Preview: Two Second-Chance Benedictine Martyrs

On Monday, November 13, we'll continue our series on highlights from Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors For Every Day in the Year looking at two Benedictine Abbots of major English monasteries. One thing Blessed Hugh Faringdon, OSB and Blessed Richard Whiting, OSB have in common is that that took Henry VIII's Oaths of Succession and Supremacy; the other thing they have in common is that they seem to have regretted it. They, with companions, suffered being hanged, drawn, and quartered on November 15, 1539 in sight of their respective abbeys.

Perhaps we should be inspired by their stories to see any dangers to the Faith as soon as possible, and act against them!

I'll be on at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern, the last segment in the second national hour on EWTN Radio. Please listen live here and/or catch the podcast later here.

For Blessed Hugh Faringdon, Father Bowden offers the title "Guardian of the Sanctuary", noting that as Abbot of Reading he was favorite of Henry VIII, who called him "his own abbot". He was "learned and pious", and enforced "strict discipline in his Abbey." Bowden says, however that Faringdon "compromised himself by supporting the King in his petition for the divorce" and the doctrine of Royal religious supremacy. Faringdon supplied Henry with books supporting his argument that his marriage to Catherine of Aragon was invalid in spite of a papal dispensation.

When the time came for the surrender of Reading Abbey, founded by King Henry I in 1121 for the monks to pray for his salvation, that of his ancestors and successors, Faringdon seemed willing to surrender it, although no signed documentation survives.

As British History Online documents:

Apparently some kind of justification for the charge of high treason against Abbot Hugh was devised or forthcoming, but it is impossible now to find out what it was. The abbot was hurried off to the Tower, probably early in the summer, and whilst there Cromwell coolly decided, as we have seen, that he was to be tried and executed at Reading.

So the Abbot was executed--hanged, drawn, and quartered--in front of the Abbey Gates. Father Bowden comments that "On the scaffold, he spoke out boldly, professed his fidelity to the Holy See, which he declared to be the common Faith of those who had the best right to define the true teaching of the English Church." The Pope, not King Henry VIII.

The scripture verse is from Lamentations: "Our heart is sorrowful . . . for Mount Sion, because it is destroyed . . . But Thou, O Lord, wilt remain forever" (5:17-19) Because Reading Abbey was of course left to decay and ruin, and the grave of King Henry I--founder of the Abbey--lost.

The martyrdom of Blessed Richard Whiting follows a similar pattern: he was the 61st and "last abbot of Glastonbury, the most ancient and famous of the great English Benedictine houses. In rank, he stood next to the Abbot of St. Albans" and he was a member of Parliament in the House of Lords. There were one hundred monks in the great abbey, and under his leadership, it was "a religious house of strict observance" and a house of education. Whiting administered the vast land holdings of the abbey for "the relief of the poor and works of charity"--there was no scandal or abuse at Glastonbury.

But there had to be if Henry VIII was to get his hands on that vast wealth for his purposes. But there wasn't any . . . so Abbot Whiting's taking of the Oath of Supremacy didn't matter once he opposed the suppression of Glastonbury Abbey; that was Treason enough. So he was Attainted for Treason in Parliament, denied--like Abbot Faringdon--the trial of his peers in Parliament he was entitled to. He was tried in Wells and taken back to Glastonbury, dragged up the High Tor nearby, and drawn and quartered in sight of that glorious abbey.

Bowden titles his memento "The Watchman on the Hills' with the verse from Isaiah 62:6: "Upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen all the day and all the night: they shall never hold their peace."

Although these two Guardians and Watchmen may have failed at first to see the danger Henry VIII's marital issues and power grab posed to the Catholic faith and to their abbeys and their way of life, they did recognize the danger at last and died martyrs in resistance. They were beatified by Pope Leo XIII on May 13, 1895 in a group of nine martyrs, seven of whom suffered toward the end of the Dissolution of the Monasteries (including John Beche, last abbot of Colchester, John Eynon, Roger James, John Rugg, John Thorne, and these two Abbots).

Blessed Hugh Faringdon, pray for us!

Blessed Richard Whiting, pray for us!

Image credit (Public Domain): Reading Abbey. The south doorway of the Abbey Church, looking along the east walk of the Cloister. Photograph by H. W. Taunt and Company, No. 9014. 1890-1899.

Image credit (Public Domain): View of Arches at Glastonbury, albumen print, by the British photographer Francis Frith. 16.7 cm x 21.1 cm (6 9/16 in. x 8 5/16 in.) Courtesy of the Yale University Art Gallery, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

Fisher and More Religious Freedom Week Thoughts

As Anna Mitchell pointed out during our discussion of Henry VIII's prison visit to Blessed Sebastian Newdigate Monday morning on the Son Rise Morning Show, the USCCB's Religious Freedom Week begins today, June 22, the feast of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More. The portraits above laud them as "England's Most Glorious Martyrs" (note that the clipping dates from before their canonization in 1935, 400 years after their executions).

On the day of their feast, the USCCB asks us to reflect on "Respect for Sacred Spaces":

In a pluralistic society such as ours, respect for sacred spaces is especially vital for the sake of civil peace, which is part of the common good. In recent years, a wave of vandalism and arson has hit Catholic churches and statues. That wave rose following the leaked draft of the Dobbs decision, and it crested after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing states to regulate abortion. June and July of 2022 saw a huge spike in anti-Christian and anti-life attacks on churches. There have been over 250 attacks so far, and that number steadily continues to grow. [well, it certainly can't diminish!]

Before Fisher and More were executed in 1535, sacred spaces in England seemed to be safe: chantry chapels, parish churches, abbey churches, cathedrals, pilgrimage sites, friaries, priories, convents, and monasteries. All their shrines, stained glass, statues, altars, libraries, chalices, patens, pixes, and reliquaries also seemed safe. But with the Dissolution of the Monasteries during Henry VIII's reign, and the greater destruction of the religious fabric of sacred spaces during Edward VI's reign and the Elizabethan iconoclasm after the brief restoration of Catholic worship under Mary I, the pattern of destruction began. We could say that it started, however, in 1536, with the first wave of dissolutions or suppressions, and continued with the larger houses and the campaign against monastic life in general with the Visitations of the larger monasteries and the establishment of the Court of Augmentations to dispose of the sacred spaces of the monasteries with the conversion of some abbey churches into parish churches or cathedrals.

Of course, sixteenth century England did not have any idea of religious freedom: this meme from the beginning of the USCCB's attention to matters of religious freedom in the USA with the "Fortnight for Freedom" in reaction to the HHS/ACA contraception mandates and the Little Sisters of the Poor battles against them reminds us of that!

I'd previously shared this article from The Historical Journal (2022) by Martin Heale, "Thomas More and the Defense of the Religious Orders in Henry VIII's England", and draw your attention to it again with a couple of excerpts. In the course of the article, Heale comments more than once about St. Thomas More's admiration for the Observant Friars at Greenwich, the Carthusians at the London Charterhouse, and the Bridgettines of the House of Syon. On page 936 of the journal, he begins to explore More's defense of monasticism in general:

Alongside his unfettered praise for strictly observant religious orders, More’s polemical writings echoed his ‘Letter to a monk’ by repeatedly emphasizing the inherent value of the monastic way of life. In his ‘Letter to Bugenhagen’, More expressed a very high estimation of the monastic calling: ‘Religious orders have produced a great many men of extraordinary sanctity…[while] the purest segment of the Christian people have always been found in religious orders.’ Their way of life was also certified by the great holiness of their original founders. Monastic living, More added, with its austerities and self-denial, followed Christ’s teaching and example far more faithfully than the pampered and indulgent lives of its evangelical critics.75 The supplication of souls set out a robust defence of the friars’ practice of begging and the endowments held by monastic houses.76 And in the Apology, More denied that the professed religious life was in any way inferior to the calling of secular priests, and asserted that Christian people were bound to show honour towards religious persons on account of their ‘holy profession of their godly state of living’. 77 

You'll need to access the article for the end note links.

Nevertheless, Heale emphasizes that More, the Christian humanist and Catholic apologist, balanced that "very high estimation of the monastic calling" with an acknowledgement of problems among the monastic houses in England, and a rather tepid defense of those houses. While he regretted the dissolution of monasteries in Lutheran Germany (p. 940) More did not mount a defense of the monastic orders or houses. Heale concludes:

It is improbable that Thomas More himself, through his polemical writings, could have impeded the Henrician regime’s plans to embark upon a significant programme of monastic suppression in the mid-1530s. After all, More . . .  had issued stark warnings about the likely negative social and economic consequences of dissolving religious houses: a viewpoint that came to be quite widely shared within a few years of the suppressions. 113 He was, moreover, by no means unique among English humanists in his predilection for strictly observant forms of monastic life, and a concomitant lack of enthusiasm for ‘unreformed’ religious houses.

Tomorrow I'll post my preview for on Monday, June 26 discussion of Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's mementoes of Saint John Fisher on the Son Rise Morning Show!

Saint John Fisher, pray for us!

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Medieval Monastic Ghost Stories for Modern Minds?

According to this History First article by Mark Bridge, "Dr. Michael Carter, senior properties historian at English Heritage, a specialist in medieval monasteries and leader of the tours", thinks one way to help modern non-believers appreciate the lives of monks and nuns in England's pre-Reformation monasteries and convents is through ghost stories and tales of the afterlife, including souls in Purgatory and Devils in the dormitory:

How do you help 21st century “post-Christian” audiences to get inside the heads of the monks, nuns and devout laypeople who created England’s great medieval monasteries? The answer, according to the custodian of sites such as Rievaulx Abbey, lies with ghosts and gore.

This October and November, English Heritage will offer free expert-led tours of five ruined monasteries in Yorkshire and Cumbria, telling of spectres such as the priest who rose from the grave to gouge out his concubine’s eyeball. The tours, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, are the first of their kind from the conservation charity and may be extended to other regions. They use dark tales from monastic manuscripts as a lens for understanding religious communities that flourished for hundreds of years before the Reformation.

Bridge quotes Carter:

“There’s this question of how do we engage people and make these belief systems understandable for an increasingly secular and, to some extent, post-Christian, audience? How do you get across concepts of death, damnation and, especially, the redemption of souls in purgatory? The role these monasteries played in the salvation of souls was so important — it was the whole purpose. One way of getting that across is through the ghost stories written by the Byland monk and at other monasteries.”

Please read the rest there. My first reaction was negative, especially because of the headline: "Ghosts of sinful monks and nuns illuminate England's monastic history". I thought that played into the view of religious people as being hypocrites, saying they want to be holy and dedicated to a rule of life and yet sinning and failing. So, what's the problem? Isn't that part of the human condition? 

But that's not really Dr. Carter's view of these stories and the way he wants to present them to his non-believing audiences, at least as evidenced by his comments in the article. 

I'm still not sure that this appeal to ghost stories of the past will move non-believers to gain more understanding of what the monks and nuns were trying to achieve as they followed their order's rule and fulfilled their vocations as monastics. 

Does the mere recognition that the monks and nuns believed there was life after death and that the way your soul (and later your body) existed after death depended how you'd lived help the non-believer? It is a good first step to gaining some understanding of these medieval lives?

Would a visit to a monastery or convent open now, with monks and nuns living by the same Rule, be a better way? This way of life is not gone, even though the glorious ruins of these monasteries may fool one into thinking it is.

I'm just not sure.

Of course, I'm believer. 

Patrick Leigh Fermor's elegy to the monastic ruins of England in A Time to Keep Silence resonates with my mind and heart just fine:

But, for us in the West, because of all such relics they are the most compelling mementos of the life that once animated them, the ruined abbeys of England that have remained desolate since the Reformation will always be the most moving and tragic. For there is no riddle here. We know the function and purpose of every fragment and the exact details of the holy life that should be sheltering there. We know, too, the miserable and wanton story of their destruction and their dereliction, and have only to close our eyes for a second for the imagination to rebuild the towers and the pinnacles and summon to our ears the quiet rumour of monkish activity and the sounds of bells melted long ago. They emerge in the fields like the peaks of a vanished Atlantis drowned four centuries deep. The gutted cloisters stand uselessly among the furrows and only broken pillars mark the former symmetry of the aisles and ambulatories. Surrounded by elder-flower, with their bases entangled in bracken and blueberry and bridged at their summits with arches and broken spandrels that fly spinning over the tree-tops in slender trajectories, the clustering pillars suspend the great empty circumference of a rose-window in the rook-haunted sky. It is as though some tremendous Gregorian chant has been interrupted hundreds of years ago to hang there petrified at its climax ever since.

What do you think? Please let me know.

Butley Priory in the News (Newsweek!)

Newsweek posted a story about a young boy in England finding a seal from Butley Priory in Butley, Suffolk:

George Henderson found the seal around 5 inches in the ground shortly after starting a charity dig set up by his father, Paul Henderson, in November 2021. The money will be shared between George Henderson and the farmer who owns the land in Suffolk, East Anglia, where the seal was found.

Used by medieval priests in the 13th century to put wax seals on official letters, the copper-alloy object is inscribed in Latin with the words: "Seal of the Priory and Convent of Butley, of Adam, Canon Regular."

The seal features an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to whom the Priory was dedicated (a house of Augustinian Canons or Austin Canons). The priory was founded in 1171 and suppressed in 1538.

British History Online provides many details about the bishops' visitations through the years, including the last before its dissolution:

The reformanda of the bishop, consequent on this visitation, ordered that a master was to be provided for instructing the novices and boys in 'priksong' and grammar; that one canon should be sent to the university; that an annual statement of accounts was to be presented in the chapter-house before three or four of the older brethren; that a proper place was to be assigned for an infirmary, with a sufficiency of healthy food and drink and of medical and surgical assistance for the infirm; that the prior was to pay each novice 20s. for clothing according to old custom; that horses and a servant be provided for canons when they seek orders; that the presbytery be at once repaired; that one brother be sacrist and another precentor; that the same drink be supplied to the brethren as to the prior; that warning be given to the servants as to being insolent; that the roof and walls of the chapterhouse be repaired; and that the refectory be supplied with footboards and backs to the benches to lessen the cold in winter. The visitation was adjourned until the ensuing feast of the Purification to see if the various reformations were carried out. (fn. 21)

John Thetford, prior of the Holy Sepulchre, Thetford, was a benefactor to Butley priory about 1534. He gave them two chalices, one for the chapel of All Saints and another for the chapel of St. Sigismond. He also gave them a relic of special value, namely the comb of St. Thomas of Canterbury and a silver box of small relics. (fn. 22)

Thomas Manning alias Sudbury, who had been elected prior in 1528, was appointed suffragan Bishop of Ipswich in March 1536, having been nominated along with George, abbot of Leiston, by the Bishop of Norwich. (fn. 23) In December 1536 the new suffragan bishop got into trouble with Cromwell over some alleged complicity in the escape of a canon of Butley imprisoned on a charge of treason, whereupon he dispatched his servant to the Lord Principal, two days after Christmas, with two fat swans, three pheasant cocks, three pheasant hens, and one dozen partridges:—the weather had been so open and rainy that he could get no wild fowl. In his letter he told Cromwell that divers were busy to get him to resign his house, but that with the king's favour he would never surrender it. (fn. 24)

However, the prior-bishop found it impossible to resist—all pensions would have been forfeited if he had remained obstinate—and on 1 March, 1538, Manning and eight of the canons signed the surrender. (fn. 25)

The Butley Priory website  (it is privately owned and open as a venue for weddings, etc) includes this detail about a Royal Visitor who would probably have been very disappointed at its suppression, the Princess Mary Tudor, Queen of France, Duchess of Suffolk:

Then during the time of Prior Augustine Rivet (1509-28), the Priory became the regular resort of royalty and nobility who came there for the hunting. Mary Tudor, sister of Henry Vlll, was particularly fond of it and visited often, including a visit of two months with her new husband, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, in 1527.

On August 6th that year, as it was very hot, Mary Tudor ordered their supper to be laid out in a shady part of the garden on the east side of the gatehouse. This she so enjoyed that alfresco suppers became a regular feature of her stays at Butley. It is also recorded that in Brother Nicholas’s garden the royal party were overtaken by a violent thunderstorm, and had to rush to the church for shelter.

As the Freelance History Writer notes the former Queen of France would be affected (at least her mortal remains) further by the Dissolution of the Monasteries:

While Mary lived, she was never called the Duchess of Suffolk but “the French Queen”. She spent most of her time at her private home Westhorpe Hall in Suffolk. Mary’s relationship with King Henry was strained in the 1520’s because she didn’t support Henry’s efforts to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon whom Mary had known for many years. She never liked Anne Boleyn. She basically lived a quiet life away from court.

When Mary died at Westhorpe on June 25, 1533, she was buried at the abbey in Bury St. Edmunds. The monastery was destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII when Henry broke with the Catholic Church to marry Anne Boleyn. Mary’s body was then moved to St. Mary’s Church, Bury St. Edmunds.

May she rest in peace.

In Progress: What I'm Reading Now (Newman and Tolkien)

Edward Short, who edited and wrote the introduction to the Millennium Edition of Saint John Henry Newman's lectures on Anglican Difficulties (CERTAIN DIFFICULTIES FELT BY ANGLICANS IN CATHOLIC TEACHING CONSIDERED In Twelve Lectures addressed in 1850 to the Party of the Religious Movement of 1833), kindly sent me a review copy. His introduction provides excellent background to the circumstances which led to Newman presenting these lectures at the London Oratory, trying to persuade his former Tractarians to acknowledge there was no place for them in the Church of England, especially after the Gorham Judgment, when Queen Victoria's Privy Council determined that the Reverend George C. Gorham should become the Vicar of Brampford Speke, in spite of his denial of baptismal regeneration. Newman used all his rhetorical skill and art--like Cicero against Catiline--to bring them to the Catholic Church, which would uphold the Truth of the Sacrament of Baptism, that it had a spiritual effect as symbolized by the action of washing with water in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, as the Holy Bible and the Fathers of the Church taught. This controversy about Baptism within the Church of England in the 1840's has great parallels to the controversy about the priesthood and episcopacy (women priests and bishops) in the same National/State Church more recently, which certainly proves one of Newman's points--the Church of England will ever move in the direction the State and the Nation are moving. Thus the Anglicann Ordinariate!

So I've read Short's introduction and am reading the lectures now, in the midst of Lecture V, "The Providential Course of the Movement of 1833 [Newman's term for the Oxford or Tractarian Movement he had previously led with Keble and Pusey] not in the Direction of a Party in the National Church". Short's footnotes throughout these lectures are also very thorough, identifying works, literary allusions, people Newman refers to, etc., providing additional depth of context.

I've also started reading Holly Ordway's Tolkien's Modern Reading: Middle-earth Beyond the Middle Ages, which I purchased at Eighth Day Books:

Tolkien’s Modern Reading addresses the claim that Tolkien “read very little modern fiction, and took no serious notice of it.” This claim, made by one of his first biographers, has led to the widely accepted view that Tolkien was dismissive of modern culture, and that The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are fundamentally medieval and nostalgic in their inspiration.

In fact, as Holly Ordway demonstrates in this major corrective, Tolkien enjoyed a broad range of contemporary works, engaged with them in detail and depth, and even named specific titles as sources for and influences upon his creation of Middle-earth.

Drawing on meticulous archival research, Ordway shows how Tolkien appreciated authors as diverse as James Joyce and Beatrix Potter, Rider Haggard and Edith Nesbit, William Morris and Kenneth Grahame. She surveys the work of figures such as S.R. Crockett and J.H. Shorthouse, who are forgotten now but made a significant impression on Tolkien. He even read Americans like Longfellow and Sinclair Lewis, assimilating what he read in characteristically complex ways, both as positive example and as influence-by-opposition.

Tolkien’s Modern Reading not only enables a clearer understanding of Tolkien’s epic, it also illuminates his views on topics such as technology, women, empire, and race. For Tolkien’s genius was not simply backward-looking: it was intimately connected with the literature of his own time and concerned with the issues and crises of modernity. Ordway’s ground-breaking study reveals that Tolkien brought to the workings of his fantastic imagination a deep knowledge of both the facts and the fictions of the modern world.

And Ordway's book--from her Prelude in fact--has led me to another historical fiction novel, set during the reign of Charles I, John Inglesant: A Romance by Joseph Henry Shorthouse, written in Birmingham! The summary title is:

MR. JOHN INGLESANT SOMETIME SERVANT TO KING CHARLES I. WITH AN ACCOUNT OF HIS BIRTH, EDUCATION, AND TRAINING BY THE JESUITS AND A PARTICULAR RELATION OF THE SECRET SERVICES IN WHICH HE WAS ENGAGED ESPECIALLY IN CONNECTION WITH THE LATE IRISH REBELLION WITH SEVERAL OTHER REMARKABLE PASSAGES AND OCCURRENCES, ALSO A HISTORY OF HIS RELIGIOUS DOUBTS AND EXPERIENCES AND OF THE MOLINISTS OR QUIETISTS IN ITALY IN WHICH COUNTRY HE RESIDED FOR MANY YEARS WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE ELECTION OF THE LATE POPE AND MANY OTHER EVENTS AND AFFAIRS.

The book begins during the reign of Henry VIII as Cromwell sends John Inglesant's ancestor Richard to conduct some delicate negotiations with the Prior of a monastery in Norfolk, near Malmsbury, Westacre Priory, a house Augustinian Canons.

There really was such Priory, and according to British History Online, it was dissolved in a fashion quite different from Shorthouse's fiction. The visitors, Doctor Legh and John ap Rice, a notary public, accused the Prior, the sub-prior and several canons of quite grave sins, which they were supposed to have confessed. The entry on British History Online casts quite grave doubts on these confessions:

At any rate no credence whatever could have been given to this particular charge made by these notorious 'visitors'; for although, according to them, West Acre was by far the foulest lived of all the Norfolk religious houses, in October of the very year when their report of the prior of Westacre's personal and conventual enormities had been rendered, William Wingfield was one of the fourteen Norfolk gentlemen specially appointed by the king to abide in their counties and act as justices to keep good order during the absence of the rest of the gentlemen and noblemen during the northern rebellion, the priors of West Acre and Castle Acre being the only two ecclesiastics of the county selected for this honour. (fn. 23)

On 15 January, 1538, West Acre Priory, with the dependent priory or cell of Great Massingham and all its possessions, was surrendered to Robert Southwell, attorney of the Augmentation Office, to be held by him for a year with remainder to the king. The surrender was signed by the prior and seven of the canons. This was the first of the monastic 'surrenders,' and its farcical character is clear; for a month earlier (16 December, 1537) Sir Roger Townsend wrote to Cromwell saying that all the goods of West Acre Priory had been sequestrated according to order and inventories taken. On 9 December there had been some endeavour otherwise to dispose of the monastic property. Commissioner Layton waxed wroth on this subject, and in a letter to Cromwell from West Acre, three days after its 'surrender,' he wrote:—

As for Westacre, what falsehood in the prior and convent, what bribery, spoil, and ruin contrived by the inhabitants it were long to write; but their wrenches, wiles, and guiles shall nothing them prevail. (fn. 24)

Prior Wingfield, notwithstanding his reputed sins and trickery, had the handsome pension granted him of £40 per annum, of which he was still in receipt in 1555; he also held the rectory of Burnham Thorpe.

The 'surrender' of West Acre was accompanied by a vaguely but extravagantly worded 'confession' of lax living. The better known and absurd so-called 'confession' of the monks of St. Andrew's, Northampton, has been dealt with in another volume of this series. (fn. 25) The private correspondence of the visitors with the Lord Privy Seal makes it quite clear that these two confessions (the only ones on record) were written by them; it is more than probable that neither the canons of the one house nor the monks of the other had any knowledge whatsoever of the documents in question. This is a grave charge to make against Ap Rice, Legh, and Layton; but those who have studied the Cromwell correspondence at the Public Record Office at first hand cease to be surprised at any depth of moral turpitude displayed by his active agents. (fn. 26)

Only the Gatehouse is left now.

Full reviews of the books to come in due course.

July 18, 1538: Cromwell's Marian Bonfire

This is almost too timely: as statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary on church grounds, as well as public, not necessarily religious statues of Saint Junipero Serra and Saint Louis of France are threatened, defaced, desecrated, and destroyed, we have an historical example from the English Reformation to remember.

According to the Walsingham Blog's Facebook page today is the anniversary of the burning of many statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary--perhaps even including Our Lady of Walsingham--in 1538:

On the 14th of July 1538 Prior Vowell of Walsingham Priory reported to Thomas Cromwell that the royal commissioners had take the image of Our Lady from the chapel. 

On July 18th the Image that had for centuries been loved and venerated in its Holy House, and where so much prayer and pleading had poured forth, reached London, along with statues of Our Lady of Basingstoke, Caversham, Ipswich, Penrhys, Willesden, Worcester and others. They were taken to the residence of the Lord Privy Seal , Thomas Cromwell, Chelsea Manor, where they were burnt in the presence of the Lord Privy Seal himself.

Chelsea Manor had been Saint Thomas More's home. It was no accident Cromwell chose that location.

Bishop Hugh Latimer, as Gary Waller recounts in his book The Virgin Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern English Literature and Popular Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2011), rejoiced in the burning of these statues, proclaiming:

Here is confounded and overthrown the foolish opinion of the papists, which would have us to worship a creature before the Creator; Mary before her Son. These wise men do not so; they worship not Mary; and wherefore? Because God only is to be worshipped: but Mary is not God.

In 1538, in the late summer or autumn, in Chelsea or Smithfield or Tyburn, we can surmise – from both casual remarks recorded at the time and various histories and memoirs some years later – that one or more fires was lit and in it (or them) were burned statues, “images,” of the Virgin Mary, most probably those that had been brought from shrines dedicated to her at Doncaster, Ipswich, Penrhys, and Walsingham. Local records suggest that similar images from Caversham, along with roods from Bermondsey, Boxley, Islington, and others were added to this, or similar, fires elsewhere. In 1537, the reformist bishop Hugh Latimer had announced that in his own diocese there reigned “idolatry, and many kinds of superstition,” and during what Helen Parish terms 1538’s “long summer of iconoclasm,” he also named the statue of the Virgin at Worcester a “devil’s instrument.” He gloated that the statue, along with “her old sister of Walsingham, her young sister of Ipswich,” and statues from Doncaster and Penrhys, “would make a jolly muster” and, he added for good measure, unlike flesh-and-blood heretics, would not “be all day in burning.” There are conflicting accounts on the date or dates on which such a “jolly muster” took place, and exactly when and what “idols” were destroyed, whether publicly or privately, but, Latimer pronounced, they were destroyed because they had “been the instrument to bring many (I fear) to eternal fire.”

You might recall that Hugh Latimer preached a long sermon while Blessed John Forest was hanging in chains in preparation for his being burned alive on May 22, 1538, with a statue of a Welsh saint, Derfel Gadarn, being added to the pyre:

Father Forest was brought on a hurdle from prison in his tattered Franciscan habit to Smithfield and forced to hear Bishop Latimer’s sermon. After an hour’s preaching, Latimer asked Forest to respond. They argued and Forest even noted that he and Latimer had formerly agreed upon the important points of Catholic doctrine but that Latimer had succumbed to the offers of power and authority. He should instead have followed the examples of Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher. Either Latimer or Cromwell then cried out, “Burn him! Burn him!”—enraged by what English witnesses called his stubbornness.

Latimer was not the only one rejoicing at the debasement and destruction of the statues (from the BHO entry for the priory of Walsingham):

John Husee, writing to Lord Lisle, on 18 June, also attempted to be witty on the same subject:

This day our late lady of Walsingham was brought to Lambithe (Lambeth), where was both my Lord Chancellor and my Lord Privy Seal with many virtuous prelates, but there was offered neither oblation nor candle. What shall become of her is not determined. (fn. 57)

Melancthon, on 1 November of the same year, exulted in the overthrow of the image of 'Mary by the Sea.' (fn. 58)

And Henry VIII, who had visited the Walsingham shrine in 1511, evidently approved of this iconoclasm:

Among the Lady Day accounts of 1538 [the Annunciation, March 25] the usual payments were made for the king's candle, and to the king's priest who sang before Our Lady at Walsingham. But when the Michaelmas payments came round the entry runs:

'For the king's candle before Our Lady of Walsingham, and to the prior there for his salary, nil.' (fn. 59)

Do not fear, however, because the prior, Richard Vowell, was well paid:

On 20 October, 1539, the late prior received a grant of the exceedingly large pension of £100 in reward for his obsequiousness and considerable bribes to Cromwell.

So as Catholics in the USA are reacting to what may be 2020's "long summer of iconoclasm", at least we may have the hope that justice may done to those who destroy private property. Otherwise, we must pray:

Our Lady of Walsingham, pray for us!

On "Kresta in the Afternoon" TODAY

Before I go to my Holy Hour of Adoration today, I am going to record a segment for Kresta in The Afternoon, which will be aired later today. I'm not sure when it will be aired during his two hour show, but we are going to discuss Henry VIII being named Supreme Head and Governor of the Church in England and what it meant for Catholics in England.

Kresta in the Afternoon is on EWTN Radio and Ave Maria Radio from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. Central Time/4:00 to 6:00 p.m. Eastern, etc.

What did it mean for Catholics in England at the time? Did they expect any real changes in doctrine, worship, and discipline? Except for a few, like the Carthusians, and the Observant Franciscans, and Sir Thomas More, and Bishop John Fisher, most probably thought that Henry VIII becoming the Supreme Head and Governor of the Church of England meant that everything as far as doctrine--except for the Pope--and worship--except for the Pope (as he was cited in the prayers at Mass and in the Divine Office)--and morals would remain the same.

By December 24, 1545, Henry VIII may have not been sure what he wanted to achieve as the Supreme Head and Governor of the Church of England. He was certainly disappointed that there was so much division in the Church, but there had been at least two parties, the reforming Lutherans and the conservative Catholics, from the beginning, contending for influence over the king. From 1536 to 1545, religious practice in England changed from being more Lutheran to being more Catholic: the Ten Articles and the Bishops Book; then the Six Articles and the King's Book; the suppression of the monasteries and the friaries; the fall of Cromwell; the Chantries Act; and at the end of Henry VIII's reign, the Lutheran/Calvinist party prepared to seize power when he died.

According to G.W. Bernard, in The King’s Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church:

The king sought a middle way between Rome and Zurich, between Catholicism and its associated superstitions on one hand and the subversive radicalism of the reformers on the other. With a ruthlessness that verged on tyranny, Henry VIII determined the pace of change in the most important twenty years of England’s religious development.

I think it's hard to know what Henry VIII intended to achieve at the beginning of his control over the Church of England beyond consolidating his dynasty's succession.

Catherine Palmer, Abbess of Syon Abbey, RIP

Catherine Palmer, the last abbess of Syon Abbey, died in exile on December 19, 1576. She had confronted a Calvinist mob in Mechelin (today in Belgium) the month before. Since St. Richard Reynolds was martyred in 1535 and the house suppressed in 1539, Palmer had been one of the leaders of the surviving Bridgettine nuns from one of the richest and most scholarly religious houses in England, founded by King Henry V and destroyed by King Henry VIII. It was restored briefly during the reign of Queen Mary I but dissolved again and BHO recounts:

The community did not disperse after the Dissolution but, apparently in the hope that the schism was only a temporary matter, remained in groups until they could return to Syon. Abbess Jordan rented a farmhouse near Denham (Bucks.), and with her went nine of the community. (fn. 185) Another group, led by Catherine Palmer, went abroad, staying first at Antwerp and later at Termonde in Flanders until the restoration. (fn. 186) The accession of Queen Mary brought the fulfilment of their hopes. Naturally it took some time to gather together the scattered community, but some were enclosed by Cardinal Pole at Sheen in November 1556. (fn. 187) The official re-establishment of Syon was confirmed by the cardinal on 1 March 1557, (fn. 188) and in April letters patent were issued granting the site and more than 200 acres of land at Isleworth. (fn. 189) The community then consisted of 21 sisters and 3 brothers, with Catherine Palmer as abbess and John Green confessor-general. (fn. 190) A further grant of lands at Isleworth was made in January 1558. (fn. 191)

Meantime the work of refitting the buildings for monastic life had been going on, the cost being borne by Sir Francis Englefield who, through his wife, formerly Catherine Fettyplace, was related to two of the sisters. (fn. 192) The re-establishment was completed by the solemn enclosure of all who had rejoined by the Bishop of London, assisted by the Abbot of Westminster. (fn. 193) Both the queen and Cardinal Pole were rewarded for their favours by obits at the abbey. (fn. 194)

The community was not to remain long in enjoyment of its peaceful round. In May 1559 Parliament decreed the dissolution of the re-established monasteries, pensions being granted only to those religious willing to take the Oath of Supremacy. (fn. 195) Once again the community at Syon decided to continue its monastic life and it was arranged that the retiring Spanish ambassador, Feria, should take them and other religious abroad with him. (fn. 196) The community moved to Flanders, where it began a long exile in the Bridgettine house at Termonde. (fn. 197) Despite many difficulties and hazards it continued to exist in Flanders, France, and Portugal until its return to England in two groups, one in 1809 and the other in 1861, and it has been settled since 1925 at Marley, South Brent, Devon. (fn. 198)

Note that the house in Devon was finally closed in 2011. There were only three elderly nuns left and they could not maintain the convent. Before they had to close, the nuns published The Syon Breviary, an English translation of the Bridgettine Daily Office of Our Lady, which they continued to pray!

St. Aelred of Rievaulx, BFF

On January 12, 1167, Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx died; therefore, this is his feast day. He was born c. 1110 in Hexham to a priestly family , was educated there and possibly at Durham, and was a courtier of David I, king of Scots, before entering the Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx in the early or mid 1130s. In 1143 Ailred became the first abbot of its daughter house of Revesby in the Lincolnshire Wolds. In 1147 he was elected abbot of Rievaulx, a position he held until his death. Under his rule Rievaulx was a vibrant institution, helping to spread the Cistercian model of momastic life across northern England and beyond.

In his book, Saints and Scholars: Twenty-Five Medieval Portraits, David Knowles comments that St. Aelred of Rievaulx is a "singularly attractive figure whom, thanks to the records left by a disciple and still more to his own writings, we can see as a living man in some completeness. . . . As we read, a corner of the veil that hides the past from us seems to lift . . ."

Among St. Aelred's 13 surviving written works, perhaps the most famous is his treatise on Spiritual Friendship:

"Friendship is that virtue by which spirits are bound by ties of love and sweetness, and out of many are made one. Even the philosophers of this world have ranked friendship not with things casual or transitory but with the virtues which are eternal. Solomon in the Book of Proverbs appears to agree with them when he says: "he that is a friend loves at all times," manifestly declaring that friendship is eternal if it is true friendship; but if it should ever cease to be, then it was not true friendship, even though it seemed to be so."

and

"For spiritual friendship, which we call true, should be desired, not for consideration of any worldly advantage or for any extrinsic cause, but from the dignity of its own nature and the feelings of the human heart, so that its fruition and reward Is nothing other than itself. ... And so spiritual friendship among the just is born of a similarity in life, morals, and pursuits, that is, it is a mutual conformity in matters human and divine united with benevolence and charity."

but remember:

"This type of friendship is not common."

His abbey was, of course, suppressed during Henry VIII's reign, and on 3 December 1538 Abbot Blyton and his twenty-two monks gathered in Rievaulx’s chapter-house for the final time and surrendered their abbey to the royal commissioners. But now the abbey is a National Park, hailed as "one of the most complete and impressive abbeys in Britain" and "one of the most popular visitor attractions in the North"!

St. Bernard and the Cistercians in England

From Tea at Trianon comes this link to an article arguing for the long-term beneficial effects of the monasteries in England even after their dissolution:

The Monks Left Fundamental Values in Society

Having looked at statistics covering 40 counties in England, the researchers concluded that regions with many Cistercian monasteries experienced a higher population growth in the period 1377-1801.

What’s even more striking is that the influence that monasteries had on population density was the same before and after 1600.

The fact that all monasteries were closed down during the Reformation in the year 1500 [not really: the dissolution occurred in the late 1530's, from about 1535 to 1540] also shows that the monasteries had an influence on society several centuries after being closed down.

So it appears that it wasn’t only the monks’ excellent abilities to e.g. use watermills that have been passed on to posterity. Rather, it was something more inherent and fundamental.

“We are cementing that the monks passed on their cultural values by showing – based on the European Values Study – that European regions with several Cistercian monasteries still to this day value diligence and moderation more than other regions,” says Bentzen.

“Our study of monks shows that societies that had a culture where diligence and moderation were highly valued had an advantage when the Industrial Revolution started. All else being equal, countries with high levels of work ethic will, historically speaking, achieve greater prosperity.”

Last year on the Feast of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, I posted this history of the Cisterican monastic life in England. St. Bernard of Clairvaux, pray for us!

The English Reformation Today: Episode Three

"Henry VIII and the Break from Rome" is our topic today. We will talk briefly about the causes behind Henry VIII's decision to assert ecclesiastical authority in England to get around the Pope not declaring his first marriage null and void so he could marry again and hopefully sire a male heir. Beyond that, however, we will concentrate on the crisis of conscience among Catholics asked to choose the source of spiritual authority: their Monarch or the Vicar of Christ (you know which way I lean!). Therefore we will examine the protomartyrs of the English Reformation: The Carthusians, Observant Franciscans, St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More. Here is an interesting article from the UK's The Catholic Herald, which the columnist/blogger Francis Philips titles "I feel a shiver when I see the parallels between our world and that of St John Fisher":

. . . I read about St John Fisher (who gave his name to the chaplaincy), the magnificent and martyred alumnus of the 16th century. In an article by Dr Richard Rex, I was reminded that Fisher, who refused to renounce the authority of the pope in favour of Henry VIII, accepted execution rather than go against his conscience. “That Fisher would find himself called upon to deny a doctrine that had been taught in England all his life was something he could hardly have imagined in his student days. More surprising still is how few followed him in refusing. The reason was partly fear, but more the spirit of the age…”

Rex continues, drawing a parallel between the challenge faced by Fisher and those facing Christians today: “We shall not be called upon to make that ultimate sacrifice. But look out for the dominant ideology. Today it is just straws in the wind. Rocco Buttiglione disqualified from the European Commission because of his adherence to Catholic teaching on sexual morality. The closure of Catholic adoption agencies in England because of their refusal to place children with same-sex couples. How long will it be before a formal affirmation of so-called ‘liberal’ principles becomes a prerequisite for employment in the public sector?”

This is disquieting but should not be a surprise. . . . 

Read the rest here.

I will also discuss the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the effect of that destruction of religious life in England. I wrote about the Dissolution of the Monasteries for OSV's The Catholic Answer Magazine and you may access that article here, including its discussion of the Pilgrimage of Grace:

In October 1536, an army of commoners and gentry advanced from the north of England under banners marked with the five wounds of Christ.

Led by Robert Aske, a barrister, they were the Pilgrimage of Grace, a popular rising from York making grievances in protest of King Henry VIII, including protesting the dissolution of the monasteries and changes in religious practice since Henry VIII’s Reformation Parliament had proclaimed him “Supreme Head and Governor” of the Church.

There were too many in this group — 30,000 to 40,000 — for Henry’s small mercenary army to handle. Henry’s agent, Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, pretended to hear their terms to stop the dissolution, get rid of bad advisers such as Thomas Cromwell and restore the freedom of the Church protected in the Magna Carta. Henry promised to call a Parliament in York. In January 1537, another uprising led him to impose martial law and punish the rebels. Aske hung in chains in front of York Castle, dying of exposure, and 215 more rebels, including abbots, monks and parish priests, were executed.

The Pilgrimage of Grace was the greatest domestic threat Henry VIII faced, and the dissolution of the monasteries the most radical aspect of his otherwise rather conservative religious program.

Even after he had usurped the spiritual authority of the pope in England, Henry considered himself a Catholic, treasuring his title as Defender of the Faith and zealousness in protecting the Real Presence in the Eucharist. Henry’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, and his chancellor, Cromwell, might have imbibed Lutheran ideas, but not Henry. . . .

I welcome all listeners of Radio Maria US to my blog, whether you're listening on one of their radio stations or on line or through one of their apps. Next week on The English Reformation Today we'll discuss the Calvinist Reformation ushered in by the minority rule of Henry VIII's young son, King Edward VI. I invite you to call in with questions and comments toll-free at 866-333-MARY(6279).

And here is the crucial question: Are Dr. Richard Rex and Francis Philips correct about the parallels between St. John Fisher's time (and the Carthusians' and St. Thomas More's) and our time, even here in the United States of America? Please let me know what you think, on air or in the comment box.

Book Review: Saints, Sacrilege, and Sedition

Eamon Duffy's new book on the English Reformation, subtitled "Religion and Conflict in the Tudor Reformations" is a collection of essays, not the thorough composed book I hoped for initially. Nevertheless, Duffy displays the same level of erudition and original research that can be expected from him. In the first two chapters he speaks directly to the foundation of the English Reformations under the Tudors and its effects:

The Reformation marked, for England, the end of the notion of Christendom. The foundation of the English Reformation was neither sola scriptura nor sola fide, but the Royal Supremacy: Henry VIII utterly rejected justification by faith and burned those who preached it, and he understood the authority of scripture to reside chiefly in the fact that the scriptures taught obedience to the king. (Nice chiasmus, there.)

He depicts the English Reformation as a crucial break with the past:

Overnight, a millennium of Christian splendour--the worlds of Gregory and Bede and Anselm and Francis and Dominic and Bernard and Dante, patterns of thought and ritual and symbols that had constituted and nourished the mind and heart of Christendom for a thousand years--became alien territory, the dark ages of popery. . . . The Reformation silenced the prayers of men and women for their parents, it banished the saints, it drastically reduced the sacramental life of every Christian. The destruction of monasticism did more than take the roofs off some of the best buildings in England: it amputated one of the Church's perennial and most precious sources of Christian inspiration and renewal.

Duffy focuses his attention on the rood screens and how documents in parish churches reveal the lay involvement in their construction and renovation in chapter three; examines the records of one extraordinary large parish church in chapter four; and reviews the results of the 1552 Inventories of Church goods in chapter five.

He dedicates chapters 6 through 9 to the hierarchy, particularly to Cardinal Bishop and martyred saint, St. John Fisher, and to Reginald Cardinal Pole, the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury.

The last two chapters trace "the conservative voice" even among those who went along with the established Church of England as they recalled the past--the rituals, the rhythm of the Church year, the beauty of the churches, etc.; and finally he parses a line from Shakespeare's sonnet about bare ruined choirs, recalling the dissolved monasteries and their reputation.

I heartily recommend Saints, Sacrilege, and Sedition for anyone interested in the English Reformation.

I. Reformation Unravelled \ Introduction \ 1. Reformation, Counter-reformation and the English nation \ 2. Reformation Unravelled: Facts and Fictions \ II. The Material Culture of Early Tudor Catholicism \ 3. The Parish, Piety and Patronage: the Evidence of Roodscreens \ 4. Salle Church and the Reformation \ 5. The End of It All: Medieval Church Goods and the 1552 Confiscations \ III. Two Cardinals \ 6. John Fisher and the Spirit of his Age \ 7. The Spirituality of John Fisher \ 8. Rome and Catholicity in mid-Tudor England \ 9. Archbishop Cranmer and Cardinal Pole: the See of Canterbury and the Reformation \ IV. Catholic Voices \ 10. The Conservative Voice in the English Reformation \ 11. Bare Ruin'd Choirs: Remembering Catholicism in Shakespeare's England

Wales and the Catholic Church

With the commemoration of St. John Jones the Welsh Franciscan martyr yesterday, I thought I'd mention a couple of interesting links on the Church and Wales, occasioned by this article in the National Catholic Register:

For centuries, they came. Trudging along narrow footpaths, often precariously perched atop steep cliffs that plunged down to the Irish Sea, the pilgrims had one mission: to reach Bardsey Island.
Bardsey Island sits off the blustery northern coast of Wales, and evidence indicates it has been a site of worship since the Bronze Age (3600-1200 B.C.). In the sixth century, St. Cadfan began construction of a monastery there that eventually became home to many devout monks, causing Bardsey to become an important site for the Celtic Christian Church. Over time, the faithful began flocking to the island on pilgrimage. As their numbers swelled in the Middle Ages, the Pope declared that three pilgrimages to Bardsey Island equaled one pilgrimage to Rome.
 
Eventually, the island became known as the “Island of the Saints,” and it was said 20,000 holy people were interred there.

Of course, you've noticed that the two groups of martyrs canonized and beatified are the "Forty Martyrs of England and Wales" and the "Eighty-Five Martyrs of England and Wales": Here is a site dedicated to telling the stories of the Welsh martyrs.

And of course, one of the most evocative of all the monastic ruins, Tintern Abbey, is in Wales: Here is a site dedicated to the Welsh Abbeys and other holy sites in Wales. Tintern Abbey, of course, inspired William Wordsworth. (Image credit: wikipedia.)

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!

Some Relevant Current Events

1)--This story from the BBC:

A collection of centuries-old skeletons excavated in Oxfordshire and stored in a museum are to be reburied as part of a "celebration" mass.

The human remains were found during the extension of a church graveyard in Eynsham, leading to excavations between 1989 and 1992.

Father Martin Flatman, of St Peter's Catholic Church, said he was pleased he could give them a "proper burial".

Six bodies are thought to be monks from the medieval Eynsham Abbey.

The remains of two women and a man have been dated to after the Reformation, and are believed to have been secretly buried in the consecrated ground.

The Catholic church was built on the site of the ancient abbey in the 1940s.

'Rib fractures'

Father Flatman said: "Suddenly it dawned on me that I didn't know where the bodies were. I found out they were in the museum's storage and I applied to have them back.

"As a Catholic we honour the dead and we wouldn't want to leave them, particularly those faithful 16th and 17th Century Catholics who faced persecution."

The finding of those bodies at Eynsham Abbey is another demonstration of what Eamon Duffy indicated in his article in The Telegraph I posted yesterday: for too long, England has ignored its past. In burying those recusant faithful, Father Flatman is reminding England of a time when a Catholic was forced to conform to the national church at birth, at her marriage, and at death.

2)--This interview from Hilary Mantel in The Telegraph:

Mantel was raised a Roman Catholic and educated at convent school.

However, the 59-year-old writer said child abuse scandals involving Roman Catholic priests demonstrated the “cruelty” and “hypocrisy” of the church.

Asked if she would call for a priest on her deathbed, Mantel replied: “No. I might very well call for a Church of England vicar, but I would not call for a Catholic priest.

“I’m one of nature’s Protestants. I should never have been brought up as a Catholic. I think that nowadays the Catholic Church is not an institution for respectable people.”

Which reminds me of the Oscar Wilde comment, "The Catholic Church is for saints and sinners alone. For respectable people, the Anglican Church will do." (Remember that Oscar Wilde became a Catholic on his deathbed.) Francis Phillips responded here in The Catholic Herald. Mantel may think she was being remarkably current and astute ("nowadays") in her comment, but she is ignoring the past five hundred years in England, too--not to mention the Gospel stories of Jesus dining with tax collectors and publicans--they weren't respectable either. For a literate and learned person, she made a most illiterate and ignorant statement.

3)--This story from Maryland:

The Rev. Edward Meeks and his flock attended to a "million and one details" last week in the run-up to a momentous day for their church. People to talk to. Flowers to arrange. Food to cook. And, of course, the new sign. On Sunday, Christ the King Church — Anglican — became Christ the King Catholic Church. The Towson congregation of about 140 is one of the first groups in the United States to join a new "ordinariate" established for those who want to be Catholic but hold on to Anglican traditions. The largest Anglican church in the country to do so, it follows in the footsteps of Mount Calvary Church in Baltimore and St. Luke's Parish in Bladensburg.

Liberal stances by Anglican leaders, particularly Episcopalians, have driven some clergy and members to the Roman Catholic Church. But Meeks, who studied to become a Catholic priest as a young man, speaks not of rejection but of reunification — becoming one with the "authentic apostolic authority" of the church that dates back 2,000 years.

"We're just overjoyed by this," said the Rev. Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson, who heads the U.S. ordinariate, the equivalent of a diocese but national in scope. As parishioners of all ages scurried past to take their seats for the Mass, he added, "It's such a healthy community — you can see it's full of children."

The parishioners who became Catholics Sunday morning were joining the church for the first time or returning after years apart. A handful of parishioners haven't decided whether to make that leap, though they're remaining in the congregation.

Others left. The 140-member church had about 200 parishioners when it started down the road to Catholicism almost two years ago, losing both those who didn't want to be Catholic and those who opted for a more traditionally Catholic experience.

That loss has been painful, parishioners say. But they add that the transformation from Protestant to Catholic has not been acrimonious — in contrast to the roiling discontent that produced the Church of England more than 450 years ago and that spawned Anglican churches around the world. Some parishioners who went elsewhere return for social events.

"We've still got a good relationship with virtually all who have left," Meeks said.


and 4)--This story, also from The Telegraph from a few months back, about the community left behind by the Anglican Ordinariate:

Members of the congregation at St Michael and All Angels parish church in Croydon, south London, don’t ask for much. A decent sermon, perhaps a few rousing hymns; clean pews; a tidy garden at the back; someone to help with Sunday school. But this month, they need something rather more important: a new vicar, to replace the one who converted to Catholicism and took 69 of his flock with him to a church up the road.

A “Parish priest: vacant” sign now stands outside the towering red-brick church behind West Croydon train station. Seven weeks ago, it housed 100 parishioners and a vicar who had served there for 16 years. Today, St Michael’s has less than half its original congregation, after the Rev Donald Minchew quit his post and was received into the Catholic faith at St Mary’s, 500 yards away.

This extraordinary leap of faith was prompted by the Rev Minchew’s decision to join the Ordinariate, a structure within the Roman Catholic Church that allows Anglicans to enter into full communion while retaining some of their C of E heritage. The practice started last January, when three former Anglican bishops were ordained as Catholic priests, following a decree from Pope Benedict XVI to heal division between the faiths. Since then, dissatisfaction with aspects of Anglican doctrine – including the Church’s attitude towards homosexuality and its willingness to consider female bishops – has led hundreds to take up the offer of conversion.

The Rev Minchew’s reasons for leaving St Michael’s were rooted in his doubts about the Anglican faith. “In the Church of England, you don’t know what the Church believes from one synod to the next,” he said. “I think there is great comfort in the Catholic church: you know what you believe and what the Church teaches.”

But what of those he left behind? St Michael’s is one of many Anglican parishes for which the Ordinariate has meant empty pews, an interregnum and a gaping hole in church life for the congregation.

Book Review: The Man on a Donkey

H.F.M. Prescott's The Man on a Donkey is called a Chronicle; as Prescott tells the stories of the historical and fictional characters, she interweaves their stories into the epic of the Pilgrimage of Grace. Each character's chronicle begins and ends, first with their life's story before the great events of 1535 and 1536, then through the long autumn and winter of that year and into spring of 1537, when each of their chronicles end with either their deaths or their departures. Three characters are historical: Christabel Cowper, the Prioress of Marrick, Thomas, Lord Darcy, and Robert Aske, captain of the Pilgrimage of Grace. Two are Prescott's creation, Julian Savage, fictional sister of Margaret Bulmer, and Gilbert Dawe, a priest who has become an evangelical.

One of my first comments is how Prescott's clerical and religious characters are not at all ideal: Cowper is a mercenary and selfish character; she is dedicated to the survival of Marrick mainly because she enjoys her power and comforts; Gilbert Dawes may believe he has found the truth, but he is as cruel and rapacious as she is, abandoning his lover and their children, mistreating the poor son who survives--when their chronicles end she has (actually at the beginning of the novel) lost her position and he has realized his failure. Dawes knows that he he has the true faith, but that he is not saved; he may be able to preach it, but he will not gain Heaven: he knows only a Gospel of judgment and wrath--there is no love.

With Thomas, Lord Darcy, Prescott has a back story to fill in based on historical data; with Robert Aske, she can create a background of family tension and some rivalry, including the depiction of how Aske's brother Kit wounds him and causes him to lose an eye, and the strange mixture of regret and hatred that produces in Kit. Darcy is a nobleman who speaks against the changes Henry VIII is leading the country into based on his loyality and faithfulness to the Church and the Catholic Faith--he once went to the Holy Land for a crusade.

Julian is a great character--one of the best scenes depicts her feelings when she has to get a tooth pulled: fear and anguish before; joy and relief after (but the narrator reminds us that another tooth will probably have to be pulled someday). Her fortunes are for a long time connected to her sister Margaret's, who is sexy, sensual young woman of desire--she marries and cuckolds her husband. Julian is painted with the same brush of infidelity and loose living, spends some time in the convent at Marrick. Eventually, she gets married to a man who really loves her but has a hard time reconciling his love with his needs for control as the master of the house and his concern about her love for Robert Aske.

There is another important character: Malle, a poor woman who has visions; she sees Christ as the Man on a Donkey. Her visions are dangerous: after all, the Nun of Kent was executed for her statements against Henry VIII. Malle prophesies darkness and pain. She takes care of Dawe's poor, sick son Wat, who otherwise has known only abuse and neglect.

Prescott provides vignettes of life at court, in the convent, in the Aske home, including crucial scenes that depict the progress of Henry VIII's tyranny over his family, the nobility, the church, and his country. There are brief scenes of Thomas More's trial, Katherine of Aragon's death, Anne Boleyn's imprisonment, Mary's signing of the statement rejecting her parents' marriage and accepting her own bastard status, etc. When the Pilgrimage of Grace begins, the double-dealing of the Duke of Norfolk, the Archbishop of York, Aske's own family, and most of all of Henry VIII, makes it a confusing effort. There is no great sweep of power and enthusiasm--the effort just plods on. There is a crucial moment when Darcy proposes seeking the aid of the Holy Roman Emperor to fight against Henry, but then the negotiations and the deceptions go on.

There's no Braveheart moment when victory, moral or military, is won, because that's not what happened. The Pilgrimage failed: Margaret Bulmer, Lord Darcy and Robert Aske are sentenced to death and Aske twists in the wind and rain in chains at York Castle; the dissolution of the monasteries continues; the convent at Marrick closed, and the illuminated pages of the library's Bibles and prayer books scattered, to be made into paper boats by Malle at the end, flowing away down the river of time.