Book Review: A Symphonic Survey of Pope Benedict XVI's Liturgical Theology

Roland Millare visited Eighth Day Books in January 2023 and I bought his book A Living Sacrifice: Liturgy and Eschatology in Joseph Ratzinger at that time (and I also gave a copy of it to my best friend last month for her birthday; she's the educated theologian; I'm just an autodidact reader).

This review from the Adoremus Bulletin by Father Paul J. Keller, O.P., summarizes the book much better than I possibly can.

What I really appreciated was the clarity and balance of Millare's writing style; his declarative yet comprehensive sentences as he described the theologian-Cardinal/Pope's interaction with other theologians. Since I have read many of Romano Guardini's liturgical theology works, I was able to follow Millare's analysis of the issues of Ethos and Logos and even the models of meal/banquet and sacrifice easily. And when Millare compares and contrasts Ratzinger's thoughts with other theologians I'm not familiar with, like Moltman and Metz, he provides the necessary detail and context, even as he emphasizes the central themes of Logos and the eschaton.

In fact, the "consistency and centrality of the Logos" versus placing Ethos at the center of theology, liturgical, moral, or fundamental is one of most crucial themes of the entire book. It informs Millare's discussion of the Sacrifice of the Mass, of the Communion of the Church and the Second Coming, with hope for the New Heavens and the New Earth, of the mission of the Church and the congregation attending Mass and receiving Holy Communion and then going to the world to share the Love of God and neighbor; and the beauty of art and architecture of the celebration of Mass and our churches, etc.

Millare summarizes his study of Pope Benedict XVI's theology of worship and the eschaton thusly on page 266:

Ratzinger describes his work as having an "incomplete character," yet I have demonstrated that there is a unity within his "fragmentary" writings that is defined by the primacy and centrality of the Logos incarnate. It has been argued throughout this book how the focus on the loges consistently unites his eschatology with his theology of liturgy, in whose orbit can also be found his Christology, ecclesiology, theological anthropology, and ethics.

The text is supplemented with extensive footnotes and a substantial bibliography. Well worth reading, even for a non-specialist. I read it after a discussion of the Resurrection and Ascension chapters in Pope Benedict XVI's Holy Week volume in the Jesus of Nazareth trilogy with my theologian friend and in the midst of the Eucharistic Revival here in the USA.

Preview: Two by Ward for the Son Rise Morning Show

For your late summer reading plan, we're going to discuss two of Josephine Ward's novels on the Son Rise Morning Show Monday, July 15, after Matt Swaim and Anna Mitchell (and perhaps Paul Lachmann, the Sound Engineer and the first voice I hear when I connect with Sacred Heart Radio on Monday mornings) come back from their summer break. 

I recommend both of these books: One Poor Scruple and Tudor Sunset. 

One Poor Scruple is a contemporary novel of manners/morals at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries; Tudor Sunset is a historical fiction set in the last years of Elizabeth I's reign at the beginning of the 17th century (1600-1603).

I reviewed One Poor Scruple here and Tudor Sunset here.

I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern. Please listen live here or listen to the podcast later. 

Since I talked to Anna Mitchell about Josephine Ward's life and significance, I went to Eighth Day Books and bought the book that inspired her to ask me to talk about Ward in the first place: Women of the Catholic Imagination: Twelve Inspired Novelists You Should Know. I agree with Eleanor Bourge Nicholson's comments about these two novels in her essay "Josephine Ward: Transforming a Heritage of Exile". She writes of One Poor Scruple that is an "unequivocally Catholic as well as a masterfully executed novel that well deserves the positive reception" it received upon its publication "by Catholic and non-Catholic readers alike". (p. 15) It might even be a more Catholic novel today since the issue at the heart of Marge's moral dilemma is Catholic moral teaching forbidding divorce and remarriage. She wants to be accepted in British society and does not know how to resist the temptation to a prestigious marriage. Crucially, Marge is not receiving the Sacraments!

Of Tudor Sunset, Nicholson comments "that it brings together the themes that had absorbed Ward throughout her life, especially Catholic identity and its relationship to patriotism and her conviction of the operation of grace." (p. 19) When Elizabeth I is dying, Meg Scrope, who has suffered imprisonment and the threat of Richard Topcliffe's cruel attentions in Newgate Prison because of the Queen's religious policy, prays for her salvation through the grace of God, whispering the Ave Maria at her beside on the eve of the Feast of the Annunciation.

The Josephine Ward novel I hope to see published soon is Out of Due Time, since it deals with the Modernist Crisis as described in yesterday's post on Elizabeth Huddleston's project, “‘A Story of Well-Defined Purpose’: Josephine Hope-Scott Ward’s Social Criticism of Modernism.”

More on Josephine Ward: Elizabeth Huddleston's Project

I do believe Josephine Ward's time for revival and reevaluation has come! (Here's some detail about the books she wrote.)

From the University of Notre Dame's Cushwa Center:

Elizabeth Huddleston is head of research and publications at the National Institute for Newman Studies and associate editor of the Newman Studies Journal. She also teaches in the Department of Catholic Studies at Duquesne University. In 2024, she received a Research Travel Grant from the Cushwa Center to carry out archival research at Notre Dame in support of her project, “‘A Story of Well-Defined Purpose’: Josephine Hope-Scott Ward’s Social Criticism of Modernism.” Shane Ulbrich corresponded with Huddleston following her visit in April to the Notre Dame Archives.

Huddleston is focused on the Modernist Crisis and what Ward can teach us about it:

The Modernist Controversy has often been studied through the lens of its key figures—Tyrrell, Loisy, Hébert, Houtin, Sabatier, von Hügel, Bremond, to name a few—and their anti-modernist counterparts—Garrigou Lagrange, Merry del Val, Pius X, etc. What can be lost in only viewing the crisis through these polarized and zoomed-in lenses is a sense of how the crisis spilled into the lives of others not at the epicenter. Wilfrid and Josephine were conversant with tenets of both modernism and anti-modernism. Of course they did not want to be censored or condemned, but they also felt that the church was lacking in her relationship with the modern world. Their writings, both personal and published, reflect the tumult felt within the Catholic landscape of the era. While it is important to study the central figures and tenets of movements and crises, it is also important to take a step back and try to view the ripple effects of the crisis to the wider church. The correspondence and writings of Josephine Ward help us gain a better understanding of these currents.

Please read the rest there . . .

Years ago (pre-blog) I read Critics on Trial: An Introduction to the Catholic Modernist Crisis by Marvin O'Connell. One reason I've been interested in the subject is of course the effect on Cardinal Newman's reputation at the time. You may be sure that I'll be following this project with great interest! It especially makes me hope that Out of Due Time, the novel Huddleston mentions, might be published soon.

CD Review: "Reformation" Keyboard Works: Lamenting Walsingham

I chanced to see a post by Damian Thompson on social media about a new Hyperion CD of Elizabethan keyboard music by William Byrd, et al, so went to his Spectator "Holy Smoke" page to listen to his interview with the performer, Mishka Rushdie Momen (yes, she's related to Salman Rushdie; he's her uncle). Then, of course, I ordered the CD after perusing the Hyperion website for samples, etc.

The soloist wrote the liner notes for the CD and she laments the losses of culture and freedom in Recusant England, not just for Catholics at the time, but for the world (some of that regret comes through even more clearly in the "Holy Smoke" interview linked above). An excerpt:

Thinking about pilgrimages in England also involves confronting a great absence. English culture has been predominantly Protestant for half a millennium and the cult of St Thomas no longer exists. Thomas Becket’s shrine in Canterbury, described by Erasmus as ‘a shryne of gold … [where] all thynges dyd shyne, florishe’, was demolished in 1538 by the agents of Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to Henry VIII and architect of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The relics of Thomas Becket also vanished; in her novel The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel suggests they might have been thrown into Cromwell’s cellar. Subsequently, a royal proclamation ordered the destruction of any image or mention of Becket in the Church; in Missal books, Becket’s name is redacted more consistently than references to the Pope.

Our picture of the Renaissance is severely fractured and incomplete as a result of the sheer scale of the cultural vandalism caused by the English Reformation. Many paintings and works of art were destroyed in this Puritan [sic] environment. A rare example of a medieval wall painting which has survived is in Pickering, Yorkshire, where I gave a recital for the Ryedale Festival underneath an image depicting the chaplain Edward Grim pleading with the four knights of Henry II who murdered Thomas Becket. Over 700 Catholic religious institutions were destroyed between 1536 and 1540, and a great number of trained musicians and composers lost their positions. Some would have found work in the new Church of England and others in secular environments such as private homes, but I wonder if a wealth of musical treasures and talent may have been squandered. . . .

One might quibble with the "Puritan environment" description as anachronistic, but it does represent the views of someone like Latimer who wanted to purify English churches and shrines of their statues of the Mother of God and the saints. Here's a link to a page describing the wall paintings in Saints Peter and Paul church in Pickering, Yorkshire Momen refers to.

I received the CD Friday and have been listening to it with delight. She performs these pieces on the modern piano instead of the period instruments Byrd and Bull and Gibbons would have used, and I like the range and dynamics of the performances. While through the years I've listened to many recordings of William Byrd's liturgical music, including the three Masses, this is the first time I've listened to his keyboard works for such a stretch, and the soloist's notes about her methods of playing them on a concert piano, including fingering and use of the pedals, were enlightening to me. Her final comment from the notes:

Research has provided us with many details about people’s lives in this era and yet our imagination is compelled to fill in so many gaps. Musically speaking, exploring this repertoire on the piano gives me a sense of encountering a palace of riches, and at the same time a feeling of venturing into relatively uncharted territory. I would love it if works from this period were to become fully integrated into the modern pianist’s canon and for this inspiring repertoire to enter into a dialogue with masterpieces from throughout history.

Please note that this is Hyperion's "Record of the Month" and Momen was featured on BBC Radio's In Tune program Thursday, July 4, and there's a Gramophone interview. 

I think this would be a good CD for any collection. 

Image Source (Fair Use for a Review).

Book Review: "Tudor Sunset" by Mrs. Wilfrid (Josephine) Ward

This book begins and ends with death: the future Saint John Rigby is hanged, drawn, and quartered at St. Thomas Waterings (on the way to Canterbury) on June 21, 1600 and Queen Elizabeth I dies in her bed on March 24, 1603. With a title like Tudor Sunset, I don't think I'm spoiling the plot by telling you that: the sun sets on the Tudor dynasty when she dies.

It's what Josephine Ward does between these two deaths that make a novel a tense and suspenseful historical tale, as the fictional couple at the center of tale, Margaret (Meg) Scrope and Captain Richard Whitlock do their best to survive the last two years and three months of Elizabeth's reign. Especially since Meg is a recusant Catholic lady-in-waiting and friend of Anne (Dacre) Howard, Lady Arundell, the widow of martyred-in-chains Saint Philip Howard, and she and Whitlock frequent the bookstore of future Blessed James Duckett (also a martyr).

Each book and each chapter--numbered, not titled--brings another brush with danger, near escape, temptation or trap, and the reader becomes even more watchful than the characters.

Following a classic historical fiction method, Ward brings real historical characters into the story: not just Queen Elizabeth I, but Richard Topcliffe, William Byrd, Father John Gerard, SJ, Lady Arundell, the two martyrs already mentioned, etc., and one lady in particular, Luisa de Carvajal.

In the appendix with notes on her sources, Ward admits that she has brought Luisa de Carvajal to England earlier than records indicate she actually came. She needs her there for a crucial plot development and resolution. 

This may be a deal breaker for some readers and I'm not completely happy with her decision either. One result of this change in time line is that Ward depicts the "last supper" of Saint John Roberts, OSB and Blessed Thomas Somers the night before their executions at Tyburn arranged by Luisa de Carvajal on December 9, 1610 in Newgate Prison as being arranged instead for Blesseds Francis Page, SJ, Robert Watkinson, and Venerable Thomas Tichborne the night before their executions on April 20, 1602!

I looked at a couple of historical fiction writing guides and they commented that the author may use the excuse of a gap in the historical record to deviate from the timeline. For example Jane Friedman comments:

Rather than worrying about never, ever deviating from history, I advise establishing your own set of rules for when to bend history or not. That way, you’ll be able to make fair and consistent decisions and achieve the kind of balance most readers are looking for. Here are some tips that might help:

• There is a difference between altering verifiable facts and filling in the gaps. History is full of mysteries, unanswered questions, and gaps in the record. If what really happened can’t be verified, you have much more freedom to play around with history. . . .

• If a historical figure isn’t well known and not a lot has been written about them, you have more room for maneuver than you do if their life has been exhaustively documented. But, if you’re going to make something up, make sure it’s consistent with what you otherwise know about the character, including how they behaved, their interests, and what their values were.

So I'll just leave that there for your consideration; the scenes depicting the interactions between the priests and the laywomen, including the tragic figure of Anne Bellamy, who betrayed Saint Robert Southwell after horrible abuse and manipulation by Topcliffe (see the third paragraph on this page for details) are filled with wonderful detail and verisimilitude (?). Ward adds details to their conversations like the stories of Jane Wiseman, a recusant sentenced to the same fate as Saint Margaret Clitherow, of being pressed (literally) for information--which fits the timeline of the novel--and the executions of Blesseds John Thules and Richard Wrenno (Wrenno the Weaver)--which do not! (they were executed in Lancaster in 1616)--so while it's a beautiful scene and fulfills Ward's purposes of using the occasion to present vivid historical detail about how Catholics suffered in different ways in that era, it still troubles me a bit . . .

After a detour through Newgate and a sojourn at the Recusant Sawston Hall in Cambridgeshire with Lady Huddleston and William Byrd (his Mass for Three Voices is sung there), the scene returns to Court after the execution of the Earl of Essex on February 25, 1601. 

There's a different tension in the last part of the book as the two fictional characters wait out the last months of Elizabeth I's life. Meg and Lady Southwell--I presume this is the Lady Elizabeth (Howard) Southwell who went on to serve James I's Queen Anne of Denmark--serve the queen through her last decline: on the floor, standing up for hours, finally in bed, pressed to prepare for death by Archbishop Whitgift and the succession by Lord Cecil . . . 

The last words of the book are: 

It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.

Finally, I must comment on Josephine Ward's extensive preparation for this book, documented in her "Rough Notes on some of the Books Consulted" in the Appendix. The notes are not rough at all as she evaluates the literature available to her at the time and displays her critical judgment of the authors' intentions and methods. She read these works not just for the details about the sufferings of Catholics during Elizabeth I's reign but to help her prepare for the really great challenge of the novel: How to depict Queen Elizabeth I in the waning years of her reign. 

In the note Ward wrote "To Alfred Noyes" at the beginning of the book, she offers some insights into how she framed this depiction:

Does not tyranny provoke falsehood? Was ever a father so tyrannous as Henry VIII? Has it every been understood how his tyranny affected Elizabeth? Mary has been more pitied [?], and perhaps rightly, but the fact that the vices of the triumphant Elizabeth can be traced to her childhood is in itself a tragedy.

If the heart of Mary's mother was broken, the mother of Elizabeth was beheaded. The alternations of their fate were extreme, for first one and the other daughter was proclaimed illegitimate; first one and then the other and then both had the prospect of wearing the crown. The story of their childhood shows how they were conscious that they were utterly helpless and without defense against their father. On Elizabeth the effect was formative and repulsive. It seems to me that she admired the monster as heathens have admired inhuman gods. . . . Was ever child more demoralised by a bad father? (p. xi)

For all my qualms about the Luisa de Carvajal timeline manipulations, this was a marvelous reading experience and I recommend the novel highly.

Ward placed the "Epilogue at the Presentation before Queen Elizabeth of Ben Jonson's "Every Man Out of His Humor" (1599) as the frontispiece of the book (I have the Reprinted edition of December 1932 from Longmans, Green and Co.):

O heaven, that She, whose presence hath effected
This change in me, may suffer most late change
In her admired and happy government:
May still this Island be call'd Fortunate,
And rugged Treason tremble at the sound,
When Fame shall speak it with an emphasis.
Let foreign polity be dull as lead,
And pale Invasion come with half a heart,
When he but looks upon her blessed soil.
The throat of War be stopt within her land,
And turtle-footed Peace dance fairy rings
About her court; where never may there come
Suspect or danger, but all trust and safety.
Let Flattery be dumb, and Envy blind
In her dread presence; Death himself admire her;
And may her virtues make him to forget
The use of his inevitable hand.
Fly from her, Age; sleep, Time, before her throne;
Our strongest wall falls down, when she is gone.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Elizabeth I, painted around 1610, during the first revival of interest in her reign. Time sleeps on her right and Death looks over her left shoulder; two putti hold the crown above her head.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Portrait thought to Elizabeth Southwell as a widow in 1600

The Great Reunion of 1913 at Gettysburg

My late brother Steven was a Civil War history student; he lived in Pennsylvania for several years and went to Gettysburg often, taking our father there once at least. We discussed the Ken Burns PBS program often and talked about the Civil War books he read (often those family members gave him as gifts).

So this off-blog-topic post is in memory of him as we prepare to celebrate Independence Day, always a great family holiday. We had an additional reason: our parents met on a blind date on the Fourth of July!

One hundred and eleven years ago, from June 29 through July 4, Civil War veterans from North and South met on the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. One of the highlights was the re-enactment of Pickett's charge and then the handshake pictured above, after the echoes of the famous Rebel yell had faded. 

President Woodrow Wilson spoke on July 4, 1913--not as long as Edward Everett and not as briefly as President Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1863--and concluded his remarks with this:

How shall we hold such thoughts in our hearts and not be moved? I would not have you live even to-day wholly in the past, but would wish to stand with you in the light that streams upon us now out of that great day gone by. Here is the nation God has builded by our hands. What shall we do with it? Who stands ready to act again and always in the spirit of this day of reunion and hope and patriotic fervor? The day of our country's life has but broadened into morning. Do not put uniforms by. Put the harness of the present on. Lift your eyes to the great tracts of life yet to be conquered in the interest of righteous peace, of that prosperity which lies in a people's hearts and outlasts all wars and errors of men. Come, let us be comrades and soldiers yet to serve our fellow-men in quiet counsel, where the blare of trumpets is neither heard nor heeded and where the things are done which make blessed the nations of the world in peace and righteousness and love.

May God bless the United States of America and all "the nations of the world in peace and righteousness and love"!

Happy Independence Day!

Image Credit (Public Domain): Now the "Friendly" Angle One of the most affecting sights witnessed during the present reunion of Confederate and Federal veterans at Gettysburg is depicted in this photograph. Across the stone wall, which marks the boundaries of the famous "Bloody Angle" where Pickett lost over 3,000 men from a force of 6,000 these old soldiers of the North and South clasped hands in fraternal affection / / International News Service, 200 William St., New York.

Preview: Introducing Mrs. Wilfrid (Josephine) Ward on the Son Rise Morning Show

Anna Mitchell asked me if I'd like to comment on the life and career of Mrs. Wilfrid Ward (nee Josephine Mary Hope-Scott) during my usual Son Rise Morning Show spot on Monday, July 1. She had read a chapter about her in a book from Word on Fire, Women of the Catholic Imagination: Twelve Inspired Novelists You Should Know, edited by Haley Stewart, which I have not read. 

But I have read about Josephine Ward from other sources and have read two of her novels, so I said yes, I'd be happy to. So, Anna will bring what she knows about Josephine and I'll bring what I know about Josephine to our discussion.

The SRMS team will take the week of July 8 through 12 off (although Anna Mitchell has prepared many interviews to air during that week).

We will talk about the two novels by Josephine Ward I have read (One Poor Scruple and Tudor Sunset) during my resumed Monday segment on July 15!

BTW: for those of you few (!) who haven't followed this blog from the beginning, I started appearing on the Son Rise Morning Show in 2010, soon after Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation was published. I even visited Sacred Heart Radio's former location during a business trip with my late husband Mark in 2012, driving from Columbus to Cincinnati, and meeting Anna and Matt Swaim.

I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern. Please listen live here or listen to the podcast later.

Josephine Ward (May 18, 1864 – November 20, 1932) was the daughter of one of Saint John Henry Newman's good friends, James Hope-Scott (please note the "-Scott") and his second wife Lady Victoria Alexandrina Fitzalan-Howard, a daughter of the 14th Duke of Norfolk, Henry Granville Fitzalan-Howard, the leading Catholic peer and Earl Marshall of England. By his first wife, Charlotte Harriet Jane Lockhart, Sir Walter Scott's granddaughter, James Hope inherited Abbotsford House in 1853 and added the "-Scott' to his name.

After her parents' deaths, she and her brother James went to live with her maternal grandmother, Augusta Minna Howard, the dowager Duchess of Norfolk at Arundel Castle in West Sussex.

I drop all these names and titles because they demonstrate the rich Catholic background Josephine Mary had--both "Old" Catholic and "New" Catholic, with ties to the recently Emancipated Recusants and the Oxford Movement/Tractarian converts. 

She lived in two historically storied homes: Abbotsford, where she describes how she used play "as a child amidst [her great-grandfathers's] coats of mail in Hall . . . and [pass] between them shivering with terror on my lonely way to bed" in her note to Alfred Noyes in her last novel, Tudor Sunset. Reflecting on her ancestor's writing career, she says as child she didn't really think about attempting "to write an historical novel!", and yet in 1932, she published one about the last years of Queen Elizabeth I.

Then she lived in Arundel Castle, associated with two Catholic martyrs, Saint Philip Howard--where his then-Venerable/Beatified remains were entombed in the Fitzalan Chapel--and Blessed William Howard. So she had those deep ties to the past and the nine pages of books consulted at the end of Tudor Sunset demonstrates how she had studied her family's Catholic heritage.

In 1887, she married Wilfrid Philip Ward, the son of another important Oxford Movement convert, William George Ward. Wilfrid wrote biographies of his father (two separate titles), of Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman, and of Cardinal Newman (two volumes). She wrote novels, One Poor Scruple, Out of Due Time and The Job Secretary, for example. Wilfrid and Josephine knew all the great Catholics of that era, from Newman to Manning and Noyes to Belloc, not to mention other literary figures like Chesterton and Tennyson! Can you imagine a dinner party at their home?

To appreciate how close she and Wilfrid were to Cardinal Newman, see the letters she wrote and he wrote to Newman, announcing their engagement to be married in 1887!

Furthermore, Josephine and Wilfrid's daughter Maisie Ward married Frank Sheed in 1926, and they founded Sheed & Ward publishers, which republished some of Josephine's novels in 1933, including One Poor Scruple. Josephine assisted Maisie and Frank financially to found the company. Maisie went on to write many great books too, including biographies of her parents, Chesterton, Caryll Houselander, and Cardinal Newman--and one of my favorites, Saints Who Made History: The First Five Centuries!

Wilfrid died in 1916, Josephine in 1932; she was buried on the Isle of Wight.

The editors of the Catholic Women Writers series, Julia Meszaros and Bonnie Lander Johnson have included One Poor Scruple among the first works published in the series by the Catholic University of America Press, which I reviewed here.

In an article published in the Newman Review, they wrote of Josephine:

One of the Revival’s greatest literary treasures is Josephine Ward, who lived between 1864–1932. . . . In their writing, Josephine and Wilfrid were both concerned with the question of how to realize the fullness of human character in prose: What is a person? How is character formed? Josephine wrote in the Dublin Review that “the greatest drama is the unfolding of the action of the will as it adheres to or thwarts the Divine purpose.” But as a life-long friend of Newman’s, she was also steeped in his ideas about conscience and the formation of moral character, as well as about the importance of doctrine for both. Another central concern of Josephine’s—as topical today as it was then—was how to enable her children to participate in the best of public, intellectual, and cultural life, without exposing them over-much to the influence of institutions that remained fundamentally opposed to Catholic belief and practice.

I'm excited about this discussion on Monday and am grateful to Anna Mitchell for suggesting it.

Image Source (Public Domain): Portrait by Thomas Lawrence, c. 1820s

Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers, RIP

On May 4th I attended and read my parts in one of the quarterly Shakespeare meetings I asked to join a year ago. We read Shakespeare's History/Tragedy, Richard III. Today, the 25th of June is the anniversary of the execution in 1483 of Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers, on the orders of Richard, Duke of Gloucester at Pontefract or Pomfret, as it's named in Act III, Scene 3. Richard is arranging everything from murders to kidnappings to marriages so that he may take the throne after Edward IV has died, and he has to get rid of Queen Elizabeth's family, including her brother Lord Rivers, and her son, Sir Richard Grey, and another close associate of the Queen and her son Edward V, Sir Thomas Vaughan--and of course her sons, the Princes in the Tower.

Rivers recalls that Richard II was murdered at Pontefract/Pomfret:

O Pomfret, Pomfret! O thou bloody prison,
Fatal and ominous to noble peers!
Within the guilty closure of thy walls,
Richard the Second here was hacked to death,
And, for more slander to thy dismal seat,
We give to thee our guiltless blood to drink.

Rivers and Grey look back on the curses of Queen Margaret, King Henry VI's widow in Act I, Scene 3 and realize they are being fulfilled:

GREY
Now Margaret’s curse is fall’n upon our heads,
When she exclaimed on Hastings, you, and I,
For standing by when Richard stabbed her son.

RIVERS
Then cursed she Richard. Then cursed she
Buckingham.
Then cursed she Hastings. O, remember, God,
To hear her prayer for them as now for us!
And for my sister and her princely sons,
Be satisfied, dear God, with our true blood,
Which, as thou know’st, unjustly must be spilt.

RATCLIFFE
Make haste. The hour of death is expiate.

RIVERS
Come, Grey. Come, Vaughan. Let us here embrace.
Farewell until we meet again in heaven.

They exit to their beheadings . . . offstage.

But when you read his biography in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica you realize he was much more than the Queen's brother, her son's guardian, and Gloucester's enemy, for he was a:

statesman and patron of literature, and author of the first book printed on English soil, was born probably in 1442. He was the son of Richard de Wydeville and his wife, Jacquetta de Luxemburg, duchess of Bedford. His father was raised to the peerage in his son's infancy, and was made earl of Rivers in 1466. Anthony, who was knighted before he became of age, and fought at Towton in 1461, married the daughter of Lord Scales, and became a peer jure uxoris in 1462, two years after the death of that nobleman. . . . His father and brother were beheaded after the battle of Edgecot, and he succeeded in August of that year to the earldom. He accompanied Edward in his temporary flight to the Continent, and on his return to England had a share in the victory of Barnet and Tewkesbury and defended London from the Lancastrians. In 1473 he became guardian and governor to the young prince of Wales, and for the next few years there was no man in England of greater responsibility or enjoying more considerable honours in the royal service.

Then the biography turns to his literary pursuits, followed by a poignant line:

His mother, the duchess, died in 1472, and his first wife in 1473; in 1475 and the following year he went on pilgrimage to the holy places of Italy; from this time forth there was a strong tincture of serious reflection thrown over his character; he was now, as we learn from Caxton, nominated “Defender and Director of the Siege Apostolic for the Pope in England.” Caxton had in 1476 rented a shop in the Sanctuary at Westminster, and here had set up a printing-press. The first MS. which he undertook in London was one sent to him by “the noble and puissant lord, Lord Antone, Erle of Ryvyers,” consisting of a translation “into right good and fayr Englyssh” of Jean de Teonville's French version of a Latin work, “a glorious fair mirror to all good Christian people.” In 1477 Caxton brought out this book, as Dictes and Sayengis of the Philosophers, and it is illustrious as the first production of an English printing-press. To this succeeded the Moral Proverbs of Christine de Pisan, in verse, in 1478, and a Cordial, in prose, in 1479. The original productions of Lord Rivers, and, in particular, his Balades against the Seven Deadly Sins, are lost. . . .

The poignant line: 

Rivers began to perceive that it was possible to rise too high for the safety of a subject, and he is now described to us as one who “conceiveth well the mutability and the unstableness of this life.” After the death of Edward IV., he became the object of Richard III.'s peculiar enmity, and was beheaded by his orders at Pontefract on the 25th of June 1483.

Edmund William Gosse concludes:

Lord Rivers is spoken of by Commines as “un très-gentil chevalier,” and by Sir Thomas More as “a right honourable man, as valiant of hand as politic in counsel.” [In More's English version of The History of King Richard III]. His protection and encouragement of Caxton were of inestimable value to English literature, and in the preface to the Dictes the printer gives an account of his own relations with the statesman which illustrates the dignity and modesty of Lord Rivers in a very agreeable way. Rivers was one of the purest writers of English prose of his time.

“Memoirs of Anthony, Earl Rivers” are comprised in the Historical Illustrations of the Reign of Edward the Fourth (ed. W. H. B[lack]). (E.G.)

Another biography of Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers by Alexander Chalmers may be found here.

At the beginning of August, we'll read the last of Shakespeare's English History plays, The Life Of Henry VIII (which isn't). I don't think I can convince the hosts to accept Sir Thomas More as a Shakespeare History play, even though three pages of the single manuscript are accepted as being in Shakespeare's hand by the British Library!

Illustration credit (Public Domain): Presentation miniature from Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers, the first printed book in the English language, translated by en:Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, younger brother of Queen Elizabeth Woodville, and printed by William Caxton. The miniature shows Rivers presenting the book to his brother-in-law King Edward IV, accompanied by his consort Queen Elizabeth Woodville and her son Edward, Prince of Wales. Lambeth Palace Library, MS 265. Rivers displays on his tabard arms quarterly of 6: 1: Argent, a fess and a canton conjoined gules (Woodville) 2: Gules, a lion/griffin rampant or 3: Barry of ten argent and azure, a lion rampant gules armed langued and crowned or (Grand Dukes of Luxemburg) 4: Gules, a star of sixteen points argent (Baux) 5: Gules, an eagle ? displayed or 6: Vair (Beauchamp of Hatch, Somerset)

The 2024 Religious Freedom Week Begins

Once again, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have issued prayers for Religious Freedom Week, starting today, on the Optional Memorial--their choice--of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More, as the patrons of the week. June 22 is the anniversary of Saint John Fisher's execution; July 6 of Saint Thomas More's: both in 1535.

The theme for today is the "Respect for Sacred Spaces", and the reflection upon that theme mentions that "In recent years, a wave of vandalism and arson has hit Catholic churches and statues. There have been over 320 attacks so far, and that number steadily continues to grow."

Although Saints Fisher and More did not live to see it, we know that throughout the English Reformation period, during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Elizabeth religious objects, vessels, art, and other devotional representations of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Saints were vandalized and destroyed. 

Just three years and a few months after their executions, both mercifully commuted to beheadings rather being hanged, drawn, and quartered, the destruction began, as this excerpt from "Chapter 1: 1538 and after: the Virgin Mary in the century of iconoclasm" in The Virgin Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern English Literature and Popular Culture by Gary Waller (Cambridge University Press, 2022):

In 1538, in the late summer or autumn, in Chelsea or Smithfield or Tyburn, we can surmise – from both casual remarks recorded at the time and various histories and memoirs some years later – that one or more fires was lit and in it (or them) were burned statues, “images,” of the Virgin Mary, most probably those that had been brought from shrines dedicated to her at Doncaster, Ipswich, Penrhys, and Walsingham. Local records suggest that similar images from Caversham, along with roods from Bermondsey, Boxley, Islington, and others were added to this, or similar, fires elsewhere. In 1537, the reformist bishop Hugh Latimer had announced that in his own diocese there reigned “idolatry, and many kinds of superstition,” and during what Helen Parish terms 1538’s “long summer of iconoclasm,” he also named the statue of the Virgin at Worcester a “devil’s instrument.” . . . There are conflicting accounts on the date or dates on which such a “jolly muster” took place, and exactly when and what “idols” were destroyed, whether publicly or privately, but, Latimer pronounced, they were destroyed because they had “been the instrument to bring many (I fear) to eternal fire.” 

Here's a rather ironic line from Latimer's comments: these statues of the Mother of God, "unlike flesh-and-blood heretics, would not “be all day in burning.”" (Since Latimer was present at Blessed John Forest's execution by being burned alive, and he himself would suffer the same fate, those are eerie words to read). Notice that both men were burned alive as heretics!

And, of course, as the Dissolution of the Monasteries proceeded, more religious art and artefacts, books, and buildings were destroyed.

Saint John Fisher, pray for us!

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Our Lady of Walsingham, pray for us!

Image Credit (Public Domain): Seal of the Abbey of Our Lady of Walsingham.

Preview: Part Three of Three: Newman on "The Greatness and Littleness of Human Life"

On Monday, June 24, we'll conclude our series on Newman's "The Greatness and Littleness of Human Life" with the final paragraphs in which he sums up the purposes of the sermon. I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern. Please listen live here or listen to the podcast later.

It's good to remember that the power of Newman's preaching at the time was not through rhetorical flourishes, raising and lowering his voice--mostly, he used the pause to add emphasis. Otherwise, he read his Parochial and Plain Sermons and looked mostly at his text, not at his congregation. It was his words that captivated people (even those who never shared his faith in God), his imaginative style of helping us spiritual things and ideas in new ways. Newman took as one of his models the great Roman orator Cicero, but he took the Holy Bible and, when he was an Anglican, the "Church Catholic" as he called it, searching for the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church as his guides for truth and content.

The concluding paragraphs of this sermon demonstrate Newman's skill in reaching the souls of his congregation as he exhorts them to prepare to see Jesus in Heaven and their loved ones too more truly than they ever have on earth. 

Let us then thus account of our present state: it is precious as revealing to us, amid shadows and figures, the existence and attributes of Almighty God and His elect people: it is precious, because it enables us to hold intercourse with immortal souls who are on their trial, as we are. It is momentous, as being the scene and means of our trial; but beyond this it has no claims upon us. "Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, all is vanity." We may be poor or rich, young or old, honoured {223} or slighted, and it ought to affect us no more, neither to elate us nor depress us, than if we were actors in a play, who know that the characters they represent are not their own, and that though they may appear to be superior one to another, to be kings or to be peasants, they are in reality all on a level. The one desire which should move us should be, first of all, that of seeing Him face to face, who is now hid from us; and next of enjoying eternal and direct communion, in and through Him, with our friends around us, whom at present we know only through the medium of sense, by precarious and partial channels, which give us little insight into their hearts.

While he challenges them to see their lives in the right perspective, he also shows them how "this attractive but deceitful world"--God's Creation!--in its beauty and glory is preparing them for even greater glory and splendor:

These are suitable feelings towards this attractive but deceitful world. What have we to do with its gifts and honours, who, having been already baptized into the world to come, are no longer citizens of this? Why should we be anxious for a long life, or wealth, or credit, or comfort, who know that the next world will be every thing which our hearts can wish, and that not in appearance only, but truly and everlastingly? Why should we rest in this world, when it is the token and promise of another? Why should we be content with its surface, instead of appropriating what is stored beneath it? To those who live by faith, every thing they see speaks of that future world; the very glories of nature, the sun, moon, and stars, and the richness and the beauty of the earth, are as types and figures witnessing and teaching the invisible things of God. All that we see is destined one day to burst forth into a heavenly bloom, and to be transfigured into immortal glory. Heaven at present is out of sight, but in due time, as snow melts and discovers {224} what it lay upon, so will this visible creation fade away before those greater splendours which are behind it, and on which at present it depends. In that day shadows will retire, and the substance show itself. The sun will grow pale and be lost in the sky, but it will be before the radiance of Him whom it does but image, the Sun of Righteousness, with healing on His wings, who will come forth in visible form, as a bridegroom out of his chamber, as His perishable type decays. The stars which surround it will be replaced by Saints and Angels circling His throne. Above and below, the clouds of the air, the trees of the field, the waters of the great deep will be found impregnated with the forms of everlasting spirits, the servants of God which do His pleasure. And our own mortal bodies will then be found in like manner to contain within them an inner man, which will then receive its due proportions, as the soul's harmonious organ, instead of that gross mass of flesh and blood which sight and touch are sensible of. For this glorious manifestation the whole creation is at present in travail, earnestly desiring that it may be accomplished in its season.

Then he closes with a call to repentance and the desire for God's grace and forgiveness:

These are thoughts to make us eagerly and devoutly say, "Come, Lord Jesus, to end the time of waiting, of darkness, of turbulence, of disputing, of sorrow, of care." These are thoughts to lead us to rejoice in every day and hour that passes, as bringing us nearer the time of His appearing, and the termination of sin and misery. They are thoughts which ought thus to affect us; and so they would, were it not for the load of guilt which weighs upon us, for sins committed against light and grace. O that it were otherwise with us! O that we were fitted {225} duly to receive this lesson which the world gives us, and had so improved the gifts of life, that while we felt it to be perishing, we might rejoice in it as precious! O that we were not conscious of deep stains upon our souls, the accumulations of past years, and of infirmities continually besetting us! Were it not for all this,—were it not for our unprepared state, as in one sense it may truly be called, how gladly should we hail each new month and year as a token that our Saviour is so much nearer to us than He ever has been yet! May He grant His grace abundantly to us, to make us meet for His presence, that we may not be ashamed before Him at His coming! May He vouchsafe to us the full grace of His ordinances: may He feed us with His choicest gifts: may He expel the poison from our souls: may He wash us clean in His precious blood, and give us the fulness of faith, love, and hope, as foretastes of the heavenly portion which He destines for us!

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let Your perpetual light shine upon them. May the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace. Amen.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!