A Cistercian Seal found in Smithfield, Virginia

You might remember that years ago--in 2015, to be precise--there was a story about a reliquary, presumed to be of Catholic provenance, found in the grave of one of the Jamestown founders. There are more details about the reliquary here. Now, there's a story about a seal from a suppressed English Cistercian monastery being identified in Smithfield, Virginia:

At a recent archaeological artifact workshop hosted by our good friends at the Isle of Wight County Museum in Smithfield, Va., a most unusual 14th-century religious seal was brought to our attention. After sharing the information we had obtained from earlier research conducted by Judith Paulos of The Mount Vernon Ladies Association, we discussed the artifact with a friend and colleague, Dr. Bly Straube, who is the Senior Curator at the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation and a superlative researcher. Bly shared the fact that the late Ivor Noel Hume, the former Director of Archaeology at Colonial Williamsburg, had seen the same seal matrix just prior to finishing his 1994 book The Virginia Adventure. In his book, Hume included a photo of the item and recognized its antiquity. He speculated that it may have been a sign indicating that the “lost colony” had made its way to the area after leaving Roanoke Island sometime prior to the 17th century. . . .

As part of the ongoing investigation into what happened at the Roanoke Settlement, the archaeologists hope to make a connection between the seal and the movement of those colonists. They identified the seal as coming from one of the Cistercian monasteries suppressed by Henry VIII, Garendon Abbey in Leicestershire, one of the hundreds of Cistercian houses established in England, Scotland, and Ireland:

Bly discovered that the seal matrix likely came from the Cistercian Garendon Abbey in Leicestershire, England. The Garendon Abbey was established under the protection of St. Mary the Virgin in 1133 by Robert [de Beaumont], Earl of Leicester. The Cistercians held a great deal of land over several counties near the Abbey, and the monks, priests, and other residents living there appear to have been occupied heavily in sheep farming. . . . 

The post references the dissolution of abbey in 1536, stating that in that year Henry VIII "officially dissolved all Catholic institutions in England, marking the end of the Garendon Abbey." That's not completely accurate: in 1536, Cromwell and Henry, after an extensive visitation of the monasteries throughout England, ostensibly to value their property for taxation purposes, but also to identify abuse and infidelity, acted upon the 1535 Act of Parliament for the "Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries", those valued less than 200 pounds. Garendon Abbey fell beneath that threshold in value, and thus was liable to suppression.

British History Online notes the discrepancy between the reports of Cromwell's visitors and local commissioners in 1535:

In the 16th century, if not earlier, the Holy Cross at Garendon was an object of pilgrimage locally. (fn. 40) In 1535 the clear yearly value of the abbey's revenues was assessed at less than £160. (fn. 41) Cromwell's investigators, visiting Garendon in the following year, alleged that five of the monks were guilty of unnatural vice, and that three sought release from religion. (fn. 42) The county commissioners, who visited the house in June of the same year, gave a much more favourable report, stating that all the fourteen monks of the house desired to continue in religion, and that twelve of them were priests, of good conversation. Divine service was well maintained, though the large old monastery was partly ruinous. Five children and five impotent persons were maintained by the monks' charity, (fn. 43) and there were also two corrodiaries [individuals living in the monastery with room and board provided]. (fn. 44) The abbey, however, was listed amongst the smaller monasteries dissolved in 1536. (fn. 45) The abbot [Randolph Arnold] obtained a pension of £30. (fn. 46) The First Minister's Account shows a net income of £100. 18s. 10½d. (fn. 47)

Why did someone bring a seal from a suppressed Cistercian abbey to the New World in the 16th or 17th century? Does this mean there was Church Papist from Leicestershire in the colony, who remained inwardly true to the Catholic Church while attending Church of England services to avoid recusancy? Like the reliquary box in Jamestown, it remains a mystery because it does not seem that the provenance of this artifact has been identified.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the founders of the Cistercian reform of the Benedictine order.

Jamestown in The National Catholic Register

After posting about the reliquary found in the grave of Captain Gabriel Archer, I wrote an article and posted it off to my contact at The National Catholic Register. My story was posted on-line the next day:

Several articles have appeared recently about the discovery and identification of remains in Jamestown, Va., in The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, The New York Times and The Washington Post. The Atlantic headline on July 28 summed up the issue: “A Skeleton, a Catholic Relic and a Mystery About American Origins.” In the article by Adrienne Lafrance, the researchers at Jamestown and others discuss the ramifications of one of the discoveries in the grave of Capt. Gabriel Archer, a leader of the English colony. His grave and those of three others were found in the sanctuary of the Anglican chapel.

A small silver box found in his grave is “a historical bombshell” because the archaeologists believe it is a reliquary, which leads them to believe that Archer, who had many conflicts with Capt. John Smith of Pocahontas fame, might have been a secret Catholic in Anglican Jamestown.

A reliquary is a receptacle containing a piece of bone or some other object associated with a saint. Relics have always been important to Catholics: Every church altar contains a reliquary, and the priest kisses the altar, usually on top of the reliquary, at the beginning and end of each Mass.

The presence of a Catholic reliquary buried in an Anglican church has provoked quite a few questions. Was Archer secretly a Catholic and just seeming to conform to the Church of England, with King James I as its supreme governor and defender of the faith? Since Jamestown “was fundamentally anti-Catholic” and was “meant to be the beachhead for an English empire in America that will serve as a bulwark against Catholicism,” The Atlantic article states, his crypto-Catholicism brings questions about his leadership in the colony.

Please read the rest there.

Were There Catholics at Jamestown?

From The Atlantic, news that archaeologists have found indications that one of the founder of Jamestown, Captain Gabriel Archer, might have been a secret Catholic:

“One of the major surprises was the discovery of this mysterious small silver box,” said James Horn, the president of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation. “I have to say, we’re still trying to figure this out. You have the very strange situation of a Catholic reliquary being found with the leader of the first Protestant church in the country.”The finding is a historical bombshell, unearthed in a grave on the site of what was once the first church built at Jamestown. Which means researchers may have just discovered proof of an underground community of Catholics—including Archer and perhaps the person who buried him with the relic—who pretended to be Protestants.

“The first settlers there were mostly members of the Church of England,” said James O’Toole, a history professor at Boston College who focuses on the roots of American Catholicism. “While they didn't have the same active hostility to Catholics that the slightly later Puritan colonists in New England did, they were not particularly welcoming to Catholics. If there were Catholics in Tidewater Virginia ... that would be news.”

It’s the kind of discovery that makes historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, and other academics giddy with curiosity. But it raises even bigger questions, too—ideas that could rewrite our understanding of the intersection of religious and cultural identities in colonial America.

The English settlement of the New World is most often remembered as a Protestant endeavor. But if indeed there were Catholics at Jamestown, then, from the very beginning, it was a project pursued by those of multiple faiths, seeking new opportunities.

“There is this sense that American Catholic history begins in the 19th century with a wave of immigrants from Germany and Ireland in the 1820s and 1830s, but there is a history of earlier Catholicism,” said Maura Jane Farrelly, an associate professor of American studies at Brandeis University. “What’s captivating about it is the notion of the secretive nature. If he’s secretly Catholic, what does that faith mean to him that he’s willing to hold onto it even though it’s dangerous?”

I would take some issue with the statement that Anglicans weren't as actively hostile to Catholics in colonial England as Puritans. In England at least the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury under James I had led crackdowns on Catholics. Jamestown had recusancy laws too, at least as stated in this Smithsonian article, which has another issue:

But hadn’t Catholicism been banished in England? Weren’t they all Anglicans? Yes, Horn pointed out, but there were still Catholics practicing underground. Rosary beads, medallions of saints and a crucifix carved on jet have also turned up at Jamestown. Gabriel Archer’s father was among the Catholics, called a “recusant” and cited in court for failing to attend Anglican services. Archer had learned resistance at home.

Elizabethan recusancy and penal laws never officially "banished" Catholicism. It was illegal to attend Catholic Mass, to convert to Catholicism or influence another to convert, and it was certainly illegal for Catholic priests to be in England. Jamesian laws, passed after the Gunpowder Plot scare in 1605, made it more difficult for a Catholic to live and work in England. 

But if Captain Archer's father was a recusant and other Catholic objects have been dated to that period, as this paragraph implies, that silver box may indeed be a reliquary and Captain Archer a secret Catholic. Perhaps he was a Church Papist, outwardly conforming and secretly remaining a Catholic. One of the researchers in The Atlantic article wonders if Archer could have a Catholic priest, which seems doubtful: whatever other disguise Catholic priests in England donned, they would not attend a Church of England service in the normal course of events. 

Fascinating.