Another Recusant Scholar

From  I News:

They were monks who disavowed worldly possessions and are best known for their monastic scholarship and abstinence. 

But far from living a cloistered existence, sixteenth and seventeenth century Benedictines refused abstinence, died in duels and went off to war, a study has found. 

The Monks in Motion project led by Dr James Kelly of Durham University’s Department of Theology and Religion has also found that they spread illegal Catholic doctrine. 

It has brought together records of English and Welsh Benedictine monks exiled in Europe in a first-of-its-kind searchable database to uncover some of their remarkable histories.

Read the rest there.

Dr. James Kelly of Durham University:

I am St Cuthbert's Society Research Fellow in Early Modern British and Irish Catholicism and have been a member of Durham University's Department of Theology and Religion and its Centre for Catholic Studies since 2012. I am also Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded 'Monks in Motion' project, which is investigating the experience of the English and Welsh Benedictines in exile, c.1553-1800.

After completing my PhD at King's College, London, I was a member of the AHRC-funded ‘Who Were the Nuns?’ project and Project Manager of its AHRC-funded follow-on initiative, both at Queen Mary, University of London.

My interests are in post-Reformation Catholic history in Europe, with a particular focus on Britain and Ireland. The experience of the British and Irish Catholic communities at home and in exile is the main focus of my research.

I lead the History of Catholicism research strand within the University's Centre for Catholic Studies. I am also an associate and member of the steering committee of the Queen Mary Centre for Religion and Literature in English, as well as serving as secretary of the Catholic Record Society.

Here's more on that "Who Were the Nuns?" project. It's clear that the recusant Catholic community, clerical, religious, and lay, offers many avenues for research. A review of the table of contents for Dr. Kelly's co-edited book, Early Modern English Catholicism, demonstrates that:

Part I: Identity

1. Situating Early Modern English Catholicism by Brad S. Gregory

2. Creating an English Catholic Identity: Relics, Martyrs and English Women Religious in Counter-Reformation Europe by James E. Kelly

3. A British Catholic Community? Ethnicity, Identity and Recusant Politics, 1660–1750 by Gabriel Glickman

4. ‘Libera nos Domine?’ The Vicars Apostolic and the Suppressed/Restored English Province of the Society of Jesus by Thomas M. McCoog, SJ

Part II: Memory

5. ‘Attend to Me’: Julian of Norwich, Margaret Gascoigne and Textual Circulation among the Cambrai Benedictines by Jaime Goodrich

6. English Catholics and English Heretics: The Lollards and Anti-Heresy Writing in Early Modern England by Susan Royal

7. Joseph Reeve, SJ, the Park at Ugbrooke and the Cliffords of Chudleigh by Matthew J. Martin

Part III: Counter-Reformation

8. Underground Networks, Prisons and the Circulation of Counter-Reformation Books in Elizabethan England by Earle Havens and Elizabeth Patton

9. The Gospel, Liturgy and Controversy in the 1590s: Thomas Stapleton’s Promptuaria by William J. Sheils

10. Praying the Counter-Reformation by  Eamon Duffy

11. John Austin’s Devotions: Voicing Lyric, Voicing Prayer by Susannah B. Monta

Afterword by John Bossy

English recusant historians are discovering a world and people that were ignored for centuries. They are finding out how Catholics survived and endured through oppression and persecution, in exile and in their underground communities.

Charles II's Deathbed Conversion

Apologizing that it was taking him so long, Charles II died on February 6, 1685. He had suffered a fit of apoplexy on February 2 (O.S.) and had asked his brother James the Duke of York to take care of his mistresses (no word about his wife?) and certainly "let not poor Nelly starve."

Before he died Charles' brother and his wife Catherine of Braganza arranged to have the priest Father John Huddleston who had saved him in England after the defeat at Worcester come into the Royal Sickroom. The Bishop of Bath, Thomas Ken (future nonjuror) and all the other Anglicans left the room. The line attributed to James was that the priest who had saved his body was there to help save his soul--and Charles II was received into the Catholic Church and received Holy Communion as Viaticum.

Then when the Bishop and other clergy and nobility came back into the room, Charles did not receive Anglican communion. When he was buried at Westminster Abbey on February 14, his funeral ceremonies were rather restrained, possibly by the knowledge that he had "Poped" before he died.

Charles had ruled alone after dissolving Parliament in 1681, the conflict with Parliament, caused at partially (as it had been for his father) by religious matters. After the furor of the Popish Plot he had restored his brother to the position of High Admiral in violation of Parliament's Test Act and he had begun again to rely on France for funds. He might have been heading for another Civil War, but what some have called his love of ease, his laziness, might have pulled him back so he would avoid exile once again. He was not so dedicated to Catholic faith as James, and would have been more politic, just as waiting until at the point of death to convert he delayed his promised conversion.

Father John Huddleston was a Benedictine monk; he was born in Lancashire into a Catholic family and studied at St. Omer's and at the English College in Rome, being ordained in Rome at St. John Lateran in 1637 and returned to England in 1639. The Catholic Encyclopedia explains how he saved the future Charles II:

In 1651 he was residing at Moseley, Staffordshire, as chaplain to the Whitgreave family. After the defeat at Worcester on 3 September, 1651, Charles II was conducted by Colonel Gyfford to Whiteladies, where he was sheltered by the Penderell family, and it was while seeking for some safer hiding place for the king that John Penderell happened to meet Father Huddleston. Accordingly Charles was disguised as a peasant and removed to Moseley during the night of Sunday, 7 September. To guard against surprise Huddleston was constantly in attendance on the king; his three pupils were stationed as sentinels at upper windows and Thomas Whitgreave patrolled the garden. On Tuesday, 9 September, Cromwell's soldiers came to search the house. The king and Huddleston were hurriedly shut away in the priest's hiding place, and the troops, after first seizing Whitgreave as a fugitive cavalier from Worcester, were eventually convinced that he had not left the house for some weeks and were persuaded to depart without searching the mansion. That night the king left for Bentley, after promising to befriend Huddleston when restored to his throne.

While Charles was in exile, Huddleston became a Benedictine. Once Charles II restored the monarchy, Father Huddleston served first the Dowager Queen Henrietta Maria and then Queen Catherine of Braganza. Charles II helped all those who had helped him, protecting them for example, during the Popish Plot crisis: 

During the disturbances produced by Titus Oates's pretended revelations the House of Lords, by a vote on 7 December, 1678, ordered that Huddleston, Thomas Whitgreave, the brothers Penderell, and others instrumental in the preservation of his Majesty's person after the battle of Worcester, should for their said service live as freely as any of the king's Protestant subjects, without being liable to the penalties of any of the laws relating to Popish recusants.

Father Huddleston's "mind failed" before he died and Louis de Duras, 2nd Earl of Feversham, one of the French nobles of the Duke of York's household/James II's court--who had been present when Father Huddleston received Charles II into the Church--took care of him. Father Huddleston was buried in St. Mary-Le-Strand on September 13, 1698.

Alcuin of York's Pupil, Rabanus Maurus

Rabanus Maurus died on February 4, 856; he was a German Benedictine and pupil of Alcuin of York. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Abbot of Fulda, Archbishop of Mainz, celebrated theological and pedagogical writer of the ninth century, born at Mainz about 776 (784?); died at Winkel (Vinicellum) near Mainz on 4 February, 856. He took vows at an early age in the Benedictine monastery of Fulda, and was ordained deacon in 801. A year later he went to Tours to study theology and the liberal arts, under Alcuin. He endeared himself to his aged master, and received from him the surname of Maurus in memory of the favourite disciple of St. Benedict. After a year of study he was recalled by his abbot, became teacher and, later, head-master of the monastic school of Fulda. His fame as teacher spread over Europe, and Fulda became the most celebrated seat of learning in the Frankish Empire.

The author of this entry concludes that "Rabanus was probably the most learned man of his age. In Scriptural and patristic knowledge he had no equal, and was thoroughly conversant with canon law and liturgy. His literary activity extended over the entire field of sacred and profane learning as then understood."

Two great hymns are attributed to him: the Veni, Creator Spiritus (to be distinguished from the Sequence for Pentecost, Veni, Sancte Spiritus) and Christe, sanctorum decus Angelorum ("Christ, the Fair Glory of the Holy Angels").

The Oratorian Father Edward Caswall translated the former:

Come, Holy Ghost, Creator blest,
And make our hearts Your place of rest;
Come with Your grace and heav'nly aid
And fill the hearts which You have made.

To You, the Counselor, we cry,
To You, the gift of God Most High;
The fount of life, the fire of love,
The soul's anointing from above.

In You, with graces sevenfold,
We God's almighty hand behold
While You with tongues of fire proclaim
To all the world His holy name.

Your light to ev'ry thought impart,
And shed Your love in ev'ry heart;
The weakness of our mortal state
With deathless might invigorate.

Drive far away our wily foe,
And Your abiding peace bestow;
With You as our protecting guide,
No evil can with us abide.

Teach us to know the Father, Son,
And You, from both, as Three in One
That we Your name may ever bless
And in our lives the truth confess.

Praise we the Father and Son,
And Holy Spirit, with them One,
And may the Son on us bestow
The gifts that from the Spirit flow!

The illustration depicts Alcuin of York in the center, with Rabanus on the left presenting his work to Otgar, the Archbishop of Mainz.

For St. Cecilia's Day

There is a Benedictine Abbey of nuns on the Isle of Wight named for St. Cecilia; the abbey is part of the Solesme community of Dom Prosper Gueranger, who revived Benedictine monasticism in France after the French Revolution. He wrote a life of St. Cecilia which is available from Loreto Publications:

In the nineteenth century there was a concerted effort on the part of liberal revisionists to undermine the Church’s history by challenging the veracity of the Acts of the Martyrs. Some miraculous events associated with the lives of very popular saints, whose names were canonized in the Roman Missal, were treated with ridicule by scholars more concerned with documents than the living evidence of common tradition. 

It was righteous indignation that moved Abbot Dom Guéranger to defend the cause of Saint Cecilia, whose holy celebrity had spanned fifteen centuries. The abbot’s strategy was to validate the traditional accounts of all the martyrs’ lives by exonerating just one. He achieved this in the holy virgin Cecilia’s case by presenting in book form every morsel of factual evidence available, especially that which modern archeological excavations offered. As a result of his labor, there arose a refreshing new devotion to the young martyr, and – at least for a time — the cynical scoffs of the proud were silenced. This particular biography was written in response to the request of his co-reformer and friend, the Benedictine Abbess Cécile Bruyère.

Prospér Louis Pascal Guéranger was born in France, in 1805, at Sablé-sur-Sarthe. In the Napoleonic era, 1827, during the continued anti-clerical aftermath of the French Revolution, he was ordained a parish priest. As a young curé he authored several works on church-state relations. In 1836, having purchased an abandoned priory that was for sale in Solesmes, he and five other parish priests took solemn vows as Benedictines, with the intention of restoring the monastic life in France according to the ancient rule of Saint Benedict. Until his death there in 1875, Abbot Dom Guéranger devoted himself to restoring the cenobitical life as originally cultured thirteen centuries earlier by the father of western monasticism. He did much by his writings and prayers to keep the church in France loyal to the person of the Sovereign Pontiff and away from the dangers of both Gallicanism and Jansenism.

You may also find an online version here.

I see the Benedictines of St. Cecilia's Abbey listed often as translators of various Latin hymns in the monthly Magnificat liturgical prayer book/magazine. For example, for the feast of St. Elizabeth of Hungary last week (November 17) they have translated "Fortem virili pectore" by Silvio Cardinal Antoniano (1540-1603).

The Benedictines in England: Down to One Man

As today is the feast of St. Benedict, one of the patron saints of Europe, it's appropriate to reflect on the Benedictine order in England, before and after the English Reformation. Of course, the crucial events of that history are the foundation of the great Benedictine, Cluniac and Cistercian monasteries throughout England, their suppression and destruction during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and finally their revival after Catholic Emancipation in 1829 and the Restoration of the Hierarchy in 1850. The English Benedictine congregation was founded by St. Augustine of Canterbury in the fifth century, so it is very old.

As this website describes, the key to the continuity of the Benedictine order in England today is one man, Father Sigebert Buckley, who survived after the second suppression of the order at the beginning of Elizabeth I's reign. Henry VIII had suppressed the entire order and all its houses by 1540, but Queen Mary I restored the abbey at Westminster as a royal foundation:

Queen Mary nominated to the Abbacy Doctor John Feckenham, a learned and pious monk of Evesham. He gathered round him fourteen Benedictine monks and entered into possession of his Abbey on 21 November, 1556. This revival of St Peter's lasted only two years and eight months. On 12 July 1559 the monks were driven out, and have not yet returned.

Amongst those professed by Abbot Feckenham was Father Sigebert Buckley, a native of Staffordshire. He refused to take the oath of supremacy, and suffered imprisonment all during Elizabeth's reign. At the accession of James I, he was released from the prison of Framlingham. In the same year 1603 two English monks of the Cassinese congregation, Fathers Preston and Beech, arrived at Yarmouth, and found Father Sigebert in the house of Mr Francis Woodhouse. The 86 year old Confessor of the Faith was willing and anxious to pass on at once the habit and the succession of Westminster.

How to do this legally caused a delay of four years. The difficulty was at last overcome by a young lawyer of Abergavenny who had gone to Italy to fulfil a vow and had returned a Benedictine monk. Br Augustine Baker drew up a legal instrument for the aggregation and succession which satisfied all ecclesiastical law. It is said that it was a secular priest, Arthur Pitts, an exile in Lorraine, who recommended Sadler and Maihew to receive the succession of Westminster.

According to my categorization of the different causes of martyrdom during and after the Long English Reformation, Benedictines suffered as Supremacy Martyrs during the reign of Henry VIII, as Recusant Martyrs during the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I and Charles I, and one as a Popish Plot martyr during the reign of Charles II.

The Benedictine Supremacy martyrs are:

Blessed John Beche, Abbot of Colchester, 1 December 1539
Blessed Hugh Faringdon, Abbot of Reading, 14 November 1539 
Blessed Richard Whiting, Abbot of Glastonbury, 15 November 1539
Blessed John Rugg, 15 November 1539
Blessed John Thorne, 15 November 1539 
(All beatified on 13 May 1895 by Pope Leo XIII)

The Benedictine Recusant martyrs are:

St. John Roberts, 10 December 1610
St. Alban Bartholomew Roe, 21 January 1642
Blessed Mark Barkworth, 27 February 1601
Blessed George Gervase, 11 April 1608
Blessed Maurus Scott, 30 May 1612
Blessed Philip Powell (sometimes spelled Philip Powel), 30 June 1646
(The first two canonized in 1970 by Pope Paul VI, the others beatified either by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929 or Blessed John Paul II on 22 November 1987) 

The Benedictine Popish Plot martyr is:

Blessed Thomas Pickering, 9 May 1679 (Benedictine lay brother) (Beatified by by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929)

St. Benedict, pray for us!

Blessed and Holy Benedictine Martyrs of England, pray for us!

Saint Anselm, the Reluctant Archbishop of Canterbury

The late, great Ralph McInerny wrote this about St. Anselm of Canterbury, today's saint:

Saint Anselm was born near Aosta in 1033. His education commenced under the tutelage of the local Benedictines. When his mother died, Anselm knew a period of grief and sadness and, after three years of wandering, came to the monastery at Bee, drawn there by the reputation of Lanfrane. He became a monk of Bec in 1060 and, when Lanfranc went to Caen in 1063, succeeded him as prior of the abbey. He was a teacher in the monastery and became abbot in 1078. After fifteen years in this post he was summoned to England in 1093 to become the archbishop of Canterbury. His years at Canterbury were filled with controversy, and it was in that post that death overtook him in 1109. A rather extensive biography by his pupil Eadmer has come down to us.

This skeletal outline of the life of Anselm seems to present us with a busy ecclesiastic. Despite this impression, it is generally held that Anselm was a reluctant administrator and that he had no real relish for the many controversies into which he was drawn. He seems to have been prompted by a sense of obligation rather than by any deep inclination of his own nature. His essential self, it would seem, was inclined to withdraw into study and contemplation. Eadrner suggests that Anselm was so intent on the life of a teacher that he considered leaving Bec because Lanfranc already occupied the teaching post there. Later Anselm was to chastise himself for this worldly ambition, which he felt to be incompatible with the cloistered vocation that was his. Nonetheless, that ambition symbolizes his deep-seated desire for study, for teaching, for the calm of contemplation. Anselm's dislike for administration and active posts was based on his conviction that he had no real competence for leadership. Twice he asked the pope to relieve him of the see of Canterbury. He sought to return to the peace and tranquillity of the cloister, to prayer, meditation, and the teaching that awaited him there. Although he was a reluctant archbishop, his troubles in the post seem not to have been due to any incompetence of his. He was nonetheless twice exiled from his see, something that caused him no little anguish, but perhaps he derived a kind of ambiguous pleasure from those absences, for during those periods he recaptured in some measure the life he truly desired. But even in his active periods as archbishop he was as much theologian as spiritual administrator, composing some of the works on which his fame was to repose. . . . 

Just as the sketch of his life can mislead us into thinking that in Anselm we are confronted principally with a Church leader, so this seemingly meager list of writings could cause us to think that we will not find Anselm to be a significant thinker. He is a major figure nonetheless. His teaching represents one of the highest points reached by what may be referred to as the Augustinian tradition. It has often been suggested that Anselm has suffered unfairly from the tendency of students to hurry past him in order to arrive at the giants of the thirteenth century. But Anselm is a man of the eleventh century, and it is in its terms that he must be viewed. Thus regarded, he looms above the men of his own time. If we must say, as we must, that the men of the thirteenth century knew much more than Anselm, we may add that Anselm was one of the sources of their knowledge.

Read the rest there, for more information about his theological works.

O God, who led the Bishop Saint Anselm
to seek out and teach the depths of your wisdom,
grant, we pray,
that our faith in you may so aid our understanding,
that what we believe by your command
may give delight to our hearts.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.

75 Years Ago Today: Coventry Cathedral

The German Luftwaffe bombed Coventry on November 14, 1940, destroying the Anglican Cathedral and the Cathedral is celebrating the 75th anniversary of that night of terror:

BBC Radio 4’s Sunday programme highlighted Coventry’s perspective on the subject of remembrance in a special feature broadcast on the morning of Remembrance Sunday, November 8th. You can listen to it here.

On the evening of Saturday 14th November, the city is planning to create a giant Human Chain of Peace and Light in the city centre finishing at the Cathedral. Each person attending will carry a light along the chain to symbolise communities joining together in a universal message of remembering the past but looking to the future. Join His Royal Highness The Duke of Kent KG GCMG GCVO ADC and listen to LocalVocals as they sing songs from the 40’s. Hear survivor stories and stand shoulder to shoulder with your neighbour and a host of VIPs to remember the Blitz. The event begins in the University Square at 6.30 pm. Bring your torch or mobile phone to light up the square at 7 pm.

The inspiration for the Human Chain comes from Dresden where a similar event takes place annually and attracts thousands of people from across the country.

The Blitz 75th Commemorations programme continues with a concert in the Cathedral at 7.30 pm on Saturday evening with the Saint Michael’s Singers performing Mozart’s Requiem and Solemn Vespers with the Parliament Choir and the English Symphony Orchestra. . . .

On the evening of Sunday 15th November, the Cathedral will be hosting a Civic Service of Commemorationat 7 pm. Everyone is invited to come and join in looking back to the events of 75 years ago in company with representatives from Coventry’s friends across the world – including nations with whom we were at war in 1940.

The destroyed Cathedral, dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel, was of course formerly a Catholic church, built in the 14th and 15th centuries. The first cathedral of Coventry was St. Mary's, a Benedictine Priory. One might note that Henry VIII destroyed St. Mary's in the 16th century (the only cathedral destroyed during the English Reformation) in the course of the Dissolution of the Monasteries--he had offered it to the people of Coventry for purchase, but they could not raise the funds, so he had it razed. The ruins are of course now a tourist site.

St. Mary's was founded in the 11th century and there's an intriguing historical connection:

Leofric, earl of Chester, and Godiva his wife founded the great Benedictine monastery of Coventry in 1043, it being consecrated on 4 October by Archbishop Eadsige. The church was dedicated to the honour of God and His Blessed Mother, and also of St. Peter the Apostle, and of the Holy Virgin St. Osburg and of All Saints. It was endowed by the founder with one-half of the town in which the monastery was situated, and with twenty-four lordships, fifteen of which were in this county, four in Leicestershire, two in Northamptonshire, and one each in Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, and Cheshire. Among the witnesses to this foundation charter were Edward the Confessor, the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of Worcester and Lichfield, the abbots of Winchcombe and Pershore, and the earls Godwin, Harold, Siward, and Ordgar. The king confirmed to this abbot and his successors sac and soc and toll and all other liberties.

Yes, that Lady Godiva, who probably never rode a horse naked.

St. Mary's Priory was surrendered to the Crown on January 15, 1539. St. Michael's Cathedral was rebuilt after the Blitz and was consecrated in 1962 with Benjamin Britten's War Requiem premiering. The War Requiem combines traditional parts of the Catholic Missa pro Defunctis with the poems of Wilfred Owen, a World War I poet. Sir Simon Rattle recorded it in 2013 with the Berlin Philharmonic.

Image credit: Winston Churchill visits the ruins of the Cathedral in 1941.

The Fortnight for Freedom: Blessed Philip Powell, OSB

Blessed Philip Powell (sometimes spelled Philip Powel) (2 February 1594–30 June 1646) was a lawyer who became a Benedictine monk and priest, serving as a missionary in England during the period of recusancy. He was martyred at Tyburn. Powell is usually said to have been born in Tralon, Brecknockshire, Wales. From his youth he was a student of law, taught principally by David Baker, (who would later become a Benedictine himself, taking the name Augustine Baker). At the age of sixteen he went to study at one of the Inns of Court, London, and afterwards practiced civil law.

So he must have conformed and taken the Allegiance Oath required by James I after 1606, if he was studying and practicing civil law in London--thus he must have experienced some kind of reversion or conversion, discerned a vocation, left England, and studied for the priesthood. Perhaps like David Baker's family, Powell's parents were Church Papists, avoiding the fines by attending Church of England services, but also attending Catholic Mass whenever they could.

Three or four years later he received the Benedictine habit, becoming part of the community of St. Gregory at Douai (now at Downside Abbey, near Bath). The Benedictine monastery in Douai was named for Pope St. Gregory the Great; founded in 1605, its first prior was St. John Roberts, OSB, martyred at Tyburn on December 10, 1610. The biographies I've found do not state that he attended the English College at the University of Douai (pictured left), but that was the usual process. 

In 1618 Powell was ordained a priest and in 1622 left Douai to go on mission in England. In around 1624 he became chaplain to the Poyntz family at Leighland, Somerset. According to this British History site, the Poyntz family maintained a close relationship with the Benedictine order:

About 1624 Philip Powell or Morgan, later martyred at Tyburn, became chaplain to the Poyntz family at Leigh Barton. Powell left Leigh c. 1642, and was followed by a succession of priests, usually Benedictines, who regarded Leighland as the centre of a mission in West Somerset. In 1627 Giles Poyntz built a chapel and an annexe for the priest behind his house. Giles was one of a group of 8 recusants reported in 1642, and 12 were presented in 1664. Prudence Poyntz (d. 1691), Giles's second wife, leaving Leigh to her kinsman Robert Rowe, apparently required that Rowe should either maintain a chaplain in the house or pay him for an agreed number of masses. Should the family fail to keep a chaplain they were to pay £300 to the Benedictine province. There were resident chaplains at Leigh until 1767, but thereafter the chapel was used only occasionally. A priest celebrated monthly for five 'reputed papists' in 1776, and a priest from Dunster was evidently visiting Leigh later in the century. A French émigré priest may have used the chapel c. 1808.

When the English Civil War broke out he retired to Yarnscombe and Parkham in Devon. He then served for six months as chaplain to the Catholic soldiers in General Goring's army in Cornwall, and, when that force was disbanded, took ship for South Wales. The vessel was captured on 22 February 1646, and Powell was recognized and denounced as a priest.

On 11 May he was sent to London and confined in St. Catherine's Gaol, Southwark, where his treatment brought on a severe attack of pleurisy. His trial, which had been fixed for 30 May, did not take place till 9 June, at Westminster Hall. He was found guilty of being a priest and was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. It is recorded that that when informed of his death sentence, Powell exclaimed "Oh what am I that God thus honours me and will have me to die for his sake?" and called for a glass of sack (or sherry).  The martyr's crucifix, which had formerly belonged to Feckenham, last Abbot of Westminster, is preserved at Downside, with some of his hair and a cloth stained with his blood.

He was beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929. He is one of the six Gregorian martyrs: Blessed George Gervase (1608) ; Saint John Roberts (1610); Blessed Maurus Scott (1612); Saint Ambrose Barlow (1641); Blessed Philip Powell (1646), and Blessed Thomas Pickering (1679) honored at Downside Abbey, established after the French Revolution led to the suppression of the monastery at Douai.

Blessed Columba Marmion

From Vultus Christi in Ireland:

A Great Irish Saint

Today is the feast of a great Irish saint! Born and educated in Dublin, Joseph Marmion served as a parish priest and seminary professor before becoming a Benedictine monk at the Abbey of Maredsous in Belgium. Dom Columba Marmion was elected of Abbot of Maredsous in 1909. He chose to receive the Abbatial Blessing on Rosary Sunday. It fell that year on October 3rd. When Pope John Paul II beatified Abbot Columba Marmion in 2000, the liturgical memorial of the new Blessed was fixed on the date of his Abbatial Blessing, rather than on the day of his death, January 30th.

John Paul II

In 1985 Pope John Paul II visited Belgium. When the papal helicopter flew over the Abbey of Maredsous on the way from Brussels to Beauraing, the Holy Father confided to one of his aides: “I owe more to Columba Marmion for initiating me into things spiritual than to any other spiritual writer.” The saints engender saints, and this in every age.

Cardinal Mercier, and Others

Cardinal Mercier, the holy Archbishop of Malines in Belgium and a contemporary of the Abbot wrote, after reading Christ, the Life of the Soul: “The perfume of Holy Scripture, to be breathed in at each page of this volume, gives the impression that it was conceived and prepared during prayer, at the foot of the altar, before being given to the public.” Pope Benedict XV kept the writings of Abbot Marmion close at hand and recommended them to the saintly head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church Metropolitan Andrei Sheptitsky of Lviv, saying: “Read this, it is the pure doctrine of the Church.”

Buckfast Abbey on the BBC

Buckfast Abbey was featured on the BBC's Choral Evensong programme last week and the Vesper service is still on-line today. It was recorded for the Feast of the Transfiguration:

Choral Evening Prayer from Buckfast Abbey, Devon during the 2014 Exon Singers’ Festival – recorded Thurs 31st July (rpt Sun 10th Aug)

Introit: An Introit for Transfiguration (Robin Holloway) (First performance)

Responses: Plainsong

Office Hymn: O vision blest of heavenly light (Coelestis gloriae)

Psalms: 97, 121 (Plainsong; Robin Holloway)

First Lesson: 2 Peter 1 vv16-19

Anthem: Christus Jesus splendor Patris (Massaino)

Second Lesson: Matthew 17 vv1-9

Homily: The Rt Revd David Charlesworth, Abbot of Buckfast

Canticle: Magnificat quarti toni (Palestrina)

Lord’s Prayer (Toby Young ) (First performance)

Motet: Ave Maria (Josquin)
Final Hymn: ‘Tis good, Lord, to be here (Carlisle)

Organ Voluntary: Hymne d’Actions de graces: “Te Deum” (Langlais)

Richard Wilberforce (Music Director)

Jeffrey Makinson (Organist) 

Buckfast Abbey was founded first in the 11th century as a Benedictine abbey, and then Cistercians took over. They surrendered the abbey in 1540 and it was used as a quarry after Thomas Cromwell's Court of Augmentations granted it to  Sir Thomas Dennis of Holcombe Burnell. French Benedictines returned to the site in 1882 and built a new abbey, officially opened in 1902, with the abbey church pictured above (from Wikipedia Commons) completed in 1938. Buckfast Abbey sells a tonic wine and raises bees to be self-sufficient.

More information about the Exon Singers' Festival here.

Crowland Abbey: A Pilgrimage and a Poem

A Clerk of Oxford posts a marvelous remembrance of a pilgrimage to the ruins of Crowland Abbey in Lincolnshire. John Clare, the 19th century "labouring-class poet" wrote a sonnet about the abbey ruins:

IN sooth, it seems right awful and sublime
To gaze by moonlight on the shattered pile
Of this old Abbey, struggling still with Time,
The grey owl hooting from its rents the while;
And tottering stones, as wakened by the sound,
Crumbling from arch and battlement around,
Urging dread echoes from the gloomy aisle,
To sink more silent still. ­The very ground
In Desolation’s garment doth appear,
The lapse of age and mystery profound.
We gaze on wrecks of ornamented stones,
On tombs whose sculptures half erased appear,
On rank weeds, battening over human bones,
Till even one’s very shadow seems to fear.

Crowland Abbey was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Bartholomew, and St. Guthlac, a late 7th century/early 8th century saint who came to Crowland on St. Bartholomew's Day in 699. The last abbot of Crowland and 28 monks surrendered the abbey to Cromwell's Visitors on December 4, 1539. According to this site, the last abbot had a rather contentious rule:

The last abbot, John Wells, or Bridges, ruled the house from 1512 until 1538. The visitation of Atwater, bishop of Lincoln, in 1519, shows that he was very arbitrary and unpopular. He then kept in his own hands the emoluments of the cellarer and receiver, so that they were officers only in name. In consequence the monks got neither soup nor pudding. Sick monks who were away with leave could not get the customary allowance of food and drink. One very old monk was denied the privileges which were his due. The bishop ordered the abbot to make full amends, and also to remove the janitor who spent much of his time in the town of Crowland, and sent pilgrims to Walsingham astray.

An anxious desire to appease Cromwell and Henry VIII appears in the abbot's correspondence in 1534, 1539, and 1539. Demands were made on him for leases and grants which were beyond his power to satisfy. There is no record of any discussions among the monks about the progress of affairs, and they certainly swallowed any scruples which they may have had. In June, 1534, the abbot and thirty-two monks subscribed to the royal supremacy. On 25 March, 1537, the abbot sent a present of fen fish to Cromwell, begging him 'to be good and favourable lord' unto him and his poor house. Between 1535 and 1539 he granted over thirty small annuities, some of them possibly for sums of ready money with the object of providing for the future.

John Wells received a generous pension: £133 6s. 8d, while the rest st of the monks received £5 to £10 a year. The nave and the aisles of the monastery church were saved to become the parish church in Crowland, while the monastery,  as well as the crossing, chancel, and transepts were destroyed. As usual, A Clerk of Oxford's post provides great detail and excellent pictures.

David Augustine Baker, OSB

 

Benedictine priest and monk (David) Augustine Baker died of the plague on August 9, 1641. He was a missionary priest in England, a spiritual director of English Benedictine nuns in exile, and a mystic, writing books on Catholic spirituality.

 

As this site notes Father Baker, "was one of the earliest members of the newly restored English Benedictine Congregation. He has three claims on our attention.

• "He supervised the link between Sigebert Buckley of Westminster and the old English Congregation and the new English monks from Italy.
  
• "He collected a huge amount of historical material to support the claim (against newer orders) that the conversion of England was from the beginning essentially Benedictine.
  
• "He explored deep into the spiritual world of prayer, teaching many, especially among our nuns, the fruitful realities of the life of prayer. In this his influence is incalculable, and is still with us today. Apart from the language in which it is set out, which is, not unreasonably, a little dated, it is a spirituality which sits well on the more recent columns of the church's inner structure. It grew in the Counter- Reformation world, but has older roots and survives when some of the more enthusiastic accretions of the seventeenth century have largely evaporated."

This blogger comments on Father Baker's spirituality and life of prayer:

Like the Fathers of the Church, Dom Augustine regarded continuous prayer as the whole purpose of monastic life; but he did not reserve contemplation to monks and nuns alone. For St Symeon the New Theologian it is as connected with holy communion as baptism is connected with conversion. Dom Augustine wrote of the solitude that is a necessary condition for contemplation:

Now this so necessary solitude can be found more perfectly and permanently in a well-ordered religious state … yet it is not confined to that state but that, in the world also, and in a secular course of life, God has oft raised and guided many souls in these perfect ways, affording them even there as much solitude and as much internal freedom of spirit as he saw was necessary to bring them to a high degree of perfection.

Just as he believed that people can be called by God to contemplation in all walks of life, so he believed that a monk can pursue his goal in any conditions imposed on him by obedience. Being sent on the Mission was not unmonastic if the monk has sufficient spiritual maturity not to be diverted from his contemplative goal. Indeed his argument with Dom Rudisind was that life in a monastery can also be a distraction from contemplation in someone who is too concerned about the externals of monastic life. I believe that, if the teaching of Dom Augustine Baker is complemented by the teaching of P. Jean-Paul de Caussade SJ with his “Abandonment to Divine Providence” and his “Sacrament of the Present Moment”, and if this is set within the context of a sound understanding of the Liturgy and, hence, of the Church, then the English Benedictine Congregation will be seen to have a common goal, a coherent doctrine how to achieve it, and a flexibility to adapt the monastic observances to whatever circumstances may arise.



Ampleforth Beer, There and Back Again

The Northern Echo has this story about Ampleforth Abbey shipping its beer to France, and how that is a "homecoming" of sorts for the beer:

IN A turn of events which has taken 220 year to come full circle; English monks are to sell beer to the French based on a secret recipe they fled France with way back in 1793.

The secret recipe for “la biere anglaise” has been hopping the channel with Benedictine monks for more than 400 years.

The closely guarded monastic recipe went with them after they were driven from England to France during the Reformation in 1608 before returning to England when they fled Revolutionary France in 1793.

While living on the continent, the beer provided the monks with a living but production ceased on their return to England and wasn't brewed again until last year.

Since Ampleforth Abbey Beer went on sale 12 months ago, the ale has received an enthusiastic reception.

Deliciously Yorkshire named it “Yorkshire’s Best Drink”. Now - in a case of history repeating itself - the French are about to discover the drink again.

Ampleforth Abbey, near Helmsley, has just received a large order for thousands of bottles of its beer from one of France’s leading beer distributors, International Breweries and Beers (IBB).

As soon as I read that second paragraph I began to wonder--"they were driven from England to France during the Reformation in 1608"? The Dissolution of the Monasteries, as we know, occurred during the reign of Henry VIII, not the reign of James I of England. I think what's missing from the timeline is that in 1607, the last link to the Benedictine Abbey at Westminster, re-established by Queen Mary I and then dissolved again by Elizabeth I, the monk Robert Sigebert Buckley, "professed a group of English monks in France, and so passed onto them the rights and privileges of the ancient English Benedictine Congregation", as the Ampleforth Abbey website history page explains. There are more resources about Father Buckley here, including information about the last Catholic Abbot of Westminster, John Feckenham. Among the monks who joined the continued English Benedictine line were the martyr St. Alban Roe and Father Augustine Baker.

Like the English Benedictines of Cambrai who were imprisoned with the Carmelites of Compiegne, the English Benedictines in France at Dieulouard fled back to England during the French Revolution. Although the monks had brewed the beer and sold it in France to make a living, they just started production again in Ampleforth last May. I think that we in the U.S.A. would have to make pilgrimage to Ampleforth to enjoy this beer, which is double-fermented and sparkles like champagne! Cheers!

Image credit to wikipedia commons under a license.

Benedictine Martyrs of the English Reformation

Since July 11 is the feast of St. Benedict of Nursia, founder of Western style monasticism, it seems only right for me to post some background on the Benedictine martyrs of the English Reformation. According to my categorization of the different causes of martyrdom during and after the Long English Reformation, Benedictines suffered as Supremacy Martyrs during the reign of Henry VIII, as Recusant Martyrs during the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I and Charles I, and one as a Popish Plot martyr during the reign of Charles II.

The Benedictine Supremacy martyrs are:

Blessed John Beche, Abbot of Colchester, 1 December 1539
Blessed Hugh Faringdon, Abbot of Reading, 14 November 1539
Blessed Richard Whiting, Abbot of Glastonbury, 15 November 1539
Blessed John Rugg, 15 November 1539
Blessed John Thorne, 15 November 1539
(All beatified on 13 May 1895 by Pope Leo XIII)

The Benedictine Recusant martyrs are:

St. John Roberts, 10 December 1610
St. Alban Bartholomew Roe, 21 January 1642
Blessed Mark Barkworth, 27 February 1601
Blessed George Gervase, 11 April 1608
Blessed Maurus Scott, 30 May 1612
Blessed Philip Powell (sometimes spelled Philip Powel), 30 June 1646
(The first two canonized in 1970 by Pope Paul VI, the others beatified either by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929 or Blessed John Paul II on 22 November 1987)

The Benedictine Popish Plot martyr is:

Blessed Thomas Pickering, 9 May 1679 (Benedictine lay brother) (Beatified by by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929)

Other Benedictines, like Elizabeth Barton and her confessors, suffered for their faith, but have not been beatified or canonized. The Supremacy martyrs were those abbots and monks who suffered during the Dissolution of Monasteries, and again, there were other Benedictines or Cistercians who suffered after the Pilgrimage of Grace who have not been designated as holy martyrs for some reason. Mary I restored the Benedictine order at Westminster Abbey, but with her death, Elizabeth I dissolved the order again. By 1607, there was only one Benedictine monk of the pre-Reformation era alive, Dom Sigebert Buckley, and he is the bridge for the order in the seventeenth century--down to one man!

Shrewsbury Masses in Monastic Sites

On Saturday, June 8 and Sunday, June 23, Masses were celebrated during the Year of Faith in two former Catholic abbeys. On June 8, the Bishop of Shrewsbury celebrated Mass at Shrewsbury Abbey:

The Mass was arranged by the Shrewsbury deanery with the permission of the Church of England and was celebrated by the Rt Rev. Mark Davies, the Bishop of Shrewsbury.

The abbey was full to capacity as hundreds of local Catholics and about a dozen priests turned out for the event on a blazing Saturday afternoon.

The Mass began with the singing of the Te Deum, in which the congregation asked for the intercession of such saints as St Winefride, whose tomb used to lie in the abbey, and such local martyrs as the Elizabethans Blessed Robert Johnson and Blessed Richard Martin.

[Shrewsbury Abbey, the site of Ellis Peter's Cadfael murder mysteries, is an Anglican parish now.]

Shrewsbury Abbey was founded in 1083 and by the early 16th century was one of the most wealthy and important of more than 600 monasteries throughout the country, and was ruled by a “mitred abbot” who also sat Parliament.

It was dissolved in 1540 by King Henry VIII and the shrine of St Winefride, today a patron of the Diocese of Shrewsbury, was desecrated.

Following improvements in ecumenical relations since the Second Vatican Council, Benedictine monks were about a decade ago permitted to celebrate Mass at the abbey for the first time since its dissolution.

The Mass at Norton Abbey was scheduled to be celebrated in the outdoor ruins of the Augustinian priory, but the weather did not cooperate:

Catholics in Cheshire have attended Mass on the site of a Medieval abbey church for only the second time since the Reformation.

The Mass at Norton Priory, Runcorn, was celebrated to mark the Year of Faith opened last October by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

It brought together more than 600 faithful from the five Runcorn churches of the Holy Spirit, Our Lady, St Augustine, St Edward and St Martin de Porres and the Frodsham parish of St Luke that make up Local Pastoral Area 12 of the Diocese of Shrewsbury.

Initially, an outdoor Mass had been planned amid the ruins of the former Augustinian priory but the uncertain weather persuaded organisers to transfer the celebration to the 12th century undercroft. . . .

The Mass was concelebrated by Runcorn priests Fr Peter Wright, who preached, and Fr George Malecki and by Fr Peter O’Neill, the parish priest of St Luke’s. The Rev. Deryck Sankey, a Warrington-based deacon, also attended.

The Mass was also attended by the children of six primary schools, with their families, as well as pupils and teachers from St Chad’s Catholic and Church of England High School, Runcorn.

The congregation included a small group of Kenyans who were visiting Runcorn from St Mary’s Catholic School in Nyeri, which is twinned with St Chad’s. . . .

Norton Priory has now become an acclaimed tourist attraction with an award-winning museum, managed woodland and 18th century walled gardens open to visitors.

Much of the original layout of the buildings – the cloisters, church, refectory and dormitory – can be seen, though few of the original buildings remain standing.

One of the greatest surviving items is an huge statue of St Christopher carrying the child Jesus on his shoulders [pictured in the article] which was preserved by the Brooke family and is now on view at the museum.

The Mass was only the second Mass to be celebrated at the site of the priory since the 16th century.

The first was celebrated by the priest and parishioners of St Augustine’s, Runcorn, about 30 years ago.

These are fascinating historical events! It is good for English Catholics to demonstrate their heritage in their native land, and it is very hospitable for the Church of England pastor to make his church available for the celebration of the Mass--but the church was consecrated for the celebration of Holy Mass and the Sacraments of the Catholic Church, after all!

[Both photos are from wikipedia commons.]

St.Benedict and England

As today is the feast of St. Benedict, patron saint of Europe, it's appropriate to look at the Benedictine order in England, before and after the English Reformation. Of course, the crucial events of that history are the foundation of the great Benedictine, Cluniac and Cistercian monasteries throughout England, their suppression and destruction during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and finally their revival after Catholic Emancipation in 1829 and the Restoration of the Hierarchy in 1850. (The image on the right is courtesy of wikipedia commons, depicting the ruins of Whitby Abbey at sunset.)

The current English Benedictine Congregation sketches that history, noting that the preservation of the link between pre-Reformation Benedictine monasticism in England came down to one survivor in 1607, in the early years of James I's reign:

The present day English Congregation can claim canonical continuity with the congregation erected in the thirteenth century by the Holy See. The oldest monasteries of that congregation claimed continuity with the monasteries restored by Ss Dunstan, Ethelwold and Oswald in the tenth century. These monasteries had bound themselves together by a document known as the Regularis Concordia or Rule of Agreement. These monasteries in turn claimed moral continuity with the monasteries founded by Ss Wilfrid and Benet Biscop in the seventh century, who in turn were inspired by what they saw at St Augustine’s monastery at Canterbury. St Augustine had been a monk at Pope Gregory the Great’s monastery in Rome and had been sent by the Pope to England in 597. The seventh century monasteries had been destroyed by the Viking invaders in the ninth century.

From the tenth to the sixteenth century the black monks of St Benedict played an integral part in every aspect of English life: religious, social and economic. Under King Henry VIII the congregation nearly came to extinction with the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s. Queen Mary I took the ancient royal Abbey of Westminster, refounded by King Edward the Confessor in the eleventh century, and restored it to a surviving band of monks on 21 November 1556. However, this revival ceased on the accession of Elizabeth I in 1558.

By 1607 only one monk of the pre-Reformation congregation survived, Dom Sigebert Buckley. On 21 November 1607 he aggregated two young English monks of the Cassinese Congregation to the English Congregation, thus ensuring a moral continuity of the link to St Augustine. These two monks joined other English monks exiled in France who were training for work on the English mission. It is through this missionary work that the present day congregation finds part of its work in parochial duties throughout the country.

By the nineteenth century monasteries were once again established in England. The monks from Douai came to England in 1795 to Acton Burnell, in Shropshire, the seat of Sir Edward Smythe, relocating to their current home at Downside near Bristol in 1814. Those of St Laurence's, Dieulouard, coming to Ampleforth near York in 1802. The monks of St Edmund’s in Paris moved first to Douai after the French Revolution and returned to England to Douai near Reading in 1903. The nuns in Cambrai moved to Woolton, then Salford (Warks), finally Stanbrook near Worcester in 1838, and those from Paris to Cannington, then Colwich near Stafford in 1836.

Read the rest here.

Several Benedictines suffered in the aftermath of the English Reformation: Downside Abbey honors several saints on their site. St. Benedict, Pray for Us!

Kidnapped by Pirates and Martyred at Tyburn

Blessed George Gervase: Priest and martyr, born at Boscham, Suffolk, England, 1571; died at Tyburn, 11 April, 1608. His mother's name was Shelly, and both his father's and mother's families had been long established in the County of Suffolk. Losing both parents in boyhood, he was kidnapped by pirates and carried off beyond seas, remaining in captivity over twelve years. He lost his religion during that period; but, when at last he was able to return to England, and found that his brother Henry had become a voluntary exile in Flanders in order to be able to practise his religion, George followed him there, and was soon reconciled with the Church. He entered the English College at Douai in 1595, and was ordained priest in 1603. He at once went to the English mission. He laboured very successfully for over two years, but was arrested in June, 1606, and banished with several other clergy. He then made a pilgrimage to Rome, and there endeavoured to enter the Society of Jesus, but, not being admitted for some unknown reason, he returned to Douai, where he received the Benedictine habit. His brother Henry had obtained for him a comfortable living near Lille, being anxious to preserve him from the persecution then raging in England. But George was determined to labour for the conversion of his native land, and succeeded in returning to his native England, but was soon arrested and incarcerated. Refusing to take the new oath of allegiance on account of its infringing on spiritual matters where Catholics were concerned, he was tried, convicted of the offense of merely being a priest, under the statute 27 Elizabeth, and was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. Some authorities say he did not receive the Benedictine habit until a short time before his death from Father Augustine Bradshaw.

December 10, 1610: Executions at Tyburn Tree

Two martyrs and some notes on Catholic martyrdom during the reign of James I:

St. John Roberts, OSB and Blessed Thomas Somers were executed as traitors/priests at Tyburn Tree during the reign of King James I .

According to this site, St. John Roberts was the

Son of John and Anna Roberts; his ancestors were princes in Wales. Raised Protestant, John always felt an affinity for Catholicism. He studied at Saint John’s College, Oxford from 1595 to 1597, but left without a degree. He then studied law at the Inns of Court at age 21. In 1598, while travelling in France, he joined the Church of Rome at Notre Dame in Paris.

Entered the English College at Valladolid, Spain on 18 October 1598. He left the College in 1599 to join the Abbey of Saint Benedict in Valladolid. Benedictine novice at the Abbey of Saint Martin in Compostela, Spain in 1600. Ordained there.

Father John returned to England as a missioner, leaving on 26 December 1602, and entering the country in April 1603. Arrested in May 1603, and exiled. Returned to England in 1604, and worked with plague victims in London; arrested and banished again. Returned to England in 1605. During a search for suspects involved in the Gunpowder Plot, John was found in the home of Mrs Thomas Percy, and was arrested again. Though he had no connection to the Plot, he spent seven months in prison, and was exiled again in July 1606.

While in exile he founded a house in Douai for exiled English Benedictines; this house became the monastery of Saint Gregory. Responsible for the conversion of Blessed Maurus Scott. Returned to England in October 1607, was arrested in December, and sent to Gatehouse prison. He escaped, and spent a year working in London, but was again arrested. His execution was scheduled for May 1609, but the intercession of the French ambassador led to a reduction in sentence; he was exiled yet again.

Returned to England a few months later, he was arrested while celebrating Mass on 2 December 1610. Convicted on 5 December 1610 of the crime of priesthood. Martyred with Blessed Thomas Somers.

He was canonized by Pope Paul VI as one of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales in 1970.

Blessed Thomas Somers was a Schoolmaster who left England to become a seminarian in Douai, France. He was ordained there and then returned to England to minister to covert Catholics in London, sometimes using the alias Thomas Wilson. Arrested and condemned to death for the crime of being a priest. He was beatified in 1929 by Pope Pius XI.

James VI of Scotland and I of England and Ireland executed fewer priests and laity under his predecessor's treason and felony laws. Although terrified after the near miss, James was really rather restrained in his reaction to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. At least, he was restrained if you compare the numbers of Catholics executed for their faith in the years after the November 5, 1605 discovery of the plot to the brutal reaction of Elizabeth I's government after the failed Spanish Armada in 1588. In 1606, there were three martyrs (including Nicholas Owen by torture); one in 1607; three in 1608 (including Thomas Garnet, SJ); none in 1609. Compare that to the executions of 1588 alone: eight on August 28; six on August 30; seven more on October 1 and three on October 5--and the martyrdoms continued through the end of Elizabeth I's reign.

In 1610, however, in reaction to the assassination of King Henry IV of France by Francois Ravillac in May, James' fears were revived. The Oath of Allegiance, which he thought perfectly reasonable and limited to temporal loyalties, had not been accepted by Catholics as well as he hoped, and thus there was a slight uptick in executions--still only four (the others were Roger Cadwallador and George Napper, the latter in Oxford).

In 1611, George Abbott became Archbishop of Canterbury--he was more zealous in his suppression of Catholicism, but still only two martyrs in 1612; none from 1613 to 1615 (one that year, Robert Edmonds); six in 1616 and one in 1618. So that's 21 martyrs from 1606 to 1618 compared to 24 martyrs from August 28 to October 5, 1588!

Then things settled down again until the reign of Charles I.

So why this pattern? For one thing, James I believed that persecution was the sign of a false church (which also shows he knew this persecution to be on religious grounds, not merely for state security). Also, the diplomatic positions that James took emphasized peace and conciliation with Catholic Spain or even France, so persecution would be suspended during when it was the diplomatic thing to do--when he was negotiating for the Spanish or French matches, for example. The ambassadors of Spain actively campaigned for priests to be freed and exiled. On the side of enforcing the Elizabethan statutes against Catholic priests were his Archbishop of Canterbury and Parliament, so a few sacrificial lambs would be offered up from time to time.

St. Benedict and England

As today is the feast of St. Benedict, patron saint of Europe, it's appropriate to look at the Benedictine order in England, before and after the English Reformation. Of course, the crucial events of that history are the foundation of the great Benedictine, Cluniac and Cistercian monasteries throughout England, their suppression and destruction during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and finally their revival after Catholic Emancipation in 1829 and the Restoration of the Hierarchy in 1850.

The English Benedictine Congregation sketches that history, noting that the preservation of the link between pre-Reformation Benedictine monasticism in England came down to one survivor in 1607, in the early years of James I's reign!

St. Benedict, Pray for Us!