Preview: Anniversaries of Two Martyrs in England and Ireland

(The candle marks the spot where the great shrine of Saint Thomas of Canterbury once stood, destroyed by Henry VIII's command in 1538, when he suppressed the saint's Cult in England--to no effect in the Catholic Church of course.)

When Thomas More was condemned to death in 1535, he wrote that famous letter to his daughter Meg in which he rejoiced that the date of his execution was July 6, the vigil of one the feasts of Saint Thomas of Canterbury (the translation of his relics into his great shrine after his canonization) and the Octave of the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul:

I cumber you, good Margaret, much, but I would be sorry, if it should be any longer than tomorrow, for it is Saint Thomas' Even and the Utas [Octave] of Saint Peter and therefore tomorrow long I to go to God, it were a day very meet and convenient for me. I never liked your manner toward me better than when you kissed me last for I love when daughterly love and dear charity hath not leisure to look to worldly courtesy.

On Monday, July 7, there was a Catholic Mass celebrated in the Anglican Cathedral of Canterbury (sede vacante since January this year) for the celebration of this feast. 

So on Monday, July 14, we'll discuss this anniversary and event on the Son Rise Morning Show; we'll also highlight the celebration in Ireland of the 400th anniversary of Saint Oliver Plunkett's birth! He was the last Catholic priest executed at the end of the Popish Plot hysteria. As usual, I'll be on the air about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

Catherine Pepinster with Religion News Service began here with the story about this Mass, offered by the Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Miguel Maury Buendia:

LONDON (RNS) — King Henry VIII and his iconoclast-in-chief, Thomas Cromwell, would be stunned: Nearly 500 years after the English Reformation, Canterbury Cathedral, the mother church of the Protestant Church of England, will be given over to a Roman Catholic Mass, celebrated by the pope’s own representative in the country in honor of the martyr Thomas Becket, who died in the cathedral in 1170.

Not least among the historical oddities of the day will be that the Mass will award those in attendance a plenary indulgence.

When Henry broke with Rome in 1535 to create the Church of England, it led to the destruction of shrines to saints and martyrs, including their relics. The tradition of offering pilgrims an indulgence for visiting these shrines — a key driver of the Protestant revolt across Europe at the time — was ended.

Tenebrae provided the chant during the Mass; pilgrims could receive the Jubilee Year indulgence; and the congregation sang the Salve Regina! This was an extraordinary event! 

St. Thomas of Canterbury was martyred in 1170 (855 years ago this December 29), canonized in 1173, and his relics were moved on July 7 from the crypt to the Trinity chapel in 1220 (805 years ago).

The other great anniversaries are for Saint Oliver Plunkett: the 400th anniversary of his birth on All Saints Day in 1625 and the 50th anniversary of his canonization on October 12, 1975 (he was beatified in 1920!)

RTE reported on July 4 in advance of the events:

The 400th anniversary of the birth of St Oliver Plunkett is being marked in both Drogheda and the Oldcastle area of Co Meath this year. . . .

A series of events is under way to mark 400 years since St Oliver Plunkett’s birth, and also the 50 years since his canonisation in 1975, when he became the first newly-made Irish saint for almost 700 years.

Tomorrow will see an event titled the 'Plunkett Clan Gathering’ take place at Loughcrew House and Gardens, the ancestral seat of the Plunkett family.

An ecumenical service in the 17th-century church will be followed by historical talks, live music and refreshments, which organisers have said will be a "heartfelt tribute in a place of deep personal resonance for the saint’s descendants".

More details here on a special website for the martyred saint.

These anniversaries and these events demonstrate the great impact of these martyrs and their legacy for the Catholics of England and Ireland!

Saint Thomas of Canterbury, pray for us!

Saint Oliver Plunkett, pray for us!

St. Thomas of Canterbury on the Son Rise Morning Show

Just a reminder that I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show this morning at about 7:50 Eastern/6:50 Central to talk about how St. Thomas of Canterbury (aka Becket) is back in the news since the postponed commemoration of the 850th anniversary of his martyrdom is ramping up. 

Please listen live here or on EWTN radio, on-line or on your local station, as this second hour is now broadcast on EWTN.

When Henry VIII commanded that "the dayes used to be festivall in [St Thomas of Canterbury's] name" be removed from the calendar in his Church of England, he was referring to two feasts: that of his martyrdom on December 29 and that of the translation of his relics to the great shrine in Trinity Chapel in the Cathedral of Canterbury on July 7. 

That latter date was on St. Thomas More's mind in 1535 as he awaited execution in the Tower of London. He hoped it would be scheduled on July 6, the eve of the Feast of the Translation of St. Thomas of Canterbury.

2020 was not only the 850th anniversary of the first feast, but also the 800th anniversary of the second feast, as the saint's relics were moved to the shrine in 1220. For 318 years, until Henry VIII ordered its destruction, thousands of pilgrims came to Canterbury to ask for the martyr's prayers for their intentions. In honor of that 800th anniversary, a digital recreation of the shrine was created.

The BBC posted a story about the digital model, but The Daily Mail story also includes a video.

The model was based on several first hand reports by pilgrims and depicts it as it would have appeared in 1408, according to this article:

Besides Erasmus there are at least seven surviving first-hand accounts of the pilgrim experience within the cathedral from the early 14th century, as well as one locally composed poem on the subject and the surviving Customary of the shrine. 20 Erasmus’s is the latest of all these sources, and the only one to visit the Martyrdom or tomb before going to the shrine. As I have argued elsewhere, all sources apart from Erasmus show that the ‘typical’ pilgrim went directly to the shrine up the south choir aisle and only then to some or all of the other ‘stations’, dependent on status, need or interests. 21 In addition to the accounts cited in my previous work, a newly discovered Florentine merchant’s account of his visit in 1444 confirms the shrine as the first port of call, followed by a selection of the other sites (in his case not including the tomb). 22 Even if the cathedral had been planned so that pilgrims, rather than monastic processions, would move from Martyrdom to tomb to shrine, the evidence from the later Middle Ages strongly indicates they were not doing so. Some of the previously reconstructed pilgrim routes would have taken the laity through such intimate monastic spaces as the north choir aisle and even into the choir itself. While special visitors such as Erasmus and the Florentine merchant may have been given this treatment as part of a guided tour, if used as a general route monastic liturgy and pilgrim activity would have had to take place at separate times, for both used the same spaces. Yet the Customary and other accounts provide evidence that pilgrim activity was managed so that it could take place at the same time as, and adjacent to, the monastic liturgy. The celebration of divine service in the choir at the heart of the cathedral provided a sensory backdrop to the activity at the shrine, enhancing and shaping the pilgrim experience and emphasising the custodial role of the monks in the cult. 23

Just like the Miracle windows that surrounded the shrine on the North and South aisles of the cathedral, the lost shrine fascinates historians and archaeologists as they explore the past. St. Thomas of Canterbury, as the defender of the freedom of the Church in the 12th century--therefore a hero today for religious liberty--can be honored more by Catholics as a symbol in a cause than as a saint, an intercessor in Heaven to pray for us. Medieval pilgrims didn't visit Canterbury Cathedral because they wanted to demonstrate their disagreement with what Henry II had done or his knights had done, to take a stand against the State or their ruler. They came to the saint's shrine to ask for his prayers for their health, healing, and other needs and to make reparation for their confessed and forgiven sins. 

Saint Thomas of Canterbury, pray for us!

Preview: St. Thomas a Becket, Rescheduled

At the beginning of last year (2020!), Anna Mitchell, Matt Swaim, and I discussed on the Son Rise Morning Show the major historical anniversaries to be remembered and celebrated that year. One of the major events was the 850th anniversary of the "Murder in the Cathedral", the martyrdom of St. Thomas of Canterbury on December 29, 1170. Events in Canterbury and a major exhibition at the British Museum were planned.

Then of course, COVID-19 shutdowns and crowd management intervened and, except for the usual celebrations of his feast at Mass during the Octave of Christmas--and an extraordinary proclamation from the White House of President Donald J. Trump--all those plans were scrapped.

But now, St. Thomas a Becket is back in the news again as the planned exhibit at the British Museum is going to open in April, so I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time (7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central) on Monday, February 1st to talk with Anna Mitchell about his enduring significance--and a surprising discovery made when one of the surviving stained glass windows from his destroyed shrine (Henry VIII's work!) was put back together in the right order for the first time in 350 years! A conference at Canterbury Cathedral has also been rescheduled for April.

Please listen live here or on EWTN radio, on-line or on your local station, as this second hour is now broadcast on EWTN.

First, an excerpt from the December 28, 2020 Proclamation from the Trump White House:

Thomas Becket’s martyrdom changed the course of history. It eventually brought about numerous constitutional limitations on the power of the state over the Church across the West. In England, Becket’s murder led to the Magna Carta’s declaration 45 years later that: “[T]he English church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished and its liberties unimpaired.”

When the Archbishop refused to allow the King to interfere in the affairs of the Church, Thomas Becket stood at the intersection of church and state. That stand, after centuries of state-sponsored religious oppression and religious wars throughout Europe, eventually led to the establishment of religious liberty in the New World. It is because of great men like Thomas Becket that the first American President George Washington could proclaim more than 600 years later that, in the United States, “All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship” and that “it is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.”

Thomas Becket’s death serves as a powerful and timeless reminder to every American that our freedom from religious persecution is not a mere luxury or accident of history, but rather an essential element of our liberty. It is our priceless treasure and inheritance. And it was bought with the blood of martyrs. . . .

To honor Thomas Becket’s memory, the crimes against people of faith must stop, prisoners of conscience must be released, laws restricting freedom of religion and belief must be repealed, and the vulnerable, the defenseless, and the oppressed must be protected. The tyranny and murder that shocked the conscience of the Middle Ages must never be allowed to happen again. As long as America stands, we will always defend religious liberty.

A society without religion cannot prosper. A nation without faith cannot endure — because justice, goodness, and peace cannot prevail without the grace of God.

Next, the explanation from Canterbury Cathedral of how the mix-up on one of the surviving stained glass Miracles was discovered and corrected:

This is the first time one of the famed Miracle Windows – which were made in the early 1200s to surround Becket’s now-lost shrine in the Cathedral’s Trinity Chapel – have ever been lent, and the first time the glass has ever left the Cathedral, since their creation 800 years ago. The seven surviving windows, from an original series of twelve, tell several of the evocative stories of miracles attributed to Becket in the three years following his death, and are the only known depictions of Becket’s miracle stories in any media.

New research in collaboration with the foremost expert on the Becket miracles, Rachel Koopmans of York University, Toronto, has revealed that some of the panels have been in the wrong order for centuries. They were probably mixed up during a hasty rearrangement in the 1660s and the errors were discovered after close inspection of individual pieces under a microscope. When the window is shown at the British Museum, it will be rearranged in the correct narrative order, and this will be the first time in over 350 years that visitors will be able to view these panels as they were made to be seen. It will also be the very first time the window can be seen up-close at eye-level.

Leonie Seliger, Director of Stained Glass Conservation at Canterbury Cathedral, said: “The Miracle Windows are medieval versions of graphic novels illustrating the experiences of ordinary people. They greeted the pilgrims at the culmination of their journey to Becket’s shrine with images that would be reassuring and uplifting. The window that will be shown at the British Museum is only one of seven that remain, and they are one of Canterbury Cathedral’s greatest treasures.”

It's rather surprising to me that any of the windows survived the destruction of the saint's shrine in 1538--the act that finally led to Henry VIII's excommunication by Pope Paul III on December 17, 1538.

In Henry VIII's Proclamation of November 17, 1538, he had stated:

Therefore his Grace strayghtly chargeth and commandeth that from henseforth the sayde Thomas Becket shall not be estemed, named, reputed, nor called a sayncte, but bysshop Becket; and that his ymages and pictures, through the hole realme, shall be putte downe, and avoyded out of all churches, chapelles, and other places; and that from henseforthe, the dayes used to be festivall in his name shall not be observed, nor the service, office, antiphoners, colletes, and prayers, in his name redde, but rased and put out of all the bokes.”

A Reformation era example of "cancel culture".

Eamon Duffy on Reginald Pole

Eamon Duffy, who included a chapter on Reginald Cardinal Pole, the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury in his 2017 Reformation Divided:Catholics, Protestants and the Conversion of England, presented a lecture for the Ordinariate's pilgrimage to Canterbury last Saturday, July 13. There's a video/audio recording of his talk uploaded here.

One of the interesting aspects of his talk is that he calls for a new biography of Reginald Pole in spite of the fact that the late Thomas F. Mayer of Augustana College wrote a biography, Reginald Pole: Prince and Prophet, published by Cambridge University Press in 2000 and now available in paperback:

This is the first biography in ninety years of Reginald Pole (1500-1558), one of the most important international figures of the sixteenth century. Pole's career is followed as protege; and then harshest critic of Henry VIII, as cardinal and papal diplomat, legate of Viterbo, a nearly successful candidate for pope, and finally as legate to England, archbishop of Canterbury, architect of the English Counter-Reformation, and victim of both Pope Paul IV and of himself.

• A comprehensive, illustrated biography of Cardinal (Reginald) Pole, one of the most influential and charismatic figures of the sixteenth century
• Covers Pole's career from his years as Henry VIII's protégé to his years in Italy, and his return to England during the reign of Mary I as archbishop of Canterbury
• Delves deeply into archival material, including the records of the Inquisition, and includes startling new evidence about Pole's sexual orientation [ugh]

So why does Duffy want a new biography--or perhaps one that's more accessible (price!)--than this recent effort?

Duffy's main issue is that Mayer has no sympathy for his subject: he did not like Reginald Cardinal Pole and Duffy says it shows: in fact, Duffy states, Mayer "loathed Pole"! Duffy also cites Mayer's entry for Pole in the new Dictionary of National Biography, noting the same problem.

Duffy believes that Reginald Pole was "a holy man; a troubled man" and that Mayer judges him too harshly. Mayer thought he was a hypocrite and a sham! Duffy opines that Mayer's biography of Pole is "dense" and "elusive" as this review seems to agree:

Pole's life was lived in a number of contexts; he was a cousin of Henry VIII, a major figure in the European reform, and Mary's advisor and archbishop of Canterbury. In addition to his many roles, however, Mayer argues that Pole's biography is complicated by the nature of the sources about and by him. Pole was a prolific writer, but refused the appellation, arguing that he never wrote to publish. Partly for this reason, the authorship of works attributed to him, and his circle, is confused. Further, Pole and his contemporaries wrote and rewrote his life story, both during his life and after his death. As a result of all of this textual revision, Mayer argues that "Pole always existed in two phases, the life as lived and the life as written" (p. 3). Rather than trying to evade this difficulty, Mayer has chosen to build his biography around it, giving equal focus to the texts and the man, and hoping that the juxtaposition will help to explain both. This ambitious aim has spawned more than simply the biography, which stands as the keystone to an entire Polian edifice.[2] . . .

This is not an easy book. For those who are not already familiar with the broad outlines of Pole's life, it may be difficult to follow.[3] This biography is concerned with drawing the links that lie below the surface of such a narrative, setting Pole's life in the nest of his relationships with people like Contarini, Morone, Priuli, Bembo, Carafa and Vittoria Colonna. An astonishing amount of work has gone into tracing those networks, and the density of the narrative can be dizzying at times. However, it provides a remarkable richness of context, and allows Mayer to draw a character of formidable complexity. He paints a picture of Pole as an influential thinker, a conscientious and tolerant reformer, a warm and sustaining friend and a prolific writer who was, admittedly, a bad diplomat and politician. Mayer concludes that "Pole had greatness thrust upon him and it missed" (p. 439); what strikes the reader is how effectively Pole avoided greatness. He was placed in numerous positions of influence, importance and opportunity, and regularly fled them, only to be offered another chance. Mayer argues that Pole "succeeded best in private away from the public stage" (p. 442), but given his birth, his education, and the times, it seems that Pole never had the option of privacy.

Although it's not a complete biography by any means, I think Philip Hughes' analysis of Reginald Cardinal Pole's role in the Catholic Counter-Reformation and the revival of Catholicism in England in his book Rome and the Counter-Reformation in England is masterful. Hughes notes Pole's strengths and weaknesses, as I commented in my review a couple of years ago:

Hughes covered three periods of the efforts to revive, save, and restore Catholicism in England after the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI:

looking first at the Marian efforts to re-establish the Catholic Church with the papacy and hierarchy in England (during the reign of Mary I), then the long recusant period of missionaries, martyrs, and hopes of political conquest (during the reign of Elizabeth I), and finally the divisive disasters of the effort to bring on-site leadership to the clergy and the laity with the Archpriest controversy and the Bishops of Chalcedon failures (during the reigns of James I and Charles I).

Rome and the Counter-Reformation in England is divided into three parts, one for the leading figure of the eras described above: 1) Reginald Cardinal Pole; 2) William Cardinal Allen; 3) Richard Smith, Bishop of Chalcedon. For each man Hughes provides an insightful character sketch and analysis, noting his strengths and weaknesses. Those strengths and weaknesses contribute, of course, to each man's successes and failures.

Of Reginald Pole, Hughes demonstrates that for all his knowledge and love of Jesus and His Church, he lacked "irascible passion"; he was too ready to be a victim--and that he had "a temperament that instinctively turned from the hard, unpleasant realities of a problem to the ideal way in which it ought to be solved." (p. 43) Although Pole was a man of action and ready to promote reform and renewal, Hughes claims that he lacked audacity: he was not bold and he could not be stirred to righteous anger. Therefore, he wasn't able to take crucial action in a crisis. Nevertheless, Hughes does not blame the failure of the Marian revival and re-establishment of the Catholic Church in England on Pole's character; he acknowledges that time was the main factor. Mary and Pole died too soon to effect a long-lasting Catholic revival. They left great resources for Catholicism in England, however, in the good bishops they'd appointed, but they left also left the disastrous legacy of the burnings of Smithfield to the memory of Protestants in England. Unlike Eamon Duffy, who proposed that the prosecution of heretics was working in Fires of Faith, Hughes notes that even this effort was made ineffective by the too early deaths of Mary and Pole, especially without a Catholic heir. The other great legacy Mary and Pole left to Catholics in England was William Allen.

John of Salisbury, RIP and St. Thomas a Becket

John of Salisbury, English bishop and associate of St. Thomas a Becket and Nicholas Breakspear (the only Briton to be elected pope, as Adrian IV), died on October 25, 1180--as the Bishop of Chartres. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, he witnessed the martyrdom of St. Thomas a Becket:

Born about 1115; died 1180; a distinguished philosopher, historian, churchman, and scholar. Born near Salisbury, he went at an early age to Paris, where he studied arts and philosophy (1136-38) under Peter Abelard, Alberic of Reims, and Robert of Melun; then under William of Conches, Richard l'Evêque, and Theoderic of Chartres at the famous school at this latter town (1138-40); finally again at Paris, completing his studies in theology under Gilbert de La Porrée, Robert Pullus, and Simon of Poissy (1141-45). This solid education, under such brilliant masters, he perfected by some private teaching, perhaps with his lifelong friend Peter, Abbot of Moutier La Celle, near Troyes, with whom he was living in 1148. At the Council of Reims in this year, he was introduced to Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, by St. Bernard. After spending a few years at the papal Court at Rome, whither he went from Reims with Pope Eugene III, he returned to England and acted as private secretary to Theobald for several years, during which period he was repeatedly sent on delicate and important diplomatic missions to the Holy See, in 1159 he had "ten times crossed the Alps on his road from England" (Metalogicus, iii, prol., p. 113).

He was thus brought into intimate relations with princes and popes, especially with Henry II and his chancellor, Thomas à Becket, and with Pope Adrian IV, also an Englishman. In defending the rights of the Church, he incurred the kings displeasure in 1159 - when his forced seclusion enabled him to complete his two principal works the "Policraticus" and the "Metalogicus", both dedicated to Thomas à Becket - and again in 1163, when he was obliged to quit England. The next six years he spent with his friend Peter of La Celle, now Abbot of St. Remigius at Reims. Here he wrote "Historia Pontificalis". Thomas à Becket, who had succeeded Theobald as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1162, was soon obliged to follow John into exile. The latter steadily endeavoured to promote the cause of peace hetween the English king on the one hand and his archbishop and the Holy See on the other. Apparent success crowned those efforts in 1170, when both exiles returned. In a few months (29 Dec.) John witnessed the tragic murder of the saintly archbishop in the cathedral at Canterbury. In 1174 John became treasurer of Exeter cathedral. In 1176 he was appointed Bishop of Chartres. He attended the Third Lateran Council in 1179 and died the next year. He was interred in the monastery of St. Josaphat, near Chartres.

The British Library has an image of the martyrdom of St. Thomas a Becket from John of Salisbury's Life of Becket. More about how John of Salisbury promoted the cause for canonization and veneration of St. Thomas a Becket here. Among the ways he promoted veneration of Becket at Chartres, besides preserving drops of the martyr's blood that had fallen on him, John of Salisbury had a stained glass window panel created that contains events from Becket's life .

Summarizing his life and works, Peter Coffey comments:

John of Salisbury was one of the most cultured scholars of his day. Notwithstanding the engrossing cares of his diplomatic career, his great learning and indefatigable industry enabled him to carry on an extensive and lifelong correspondence on literary, educational, and ecclesiastical topics with the leading scholars of Europe. His collected letters (over 300 in number), no less than his other works, form an invaluable source of the history of thought and activity in the twefth century. His fine taste and superior training made him the most elegant Latin writer of his time. He is equally distinguished as an historian and as a philosopher: he was the first medieval writer to emphasize the importance of historical studies in philosophy and in all other branches of learning. Naturally of an eclectic turn, he displayed in philosophy a remarkably sound and judicious critical spirit. Familiar with all the phases of contemporary scholastic controversies, he was himself among the first to formulate clearly the solution known as "moderate realism" in answer to the fundamental philosophical problem of the value and significance of universal ideas.

The significance of Bishop John of Salisbury's devotion to St. Thomas a Becket meant that even after King Henry VIII had destroyed the martyr's shrine and tomb, there were still relics and devotion to Becket on the Continent. Like the Augustinians in Paris at the Abbey of St. Victor, the relics and stained glass of Chartres continued the veneration of the "holy, blissful martyr" in the Catholic Church.

Photo of Chartres (c) Mark Mann. Not be to used without permission.

From Flanders to Canterbury to Aix-en-Provence

Somehow, I find the English Reformation and its aftermath wherever I go!

My husband and I went to the used record store in the Delano neighborhood of downtown Wichita, Spektrum Rekords, and found some classical music LPs, including a series from the Musical Heritage Society/Erato Records called ". . . of Castles and Cathedrals". One of them is of liturgical music of Provencale composers, recorded in St. Sauveur (Holy Savior) Cathedral in Aix-en-Provence.

In searching online for more information about the LP and the cathedral, I found this note in the description of the notable art in the cathedral in the Wikipedia entry:

A set of seventeen tapestries of the life of Christ, bought in 1656 by the chapter thanks to a legacy from Archbishop Michel Mazarin. The tapestries were among twenty-six originally woven in 1511 for Canterbury Cathedral in England, and decorated the choir there until 1642, when they were taken down during the English Civil War. They made their way to Paris, where they were bought by the chapter and placed in the choir of the cathedral. The tapestries were stolen during the French Revolution, but repurchased by the Archbishop of Aix-en-Provence and Arles. In 1977, the first nine tapestries were stolen, and have not been recovered.

Here's more information about the tapestries.

Another great piece of art in the Cathedral, The Burning Bush, is pictured above with the side panels (you'll just have to imagine that the panels are on either side of the centerpiece):

The Burning Bush triptych by Nicolas Froment, an Avignon painter, is a masterpiece of the 15th century. The painting came from a Carmelite convent, destroyed during the French Revolution. The central panel represents the Virgin and Child seen on the burning bush. In the foreground, Moses, guarding his flock, is amazed by the vision. The two other parts of the triptych show the patrons of the work, King René I of Naples, also ruler of Provence, and his consort Queen Jeanne, in devotional attitudes.

The compositions on the LP are by Jocelyne Poitevin (by attribution), Joseph-Francois Salomon, and Andre Campra, "The Provencale Masters of the Motet", and are performed by the Stephane Caillat Chorale with its eponymous conductor. The subhead for the album is, "The glowing fervour of the musicians of Provence intensifies the prayers of their ardent faith". 

St. Thomas of Canterbury and St. John Stone

Over at the National Catholic Register, please find my post on St. Thomas of Canterbury today, on his feast. I also tell the story of St. John Stone, a martyr during another Henry's reign:

St. Thomas of Canterbury’s memorial is on December 29 within the Octave of Christmas, and his story may be familiar to many Catholics because we’ve read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales or T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral in school or have seen the movie Becket with Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole. There is another Canterbury martyr we should remember during this Christmastide, however, that most have probably never heard of: St. John Stone.

After describing the questioning, arrest, and execution of St. John Stone, I return to the subject of St. Thomas of Canterbury's great shrine and what Henry VIII did to it:

Therefore, in April of 1538 Henry VIII set about eradicating the legacy of St. Thomas of Canterbury in England. His shrine at the Cathedral and images of him throughout the land were to be destroyed. According to Henry, St. Thomas of Canterbury was neither a saint nor a martyr and his feasts (December 29, the date of his martyrdom and July 7, the date his relics were placed in the shrine at Canterbury in 1220) were to be removed from the liturgical calendar.

This attack on a saint proclaimed by the Church was the final blow for Pope Paul III, who issued a decree of excommunication against Henry on December 17, 1538. With these actions against St. Thomas of Canterbury, and against other saints’ shrines, including the Marian shrines throughout England, it was clear that, as far as Henry VIII was concerned, the Church had reached the point of no return.

The hanging, drawing, and quartering of St. John Stone on December 27, 1539, a year after Henry VIII’s excommunication, demonstrated that sadly, Pope Paul III was right. Friar John Stone was canonized among the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales in 1970 by Pope Paul VI.

St. Thomas of Canterbury is celebrated on the liturgical calendar of the Church of the England, honored as a martyr, on either July 7 or December 29, and people still go on pilgrimage (or as tourists) to Canterbury. What would Henry VIII think about that?

Since the first of September I've had the great opportunity to write these blog posts for the National Catholic Register. It's been a good platform for telling the story of the English Reformation and other historical or liturgical themes that are important to me. I particularly enjoy highlighting the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite through these posts. Looking forward to many more posts in 2017! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! 

A Dream "Dream of Gerontius"

According to the publisher of this DVD, ICA Classics:

Filmed in colour from Canterbury Cathedral in 1968, this DVD represents the only existing film of Sir Adrian Boult conducting The Dream of Gerontius.

Sir Adrian Boult championed Elgar’s music throughout his life, following the composer’s prophetic words in a letter to the conductor: ‘I feel that my reputation in the future is safe in your hands’.

Featuring a stellar cast of soloists including Dame Janet Baker, this performance is redolent of Sir Adrian Boult’s ‘commendable energy and typical humanity’ (The Gramophone Guide review of Boult’s 1975 studio recording of The Dream of Gerontius).

This DVD also features a 60-minute documentary on Sir Adrian Boult produced by the BBC in 1989 to celebrate the centenary of his birth.

This review offers some background to the production of the broadcast:

Hats off to ICA Classics for an invaluable restoration of an altogether exceptional document. First broadcast on Easter Sunday, 14 April 1968, this transmission in early colour of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius under the baton of the composer's most selfless champion represents a remarkable achievement. Producer Brian Large's original intention had been to use Worcester Cathedral, but in the end Canterbury was chosen instead: not only did the authorities agree to close the Cathedral to allow the BBC cameras unencumbered access, its proximity to London meant that the members of the chorus were able to sleep at home. Unfortunately, the Cathedral organ was out of action, so a closed-circuit link to the instrument of a nearby church was quickly set up. Filming took place over three days, the last of which entailed capturing some fascinating and rarely-seen images of the awe-inspiring Cathedral itself (and which are interwoven into the fabric of the film with great imagination).

You can find the performance online but the version posted is from a VHS tape. I think I have enough CD versions of Elgar's Dream so this is not on my wish list. I can't help, however, from pointing out that this is the story of a man dying, facing his personal judgment, and going to purgatory. It's being performed in what was once a Catholic church where people came on pilgrimage to expiate their sins and pray for the Poor Souls in purgatory--which is now an Anglican cathedral. I wonder if there was any backlash at the time against a Catholic work by a Catholic composer based upon the poetry of Catholic convert from Anglicanism being performed in the primary see of the Anglican Church, which eliminated prayer for the dead and denied the reality--and the hope--of purgatory?

Pope St. Gregory Leading the Angels Again

As the 37 primates of the Anglican Communion gather in Canterbury, a very symbolic emblem of papal authority will be on display at the Cathedral, per this Anglican Communion News Service story:

The crozier of the sixth century Pope who sent Augustine to England to begin the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons will be in Canterbury as the Primates of the Anglican Communion gather for their meeting in the city next week.

The ancient carved ivory headed crozier will be on public display at Canterbury Cathedral during the weekends before and after the Primates Meeting after being loaned to the Cathedral by the Roman Catholic monks of San Gregorio al Celio in Rome. Saint Augustine had been prior of the monastery, which had been built by Pope Gregory I before his elevation to the Papacy. Augustine lead a seven-year mission to England and is recognised as the first Archbishop of Canterbury.

“We are very pleased to receive the crozier as a symbol of ecumenical encouragement at this time of the meeting of Anglican Primates and as a link with St Gregory whose vision of the conversion of England caused Augustine to found the community at Canterbury,” the Dean of Canterbury, the Very Revd Dr Robert Willis, said.

Commenting on the loan, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said: “Allow me at this point to congratulate you on the highly symbolic value of the loan of this relic, dear to the Church of England, which venerates Pope St Gregory the Great, the promoter of the evangelising mission to the Anglo-Saxon people and is therefore a mark of the bond that spiritually unites the Catholic and Anglican Churches.”

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, commented on the importance of Pope St. Gregory the Great to Christianity in England when Pope Benedict XVI and he prayed Evening Prayer together in Westminster Abbey (September 17, 2010):

Christians in Britain, especially in England, look back with the most fervent gratitude to the events of 597, when Augustine landed on these shores to preach the gospel to the Anglo-Saxons at the behest of Pope St Gregory the Great. For Christians of all traditions and confessions, St Gregory is a figure of compelling attractiveness and spiritual authority – pastor and leader, scholar and exegete and spiritual guide. The fact that the first preaching of the Gospel to the English peoples in the sixth and seventh centuries has its origins in his vision creates a special connection for us with the See of the Apostles Peter and Paul; and Gregory’s witness and legacy remain an immensely fruitful source of inspiration for our own mission in these dramatically different times. Two dimensions of that vision may be of special importance as we reflect today on the significance of Your Holiness’s visit to us.

St Gregory was the first to spell out for the faithful something of the magnitude of the gift given to Christ’s Church through the life of St Benedict – to whom you, Your Holiness, have signalled your devotion in the choice of your name as Pope. In St Gregory’s Dialogues, we can trace the impact of St Benedict – an extraordinary man who, through a relatively brief Rule of life, opened up for the whole civilisation of Europe since the sixth century the possibility of living in joy and mutual service, in simplicity and self-denial, in a balanced pattern of labour and prayer in which every moment spoke of human dignity fully realised in surrender to a loving God. The Benedictine life proved a sure foundation not only for generations of monks and nuns, but for an entire culture in which productive work and contemplative silence and receptivity—human dignity and human freedom—were both honoured.

So yesterday I posted the story about Vespers according to the Catholic Liturgy of Hours being celebrated in the Hampton Court Palace Chapel, today about the papal crozier being sent from Rome to Canterbury during the crucial meeting of the Anglican Communion. Archbishop Welby is hoping to avoid further division in the Anglican Communion over the issues of so-called "gay" marriage and women priests and bishops. In his message to the primates, Welby noted:

“We have no Anglican Pope. Our authority as a church is dispersed, and is ultimately found in Scripture, properly interpreted. In that light I long for us to meet together under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and to seek to find a way of enabling ourselves to set a course which permits us to focus on serving and loving each other, and above all on the proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ."
"We have no Anglican Pope": perhaps that's the problem!

And this Religious News Service story mentions an even more important relic coming to England while the primates meet, which should remind them again of Catholic unity:

In December, a much more eye-catching “holy” (sic) relic will be flown in from Rome – the bloodied vestment worn by St. Thomas Becket when he was beheaded at the high altar of Canterbury Cathedral by four armed knights loyal to King Henry II, after a quarrel between the king and his archbishop.

(Why would a media organization with the title Religious News Service put scare quotes around the word holy?)

Pope St. Gregory the Great; St. Augustine of Canterbury; St. Thomas a Becket: the way to unity is certainly symbolized through the relics on display at Canterbury! May the unity of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church with the Vicar of Christ lead the Church of England home to Rome through the Anglican Ordinariate! Blessed John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Pilgrimages Yesterday and Today

Interesting project:

'Pilgrimage and England's cathedrals' employs a ground-breaking combination of interdisciplinary perspectives and methodologies to identify and analyse the core dynamics of pilgrimage and sacred sites in England from the 11th to 21st centuries, assess the growing significance of English cathedrals as sacred/heritage sites today, and inform management of/public engagement with these iconic buildings. Set against the background of the worldwide growth of pilgrimage and increasing importance of sacred sites, the project's innovative approaches and timely research agenda also contributes substantially to defining and establishing the emerging field of Pilgrimage Studies.

At the heart of this project is a new, wide-ranging analysis of the meaning and breadth of 'pilgrimage' and the role of sacred places past and present. Why did pilgrimage matter in the past and why does it still matter today? In exploring these issues, the project focuses attention on the role of cathedrals: places where, uniquely, national and local history and identity, material culture and traditional and emerging religious practice can be encountered together. Pilgrimage was central to the development and status of English cathedrals in the Middle Ages and although most shrines were destroyed at the Reformation, many of the great churches and monasteries which housed them remain as cathedrals today, literally shaped by their pilgrim past and retaining a strong pilgrimage legacy. Anglican cathedrals are increasingly refocusing on and reinstating shrines, reflecting an international multi-faith phenomenon in which an estimated 200 million people across the world engage in pilgrimage and religious tourism annually.

Historically the pilgrims going to a certain cathedral were intent on visiting a saint's shrine, praying for his or her intercession, acting in penitence for some great personal sin or in reparation for the sake some great blessing on themselves or another. Pilgrimage on earth was aimed at eventual arrival in heaven. It was expensive, dangerous--although pilgrims were supposed to be protected--arduous, and time-consuming. Walking along the pilgrimage route, the pilgrims were focused on their goal.

Although they were stripped of their shrines and saintly significance after the English Reformation, English cathedrals have remained a goal of pilgrimage. The project organizers comment that many coming to the cathedrals in the study, York, Durham, Canterbury, and Westminster, are not even Christian or may practice no faith at all:

Moreover, over 40% of those visitors came from faith traditions other than Christianity or had no religious affiliation. This suggests that cathedrals are seen as shaped by, but transcending, Christianity, offering unique access to the 'spiritual' within the context of history, heritage and culture, and providing meaningful spaces for people of all faiths and none. These developments demand fuller, rigorous, multi-disciplinary investigation so that implications for cathedrals, visitors and communities can be explored in detail.

File that under the heading "The Unintended Reformation"! The Protestant reformers of the sixteenth century in England would be shocked. Since Christianity means Jesus Christ, transcending Christianity would be the furthest thing in their minds; yet, their reformation started the process of destroying the worldview that held saints in heaven and sinners on earth (and in purgatory) in a community of pilgrimage and love.

The Translation of St. Thomas a Becket's Relics

I posted the last letter St. Thomas More wrote to his dear daughter Margaret Roper the day before the anniversary of his martyrdom. In the letter he mentions that he hopes his execution is scheduled for the morrow, before the Feast of St. Thomas on July 7. A Clerk of Oxford explored that feast more fully here yesterday and then discusses some aspects of medieval feasts and devotion to saints:

Translation feasts like today's are particularly tricky to explain to a modern audience. It's easy to be cynical about their original motivation, since the practical benefits are usually so obvious as to make the whole idea seem like nothing more than a money-grab: building a bigger or more prominent tomb to attract and accommodate pilgrims, providing a saint with an extra feast to celebrate (often at a more convenient time of year for travel or liturgical commemoration - as clearly illustrated in the case of Becket, whose December feast, awkwardly close to Christmas, was supplemented by a summer translation one), claiming a saint as belonging to one church rather than a rival, and so on. Some medievalists get very sniffy about the pragmatism of it all, their high-minded idealism clearly offended by the idea of churches trying to make money off their saints. There's a lingering Puritanism in some circles (even within academia, but certainly outside it) which can't quite allow that medieval cults of saints were ever anything but a big con - that the saints of the Middle Ages were mostly a bunch of obscure people who were praised far beyond their merits, credited with patently invented miracles, and lauded in tiresome hagiography, with the aim of extracting money from gullible pilgrims. . . .

But if we take translation feasts as an example, trying to understand rather than to condemn or mock, they can tell us fascinating things about the communities who organised them. They can help us trace, for instance, which parts of a community's history were most important to its identity at any point in time, or how a community defined itself against other nearby houses - the translation of Thomas Becket marked the moment when he became Canterbury's most famous saint (as he remains today), surpassing the Anglo-Saxon archbishop-saints, who were still venerated but no longer as culturally useful as they had been for the community in the period immediately following the Norman Conquest (on which see this post on Dunstan and this on Ælfheah). A translation tells us not all that much about the saint whose physical body is its focus, but a great deal about what a saint's memory meant to the people who venerated him or her. What is really commemorated today, then, is not just Thomas Becket but his importance to Canterbury and to the wider world: the fame which brought pilgrims to his shrine, the political charge which made him important enough for his name to be scratched out and his carols cancelled in the sixteenth century, and, yes, the income which built Canterbury Cathedral, a treasure-house of medieval art which still draws thousands of tourists and pilgrims every year. All this deserves to be remembered - and even blogged about.

Read the rest--and enjoy all the great pictures--there.

The Canterbury Clerestory Windows at The Cloisters

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is hosting an exhibition of stained glass from Canterbury Cathedral at The Cloisters:

This exhibition of stained glass from England's historic Canterbury Cathedral features six Romanesque-period windows that have never left the cathedral precincts since their creation in 1178–80.

Founded in 597, Canterbury Cathedral is one of the oldest Christian structures in England. It was an important pilgrimage site in the Middle Ages—as witnessed by Geoffrey Chaucer'sCanterbury Tales, a literary masterpiece from the fourteenth century—and is also the cathedral of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the leader of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion worldwide. Recent repairs to the stonework of the magnificent historic structure necessitated the removal of several delicate stained-glass windows of unparalleled beauty. While the restoration of the walls has been undertaken, the stained glass has also been conserved.

The windows shown at The Cloisters are from the clerestory of the cathedral's choir, east transepts, and Trinity Chapel. The six figures—Jared, Lamech, Thara, Abraham, Noah, and Phalec—were part of an original cycle of eighty-six ancestors of Christ, the most comprehensive stained-glass cycle known in art history. One complete window (Thara and Abraham), rising nearly twelve feet high, is shown with its associated rich foliate border.

Masterpieces of Romanesque art, these imposing figures exude an aura of dignified power. The angular limbs, the form-defining drapery, and the encompassing folds of the mantles all add a sculptural quality to the majestic figures. The glass painting, which is attributed to the Methuselah Master, is striking for its fluid lines, clear forms, and brilliant use of color.

Blue Heron is performing at The Cloisters on Palm Sunday, April 13--both performances are sold out!

In 1541, following Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, Canterbury Cathedral was re-founded as a secular cathedral. The works in the program are drawn from a set of partbooks commissioned by Canterbury from the singer and scribe Thomas Bull, then at Magdalen College, Oxford, in order to supply the cathedral's new choir of professional singers (including the youthful Thomas Tallis) with a complete repertoire of Masses, Magnificats, and votive antiphons. The centerpiece of the program is the Missa Spes nostraby Robert Jones (fl. 1520–35), a wonderful and wholly obscure composer whose only two surviving works appear in Bull's partbooks.

Radiant Light: Stained Glass from Canterbury Cathedral at The Cloisters closes on May 18, 2014--makes me want to book a flight to New York! My husband took the picture above when we visited Canterbury Cathedral many years ago.

St. Augustine of Canterbury

In honor of St. Augustine of Canterbury today. My husband and I visited the Cathedral in Canterbury several years ago. Here are some pics from that visit.







Also, here's a link to an interesting site on sacred (Anglican) destinations in England. St. Augustine's in Ramsgate, designed and built by Augustus Pugin, is Catholic England's national shrine. More about it here and some pictures of the very recent Ordinariate pilgrimage to Ramsgate.

St. Thomas a Becket and the English Reformation

John Guy has written a new biography of St. Thomas a Becket. As a Tudor historian, Guy brings some of the context of that era's struggle between Church and State to this medieval story. According to this review in The Spectator:

Posterity has always embellished Thomas Becket. After his death in Canterbury Cathedral in December 1170 the Church idealised and canonised him; his tomb inspired miracles and became the most famous shrine in Christendom; the local monks grew rich and fat on the tourist trade that would attract Chaucer’s pilgrims. The 18th century invented Henry II’s hint, ‘Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?’ Playwrights spice the dish. Tennyson’s drama about Becket was staged by Irving; everyone remembers Eliot’s chorus, living and partly living; and Anouilh’s play, which turned the Norman immigrant into a Saxon, gave him, in the screened version, a wide and charismatic appeal.

Not that theatricality or charisma was foreign to the real Becket’s complex character. John Guy’s is the first substantial life of the archbishop since the veteran medievalist Frank Barlow’s a quarter of a century ago. On secondment from the Tudor period, Guy carries to the 12th century the scholarly and analytical acumen, and the vivacious prose, he has brought to the 16th.

Popular conceptions of Becket turn on his relations with the king who made and broke him. A blessed friendship turns to tragic enmity. Henry’s worldly chancellor, raised from modest origins to golden heights of power and wealth, suddenly becomes a defiant hair-shirted cleric, driven by either high principle or a taste for martyrdom into a long exile and then, on his provocative return to England, to a death that seizes Henry with remorse.

Guy disposes of much of that picture, and qualifies the rest. He finds no abrupt transition in Becket’s character. Even in his pomp, an inner piety and asceticism nibbled at his worldly contentment. So, as he moved among the ruling barons, did the insecurities of a newcomer who never felt a belonger. Becket, in Guy’s reading, was destroyed not by a personal tragedy but by political inexperience and miscalculation and impulsiveness.

A sense of tragedy is anyway precluded by Guy’s portrait of the king. We meet Henry as the latest in a brutal line of Norman and Angevin rulers obsessed by dynastic ambition and happy to sacrifice the peace and unity of their lands to it. In place of the ‘rose-tinted’ perspective of legal and constitutional historians, who have made Henry the pioneer of an effective and equitable system of justice, Guy gives us a foul-tempered, bullying, venal, perjured tyrant with ‘an innate assumption that his will was law’.

Sound familiar? Henry II=Henry VIII; St. Thomas a Becket=St. Thomas More/St. John Fisher (Thomas More makes the Henry/Thomas parallel so nicely, but Fisher was the Bishop, after all). So Henry II has the Archbishop of Canterbury murdered in his cathedral and the outcry is immediate. The Archbishop is proclaimed a martyr-saint; the king endures penance and a whipping; the pilgrims start coming, and  then:

The Reformation, by nationalising the Church and subjugating it to the state, ended all that. Henceforth Henry II’s interpretation of Becket’s international lobbying as treason, questionable at the time, would seem uncontentious. Henry VIII had Becket’s shrine demolished and despoiled. ‘There appeareth nothing in his life’, the Tudor king proclaimed, ‘whereby he should be called a saint, but rather esteemed to have been a rebel and traitor to his prince.’ Even Charles I, whose readiness to back an archbishop of Canterbury bent on restoring lost powers of the Church would baffle his subjects and help cause the civil war, declared, to the relief of the earl who heard him, that ‘he thought Thomas Becket as arrant a traitor as ever was’. The state had won.

John Guy has a very nice website here. I wonder if the professor who proclaimed St. Thomas a Becket the "Worst Briton of the 12th Century" will read the biography?