Virtually Restoring St. Augustine's Abbey

The Kent School of Architecture will virtually rebuild St. Augustine of Canterbury's Abbey:

Architectural Visualisation students were treated to an insight into the past when English Heritage visited the school to talk about the nearby St. Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury.  The archaeological site is the subject of the students’ latest project, Virtual Cities, which redirects techniques and skills typically used to visualise prospective architectural proposals, to reanimate the past.

The project will see students rebuild the Abbey to its former glory prior to the suppression by King Henry VIII in the 1530s.  The virtual model is designed to be fully navigable, allowing audiences the chance to experience the abbey complete with interpretations of the interior spaces and decoration.

Howard Griffin, Programme Director of the MA Architectural Visualisation courses said, “This is an exciting collaboration between the School of Architecture and English Heritage.  Our students have the chance to work with archaeological experts in recreating the past.  Much of the learning students are engaged with on this course is aimed at visualising the future.  However, we can use these same processes and skills to recreate the past as well.  Using real-time games technology allows audiences to navigate their way through a space in a way which cannot be achieved with simple computer animation.”

The project presents new challenges to the students, who ordinarily can rely on accurate architect’s drawings as a source of information.  Most of the Abbey and outer buildings were destroyed and little evidence remains of large parts of the site.  Collections Curator at English Heritage, Rowena Willard-Wright explained, “This project will be like building a jigsaw puzzle, but with only 3 pieces remaining.”

The first stage of the St. Augustine Abbey project is due to be completed by spring, with additional work and detailing to be completed later.  

The ruins of St. Augustine's Abbey are a UNESCO World Heritage Site under the care and maintenance of the English Heritage organization. The last abbot was John Essex and he and his monks surrendered the abbey to Henry VIII's commissioners on July 30, 1538, ending almost one thousand years of monasticism on that site (940 years). Henry VIII took over the site to build himself a palace. More on the history of the monastery here.

Image credit: Wikipedia commons.

Louisa May Alcott, RIP

Louisa May Alcott died on March 6, 1888. I read my first copy of Little Women (actually an abridged edition of  Little Women and Good Wives from Whitman Classics) so much when I was a child that the book fell apart. Sections of it fell out and I had to use a rubber band to keep the book together! (The image above is the cover of a recent Penguin edition.)

I also read Little Men, Jo's Boys, Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, Under the Lilacs, Jack and Jill, Hospital Sketches, and An Old Fashioned Girl. Several years ago, I investigated her Gothic novels and other fiction: A Long Fatal Love Chase (guess how that book ends!), Behind a Mask, The Inheritance, and Moods.

In Little Women and a few of the other children's books I noticed how Alcott sometimes used Catholic devotions. If you read Little Women you might remember when Amy has to stay at Aunt March's mansion while Beth is home ill with scarlet fever. Aunt March's French maid Esther tells her a little about the Rosary and urges Amy to set aside a place and take time every day for some meditation and prayer. Amy does pray in her chapel, but certainly does not use the Rosary Esther gives her, "feeling doubtful as to its fitness for Protestant prayers."

Rose in Bloom contains an extended discussion of saints and devotion when Rose and her cousin Charlie debate the merits of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Martin of Tours:

"Some of my saints here were people of one idea, and though they were not very successful from a worldly point of view while alive, they were loved and canonized when dead," said Rose, who had been turning over a pile of photographs on the table and just then found her favorite, St. Francis, among them.

"This is more to my taste. Those worn-out, cadaverous fellows give me the blues, but here's a gentlemanly saint who takes things easy and does good as he goes along without howling over his own sins or making other people miserable by telling them of theirs." And Charlie laid a handsome St. Martin beside the brown-frocked monk.

Rose looked at both and understood why her cousin preferred the soldierly figure with the sword to the ascetic with his crucifix. One was riding bravely through the world in purple and fine linen, with horse and hound and squires at his back; and the other was in a lazar-house, praying over the dead and dying. The contrast was a strong one, and the girl's eyes lingered longest on the knight, though she said thoughtfully, "Yours is certainly the pleasantest and yet I never heard of any good deed he did, except divide his cloak with a beggar, while St. Francis gave himself to charity just when life was most tempting and spent years working for God without reward. He's old and poor, and in a dreadful place, but I won't give him up, and you may have your gay St. Martin if you want him."

"No, thank you, saints are not in my line but I'd like the golden-haired angel in the blue gown if you'll let me have her. She shall be my little Madonna, and I'll pray to her like a good Catholic," answered Charlie, turning to the delicate, deep-eyed figure with the lilies in its hand.

"With all my heart, and any others that you like. Choose some for your mother and give them to her with my love."

So Charlie sat down beside Rose to turn and talk over the pictures for a long and pleasant hour. But when they went away to lunch, if there had been anyone to observe so small but significant a trifle, good St. Francis lay face downward behind the sofa, while gallant St. Martin stood erect upon the chimneypiece.

And later in the same novel, one of Rose's other cousins, Mac, compares Rose to the Blessed Virgin Mary:

"Lead Rosa--I'm going to take this child home, and if Uncle is willing, I'll adopt her, and she shall be happy!" cried Rose, with the sudden glow of feeling that always made her lovely. And gathering poor baby close, she went on her way like a modern Britomart, ready to redress the wrongs of any who had need of her.

As he led the slowly stepping horse along the quiet road, Mac could not help thinking that they looked a little like the Flight into Egypt, but he did not say so, being a reverent youth--only glanced back now and then at the figure above him, for Rose had taken off her hat to keep the light from baby's eyes and sat with the sunshine turning her uncovered hair to gold as she looked down at the little creature resting on the saddle before her with the sweet thoughtfulness one sees in some of Correggio's young Madonnas.

These references to saints and Madonnas coming from a Unitarian Universalist are rather surprising. Certainly when you know more about St. Martin of Tours than Rose (or Alcott), the contrast she and Charlie see between them is confusing. St. Martin of Tours, hermit and then bishop, certainly spent his days after that one gesture in the same efforts as St. Francis of Assisi, whom Alcott mistakenly calls a monk (when he was a friar). Notice too the emphasis on charity and works. Alcott's novels for young girls are filled with calls to charity for the poor, efforts for the abandoned and the orphaned. As this site notes, Alcott's Unitarian background emphasized duty far above the "outward forms and rite of religion":

When Louisa May Alcott was a young woman trying to find work in Boston, she met the Rev. Theodore Parker, a Unitarian minister. He and his wife were very helpful to her. She attended his Sunday Services and his evening discussion groups. Louisa May Alcott's [1888] biographer, Ednah D. Cheney, writes the following about Louisa's religion:

"In her journal at this time she speaks of her religious feelings, which the experiences of grief and despair and reviving hope had deepened. Louisa Alcott's was a truly religious soul; she always lived in the consciousness of a Higher Power sustaining and blessing her, whose presence was revealed to her through Nature, through the inspired words of great thinkers and the deep experiences of her own heart. She never led her life as an isolated possession which she was free to use for her own enjoyment or glory. Her father truly called her 'Duty's faithful child', and her life was consecrated to the duty she recognized as specially hers. But for outward forms and rites of religion she cared little; her home was sacred to her, and she found her best life there. She loved Theodore Parker, and found great strength and help from his preaching, and afterward liked to listen to Dr. Bartol; but she never joined any church."

Since she did not practice the ritual aspect of religion--not joining any church--Alcott unfortunately did not understand Catholic devotion. She depicts a rather romanticized and aesthetic view of Catholicism, at least when reflecting on prayers and devotions. Nevertheless, I enjoyed her books very much when I read and re-read them so many years ago.

The Indisputable Logic of Blessed Christopher Bales

Blessed Christopher Bales, priest and martyr, and companions (laymen who assisted him) Blessed Alexander Blake, and Blessed Nicholas Horner, were all executed on March 4, 1590 at three different sites in London. More about their stories here. They were beatified on December 15 in 1929 by Pope Pius XI.

 

What I want to highlight today is Father Bales' great question to the presiding judge at his trial, which presents an excellent historical argument against the idea that these martyrs were traitors because they had studied for the Catholic priesthood on the Continent and returned to serve the oppressed Catholics of England--even if Elizabeth's Parliament had technically made it so. It was an unjust law. 

Philip Caraman, SJ, includes Blessed Christopher Bales' question to Judge Anderson in his collection of primary sources, The Other Face: Catholic Life Under Elizabeth I:

 

He was asked by the judge according to custom . . . when judgment was about to be pronounced, if he had anything to say for himself. He answered, "This only to I want to know, whether St. Augustine sent hither by St. Gregory was a traitor or not." They answered that he was not . . . He answered them, "Why then do you condemn me to death as a traitor? I am sent hither by the same see: and for the same purpose as he was. Nothing is charged against me that could not also be charged against the saint." But for all that they condemned him. (Greene, Collections); page 230.

Judge Anderson replied that no, St. Augustine of Canterbury was not a traitor in the 5th and 6th centuries but that the law had changed in the 16th century. So the universal Catholic Church had indeed remained the same--just as Blessed John Henry Newman found during the Long Vacation of 1839, as he was studying the history of the Monophysite heresy. As he searched ancient Church history to establish the apostolic foundation of the Anglican Via Media, he found something disturbing:

My stronghold was Antiquity; now here, in the middle of the fifth century, I found, as it seemed to me, Christendom of the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries reflected. I saw my face in that mirror, and I was a Monophysite. The Church of the Via Media was in the position of the Oriental communion, Rome was where she now is; and the Protestants were the Eutychians. (from the Apologia pro Vita Sua, chapter 3)

So Rome (the Catholic Church) "was where she now is" in the fifth and sixth centuries--both in Kent and in Egypt (where the Monophysites dissented from the Council of Chalcedon)--and in the sixteenth century, when Blessed Christopher Bales continued St. Augustine of Canterbury's work as a missionary in England, sent by Pope Urban VII. If Judge Anderson had looked closely enough, he would have seen himself in that same mirror.

Confessing and Feasting in Shrovetide

As I mentioned yesterday, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show to talk with Matt Swaim about Shrovetide and its aspects of confessing and feasting: the spiritual and practical preparations for Lent. You may listen live here on the EWTN Radio network.

Here is a good source for a description of this season:

Shrove Tuesday is the last day of what traditionally was called "Shrovetide," the week preceding the beginning of Lent. The word itself, Shrovetide, is the English equivalent for "Carnival," which is derived from the Latin words carnem levare, meaning "to take away the flesh." (Note that in Germany, this period is called "Fasching," and in parts of the United States, particularly Louisiana, "Mardi Gras.") While this was seen as the last chance for merriment, and, unfortunately in some places, has resulted in excessive pleasure, Shrovetide was the time to cast off things of the flesh and to prepare spiritually for Lent.     

Actually, the English term provides the best meaning for this period. "To shrive" meant to hear confessions. In the Anglo-Saxon "Ecclesiastical Institutes," recorded by Theodulphus and translated by Abbot Aelfric about AD 1000, Shrovetide was described--w as follows: "In the week immediately before Lent everyone shall go to his confessor and confess his deeds and the confessor shall so shrive him as he then may hear by his deeds what he is to do in the way of penance." To highlight the point and motivate the people, special plays or masques were performed which portrayed the passion of our Lord or final judgment. Clearly, this Shrovetide preparation for Lent included the confessing of sin and the reception of absolution; as such, Lent then would become a time for penance and renewal of faith.     

While this week of Shrovetide condoned the partaking of pleasures from which a person would abstain during Lent, Shrove Tuesday had a special significance in England. Pancakes were prepared and enjoyed, because in so doing a family depleted their eggs, milk, butter, and fat which were part of the Lenten fast. At this time, some areas of the Church abstained from all forms of meat and animal products, while others made exceptions for food like fish. For example, Pope St. Gregory (d. 604), writing to St. Augustine of Canterbury, issued the following rule: "We abstain from flesh, meat, and from all things that come from flesh, as milk, cheese, and eggs." These were the fasting rules governing the Church in England; hence, the eating of pancakes on Shrove Tuesday.

The Latin term for this pre-Lenten period is Septuagesima (roughly seventy days before Easter). The short liturgical season of Septuagesima is still observed on the Liturgical Calendar for the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite (and is also observed in the Anglican Use for the Personal Ordinariates). For the past three Sundays, our priests at St. Anthony of Padua's Extraordinary Form community have worth purple vestments; we have not sung either the Gloria or the Alleluia. It's a time to prepare for Lent as Lent helps us prepare for Holy Week and Easter.

As Pieter Bruegel the Elder depicted in The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (above), we can get carried away with the possible excesses of Carnival/Fasching/Shrovetide/Mardi Gras--we don't want to incur sins of gluttony just before the season of penitence and repentance!! Shrovetide seems to achieve the right balance: spiritually preparing for Lent with confession of sins and penance while practically getting ready for fasting and abstinence by using up what you won't be using any more from Ash Wednesday to Easter!

As they say before the great Pancake Races in Olney, England and Liberal, Kansas: On your mark, get set, GO!

More and More More: Coincidentally?

So on Saturday, March 1, my husband and I had to watch Wichita State University's last home game of the 2013-2014 season on ESPN. In case you don't know it, our alma mater just concluded a perfect season, 31 wins and 0 losses. They are on their way to St. Louis for the Missouri Valley Conference tournament and need to beat three teams to win that championship too--they have already won the Missouri Valley regular season. They've already beaten every team in the conference twice, home and away, so we are confident they can do it again--and then off to the NCAA March Madness.

After watching the game, I needed to run an errand to Eighth Day Books because my cake stand was still there. I'd left the cake remaining from the February 21 GKC meeting for weekend staff and shoppers to enjoy, hadn't had time to pick it up once the cake was eaten, and wanted to bake another cake. Business was slow at Eighth Day Books; perhaps other shoppers had been watching the game. To support my local bookseller, I bought this Vintage Spiritual Classics edition of works by St. Thomas More. I plan to read The Sadness of Christ during Lent.

Thomas More is perhaps most familiar to us from his courageous struggle with Henry VIII, unforgettably portrayed in Robert Bolt’s classic, A Man for All Seasons. But that final struggle, which ended in his execution for treason, was only the crowning act in a life that he had devoted to God long before.

In the first selection in decades made for the general reader from his collected works, this volume traces More’s journey of moral conviction in his own words and writings. Drawing on a variety of More’s late writings–the extraordinary “Tower Works,” written in prison, his poignant last letters to his daughter Margaret, and his poems, private prayers and devotional works–this collection will provide even readers lacking a background in Renaissance humanism or history with a rich introduction to a startlingly modern man of spiritual principle. Also included is the famous “Life of Sir Thomas More,” written by his son-in-law, William Roper.

Home again and the cake in the oven, I turn on TCM, and there's A Man for All Seasons! And then, looking back at the book I just bought, I read the Preface by Father Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. in which he rightly points out that Robert Bolt misrepresented St. Thomas More's view of conscience. Timing!

My late father had a saying, "If dog, rabbit", usually to describe why something didn't happen. In this case, something so wonderfully coincidental or even serendipitous wouldn't have come together if I hadn't wanted to bake a cake. "If cake, More"?

Shrovetide on Monday's Son Rise Morning Show

This is just a preview of a coming event: tomorrow I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at 7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central to discuss Shrovetide with Matt Swaim. We'll talk about the spiritual and practical aspects of Shrovetide, the meaning of the word, pancakes, and the International Pancake Day Race competition between Olney in England and Liberal, Kansas!

You can listen live here.

Faith of Our Fathers: In Search of The Catholic Martyrs

When this DVD set was announced, I wrote the producer, Christian Holden, and asked for a review copy, pending its possible release in the U.S.A. I received my review copy in the mail last week and enjoyed watching it very much this past weekend. Ignatius Press will release the DVD on March 12, slightly edited (and I'm not sure what will be excerpted). The DVD set I received had two discs and although marked All Regions would not play on our BlueRay DVD player but worked fine on my laptop. The two priests in the documentary, Father Marcus Holden and Father Nicholas Schofield start and end their pilgrimage in search of the English Martyrs in London.

In London highlights include Westminster Cathedral with their visit to the shrine of St. John Southworth and pointing out the plaque displaying the continuity of the Catholic Church in England despite the English Reformation. The priests visit then Archbishop of Westminster (recently named a Cardinal), Vincent Nichols and he discusses his admiration for St. John Fisher.

Leaving London, Fathers Holden and Schofield visit Stonor Park to focus on the network of recusant Catholics, priest holes, and St. Edmund Campion. They interview Thomas Stonor, Lord Camoys. From Oxfordshire, they travel to West Grinstead in Sussex to discuss Blessed Thomas Bell, speaking with a former Anglican about how learning the truth about the English Reformation influenced his conversion.

Their travels continue with visits to the Ladyewell Shrine, with the Bishop of Salford, Terrence Brain, and St. Mary's in Chorley. Reluctantly leaving Lancashire (they are both from that area), they visit Yorkshire: Ampleforth Abbey, the ruins of Rievaulx, and the shrine of St. Margaret Clitherow in the Shambles.

Heading back to London, they visit the Tyburn Convent to hear more about the martyrs who suffered at Tyburn Tree, where one of the Benedictine nuns recounts the last words of some of the martyrs. During their journey, Fathers Holden and Schofield do not neglect Catholic culture in England: they highlight William Byrd's music; Hilaire Belloc; the loss of the monasteries and its affect on the people; the loss of Marian shrines and the bonfire of statues and images at Chelsea in 1538, etc.

In addition to the documentary, St. Anthony's Communication includes information about links to the various pilgrimage sites and about the music used in the documentary. I highly recommend this DVD from St. Anthony's Communications in England and from Ignatius Press in the U.S.A. I still hope that EWTN will broadcast the documentary (perhaps on May 4?)

Prime Time for Martyrs

George Weigel writes about the untimely suppression of the Office of Prime from the Liturgy of the Hours for First Things--untimely because we really need one of great features of that Office, the Roman Martyrology:

The Catholic Church began compiling “martyrologies”—lists of saints, typically martyrs—during the first centuries after Constantine. In the pre-Vatican II breviary, a reading from the Roman Martyrology, or what we might call the Catholic Book of Witnesses, was an integral part of the Office of Prime, the “hour” recited after sunrise. The day’s date was given, followed by a reading of the names of the saints commemorated that day, with information about each saint’s origin and place of death—and, if the saint were a martyr, the name of the persecutor, a description of tortures endured, and the method of execution. It was a bracing way to begin the working day and a reminder of Tertullian’s maxim that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.

It is somewhat ironic that the loss of Prime from the Liturgy of the Hours—and thus the loss of a daily liturgical reading from the Roman Martyrology—coincided with the greatest century of persecution in the history of the Church. It’s a point well-established but little appreciated within American Catholicism: We have been living, and we’re living now, in the greatest era of persecution in Christian history. More Christians died for the faith in the twentieth century than in the previous nineteen centuries of Christian history combined. And while the character of the persecutors has changed, from the lethal heyday of the twentieth-century totalitarianisms to the first decades of the twenty-first century, the assault on the Christian faithful today is ongoing, extensive, and heart-rending.

St. John Cantius Parish describes the Office of Prime, which was suppressed in Sacrosanctum Concilium in 1963, on their website, quoting Pius Parsch:

Prime is the Church’s second morning prayer, quite different in tone from Lauds. Lauds is the ideal morning prayer, a “resurrection song” of all creation and of the Church. Prime is the morning prayer of a sinful human, a subjective prayer. The basic theme of Prime is dedication of and preparation for the day’s labours and conflicts. This theme runs through the whole hour.

There is no special reference to any chapter in the story of salvation. Thus, the theme of the canonical hour, preparing for the day, assumes the centre of attention, and indeed to such an extent that even on feast days, themes proper to the feast are generally suppressed at Prime. The hymn at Prime enlists all our efforts and abilities in the service of the Lord and arms us against imminent dangers—perfectly in harmony with Prime’s basic theme.

This hour also contains a rather lengthy invariable set of prayers that form the real essence of the morning prayer. After the psalmody (singing of the psalms) comes a conclusion which Prime has in common with the other little hours (Terce, Sext and None): chapter, responsory, versicle, prayer. The chapter “Unto the King eternal…” is an oath of allegiance to him who is sovereign in God’s kingdom. The responsory is a fervent plea for a realization of human weakness. The blind man of Jericho is sitting along the road as Jesus passes by, shouting at the top of his lungs. I am that blind beggar and the Lord is passing by this very day.

The beautiful prayer which follows never changes. It contains all the elements of a good morning prayer: thanks, petition, good intention, preparation for the coming day, and particularly the touching plea to be spared the guilt of sin throughout the day. With this prayer the first part of Prime closes, the so-called “office of the choir”.

The second part of Prime is the "office of the chapter" and it's then that the martyrology is read, reminding the community of the models of sanctity in the Communion of Saints.

For example, here is the Martyrology for today, March 1:

At Rome, two hundred and sixty holy martyrs, condemned for the name of Christ. Claudius ordered them to dig sand beyond the Salarian gate, and then to be shot dead with arrows by soldiers in the amphitheatre.

Also, the birthday of the holy martyrs Leo, Donatus, Abundantius, Nicephorus, and nine others.

At Marseilles, the holy martyrs Hermes and Adrian.

At Heliopolis, in the persecution of Trajan, St. Eudoxia, martyr, who, being baptized by bishop Theodotus and fortified for the combat, was put to the sword by the command of the governor Vincent, and thus received the crown of martyrdom.

The same day, St. Antonina, martyr. For deriding the gods of the Gentiles, in the persecution of Diocletian, she was, after various torments, shut up in a cask and drowned in a marsh near the city of Cea.

At Kaiserswerth, the bishop St. Swidbert, who, in the time of Pope Sergius, preached the Gospel to the inhabitants of Friesland, Holland, and to other Germanic peoples.

At Angers, St. Albinus, bishop and confessor, a man of most eminent virtue and piety.

At Le Mans, St. Siviard, abbot.

At Perugia, the translation of St. Herculanus, bishop and martyr, who was beheaded by order of Totila, king of the Goths. Forty days after his decapitation his body, as Pope St. Gregory relates, was found as sound and as firmly joined to the head as if it had never been touched by the sword.

And elsewhere in divers places, many other holy martyrs, confessors, and holy virgins.

Omnes sancti Mártyres, oráte pro nobis. ("All ye Holy Martyrs, pray for us", from the Litaniae Sanctorum, the Litany of the Saints)

Response: Thanks be to God.

Blessed John Henry Newman wrote this translation of a hymn for Prime (Jam lucis orto sidere) while he was praying and fasting at the College at Littlemore in 1842:

NOW that the day-star glimmers bright,
We suppliantly pray
That He, the uncreated Light,
May guide us on our way.

No sinful word, nor deed of wrong,
Nor thoughts that idly rove;
But simple truth be on our tongue,
And in our hearts be love.

And, while the hours in order flow,
O Christ, securely fence
Our gates, beleaguer'd by the foe,—
The gate of every sense.

And grant that to Thine honour, Lord,
Our daily toil may tend;
That we begin it at Thy word,
And in Thy blessing end.

And, lest the flesh in its excess
Should lord it o'er the soul,
Let taming abstinence repress
The rebel, and control.

To God the Father glory be,
And to His Only Son,
And to the Spirit, One and Three,
While endless ages run.

If you have a Kindle and want to try out the Roman Breviary and the Office Prime, you may find it here.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols at Westminster Cathedral

The continuity with the past that Cardinal Nichols is expressing with objects from three Reformation and post-Reformation English Cardinals is impressive. When he celebrates his Mass of Thanksgiving at Westminster Cathedral today he will remember the great St. John Fisher, Cardinal Reginald Pole, and Cardinal William Allen:

Cardinal Vincent will process through the West Doors from Cathedral Piazza along with individual possessions of three English Cardinals from the Reformation. These artefacts symbolize the Catholic Church’s connection to the Reformation Cardinals: The signet ring of Cardinal St John Fisher (c.1469-1535), the pectoral cross of Cardinal Reginald Pole (1500-1558) and the crozier of Cardinal William Allen (1532-1594). Cardinal Vincent has a particular devotion to John Fisher and following further studies, has written a book about the saint who inspires him.

The book Cardinal Vincent wrote about St. John Fisher seems to be out of print: St. John Fisher: Bishop and Theologian in Reformation and Controversy, published by Alive Publishing. EWTN has the introduction in their online library:

As a man of his time, who carried many of the strengths and weaknesses of his age, John Fisher might appear distant from us today. Yet that need not be so. There are many themes of his thought and writing which carry strong echoes for us in this age.

Throughout his life, John Fisher had a deep concern for the well-being and ministry of the clergy. He realised that the health of the Church depended largely on the health of the parish and, in turn, this depended on the work and presence of the clergy. Many of his initiatives, especially during his years of academic life, were aimed at the support and improvement of the priests of his day. . . .

Fisher's main effort in support of the clergy was in the area of education. He wanted a clergy that was better educated, thereby better able to inform and form itself for its important ministry. And in that ministry the task of teaching the faith was uppermost in his mind. He wanted his priests to be able and ready to study. He wanted them to bring the fruits of that study into their preaching. He wanted a laity that understood their faith and not be led astray by erroneous opinions and error. Thus was behind his initiatives at Cambridge. . . .

What would be Fisher's view of similar matters today? He would be dismayed at the public failings of even one priest. He would be adamant about the need for personal renewal and discipline of life. He would look to us bishops and priests in particular to give a clear and helpful account of the truths of faith in a manner which spoke to people of today. I think he would be delighted at the richness of resource available to us, embracing with enthusiasm some of the potential of contemporary means of communication while always on guard for the way in which these same means can be used to circulate misleading or corrosive views. In short, he would recognise a similar pattern of strengths and weaknesses and would offer to us today the same example of steadfast study, disciplined self-application, courage of expression and faithful observance of duty, not least the duty of personal prayer and devotion.

As a reformer, then. Fisher's stance was clear. Reform was not a matter of radical change of structure or teaching of the Church, but rather an issue of personal lives being reformed to the age-old wisdom of the Church in each contemporary setting. I cannot believe that his stance would be any different today.

Here is a review of then Archbishop Nichols' book about St. John Fisher. I heard then Archbishop Vincent Nichols speak of his admiration of St. John Fisher on the great documentary--which is forthcoming from Ignatius Press--Faith of Our Fathers: In Search of the English Martyrs. I received a review copy from Saint Anthony Communications, and thoroughly enjoyed it! More about it this Sunday!

St. Anne Line and Three Priests at Tyburn

There is a rich story here of martyrdom, the relationships between Recusant Catholic laity and priests, and of love and sacrifice. Although only two priests were martyred with St. Anne Line on February 27, 1601, a third priest connected with her story suffered there a year and a couple of months later. That's why I mention three priests in the headline--and then just think of how many more priests St. Anne Line had assisted and protected!

Anne Heigham Line was a convert to Catholicism; she and her brother William Heigham were disinherited and disowned by their Calvinist father. In 1586 she married Roger Line, another disinherited convert. Not long after Anne and Roger married, he and her brother William were arrested for attending Mass and were exiled from England. Roger lived in Flanders and died in 1594.

Father John Gerard SJ, author of the famous book Autobiography of an Elizabethan Priest, asked Anne to manage two different safe houses for Jesuits, even though she was ill, but because she was destitute, surviving on teaching and sewing. She was arrested on the Feast of the Presentation, February 2, 1601, when Father Francis Page was celebrating Mass; he escaped with her help. She was tried on February 26, carried to court in a chair, where she admitted joyfully that she had helped Father Page escape and only regretted that she had not been able to help even more priests escape!

She was hung at Tyburn in London on February 27 and repeated her statement from court before her execution: "I am sentenced to die for harboring a Catholic priest, and so far I am from repenting for having so done, that I wish, with all my soul, that where I have entertained one, I could have entertained a thousand." Two priests, Father Roger Filcock and Father Mark Barkworth, paid tribute to her before their own executions, drawn, hung, and quartered. Father Filcock kissed her dead hand and the hem of her dress as she still hung from the gibbet and proclaimed, “You have gotten the start of us, sister, but we will follow you as quickly as we may.”

Blessed Mark Barkworth OSB was born about 1572 at Searby in Lincolnshire. He studied for a time at Oxford, though no record remains of his stay there. He was received into the Catholic Church at Douai in 1593, by Father George, a Flemish Jesuit and entered the College there with a view to the priesthood. He matriculated at Douai University on 5 October 1594.

On account of an outbreak of the plague, in 1596 Barkworth was sent to Rome and thence to Valladolid in Spain, where he entered the English College on 28 December 1596. On his way to Spain he is said to have had a vision of St Benedict, who told him he would die a martyr, in the Benedictine habit. While at Valladolid he make firmer contact with to the Benedictine Order. The "Catholic Encyclopedia" notes that there are accounts that his interest in the Benedictines resulted in suffering at the hands of the College superiors, but the Encyclopedia expresses scepticism, suggesting anti-Jesuit bias.

Barkworth was ordained priest at the English College some time before July 1599, when he set out for the English Mission together with Father Thomas Garnet. On his way he stayed at the Benedictine Monastery of Hyrache in Navarre, where his wish to join the order was granted by his being made an Oblate with the privilege of making profession at the hour of death.

After having escaped from the hands of the Huguenots of La Rochelle, he was arrested on reaching England and thrown into Newgate, where he was imprisoned for six months, and was then transferred to Bridewell. There he wrote an appeal to Robert Cecil, signed "George Barkworth". At his examinations he was reported to behave with fearlessness and frank gaiety. Having been condemned with a formal jury verdict, he was thrown into "Limbo", the horrible underground dungeon at Newgate, where he is said to have remained "very cheerful" till his death.

Barkworth was executed at Tyburn with Jesuit Roger Filcock and Anne Line, on 27 February 1601. He sang, on the way to Tyburn, the Paschal Anthem: "Hæc dies quam, fecit Dominus exultemus et lætemur in ea", and Father Filcock joined him in the chant:

Hæc dies quam fecit Dominus; [This is the day which the Lord has made:]
exsultemus, et lætemur in ea. [let us be glad and rejoice in it.]

At Tyburn he told the people: "I am come here to die, being a Catholic, a priest, and a religious man, belonging to the Order of St Benedict; it was by this same order that England was converted."

He was said to be "a man of stature tall and well proportioned showing strength, the hair of his head brown, his beard yellow, somewhat heavy eyed". He was of a cheerful disposition. He suffered in the Benedictine habit, under which he wore a hair-shirt. It was noticed that his knees were, like St. James', hardened by constant kneeling, and an apprentice in the crowd picking up his legs, after the quartering, called out: "Which of you Gospellers can show such a knee?" Contrary to usual practice, the quarters of the priests were not exposed but buried near the scaffold. They were later retrieved by Catholics.

Blessed Roger Filcock (1570-1601) was arrested in England while he was fulfilling a probationary period prior to entering the Jesuits. He had studied at the English College in Rheims, France and then in Valladolid, Spain, but when he asked to join the Society he was encouraged to apply again after ministering for awhile in England.

His journey into England was difficult enough. The ship he was traveling on from Bilbao, Spain to Calais, France, was becalmed just outside the port and fell pray to a Dutch ship blockading the harbor. Filcock was captured, but managed to escape and land surreptitiously on the shore in Kent in 1598. Soon after he began his ministry, he contacted Father Henry Garnet, the Jesuit superior, asking to become a Jesuit. He was accepted into the Society in 1600, but then was betrayed by someone he had studied with in Spain. He was arrested and committed to Newgate Prison in London. His trial did not last long, despite the fact that there was no evidence against him and that the names in the indictment were not names he had used. Together with Father Mark Barkworth, a Benedictine, he was tied to a hurdle and dragged through the streets to Tyburn. Barkworth was first to be hung, disembowelled and quartered. Filcock had to watch his companion suffer, knowing that he would immediately follow.

St. Anne Line was among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970. She, St. Margaret Clitherow and St. Margaret Ward share a separate Feast on August 30 (the date of St. Margaret Ward's martyrdom in 1588) in the dioceses of England. Blessed Mark Barkworth was beatified by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929. Pope John Paul II beatified Blessed Roger Filcock on the 22nd of November 1987.

Father Francis Page, whom St. Anne Line had protected at the Mass of the Presentation of Our Lord was later arrested and executed for his priesthood, suffering on April 20, 1602. He was beatified by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929.