Cistercian Martyrs of England

According to the blog of Silverstream Priory in County Meath, Ireland, St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Cistercian order recognizes these English Reformation martyrs:

From the Romano–Cistercian Martyrology:
In England, in the sixteenth century, the passion of a number of Cistercian monks cruelly put to death for different pretexts by order of King Henry VIII.
In the months of March and May 1537, died for the Catholic faith:
— the Lord Abbot of Kirkstead, Dom John Harrison and his brethren Dom Richard Wade, Dom William Small, and Dom Henry Jenkinson;
— the Lord Abbot of Whalley, Dom John Paslew and his brethren, Dom William Haydock and Dom Richard Eastgate.
Also died: the Lord Abbot of Fountains and a monk of Louth Park.
In the following year 1538, were martyred:
— the Lord Abbot of Woburn, Dom Robert Hobbes and the monks Dom Rudolph Barnes and Dom Laurence Blunham.
Recognized as authentic confessors of the faith:
Dom Thomas Mudd, monk of Jervaulx, who died on September 7, 1583;
Dom John Almond, who died on April 18, 1585,
and Dom Gilbert Browne, the last Abbot of Sweet Heart (Dulce Cor), who died on March 14, 1612.

The Catholic Encyclopedia provides some detail about the history of St. Bernard's order in England: 

St. Stephen Harding, third Abbot of Cîteaux (1109-33), was an Englishman and his influence in the early organization of the Cistercian Order had been very great. It was natural therefore that, when, after the coming of St. Bernard and his companions in 1113, foundations began to multiply, the project of sending a colony of monks to England should find favourable consideration. In Nov., 1128, with the aid of William Giffard, Bishop of Winchester, a settlement was made at Waverly near Farnham in Surrey. Five houses were founded from here before 1152 and some of them had themselves produced offshoots. But it was in the north that the order assumed its most active developments in the twelfth century. William, an English monk of great virtue, was sent from Clairvaux by St. Bernard in 1131, and a small property was given to the newcomers by Walter Espec "in a place of horror and dreary solitude" at Rivaulx in Yorkshire, with the hearty support of Thurston, Archbishop of York. By 1143 three hundred monks had entered there, including the famous St. Ælred, known for his eloquence as the St. Bernard of England. Among the offshoots of Rivaulx were Melrose and Revesby. Still more famous was Fountains near Ripon. The foundation was made in 1132 by a section of the monks from the great Benedictine house of St. Mary's, York, who desired to lead a more austere life. After many struggles and great hardships, St. Bernard agreed to send them a monk from Clairvaux to instruct them, and in the end they prospered exceedingly. The great beauty of the ruins excites wonder even today, and before 1152 Fountains had many offshoots, of which Newminster and Meaux are the most famous. Another great reinforcement to the order was the accession of the houses of the Savigny foundation, which were incorporated with the Cistercians, at the instance of Eugenius III, in 1138. Thirteen English abbeys, of which the most famous were Furness and Jervaulx, thus adopted the Cistercian rule. By the year 1152 there were fifty-four Cistercian monasteries in England, some few of which, like the beautiful Abbey of Tintern on the Wye, had been founded directly from the Continent. Architecturally speaking the Cistercian monasteries and churches, owing to their pure style, may be counted among the most beautiful relics of the Middle Ages. To the wool and cloth trade, which was especially fostered by the Cistercians, England was largely indebted for the beginnings of her commercial prosperity.

The last Cistercian monastery in England to be suppressed was Meaux Abbey in Yorkshire in December, 1539, ending more than 400 years of St. Bernard's order in England. More about the suppression of the Cistercians here.

Image credit: Bernard of Clairvaux, true effigy by Georg Andreas Wasshuber (1650–1732)

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!

Book Review: Cosmas or the Love of God

This novel--which is really almost a novel of suspense--is set in a French Trappist Monastery. The narrator tells the story of a young man who believes he has a vocation to the order but cannot commit to the stability of the monastic life. The story begins with the narrator telling a visitor about Cosmas's death and burial in the monastery graveyard, even though he was not really a member of the community. The narration and pacing of the novel really hold the reader in suspense--what happened to Cosmas? How did he die? Did he have a vocation?

The narrator is the novice master and he describes in detail Cosmas's struggles in the community: Cosmas is very enthusiastic about the Divine Office and totally dedicated to the Rule of St. Benedict. But he is frustrated and outraged by the human weaknesses of the monks and even more by the novice master's advice to him to be more accepting and understanding of human frailty. Cosmas wants to commit to the monastery only if he can leave the community periodically when he finds it difficult to accept some behavior of his fellow monks' behavior. He leaves the monastery the last time because he thinks the other monks are mechanical in their celebration of the Divine Office; that while they are chanting they show no emotion or transcendence. The novice master reminds him that he cannot use feelings to judge the effects of Grace.

Cosmas or the Love of God reminded me of Rumer Godden's In This House of Brede, with its testing not just of religious vocation but of love and self-giving. The author of Cosmas was Pierre de Calan (1911-1993) a Paris banker (president of the French division of Barclays Bank). The novel was published in French in 1977; I read the Peter Hebblethwaite translation in the Loyola Classics edition.

I was reading the book in the context of preparing for my discussion of the dissolution of the monasteries during Henry VIII's reign last Saturday. In his book, The Tudors: The Complete Story of England's Most Notorious Dynasty, G.J. Meyer provides an excellent overview of their development in the centuries before their destruction. He notes that "British conventional wisdom" about the monasteries in the sixteenth century was that they were corrupt and needed destruction. Meyer argues, however, that the monastic movement falls and rises, grows stagnant and revives constantly. A ridiculously simplified example: The Benedictines become unbalanced toward elaborate ritual with the Cluniac movement, so St. Bernard of Clairvaux and others develop the Cistercian reform; the Trappists (as in Cosmas or the Love of God) take the reform a step further--revising and perfecting the way of life to more faithfully follow The Rule--and Meyer points out, I believe correctly, that all these efforts of reform took place inside the Order, not from without. So, yes, the monasteries in England were on a downward slide in some ways but they were also on an upward arc in others. Some orders had still not recovered in numbers from the Black Death.

To me, the clincher of an argument against this "British conventional wisdom" is that Henry VIII's first targets in destroying the monastic (and mendicant or religious) foundation in England were in fact the rising stars and the best of the monastic and mendicant orders: The Carthusians, the Bridgettines, and the Observant Franciscans.

I was trying to remember or find other novels set in monasteries (not mysteries or thrillers) and came up with another: Sylvia Townsend Warner's The Corner that Held Them. If you think of any others, let me know--does Walter Scott's The Monastery count?

St. Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertines

Last year, the UK Catholic Herald featured this saint, "who founded the only distinctively English medieval religious order" in the Twelfth Century in his native Lincolnshire. The article details his path to becoming leader of this order and notes:

"Though the Gilbertines were never richly endowed they continued to flourish until the Reformation. The order, however, died out after being dissolved by Henry VIII. Today it is difficult to find even the church at Sempringham, while virtually nothing remains of the monastic buildings which had once housed 200 nuns." At the time of the Dissolution there were 26 houses, but only four major monasteries. All were handed over to the king without any trouble, and the last prior of Sempringham Abbey, Robert Holgate, became Archbishop of York in 1545, succeeding Edward Lee, whom Henry VIII appointed after the death of Thomas Wolsey.

St. Gilbertine was arrested and imprisoned in 1165, suspected of aiding St. Thomas a Becket as the latter fled from Henry II after the Council at Northampton. He was eventually released. As Alban Butler more poetically states, "During the exile of St. Thomas of Canterbury, he and the other superiors of his Order were accused of having sent him succors abroad. The charge was false; yet the saint chose rather to suffer imprisonment and the danger of the suppression of his Order, than to deny it, lest he should seem to condemn what would have been good and just."

This site discusses the renewal of Gilbertine Spirituality. The photo above, from the Catholic Herald, is of The Abbey Church of St Andrew, Sempringham. This site provides even more detail about the history of the order.

Finally, this site describes the revival of a priory at Chicksands (where St. Thomas a Becket did stop on his way to Pontigny!).

St. Gilbert of Sempringham died on February 4, 1189 when he was almost 106 years old.