Relics of English Martyrs: Torture and Hope

Thanks to Ian Stubbs on The Catholic English Martyrs Facebook page, I found this story about the Stonyhurst Christian Heritage Centre (I received their Christmas card last week) being featured in a BBC documentary about relics:

The Collections of Stonyhurst College featured prominently in a documentary broadcast on BBC Four at the weekend. In the programme, Treasures of Heaven, [Note that if you are not in the U.K. you can't watch the video] Andrew Graham-Dixon explored the ancient Christian practice of preserving Christian relics and the largely forgotten art form that went with it - the reliquary. His research took him from the Crown of Thorns venerated at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris to the martyrdom of St Thomas Becket – and even to more recent events in El Salvador with the cause of Blessed Oscar Romero. But it was in Stonyhurst that he was confronted with some of the most gruesome relics.

“The Reformation ushered in a bleak and bitter period for those adhering to the old Catholic traditions of worship,” he said, approaching the college. “If you want to understand that (largely concealed) history, there’s no better place to come than this.”

The most revealing treasure in the Stonyhurst Collection, according to Graham-Dixon, is also the most unassuming: found in the 19th century, behind a wall in a nearby Catholic home, it had lain undiscovered for more than 200 years. But it is the only one of its kind in the world. The chest, disguised as a travelling salesman’s trunk, contained everything needed for a Jesuit to say Mass. Beneath a ladies bonnet was concealed the altar stone, a chalice, corporal and an early 17th century chasuble. Jan Graffius, Curator at Stonyhurst, went on to explain how ministry had to be carried out clandestinely at this time, since anyone caught celebrating Mass would be tried for treason, for which the sentence would be death.

There are indeed more gruesome relics of torture and suffering associated with the missionary priests who returned to England to serve Catholics:

Moving on to the rope that tied St Edmund Campion SJ onto the hurdle prior to his execution at Tyburn, Jan described in the programme the process of being hung, drawn and quartered - in gory detail, before revealing another of the relics held at Stonyhurst: the right eye of Blessed Edward Oldcorne SJ. Graham-Dixon describes it as “one of the most disconcerting body parts to have been passed down to the museum”. Kept in a small silver reliquary, the eye . . . was collected by a local Catholic after Oldcorne’s execution in Worcester in 1606. “I have never seen anyone look at this,” said Jan, “without being moved, shocked: there is always a human reaction” to this relic of torture.

But according to Jan Graffius, the relics are more than just grisly mementos of past events. “I think that the real comfort that Catholics derived from holding, looking at, being near these objects, is a sense of affinity with the sacrifice of the priests who were trying to bring their faith to them, and hope for the future: keep these safe until such a time when this cruelty and persecution is no longer in England. So it’s a pledge for the future, as much as a contact with the past.”

I think I have found the programme on youtube here. How great to see Canterbury, and Paris, and Stonyhurst! There are some great images of Pugin's architecture at St. Edmund's College Chapel near Ware. (The documentary must have broadcast originally several years ago.)

Charles Carroll, Poet?

Mary Ellen Bork writes for The National Catholic Register about Charles Carroll and a poem he wrote while at St. Omers:

What madman would exchange present gifts for those unseen? You fly from real blessings, blessings unreal you chase. Purge, I pray, these vain dreams from your fevered mind, and drive the hope deep-embedded far from your heart."

 

Charles Carroll, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote these lines in 1753, while at St. Omer’s College, in a poem recently discovered at the Christian Heritage Centre at Stonyhurst College in England.

 

This discovery came from the oldest surviving museum collection in the English-speaking world, and its directors are eager to make its riches more available through digitizing and expansion.

 

On a visit to the United States, Lord David Alton, a prominent British Catholic and pro-life leader and an advocate for religious freedom, and Lord Nicholas Windsor, cousin to Queen Elizabeth II and a Catholic convert, said they see this collection of artifacts, relics and art as a critical reminder of what religious freedom costs, namely the blood of martyrs.

 

And she goes on to explain the significance of the poem and of Carroll's attendance at St. Omer's, along with his cousin John:

 

Both Charles and John Carroll, inspired by their knowledge of English Catholic history, fought for the right of Catholics to practice their religion at a time of strong anti-Catholic sentiment.

 

Knowing more about the history of the English Catholic struggle can better prepare us for the work of re-evangelization and defending our own religious freedom. Remembering our past will give us hope for the future.

 

Curator Jan Graffius said that Charles Carroll was 17 when he wrote this poem in Latin for a recitation on the feast of St. Cecilia. The tyrant Amachius, having sentenced Cecilia to death, pressured her to worship Roman gods in order to save her life, her youth and her beauty. The poem shows that young Charles saw clearly the corrosiveness of compromise.

 

Recitation formed an important part of the Jesuit education that started in the school, originally called St. Omer’s, which was founded in 1593 by Father Robert Persons during the persecution of Catholics by Queen Elizabeth I. There were no Catholic schools allowed in England, so the boys were smuggled out of their country to the school outside of Calais in France, then under Spanish rule. If they were caught leaving England, the penalty was imprisonment or death.

 

The school’s brave mission is engraved above the door: "Jesus, Jesus, convert England; may it be, may it be." Many students became priests and went back to England to preach the faith.

Read the rest here.

More on the Christian Heritage Centre

Lord Alton, Lord Windsor and Jan Graffius, the curator of the Christian Heritage Centre collection at Stonyhurst were on EWTN Live last night and talked about their visit to Washington, DC, displaying some the relics and artefacts they hope to display soon in England. The World Over news show was really all about religious freedom and conscience protections last night, as Raymond Arroyo also interviewed the Little Sisters of the Poor, who have filed a class action law suit against the HHS Mandates.

The Christian Heritage Centre segment was highlighted by close ups of a small crucifix owned by St. Thomas More and also a book from the library at St. Omers, where Stonyhurst College began, with doodles by John Carroll and Charles Carroll. John Carroll was of course the first Catholic bishop in the United States--in Baltimore Maryland--and Charles Carroll of Carrollton was the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence.

The Christian Heritage Centre does have a website and they are accepting donations to build the exhibition space needed to have these objects from English Catholic history from the Middle Ages to the present day.

The Catholic Herald writes about the visit of the three to Washington here:

Lord Nicholas Windsor is this week leading a group from Stonyhurst College, in Lancashire, on a trip to the USA to promote the Stonyhurst Christian Heritage Centre Project.

He is accompanied by Lord Alton of Liverpool, a life peer of the House of Lords, and Stonyhurst’s curator, Jan Graffius, who has with her a number of sacred artefacts from the Stonyhurst collection, including St Thomas More’s crucifix.

Lord Nicholas Windsor and Lord Alton are visiting Washington DC, Baltimore and Boston to promote their joint project and to considerably widen access to the extensive historic collection.
Earlier in the week the group attended morning Mass celebrated by the Archbishop Emeritus, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, at St Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington DC yesterday. Cardinal McCarrick expressed his support for the Christian Heritage Centre project and said that by properly appreciating and understanding our past “we will be equipped to face the considerable challenges which confront us today and which will continue to face us in the future”.

But while we are remembering the Jesuits who collected these relics of the English martyrs and other artefacts, including relics of their own martyrs like St. Edmund Campion, since today is the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, let us not forget the Franciscan martyrs of the English Reformation. From Blessed John Forest to St. John Wall, they suffered and died for the Catholic faith England.

Nicholas Windsor, Lord Alton, and Stonyhurst

From Crisis magazine comes this great story about the Catholic convert who lost his place in the royal succession of England (Lord Nicholas Windsor) and a plan for a "Museum of Christian Heritage to be located at the Jesuit estate Stonyhurst, the home of Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, England."

The Jesuits at Stonyhurst have collected some marvelous artefacts, according to author Austin Ruse:

The story of this project begins in 1593 when English Catholics established a boy’s school at a place called St. Omers not far from Calais then subject to the Spanish crown. Catholic education was not legal at the time in England and so English boys were sent there for education and protection. Besides protecting English boys, the school became a protector of precious Catholic items like vestments, manuscripts, and relics that were endangered on English soil. Thus began what is now called the “oldest surviving museum collection in the English-speaking world.”

The first acquisition in the collection came in 1609 when they took possession of Henry VII’s cope and chasuble. The Jesuits have religiously added to this collection as they have traveled the world from that time. Some of the other remarkable items include a thorn from the Crown of Thorns, the rope that bound St. Edmund Campion at the time of his execution, and personal items belonging to St. Thomas More, Elizabeth of York, Mary Tudor, Mary Queen of Scots, James II and the Stuart Family including items belong to Bonnie Prince Charlie.

The Jesuits left France and set up shop at Stonyhurst where the first museum was begun in 1796. The Arundell Library was opened there in 1855 and housed such amazing artifacts as the Book of Hours that is said to have been handed by Mary, Queen of Scotts, to her chaplain on the scaffold just before her execution.

The foundation of this Christian Heritage Centre was inspired by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI's visit to Scotland and England in 2010. Lord David Alton's website has more about the proposed display of these artefacts (from September 2011):

One year ago, at Westminster, Pope Benedict told English Catholics not to lose their identity; not to forget their Christian roots; to remember who they are; to pass on their beliefs to their children and to share their love of their Faith with their countrymen.Some flavour of that identity has memorably been revealed in the remarkable “Treasures From Heaven” (sic)* exhibition recently staged at the British Museum and sponsored by two significant Catholics, John Studzinski CBE and Michael Hintze. Both men have been honoured with Papal Knighthoods by the Holy See for their services to arts and culture.

*Treasures of Heaven is the correct title.

The queues which have formed at the British Museum underline the public appetite for sacred culture. I saw the same phenomenon during 2008, when Liverpool was European Capital of Culture and, at St.Francis Xavier’s church, and an exhibition was staged entitled “Held in Trust”. Around 30,000 people poured in to the magnificent setting of SFX to see some of the wonderful artefacts loaned by Stonyhurst College and by the Society of Jesus. Arising out of the “Held In Trust” exhibition, Stonyhurst College published a beautiful book, by the same name, detailing some of the Collections which they hold and which they want to house in a permanent Christian Heritage Centre.

As a lasting legacy of Pope Benedict’s historic State Visit, the College Governors and the Society of Jesus have made available a Grade Two listed site, close to the College, the Corn Mill Buildings, which would be developed into an exhibition and interpretive centre. John Cowdall, the Chairman of Governors, Andrew Johnson, Stonyhurst headmaster, and the outgoing Provincial, Fr.Michael Holman SJ are all to be warmly applauded for this initiative.

Open to visitors The Christian Heritage Centre will have a mission to tell the Catholic story to future generations. Much more than a museum, it will be an interactive and inspirational educational centre; a study and retreat centre; a major visitors’ attraction; and a place where the rising generation will be inspired by the sacrifices of the past. The Christian Heritage Centre will be administered by a free standing charitable Trust. Knowledge of those who went before – and the price which they paid for the religious liberties and freedoms which we enjoy today – will help and guide our young people as they face today’s challenges and aggressive militant secularism.

Lord Alton and Lord Nicholas Windsor visited the Catholic Information Center in Washington, DC last night for a reception--unfortunately, I cannot find a website established for the Christian Heritage Centre at Stonyhurst.