
10. The Armada, War and Propaganda in the Cinema--W.Coster
11. Elizabeth: The Golden Age: A Sign of the Times?--V. Westbrook
12. Shakespeare in Love: Elizabeth I as dea ex machina--B.Usher
13. The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex and the Romanticization of Eliabethan Politics--P.Hammer
14. Oliver Cromwell and the Civil Wars--J.Morrill
15. The Unfilmed Oliver Cromwell--D.Smith
16. Winstanley--C.Durston
17. Why Don't the Stuarts Get Filmed?--R.Hutton

Notes
Index

You might notice immediately that Mary, the First Queen Regnant of England isn't even mentioned in a chapter title, although she does show up on the chapters on the Tudors; only one of Henry's wives has merited a chapter. Of course, this because of Hollywood's (standing for all film production) choices of whose story works on film. Perhaps it's a good thing Mary I has not been portrayed extensively on film--those fires of Smithfield! Elizabeth I dominates: eight of the chapters, including the chapter on her cousin Mary, Queen of Scotland and her 1971 movie, discuss the presentation of the last Tudor monarch on screen.

What these distinguished authors have done is not only analyze the historical accuracy of the films (and they all take certain liberties with the facts) but explore the reasons for the film makers' choices. Perhaps the best two chapters for this analysis are the two on the Shekar Kapur Elizabeth films. The anti-Catholic, really misogynist views the director and his screenwriter have taken of her reign are really disturbing, totally anti-feminine, twisting facts, playing with the timeline and creating plots and events that really don't fit with the history we know. Now, there's that disclaimer in the introduction, "it's only a movie" but the film makers, including the actors, are presenting their film as "a" truth, a plausible, dramatic, and effective presentation to move the audience: move them to think or feel something about events in the past. From these two movies the audience will certainly think that all Catholics in sixteenth century England were treasonous villains, ready to murder, but not really ready to suffer (Westbrook comments that "the torture sequences were hardly shocking. Apparently, Catholics were prepared to give it all up for a few pokes with a torch and the loss of body hair"!) We certainly know that's not true--at least the Catholic priests like St. Edmund Campion, St. Alexander Briant, St. Robert Southwell, and St. Henry Walpole, to name just a few, suffered the most excruciating and unrelenting torture Topcliffe and Elizabeth's other torturers could devise and deliver!

The last chapter, on the Stuarts, is really a gem in the book. Ronald Hutton immediately admits that his chapter title is completely misleading, because the Stuarts have been filmed, of course. He says the real title should be two questions, "Why don't the Stuarts get filmed as often as the Tudors?" and "Why don't the Stuarts get filmed memorably?" In answering those questions, he introduced me to a film I've never heard of but would love to see, The Exile, with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Hutton also mentioned Forever Amber with Linda Darnell (I remember finding my mother's copy of that "scandalous" novel, printed in double columns to save paper during WWII, hidden in the front closet and reading all about the plague!) TCM has the fun note that The Exile was released in sepia tone and came out at the same time as Forever Amber so that it was nicknamed "Forever Dark Brown"!

I read this book primarily because I am preparing a presentation series for the Eighth Day Institute here in Wichita, Kansas. I want to examine the changes in how the history of the English Reformation has been presented, from the Whig interpretations to the revisionist views I summarize in Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation. I plan to use a historical novel, By What Authority? by Robert Hugh Benson to represent a Catholic interpretation and a movie, Fire Over England by Alexander Korda to represent a nationalistic, Whig view--both focused on the reign of Elizabeth I.

Beyond that purpose, for which the chapter on "The Armada, War and Propaganda in the Cinema" was most useful to me, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It satisfies my love of history, truth, and great movies, especially movies from the great days of Hollywood. The other book (perhaps a guilty pleasure?) that satisfies those interests is George MacDonald Fraser's The Hollywood History of the World From One Million Years B.C. to Apocalypse Now! Fraser was a real fan of Charlton Heston, I recall. He also highlighted one movie in particular which I've seen at least once on TCM: Saraband for Dead Lovers, with Stewart Granger and Joan Greenwood, who must have had the most distinctive voice of any actress in her era. I can never decide which performance of hers I enjoy more: in Kind Hearts and Coronets or The Importance of Being Earnest.

This Morning on the Son Rise Morning Show

2012-02-13T00:11:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned on Saturday, I will be on the Son Rise Morning Show today at 7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central, talking to either Matt or Anna about the parallels commentators have been seeing between the English Reformation religious mandates of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I and the HHS Contraception mandates.

You may listen live here and I will post the podcast as soon as it is available. UPDATE: Here is the podcast; my interview starts after the 1:45 mark.

As a reminder, here and here and here are the posts from last week in which I first addressed this issue, based on other commentators making the connection. I look forward to our discussion this morning very much.

The Massacre of Glencoe--February 13, 1692

2012-02-13T00:05:00.000-08:00

The massacre of the MacDonald clan by the Campbell clan, and the subsequent horror of women and children freezing to death in the west highland glen was the scandal of William and Mary's reign--what did William III know and when? Finally it was determined that he did not know the intent of the Earl of Argyll's foray into Glencoe, and an underling received the blame.

According to this site:

The massacre commenced about five o'clock in the morning at three different places at once. Glenlyon, with a barbarity which fortunately for society has few parallels, undertook to butcher his own hospitable landlord and the other inhabitants of Inverriggen, where he and a party of his men were quartered, and despatched Lieutenant Lindsay with another party of soldiers to Glencoe's house to cut off the unsuspecting chief. Under the pretence of a friendly visit, he and his party obtained admission into the house. Glencoe was in bed, and while in the act of rising to receive his cruel visitors, was basely shot at by two of the soldiers, and fell lifeless into the arms of his wife. The lady in the extremity of her anguish leaped out of bed and put on her clothes, but the ruffians stripped her naked, pulled the rings off her fingers with their teeth, and treated her so cruelly that she died the following day. The party also killed two men whom they found in the house, and wounded a third named Duncan Don, who came occasionally to Glencoe with letters from Braemar.

While the butchery was going on in Glencoe's house, Glenlyon was busily doing his bloody work at Inverriggen, where his own host was shot by his order. Here the party seized nine men, whom they first bound hand and foot, after which they shot them one by one. Glenlyon was desirous of saving the life of a young man about twenty years of age, but one Captain Drummond shot him dead. The same officer, impelled by a thirst for blood, ran his dagger through the body of a boy who has grasped Campbell by the legs and was supplicating for mercy.

A third party under the command of one Sergeant Barker, which was quartered in the village of Auchnaion, fired upon a body of nine men whom they observed in a house in the village sitting before a fire. Among these was the laird of Auchintriaten, who was killed on the spot, along with four more of the party. This gentleman had at the time a protection in his pocket from Colonel Hill, which he had received three months before. The remainder of the party in the house, two or three of whom were wounded, escaped by the back of the house, with the exception of a brother of Auchintriaten, who having been seized by Barker, requested him as a favour not to despatch him in the house but to kill him without. The sergeant consented, on account of having shared his generous hospitality; but when brought out he threw his plaid, which he had kept loose, over the faces of the soldiers who were appointed to shoot him, and thus escaped.
and then:

After the destruction of the houses, a heart-rending scene ensued. Ejected from their dwellings by the devouring element, aged matrons, women with child, and mothers, with infants at their breasts and followed by children on foot, clinging to them with all the solicitude and anxiety of helplessness, were to be seen wending their way, almost in a state of nudity, towards the mountains in a quest of some friendly hovel, beneath whose roof they might seek shelter from the pitiless tempest and deplore their unhappy fate. But as there were no houses within the distance of several miles, and as these could only be reached by crossing mountains deeply covered with snow, a great number of these unhappy human beings, overcome by fatigue , cold, and hunger, dropt down and perished miserably among the snow.

Jim MacLean's ballad depicts the horror of the attack:

They came in a blizzard, we offered them heat
A roof for their heads, dry shoes for their feet
We wined them and dined them, they ate of our meat
And they slept in the house of MacDonald.

Chorus: O, cruel was the snow that sweeps Glencoe
And covers the grave o'Donald
O, cruel was the foe that raped Glencoe
And murdered the house of MacDonald.

They came from Fort William with murder in mind
The Campbell had orders King William had signed
"Put all to the sword" these words underlined"
And leave none alive called MacDonald".

Chorus: O, cruel was the snow that sweeps Glencoe
And covers the grave o'Donald
O, cruel was the foe that raped Glencoe
And murdered the house of MacDonald.

They came in the night when the men were asleep
This band of Argyles, through snow soft and deep
Like murdering foxes amongst helpless sheep
They slaughtered the house of MacDonald.

Chorus: O, cruel was the snow that sweeps Glencoe
And covers the grave o'Donald
O, cruel was the foe that raped Glencoe
And murdered the house of MacDonald.

Some died in their beds at the hand of the foe
Some fled in the night and were lost in the snow
Some lived to accuse him who struck the first blow
But gone was the house of MacDonald.

Chorus: O, cruel was the snow that sweeps Glencoe
And covers the grave o'Donald
O, cruel was the foe that raped Glencoe
And murdered the house of MacDonald.

Image Source: wikipedia.

Five English Catholic Martyrs and the Ladywell Shrine in Lancashire

2012-02-12T00:19:00.000-08:00

From the Catholic Encyclopedia comes this account of one of the five priests executed on February 12, 1584, Blessed George Haydock, and of course, his connection to the other four, accused with him of a conspiracy against Elizabeth I:

English martyr; born 1556; executed at Tyburn, 12 February, 1583-84. He was the youngest son of Evan Haydock of Cottam Hall, Lancashire, and Helen, daughter of William Westby of Mowbreck Hall, Lancashire; was educated at the English Colleges at Douai and Rome, and ordained priest (apparently at Reims), 21 December, 1581. Arrested in London soon after landing, he spent a year and three months in the strictest confinement in the Tower, suffering from the recrudescence of a severe malarial fever first contracted in the early summer of 1581 when visiting the seven churches of Rome. About May, 1583, though he remained in the Tower, his imprisonment was relaxed to "free custody", and he was able to administer the Sacraments to his fellow-prisoners. During the first period of his captivity he was accustomed to decorate his cell with the name and arms of the pope scratched or drawn in charcoal on the door or walls, and through his career his devotion to the papacy amounted to a passion. It therefore gave him particular pleasure that on the following feast of St. Peter's Chair at Rome (16 January) he and other priests imprisoned in the Tower were examined at the Guildhall by the recorder touching their beliefs, though he frankly confesses it was with reluctance that he was eventually obliged to declare that the queen was a heretic, and so seal his fate. On 5 February, 1583-4, he was indicted with James Fenn, a Somersetshire man, formerly fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, the future martyr William Deane, who had been ordained priest the same day as himself, and six other priests, for having conspired against the queen at Reims, 23 September, 1581, agreeing to come to England, 1 October, and setting out for England, 1 November. In point of fact he arrived at Reims on 1 November, 1581. On the same 5 February two equally ridiculous indictments were brought, the one against Thomas Hemerford, a Dorsetshire man, sometime scholar of St. John's College, Oxford, the other against John Munden, a Dorsetshire man, sometime fellow of New College, Oxford, John Nutter, a Lancashire man, sometime scholar of St. John's College, Cambridge, and two other priests. The next day, St. Dorothy's Day, Haydock, Fenn, Hemerford, Munden, and Nutter were brought to the bar and pleaded not guilty.

Haydock had for a long time shown a great devotion to St. Dorothy, and was accustomed to commit himself and his actions to her daily protection. It may be that he first entered the college at Douai on that day in 1574-5, but this is uncertain. The "Concertatio Ecclesiae" says he was arrested on this day in 1581-2, but the Tower bills state that he was committed to the Tower on the 5th, in which case he was arrested on the 4th. On Friday the 7th all five were found guilty, and sentenced to death. The other four were committed in shackles to "the pit" in the Tower, but Haydock, probably lest he should elude the executioner by a natural death, was sent back to his old quarters. Early on Wednesday the 12th he said Mass, and later the five priests were drawn to Tyburn on hurdles; Haydock, being probably the youngest and certainly the weakest in health, was the first to suffer. An eyewitness has given us an account of their martyrdom, which Father Pollen, S.J., has printed in the fifth volume of the Catholic Record Society.

He describes Haydock as "a man of complexion fayre, of countenance milde, and in professing of his faith passing stoute". He had been reciting prayers all the way, and as he mounted the cart said aloud the last verse of "Te lucis ante terminum". He acknowledged Elizabeth as his rightful queen, but confessed that he had called her a heretic. He then recited secretly a Latin hymn, refused to pray in English with the people, but desired that all Catholics would pray for him and his country. Whereupon one bystander cried "Here be noe Catholicks", and another "We be all Catholicks"; Haydock explained "I meane Catholicks of the Catholick Roman Church, and I pray God that my bloud may encrease the Catholick faith in England". Then the cart was driven away, and though "the officer strock at the rope sundry times before he fell downe", Haydock was alive when he was disembowelled. So was Hemerford, who suffered second. The unknown eyewitness says, "when the tormentor did cutt off his members, he did cry, 'Oh! A!'; I heard myself standing under the gibbet". As for Fenn, "before the cart was driven away, he was stripped of all his apparell saving his shirt only, and presently after the cart was driven away his shirt was pulled of his back, so that he hung stark naked, whereat the people muttered greatly". He also was cut down alive, though one of the sheriffs was for mercy. Nutter and Munden were the last to suffer. They made speeches and prayers similar to those uttered by their predecessors. Unlike them they were allowed to hang longer, if not till they were dead, at any rate until they were quite unconscious. Haydock was twenty-eight, Munden about forty, Fenn, a widower, with two children, was probably also about forty, Hemerford was probably about Haydock's age; Nutter's age is quite unknown.

The Haydock family of Lancashire was one of the great recusant families of that northwestern county that resisted the established Church of England. Later this month, on February 21, I'll post about Thomas Haycock, publisher. On April 11, I'll tell you about his brother, Father George Leo Haydock.

The Ladywell Shrine, The Shrine of Our Lady and the Martyrs, is in Lancashire.

The Executions of Guilford and Jane Dudley

2012-02-12T00:04:00.000-08:00

All three recent biographies of Mary I highlighted the singular mercy the first Queen Regnant showed to the young woman who had temporarily displaced her and to her family immediately after coming to the throne. Guilford Dudley and Lady Jane Grey could have been summarily executed, but Mary knew that John Dudley, Lord Northumberland bore the greater share of blame for the plot to change Henry VIII's will and divert the succession. They were tried in November of 1553 and found guilty (they actually pleaded guilty), but were held in some comfort at the Tower of London. Their brief rule had also been spent in the Tower, but Jane had refused kingship for Guilford; whatever reluctance she might have felt, once she became Queen, she intended to hold the power as Queen Regnant exclusively and she intended to reign for "God's Glory" which meant of course that she would continue Edward VI's Reformed reforms. Guilford certainly wanted to reign and he presided over the Council meetings held between Edward VI's death and Mary's overthrow of Northumberland's plot.

It was only after the Wyatt rebellion that Jane's continued existence as a focal point for overthrowing Mary became too great a liability, especially with Philip of Spain on the way. Jane had little to do with Wyatt's plans--in fact, Elizabeth was probably more guilty of collusion with Wyatt's plot than Jane had willingly been with her father-in-law (at first, at least). Unfortunately for her, however, her father had taken part in Wyatt's attempt to depose Mary to place Elizabeth and Courtenay, an erstwhile Catholic candidate as husband for Mary, on the throne and even though Mary regretted it, She ordered Jane's execution. Jane watched her husband be taken to Tower Hill for execution and his headless body brought back the morning of February 12, 1554 while she was scheduled for a private execution at Tower Green. He had asked to meet the night before but she refused, saying it would be too painful and certain they would meet again soon in heaven.

At her execution, she acknowledged her guilt in the one case and declared her innocence in the other: "Good people, I am come hither to die, and by a law I am condemned to the same. The fact, indeed, against the Queen's highness was unlawful, and the consenting thereunto by me: but touching the procurement and desire thereof by me or on my behalf, I do wash my hands thereof in innocency, before God, and the face of you, good Christian people, this day."

The Delaroche painting romantically depicts her moment of panic when she could not find the block after being blindfolded as her ladies swoon behind her. John Feckenham, the last Abbot of Westminster accompanied her on the scaffold, sent by Mary before to help Jane prepare for death. As I've noted before, although they strictly disagreed on religious matters, Jane and Father Feckenham at least respected each other.

I have not read Eric Ive's recent study of Lady Jane Grey's claim to the throne, but I agree with Leanda de Lisle in The Sisters Who Would be Queen: Mary, Catherine, and Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Tragedy that "The sixteenth-century Jane was a much more interesting and ambivalent figure than the traditional stories allow." Since Guilford's brother Robert had become Elizabeth's great favorite, the story of their brief reign and their executions were soon part of Elizabethan propaganda. Her seeming innocence and evangelical fervor also made her a likely target of Foxe's myth-building.

Would You Believe? Another Historical Parallel

2012-02-11T00:28:00.000-08:00

The White House announces an "accommodation" for religious institutions to the HHS Contraception/Abortafacient/Sterilization Mandate. If Catholic Institutions and the Bishops say "we still can't comply", the White House will reply, "how can you not comply? we've made special accommodations!"

The Beckett Fund explains the situation and the "accommodation"

According to a White House statement, some religious employers will no longer be required to provide insurance coverage for contraception, sterilization, and abortifacient drugs; coverage for those services will instead be provided for free directly by insurance companies. However, at least three problems remain. First, hundreds if not thousands of religious organizations self insure, meaning that they will still be forced to pay for these services in violation of their religious beliefs. Second, it is unclear which religious organizations are permitted to claim the new exemption, and whether it will extend to for-profit organizations, individuals, or non-denominational organizations. Third, money is fungible, and many religious organizations may still object to being forced to pay money to an insurance company which will turn around and provide contraception to its employees for free. --in other words, there is still no conscience provision, just some sleight of hand to confuse the matter.

The parallel that I see is with James I's Oath of Allegiance, introduced in 1606 in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot. As you might remember if you've read some posts I've made not so long ago about James I and Catholics, he did not want to execute priests and laity at the same rate as Elizabeth I's government had. King James introduced this new Oath and hoped that Catholics would take it--he also hoped that it would divide the Catholic community, small as it was: could one take the Oath or not?

And it did divide the Catholic community. The Jesuits, led by Robert Parsons, followed the lead of Pope Paul V against the Oath; the secular archpriest, George Blackwell changed his mind several times and finally took the Oath while in prison. James I assured him that he did not mean to impose on his conscience at all.

Some of the priests who were executed during James I's reign were found guilty not so much of violating the Elizabethan statute of their presence in England, but of not swearing this Oath of Allegiance, for instance: St. Thomas Garnet, Blessed Robert Drury (whose dies natalis we will soon honor).

My disclaimer is again, that I do not know that the Obama administration issued this accommodation to divide the Catholic community, which since January 20 has been united in opposition to the HHS Mandate. It's certainly true, however, that the accommodation HAS divided the Catholic community. It's shifted the issue from the protection of religious freedom to a debate over funding contraception, abortafacient and sterilization as preventive medicine (which could also be a good debate, if we could actually have it!).

Remember the Blaine! Amendment, That Is

2012-02-11T00:17:00.000-08:00

PLEASE NOTE: I will be on the Son Rise Morning Show Monday Morning, February 13 at 7:45 a.m. Eastern; 6:45 a.m. Central to discuss the connections commentators are seeing between the HHS Mandate and what I call the "Tudor Mandates" (Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy and Elizabeth I's Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity). Listen live here.

This September 27, 2004 article from America magazine even has an appropriate title for our current situation in the USA: "A Mandate for Anti-Catholicism: The Blaine Amendment". The issue now is health care; the issue in the 1870s was public education. (Of course, the underlying issue was and is freedom of religion.) Thomas E. Buckley provides an excellent survey of post-Civil War America, facing issues of unity and diversity:

The advancement of public schools represented a key element in that program as well as an important part of the Republican drive for cultural homogeneity in post-Civil War America. The schools would lift up Southern blacks and Americanize newly arrived immigrants, especially Irish and German Catholics. Following the program laid out by Horace Mann in the 1840’s, public education would inculcate a nondenominational Protestant morality through Bible reading, hymn singing and the use of the McGuffey readers. The result would be a law-abiding, hard-working, broadly based middle-class society that embodied the values of capitalism embedded in Republican ideology.

Some Republican politicians, like President Ulysses S. Grant, James Gillespie Blaine, Judge Elisha Hurlbut of New York, and future President Rutherford B. Hayes began to believe that the Catholic Church and Catholic schools stood in the way of those goals. Thus they began to use language much like Queen Victoria's government, headed by Lord John Russell did when after Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the Catholic Church re-established a hierarchy in 1850.

Judge Elisha Hurlbut, for example, proposed a new Constitutional amendment:

It would empower Congress to ban “any foreign hierarchical power...founded on principles or dogmas antagonistic to republican institutions.” Some read in Hurlbut’s proposal the opening salvo of an anti-Catholic, nationalistic campaign akin to Otto von Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, which was gathering steam in Germany. Moreover, the campaign to identify the United States as a Christian Protestant nation, which had begun during the Civil War, now revived with the efforts of Supreme Court Justice William Strong and the National Reform Association to amend the U.S. Constitution’s preamble to read: “Recognizing Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, and...the Lord Jesus Christ as the Governor among the nations, His revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government,” we the People, etc.

President Grant concurred with these sentiments and Blaine followed up on them:

the president proposed that Congress approve a constitutional amendment formally separating church and state, provide for the taxation of church property and forbid the states from allocating public funds to any schools that taught “sectarian tenets.” Sectarian meant Catholic. A week later Blaine offered his amendment on the floor of the House. It included the most popular of the Grant proposals. After extending the language of the First Amendment to the states, it provided that “no money raised by taxation in any state for the support of public schools, or derived from any public fund thereof, nor any public lands devoted thereto, shall ever be under the control of any religious sect, nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations.”

As the University of Chicago law professor Philip Hamburger has demonstrated in his superb study, Separation of Church and State (Harvard Univ. Press, 2002), Blaine’s proposal directly challenged Catholic efforts for school funding while leaving nondenominational Protestantism securely entrenched in public education.

Although the amendment passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives, it failed to achieve the two-thirds majority necessary in the Senate. Nevertheless, state legislatures began to adopt Blaine amendment type clauses in their constitutions. Meir Katz of The Beckett Fund provides detail about them in this report.

Again, I am not drawing absolute comparisons between the USA in the nineteenth century and today. This history, like the conflicts between the Catholic Church and Queen Victoria's government in nineteenth century England, represents another phase in the ongoing "dialogue" between Church and State. I don't think anyone in the executive or legislative branches of our government is speaking this kind of language, but you can clearly see, if you read even a few comments on any news website covering or commenting on the HHS Mandate, the old nativist anti-Catholic attacks. Unfortunately, they are now combined with mentions of the priest sex-abuse crisis of the last decade.

Unintended Consequences? The Reformation and Today

2012-02-10T00:16:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed reading Brad Gregory's Salvation at Stake, his study of the state of Christian martyrdom in 16th century Europe. His most recent book is The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society:

In a work that is as much about the present as the past, Brad Gregory identifies the unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation and traces the way it shaped the modern condition over the course of the following five centuries. A hyperpluralism of religious and secular beliefs, an absence of any substantive common good, the triumph of capitalism and its driver, consumerism—all these, Gregory argues, were long-term effects of a movement that marked the end of more than a millennium during which Christianity provided a framework for shared intellectual, social, and moral life in the West.

Before the Protestant Reformation, Western Christianity was an institutionalized worldview laden with expectations of security for earthly societies and hopes of eternal salvation for individuals. The Reformation’s protagonists sought to advance the realization of this vision, not disrupt it. But a complex web of rejections, retentions, and transformations of medieval Christianity gradually replaced the religious fabric that bound societies together in the West. Today, what we are left with are fragments: intellectual disagreements that splinter into ever finer fractals of specialized discourse; a notion that modern science—as the source of all truth—necessarily undermines religious belief; a pervasive resort to a therapeutic vision of religion; a set of smuggled moral values with which we try to fertilize a sterile liberalism; and the institutionalized assumption that only secular universities can pursue knowledge.

The Unintended Reformation asks what propelled the West into this trajectory of pluralism and polarization, and finds answers deep in our medieval Christian past.

Barton Swaim, author of Scottish Men of Letters and the New Public Sphere, 1802-34, reviewed it for The Wall Street Journal: "Blame It on Calvin and Luther"--

Brad Gregory, a history professor at Notre Dame, is deeply unhappy with modern life. "I wish this book could have had a happier ending," he says late in "The Unintended Reformation," an intellectual history of the West since the religious upheaval of the 16th century, "but that would have happened only if the world in which we are living today were different. And our present world would be different only if the past had not been what it was."

Mr. Gregory describes six ways in which the West has lost its moral and intellectual bearings, and in each case he traces the loss to the Protestant Reformation, when Martin Luther, John Calvin and others led a rebellion against what they perceived to be the Roman Catholic Church's corruption and theological error.

The book begins with a broadside against "supercessionist" views of history: narratives in which supposedly primitive ideas give way to progressively more sophisticated ideas, culminating in those of the enlightened present. The sophisticated ideas of the present, Mr. Gregory notes, always seem to bear a striking similarity to those of the historian and his or her like-minded colleagues in the faculty lounge. The problem with supercessionist histories is that the overwhelming majority of Westerners, unlike most historians, are not disenchanted, secularist intellectuals, and any serious interpretations of history claiming to explain how we got to the present day must also describe the present as it actually is—not as the historian thinks it should be or soon will be. . . .

Read the rest of the review here. Something new for the wish list?

More on the HHS Mandate and the English Reformation

2012-02-09T01:57:00.000-08:00

Chris Matthews from MSNBC sees the connections too:

"If the church teaches it's morally wrong to use birth control, how can you make the teacher pay for the birth control without losing their authority, their moral authority?" Matthews asked today when discussing the Department of Health and Human Services mandate that many religious institutions provide contraception to their employees. "If you can make them do it, they can't teach it anymore."

Matthews recalled the stories of Thomas More and Thomas Becket when explaining his thinking. "I guess I grew up watching movies like Becket and A Man for All Seasons and seeing the church and state go to war with each other and being told stories from the Old Testament about the Maccabees, about people, families being told you got to eat pork," he said. Matthews added that it is "frightening" to him "when the state tells the church what to do."

Thanks very much to my facebook friend, Penny McKelvey, for pointing this story out to me! It just demonstrates that knowledge of history helps us see connections and distinctions in current events. The great difference between the English Reformation and the subsequent Recusant era and the crisis the Catholic Church--and all organized religion in the USA--faces today is that we have a representative democratic republic. The voters have an official voice and can protest against their elected officials. We have a constitution to refer to. The martyrs and the Catholic survivors of the sixteenth and seventeenth century did not have our methods for protest. Even though St. Thomas More brilliantly argued his case at his trial, the verdict and the sentence were already determined.

Catholics in sixteenth century England could either conform to the Church of England or pretend to conform to the Church of England. They could actively work to overthrow the monarch to change the regime and the religion, which meant treason, violence, and probably execution if the rebellion failed. The Catholic martyrs chose to be absolutely true to their faith, certainly, and suffer the consequences of disobeying laws that made Catholic priesthood in England, aiding a Catholic priest in England, attending Catholic Mass in England, or becoming a Catholic in England all crimes punishable by death. Chris Matthews is definitely correct in seeing the English Reformation and now the HHS Mandate as events in the long battle between Church and State.

UPDATE: PLEASE NOTE: I will be on the Son Rise Morning Show Monday Morning, February 13 at 7:45 a.m. Eastern; 6:45 a.m. Central to discuss the connections commentators are seeing between the HHS Mandate and what I call the "Tudor Mandates" (Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy and Elizabeth I's Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity). Listen live here.

Catholic Maryland and Oxford

2012-02-09T00:12:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Once I Was a Clever Boy, here is a link to John Whitehead's post on Catholic Maryland. At Mass at the Oxford Oratory, he met

a visiting American academic. Talking afterwards I found that he was Dr Henry M. Miller, Director of Research at the Historic St Mary's City project in Maryland, of which I had read something a while back on the internet, and that he was spending a sabbatical research year in Oxford attached, through the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, to Keble college.

The importance of St Mary's City, of which none of the original buildings survive above foundation level, is that it was the first capital of Maryland, established as a private Catholic colony in 1634 by George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, and with freedom of religion. After it was taken over as a Crown colony in 1694 that position changed, and in 1704 there was an Act to deter the growth of Popery. Nonetheless this was the first such experiment in religious pluralism, and the chapel, of which the one built in 1667, replacing one destroyed in the Civil War, and recently reconstructed on its foundations under Dr Miller's leadership, can claim to be the mother church of English Roman Catholic North America.

Here is the website for Historic St Mary's City and a link to Dr. Miller's blog while working in Oxford:

This blog reports the experiences and findings of Dr. Henry Miller while he is on assignment at the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Oxford, England. From September 2011 to May of 2012, he will be conducting research about early Maryland and its English connections, writing, and teaching. Watch this space for Dr. Miller's research findings, insights on the remarkable history and nature of Oxford and other places he visits, and curious aspects of living in another country.

If you have read Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation (and if you haven't, why haven't you?), you will know that I trace the thread of the Lords Baltimore and the Maryland colony throughout the chapters on the Stuart monarchs. From the first Lord Baltimore, Geroge Calvert to the third Lord Baltimore, Charles Calvert, the fortunes of their vision of religious freedom in the colony in Maryland ebbed and flowed with the changes in the Stuart dynasty through the Civil War, Interregnum, and finally the so-called "Glorious" Revolution of 1688. John D. Krugler wrote what I think is still the standard work on the their efforts: English and Catholic: The Lords Baltimore in the Seventeenth Century.

HHS, Henry VIII and Recusancy

2012-02-08T01:24:00.000-08:00

Even a contributor to The Wichita Eagle's opinion line has noticed the parallel: Like Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy, the Obama administration’s HHS mandate is an attempt to seize control of all Catholic institutions. But Catholics are only the beginning. If this decision stands, freedom of religion is dead in this country.

This article in The Catholic World Report makes the connection between the recent contraception mandate and the English Reformation, although Matthew Cullinan Hoffman focuses on Elizabeth I and recusancy:

Intentionally or not, the administration's policy smacks of the methods established by England's Queen Elizabeth against Catholic "recusants," who refused to participate in the worship services of the Anglican Church during the late 16th century. Although Elizabeth's regime, and those that followed for the next two hundred years, did not provide a penalty for Catholic belief as such, they found a simple and devastating way to coerce Catholics to violate their consciences: the recusancy fine, which was levied against those who absented themselves from Sunday Anglican worship or failed to receive communion once a year.

The fine, which began as a few shillings, was eventually raised to 20 pounds a month, a devastating penalty that few could afford. After being impoverished by such levies, family members would be thrown in jail for failing to pay, and sometimes expelled from the country. Only the wealthiest Catholic families, generally of the aristocracy, could avoid persecution by paying the fines and maintaining a Catholic existence in the privacy and secrecy of their estates.

Although it is far removed from the severity of Britain's old recusancy measures, Obama's policy bears an uncomfortable similarity to them. Catholics will not be directly forced to repudiate their moral principles, but some of their most important institutions will be fined handsomely for refusing to do so. For each employee not provided with contraceptive insurance coverage, a Catholic university, charity, or other institution will be required to pay the government $2,000 annually.

As under the old recusancy system, some larger and wealthier institutions might be able to sustain the financial burdens, but smaller ones will simply go bankrupt and be forced to fold, or will publicly violate their religious beliefs to remain in existence. The outcome will be painfully similar to that of other policies that impose morally offensive requirements on Catholics, such as requiring adoption agencies to give children to homosexuals. As a result of such measures, Catholic agencies in some states have been forced to close or have renounced their Catholic identity to continue operating.

As the publisher's blurb on the back of my book Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation so clearly states: "This book tells the story of the Catholic Church's survival and restoration in one land. It serves both as a lesson and a warning of the risks to faith and freedom when absolute power is given free reign."

UPDATE: PLEASE NOTE: I will be on the Son Rise Morning Show Monday Morning, February 13 at 7:45 a.m. Eastern; 6:45 a.m. Central to discuss the connections commentators are seeing between the HHS Mandate and what I call the "Tudor Mandates" (Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy and Elizabeth I's Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity). Listen live here.

Charles Dickens and the Gordon Riots

2012-02-08T00:21:00.000-08:00

Charles Dickens' 200th birthday was celebrated yesterday, February 7. Among Dickens' many, many works is one rather unusual historical novel, Barnaby Rudge, concerning the Gordon Riots--those anti-Catholic disturbances that followed the first steps of emancipating Catholics in England. There are two interesting features of this novel: one that Dickens wasn't really that interested in history and the other that Dickens really had no sympathy for the Catholics attacked during the Gordon Riots!

As to the first feature: Chesterton commented on Dickens writing two historical novels (A Tale of Two Cities and Barnaby Rudge) while not knowing anything or caring about history:

But it is very typical of Dickens's living interest in his own time, that though he wrote two historical novels they were neither of them of very ancient history. They were both, indeed, of very recent history; only they were those parts of recent history which were specially picturesque. I do not think that this was due to any mere consciousness on his part that he knew no history. Undoubtedly he knew no history; and he may or may not have been conscious of the fact. But the consciousness did not prevent him from writing a History of England. Nor did it prevent him from interlarding all or any of his works with tales of the pictorial past, such as the tale of the broken swords in Master Humphrey's Clock, or the indefensibly delightful nightmare of the lady in the stage-coach, which helps to soften the amiable end of Pickwick. Neither, worst of all, did it prevent him from dogmatising anywhere and everywhere about the past, of which he knew nothing; it did not prevent him from telling the bells to tell Trotty Veck that the Middle Ages were a failure, nor from solemnly declaring that the best thing that the mediæval monks ever did was to create the mean and snobbish quietude of a modern cathedral city. No, it was not historical reverence that held him back from dealing with the remote past; but rather something much better -- a living interest in the living century in which he was born. He would have thought himself quite intellectually capable of writing a novel about the Council of Trent or the First Crusade. He would have thought himself quite equal to analysing the psychology of Abelard or giving a bright, satiric sketch of St. Augustine. It must frankly be confessed that it was not a sense of his own unworthiness that held him back; I fear it was rather a sense of St. Augustine's unworthiness. He could not see the point of any history before the first slow swell of the French Revolution. He could understand the revolutions of the eighteenth century; all the other revolutions of history (so many and so splendid) were unmeaning to him. But the revolutions of the eighteenth century he did understand; and to them therefore he went back, as all historical novelists go back, in search of the picturesque. And from this fact an important result follows,

The result that follows is this: that his only two historical novels are both tales of revolutions -- of eighteenth-century revolutions. These two eighteenth-century revolutions may seem to differ, and perhaps do differ in everything except in being revolutions and of the eighteenth century. The French Revolution, which is the theme of A Tale of Two Cities, was a revolt in favour of all that is now called enlightenment and liberation. The great Gordon Riot, which is the theme of Barnaby Rudge, was a revolt in favour of something which would now be called mere ignorant and obscurantist Protestantism. Nevertheless both belonged more typically to the age out of which Dickens came -- the great sceptical and yet creative eighteenth century of Europe. Whether the mob rose on the right side or the wrong they both belonged to the time in which a mob could rise, in which a mob could conquer. No growth of intellectual science or of moral cowardice had made it impossible to fight in the streets, whether for the republic or for the Bible. If we wish to know what was the real link, existing actually in ultimate truth, existing unconsciously in Dickens's mind, which connected the Gordon Riots with the French Revolution, the link may be defined though not with any great adequacy. The nearest and truest way of stating it is that neither of the two could possibly happen in Fleet Street to-morrow evening.

As to the second feature, Dickens commented on his sympathies in the preface:

"However imperfectly those disturbances [the 1780 riots] are set forth in the following pages, they are impartially painted by one who has no sympathy with the Romish Church, though he acknowledges as most men do, some esteemed friends among the followers of its creed."

As I read the book a couple of years ago, I realized that Dickens' sympathies are against the anti-Catholics, not for the Catholics. The same pattern occurs in A Tale of Two Cities: Dickens is not for the aristocrats slaughtered at the guillotine; he is against the injustice of the execution of Charles Darney and revenge that furthers the suffering of Dr. Manette and Lucy. To Dickens, the Catholic and the aristocrat are foreign and unknown, but he still cannot stand to see them unjustly treated. Although his natural sympathies are for the mob and not for the Catholics or the aristocrat abused by the mob, he still has to reveal the horror of the mob's cruelty--just as much as he exposed the cruelty of the Marquis d'Evremonde and lacked sympathy for the "Romish creed", even though he had friends who were Catholics!

Peter Ackroyd describes this idea to a certain extent in his analysis of Barnaby Rudge:

The Gordon riots were the single most important threat to Parliament, and to the authorities of London, in the city's history. They began as a protest against the Catholic Relief Act of 1778, in which Roman Catholics were relieved of certain historical penalties. But under the leadership of Lord George Gordon the first protests quickly turned into a form of mob rule, in which Parliament was invaded and the prison of Newgate burned to the ground. For a few days London was at the mercy of the populace.

Dickens was always interested in the behaviour of the London crowd. He knew its volatility at first hand, having been brought up in its shadow. Just a year before he began Barnaby Rudge he attended the public hanging of a murderer, François Benjamin Courvoisier, and noted of the mob gathered on that occasion that there was "nothing but ribaldry, debauchery, levity, drunkenness and flaunting vice in fifty other shapes". These were scenes that he recreated in the novel. Even as he was writing it there were rumours of Chartist uprisings in the heart of the city. Two years before there had been street battles in Birmingham and in Newport.

Dickens was a radical by instinct, if not by judgment, and he always manifested a signal dislike or suspicion of authority in all its forms. Yet he was too capacious a novelist to take a single or unambiguous attitude towards the events he was describing.

At any rate, belated happy birthday, Charles Dickens!

February 8, 1587 at Fotheringhay Castle

2012-02-08T00:08:00.000-08:00

Soon we will consider the executions of Lady Jane Grey and her husband Guilford at the orders of Mary I of England during the crisis of the Wyatt Rebellion. As I read different on-line accounts on their deaths, I certainly noticed the effects of their mythology and legend--with comments about Mary's panic and cruelty in ordering their deaths. Yet she had delayed those orders and had really intended that they be freed at some point. Jane's father participated in Wyatt's rebellion--Mary had forgiven him once and she had not ordered their executions in November of 1553, even though they pled guilty. Yet, their executions are used to further bloody Mary.

If those minor legends hold such sway, the legend--and the real impact--of Mary, Queen of Scots' execution on February 8, 1587 at Fotheringhay Castle looms tremendously over our imaginations and reactions. I admit that my knowledge of Mary is formed by Antonia Fraser's 1969 biography. The epilogue still has great impact when Fraser writes about all the childrens' coffins found when the vault was opened and the fact that all the kings and queens of England after the Tudors were and are her descendants--in contrast to the barrenness of Elizabeth and Mary of England; and the summary with Mary's motto: In My End is My Beginning--Fraser really wraps it up!

Like her half-sister Mary regarding Lady Jane Grey, Elizabeth also regretted the deposed Queen of Scotland's execution--especially since Mary of Scotland had been anointed and crowned. For one anointed and crowned Queen to say that another anointed and crowned Queen could be executed was a bad precedent--one that Mary of Scotland's grandson would inherit. Elizabeth also knew that this death would have a wide-ranging impact, as Mary herself had pointed out--the reactions of France and Spain [Armada, anyone?] had to be considered. The manifest unfairness of the trial, as Mary was without legal counsel, could call no witnesses, did not see the evidence to be presented against her, and had never been a subject of Queen Elizabeth (a prisoner, yes, but how can an anointed and crowned Queen be a subject?) and thus could not be accused of treason--and then there was the whole issue of entrapment! Please note that the same injustices in the conduct of Charles Ist's trial are levied against Cromwell and his Rump Parliament--no legal counsel, no knowledge of the charges beforehand--and the same dilemma of the authority of the court over the king!

And then the theatrics of the execution: her weeping attendants, Mary's pointed references to martyrdom and her Catholicism, the reports of her head falling out of its wig in the executioner's hand and the piteous image of her little terrier on the scaffold! A public relations nightmare for Elizabeth!

But Elizabeth had signed the death warrant and although she had the privy councillor who enacted it (William Davison) thrown in the Tower, he was eventually freed. Philip II of Spain and the other Catholic courts on the Continent reacted just as Mary had predicted.

Happy Birthday to Thomas More

2012-02-07T00:30:00.000-08:00

Thomas More was born in London on February 7, 1478; he was educated at St. Anthony's School and then lived in the household of John Morton, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor of England from 1490-1492. Archbishop Morton arranged for his admittance to Canterbury College at the University of Oxford, where More studied classicial literature. He was a pupil of Linacre and Grocyn, but left Oxford after only two years in 1494 because his father, successful lawyer Sir John More wanted him to study law and become a lawyer.

He studied law at the Inns of Chancery and the Inns of Court and was called to the bar in 1502. From 1503 to 1504 More lived near the Carthusian Charterhouse outside the walls of London. According to Erasmus, he even thought of becoming a monk.

In 1505, Thomas More married Jane Colt and again, Erasmus is our source for the detail that More began to teach his young wife about music and literature. They had four children--three girls and one boy: Margaret, Elizabeth, Cecily, and John. Just as he cared for his wife's education, More made sure that his daughters were well-educated. John Guy wrote a great study of Thomas More's special relationship with his daughter Margaret (Meg), A Daughter's Love: Thomas More and His Dearest Meg, which I reviewed in 2009 on amazon.com:

There have been attempts to besmirch the reputation of Sir (Saint) Thomas More--unsubstantiated and denied rumors of torture, inflated numbers of executions for heresy under this administration as Chancellor, and emphasis on the more colorful language in his polemics against Luther and Tyndale. All are cited as unworthy of a canonized saint, either reflecting confusion about historical accuracy or what it means to be a saint.

In this book, John Guy describes the relationship between Thomas More and his dearest daughter, Margaret Roper. It is a loving relationship, demonstrating the richness of character and integrity of both father and daughter. Guy highlights Thomas More's progressive educational program for all his children, including his daughters, uncommon at the time, with the highest standards of contemporary humanism. Erasmus of Rotterdam found in Margaret More Roper a critical and discerning reader who could appreciate his efforts and correct his Latin.

Crucially, John Guy emphasizes that Thomas More had completely integrated the sacred and the secular in his way of life and yet steadfastly kept the public and the private aspects of his life separate. When he was with his family, or when he wrote to them when he was away from them, he did not discuss the efforts, burdens or issues of his working life, as lawyer, member of Parliament, ambassador, or Chancellor. It was only when he knew that public life was going to intrude violently and with deadly force on his private life that he gave his family a sign of what was to come: a brutal knock at the door, interrupting the family gathered at meal and a preemptory summons to answer charges of treason.

Also crucially, Guy highlights the ferocious will to power of Henry VIII once he knew what he wanted and experienced the satisfaction of obtaining it. Henry was then insatiable and only those who bowed utterly to his desire could hope to survive, and even they faced the danger of his changing mood and will. Thomas More tried to warn Thomas Cromwell (as depicted in the film "Anne of the Thousand Days") never to let the king focus on what he could do, but only on what he should do. More followed his own advice and was executed; Cromwell did not follow that advice and was still executed.

Margaret was one of the few who knew her father wore a hair shirt; she would thus be the only one who knew how to sustain him during his imprisonment in the Tower, engaging him with both intellectual diversion and prayer. She would be his champion after his execution, rescuing his head from its place in the row of traitors and preserving all his works, including the letters and treatises he wrote in the Tower, so that they could be published during the reign of Mary Tudor, Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon's surviving child and the first Queen Regnant of England, Ireland and Wales.

A sad and final irony I gained from the story of this relationship was an inkling of what might have been: if Henry VIII could have had the same respect and love for his daughter Mary, he could have fulfilled his early promise as a Renaissance prince. If Henry had seen Mary as the gift she was, with her intellect, her musical talent, and the same desire that Margaret had to please her father, what might have been? But then, we might not have the works Thomas More wrote in the Tower, when he put polemics aside and contemplated Jesus in His Passion, the soul facing comfort and tribulation, and that loving last letter to Margaret, praising her for her demonstration of love as he returned to the Tower of London after his trial.

John Guy has given us the great gift of this book, clarifying many aspects of Thomas More's life, including his relationships with his second wife Alice and his great friend Erasmus, who both sadly abandoned him when he faced the trials of the Tower. The supporting materials (illustrations, family trees, and bibliography) are great.

Blessed Thomas Sherwood, Wooldraper

2012-02-07T00:14:00.000-08:00

According to this article from EWTN:

Thomas Sherwood was not a priest and he was not a religious. He had planned to study for the priesthood but had not yet carried out his plan when he was arrested.

He was by profession a wool draper and was associated with other Catholic families, in particular the family of Lady Tregonwell. The son of Lady Tregonwell turned him in to the authorities, who sent him to the Tower of London. There he was tortured in order to discover where he heard Mass, who the priest was who celebrated the Mass, and the names of other Catholics with whom he was associated.

St. Thomas More's son-in-law, William Roper, tried to send him money for medicine and food, but the officer at the Tower would not permit money to be spent on anything but clean straw for him to sleep on. Blessed Thomas Sherwood was twenty-seven years old at the time of his arrest, and his brother wrote an account of his sufferings and martyrdom. We also possess the directions given to the lieutenant of the Tower from the privy council, ordering him to obtain information from Thomas Sherwood on the rack. After his execution, his mother was arrested and put in prison, where she died fourteen years later.

During his terrible sufferings, all that he said was: "Lord Jesus, I am not worthy to suffer for thee, much less to receive those rewards which thou hast promised to those who confess thee." Three weeks after his death, his death was recorded in the daybook of Douay College, where he had been expected: "On the first of March, Mr. Lowe returned to us from England bringing news that a youth, by name Thomas Sherwood, had suffered for his confession of the Catholic Faith, not only by imprisonment, but by death itself."

He was executed on February 7, 1578--hung, drawn, and quartered because he denied the Royal Supremacy of Elizabeth I, an act of treason according to the State.

Anne, Future Queen of Great Britain, Born

2012-02-06T00:13:00.000-08:00

Anne, the second daughter of James, the Duke of York and Anne, the Duchess of York, was born at 11:39 p.m. on 6 February 1665 at St James's Palace, London. She was baptised into the Anglican faith at the Chapel Royal at St James's. Her older sister, Mary, was one of her godparents, along with Archbishop of Canterbury Gilbert Sheldon and Anne Scott, Duchess of Monmouth.

According to the wikipedia summary:

As a child, Anne suffered from an eye condition, which manifested as excessive watering known as "defluxion". For medical treatment, she was sent to France, where she lived with her paternal grandmother, Queen Dowager Henrietta Maria, at the Château de Colombes near Paris. Following her grandmother's death in 1669, Anne lived with an aunt, Henriette Anne, Duchess of Orléans. On the sudden death of her aunt in 1670, Anne returned to England. Her mother died the following year. As was traditional in the royal family, Anne and her sister were brought up separated from their father in their own establishment at Richmond, London. On the instructions of Charles II, they were raised as Protestants. They were placed in the care of Colonel Edward and Lady Frances Villiers and their education was focused on the teachings of the Anglican church.

Around 1671, Anne first made the acquaintance of Sarah Jennings, who later became her close friend and one of her most influential advisors. Jennings married John Churchill (the future Duke of Marlborough) in about 1678. He was the brother of the Duke of York's mistress, Arabella Churchill, and was to be Anne's most important general.

In 1673, the Duke of York's conversion to Roman Catholicism became public (Anne's mother had also become a Catholic before her death). He married a Catholic princess, Mary of Modena, who was only six and half years older than Anne. Charles II had no surviving legitimate children, and so the Duke of York was next in the line of succession, followed by his two surviving daughters from his first marriage, Mary and Anne. Over the next ten years, the new Duchess of York had ten children, but all were either stillborn or died in infancy, leaving Mary and Anne second and third in the line of succession after their father.

Mary Beatrice of Modena and Queen Anne of Great Britain thus had a similar history of pregnancy. Anne married Protestant Prince George of Denmark brother of King Christian V of Denmark in 1683. Anne was pregnant seventeen (17) times: six stillborn babies, six miscarriages, and five live births. The only child to survive infancy was William, Duke of Gloucester, and he died at age 11.

The Official Website of The British Monarchy summarizes her reign as queen here.

Sunday Shrine Series: Church of Our Lady, Queen of Martyrs, and St. Ignatius

2012-02-05T00:15:00.000-08:00

This church is the shrine of the Dorset martyrs, whom I have mentioned before.

As the website states, the Dorset martyrs are among the "clouds of witnesses" of the English Martyrs:

Of these, eight are associated with Chideock. Seven were put to death and are known as the Chideock Martyrs. The eighth, John Jessop, was put in prison for his Faith and died there. Their portraits are displayed above the nave in the Church.

Fr.Thomas Pilchard was a Jesuit and despite being banished, in 1586 he returned to England and became Chaplain at Chideock Castle where he was concealed. While he was here, he made many converts including William Pike, a carpenter in Chideock. Both were put to death in Dorchester and were beatified, together with Jessop, in 1987.

Blessed John Cornelius was a friend and Chaplain to the Arundells at Chideock Castle. Around Easter 1594, a servant betrayed his presence and he was arrested along with

Thomas Bosgrave, a nephew of Lady Arundell, and two servants, John Carey and Patrick Salmon, all of whom had tried to save Fr. Cornelius. All four were executed at Dorchester on 4th July 1594 and beatified in 1929.

Blessed Hugh Green also became Chaplain to the Arundell family and was martyred in 1642 after being arrested at Lyme Regis as he tried to escape to France. He was beatified in 1929.

More about the history of the shrine and pilgrimages here.

February 5, 1649: The King is Dead; Long Live the King (of Scotland)

2012-02-05T00:01:00.000-08:00

Charles, the Prince of Wales, at age 18, succeeded his father Charles I as king of Scotland on February 5, 1649--that Parliament not accepting the Republican form of government and defying the English Parliament which forbade any succession after the execution of Charles I. Charles II of Scotland had to agree to support the Solemn League and Covenant, which meant supporting the establishment of the Presbyterian Kirk throughout Britain. He did not land in Scotland until June of that year and was not crowned until January of 1651.

He did not get along very well with the Covenanters and his supporters in England regretted his abandonment of the Church of England. Losing the Battle of Worcester when attempting an invasion of England to take the throne on September 3, 1651, he--like his great-great nephew Bonnie Prince Charlie--had to hide and wear a disguise to escape England. He famously hid in the "Royal Oak" in Boscobel Wood, and Father John Huddleston and he escaped discovery at Moseley Old Hall, hiding there in a recusant-era priest hole!

He and his family would live in exile in France until the Restoration of 1660. That Restoration would be remembered every May for many years on Royal Oak Day or Oak Apple Day, while Charles II rewarded Father Huddleston and the others, especially the Penderell brothers of Whiteladies, once he became King of England, Ireland and Scotland. And of course, Father John Huddleston, protected by the King during the Popish Plot, received Charles into the Catholic Church in 1685 (February 6 Old Style).

Blessed John Speed or Spence

2012-02-04T00:15:00.000-08:00

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia: English martyr, executed at Durham, 4 Feb., 1593-4, for assisting the venerable martyr St. John Boste, whom he used to escort from one Catholic house to another. He died with constancy, despising the inducements offered to bring him to conformity. With him was condemned Mrs. Grace Claxton, wife of William Claxton, of the Waterhouse, in the parish of Brancepeth, Durham, at whose house Boste was taken and probably Speed also. She was, however, reprieved on being found to be with child. In 1929, John Speed was beatified by Pope Pius XI as one of the Durham Martyrs. (More about the Durham Martyrs here.)

Re: St. John Boste: Priest and martyr, b. of good Catholic family at Dufton, in Westmoreland, about 1544; d. at Durham, 24 July, 1594. He studied at Queen's College, Oxford, 1569-72, became a Fellow, and was received into the Church at Brome, in Suffolk, in 1576. Resigning his Fellowship in 1580, he went to Reims, where he was ordained priest, 4 March, 1581, and in April was sent to England. He landed at Hartlepool and became a most zealous missioner, so that the persecutors made extraordinary efforts to capture him. At last, after many narrow escapes, he was taken to Waterhouses, the house of William Claxton, near Durham, betrayed by one Eglesfield [or Ecclesfield], 5 July, 1593. The place is still visited by Catholics. From Durham he was conveyed to London, showing himself throughout "resolute, bold, joyful, and pleasant", although terribly racked in the Tower. Sent back to Durham for the July Assizes, 1594, he behaved with undaunted courage and resolution, and induced his fellow-martyr, Bl. George Swalwell [or Swallowell], a convert minister, who had recanted through fear, to repent of his cowardice, absolving him publicly in court. He suffered at Dryburn, outside Durham. He recited the Angelus while mounting the ladder, and was executed with extraordinary brutality; for he was scarcely turned off the ladder when he was cut down, so that he stood on his feet, and in that posture was cruelly butchered alive. An account of his trial and execution was written by an eye-witness, Venerable Christopher Robinson, who suffered martyrdom shortly afterwards at Carlisle.

St. Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertines

2012-02-04T00:09:00.000-08:00

Last year, the UK Catholic Herald featured this saint, "who founded the only distinctively English medieval religious order" in the Twelfth Century in his native Lincolnshire. The article details his path to becoming leader of this order and notes:

"Though the Gilbertines were never richly endowed they continued to flourish until the Reformation. The order, however, died out after being dissolved by Henry VIII. Today it is difficult to find even the church at Sempringham, while virtually nothing remains of the monastic buildings which had once housed 200 nuns." At the time of the Dissolution there were 26 houses, but only four major monasteries. All were handed over to the king without any trouble, and the last prior of Sempringham Abbey, Robert Holgate, became Archbishop of York in 1545, succeeding Edward Lee, whom Henry VIII appointed after the death of Thomas Wolsey.

St. Gilbertine was arrested and imprisoned in 1165, suspected of aiding St. Thomas a Becket as the latter fled from Henry II after the Council at Northampton. He was eventually released. As Alban Butler more poetically states, "During the exile of St. Thomas of Canterbury, he and the other superiors of his Order were accused of having sent him succors abroad. The charge was false; yet the saint chose rather to suffer imprisonment and the danger of the suppression of his Order, than to deny it, lest he should seem to condemn what would have been good and just."

This site discusses the renewal of Gilbertine Spirituality. The photo above, from the Catholic Herald, is of The Abbey Church of St Andrew, Sempringham. This site provides even more detail about the history of the order.

Finally, this site describes the revival of a priory at Chicksands (where St. Thomas a Becket did stop on his way to Pontigny!).

St. Gilbert of Sempringham died on February 4, 1189 when he was almost 106 years old.

Blessed John Nelson, SJ

2012-02-03T00:10:00.000-08:00

John Nelson (1535-1578) became a Jesuit in prison just before he was martyred. A man of bold and unshakeable convictions, he died two years before the English mission began, but he provided the same fearless service to Catholics that Jesuits later lived and died for. The son of Sir Nicholas Nelson, he was born in Yorkshire about 1535. He was firm in his conviction that Catholics should be bold in professing their faith and did not accept the practice of attending Protestant services to avoid penalties. Finally he left England when he was almost 40 and studied at the English College in Douai. His younger brothers Martin and Thomas followed him to Douai. He was ordained a priest at Bynche in June 1576 and set out with four other newly ordained priests the following November to return to England.

Little is known about Father Nelson's ministry except that it lasted only one year before he was arrested on the evening of Dec. 1, 1577 when priest-catchers burst into his residence as he was reading his breviary. They arrested him on suspicion of being a Catholic; but when he was brought before the queen's high commissioners and asked who the head of the Church was, he boldly answered that it was the pope, thus sealing his fate. His trial took place February 1 and featured the comments he made before the commissioners; since he refused to take the oath acknowledging the queen's supremacy in religious matters, he was found guilty of high treason and condemned to be executed as a traitor. Nelson had admired the Jesuits but their mission to England did not begin until two years after his death. He wrote to the French Jesuits asking to be admitted, and they were pleased to accept a priest about to be martyred. He was kept in a foul dungeon--possibly the Pit in the Tower of London--for two days and then dragged to Tyburn to be executed.

He spoke to the crowds, leading the Catholics assembled there in the Credo, the Pater Noster, and the Ave Maria. Then he said, "I die in the unity of the Catholic Church; and for that unity do now most willingly suffer my blood to be shed; therefore, I beseech God . . . to make you, and all others that are not such already, true Catholic men, and both to live and die in the unity of our Holy Mother, the Catholic Roman Church." As he gave his final words to onlookers, asking forgiveness of any he had offended and forgiving his enemies and his executioners, Blessed John Nelson was hanged but then cut down while he was still alive and disembowelled. He was beheaded and quartered with his body parts exhibited on London Bridge and the city gates as a warning.

Blessed John Nelson could definitely be a patron of those who enter the religious life or the priesthood when they are older than the norm. He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1886.

Candlemas, February 2

2012-02-02T00:10:00.000-08:00

Down with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and misletoe;
Down with the holly, ivy, all
Wherewith ye dress'd the Christmas hall;
That so the superstitious find
No one least branch there left behind;
For look, how many leaves there be
Neglected there, maids, trust to me,
So many goblins you shall see. --Robert Herrick, Ceremony on Candlemas Eve
************
Kindle the Christmas brand, and then
Till sunset let it burn ;
Which quench'd, then lay it up again
Till Christmas next return.
Part must be kept wherewith to tend
The Christmas log next year,
And where 'tis safely kept, the fiend
Can do no mischief there.--Robert Herrick, Ceremony on Candlemas Day

February 2, Candlemas, was the day for taking down all the Christmas decorations, the 40th day after Christmas. The Yule Log was also lit and allowed to burn almost away, with some kept to start the next Yule Log.

Liturgically, February 2 is the day of Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary or the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. The Gospel is taken from St. Luke, depicting the ritual offering and the encounters with the priest Simeon and the prophetess Anna. Candles for use at church or in the home for prayer were blessed on Candlemas. More here. And here is a link to the text of St. Robert Southwell's poem on the Presentation.

Another event to mark on February 2nd--Blessed John Henry Newman established the first Oratory of St. Philip Neri in England on that date in 1848. The Birmingham Oratory is celebrating its 164th anniversary today! As I recall from when Father Dennis Corrado from the Brooklyn Oratory visited Newman University last century, Newman's selection of the Congregation of the Oratory after his conversion and training in Rome for the priesthood was led by how similar Oratorian community life was to the life he loved in Oxford at Oriel and at the College in Littlemore. It afforded him the opportunity to work in education and with the laity. Father Corrado recommended Placid Murray's Newman the Oratorian which I then dutifully read: the author emphasized the true development and continuity of Newman's ministry, spirituality, preaching, and teaching in the Oratory and the Catholic Church from his days at the University of Oxford and in the Church of England. Happy anniversary!

St. Henry Morse, SJ--February 1, 1645

2012-02-01T00:16:00.000-08:00

I will be on the Son Rise Morning Show this morning at 7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central, to discuss today's English Catholic martyr. You may listen live here and I will post the podcast when available here.

Philip Caraman, SJ wrote a life of today's English Catholic Martyr titled Henry Morse: Priest of the Plague. The Jesuit Curia in Rome provides this biography:

Henry Morse (1595-1645) was five times arrested for being Catholic and four times was released or escaped. His ability to get out of prison meant that he had a much longer ministry career than most Jesuits in England.

He began his studies at Cambridge then took up the study of law at Barnard's Inn, London; at the same time he became increasingly dissatisfied with the established religion and more convinced of the truth of the Catholic faith. He was received into the Catholic church at the English College at Douai, Flanders, and then returned to England to prepare to enter the seminary that autumn. Port authorities in England asked him to take the oath of allegiance acknowledging the king's supremacy in religious matters. The recent convert refused to do so and was arrested the first time. He was imprisoned four years before being set free in 1618 when the king released hundreds of religious dissenters and exiled them to France. Morse first went to Douai but the English College had too many students, so he was sent to Rome, where studied theology and was ordained in 1623.

Before Morse left Rome, he met the Jesuit superior general and asked to be admitted into the Society; the general said Morse would be admitted as soon as he returned to England. He probably entered the Jesuits in 1624, and spent his novitiate period doing pastoral work in the Newcastle area in northern England. After 18 months of traveling from station to station, he was due to make the month-long Spiritual Exercises to complete his novitiate. He was supposed to do so at Watten, Flanders; but the ship he boarded to take him there was halted in the mouth of the Tyne River so soldiers could search for a priest, possibly disguised as a foreign merchant. They discovered Father Morse instead, although he carried only a rosary. He was arrested the second time and sent to Newcastle's prison. Soon another Jesuit was imprisoned, Father John Robinson, a classmate from Rome, who was on his way to take Morse's place. Both ended up at York Castle, where Robinson directed Morse in the retreat which completed his novitiate. Morse spent three years in prison before he was released and banned from the land. The young Jesuit returned to Flanders and served as chaplain to the English soldiers serving in the Spanish army then in Flanders. He had to give up this work when his health broke; then he became assistant to the novice master.

In 1633 he was again assigned to England to work at the parish of St. Giles in a poor district outside London. While he was there, the city was ravaged by a plague. Several isolated cases were discovered in late 1635, but by mid-April both city and suburbs were afflicted by the dread disease. Morse threw himself into caring for the sick, in the classic Jesuit fashion. He found medicine for the sick, took viaticum to the dying and prepared the dead for burial. His reward for this selfless service was to be arrested a third time when a priest-hunter recognized him and incarcerated him in Newgate Prison. On April 22 he came to trial and ably defended himself, but was convicted anyway although sentence was never passed. He was released on June 17 because of the intervention of Queen Henrietta Marie in recognition of his service to plague victims. He briefly returned to pastoral work, but could no longer move about safely so he returned to the continent and again became chaplain to the soldiers.

He was again assigned to England in 1643, but sent to Cumberland where he was less well-known. This strategy worked for 18 months until he accidentally walked into a group of soldiers late one night. They suspected he was a priest because he was travelling alone, so they arrested him and held him overnight in the home of a local official. Fortunately, the official's wife was Catholic and she helped the Jesuit escape. For six weeks he enjoyed freedom, but then had the extreme bad fortune to knock on a door seeking directions when he was lost. The man who opened the door happened to be one of the soldiers who had recently apprehended him and remembered him well.

There would be no fifth escape. He was moved from local jails to London's Newgate Prison in January 1645 and tried in Old Bailey; his very presence in England proved him guilty of violating the law by coming back after he had been banished. He was quickly found guilty of high treason and condemned to death. Early in the morning of his last day, he celebrated Mass and then was dragged to Tyburn to be executed. He stood on a cart under the gallows and was left hanging when the cart moved away. After he was dead, his body was torn open, his heart removed and his entrails burned. His head was exposed on London bridge and the four sections of his quartered body were mounted on the city's four gates.

His life and death--or the life and death of some of the other English Catholic martyrs, like St. Edmund Campion, especially--should be the subject of a great adventure movie. It would be good to balance out the anti-Catholic offenses of the Cate Blanchett Elizabeth movies, with the murderous Jesuit. Depicting early modern Cambridge, Douai, Rome, St. Giles, and London would be a great challenge, of course! But can't you see the scene of Father Morse knocking at the door and the soldier who'd arrested him opening the door? Imagine him standing in the cart at Tyburn, rope around his neck, saying these words:

"I am come hither to die for my religion. . . . I have a secret which highly concerns His Majesty and Parliament to know. The kingdom of England will never be truly blessed until it returns to the Catholic faith and its subjects are all united in one belief under the Bishop of Rome. . . . I pray my death may be some kind of atonement for the sins of this kingdom."

The Gunpowder Plotters Die, Part Two

2012-01-31T00:11:00.000-08:00

On January 31, 1606, the second group of Gunpowder Plot conspirators were executed: Thomas Wintour, Ambrose Rookwood, Robert Keyes, and Guy Fawkes. From the site I quoted yesterday:

On Friday, 31 January 1606, Fawkes, Thomas Wintour, Ambrose Rookwood and Robert Keyes were taken to the Old Palace Yard at Westminster and hanged, drawn and quartered "in the very place which they had planned to demolish in order to hammer home the message of their wickedness". Thomas Wintour was followed by Rookwood and then by Keyes. Guido, the "romantic caped figure of such evil villainy" came last. A contemporary wrote:

"Last of all came the great devil of all, Guy Fawkes, alias Johnson, who should have put fire to the powder. His body being weak with the torture and sickness he was scarce able to go up the ladder, yet with much ado, by the help of the hangman, went high enough to break his neck by the fall. He made no speech, but with his crosses and idle ceremonies made his end upon the gallows and the block, to the great joy of all the beholders that the land was ended of so wicked a villainy".

Jardine says, "according to the accounts of him, he is not to be regarded as a mercenary ruffian, ready for hire to do any deed of blood; but as a zealot, misled by misguided fanaticism, who was, however, by no means destitute of piety or humanity".

Another of the condemned, Ambrose Rookwood, also escaped the agony of evisceration:

While being dragged to his execution, he asked to be told when they were passing his house in the Strand so he could have one last look at his beloved wife. He cried to Elizabeth 'pray for me, pray for me'. She replied "I will, and be of good courage. Offer thyself wholly to God. I, for my part, do as freely restore thee to God as He gave thee unto me".

At the scaffold, he made a speech where he freely confessed his sin, and asked God to bless the King and his family, that they might 'live long to reign in peace and happiness over this Kingdom', and beseeched God to make the King a Catholic. "The onlookers could scarcely restrain their tears since he had been well known and loved for his exemplary behaviour while he lived". This speech earned him his mercy, as he was hanged until he was almost dead.

The Death of Bonnie Prince Charlie

2012-01-31T00:05:00.000-08:00

According to Theo Aronson in Kings Over the Water: The Saga of the Stuart Pretenders, the Young Pretender, AKA Bonnie Charlie, born Charles Edward Stuart, actually died on the anniversary of his grandfather's execution on January 30, 1788. His death, however, is dated January 31st of that year.

After the defeat at Culloden in '45 and the Holy See's recognition of the House of Hanover after Prince Charles' father died in 1766, the Pretender wandered in Europe, sometimes calling himself the Duke of Albany.

His wife, Princess Louise of Stolberg-Geden, left him in 1780, claiming abuse. He legitimized his daughter Charlotte, born of his mistress Clementine Walkinshaw, in 1783. They stayed together in Rome and Florence until his death in 1788. Prince Charles was first buried in the Cathedral Basilica of St. Peter's in Frascati where his brother was bishop, but then he was moved to St. Peter's Basilica when Henry Cardinal Stuart died in 1807. That's where the Prince Regent, later George IV of the House of Hanover, supported the construction of a monument by Antonio Canova to the three Stuart Pretenders--the threat was gone, after all--commemorating the saga of the Kings over the Water.

The Gunpowder Plotters Die, Part One

2012-01-30T00:36:00.000-08:00

Sir Everard Digby, Robert Wintour, John Grant, and Thomas Bates, four of the surviving Gunpowder Plotters were executed in St. Paul's Churchyard on January 30, 1606. They and the other conspirators had been tried on January 27th in Westminster Hall.

According to this site:

Digby, Robert Wintour, John Grant and Thomas Bates were the first scheduled to be executed. Their executions took place at St. Paul's Churchyard on 30 January 1606. Digby was the first to mount the scaffold, which he did unrepentant. In his speech he had claimed that he 'could not condemn himself of any offense to God' in his motives of the 'ending of the persecution of the Catholics, the good of souls, and the cause of religion', although he freely admitted to offending the laws of the realm, for which he was willing to suffer death, and 'thought nothing too much to suffer for those respects which had moved him to that enterprise.'.

He refused to pray with the preachers, and called on the Catholics in the crowd to pray with him, whereby he "fell to his prayers with such devotion as much moved all the beholders".

He then saluted each nobleman and gentlemen upon the scaffold, in 'so friendly and cheerful manner' that they later said that he seemed 'so free from fear of death' that he could have been taking his leave of them as if he was just going from the Court or out of the city.

Digby was hung only a very short time, and was undoubtedly alive when he went to the quartering block and was disembowelled. Cecil's cousin, Sir Francis Bacon told the story that when the executioner plucked out his heart, and held it up saying, as was the custom "Here is the heart of a traitor", Digby managed to summon up the strength to respond "Thou liest".

Digby, perhaps given his youth and earlier popularity, made quite an impression, as recounted by Gerard:

"He was so much and so generally lamented, and is so much esteemed and praised by all sorts in England, both Catholics and others, although neither side do or can approve this last outrageous and exorbitant attempt...".

More about the other conspirators tomorrow.

Heads Roll on January 30 in 1649 and 1661

2012-01-30T00:11:00.001-08:00

On January 30, 1649, King Charles I was executed in London outside the Banqueting House at Whitehall. Because of the cold, he wore two shirts so that he would not be seen to tremble, which could be interpreted as fear. I blogged about the start of his trial on January 20; this execution was the inevitable result. There are conflicting reports about crowd reaction to his beheading: one mentions a loud groan and people dipping their handkerchiefs in the blood at the scaffold as either relics or mementos. There is also some uncertainty about who the masked executioner was. Soon after his execution, the pamphlet Eikon Basilike (Royal Image) appeared, building up the image of Charles I as martyr for Anglicanism--John Milton wrote Eikonoklastes (The Iconoclast) as a Parliamentary reaction, attempting to destroy that image in popular imagination.

On January 30, 1661, the body of Oliver Cromwell was exhumed from its grave in Westminster Abbey and was posthumously executed by hanging, drawing and quartering as punishment for his crimes of treason and regicide. His body was left hanging at Tyburn and his head displayed outside Westminster Hall until 1685. Other regicides were either hunted or dug up, as the son exacted vengeance.

In London this morning, a service of commemoration is planned at the site of King Charles the Martyr's execution. According to the Society of King Charles the Martyr (SKCM):

Commemoration at the place of the Martyrdom
Noon High Mass with Sermon
Inside the Banqueting House, Whitehall
Celebrant: The Chaplain to SKCM
The Preacher: The Bishop of Richborough
Followed by Veneration of the Relic

The service is held at the site of S.Charles’s martyrdom, The Banqueting House in Whitehall, London. Wreath laying and prayers near the place of the martyrdom are offered at 11.40 a.m. followed by High Mass (sic) and sermon at noon within the Banqueting House itself.

When the 30th January falls on a Sunday it is customary to transfer the observance to the preceding Saturday.

The Society’s relics of S. Charles are placed upon the altar for the Mass and may be venerated and viewed after the service. A choir, usually from King’s College, London sings at the Mass. The Banqueting House is where S. Charles was kept for several hours on the day of his decollation. It is a magnificent setting for the Mass: the architect was Inigo Jones and the ceiling adorned by the great paintings of Rubens. There is an exhibition on the ground floor describing the events of 30th January 1649.

The Society is very grateful to the Royal Palaces Agency for their permission to hold the Mass. Access to the Banqueting House for the commemoration and Mass is free of charge. The costs of the service are considerable and donations gratefully received. SKCM also provides a bookstall after the Mass.

If you wish to attend, here are some travel notes. One of the SKCM's patrons is Lord Nicholas Windsor, who joined the Catholic Church in 2001 and then got married in the Vatican in 20006--he has thus lost his place in the succession (great-grandson of King George V, younger son of the Duke and Duchess of Kent, the latter of which became a Catholic in 1994 with Elizabeth II's approval.

Decollation. That's a fine Latinate term for beheading!

Frederick Oakeley, RIP

2012-01-30T00:11:00.000-08:00

Frederick Oakeley died on January 30, 1880; he is better known for his English translation of Adestes Fideles (O Come All Ye Faithful), but he was a member of the Oxford Movement, friend of W.G. Ward, defender of Newman's Tract 90, and a Catholic convert and priest.

He was born on September 5, 1802 and attended Christ Church at Oxford, becoming a Fellow at Balliol College. He defended W.G. Ward when Ward defended Newman's Tract 90--Ward was removed from his post at Balliol. Oakeley also defended that Tract in which Newman judged that Anglican doctrine was closer to Catholic doctrine than to Protestant, and he lost his living at Margaret Chapel in London.

Thereafter, he joined Newman's community in Littlemore and became Catholic a few weeks after Newman. He studied at St. Edmund's College and was ordained by then Dr. Nicholas Wiseman in 1847.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1911:

"The next thirty-three years were spent as a canon of the Westminister chapter and missionary rector of St. John's, Islington. Short-sighted, small of stature, lame, he exercised a wide influence by his personality, his writings, and the charm of his conversation. His chief works are: Before his conversion: "Aristotelian and Platonic Ethics" (Oxford, 1837); "Whitehall Sermons" (Oxford, 1837-39) "The Subject of Tract XC examined" (London, 1841); "Homilies" (London, 1842); "Life of St. Augustine" (Newman's series, Toovey, 1844). After his conversion: "Practical Sermons" (London, 1848); "The Catholic Florist" (London, 1851); "The Church of the Bible" (London, 1857); "Lyra Liturgica" (London, 1865); "Historical Notes on the Tractarian Movement" (London, 1865); "The Priest on the Mission" (London, 1871)."

New Sunday Series: "Our Lady and the English Martyrs"

2012-01-29T00:16:00.000-08:00

Last year I dedicated quite a few posts to English churches from before the Reformation and the saints and shrines they featured. Now I am changing the Sunday Shrine series to focus on English "RC" churches built after Emancipation and Restoration that are dedicated to or feature shrines to the Catholic Martyrs. I'll start today with a series of posts on churches named for "Our Lady and the English Martyrs" beginning with the parish church of that name in Cambridge, aka OLEM:

The Church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs, or OLEM, is situated in the heart of the city of Cambridge. An imposing example of the 19th Century Gothic Revival, it was built to the designs of Dunn & Hansom of Newcastle between 1885 and 1890, and founded solely by Mrs Yolande Marie Louise Lyne-Stephens, a former ballet dancer at the Paris Opera and Drury Lane, London, and widow of a wealthy banker. She promised to build the church on the feast of Our Lady of the Assumption, and Monsignor Christopher Scott - the first Rector - also wished to commemorate the Catholic Martyrs who died between 1535 and 1681, over thirty of whom had been in residence at the University.

Designed by architects Dunn and Hansom of Newcastle and built by the Cambridge firm of Rattee and Kett , OLEM is constructed in Casterton, Ancaster and Combe Down Stone. The church is a traditional cruciform structure in the early-decorated style with a large tower at the crossing, a polygonal apse and a west bell tower with a 65-metre spire, visible for miles around Cambridge. Quite often, it is quoted by visitors and local residents as a location point. The approximate internal dimensions of the church are: length 48 meters [156 ft] width across the aisles 16 meters [51 ft] width at the transepts 22 meters [71 ft], the height of the nave 15 meters [71ft].

Inside and over the west door stands the figure of Our Lady of the Assumption crowned with lilies and standing on the crescent moon with the vanquished serpent beneath. The west window shows the English Martyrs arranged in two principal groups, the clergy on the south side with St John Fisher in their midst and the laity on the north grouped round St Thomas More. . . .

The aisle windows were almost completely destroyed when the church was struck by a bomb on 1941, but were subsequently replaced in their original form. They epitomise the various sufferings of the English Martyrs, their being brought before the Council, racked, hung, drawn and quartered in the sight and sympathy of the faithful. The windows of the north aisle portray Carthusians, St Thomas Moore (sic), B. Margaret Pole and others, while the south aisle is made a “Fisher Aisle”, devoted to scenes from the life of St John, Cardinal Bishop of Rochester, who in so many important ways is identified with Cambridge.

Here are some photos from a Flickr photographer, focused on the stained glass windows.

Archbishop Chaput's "Render Unto Caesar"

2012-01-29T00:10:00.000-08:00

I belong to a reading group that meets weekly, reading the chosen book aloud and discussing it as we go. We just finished Archbishop Charles J. Chaput's book Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs In Political Life which he wrote while serving the Denver Archdiocese. The book has nothing to do with the topic at hand--but, I found it interesting how Archbishop Chaput referred to historical figures I mention often on this blog, and highlighted in my own book, Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation.

Any book about Church and State will feature Thomas More, and Chaput features Thomas More extensively. He also highlights Bishop John Fisher.

Any book about the rights of religion in the USA will mention Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and Chaput features that great founder also.

Tolkien is the interesting figure and how Chaput works him in is a discussion of how Tolkien's mother Mabel became a Catholic and the very adverse reaction of her family: withdrawing material assistance and love. The Archbishop used her story to depict the cost of following Jesus Christ: "We can't follow Jesus Christ without sharing in his cross."

Reading a book aloud a paragraph (or so) at a time, even with different voices, highlights the rhythm of sentence structure, phraseology, and word choice in an author's prose. I read Supremacy and Survival aloud as I wrote it to hear what I was "saying" and how I was "saying" it. It's a big leap back to ancient times when all reading was aloud--remember how St. Augustine was amazed when St. Ambrose read silently? What reading groups do you belong to, readers, and have you ever participated in a read aloud group?

One Henry Born; Another Henry Dies

2012-01-28T00:16:00.000-08:00

Henry VII was born on January 28, 1457 while Henry VIII died on January 28, 1547.

Henry Tudor, founder of the Tudor Dynasty, was the son of Edmund Tudor the First Earl of Richmond and Margaret Beaufort. His Lancastrian claim to the throne of England was through his mother who was the great granddaughter of John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster. It was a rather tenuous claim, however, since it was maternal and based on a lineage of ancesters who had legitimized by Parliamentary act, since John's children by Kathryn Swynford were born before they were married. Through his father's ancestry, there was the link to Catherine of Valois through her marriage to Owen Tudor. His reputation, based on the joyous young reign of his second son, has been of a dour skinflint who just saved lots of money for that son to waste (per Hoskins). Henry VIII of course began that interpretation by executing his father's unpopular ministers, Empson and Dudley. Nevertheless Henry VII ended the Wars of the Roses, established the new dynasty, developed England's foreign policy; in doing so, he had to destroy any rivals to the throne through fair means or foul, curtail the power of the nobility, and institute unpopular taxes--except that England was ready for a stable central government and thus he succeeded in most of his efforts.

There is a new biography of Henry VII coming out soon: Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England by Thomas Penn, published by Simon and Schuster:

It was 1501. England had been ravaged for decades by conspiracy, violence, murders, coups and countercoups. Through luck, guile and ruthlessness, Henry VII, the first of the Tudor kings, had clambered to the top of the heap—a fugitive with a flimsy claim to England’s throne. For many he remained a usurper, a false king.

But Henry had a crucial asset: his queen and their children, the living embodiment of his hoped-for dynasty. Queen Elizabeth was a member of the House of York. Henry himself was from the House of Lancaster, so between them they united the warring parties that had fought the bloody century-long Wars of the Roses. Now their older son, Arthur, was about to marry a Spanish princess. On a cold November day sixteen-year-old Catherine of Aragon arrived in London for a wedding that would mark a triumphal moment in Henry’s reign.

In this remarkable book, Thomas Penn re-creates the story of the tragic, magnetic Henry VII—a controlling, paranoid, avaricious monarch who was entering the most perilous years of his long reign.

Rich with drama and insight, Winter King is an astonishing story of pageantry, treachery, intrigue and incident—and the fraught, dangerous birth of Tudor England.

Here is an analysis of Henry VIII's legacy and last will and testament from a very popular Tudor blog. The reputation of Henry VIII as a ruler is so bound up in popular imagination with our desire to see people in the past and present be happy (that is, do whatever they want to do) that we sometimes forget Henry VIII's vocation and purpose in life was to be a good king, husband, and father. His sexual and marital life, a la The Tudors, perhaps prevents us from judging his actions in those three roles more objectively. From my point of view, for instance, citing the establishment of the Church of England as an accomplishment of his reign deserves a great deal of qualification. It was not based upon a theological reforming inspiration; it involved horrible destruction and loss of life; it required the establishment of an empire and a tyranny, and Henry VIII died wanting all the consolations of a traditional Catholic death: Masses and prayers, forgiveness and Heaven. By dividing England from the universal Catholic Church and the spiritual and moral authority of the Pope in Rome, Henry ensured that his bequests for spiritual assistance in the afterlife would never be fulfilled. Along the way, in addition to becoming a tyrant to his people, he proved himself a poor model of a husband (treating Katherine of Aragon cruelly and inhumanely and sentencing Anne Boleyn to a unjust death) and of a father (humiliating and threatening Mary; neglecting Elizabeth). As Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury said a few years ago, if Henry VIII gained Heaven it was only through the prayers of one of the holy men he condemned to hideous death--because they opposed his break away from the universal Catholic Church and his claim on ecclesiastical supremacy in establishing the Ecclesiae Anglicanae. [And the fact that the Archbishop of Canterbury would even say such a thing, indicating a belief in salvation through works or even purgation after death, demonstrates again the confused legacy of Henry VIII's Church of England!]

It is also interesting to remember the words of Henry Peto, Observant Franciscan, who warned Henry VIII that dogs would lick his blood after his death, just like the bad King Ahab in the Old Testament: When Henry's body was being brought to Windsor Castle for burial, it rested overnight at the former Syon Abbey:

Syon Abbey had become renowned for its spiritual learning, public preaching and library. It was favoured and visited by King Henry VIII’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon but it got embroiled in the religious turmoil of the King’s divorce and his subsequent action of making himself Supreme Head of the Church in England. The Father Confessor, of the nuns, Richard Reynolds, could not accept the King’s supremacy and was brutally executed in 1535, his body placed on the abbey gateway. He was later canonised as a martyr.

In 1547, King Henry VIII's coffin was brought to Syon on its way to Windsor for burial. It burst open during the night and in the morning dogs were found licking up the remains! This was regarded as a divine judgement for the King's desecration of Syon Abbey.

And the fulfillment of Henry Peto's warning to Henry/Ahab about Anne/Jezebel! I'm sorry, I just don't agree that Henry VIII's establishment of the Church of England was an accomplishment worthy of unmitigated or unreserved praise.

The English Reformation and "Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran School v. EEOC"

2012-01-28T00:10:00.000-08:00

The recent decision from The Supreme Court of the United States of American reversing a Sixth Circuit Court decision was written by Chief Justice Roberts. He cites the history of religious conflict in England from King John and the Magna Carta to Henry VIII and the Act of Supremacy--and beyond, to the colonies of "New England":

Controversy between church and state over religious offices is hardly new. In 1215, the issue was addressed in the very first clause of Magna Carta. There, King John agreed that “the English church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished and its liberties unimpaired.” The King in particular accepted the “freedom of elections,”a right “thought to be of the greatest necessity and importance to the English church.” J. Holt, Magna Carta App. IV, p. 317, cl. 1 (1965).

That freedom in many cases may have been more theoretical than real. See, e.g., W. Warren, Henry II 312(1973) (recounting the writ sent by Henry II to the electorsof a bishopric in Winchester, stating: “I order you to hold a free election, but forbid you to elect anyone but Richard my clerk”). In any event, it did not survive the reign of Henry VIII, even in theory. The Act of Supremacy of 1534, 26 Hen. 8, ch. 1, made the English monarch the supreme head of the Church, and the Act in Restraint of Annates, 25 Hen. 8, ch. 20, passed that same year, gave him the authority to appoint the Church’s high officials. See G. Elton, The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary 331–332 (1960). Various Acts of Uniformity, enacted subsequently, tightened further the government’s grip onthe exercise of religion. See, e.g., Act of Uniformity, 1559,1 Eliz., ch. 2; Act of Uniformity, 1549, 2 & 3 Edw. 6, ch. 1. The Uniformity Act of 1662, for instance, limited service as a minister to those who formally assented to prescribed tenets and pledged to follow the mode of worship set forth in the Book of Common Prayer. Any minister who refusedto make that pledge was “deprived of all his Spiritual Promotions.” Act of Uniformity, 1662, 14 Car. 2, ch. 4.

Seeking to escape the control of the national church, the Puritans fled to New England, where they hoped to elect their own ministers and establish their own modes of worship. See T. Curry, The First Freedoms: Church and State in America to the Passage of the First Amendment 3 (1986); McConnell, The Origins and Historical Understanding of Free Exercise of Religion, 103 Harv. L. Rev.1409, 1422 (1990). William Penn, the Quaker proprietor of what would eventually become Pennsylvania and Delaware, also sought independence from the Church of England. The charter creating the province of Pennsylvania contained no clause establishing a religion. See S. Cobb, The Rise of Religious Liberty in America 440–441 (1970).

Colonists in the South, in contrast, brought the Church of England with them. But even they sometimes chafed at the control exercised by the Crown and its representatives over religious offices. In Virginia, for example, the law vested the governor with the power to induct ministers presented to him by parish vestries, 2 Hening’s Statutes at Large 46 (1642), but the vestries often refused to make such presentations and instead chose ministers on their own. See H. Eckenrode, Separation of Church and State in Virginia 13–19 (1910). Controversies over the selection of ministers also arose in other Colonies with Anglican establishments, including North Carolina. See C. Antieau, A. Downey, & E. Roberts, Freedom from Federal Establishment: Formation and Early History of the First Amendment Religion Clauses 10–11 (1964). There, the royal governor insisted that the right of presentation lay with the Bishop of London, but the colonial assembly enacted laws placing that right in the vestries. Authorities in England intervened, repealing those laws as inconsistent with the rights of the Crown. See id., at 11; Weeks, Church and State in North Carolina, Johns Hopkins U. Studies in Hist. & Pol. Sci., 11th Ser., Nos. 5–6, pp. 29–36 (1893).

It was against this background that the First Amendment was adopted. Familiar with life under the established Church of England, the founding generation sought to foreclose the possibility of a national church. See 1 Annals of Cong. 730–731 (1789) (noting that the Establishment Clause addressed the fear that “one sect might obtain a pre-eminence, or two combine together, and establish a religion to which they would compel others to conform” (remarks of J. Madison)). . . .

Chief Justice Roberts goes on to cite a proof text of the government's non-interference in the naming of church ministers, in connection with the Catholic Church and the firt Archbishop of Baltimore, John Carroll:

The first [example] occurred in 1806, when John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in the United States, solicited the Executive’s opinion on who should be appointed to direct the affairs of the Catholic Church in the territory newly acquired by the Louisiana Purchase. After consulting with President Jefferson, then-Secretary of State Madison responded that the selection of church “functionaries” was an “entirely ecclesiastical” matter left to the Church’s own judgment. Letter from James Madison to Bishop Carroll (Nov. 20, 1806), reprinted in 20 Records of the American Catholic Historical Society 63 (1909). The “scrupulous policy of the Constitution in guarding against a political interference with religious affairs,” Madison explained, prevented the Government from rendering an opinion on the “selection of ecclesiastical individuals.” Id., at 63–64.

It is interesting that Roberts does not cite Maryland and the Lords Baltimore in the paragraph on the Puritans and the Quakers.

Your Own Personal Tour of an Historic Building

2012-01-27T00:12:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth Chadwick, an author of historical fiction set in Medieval England, offers this post on the English Historical Fiction Authors blog about a personal tour she received of the Palace of Westminster. Since she writes about William Wallace, she was attuned to certain things during the tour:

A little while ago, A reader called Mike Pinchen wrote to me to say he'd been enjoying the novels about William Marshal. He also told me that he worked as an usher for Black Rod's department at the House of Lords and that should I ever wish for a bespoke guided tour of the Palace of Westminster, he would be delighted to show me round. How could I refuse? What a wonderful and unique opportunity. I accepted with alacrity and delight. Thank you Mike. What gave the invitation that extra frisson is that 800 years ago, John Marshal - hero of my novel A Place Beyond Courage, was in charge of the King's ushers, and the Marshal always carried a rod of office when on official business. We also know the name of two of the ushers from John Marshal's time - Bonhomme and Ralf. What a connection down the centuries. It gives me a feeling of warmth and pride and security to know that the job still exists. I guess that's what experiencing roots and continuity does for you.

She describes visiting the House of Commons, Westminster Hall, the undercroft chapel, (more images here from another source on flicker) and the House of Lords, and provides photographs of the areas where photography was allowed. It's a very worthwhile post.

Reading it led me to consider what I would really pay attention to and be meditating on when given a personal tour of the Palace of Westminster. In Westminster Hall I would certainly want to find the marker on the floor designating St. Thomas More's trial, but would also remember St. John Fisher and many others tried and convicted there, some later led to martyrdom on Tower Hill or at Tyburn Tree. St. Mary's Undercroft looks absolutely gorgeous and I would enjoy the Gothic glories there, while in the House of Commons again, I would think, not of William Marshal, but of Thomas More withstanding Thomas Cardinal Wosley, or of Charles I entering the House of Commons to arrest certain members of that house who had already fled. Visiting the chapel in the undercroft would also call to mind the Gunpowder Plot and Guy Fawkes's capture while checking on the gunpowder stored in the undercroft to plow up the Houses of Parliament; today is the anniversary of the trials in 1606 of the surviving conspirators in Westminster Hall. Found guilty of treason, they were scheduled to be executed the last two days of January, two cold midwinter mornings.

What would you want to see in the Houses of Parliament? What other historic building would you want to tour with a personal guide?

TRENT AND ALL THAT: Catholic Reformation or Counter Reformation? Or Something Else??

2012-01-26T00:08:00.000-08:00

One of the last purchases on my Eighth Day Books gift certificate from my husband this Christmas is Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era by John W. O'Malley. Previously, I have enjoyed reading his book Four Cultures of the West (prophetic, academic, humanistic, performance/art). Re: this book, Harvard University Press states:

Counter Reformation, Catholic Reformation, the Baroque Age, the Tridentine Age, the Confessional Age: why does Catholicism in the early modern era go by so many names? And what political situations, what religious and cultural prejudices in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gave rise to this confusion? Taking up these questions, John O’Malley works out a remarkable guide to the intellectual and historical developments behind the concepts of Catholic reform, the Counter Reformation, and, in his felicitous term, Early Modern Catholicism. The result is the single best overview of scholarship on Catholicism in early modern Europe, delivered in a pithy, lucid, and entertaining style. Although its subject is fundamental to virtually all other issues relating to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, there is no other book like this in any language.

More than a historiographical review, Trent and All That makes a compelling case for subsuming the present confusion of terminology under the concept of Early Modern Catholicism. The term indicates clearly what this book so eloquently demonstrates: that Early Modern Catholicism was an aspect of early modern history, which it strongly influenced and by which it was itself in large measure determined. As a reviewer commented, O’Malley’s discussion of terminology "opens up a different way of conceiving of the whole history of Catholicism between the Reformation and the French Revolution."

Table of Contents:
Introduction: What’s in a Name?
1. How It All Began
2. Hubert Jedi and the Classic Position
3. England and Italy in Jedin’s Wake
4. France, Germany, and Beyond
Conclusion: There’s Much in a Name
Bibliography
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

The work he highlights in chapter three is H. Outram Evennett's Spirit of the Counter-Reformation, based on his Birkbeck Lectures of 1951 edited by John Bossy, one of Evennett's students and the author of the major study on English Catholicism, The English Catholic Community, 1570-1850 . What both O'Malley and Bossy point out in their evaulation of Evennett's achievement in this book (which has NOT BEEN OUT OF PRINT since publication), is that he was working in a cultural milieu, British academia at the University of Cambridge that of course had not considered the Catholic side of early modern history at all. I read Evennett's book a few years ago while preparing a couple of presentations on the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic/Counter Reformation for my parish's RCIA program.

After tracing the development of the names of what O'Malley calls "the Catholic side" of the religious changes that happened in Europe during the 16th and 17th century, he summarizes their effectiveness and proposes a new name (as of 2001, at least): Early Modern Catholicism. The other terms used: The Counter Reformation (describes the actions taken by the Catholic Church to "counter" the Protestant Reformation; The Catholic Reformation (describes the actions taken by the Catholic Church to address abuses, improve discipline); The Tridentine Age (focuses on the efforts of the Council of Trent); Confessional Catholicism (focuses on the efforts of states and nations to identify themselves politically as Catholic)--each have strengths and weaknesses in attempting to summarize the Church's activities in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The term O'Malley proposes, Early Modern Catholicism, suffers, as he admits, from some vagueness but benefits by comprehending all the other names under its big tent, and other names besides--like the Baroque Era, the Age of Gold in Spain, the Great Century in France, etc. Robert S. Miola uses that term in the title of his great anthology.

Although he uses yet another term for the Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation ("The Reinvention of Catholicism") I thought of Nathan Mitchell's book on the Rosary as I read O'Malley describing how his term Early Modern Catholicism allows much more leeway in discussing people and events that don't fit under the categories claimed in the names listed above: the missionary efforts (including England); the devotional and confraternity movements and new orders founded in the 16th and 17th centuries, like the Oratory; and the role of women, the Ursulines, Mary of Agreda, etc.

Another book that represents that broader reach and uses YET ANOTHER TERM, "Catholic Renewal" also demonstrates the dating issue O'Malley brings up, extending the period from 1540 to 1770, up to Enlightenment times. The second edition added a chapter on "The Catholic Book", which means I need to supplement the edition I already have!

Finally, there is Robert Bireley's book, The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450-1700: A Reassessment of the Counter Reformation published by Catholic University of America Press:

Throughout its history, Christianity has adapted to contemporary society and culture in order to reach people effectively and have an impact on the world. This process often evokes controversy. Certainly this is the case in the current century, and so it was in the sixteenth. Robert Bireley argues that early modern Catholicism, the period known more traditionally as the Counter Reformation, was both shaped by and an active response to the profound changes of the sixteenth century--the growth of the state; economic expansion and social dislocation; European colonialism across the seas; the Renaissance; and, of course, the Protestant Reformation.

Bireley finds that there were two fundamental, contrasting desires that helped shape early modern Catholicism: the desire especially of a lay elite to lead a full Christian life in the world and the widespread desire for order and discipline after the upheavals of the long sixteenth century. He devotes particular attention to new methods of evangelization in the Old World and the New, education at the elementary, secondary, and university levels, the new active religious orders of women as well as men, and the effort to create a spirituality for the Christian living in the world.

This book will be of great value to all those studying the political, social, religious, and cultural history of the period.

What term do you think best describes "the Catholic side" of the 16th and 17th centuries? Please cast your vote in the comment box and tell why:

1) Catholic Counter Reformation
2) Catholic Reformation
3) Tridentine Age
4) Confessional Catholicism
5) Early Modern Catholicism
6) Catholic Renewal or Catholic Refashioning
7) Your Own Term

Tract 90--January 25, 1841

2012-01-25T00:11:00.000-08:00

The last of the Tracts of the Times came out on January 25, 1841 and received a very cold reaction that had nothing to do with the winter weather. The full title of Tract 90 is "Remarks on certain Passages of the Thirty-nine Articles."

In it, Tractarian John Henry Newman examined the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England and argued that they had more in common with Roman Catholicism than with Protestantism: as he noted in the introduction, "while our Prayer Book is acknowledged on all hands to be of Catholic origin, our articles also, the offspring of an uncatholic age, are, through GOD'S good providence, to say the least, not uncatholic, and may be subscribed by those who aim at being catholic in heart and doctrine." Because of Tract 90, the Oxford Movement was effectively shut down; Newman soon retreated to Littlemore. The Tract was condemned and Newman barely escaped censure--it was a good time to leave town!

As he wrote later in the Apologia Pro Vita Sua:

I saw indeed clearly that my place in the Movement was lost; public confidence was at an end; my occupation was gone. It was simply an impossibility that I could say any thing henceforth to good effect, when I had been posted up by the marshal on the buttery-hatch of every College of my University, after the manner of discommoned pastry-cooks, and when in every part of the country and every class of society, through every organ and opportunity of opinion, in newspapers, in periodicals, at meetings, in pulpits, at dinner-tables, in coffee-rooms, in railway carriages, I was denounced as a traitor who had laid his train and was detected in the very act of firing it against the time-honoured Establishment.

When he compiled works from the Tractarian movement in The Via Media of the Anglican Church Illustrated in Lectures, Letters and Tracts Written between 1830 and 1841, then Cardinal Newman explained the background and purpose of the Tract:

THIS Tract was written under the conviction that the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, of which it treated, were, when taken in their letter, so loosely worded, so incomplete in statement, and so ambiguous in their meaning, as to need an authoritative interpretation; and that neither those who drew them up, nor those who imposed them were sufficiently agreed among themselves, or clear and consistent in their theological views individually to be able to supply it.

There was but one authority to whom recourse could be had for such interpretation—the Church Catholic. She had been taught the revealed truth by Christ and His Apostles in the beginning, and had in turn taught it in every age to her faithful children, and would teach it on to the end. And what she taught, all her branches taught; and this the Anglican Church did teach, must teach, if it was a branch of the Church Catholic, otherwise it was not a branch; but a branch it certainly was, for, if it was not a branch, what had we to do with it? And it being a branch, it was the duty of all its members, priests and people, ever to profess what the Universal Church had from the beginning professed, and nothing else, and nothing short of it, that is, what had been held semper et ubique et ab omnibus. Accordingly, it was their plain duty to interpret the Thirty-nine Articles in this one distinct Catholic sense, the sense of the Holy Fathers, of Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine, and of all Doctors and Saints; it being impossible that in any important matters those Articles should diverge from that sense, or resist the interpretation which that sense required, inasmuch as the Divine Lord of the Church watched over all her portions, and would not suffer the Anglican or any portion to commit itself to statements which could not fairly and honestly be made to give forth a Catholic meaning.

And the circumstances under which the Thirty-nine Articles came into existence, favoured this view. Its compilers were not likely knowingly to exclude the possibility of a Catholic interpretation of them. Doubtless they wished to introduce the new doctrine, but it did not follow from that that they wished to exclude those who still held the old. The ambiguity above spoken of, in the instance of men so acute and learned as they were, could only be accounted for by great differences of opinions among themselves, and a wish by means of compromise to include among the subscriptions to their formulary a great variety of the then circulating opinions, of which a moderate quasi-Catholicity was one. This would lead them to the use of words, which in the long-run, as they would consider, would tell in favour of Protestantism, while in the letter and in their first effect they did not enforce it.

It must be added, in corroboration, that, as is well known, the very Convocation which received and passed the Thirty-nine Articles, also enjoined that "preachers should be careful, that they should never teach aught in a sermon, to be religiously held and believed by the people, except that which is agreeable to the doctrine of the Old and New Testaments, and which the Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops have collected from that very doctrine." Could they mean their Thirty-nine Articles to be inconsistent with that patristical literature, which at the same time they made the rule even for the interpretation of inspired Scripture?

This primâ facie view of the Thirty-nine Articles as not excluding a moderate Catholicism (that is, Roman doctrine, as far as it was Catholic) became more cogent, when it was considered that one of these Articles recognized, approved, and appealed to the two Books of "Homilies," as "containing a godly and wholesome doctrine," and by this appeal determined the animus and drift of the Articles to be Catholic. It was evidence of this in two ways, positively and negatively:—positively, inasmuch as the Homilies, though hitherto claimed by the Evangelical party as one of their special weapons against the High Church . . . were found on a closer inspection to take a view more or less favourable to Rome as regards the number of the Sacraments, the Canon of Scripture, the efficacy of penance, and other points; and negatively, because the Homilies for the most part struck, not at certain Roman doctrines and practices, but at their abuse, and therefore, when, once these Homilies were taken as a legitimate comment on the Articles, they suggested that the repudiations of Roman teaching in the Articles were repudiations of it so far as it was abused, not as it was in itself.

Indeed, it may be further asked, if the Articles were not aimed at the abuses, doctrinal and practical, as drawn out in the Homilies, the abuses of times and places, of particular dioceses, schools, preachers, and people, against what could they be directed? Certainly not against any formal doctrines of Rome, call them Catholic or not, for the Tridentine Decrees were not promulgated till 1564, and the Thirty-nine Articles were agreed on in Convocation in 1562.
For these reasons it appeared likely, that when the Articles were carefully handled, little in them would interfere with the liberty of teaching in the Church of England the semper, ubique, et ab omnibus of the Catholic Religion, the unanimous teaching of the Holy Fathers, the present teaching, as far as concordant, of the East and West.

The all-important question followed, whether the Articles, when examined, actually fulfilled this expectation for which there were several good reasons; whether, one by one, they were (as was said at the time) "patient, though not ambitious, of a Catholic interpretation." The Tract which follows made that experiment.

Introduction.
1. Holy Scripture and the Authority of the Church.
2. Justification by Faith only.
3. Works before and after Justification.
4. The Visible Church.
5. General Councils.
6. Purgatory, Pardons, Images, Relics, Invocation of Saints.
7. The Sacraments.
8. Transubstantiation.
9. Masses.
10. Marriage of Clergy.
11. The Homilies.
12. The Bishop of Rome.
Conclusion.

First Jesuit Popish Plot Martyrs

2012-01-24T00:14:00.000-08:00

Blessed William Ireland, SJ (picture) and Blessed John Grove, a Jesuit lay brother, were executed on 24 January 1679, found guilty in Titus Oates' perjured plot:

William Ireland (1636-1679) worked for 10 years in Flanders, waiting to return to his native England. When he was finally able to do so, he served as procurator (responsible for finances) for only one year before he became the first victim of the infamous Titus Oates plot. Ireland studied at the English College at Saint-Omer, Flanders, and entered the Jesuit novitiate at age 19. After studying theology at Liège, he was ordained in 1667. For the next decade he taught at his alma mater and was confessor to the Poor Clares at Gravelines. Finally, he was able to return to England in June 1677 and settled in London where he used the alias "Ironmonger" while he cared for the financial affairs of the Jesuit mission.

Titus Oates was a renegade Anglican minister who hated the Society of Jesus. Along with another minister, Israel Tonge, he invented a story that the English Jesuits planned to assassinate King Charles II, overthrow the government and its established religion and reinstate Catholicism. This fabricated tale raised an angry furor and led to a renewed persecution of Catholics. Among the first to suffer was Father Ireland who was arrested along with Father John Fenwick and their lay assistant, Mr. John Grove. They were imprisoned in the Newgate and burdened with heavy chains that rubbed the flesh on their legs raw. After three months, Ireland and his companions came to trial on Dec. 17, 1678; along with them were Fr. Thomas Whitbread and Thomas Pickering, a Benedictine brother.

At the trial Titus Oates testified that he had been present at a meeting of Jesuits in April that year and listened to plans being made to murder the king. He claimed that Ireland, Fenwick and Grove were present at the meeting, while Whitbread and Pickering had been assigned to carry out the murder. According to Oates, Ireland had been seen loitering about the royal residence during August; an attempt would have already been made but Pickering's pistol failed three times to fire. A second witness agreed with most of the testimony. Ireland had witnesses to prove that he was in the Midlands and North Wales at the time he was alleged to have loitered about the royal palace. To contradict him, Oates bribed a maid to say she had seen him in London at that time. On the basis of the false testimony, Ireland, Grove and Pickering were found guilty of high treason and condemned to be hanged, drawn and quartered. The execution was postponed for a month by royal order because Charles II never believed that the Jesuits were involved in a plot against him. Oates produced more unreliable witnesses and the king allowed the executions to take place out of fear for popular anger.

Ireland and Grove were taken to Tyburn on Jan. 24, 1679. The people of London pelted them with stones and insults as they were dragged to the gallows. They were hanged until dead, and then cut down so their bodies could be drawn and quartered.

They were beatified in 1929 by Pope Pius XI.

Charles Kingsley, RIP

2012-01-23T00:03:00.000-08:00

Charles Kingsley died on January 23, 1875. Clergyman, proponent of "muscular Christianity", novelist (Westward Ho! and Water Babies), and Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge, he also provoked Father John Henry Newman, Oratorian to write his Apologia pro Vita Sua in response to Kingsley's attacks on Newman's honesty--and that of all Catholic priests.

Kingsley had reviewed Froude's History of England in Macmillans Magazine and commented: "truth, for its own sake had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy . . . [and] Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not to be; that cunning is the weapon which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage."

Although Newman contacted Kingsley asking him to point out where and when he had ever said such a thing, Kingsley ignored that question and just offered an apology.

An exchange of letters ensued which resulted in Newman's pamphlet Mr. Kingsley and Dr. Newman: A Correspondence on the Question Whether Dr. Newman Teaches That Truth is No Virtue. Instead of letting the matter drop, Kingsley flailed out in his own pamphlet: "What, Then, Does Dr. Newman Mean?" A Reply to a Pamphlet Lately Published by Dr. Newman. In his pamphlet Kingsley foolishly broadened his charge: not only had Newman made a statement he denied having made and which Kingsley was unable to locate, Newman had also lived a dishonest life. Throughout that text, Kingsley presents one of his main themes (found for instance in his novel Westward, Ho!): that there is something un-English about Catholicism, that the latter is foreign, deceptive, and manipulative--and that somehow becoming Catholic (Romish, Romanist are Kingsley's perferred terms) Newman had betrayed his country, wasted his Oxford education, and ignored the virtues of his English heritage.

Of course the Apologia pro Vita Sua put the lie to that charge, vindicated Newman completely, and made Kingsley look rather ridiculous. Kingsley was not sophisticated enough to face Newman's argument and persona; I remember reading that their verbal duel was like a country bumpkin challenging a trained swordsman, the former armed with a stick, the latter with a fine rapier. By giving Newman the occasion to write about his religious opinions from his youth to his conversion to Catholicism to demonstrate his honesty, Kingsley also gave Newman the opportunity to convince Anglicans who had remained in the Oxford Movement that he had been sincere in his efforts in that cause and to persuade Catholics that he was truly a Catholic, not with one foot in Canterbury and the other in Rome.

St. Vincent Pallotti's London Connection

2012-01-22T00:18:00.000-08:00

Today would be the memorial of St. Vincent Pallotti if t'were not Sunday (I once applied for a position with the Pallotines here in Wichita; the order was setting up an office of their Society of the Catholic Apostolate--I had to write a long essay in which I waxed eloquent, to no avail, on the correspondences between Newman's Oratory and Pallotti's Society), the nineteenth century founder of the Pallotines. He died on January 22, 1850 and was canonized in 1963 by Blessed Pope John XXIII. His London connection?--St. Peter's Italian Church on Clerkenwell Road. According to the parish website:

In the early 19th century the Saffron Hill area of London was a poor neighbourhood of densely populated slum-ridden alleys. By 1850, nearly 2000 Italian immigrants had settled there, chiefly employed as itinerant workers - street musicians, organ-grinders, street vendors or as artisans producing plaster figures, picture-frames, looking-glasses, barometers and other scientific instruments. They worshipped at the Royal Sardinian Chapel, Lincoln's Inn Fields, because they had no church of their own.

In 1845 St. Vincent Pallotti, a RC priest and founder of the S.A.C. (Pallottine Fathers), thought of constructing a church in London for Italian immigrants.
The Irish architect, Sir John Miller-Bryson, modelled the church on the Basilica of San Crisogono in Rome.

Originally it was meant to hold 3,400 people, but the plans were scaled down. It was consecrated as "The Church of St. Peter of all Nations" on 16 April 1863 and, at that time, it was the only church in Britain in the Roman Basilica style.

and

St Vincent Pallotti, the priest asked by Cardinal Wiseman to establish St Peter's, was born in Rome in 1795. His parents Pietro Paolo and Magdalena were the decisive religious influence during his youth. He was ordained priest on the 16th of May 1818. After his ordination, he committed himself to keep alive the Christian faith of the people of Rome. His pastoral presence on all fronts urged him on to become an animator of collaboration among clergy, religious and laity. He held very strongly a belief in the then new concept that every Christian, not just those in the holy orders, has from Jesus a mission for the Church and for the world.

To put this concept into action he founded in 1835 the Union of Catholic Apostolate. This movement brought together priests, monks, nuns and lay people as a community for the common purpose of living and spreading awareness of the Good News to all of the world.

St. Vincent died on the 22nd of January 1850 at the centre of his new community, the church of San Salvatore in Onda, Rome. He was beatified by Pope Pius XII on 22 January 1950, and proclaimed a Saint by Pope John XXIII in January 1963.

Dangerous Time to Come Home

2012-01-22T00:12:00.000-08:00

Bl. William Patenson was martyred on January 22, 1592. Born at Durham, he departed his homeland and studied at Reims before receiving ordination there in 1587. The following year he sailed home and worked to promote the Catholic cause in the dangerous atmosphere of Elizabethan England, arriving in the year of the Spanish Armada and the intense government reaction against English Catholics, including multiple executions. Arrested in 1591, he was tried and condemned for being a priest and was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. During his imprisonment, he converted six other prisoners to the Catholic faith. Pope Pius XI beatified him in 1929.

Arthur Tooth Arrested January 22, 1877

2012-01-22T00:05:00.000-08:00

As John Shelton Reed's Glorious Battle: The Cultural Politics of Victorian Anglo-Catholicism recounts, the Anglo-Catholic ritualists who carried on the work of the Oxford Movement into local parishes and communities often faced tremendous conflict with the hierarchy of the Church of England. As the established church, it was able to use Parliament to pass laws forbidding certain ritualistic practices. The Public Worship Regulation Act of 1874, introduced in Parliament by the Archbishop of Canterbury Archibald Campbell Tait was supported by Queen Victoria and Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, and descried by William Gladstone, future Prime Minister . Among the ritualistic practices condemned by the Act: incense, lighted candles, genuflecting, mixed chalice (water added to the wine), ad orientatem position at the altar (facing East), and wearing vestments.

One Anglican clergyman who fell afoul of this Act was the Reverend Arthur Tooth, Vicar of St. James, Hatcham in South London. He rejected Parliament's authority to pass such an act without the concurrence of the Convocation of Bishops, but soon found himself arrested and imprisoned for such criminal acts -- he also wore a biretta and the choir sung the Agnus Dei! He was arrested on January 22, 1877 after protesting against the law, ignoring Court summons, and enduring riots and other disturbances at Sunday services.

He was only in gaol until February 17 but his health was broken down. He went abroad to recover and returned to find his church locked against him--but he found a way in through a window. Reverend Tooth soon had to retire his living at St. James and went to live in Woodside, Croydon, a borough of London where he continued his work with an orphanage for boys and an order of Anglican religious, the Sisterhood of the Holy Paraclete. He died on March 5, 1931.

In 1906, a Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline formally recognized diversity in worship throughout the Church of England but the law was not repealed until 1965.

Cold January Mornings, January 21, 1586 and 1642

2012-01-21T00:15:00.000-08:00

The facts:
~Blessed Edward Stransham, priest and martyr--A native of Oxford, born about 1554, earning his BA from St. John's College in 1575-76. Then he went to Douai in 1577 and Reims in 1578. Because he was ill he returned to England to recuperate; then went back to Reims in 1579; ordained in 1580. In 1581 he returned to England as a missionary priest, but was still suffering from consumption; he left England in 1583, bringing 12 Oxford converts with him to Reims. After a stay in Paris, he returned to England and was arrested while saying Mass in London in 1585 and executed at Tyburn on January 21, 1586.
~Blessed Nicholas Wheeler (or Woodfen), priest and martyr--Born at Leominster in 1550, he studied for the priesthood in Reims, after ordination he returned to England with Edward Stransham, and was executed with him at Tyburn in 1586. (He is honored at this church in Herefordshire.)

~Saint Alban Roe, OSB, priest and martyr--Born in Suffolk in 1583, after his conversion to Catholicism, he became a Benedictine and was ordained; he was arrested several times during his ministry, and exiled and imprisoned for seventeen years. He was executed at Tyburn in 1642.
~Blessed Thomas Green (Reynolds), priest and martyr--Born under the name Green, he trained at Rheims, Valladolid and Seville; exiled from England once, he returned and spent fourteen years imprisoned until his execution at Tyburn in 1642 at the age of 80.

The significance:
In 1586, Blessed William Freeman witnessed the executions of Stransham and Wheeler. He became a Catholic, went to Reims, was ordained and returned to England as a missionary priest. He was hung, drawn, and quartered for that crime on 13 August 1595in Warwick, after spending some time in Stratford-on-Avon.

Notice, however, that the time Fathers Stransham and Wheeler spent in England was relatively short. Although Stransham traveled back and forth between England and the Continent because of his health (how poorly he must have fared in prison while waiting trial and execution!), he and Wheeler received no second chances once finally captured--during some periods of Elizabeth I's reign, that was the common practice: capture, torture (if some plot was suspected), trial, execution.

St. Alban Roe and Blessed Thomas Green, ministering during the Stuart dynasty, however, received different treatment. They were captured, imprisoned, and exiled, sent back to the Continent--then they returned. Their long final imprisonments were spent in relative "freedom". St. Alban Roe was allowed to leave his cell in the Fleet prison, minister to Catholics, and return at night for lock-up. In 1641 he was transferred to close confinement within the strict Newgate prison and was finally tried in 1642 and found guilty of treason under the statute 27 Eliz c.2 for being a priest. [The authorities really didn't know what to do with him and at trial Roe perplexed the judge so much that he suspended his sentence of execution!] Just before his death, Alban asked the sheriff if his life would be spared if he renounced his Catholic religion and became an Anglican. The sheriff swore he would be spared if he did. Alban then said to all: “See, then, what the crime is for which I am to die, and whether my religion be not my only treason... I wish I had a thousand lives; then would I sacrifice them all for so worthy a cause.” More about him here, on the website of Ampleforth Abbey.

His companion, Blessed Thomas Reynolds (Green) had also been exiled in 1606, during the reign of James I--after the Gunpowder Plot!--but had returned to England to serve Catholics until he was arrested in 1628. He spent fourteen years in prison before his trial and execution. Why the long prison sentences, the relative freedom, the delay in trial and execution? Because Charles I was reigning without Parliament! "When he finally had to recall Parliament and the Long Parliament convened, however, the hangings began again in earnest (20 between 1641 and 1646 including Fr. Alban [and Fr. Reynolds])" Ampleforth Abbey notes.

The situation: (a little Ignatian method here, as I shared yesterday on the Son Rise Morning Show): think of the cold these men endured those January mornings. After all dangers of their missionary efforts, the discomforts of imprisonment, and the anticipation of the horrendously painful and humiliating death they were about to undergo, they were shivering with cold. The hurdles they were tied to, on their backs, bumped and jostled on frozen ground. St. John Roberts, executed in December of 1610, managed to joke about the cold: when someone said he should be wearing a cap, he asked "are you afraid I'll catch a cold?"; when he arrived at the scaffold he saw the fire (which would actually be used to burn his guts) and said "I see you have prepared a hot breakfast for us!" It's clear that the demeanor and steadiness of these four men moved the crowds to empathy--and at least in one case we know of, conversion.

The stories of the English Catholic martyrs--like all the Church's martyrs from Apostolic times until today--never cease to inspire!

BTW, I will post a link to the podcast of my interview yesterday on this facebook page dedicated to The Catholic English Martyrs when it is available.

Priests Holes and Safe Houses

2012-01-21T00:13:00.000-08:00

The blog Laudem Gloriae posted this very well illustrated examination of the construction of "priests holes" in Catholic households where priests, their altar vessels and other sacramentals could be be hidden if pursuivants came hunting:

Under the reign of "Good Queen Bess", a law was passed prohibiting the celebration of Mass, on pain of extradition. On a second offense, the guilty priest would be sentenced to a year in prison, and on the third offense, jailed for life. In some cases, the offending priest would be put to death, usually by hanging, drawing, and quartering. Another law was passed that punished with death any Catholic who should convert a Protestant.

It was during this time that the Jesuit and martyr Nicholas Owen was called on to design and build priest holes in all the great Catholic manses in England. He spent the greater part of his life doing so.

St. Nicholas Owen, a Jesuit lay brother, died under torture when James I's government, further investigating the background of the Gunpowder Plot, sought information about the various hiding places he had constructed:

The Jesuits were taken to London, and Owen was put into Marshalsea Prison before being moved to the Tower to be tortured. The king's men realized they had the only person who knew the location of the hiding places and residences of priests all over the kingdom. They were eager to force him to uncover the Catholic underground, but he was even more firm that he would not betray those whom he had spent so much time protecting. He was tortured on the rack for hours a day, several days in succession but maintained his silence. In frustration the torturers kept adding weight to his feet but went beyond all limits. On March 1 his abdomen burst open and his intestines spilled out. Owen lingered on for one painful day before dying in the early hours of March 2. The rack-master tried to cover his behavior, excessive even under the harsh standards of the day, by saying that the Jesuit had committed suicide. Clever and hard-working in his life, Nicholas Owen remained courageous and faithful in his death.

Son Rise Morning Show Preview of January 21 Blog Post

2012-01-20T00:20:00.000-08:00

While you will have to wait for the unveiling of my post about four Recusant martyrs on January 21 in 1586 and 1642 until tomorrow, you can hear me on the Son Rise Morning Show this morning at 7:45 a.m. Eastern; 6:45 a.m. Central. Brian Patrick and I will discuss these four martyrs: Blessed Edward Stransham, Blessed Nicholas Wheeler, St. Alban Roe, OSB, and Blessed Thomas Reynolds. Please listen live here.

The King on Trial

2012-01-20T00:19:00.000-08:00

The trial of King Charles I began on January 20, 1649--a unique event. Not even King Louis XVI would be tried as monarch in the French Revolution; he was deposed and tried as Louis Capet: and he had defense counsel and knew the charges against him before the trial. Charles' grandmother had been deposed as Queen of Scotland when she was tried, and like him, Mary of Scotland protested against the grounds of the trial. She was not the subject of Elizabeth, Queen of England; she was an anointed and consecrated monarch (and that's why Elizabeth was concerned about the precedent set). How can one Queen commit treason against another Queen?

It's one thing to depose a king and murder him (as happened to Edward II, Richard II, and Henry VI), it's another thing to put him on trial when he is, according to the custom and the law, the source of law and justice in the land. With his high, divine right of kings view of his role in the British polity, Charles I would not recognize the Parliamentary Court and he would not plead or participate in the trial. Luckily for him, they did not sentence him to peinte et dure (pressing until he would plead one way or the other (remember St. Margaret Clitherow). But they did find his lack of plea an admission of guilt. He challenged the legality of the trial and the court on the first day of the proceedings:

I would know by what power I am called hither ... I would know by what authority, I mean lawful; there are many unlawful authorities in the world; thieves and robbers by the high-ways ... Remember, I am your King, your lawful King, and what sins you bring upon your heads, and the judgement of God upon this land. Think well upon it, I say, think well upon it, before you go further from one sin to a greater ... I have a trust committed to me by God, by old and lawful descent, I will not betray it, to answer a new unlawful authority; therefore resolve me that, and you shall hear more of me.

I do stand more for the liberty of my people, than any here that come to be my pretended judges ... I do not come here as submitting to the Court. I will stand as much for the privilege of the House of Commons, rightly understood, as any man here whatsoever: I see no House of Lords here, that may constitute a Parliament ... Let me see a legal authority warranted by the Word of God, the Scriptures, or warranted by the constitutions of the Kingdom, and I will answer.

As this attorney notes,

The trial of King Charles I was, by legal standards, a rather discreditable affair. The "Court" had no legal authority. It was the creature of the power of the army. The King had no advance notice of the charge. No one was appointed to help him with his defence. The court did not even pretend to be impartial. When the King scored a point in argument, the soldiers around the Hall showed where the real power lay. . . .

The King was denied the chance to appeal to a true Parliament, the only body that might have been relevant in his case. His deprivation of liberty, and ultimately of his life, was by the power of a purported Parliament and not by a procedure established by law. He was not informed at the time of his arrest of the charges against him. Indeed, until the trial began, he was not informed of the precise accusations. Nor was he brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorised by law to exercise the judicial power. Instead, he was kept in close custody in successive isolated places of detention whilst his accusers decided what they would do with him. He had no access to a court to invoke the Great Writ to secure his liberty. Although he was treated with courtesy and dignity, he was not treated with humanity. He was kept away from his family, friends and advisers. He was surrounded by guards, informers and pimps engaged by the army for surveillance.

Charles I spoke as much as he could at trial to warn the people that the precedent set by this trial guaranteed further injustices--and the royalists left behind would discover that he was right.

Henry VIII's Last Victim: Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey

2012-01-19T00:15:00.000-08:00

The Earl's father, Thomas Howard, the Third Duke of Norfolk survived just because Henry VIII died before signing the final order for execution. The Earl was executed on January 19, 1547 because Henry VIII feared that he wanted to usurp the throne from Edward, the Duke of Cornwall and Prince of Wales. According to this site:

When Henry VIII's health was failing in 1546, Surrey made the mistake of announcing his opinion of the obviousness of his father becoming Protector to young Prince Edward. The Seymours finally had their day, when Surrey ill-advisedly displayed royal quarterings on his shield. Arrested along with his father on charges of treason, he was imprisoned in the Tower. Several additional claims were made against him, including that he was secretly a papist. Surrey was indicted of high treason in January 1547, despite the lack of any real evidence, condemned, and executed on January 19, 1547 on Tower Hill.

Although the Howard family had been so loyal to the first two Tudor kings, conflict between the Seymour family, especially the brothers of Jane Seymour, the Queen who finally fulfilled Henry VIII's hopes for a male heir, and the Howard family meant trouble for both Thomas and Henry Howard. The Seymours tried to spread rumours that the Howards were opposed to the Dissolution of the Monasteries (although they benefitted from it) and supported the Pilgrimage of Grace (although they fought against it). Henry Howard even spent some timed imprisoned at Windsor Castle after striking a courtier who repeated the slander. Therefore, he wrote a poem contrasting his time in prison to the time he spent there with Henry Fitzroy:

PRISONED IN WINDSOR, HE RECOUNTETH
HIS PLEASURE THERE PASSED.

SO cruel prison how could betide, alas,
As proud Windsor, where I in lust and joy,
With a Kinges son, my childish years did pass,
In greater feast than Priam's sons of Troy.
Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour.
The large green courts, where we were wont to hove,
With eyes cast up into the Maiden's tower,
And easy sighs, such as folk draw in love.
The stately seats, the ladies bright of hue.
The dances short, long tales of great delight;
With words and looks, that tigers could but rue;
Where each of us did plead the other's right.
The palme-play, where, despoiled for the game,
With dazed eyes oft we by gleams of love
Have miss'd the ball, and got sight of our dame,
To bait her eyes, which kept the leads above.
The gravel'd ground, with sleeves tied on the helm,
On foaming horse, with swords and friendly hearts;
With chere, as though one should another whelm,
Where we have fought, and chased oft with darts.
With silver drops the mead yet spread for ruth,
In active games of nimbleness and strength,
Where we did strain, trained with swarms of youth,
Our tender limbs, that yet shot up in length.
The secret groves, which oft we made resound
Of pleasant plaint, and of our ladies' praise;
Recording oft what grace each one had found,
What hope of speed, what dread of long delays.
The wild forest, the clothed holts with green;
With reins availed, and swift y-breathed horse,
With cry of hounds, and merry blasts between,
Where we did chase the fearful hart of force.
The void vales eke, that harbour'd us each night:
Wherewith, alas ! reviveth in my breast
The sweet accord, such sleeps as yet delight;
The pleasant dreams, the quiet bed of rest;
The secret thoughts, imparted with such trust;
The wanton talk, the divers change of play;
The friendship sworn, each promise kept so just,
Wherewith we past the winter night away.
And with this thought the blood forsakes the face;
The tears berain my cheeks of deadly hue:
The which, as soon as sobbing sighs, alas!
Up-supped have, thus I my plaint renew:
'O place of bliss! renewer of my woes!
Give me account, where is my noble fere?
Whom in thy walls thou d[id]st each night enclose;
To other lief; but unto me most dear.'
Echo, alas! that doth my sorrow rue,
Returns thereto a hollow sound of plaint.
Thus I alone, where all my freedom grew,
In prison pine, with bondage and restraint:
And with remembrance of the greater grief,
To banish the less, I find my chief relief.

Along with Sir Thomas Wyatt, Howard was the great developer of the sonnet form in English, and he even wrote a sonnet on the death of his fellow poet:

OF THE DEATH OF SIR THOMAS WYATT.

DIVERS thy death do diversely bemoan :
Some, that in presence of thy livelihed
Lurked, whose breasts envy with hate had swoln,
Yield Cæsar's tears upon Pompeius' head.
Some, that watched with the murd'rer's knife,
With eager thirst to drink thy guiltless blood,
Whose practice brake by happy end of life,
With envious tears to hear thy fame so good.
But I, that knew what harbour'd in that head ;
What virtues rare were tempered in that breast ;
Honour the place that such a jewel bred,
And kiss the ground whereas the corpse doth rest ;
With vapour'd eyes : from whence such streams availe,
As Pyramus did on Thisbe's breast bewail.

Robert Hutchinson traces the career of the Howard family in House of Treason: The Rise and Fall of a Tudor Dynastyand describes the situation at Court in The Last Days of Henry VIII: Conspiracy, Treason and Heresy at the Court of the Dying Tyrant.

Updates on Our Lady of Walsingham Ordinariate in England

2012-01-18T00:17:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, the first Personal Ordinariate established for groups of Anglicans celebrated its first year anniversary. Monsignor Keith Newton announced a new Lenten preparation of groups to enter the Catholic Church around Easter time:

Several new groups of former Anglicans will join the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham this Easter, the head of the ordinariate has said.

In a pastoral letter marking the ordinariate’s first anniversary, Mgr Keith Newton said that he expected several new groups to be received into the Catholic Church through the ordinariate at Easter and that a number of men would be ordained to the priesthood around Pentecost.

The full text of the Ordinary's pastoral letter is here. Also, Once I Was a Clever Boy directs us to some photos from the Evensong and Benediction at St. James, Spanish Place.

More on the US/Canadian Ordinariate and Its Ordinary

2012-01-18T00:16:00.000-08:00

EWTN's National Catholic Register features this interview with Father Jeffrey Steenson, the new Ordinary (like a bishop) for the Ordinariate (like a diocese) of former Anglicans in the United States. The Ordinariate of The Chair of St. Peter will be based in Houston:

The Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham — the first one to be created — was established in the United Kingdom in January of last year. The Chair of St. Peter is the second ordinariate to be erected, though Anglicans in Australia also hope to have an ordinariate established there.

“The establishment of the Personal Ordinariate is a historic moment in the history of the Church,” Father Steenson said. “For perhaps the first time since the Reformation in the 16th century, a corporate structure has been given to assist those who in conscience seek to return to the fold of St. Peter and his successors.”

A former Episcopal bishop who entered the Catholic Church in 2007 and was ordained a Catholic priest in 2009, Father Steenson proclaimed himself to be “mesmerized” by the name of the new ordinariate.

“I am so excited about the title of the ordinariate,” said Father Steenson, “because we who are pilgrims coming into the Church want to embrace this beautiful teaching, the primacy of St. Peter in Rome, where St. Peter sits in his chair and teaches us.”

Speaking in a press call-in from Our Lady of Walsingham Catholic Church in Houston, an Anglican-use parish founded in 1984 that will serve as the principal church of the ordinariate, Father Steenson was flanked by Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston and Bishop Kevin Vann of Forth Worth, Texas.

Bishop Vann is in charge of formation for former Episcopal priests who seek ordination to the Catholic priesthood under Pope John Paul II’s 1982 Pastoral Provision.

The Pastoral Provision was Blessed John Paul II's program for accepting former Episcopalian ministers, who were married, to fulfill vocations in the Catholic priesthood. More on it here, from Our Lady of the Atonement Catholic Church in San Antonio, Texas, whose pastor was ordained under the Pastoral Provision.

Antonio Ghislieri Born January 17, 1504

2012-01-17T00:08:00.000-08:00

Antonio Ghislieri became Pope Pius V in 1566 and died in 1572. According to this site, he

~~was a professor of philosophy and theology for years, and served [the Dominican] order and the Church in several high offices: Provincial Superior; Inquisitor at Corno and Bergamo; Bishop of Sutri and Nepi; cardinal; Grand Inquisitor, Bishop of Mondovi and elected Pope Pius V in a modest ceremony on January 17, 1566, his 62nd birthday.

~~Pope Pius V was a great reformer, committed to eradicating simony, the buying or selling of ecclesiastical pardons or offices, and nepotism from the Roman Curia. To numerous relatives who rushed to Rome with the hope of some privilege, Pope Pius V gave comment that a relative of the pope can consider himself sufficiently rich if he is not indigent.

~~Pope Pius V published the catechism of the Council of Trent and an improved edition of the Missal and Breviary. The Pontiff tried to make Rome truly a holy city and punished immorality severely. The rigid discipline that Pope Pius V imposed on the Church was the constant norm of his own life.

~~Pope Pius V promoted several pastoral reforms in the wake of the Council of Trent: The obligation of residence for bishops, the cloister of religious, celibacy and holiness of life of priests, bishops' pastoral visits, the increase of missions, and the correction of liturgical books.

~~Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I in 1570, an act which heightened the persecution of Catholics in England, but it also did much to strengthen Catholics.*

~~In 1571 a huge Muslim fleet threatened Christendom. Don Juan of Austria led an outnumbered Christian fleet to fight the Muslim navy. Pope Pius V entrusted the Christian fleet to Our Lady.

On October 7, 1571, the Christian fleet won a decisive battle in the Bay of Lepanto. Pope Pius V wished to institute a special feast to honor the Blessed Virgin’s assistance in securing the victory and the safety of Christendom. The feast was to be celebrated on October 7, and Pope Pius V called it the feast day of Our Lady of Victory.

~~A man of great austerity and prayer, Pope Pius V died on May 1, 1572. He suffered much, his prayer was: "Lord increase my pains, but increase my patience too."

He was canonized in 1712. On his feast day, May 5, Romans still gather at his shrine to venerate a great pope and a holy man.

*Last year, a reader chided me for not challenging this statement. Of course, I have posted before on the issues of this Papal bull and discussed it in Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation. Lately, I've been reading a book on Christian England: From the Reformation to the 18th Century by an Anglican author, David L. Edwards; while he still considers Regnans in Excelsis to be a tactical error on the Pope's part, he does note that it made Catholics in England face a choice between the Established Church of England and the universal Catholic Church, between the authority of the monarch in religious matters and the authority of the Pope. Edwards notes that otherwise, the relative ease with which Church Papists were sliding into conformity with the Anglican church would have meant the end of Catholicism in England. So, the Papal Bull did both increase the government persecution of Catholics AND strengthen Catholic resolve to be true to their faith.

Devotion, Destruction, and the English "Deformation"

2012-01-16T00:11:00.000-08:00

The Wall Street Journal featured this online article by Barrymore Laurence Scherer, whom I used to hear make presentations during the Texaco Sponsored Met Opera broadcasts, about an exhibition of medieval alabasters at the Princeton University Art Museum--with a definite connection to the English Deformation, I mean English Reformation:

Medieval luxury came in various materials and forms, alabaster carvings among them, and a new show at the Princeton University Art Museum reveals the intimate beauty and expressiveness of this art. "Object of Devotion" highlights a selection of 60 Medieval English alabaster panels and freestanding sculptures from the vast collection of London's Victoria & Albert Museum. Touring for the first time in North America, these carvings of holy figures and narrative scenes were produced for churches, royal chapels and domestic altars in England and exported to the Continent. And they represent an English industry that thrived from about 1350 to 1530, after which the Protestant Reformation's ban on religious imagery, combined with the Dissolution of the Monasteries in England by King Henry VIII, not only ended the demand for such works but also led to their outright destruction.

According to the museum website:

The dates of the sculptures range from ca. 1370 through 1530, when the Protestant Reformation put an end to the creation of new religious art.

The exhibition draws attention to the “alabastermen,” specialists in the English Midlands, around Nottingham, who sculpted the stone mined there, prized for its high quality. The subjects were chosen to appeal to churchmen, aristocrats, and wealthy non-aristocratic patrons. The relatively small works were assembled to form entire altarpieces recounting the lives of Christ and the Virgin Mary, or used as devotional works dedicated to the most revered saints. The exhibition examines the working methods of the sculptors, the exportation of much of their work to the European continent, and the stylistic evolution and different levels of quality of the sculptures. Object of Devotion also chronicles the abrupt end of the alabaster-carving tradition in England at the time of the Reformation, when works in English churches were defaced or destroyed during outbursts of Protestant iconoclasm and the alabastermen sold off their stock in continental Europe.

Mr. Barrymore Laurence Scherer (I love that name!) likes the exhibition, which will be travelling on after Princeton:

Admittedly, the rendering of the figures may appear somewhat stiff and naive compared to contemporaneous Italian work by Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello and others, yet within their formulas these alabasters often reveal remarkable visual imagination. A panel representing "The Ascension of Christ into Heaven" (c. 1380-1400) features a group of astonished apostles gazing upward as Christ, represented only by his bare feet and lower part of his robe, ascends like the tail of a rocket into a stylized cloud. Similarly, a vigorous "St. Christopher" (c. 1450-80) fords a stream, his toes protruding from the carved band representing the flowing water. While the panel's overall linear carving suggests the crisp style of Albrecht Dürer's woodcuts a few decades later, the simplified planes of the saint's head, torso and drapery seem to anticipate the streamlined neo-classicism of Art Deco half a millennium in the future.

These works often convey considerable human emotion as well, especially those pieces inspired by themes taken not from the Bible but from such popular compendia of saintly lore as Jacobus de Voragine's "The Golden Legend," compiled in the late 13th century. For instance, in a panel of "The Beheading of St. Catherine" carved between 1450 and 1470, the figure of the blindfolded saint is brutally thrust downward toward the chopping block by the executioner's foot, yet the gentleness with which she seems to feel her way is heartrending, recalling the groping for the block of the tender, blindfolded figure in Paul Delaroche's Romantic painting of "The Execution of Lady Jane Grey," one of the 19th-century favorites in London's National Gallery.

Throughout, the exhibition conveys a lively sense of religious belief amongst the people and within the clergy in late-Medieval England while vividly revealing the sophistication of life and commerce that flourished on the sea-girt isle before, during and after the Wars of the Roses.

In addition to the show itself is the beautifully illustrated exhibition catalog, including essays by several eminent scholars in the field and full-page images of the individual works, which deserves to become a popular reference book on this genre of Medieval art.

So, Henry VIII, in addition to plundering the monasteries, executing some of the greatest men in his country, destroyed a livelihood. That fact fits well the picture drawn by W.G. Hoskins in The Age of Plunder.

January 15, 1559 and Today

2012-01-15T00:04:00.000-08:00

On January 15, 1559 Elizabeth Tudor was crowned and anointed Queen of England and Ireland in Westminster Abbey with a ceremony based on that developed for her half-sister Mary Tudor five years or so earlier. There are reports that she left the sanctuary area when the Bishop of Carlisle elevated the Sacred Host and that she did not receive Holy Communion. She was only 25 years old--after the succession of a boy king, too young (legally) to reign, and of a middle aged woman, perhaps too old to reign, her youth must have been very refreshing. Her subjects anticipated her marriage.

Her first Parliament would establish the Via Media of the Church of England while the Convocation of Bishops as constituted by the late Reginald Cardinal Pole, Archbishop of Canterbury, almost to the man, refused to swear the Oaths of Supremacy and Uniformity demanded by it. Elizabeth appointed Matthew Parker, who had been one of her mother's chaplains, as her Archbishop of Canterbury--she was, after all, Supreme Governor of the Church, as determined by Parliament. The bishops, priests and officials at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge who refused to take her oaths and follow his leadership would be deposed from their positions, exiled or imprisoned.

Today, on January 15, 2012, the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham will celebrate its first year: "Monsignor Newton will preside at this commemoration celebration, which has been organised by Fr Christopher Pearson and the Marylebone Ordinariate Group, and to which all are invited.The music for the event has been chosen to reflect some of the familiar repertoire of the Anglican Choral Tradition and will include works by Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, Henry Balfour Gardiner and Sir Edward Elgar." Last year on this date, the Vatican announced the formation of this Ordinariate for groups of Anglicans in England, including entire congregations.

The very church hosting this Evensong & Benediction has a fascinating history: St. James, Spanish Place. The parish website explains the descriptive addition "Spanish Place" to the saint's name:

The visitor to St James's Church is often puzzled to know why a church which stands in George Street, W1, should have derived a kind of secondary title from a street called Spanish Place which can be found opposite the Presbytery door. The explanation is that St James's, Spanish Place, like so many of the older parishes in the Westminster diocese, can trace its origin to the penal times and to the benefactions of a friendly Catholic embassy. And this is perhaps the reason why, despite the magnificence of the church, there is within an atmosphere that breathes our Catholic past.

In the reign of Elizabeth I the Bishops of Ely let their palace and chapel in Ely Place to the Spanish Ambassador, and until the reign of Charles I it was occupied by the representative of the Court of Spain. During this period the chapel was freely used by English Catholics and became a place of sanctuary for them.

A rather fascinating juxtaposition of events--and even location, eh?

J.R.R. Tolkien versus Ivo Andrić?

2012-01-14T01:23:00.000-08:00

Elena Maria Vidal features this story on her Tea at Trianon blog: why the Nobel Prize committee passed on J.R.R. Tolkien and instead chose Ivo Andrić in 1961! Now it seems like a very shortsighted choice, and it was my first reaction too. But when I looked at the life and works of Ivo Andrić it made me think twice:

Ivo Andric was born in the village of Dolac, near Travnik, in 1892. After spending his youth in his native Bosnia, which was at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he studied philosophy at the Universities of Zagreb, Vienna, and Cracow. His studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War, at the beginning of which he was jailed for his anti-Austrian activities. After receiving a doctorate in letters from the University of Graz in 1923, he entered the Yugoslav diplomatic service. The last diplomatic post he held was that of Yugoslav minister in Berlin. When Germany invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, Andric returned to Belgrade and lived there in seclusion throughout the Second World War. He has continued to reside in the Yugoslav capital.

Andric started his literary career as a poet. In 1914 he was one of the contributors to Hrvatska mlada lirika (Young Croatian Lyrics). At the end of the war he published two books of lyrical prose - one of them entitled Nemiri (Anxieties), 1919 - which, written in the form of a diary, reflect Andric's experiences of the war and his imprisonment. There followed a long period in which Andric concentrated on the writing of short stories. His first novella, Put Alije Djerzeleza (The Trip of Alija Djerzelez), published in 1920, early manifests a dominant trait of his creative process. Andric takes his material from the life of Bosnia, but through this local material he presents universal human problems. In the period between the two world wars Andric published three books of short stories under the same title, Pripovetke (Stories), 1924, 1931, 1936.

During the Second World War, in the leisure imposed on him by the circumstances, Andric wrote his three large works, all of which were published in 1945: Na Drini cuprija (The Bridge on the Drina), Travnicka hronika (Bosnian Story), and Gospodjica (The Woman from Sarajevo).

The first two of these works - both of them chronicles rather than novels in the strict sense - deal, like most of Andric's work, with Bosnia and her history. The author describes the life of this region in which East and West have for centuries clashed with their interests and influences, a region whose population is composed of different nationalities and religions. Andric is at his best when he limits himself to his native Bosnia and her people.

In Gospodjica and Nove pripovetke (New Stories), 1948, Andric presented present-day people and problems. He dealt with the psychology of the wealthy, with the war and postwar periods, and with the formation of a new society. But in Prokleta avilija (Devil's Yard), 1954, Andric returned to his favorite milieu and described the experiences of a Bosnian Franciscan, Fra Peter, who is put in an Istanbul jail, being wrongly accused of plotting against Ottoman rule. In 1960 Andric published another collection of stories, Lica (Faces). He has also written several essays, prominent among which is Zapisi o Goji, (Notes on Goya), 1961.

He also wrote a doctoral dissertation on the effects of Turkish rule on Bosnian spirituality; read more about his works here. Here are two of his poems reflecting on his imprisonment in 1914, translated into English:

1914

In the semi-darkness and silence
Night want of dream, day want of peace.
My soul was lightly forgetting
In a wreath of wounds.
But this morning, with the first rays of the sun
Memory squealed with a horrible voice
And the blood gushed from every wound:
They brought me a jug of water
And for the first time, in horror,
I perceived on the dark water
My image, sunken, pale, and evil.
****************************************

A Promenade

This morning they took me out into the sun.

The masts of some ship behind the wall,
good and satisfying sunny minutes,
and nothing else to be seen.
But just the thought that by that same sun
your glowing paths are also lit -

and like the liquid gold of eyesight
the tears followed in a steady stream.
I closed my eyes.

When I returned, i found my cell
dark and damp, and the guard - with his sword
and a consoling face -
thought, the poor thing, that I was weeping for the sun.

Ivo Andric died on March 13, 1975.

Solid Historical Fiction Background

2012-01-14T00:10:00.000-08:00

I have no idea about the quality of this historical novel as fiction (thriller fiction at that), but the author of The Crown, Nancy Bilyeau, has the right idea about the situation of the nuns who were removed from their convents after the Dissolution of the Monasteries:

One spring day in 1539, twenty-six women were forced to leave their home— the only home most had known for their entire adult lives. The women were nuns of the Dominican Order of Dartford Priory, in Kent. The relentless dissolution of the monasteries had finally reached their convent door. Having no choice, Prioress Joan Vane turned the priory over to King Henry VIII, who had broken from Rome.
What the women would do with their lives now was unclear. Because Dartford Priory surrendered to rather than defied the crown, some monies were provided. Lord Privy Seal Thomas Cromwell, the architect of the dissolution that poured over a million pounds into the royal treasury, had devised a pension plan for the displaced monks, friars and nuns. According to John Russell Stowe’s History and Antiquities of Dartford, published in 1844, Prioress Joan received “66 pounds, 13 shillings per annum.” She left Dartford and was not heard from again—it’s thought she lived with a brother.
Sister Elizabeth Exmewe, a younger, less important nun, received a pension of “100 shillings per annum.” This was the amount that most Dartford nuns received. The roaring inflation of the 1540s meant that such a pension would probably not be enough to live on after a few years—but there was never a question of its being adjusted.
Some of the thousands of monks and friars who were turned out of their monasteries in the 1530s became priests or teachers or apothecaries. But nuns—roughly 1,900 of them at the time of the Dissolution--did not have such options. “Those who had relatives sought asylum in the bosom of their own family,” wrote Stowe with 19th century floridity. Marriage was not an option. In 1539, the most conservative noble, the Duke of Norfolk, introduced to Parliament “the Act of Six Articles,” which forbade ex-nuns and monks from marrying. The act, which had the approval of Henry VIII, became law. The king did not want nuns in the priory but he did not want them to marry either. There was literally no place for them in England.

In his historical novels The King's Achievement and By What Authority?, Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson depicts the impact of the Dissolution of the Monasteries on one English family, as Mary Torridon is evicted from her convent in the former and then lives with her sister and brother-in-law in the latter, still praying her office and observing her religious life as much as possible. In my survey of the English Reformation, I also address the fate of these nuns, with their other option of going into exile on the Continent to join convents or establish convents there, in Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation. When I spoke to the Serra Club (a Catholic lay organization that prays for and assists religious vocations) last November, I mentioned that Henry VIII had denied his people a very personal freedom: discerning a religious vocation and fulfilling God's will that one live in a convent or monastery.

"What's Wrong with the World?" Asks the Eighth Day Institute

2012-01-13T00:14:00.000-08:00

With "An Inkling of a Response" from C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, G.K. Chesterton & Co.--while remembering G.K.'s reply to the same question: "I am."

So, while I can't go next week to Fr. Longenecker's conference on English Catholicism in Greenville, South Carolina, I can attend this conference at the end of January here in Wichita, with keynote speaker Ralph Wood from Baylor University:

Ralph C. Wood, University Professor of Theology and Literature at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, holds B.A. and M.A. degrees from Texas A&M University-Commerce, as well as M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago. From 1971-97 he taught on the faculty of Wake Forest University, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he was the John Allen Easley Professor of Religion. At Baylor, he teaches in both the Great Texts program and the Department of Religion. He serves as an editor-at-large for the Christian Century and as a member of the editorial board of the Flannery O’Connor Review.

His major book, first published in 1988 and still in print from the University of Notre Dame Press, is entitled The Comedy of Redemption: Christian Faith and Comic Vision in Four American Novelists (Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, John Updike, and Peter De Vries). He is also the author of Contending for the Faith: The Church’s Engagement with Culture (Baylor, 2003); The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth (Westminster John Knox, 2004); and Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South (Eerdmans, 2004).

Also presenting: Warren Farha, Proprietor of Eighth Day Books, Stan Cox, and my friend Jackie Fremin. If you are in the area, please try to attend.

How I Wish I Could Attend!!

2012-01-13T00:13:00.000-08:00

Father Dwight Longenecker promotes this "English Catholicism Day Conference" to be held at his parish church, Our Lady of the Rosary. Joanna Bogle and Joseph Pearce will be the special guests on Saturday, January 21, in a day-long, packed down and overflowing day of presentations, prayer, and fellowship:

8:30 a.m. - Registration and Refreshments
9:00 - Deacon Ballard - Opening Comments - Why English Catholicism is Important for Americans Today
9:15 - Fr Longenecker - Merry Ole' England - Life in the English Middle Ages
9:45 - Joanna Bogle - Feasts and Seasons - How to Celebrate the Catholic Faith English Style
10:30 - Break
10:45 - Joseph Pearce - The Jolly Prophet - The Importance of G.K. Chesterton Today
11:30 - Fr Longenecker - C.S. Lewis and J.R.R.Tolkien - Conversion and Catholicism
12:00 noon - Lunch - Book Signings
12:45 p.m. - Holy Rosary Before the Image of Our Lady of Walsingham
1:15 - Joseph Pearce - Searching for Shakespeare - Was Shakespeare Catholic?
2:00 - Break
2:15 - Joanna Bogle - Catholicism in Tension - The Catholic Church in Britain Today
3:00 - Plenary Session - Questions
3:15 - Deacon Ballard - Closing Comments
3:30 - Departure
4:00 - Confessions, Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction
5:15 - Parish Vigil Mass

I would really like to attend, but alas, flights, prices, schedules, and life won't allow it! If you are in the area, you really should go.

Richard Challoner, RIP

2012-01-12T00:13:00.001-08:00

Richard Challoner, Vicar Apostolic for the London District in England, died on January 12, 1781. The Vicar Apostolic structure provided support for Catholic priests and laity in Engand in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries until the Restoration of the Hierarchy in 1850.

Born on September 29, 1691, he was raised a Presbyterian until after his father died when his mother became a servant in a Catholic household. Then he was raised Catholic and was baptized when he was thirteen. He entered the English College in Douai in 1705 and remained there until he returned to England in 1730. Challoner was ordained a priest in 1716 and served as an adminstrator at Douai for many years until becoming a missionary priest in London among the poor; although the recusancy laws were not as strictly enforced at that time, Father Challoner was still disguised as a layman and was careful not to attract official attention the the Masses and other Sacraments he celebrated in all kinds of locations.

In 1728 he had published his first work, Think Well on It. William Hyland discusses his many other published works in this Touchstone article.

Among his works, including a revision of the Douai-Rheims Bible and several devotional books, I think his most interesting were the historical and hagiographical efforts--books on the Anglo-Saxon and Medieval saints and especially on the Catholics martyrs who suffered in England from the reign of Henry VIII to that of Charles II. Those works provided the tiny minority of Catholics in England a vision of their past and indeed of its glories. In their own age they were nearly forgotten and quite ignored--not even worth persecuting!

Strangely enough, that latter condition changed after Parliament passed the Catholic Relief Act of 1778. Lord Gordon, President of the Protestant Assocation enraged the mobs so in 1780 that various No Popery riots took place (as recounted in Charles Dickens' Barnaby Rudge), as well as a march on Parliament, leading to many arrests and executions. The mobs also attacked the Embassy buildings of Bavaria and Sardinia, as well as the homes of wealthy noble Catholics. Bishop Challoner, aged 89, had to hide--just like a 16th century priest of old--until the mobs left his London home. The shock and terror of that near escape was too much for him. Bishop Challoner suffered paralysis two days before his death.

He was succeeded as Vicar Apostolic by his Coadjutor James Talbot; the last to hold that title was Nicholas Wiseman, who became the first Archbishop of Westminster in 1850.

St. Aelred of Rievaulx, BFF

2012-01-12T00:13:00.000-08:00

On January 12, 1167, Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx died; therefore, this is his feast day. He was born c. 1110 in Hexham to a priestly family , was educated there and possibly at Durham, and was a courtier of David I, king of Scots, before entering the Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx in the early or mid 1130s. In 1143 Ailred became the first abbot of its daughter house of Revesby in the Lincolnshire Wolds. In 1147 he was elected abbot of Rievaulx, a position he held until his death. Under his rule Rievaulx was a vibrant institution, helping to spread the Cistercian model of momastic life across northern England and beyond.

In his book, Saints and Scholars: Twenty-Five Medieval Portraits, David Knowles comments that St. Aelred of Rievaulx is a "singularly attractive figure whom, thanks to the records left by a disciple and still more to his own writings, we can see as a living man in some completeness. . . . As we read, a corner of the veil that hides the past from us seems to lift . . ."

Among St. Aelred's 13 surviving written works, perhaps the most famous is his treatise on Spiritual Friendship:

"Friendship is that virtue by which spirits are bound by ties of love and sweetness, and out of many are made one. Even the philosophers of this world have ranked friendship not with things casual or transitory but with the virtues which are eternal. Solomon in the Book of Proverbs appears to agree with them when he says: "he that is a friend loves at all times," manifestly declaring that friendship is eternal if it is true friendship; but if it should ever cease to be, then it was not true friendship, even though it seemed to be so."

and

"For spiritual friendship, which we call true, should be desired, not for consideration of any worldly advantage or for any extrinsic cause, but from the dignity of its own nature and the feelings of the human heart, so that its fruition and reward Is nothing other than itself. ... And so spiritual friendship among the just is born of a similarity in life, morals, and pursuits, that is, it is a mutual conformity in matters human and divine united with benevolence and charity."

but remember:

"This type of friendship is not common."

His abbey was, of course, suppressed during Henry VIII's reign, and on 3 December 1538 Abbot Blyton and his twenty-two monks gathered in Rievaulx’s chapter-house for the final time and surrendered their abbey to the royal commissioners. But now the abbey is a National Park, hailed as "one of the most complete and impressive abbeys in Britain" and "one of the most popular visitor attractions in the North"!

Blessed William Carter, Dr. Gregory Martin, and a Cloud of Witnesses

2012-01-11T00:08:00.000-08:00

Today's English Catholic martyr's story reveals some of the debates and conflicts between Catholics during the Elizabethan era. The Jesuits and a group of secular or seminary priests called the Appellants disagreed about the divided loyalties of Catholics in England and what they could do about them. You might remember this was an issue brought up in the recent study of St. Margaret Clitherow's martyrdom. Some thought that Catholics could attend Church of England services sometimes: to be part of the only Christian community openly available to them and to avoid the recusancy fines. They would abstain from the Anglican holy communion, ignore Anglican/Reformed preaching, and remain true to Catholic doctrine, sacraments, and devotions. They would certainly be loyal to their queen Elizabeth I in temporal matters but remain true to the Catholic Church in spiritual and religious matters--except that by attending the Church of England services, they paid manifestly public "lip service" to her governance of the Church of England! The Jesuits and others like St. Margaret Clitherow who agreed with them followed the restrictions of Will in Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma (but without the accent): "With me it's all er nuthin'/Is it all er nuthin' with you?/It cain't be "in between"/It cain't be "now and then"/No half and half romance will do!"

The reason for this background is the title of the book Blessed William Carter printed and for which he was arrested, tortured, and executed: Dr. Gregory Martin's "A Treatise of Schisme: Shewing, that Al Catholikes Ought in Any Wise to Abstaine Altogether From Heretical Conunenticles, to Witt, Their Prayers, Sermons, &c". According to wikipedia, Dr. Gregory Martin (c. 1542 to 28 October 1582)

was an English Catholic scholar, the translator of the Douai Version of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate. In preparing the translation he was assisted by several of the other scholars then living in the English College, Douai, but Gregory Martin made the whole translation in the first instance and bore the brunt of the work throughout.

He was born in Maxfield, parish of Guestling, near Winchelsea, in Sussex, and entered as one of the original scholars of St. John's College, Oxford, in 1557. Among those who entered at the beginning was Edmund Campion, the Jesuit martyr; at this period of his life, he conformed to the Established Anglican Church, and was ordained as a deacon. Gregory Martin was his close friend throughout his Oxford days, and himself remained a Catholic. When he found it necessary to quit the university, he was tutor in the family of the Duke of Norfolk, where he had among his pupils Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, also subsequently martyred. During his residence with the Duke, Martin wrote to Campion, warning him that he was being led away into danger by his ambition, and begging him to leave Oxford. It is said that it was in great measure due to this advice that Campion migrated to Dublin in 1570, and accepted a post in the university there.

In the meantime, Gregory Martin left the house of the Duke of Norfolk, and crossing the seas, presented himself at Dr. Allen's College at Douai as a candidate for the priesthood, in 1570. During his early days there, he wrote once more to Campion, and they met at Douai, Campion was now a professed Catholic, and he received minor orders and the subdiaconate, after which he proceeded to Rome and eventually entered the Society of Jesus. Having finished his theology, Gregory Martin was ordained priest in March, 1573. Three years later he went to Rome to assist Allen in the foundation of the English College there, known by the title of the "Venerabile".

Martin remained two years, during which time he organized the course of studies at the new college; when he was recalled by Allen to Reims, where the college had moved from Douai in consequence of political troubles. Martin and Campion met for the last time, when the latter made a short stay at Reims in the summer of 1580, on his way to the English Mission. It was during the four years after his return from Rome that Gregory Martin's settled to a Catholic translation of the Bible. The Reformers continually quoted their versions; Allen wanted to meet them on their own ground. He determined to attempt the work at his college, and deputed Martin to undertake the translation. Thomas Worthington, Richard Bristowe, William Rainolds, and Allen himself were to assist in revising the text and preparing suitable notes to the passages which were most used by the Protestants. It was accuracy of rendering which was chiefly needed by the controversial exigencies of the day.

Martin's translation was made from the Vulgate, and is full of Latinisms, so that it has little of the rhythmic harmony of the Anglican Authorized Version: but in accuracy and scholarship, it was superior to the English versions which had preceded it, and it is understood to have had influence on the translators of King James's Version. In many cases in which they did not follow the Douai, the editors of the Revised Version have upheld Martin's translation. The Reims New Testament first appeared in 1582. The Old Testament was not published till more than a quarter of a century later. This, however, was solely due to want of funds. It was not called for with such urgency, and its publication was put off from year to year. But it was all prepared at the same time as the New Testament, and by the same editors. Martin was found to be in consumption. In the hope of saving his life, Allen sent him to Paris, but the disease was past cure. He returned to Reims to die, and he was buried in the parish church of St. Stephen. Allen preached the funeral discourse, and erercted a long Latin inscription on the tomb of his friend.

The following is a list of Martin's works:
"Treatise of Schisme" (Douai, 1578)
"Discovery of the Manifold Corruptions of the Holy Scripture by the Heretikes of our Daies" (Reims, 1582)
Reims Testament and Douay Bible
"Treatise of Christian Peregrination" (Reims, 1583)
"Of the Love of the Soul" (St. Omer, 1603)
"Gregorius Martinus ad Adolphum Mekerchum pro veteri et vera Græcarum Literarum Pronunciatione" (Oxford, 1712)

Today's martyr, Blessed William Carter was born in London, 1548; suffered for treason at Tyburn on 11 January 1584. Son of John Carter, a draper, and Agnes, his wife, he was apprenticed to John Cawood, queen's printer, on Candlemas Day, 1563, for ten years, and afterwards acted as secretary to Nicholas Harpsfield, last Catholic archdeacon of Canterbury, then a prisoner. Note that Harpsfield wrote an early biography of Thomas More, left England during the reign of Edward VI for Louvain, returned during the reign of Mary I and participated in heresy trials, and finally, opposed the ordination of Matthew Parker as Archbishop of Canterbury, for which he was imprisoned in the Fleet with his brother John. Therefore, William Carter was very brave, associating with an imprisoned cleric who had refused the Oath of Supremacy!

When Harpsfield died (after release from prison on grounds of ill health) Carter married and set up a press on Tower Hill. Among other Catholic books he printed a new edition (1000 copies) of Dr. Gregory Martin's "A Treatise of Schisme", in 1580, for which he was at once arrested and imprisoned in the Gatehouse. Before this he had been in the Poultry Compter--a small prison run by a Sheriff in the City of London--from 23 September to 28 October 1578. He was transferred to the Tower, 1582, and paid for his own diet there down to midsummer, 1583. Having been tortured on the rack, he was indicted at the Old Bailey--the central criminal court in England—on 10 January 1584, for having printed Dr. Martin's book, in which was a paragraph where confidence was expressed that the Catholic Hope would triumph, and a pious Judith would slay Holofernes. This was interpreted as an incitement to slay the queen. His wife died while he was in prison.

He was beatified in 1987 by Blessed Pope John Paul II.

Printing 1000 copies of Martin's book?--that seems a considerable press run. Evidently he knew there were customers for that book. Carter was a well-to-do man, as he was able to pay for his room and board in prison for perhaps a year. The government tortured him to discover names of any "Judiths" out there ready to behead "Holofernes"--if they had found any evidence of a conspiracy they would have used better evidence than the interpretation of a certain line in a book! But that was the atmosphere of fear and suspicion at that time.

"Once I Was a Clever Boy" on Archbishop Laud

2012-01-10T00:28:00.000-08:00

John Whitehead on this blog discusses execution of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury on January 10, 1645:

Archbishop William Laud was judicially murderd by the Long Parliament on January 10th 1645. It is in no way unreasonble to see him as a martyr, although officially the Church of England has never recognised him as such - I don't think he made it to the rather curious calendar contained in Common Worship in 2000. [N.B.: St. Mary's the Virgin at Oxford did include him on the plaque honoring the "Reformation" martyrs, Catholic, Puritan, and Anglican.]

He has, of course, always been esteemed by High Anglicans. Whether he can really be classed as an Anglo-Catholic is open to debate. I think he is more what one would term a High Anglican or a Catholic Anglican, and believed in the branch theory. His Arminian (if that is what it was) base does not, I think, quite follow on from the Elizabethan Church Papists, although I am not sufficiently versed in the subject to make a definite assertion as to the influences that formed him. He did of, of course, belong to St John's College, here in Oxford, which had strong Papistical inclinations stemming from its founder Sir Thomas White. . . .

Lord "Power Corrupts" Acton Born

2012-01-10T00:13:00.000-08:00

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton was born on 10 January 1834--much of what I know of Lord Acton is in his connections with John Henry Newman, The Rambler magazine, and the issues of Papal Infallibility at the First Vatican Council. He was very much opposed to ultramontanism, with its emphasis on the authority and the powers of the Pontiff. Acton always opposed the centralization of power, it seems--even supporting the Confederacy over the Union in the American Civil War for the sake of states' rights.

(I know he did not say that "power corrupts" but that "power tends to corrupt".)

Lord Acton seems to have been such a brilliant and knowledgable historian that he was not able really to write a sustained work that matched his genius, at least according to Hugh Chisholm: "Lord Acton has left too little completed original work to rank among the great historians; his very learning seems to have stood in his way; he knew too much and his literary conscience was too acute for him to write easily, and his copiousness of information overloads his literary style. But he was one of the most deeply learned men of his time, and he will certainly be remembered for his influence on others."

The Acton Institute provides some interesting links to works by and about Lord Acton here, including his great unfinished work on the History of Freedom.

BBC History Magazine's Reader Book Club

2012-01-09T00:15:00.000-08:00

You might recall that I've blogged several times about Mary I biographies (see here and here), including the most recent (via the Mary Tudor, Renaissance Queen blog).

Here is an on-line feature from BBC's History Magazine: a Reader Book Club in which readers ask the author questions about his or her book. This month's subject: Mary I: England’s Catholic Queen by John Edward of the University of Oxford. The readers ask questions ranging from why he wrote about Mary I to speculating how history would have viewed her differently if she had lived longer. Nice feature!

Bethlehem of Noblest Cities

2012-01-08T08:53:00.001-08:00

We just sang this hymn at Mass this morning, translated by Father Edward Caswall of the Birmingham Oratory from the poem by Prudentius:

Bethlehem, of noblest cities
None can once with thee compare;
Thou alone the Lord from heaven
Didst for us Incarnate bear.

Fairer than the sun at morning
Was the star that told his birth;
To the lands their God announcing,
Hid beneath a form of earth.

By its lambent beauty guided,
See, the Eastern Kings appear;
See them bend, their gifts to offer,—
Gifts of incense, gold, and myrrh.

Offerings of mystick meaning!— 1
Incense doth the God disclose;
Gold a Royal child proclaimeth;
Myrrh a future tomb foreshows.

Holy Jesu! in thy brightness
To the Gentile world display’d!
With the Father, and the Spirit,
Endless praise to Thee be paid.

Happy Feast of the Epiphany, transferred! (At the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite Mass today, we celebrated the Feast of the Holy Family!)

Blessed Edward Waterson, World traveler and martyr

2012-01-08T00:17:00.000-08:00

As a young man Edward travelled to Turkey with some English merchants. There he met and was befriended by a wealthy Turk who liked Edward so much that he offered his daughter in marriage if the Englishman would convert to Islam. Edward declined, but the incident set his mind on spiritual matters. The route home ran through Rome, Italy and Edward converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism in 1588. He visited the English College in Rome from 29 November-11 December, 1588. Entered the seminary at Rheims, France on 24 January 1589, received the tonsure and minor orders on 18 August 1590, subdiaconate on 21 September 1591, diaconate on 24 February 1592, and was ordained a priest on 11 March 1592. Returned to England on 24 June 1592 to minister to his countrymen in hiding for their faith. Arrested for the crime of priesthood soon after, he was abused in prison for several months before being martyred.

He was hanged, drawn, and quartered on 8 January 1593 at Newcastle-on-Tyne in northeast England, and there are some interesting details about his execution: the prison horses refused to drag Edward on the hurdle to the scaffold and when the guards finally got him there, the ladder jumped around to keep them from climbing it until Edward made the Sign of the Cross over it. Father Waterson was beatified on 15 December 1929 by Pope Pius XI.

Reading his story made me think of Thomas Costain's historical novel--I read all his Costain's books when I was growing up--The Black Rose, with the 13th-century protagonist Walter of Gurnie studying with Roger Bacon at Oxford and traveling in the East. Walter and his friend Tristam even meet a Nestorian priest during their journeys! As exciting as I thought that story was years ago, this martyr's adventures and sufferings are much more moving to me today.

Blessed Edward Waterson's intrepidness as a world traveler and his faithfulness to Christ served and prepared him well for his efforts as a missionary in England.

The Death of Katherine of Aragon

2012-01-07T00:14:00.000-08:00

In the months before the death of Katherine of Aragon on January 7, 1536, both she and Mary her daughter had been very ill. They were both feeling the pressure of Henry VIII's anger and frustration with them because they were not cooperating with him. Cromwell told Mary that the very fact that she and Katherine of Aragon were alive was detrimental to Henry's relationships to foreign princes. She and Katherine were warned constantly against using the titles Princess or Queen for one another--the Princess Elizabeth and Queen Anne Boleyn owned those titles.

News of the executions of both John Fisher and Thomas More in June and July 1535 led mother and daughter to write to the Holy Father and the Holy Roman Emperor respectively, imploring them to do something about the religious changes Henry was making.

When Mary became so ill that Henry sent his own physician to care for her, Katherine begged him to send Mary to her, so she could care for her daughter--after all, they shared some of the same symptoms, sorrow and heartache. Henry refused.

When it became clear that Katherine was also very ill, perhaps near death, Katherine again begged him to let her see Mary one last time. Again, Henry refused.

Katherine died after speaking with Eustace Chapuys, Charles V's ambassador and delivering a heartfelt letter of love to her estranged husband. Henry and Anne responded by at first rejoicing at her death, wearing yellow, dining and dancing. He was relieved that the threat of war was lessened with her death.

Mary was not told of her mother's death until four days had passed. Katherine was buried in Peterborough Cathedral with a service befitting a Dowager Princess of Wales. Henry did not allow Mary to attend the funeral Mass either. Her tomb was upgraded with the marker "Katherine Queen of England" during the reign of George V.

May she rest in peace.

Peterborough Cathedral is planning its annual Katherine of Aragon Festival, to be held at the end of this month--more information here.

Newman Sermon: The SEASON of Epiphany

2012-01-06T00:11:00.000-08:00

The verse for this sermon is, "This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth His glory; and His disciples believed on Him." John ii. 11.--

THE Epiphany is a season especially set apart for adoring the glory of Christ. The word may be taken to mean the manifestation of His glory, and leads us to the contemplation of Him as a King upon His throne in the midst of His court, with His servants around Him, and His guards in attendance. At Christmas we commemorate His grace; and in Lent His temptation; and on Good Friday His sufferings and death; and on Easter Day His victory; and on Holy Thursday His return to the Father; and in Advent we anticipate His second coming. And in all of these seasons He does something, or suffers something: but in the Epiphany and the weeks after it, we celebrate Him, not as on His field of battle, or in His solitary retreat, but as an august and glorious King; we view Him as the Object of our worship. Then only, during His {75} whole earthly history, did He fulfil the type of Solomon, and held (as I may say) a court, and received the homage of His subjects; viz. when He was an infant. His throne was His undefiled Mother's arms; His chamber of state was a cottage or a cave; the worshippers were the wise men of the East, and they brought presents, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. All around and about Him seemed of earth, except to the eye of faith; one note alone had He of Divinity. As great men of this world are often plainly dressed, and look like other men, all but as having some one costly ornament on their breast or on their brow; so the Son of Mary in His lowly dwelling, and in an infant's form, was declared to be the Son of God Most High, the Father of Ages, and the Prince of Peace, by His star; a wonderful appearance which had guided the wise men all the way from the East, even unto Bethlehem.

This being the character of this Sacred Season, our services throughout it, as far as they are proper to it, are full of the image of a king in his royal court, of a sovereign surrounded by subjects, of a glorious prince upon a throne. There is no thought of war, or of strife, or of suffering, or of triumph, or of vengeance connected with the Epiphany, but of august majesty, of power, of prosperity, of splendour, of serenity, of benignity. Now, if at any time, it is fit to say, "The Lord is in His holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before Him." [Hab. ii. 20.] {76} "The Lord sitteth above the waterflood, and the Lord remaineth a king for ever." "The Lord of Hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge." "O come, let us worship, and fall down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker." "O magnify the Lord our God, and fall down before His footstool, for He is Holy." "O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness; bring presents, and come into His courts."

Blessed John Henry Newman is here reflecting on the manifestations of Jesus: to the Magi; at His Baptism in the Jordan River, and at the Marriage Feast of Cana. The Feast of Epiphany has been moved to Sunday in the Ordinary Latin Rite calendar; otherwise it is celebrated as the 12th day after Christmas--"Twelfth Night", the last burst of festivity before the return of workaday efforts.

Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves Wed

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On January 6, 1540 Henry VIII married his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves on the Feast of the Epiphany. He had misgivings about this marital arrangement--largely because of Anne's appearance and would soon turn his wrath on Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex who had arranged the marriage.

Anne of Cleves survived the marriage, while the Earl of Essex did not. Henry named Thomas Cromwell Earl of Essex in April of 1540 and by June of the same year he had him arrested and confined in the Tower of London. Cromwell survived only as long as the marriage, which was annulled in July of 1540 so Henry could marry Catherine Howard.

Book Review: The She-Apostle by Glyn Redworth

2012-01-05T00:16:00.000-08:00

Book Description by OUP: Before dawn one morning in June 1612, an elderly Frenchman took charge of a carriage carrying a precious cargo near Tyburn Fields, London's notorious place of execution. It was heading for a house in Spitalfields, where a wizened Spanish woman was waiting to receive the mortal remains of freshly-martyred Catholic priests. Her name was Luisa de Carvajal and this book tells her story.
Born into a great Spanish noble family, Luisa suffered a horribly abusive childhood and from her early years hankered to become a martyr for her faith. For almost 20 years she struggled to become possibly the first female missionary of modern times. In 1605 - the year of the Gunpowder Plot - she was secreted into England by the Jesuits, despite the fact that she spoke not a word of English. To everyone's surprise including her own, she steadily assumed a prominent role within London's underground Catholic community, setting up an unofficial nunnery, offering Roman priests a secure place to live, consoling prisoners awaiting execution, importing banned books, and helping persecuted Catholics to flee abroad. Throughout this time she ran the grave risk of imprisonment and execution, yet she miraculously managed to avoid this ultimate fate in spite of being arrested on a number of occasions. This vividly written biography, the first to give equal treatment to her double life in Spain and England, is based on Luisa's own autobiographical writings, her sparkling collection of poems and letters, and the detailed reminiscences by dozens of people who worked with her. In parts humorous, the book contains Luisa's biting descriptions of the cost of living in Shakespeare's London, the poor quality of food in the capital, as well as the weekend rowdiness of the English.

Features
~The only full life of Luisa de Carvajal, possibly the first female missionary of modern times
~An intriguing tale of the abused child who dreamt of martrydom for the Catholic cause and smuggled herself into England in the year of the Gunpowder Plot
~Tells the story of her courageous intrigues on behalf of the Catholic cause in Protestant England - from distributing banned books to preserving and distributing the bodily remains of executed priests
~A unique insight into the singular life of a determinedly independent woman in a man's world

The Author: Glyn Redworth taught at Oxford University for several years and was a research fellow at Christ Church before moving to the University of Manchester. Closely associated with the Institute of History in Madrid, he has spent several years in Spain researching Luisa's life. He has published widely on sixteenth and early seventeenth century religious and political history, including In Defence of the Church Catholic: The Life of Stephen Gardiner and The Prince and the Infanta: The Cultural Politics of the Spanish Match. The author discusses some parallels between Luisa de Carvajal and Mother Teresa of Calcutta here.

Contents:
List of Plates (29)
Picture Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Last House in London
1. A Carvajal and a Mendoza
2. Blessed Discipline
3. Toledo Street
4. "Sweet Manacles"
5. New Ways of Living
6. Generation of Vipers
7. The She-Apostle
8. Most Extraordinary Journey
9. Treason and Plot
10. Carrots, Capons, and Plague
11. Grand India
12. Sovereign Virgin
13. Broken English
14. Fashionable and Modest
15. Pears and The Last Supper
16. Oran
17. The Siege of Spitalfields
Afterword
Appendix: Three Poems
Note on Sources
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index

My review/comments--Redworth clarified some aspects of the relationship between James I as King of England and the Catholics of England. I knew that his government's pattern of persecution was tied to his diplomatic goals of peace and alliance with Spain. Redworth also demonstrated how James' fear of assassination, fostered by the Gunpowder Plot attempt to blow up Parliament and then by the murder of King Henri IV of France, led to greater efforts to find, arrest, and execute Jesuit priests. James I was also disappointed in ther negative response to the Oath of Allegiance he thought quite reasonable, and was infuriated by Catholic theologians like Bellarmine and Suarez who idenfitied kingly power as coming from the consent of the governed--which was in drastic conflict with James's idea that he reigned by Divine Right.

As to the subject of the biography: Luisa de Carvajal reminded me of Venerable Mary Ward, the English Catholic who attempted to establish an active order for women modeled on the Society of Jesus. On a small scale, de Carvajal succeeded where Ward failed, perhaps because of her position in Spanish society. The back cover of my paperback edition refers to her as a "martyr manque" but Redworth presents evidence that she could be considered a martyr--as her final illness might have been brought about by her imprisonment in 1614, when she was only 48 years old. I suppose an argument against that position is that she had been ill for years (which only makes her efforts and her endurance more remarkable). I admit that I never really warmed to her character, which seems to have been more than a little manipulative, but de Carvajal certainly had a great regard for the Catholic priests and martyrs working in England. She persevered in her goals to their attainment, whether hampered by her brother's demands for settlement of their inheritance, personality conflicts within her community, or official discouragement of her efforts to live and work in London as a Catholic missionary and a contact for imprisoned priests. The one part of the book I could not fathom was the description of the torture meted out to her as a young girl by her uncle and guardian; even more disturbing was her reaction to it (Redworth is definitely disturbed by it too). Excellent resources, including plates, notes, and bibliography.

Blessed Thomas Plumtree, 1570 Martyr

2012-01-04T00:19:00.000-08:00

Blessed Thomas Plumtree, formerly of Corpus Christi College at Oxford, served as chaplain to the Northern Rising of Thomas Percy, Earl of Northumberland and Charles Neville, Earl of Westmoreland. He officiated at the Mass in Durham Cathedral on December 4, at which clergy and people who had conformed to the new religion were reconciled to the old faith. With the establishment of the Church of England at the beginning of Elizabeth I's reign, Father Plumtree had been forced first from his rectorship at Stubton and then from his role as schoolmaster by the requirements of the Oath of Supremacy, etc. He was charged with having said Mass and offered freedom if he renounced his Catholicism, on the scaffold in the Durham Castle marketplace!--which he refused. Pope Leo XIII declared him a martyr and beatified him in 1886. The Catholic Church of St. Cuthbert in Durham mentions him in the history of their church.

For more information about the Northern Rising, see my review of a recent study of the rebellion.

Something to Look Forward To: A New Book by Eamon Duffy

2012-01-03T00:16:00.000-08:00

Continuum will publish Eamon Duffy's Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition: Religion and Conflict in the Tudor Reformations in July, 2012:

For the first time, Professor Eamon Duffy publishes a book on the broad sweep of the English Reformation. Once again he emphasises the importance of a study of Late Medieval religion and society for an understanding of the Reformation, he rescues Mary Tudor and Cardinal Pole from their detractors but shows once again his brilliance at understanding the effect of the Reformation on the population at large and the common man. Duffy writes at all times with grace, elegance and wit as he sees through the prejudices and myths of other Reformation scholars and demonstrates that the truth is never pure nor simple. This is revisionist history at its very best.

Table of Contents: I. Reformation Unravelled \ Introduction \ 1. Reformation, Counter-reformation and the English nation \ 2. Reformation Unravelled: Facts and Fictions \ II. The Material Culture of Early Tudor Catholicism \ 3. The Parish, Piety and Patronage: the Evidence of Roodscreens \ 4. Salle Church and the Reformation \ 5. The End of It All: Medieval Church Goods and the 1552 Confiscations \ III. Two Cardinals \ 6. John Fisher and the Spirit of his Age \ 7. The Religion of John Fisher \ 8. Rome and Catholicity in mid-Tudor England \ 9. Cardinal Pole and Archbishop Cranmer \ IV. Catholic Voices \ 10. The Conservative Voice in the English Reformation \ 11. Remembering Catholicism in Shakespeare's England

The cover illustration depicts St. Thomas More, St. John Fisher and Blessed Margaret Pole, a layman, bishop and laywoman being executed for the Catholic faith. Of course, they were not executed at the same time!

New Anglican Ordinariate in the USA!

2012-01-02T00:57:00.000-08:00

The Ordinariate Portal has several links to the news announced yesterday that the U.S. Personal Ordinariate for Anglican/Episcopalian clergy and Anglican/Episcopalian laity to become members of what Blessed John Henry Newman called "the one true fold of Christ" has been formed. It is called the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter and its ordinary is Fr. Jeffrey Steenson, 59, the former Episcopal bishop of Rio Grande ordained a priest of the archdiocese of Santa Fe in 2009. Here is the new website for the new Ordinariate! Note that the new group is under the protection of Our Lady of Walsingham!

Here are Cardinal Wuerl's comments about the new Ordinariate (which evidently will include groups of Anglcians from Canada!): Note that Cardinal Wuerl was the Vatican’s representative for the implementation of Anglicanorum coetibus in the United States:

It is with great joy that I welcome the establishment of the Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, and the announcement that Reverend Jeffrey N. Steenson, DPhil, has been appointed its first Ordinary.

Today’s events are the fulfillment of the hopes of many Anglicans in the United States who have longed and prayed for reconciliation with the Catholic Church while retaining cherished elements of the Anglican patrimony.

The establishment of the Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter is the culmination of careful preparation and much consultation with Vatican officials and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. I am especially grateful for the generous assistance and fraternal welcome that many local bishops have extended to those Anglican clergy and groups seeking to join the Ordinariate.

As the former Episcopal Bishop of the Rio Grande, Father Steenson brings to the position of Ordinary great pastoral and administrative experience, along with his gifts as a theologian. Under his leadership, and through the intercession of Our Lady of Walsingham, the Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter will both flourish and be a rich blessing to the Catholic Church in the United States.

(Thanks to Matthew M for commenting on this news yesterday).

Happy New Year!!

Philip of Spain: King of England by Harry Kelsey

2012-01-02T00:19:00.000-08:00

Mary Tudor, Renaissance Queen reviews a new book about Philip II of Spain and his role in England and has some reservations--here's the crucial part:

In 1570, some 12 years after Mary’s death, Philip claimed that he could give Pope Pius V ‘better information and advice on that kingdom [England], and on its affairs and people, than anyone else’.7 Clearly Philip believed he had not come away from the whole experience empty handed. His relationship with the English was at best complex but he took his role as King of England seriously and, as the quote suggests, believed himself to be an authority on that realm. This book has not proved to be a definitive or substantial account of Philip’s time as King of England. It covers briefly his involvement in the Marian Church and his influence over the direction of foreign policy, but there is no discussion of his improvements of the English navy (which of course backed fired on him in the end!), nor on his interest in another part of Mary’s realm – Ireland. It also suffers from a lack of discussion of recent works. As a result it seems distinct from current scholarship, in sharp contrast with John Edwards’ excellent Mary I: England’s Catholic Queen (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011), which paid due consideration to Philip’s role, used an array of Spanish sources and up-to-date studies. As a result I would recommend Edwards’ biography of Mary over this book when it comes to the issue of Philip’s time as king-consort. More needs to be done though on the Habsburg who became England’s king. Popular knowledge of Philip’s later and troublesome relationship with the English and former sister-in-law Elizabeth I is well known. It is time to shed more light on the origins of that relationship, which was not as fruitless as the events of the 1580s would have us believe. (my emphasis)

I think I will trust this opinion and skip this book. (My husband will be SO relieved!)

Sunday Shrine Series: The Holy Name of Jesus

2012-01-01T00:26:00.000-08:00

The Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus is celebrated on the Tuesday before Epiphany this week, on January 3rd. In honor of the feast, today's Sunday Shrine series post links to the "RC" Church of the Holy Name of Jesus in Manchester, England. According to the Wikipedia article on this church, it was founded by Jesuits in the late 19th century, fell into disuse, and has been revived by an Oratory of St. Philip Neri in formation. Mass is celebrated ad orientem (with the priest facing the high altar, toward the east and in the same direction as the congregation) with regular celebrations of the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite (aka the Traditional Latin Mass).

According to the church website:

In the sixteenth century the Spanish saint, Ignatius of Loyola founded an order called the Society of Jesus or Jesuits, who were a powerful force for the reform of the Catholic Church. They often built large churches in cities where their influence could be effective through preaching, the confessional and parochial work. They were invited to come to Manchester by the Bishop of Salford, Rt. Rev. William Turner in the late 1860’s. The foundation stone of the Holy Name was laid in 1869 and the church opened on 15th October, 1871.
The architect was a favourite of the Jesuits, Joseph Aloysius Hansom, the inventor of the cab that bears his name. The church he designed is 14th century French Gothic in style, but the plan is typical of a Jesuit city church – a broad nave, prominent pulpit and a short sanctuary with the altar near and in full view of the congregation. It is 186ft. from east to west, 112ft. from north to south and 100ft. from the floor to the inside of the vault.

The structure is brick faced inside with moulded terracotta and outside with Warwick Bridge stone. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner in his introduction to the ‘South Lancashire’ volume of his ‘Buildings of England’ series wrote that the Holy Name ‘is a design of the very highest quality and of an originality nowhere demonstrative…….Hansom never again did so marvellous a church.’

The Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus celebrates His naming at His circumcision--and was celebrated on various dates after Christmas by different religious orders or dioceses until extended to the universal Church in 1721. St. Bernardine of Siena and St. John of Capistrano had been the great promoters of the devotion, symbolised by the monogram IHS. In 1970 the feast was removed from the universal Roman calendar and then restored by Pope John Paul II in 2000.

"At the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil 2:10-11). Note that when that reading is proclaimed in the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite, we DO bend the knee during that verse!

January 1, 1511: The Birth of Henry, Duke of Cornwall

2012-01-01T00:04:00.000-08:00

What a great New Year's Day present for the King and Queen of England, Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon--a baby boy! He was their second child and first son--heir apparent. His older sister was born prematurely and stillborn on January 31, 1510. Baby Henry was baptized on January 5th with King Louis XII of France and William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury as godfathers and Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy as his godmother, although his great-aunt Anne of York, Countess of Surrey stood in as proxy for her (representing a great link to the Plantagenet line as her father was Edward IV). He was called the Duke of Cornwall and would have been named the Prince of Wales--Katherine was still the Princess of Wales--had he survived infancy.

Sadly, "the New Year's boy", "Little Prince Hal" died on February 22, 1511. Both parents, so recently united in pride and joy in their little boy were now devastated by grief and sorrow. Katherine spent hours praying on her knees while Henry went to war against France and Spain. They would experience this pattern again when another Henry, Duke of Cornwall was born and survived a month in 1514 after another stillborn infant in 1513.

I presume it would have been an inconvenient fact to point out to Henry years later when he protested that their marriage was invalid in God's eyes and that's why Katherine had borne him no sons--she did bear him sons. They just did not survive infancy! What might have been if either Henry, Duke of Cornwall had survived infancy and become Henry, Prince of Wales and then King Henry IX? Would there have been any English Reformation at all? Would we even know who Anne Boleyn was?

When these alternative history questions begin to whirl through one's mind, their uselessness becomes apparent very quickly. We simply can't know what would have happened, since it didn't, obviously. Although it's at first a comforting to think that England might have remained Catholic and the monasteries and friaries might have never been destroyed, we might have also lost the great models of faith and devotion we find today in the martyrs from Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher to St. Edmund Campion and St. Margaret Clitherow. (And there would have been no reason for me to write Supremacy and Survival!)

January 1, 2012: Happy New Year!

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Here we come a-wassailing
Among the leaves so green;
Here we come a-wand'ring
So fair to be seen.

Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail too;
And God bless you and send you
a Happy New Year
And God send you a Happy New Year.

We're not daily beggars
That beg from door to door;
But we are neighbors' children,
Whom you have seen before.

Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail too;
And God bless you and send you
a Happy New Year
And God send you a Happy New Year.

Good master and good mistress,
Are sitting by the fire,
Pray think of us poor children
Who wander in the mire.

Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail too;
And God bless you and send you
a Happy New Year
And God send you a Happy New Year.

God bless the master of this house
Likewise the mistress too!
And all the little children
that 'round the table go

Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail too;
And God bless you and send you
a Happy New Year
And God send you a Happy New Year

More on wassailing at New Year's here.

I look forward to another year of updates and posts on the English Reformation, the Catholic martyrs of England, and the ongoing revival of Catholicism in England! May 2012 bring great blessings to us all! Happy New Year!

"In the Ending of the Year"~~December 31, 2011

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John Mason Neale included this translation of the medieval hymn, In hoc anni circuli in his 1853 Carols for Christmas-tide:

In the ending of the year
Life and light to man appear;
And the Holy Babe is here,
De Virgine;
And the Holy Babe is here,
De Virgine Mariâ.

What in ancient days was slain
This day calls to life again;
God is coming, God shall reign,
De Virgine;
God is coming, God shall reign,
De Virgine Mariâ.

From the desert grew the corn,
Sprang the lily from the thorn,
When the Infant King was born
De Virgine;
When the Infant King was born
De Virgine Mariâ.

On the straw He lays His head,
Hath a manger for His bed,
Thirsts and hungers and is fed
De Virgine;
Thirsts and hungers and is fed
De Virgine Mariâ.

Angel hosts His praises sing,
Three Wise men their off'rings bring,
Ox and ass adore the King,
Cum Virgine;
Ox and ass adore the King,
Cum Virgine Mariâ.

Wherefore let us all to-day
Banish sorrow far away,
Singing and exulting aye,
Cum Virgine;
Singing and exulting aye,
Cum Virgine Mariâ.

As 2011 draws to a close, thank you for your attention to and comments on this blog! I look forward to more research and sharing in 2012.

Christmas at Cambridge

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With Christmas largesse, I purchased the BBC Music Christmas 2011 issue at one of our local Barnes & Noble stores (which is closing on 12/31 this year because the store's lease is up and not being renewed), and we've enjoyed listening to the CD of music from Caius College. One selection that interested me in particular is the Sussex Carol, which dates from the seventeenth century at least--but may be older, since it's not clear if the Irish bishop and Franciscan, Luke Wadding who included it in his 1694 publication composed it or copied it. Both Ralph Vaughn Williams and Cecil Sharp heard it and Williams transcribed the tune and there are two main arrangements, by David Willcocks (on this CD) and Philip Ledger:

On Christmas night all Christians sing
To hear the news the angels bring.
News of great joy, news of great mirth,
News of our merciful King's birth.

Then why should men on earth be so sad,
Since our Redeemer made us glad,
When from our sin he set us free,
All for to gain our liberty?

When sin departs before His grace,
Then life and health come in its place.
Angels and men with joy may sing
All for to see the new-born King.

All out of darkness we have light,
Which made the angels sing this night:
"Glory to God and peace to men,
Now and for evermore, Amen!"

The magazine also includes stories about the Choirs at several of the other Colleges at the University of Oxford.

Inclusive Language? Bah! Humbug!

2011-12-30T00:05:00.000-08:00

John Mason Neale's efforts were not very well rewarded in his day--he was thought to be too Romish and his High Church ritualism was suspected by the hierarchy of the Church of England, stung by Blessed John Henry Newman's defection to the Church of Rome. Therefore when he established an order of Anglican nuns to help serve the poor:

Neale was [once] attacked and mauled at a funeral of one of the Sisters. From time to time unruly crowds threatened to stone him or to burn his house. He received no honor or preferment in England, and his doctorate was bestowed by an American college (Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut).

Today, however, he is honored in the Church of England on its Kalendar of "Saints" on August 7th.

One way to honor him to day is to print his translations and lyrics as he wrote them! Inclusive language ruins some hymns, including his "Good Christian Men, Rejoice" which now appears in some hymnals as "Good Christian Friends, Rejoice"! [Anthony Esolen examines the results of other tinkering with beautiful hymns in this article from Crisis magazine.]

Good Christian men, rejoice

With heart, and soul, and voice;

Give ye heed to what we say:

News! News!

Jesus Christ was born to-day:

Ox and ass before Him bow,

And He is in the manger now.

Christ is born today!

Christ is born today.

Good Christian men, rejoice,

With heart, and soul, and voice;

Now ye hear of endless bliss:

Joy! Joy!

Jesus Christ was born for this!

He hath ope'd the heav'nly door,

And man is blessed evermore.

Christ was born for this!

Good Christian men, rejoice

With heart, and soul, and voice;

Now ye need not fear the grave:

Peace! Peace!

Jesus Christ was born to save!

Calls you one, and calls you all,

To gain His everlasting hall:

Christ was born to save!

In the Octave of Christmas, of course, we celebrate each day as Christmas!

The Second Howard Martyr

2011-12-29T00:05:00.000-08:00

The Howard family boasts two martyrs: St. Philip Howard who died in the Tower of London during Queen Elizabeth I's reign (denied the opportunity to see his son before he died unless he denied his Catholicism and professed to be a Protestant!) and his grandson, Blessed William Howard, who was beheaded on December 29, 1680 on Tower Hill.

William Howard was born on November 30, 1614, the son of Thomas Howard, who had conformed to the Church of England. William married Mary Stafford in a Catholic ceremony in 1637 and they had nine children. The Howard family, being Royalists, fled to the Netherlands during the English Civil War and returned to England with the Restoration of Charles II, being restored to his lands.

He was accused by Titus Oates of being part of the non-existent Popish Plot and was tried by his peers in the House of Lords in Westminster Hall. One of his witnesses was arrested and died in jail. Howard was, of course, found guilty, attainted and his lands forfeit. According to Archbishop Challoner, Blessed William Howard's speech before his execution moved the crowds to acknowledge his innocence and cry out that they believed him:

First, he protested in the presence of the eternal God, and upon his salvation, that he was entirely innocent of the treason laid to his charge. Then giving thanks to the Divine Majesty for the long time He had given him to prepare for death, he declared, that having well considered what could be the original cause of his having been so unjustly accused and condemned to death, he was convinced that it was no other than his religion, of which he said he had no reason to be ashamed, for that it taught nothing but the right worship of God and due subordination to the King, and the temporal laws of the kingdom. That he most firmly believed all the articles that the Catholic Church believes and teaches, as most consonant to the Word of God; and that with the same Catholic Church from his heart he detested all king-killing doctrine, that his principles were entirely loyal. And as for indulgences, dispensations, or pardons, pretended by the adversaries of the Church to be given to murder, rebel, lie, forswear, or commit any other crime whatsoever, he professed in the presence of God, and that without any equivocation or mental reservation whatsoever, that he was never taught any such thing, nor believed, nor practised any such thing. That if he had been really guilty of any of those crimes of which he was accused, he should have been worse than a fool, and his own self-murderer into the bargain, if he had not acknowledged his guilt, since by so doing he might have saved his life; ‘But had I a thousand lives,’ said he, ‘I would lose them all rather than falsely accuse either myself or any other whatsoever.’
Then again declaring his abhorrence of all treason and murder, and that to his knowledge he had never spoke to, or seen Oates, or Turberville till his trial, or ever spoke with Dugdale about any treasonable matters (whom nevertheless he heartily forgave, and all others that had any hand in his death), he concluded his speech as follows:— ‘I shall end with my hearty prayers for the happiness of his Majesty, that he may enjoy all the happiness in this world, and in the world to come, and govern his people according to the laws of God; and that the people may be sensible what a blessing God hath so miraculously given them, and obey him as they ought. I ask pardon with a prostrate heart of Almighty God for all the great offences I have committed against the Divine Majesty; and hope, through the merits and passion of Christ Jesus, to obtain everlasting happiness; into whose hands I commit my spirit, asking pardon of any person that I have done any wrong to, &c.
‘I beseech God not to revenge my innocent blood upon the nation, or on those that were the cause of it, with my last breath; I do with my last breath truly assert my innocency, and hope the omnipotent, all-seeing, just God will deal with me accordingly.’

He was all prepared, with his head on the block and the executioner hesitated--he asked the executioner why he delayed and the man answered that he was waiting for a sign. The martyr replied that he would give no sign; the headsman should take his time; HE was ready to die.

In 1824 his great-great-great grandson George William Jerningham requested Parliament to reverse the attainder against William Howard and restore the title Viscount Stafford, which he then inherited.

The Unfinished Vespers of December 29, 1170

2011-12-29T00:04:00.000-08:00

This recording by the Schola Gregoriana of Cambridge, founded by the late Mary Berry tells the story of the martyrdom of St. Thomas a Becket by recreating the vespers interrupted that night by Henry II's knights:

The story of the Martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket has been told many times. There are contemporary eye-witness accounts of how the four knights rushed in and slew the Archbishop in his own cathedral of Canterbury; there are scholarly modern historical studies; the story is told in the stained-glass windows of the cathedral itself; and of course there are Chaucer’s entertaining Canterbury Tales… This recording approaches the story from another angle: it is an attempt to capture through music each major act of the grim drama as it unfolds. . . . It is rare to find intact the office music for the feast of St Thomas. In nearly all the sources the relevant pages have been torn out or defaced in the 16th century by order of Henry VIII. However, in an early 13th-century noted breviary from Lewes Priory it appears in pristine condition and it is from this source that the music for the recording has been transcribed.

Mary Berry was an Augustinian Canoness Congregation of Notre-Dame de Jupille in Belgium and a great champion of Gregorian Chant who died on May 1, 2008. Her Times obituary is here:

Devout and erudite, Berry radiated a joyful and sunny blessing, occasionally interspersed with crisp commands if singers flat-footed a wrong note. There were no concessions to ignorance — either of the chant or the liturgy — but her bubbling humour leavened long hours of choir practice. With a fund of interesting and mildly scurrilous anecdotes delivered with a twinkle in her eye, she was fortunate to attract many fine cantors to sing at festivals and record CDs on the Herald label.

The cantors of the Schola, a professional group of singers interested in Gregorian chant and early music, specialise in the reconstruction and performance of liturgy from the 10th century to modern times. Led by Berry, they were the first in the field to record a reconstruction of a complete festal service based on the tropes and organa of the Winchester Troper, and this won the Michael Beazley Medieval Recording of the Year in 1991. Their work was, and continues to be, very significant in bringing early music to a wider audience.

In 2000 she was awarded the Papal Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice for her work with Gregorian chant, and in 2002 she was appointed CBE for her services to plainsong and Gregorian chant.

I ordered this CD last December and did not receive it until February! Customs between the U.K. and the U.S. held it up considerably. I will listen to it again today.

St. Thomas a Becket, pray for us.

It is rather interesting to note that the breviary that provided the office music for the Feast of St. Thomas a Becket survived the suppression of Lewes Priory, the great Cluniac house.

Feast of the Holy Innocents and the Coventry Carol

2011-12-28T00:16:00.000-08:00

The Coventry Carol was part of a 16th century mystery play depicting the slaughter of the young boys in Bethlehem as described in St. Matthew's Gospel, chapter 2, verses 16-18:

Then Herod perceiving that he was deluded by the wise men, was exceeding angry; and sending killed all the men children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the borders thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremias the prophet, saying: A voice in Rama was heard, lamentation and great mourning; Rachel bewailing her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not. (Douai-Rheims translation).

Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child,

By, by, lully, lullay.

O sisters too, how may we do,

For to preserve this day

This poor Youngling for

Whom we sing

By, by, lully, lullay?

Herod the king, in his raging,

Charged he hath this day

His men of might, in his own sight,

All young children to slay.

That woe is me, poor Child for Thee!
And ever morn and day

For Thy parting neither say nor sing,

By, by, lully, lullay.

Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child,

By, by, lully, lullay.

Because Henry VIII proscribed these mystery plays, and the last authentic manuscript was burned in the 19th century, the words we have now are based on transcriptions. Here is a performance from Westminster Cathedral.

A Rival to Madame Royale?

2011-12-28T00:04:00.000-08:00

Princess Elizabeth, Charles I and Henrietta Maria's second daughter was born on December 28, 1635 and died imprisoned by Parliament on September 8, 1650. The portrait of her in the Palace of St. James by Millais depicts her as scholarly and young. As her father had in his youth, she had suffered from rickets and broke her leg at the age of seven. She was rather scholarly, learning Hebrew, Greek, Italian, Latin, and French. The princess was also known for her gentleness, with the nickname "Temperance."

She and her younger brother Henry were not allowed to join their mother and other siblings in Holland and France. She urged her older brother James to escape as soon as he could, lending him clothing to disguise himself. Elizabeth and Henry met with their father before his execution one last time and the princess wrote her recollection (she was 13; her brother 8):

He bid us tell my mother that his thoughts had never strayed from her, and that his love would be the same to the last. Withal, he commanded me and my brother to be obedient to her; and bid me send his blessing to the rest of my brothers and sisters, with communications to all his friends. Then, taking my brother Gloucester on his knee, he said, 'Sweetheart, now they will cut off thy father's head.' And Gloucester looking very intently upon him, he said again, "Heed, my child, what I say: they will cut off my head and perhaps make thee a king. But mark what I say. Thou must not be a king as long as thy brothers Charles and James do live; for they will cut off your brothers' heads when they can catch them, and cut off thy head too at the last, and therefore I charge you, do not be made a king by them.' At which my brother sighed deeply, and made answer: 'I will be torn in pieces first!' And these words, coming so unexpectedly from so young a child, rejoiced my father exceedingly. And his majesty spoke to him of the welfare of his soul, and to keep his religion, commanding him to fear God, and He would provide for him. Further, he commanded us all to forgive those people, but never to trust them; for they had been most false to him and those that gave them power, and he feared also to their own souls. And he desired me not to grieve for him, for he should die a martyr, and that he doubted not the Lord would settle his throne upon his son, and that we all should be happier than we could have expected to have been if he had lived; with many other things which at present I cannot remember.

He gave her a Bible and told her to read good Anglican books--and never to read any Catholic books!

After Charles' execution, the care of Elizabeth and Henry was a burden to Parliament. When Charles II claimed the throne in Scotland, Elizabeth was moved as a hostage to the Isle of Wight, where she died of pneumonia at Carisbrooke Castle on September 8, 1630. Her grave in St. Thomas Church, Newport, was unmarked until the reign of Queen Victoria, who directed that a suitable tomb be erected for the sad young princess.

Carlo Marochetti carved her effigy, showing her head pillowed upon a Bible open to the Gospel of St. Matthew: "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

Above her effigy, the rest of the tomb depicts her imprisonment with an open grate that also reflects her final freedom, through death.

According to this blog, the Princess died with her head pillowed on the Bible her father had given to her and Parliament gave permission for her to join her family three days after she died.

Her story seems almost as sad as that of Marie-Therese, Madame Royale--perhaps more poignant and delicate.

Queen Victoria seems to have been interested in making sure the Stuart kings and princesses were taken care of in memory. In addition to this memorial, she had a hand in the side chapel dedicated to King James II in St. Germain-en-Laye. While we are currently so fascinated by the soap opera of the Tudor dynasty, the house of Hanover seems to have been influenced by the romance of the Stuarts. George III commissioned the monument to the Stuart Pretenders in St. Peter's in the Vatican, for another example.