Devotion to Saint Thomas of Canterbury

I've grown in my spiritual devotion to the Catholic Martyrs of England and Wales of the Reformation era, and I'm also growing in devotion to Saint Thomas of Canterbury, thanks to this book of prayers asking his intercession and meditating on his life and martyrdom.

Saint Thomas has often been seen as an important figure in the conflicts between Church and State: defending the rights of the Church in England against Henry II's attempt to take away the bishops's authority over priests and clergy. But Father John S. Hogan, in this book from Gracewing, Devotions to St Thomas Becket, reminds us that devotion to the martyred saint began as people went on pilgrimage to pray for his intercession, seeking miraculous healings through his prayers.

Therefore, Father Hogan includes prayers to Saint Thomas of Canterbury for the sick, a Litany for the Sick, a Prayer for Miracles, etc.

Father Hogan also reminds us that Saint Thomas of Canterbury grew in his Christian faith, that we find a process of conversion in his life, not just from his secular life at Court with Henry II, but through his exile and other sufferings. Father Hogan declares, "As he slowly woke to the way of true Christian discipleship, his experiences, his mistakes, his trials and sufferings, progressively turned him completely to Christ". (p. x) So there are prayers for conversion, including a Novena for the Grace of Conversion. 

Because Saint Thomas of Canterbury was a priest and bishop Father Hogan includes prayers for priests, for bishops, and a "Eucharistic Prayer", emphasizing Becket's growth in devotion to the Eucharist and to celebrating Mass with great reverence.

Thomas  Becket was born on the 21st of December (in 1119/20) and died on the 29th of December (in 1170), so there's a novena to celebrate the martyr between those dates. Since Canterbury is still a site for pilgrimage, there's a "Seven Stations" series of prayers with landmarks like St. Dunstan's Church, where Henry II started his penitential pilgrimage to the Cathedral in reparation for the martyr's murder, the Cloister of the Cathedral through which both the saint and his killers walked to enter the north transept, the Crypt where his first tomb was located, and the parish church of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, the Catholic shrine to this great saint.

There's also a Litany to St Thomas Becket and other prayers for courage, in time of persecution, etc. Gracewing has also published Father Hogan's biography of the saint.

Saint Thomas of Canterbury, pray for us.

Book Review: "La Duchesse" by Bronwen McShea

From Pegasus Books with the double subtitle: The Life of Marie de Vigneron--Cardinal Richelieu's Forgotten Heiress Who Shaped the Fate of France:

A rich portrait of a compelling, complex woman who emerged from a sheltered rural childhood into the fraught, often deadly world of the French royal court and Parisian high society—and who would come to rule them both.

Married off at sixteen to a military officer she barely knew, Marie de Vignerot was intended to lead an ordinary aristocratic life, produce heirs, and quietly assist the men in her family rise to prominence. Instead, she became a widow at eighteen and rose to become the indispensable and highly visible right-hand of the most powerful figure in French politics—the ruthless Cardinal Richelieu.

Richelieu was her uncle and, as he lay dying, the Cardinal broke with tradition and entrusted her, above his male heirs, with his vast fortune. She would go on to shape her country’s political, religious, and cultural life as the unconventional and independent Duchesse d’Aiguillon in ways that reverberated across Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

Marie de Vignerot was respected, beloved, and feared by churchmen, statesmen, financiers, writers, artists, and even future canonized saints. Many would owe their careers and eventual historical legacies to her patronage and her enterprising labor and vision. Pope Alexander VII and even the Sun King, Louis XIV, would defer to her. She was one of the most intelligent, accomplished, and occasionally ruthless French leaders of the seventeenth century. Yet, as all too often happens to great women in history, she was all but forgotten by modern times.

La Duchesse is the first fully researched modern biography of Vignerot, putting her onto center stage in the histories of France and the globalizing Catholic Church where she belongs. In these pages, we see Marie navigate scandalous accusations and intrigue to creatively and tenaciously champion the people and causes she cared about. We also see her engage with fascinating personalities such as Queen Marie de Médici and influence French imperial ambitions and the Fronde Civil War. Filled with adventure and daring, art and politics, La Duchesse establishes Vignerot as a figure without whom France’s storied Golden Age cannot be fully understood.

While I'm not quite sure that the Duchesse d'Aiguillon "shaped the Fate of France", she certainly had a great impact on the Catholic Church in France, French Canada (Quebec), and missionary fields around the world. The impact of the French Revolution kind of limits how much her political and social efforts could shape France's fate/future. Slightly hyperbolic, but perhaps indirectly she did by supporting the monarchy against the Fronde and Mazarin so that King Louis XIV ruled absolutely, giving the later French revolutionists something to rebel against!

Nevertheless, McShea's biography of this forgotten and misunderstood (at least in Catholic circles) French peer provides enough evidence of her subject's impact on culture, literature, and religion in her lifetime that it does make the reader wonder why she has been forgotten. 

Marie de Vignerot influenced Catholic piety and charity in Paris and beyond not just by her charitable contributions but even more by her vision and goals in giving the money to support her causes. One example that struck me because I am devoted to Eucharistic Adoration with a weekly hour at my parish, and regularly attend First Friday Benediction and Adoration at our Cathedral, was her influence at her parish church of Saint Sulpice while Jean-Jacques Olier was pastor. She supported him in establishing "a Benediction service that would take place in the church on the first Sunday and first Thursday of every month." (p. 207) There was a procession with the Host in the Monstrance and adoration of the Host on the Altar, this in a time when "Benediction services were rare in France" and Marie regularly attended these services because her "devotion to Christ in the Blessed Sacrament . . . was deep and sincere." She provided the funds for the candles, vestments, and the other liturgical objects required (the Monstrance, the thurifer, incense, and bells, etc). But as McShea explains, Marie also attached certain conditions, including "organ music, the ringing of the church bells, and the singing of numerous Latin hymns and responses" and "a vocal prayer for the repose of the soul of the late Cardinal Richelieu." (p. 208) 

This example is emblematic of the Duchesse's involvement in her charitable causes: she didn't just give the money, she gave direction and encouraged certain goals. McShea emphasizes that as the patroness of Saint Vincent de Paul, she inspired--not always with his immediate agreement--the methods by which improvements in the lives of the poor in rural France and civic Paris would be carried out. She had vision and the will and means to achieve her goals. 

McShea notes one vision Marie could not achieve: she thought she had a vocation to the Carmelite order but her uncle Richelieu dissuaded her, even after her husband died, to pursue it. But she certainly balanced an active live with breaks for contemplation and prayer. For example, in the chapter on Saint Sulpice, McShea recounts a 1:00 a.m. visit Marie made to the Blessed Sacrament after a busy day: She wished to make her prayer where she could be "more returned and recollected" than at home. (p. 210)

The other goal that she did not achieve as she wished was to publish her uncle's works and a history of his era based on his memoirs and other documents. The death of the author of the history she commissioned thwarted that latter effort as "the Jesuit leadership in Paris for some reason confiscated [his manuscript]" instead of giving it to her as he instructed (p. 367). She did negotiate the completion of his tomb in the chapel of the Sorbonne, but she could not maintain the unity of the house of Richelieu because of constant demands for money from her nephew Armand-Jean. His lawsuits and other actions against her estate made her last months, as she suffered from breast cancer, harder. She died on April 17, 1675. 

The book is divided into two parts: the first when Cardinal Richelieu was alive and had taken such an interest in his niece, especially after her husband died (Part One--Princesse Niece), including chapters 1 through 31, and the second after his death, since he chose her rather than her younger brother as his heir and executrix (Part Two--Pair [Peer] de France, including chapters 32 through 58. There is also a charming "Author's Afterword" demonstrating the personal link between the author and her subject (as she comes as close as she can to Marie's grave site), Acknowledgements, Sources, Notes, and an Index. It is a well-researched and narrated book. I would have appreciated either a table of names or a couple of family trees as the names and titles can be a little confusing as the characters emerge, drop away and come back again.

If Marie de Vignerot did not "shape the fate of France", she was certainly alive at an exciting time in French history: the reigns of Kings Louis XIII and XIV, with motherly Regents to both young kings (Marie de Medici and Anne of Austria respectively), the chief ministries of Richelieu and Mazarin, the Thirty Years War, the Fronde revolution, the Jansenist controversy, even the English Civil War, as Henrietta Maria returned to France after King Charles I was imprisoned. Marie even hoped to do more to support English Catholics in exile or at home--and also Catholics in Ireland, ravaged by Oliver Cromwell. She was also interested and engaged in missionary efforts in Tunis, Algiers, Vietnam, and Madagascar, and supported the seminary in Paris training missionaries as part of the Société des Missions Étrangères de Paris.

Why was such an influential figure forgotten? McShea suggests that it is because one eulogy which emphasized her retirement from worldly pursuits was chosen as the template for understanding her life, rather than another, which demonstrated her energy and direction. The preacher at one memorial Mass, at the seminary cited above, on May 13, 1675, Father Jacques-Charles de Brisacier, credited her for "magnanimity, courage, and great negotiating skills" and praised her for ardor, leadership, and judicious governance. Father Brisacier offered a more dynamic appraisal of Marie de Vignerot's achievements. (Here's an article  by McShea discussing that eulogy and describing her "contributions to the colonial-era foundations of the American church while clarifying her role in spreading French Catholicism elsewhere in the world.")

On August 12 of the same year, Father Esprit Fléchier, at the Carmelite convent church on Rue Chapon, portrayed her as the victim of a frustrated religious vocation and much more conventionally as a pious, retiring, and charitable benefactress. (See pages 377 through 380 in chapter 58, "A Forgotten "Femme Forte""). Indeed, when one reads her biography in the old Catholic Encyclopedia, it is Fléchier's version that is cited while Brisacier's is ignored:

After the death of Richelieu, who made her his principal heir, she retired to the Petit-Luxembourg, published her uncle's works and continued her generous benefactions to all kinds of charities. She carried out the Cardinal's last request by having the church and the college of the Sorbonne completed, as well as the Hôtel Richelieu, which has since been converted into the Bibliothèque Nationale. The great Fléchier was charged with pronouncing her funeral oration, which is regarded as one of the masterpieces of eloquence of French pulpit oratory.

Highly recommended. Please note that I purchased my copy from Eighth Day Books. I look forward to reading her first book (Apostles of Empire: The Jesuits and the New Frontier) and to the publication next year of Women of the Church: What Every Catholic Should Know from Augustine Institute and Ignatius Press.

Bill Introduced to Disestablish the Church of England!

You might remember earlier this year that the Oaths that King Charles III took upholding the Church of England and his place as the Defender of the Faith were important issues during his Coronation on May 6: 

Archbishop of Canterbury: Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel?

Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law? Will you maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England?

And will you preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of England, and to the Churches there committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges as by law do or shall appertain to them or any of them?

The King: All this I promise to do. The things which I have here before promised I will perform and keep. So help me God.

Archbishop of Canterbury: Your Majesty, are you willing to make, subscribe and declare to the statutory Accession Declaration Oath?

The King: I am willing. The King: I Charles do solemnly and sincerely in the presence of God profess, testify, and declare that I am a faithful Protestant, and that I will, according to the true intent of the enactments which secure the Protestant succession to the Throne, uphold and maintain the said enactments to the best of my powers according to law.

But before making these promises and taking this Oath, King Charles heard the Archbishop of Canterbury add an important caveat, recognizing the sovereign's obligation to "seek to foster an environment in which people of all faiths and beliefs may live freely."

Just recently, on December 6 (St. Nicholas's Day!), however, a Bill has been proposed in Parliament that would change all that: 

A bill backed by the National Secular Society [NSS] to disestablish the Church of England has been introduced in parliament.

The private member's bill, proposed by Liberal Democrat peer Paul Scriven with assistance from the NSS, was presented in the House of Lords today.

The bill makes provision for the separation of church and state by removing the Church of England's established status, abolishing the automatic right of bishops to seats in the Lords and removing the monarch's title "Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England".

It would also give the Church full independence over its doctrine, liturgy, and clergy, while ecclesiastical law and courts would cease to have any legal jurisdiction. The regulation of notaries would also be transferred from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Lord Chancellor.

If you go to the official website, you can see the progress of the Bill as it moves through the House of Lords and the House of Commons to the final stages and Royal Assent. 

Will King Charles III give his Royal Assent? Can he refuse?

In 2017, PBS Masterpiece presented a film adaptation of Mark Bartlett's King Charles III in which the king considers opposing an Act of Parliament--he does not refuse his Royal Assent but he enters and Prorogues Parliament (out of turn)!

Here's an online conversation about whether or not a King can refuse Royal Assent and what it would mean.

As of this writing, I do not find any reaction or statement from the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, who visited the House of Lords on December 8 for a debate on "Love Matters", focused on support for families.

The real question is, of course, what would passage of such an Act, with Royal Assent, mean for Christianity in England? 

Also: What would it mean for the Catholic Church in England? and What will the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster say about this Bill? Vincent Cardinal Nichols attended the Coronation and the Catholic Bishops Conference issued a statement and official prayer for King Charles III. 

I did not see anything currently on the Westminster website, nor on The Tablet or Catholic Herald websites. 

Something to watch for!

Photo: The late Monsignor William Carr and I walking toward Westminster Abbey; my late husband Mark took the picture. (C) Stephanie A. Mann 2023; All Rights Reserved.

Preview: Saint John Roberts' "Last Supper"

In this shortest of Advents, our last discussion for 2023 of Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors on the Son Rise Morning Show will take place on Monday, December 18, at the usual time of 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern. Appropriately enough as we're all thinking of our Christmas gatherings just a week to the day later (!) we'll look at the feast shared by Saint John Roberts, OSB and Blessed Thomas Somers the night before their executions at Tyburn. You may listen live here or follow up with the podcast later here.

This feast was arranged by a Spanish lady, Luisa de Carvajal, who had come to England because of her great devotion to the Catholic missionary priests. Years ago Glyn Redworth wrote a biography of this noble woman, The She Apostle: The Extraordinary Life and Death of Luisa de Carvajal which I reviewed here. 

So why was she in England and why was she able to hold a dinner party, a "Last Supper" for two Catholic priests in an English prison the night before their executions? From book description:

In 1605 - the year of the Gunpowder Plot - she was secreted into England by the Jesuits, despite the fact that she spoke not a word of English. To everyone's surprise including her own, she steadily assumed a prominent role within London's underground Catholic community, setting up an unofficial nunnery, offering Roman priests a secure place to live, consoling prisoners awaiting execution, importing banned books, and helping persecuted Catholics to flee abroad. Throughout this time she ran the grave risk of imprisonment and execution, yet she miraculously managed to avoid this ultimate fate in spite of being arrested on a number of occasions. 

Father Bowden describes the dinner she arranged on December 9, 1610  in Newgate Prison for Saint John Roberts, OSB, one of the six Welsh martyrs included among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, and Blessed Thomas Somers, who was beatified in 1929 by Pope Pius XI. This memento is titled "The Last Supper" with the verse from Luke 22:11, "The Master saith to thee: Where is the guest chamber, where I may eat the pasch with My disciples?" 

Perhaps because she had the support of the Spanish Ambassador and King James I wanted to maintain peace with Spanish, "she obtained leave to prepare a supper for Frs. Roberts and Somers on the eve of their martyrdom, and for their fellow prisoners."

This was not a small gathering:

"They then sat down to support--twenty prisoners for conscience's sake; twenty confessors of the Faith--Luisa de Carvajal presiding at the head of the table. The meal was a devout and joyful one--heavenly the refreshment ministered to the guests, great the fervor and spiritual delight which our Lord bestowed on His valiant soldiers, giving them that peace which passeth all understanding."

Isn't this the kind of Christmas dinner we all hope for? Festivity, peace, joy, camaraderie, and fellowship? Yes, the food is delicious and fine! And yes, the spirit is peaceful and complete!

But in fact, these guests hardly thought of eating the feast Carvajal had prepared! In the midst of that joyous celebration, Father John Roberts, the Benedictine monk, had some misgivings:

"'Do you not think I may be causing disedification by my great glee? Would it not be better to retire into a corner and give myself up to prayer?'"

No, she replied, 'You cannot be better employed than by letting them all see with what cheerful courage you are about to die for Christ.'

The next day, December 10. 1610, the martyrs suffered at Tyburn. Their executions were unusual, however, because of their reputations among the spectators:

. . . the two Martyrs in the midst of the sixteen criminals were left hanging, and quietly rendered their souls into the hands of the Holy Angels. They were allowed to remain until they were quite dead, a special mercy which it was not usual to extend to Catholics. It was already late, and nearly an hour after mid-day when the executioner cut the rope and took down the body of Father Roberts; it was first disembowelled, and the bowels thrown into a large fire. Then he cut off the head, and divided the trunk into four quarters. The same thing was done to Mr. Somers. But here a remarkable thing happened. It is usual for the hangman when he disembowels those executed for high treason, to take out the heart, and holding it up, to say, “This is the heart of a traitor,” and the people answer, “ Long live the King.” In this case when the hangman said the words, not one person answered, but all remained silent as if struck dumb.

And John Hungerford Pollen, SJ in in his 1891 Acts of the English Martyrs Hitherto Unpublished also reports this jest among Saint John Roberts' last words: "Then he arose, and looking at the fire that was already burning to consume their bowels, said, 'Here’s a hot breakfast ready, despite the cold weather.'" (see pages 143 to 170 for the full account of their trial and execution).

Thus the joyful spirit of that Last Supper sustained him through the end of his life!

While Rowan Williams was the Archbishop of Canterbury, he spoke about Saint John Roberts with great admiration:

John Roberts went from London to Paris and then to Spain, and first to the monastery of Saint Martin in Valladolid – the centre of a severe and serious monastic family, in a context where many new things were going on in the life of prayer. The heritage that mattered here was the heritage of people like Ignatius Loyola, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross; the emphasis of this monastic family, the Congregation of Valladolid, was on the inner life, the life of contemplation and self-knowledge. This was a 'renaissance' of prayer and contemplation, a kind of parallel to the cultural renaissance. In both, the human spirit was able to discover new depths and new possibilities. In Valladolid, John Roberts was encouraged towards these depths. And when he returned to England, he was able to speak and act out of these depths – in his ministry to the sick at the time of the plague in London, his compassion for all, his service to the poor of the city. And at the end, he was able also to face the appalling agony of his death out of those same depths, on the foundation of the silence and love of his monastic experience.

The martyr isn't a person who says 'No' to the world in any simple sense. The martyr sees the richness of the world, the wealth of mind and imagination, the wealth of culture and the beauty of the human spirit. And because he sees the whole as the gift and sign of God, he knows that the beauty of the Giver is infinitely more than the whole world itself. 'More treasures are found in your name than in the whole of India', in the unforgettable words of Williams Pantycelyn in the greatest Welsh hymn of the eighteenth century ('Iesu, Iesu rwyt ti'n ddigon' – 'Jesus, Jesus all-sufficient'). And so the martyr sets out on the journey to a heavenly 'India', a land of marvels, through his death.

Saint John Roberts, pray for us!

Blessed Thomas Somers, pray for us!

Henry VIII's Psalter: Himself as King David

Earlier this year there was an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City on The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England. One of the featured exhibits was the Psalter King Henry VIII commissioned from Jean Mallard in 1540, on loan from the British Library. Both the British Library and the Smithsonian Magazine comment on how Henry VIII designed the Psalter to reflect his piety--including comparisons of himself to King David--and how he annotated certain psalms to identify himself in the psalms as one who had done the Lord's Will and was being rewarded for it (i.e., the birth of his son Edward).

From the British Library's Medieval manuscripts blog:

The Psalter was commissioned by the King himself in 1540 and written and illustrated for him by Jean Mallard, a French scribe and illuminator. It is a lavish production and is still in its original binding, which although quite threadbare, retains traces of deep red velvet. The Psalms are written in an elegant, humanist script and accompanied by exquisitely decorated initials showing birds, insects, fruit, flowers and foliage.

But the Psalter’s true significance lies in its main illustrations, four of which depict Henry, and its annotations written by the King. Taken together, they demonstrate that by the 1540s Henry perceived himself as King David of the Old Testament who, according to tradition, composed the Psalms and whose story was used to justify Henry’s declaration of independence from Rome and to define the Royal Supremacy. . . .

The Smithsonian Magazine article includes some analysis of Henry VIII's annotations in the margins of his Psalter:

Henry appears to have found the self-justification he’d been seeking. Handwritten annotations in the psalter reveal what the king thought of the text and its implications for his own power. On one page, Henry scrawled “nota de peccatore quid ait,” Latin for “note: what he says about the sinner,” next to a passage declaring that sinners’ hereditary lines will be cut off as punishment for their evil deeds. By 1540, after years of waiting and seizing power to enable his multiple marriages, he had at last been rewarded with a son who would continue the Tudor line. Based on his interpretation of the psalm, Henry saw himself as being in God’s good graces—perhaps unthinkable when modern readers consider that he had already executed one of his wives, Anne Boleyn, and would soon execute another, the young Katherine Howard.

In 1540, Henry married again--twice!--to Anne of Cleves and then to Katherine Howard, who followed, as stated above, his second wife to the block.

The article goes on to state:

If these markings tell scholars anything, it’s that Henry wasn’t suffering from a twinging conscience. On the contrary, he viewed unfolding events as vindicating the very choices that later led to his reputation as a callous tyrant. Henry’s notes implicitly justify his self-empowerment; his marriages; and the executions of those who opposed him or fell out of favor, including chief adviser Thomas Cromwell and his old tutor and lord chamberlain, Thomas More. These individuals and many others were, in one way or another, casualties of Henry’s attempt to break from Rome and marry Anne Boleyn.

Following one's conscience is an important theme in Henry VIII's religious and marital matters. He complained of his conscience bothering him after years of marriage to Catherine of Aragon that he had done wrong in marrying his brother's widow. St. Thomas More writes extensively about how he had formed his conscience to answer Henry VIII's questions about the validity of that marriage. His Dialogue on Conscience also explains his position and he explained the traditional Catholic view of conscience to Cromwell and those questioning him on why he would not take the Oath as his monarch required when Cromwell tried to compare More's conscience to the consciences of the heretics which More had investigated as Chancellor (as he described the conversation to his daughter Meg in a letter dated June 3, 1535):

To this Master Secretary said that I had before this when I was Chan­cellor examined heretics and thieves and other malefactors and gave me a great praise above my deserving in that behalf. And he said that I then, as he thought and at the leastwise Bishops did use to examine heretics, whether they believed the Pope to be the head of the Church and used to compel them to make a precise answer thereto. And why should not then the King, since it is a law made here that his Grace is Head of the Church, here compel men to answer precisely to the law here as they did then concerning the Pope.

I answered and said that I protested that I intended not to defend any part or stand in contention; but I said there was a difference between those two cases because at that time, as well here as elsewhere through the corps of Christendom, the Pope's power was recognized for an undoubted thing which seems not like a thing agreed in this realm and the contrary taken for truth in other realms. Whereunto Master Secretary answered that they were as well burned for the denying of that as they be beheaded for deny­ing of this, and therefore as good reason to compel them to make precise answer to the one as to the other.

Whereto I answered that since in this case a man is not by a law of one realm so bound in his conscience, where there is a law of the whole corps of Christendom to the contrary in matter touching belief, as he is by a law of the whole corps though there hap to be made in some place a local law to the contrary, the reasonableness or the unreasonableness in binding a man to precise answer, standeth not in the respect or difference between beheading and burning, but because of the difference in charge of con­science, the difference standeth between beheading and hell.

What the Smithsonian Magazine article highlights is that by 1540 Henry VIII was not suffering from any troubled conscience about what he had done to achieve his desire to sire a legitimate son to succeed him. Henry VIII died in 1547, leaving that son, Edward VI a young boy who would never reach the age of majority, marry, or sire a son to succeed him. 

The commentator in the article, James Clarke, notes that Henry might have thought himself in God's good graces, but was concerned that that youth had passed him by and that he was getting old: he was beginning to face his mortality, if not his morality! 

Image Credit (Public Domain): Henry VIII reading Psalm 1: Beatus Vir (Blessed the man).

Preview: Saint Eustace White Meets Richard Topcliffe

The martyrs of England and Wales suffered throughout the Advent and Christmas seasons, so we'll continue our series of discussions of Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors For Every Day in the Year, with his memories of Saint Eustace White, martyr.

I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show Monday, December 11 at my usual time at 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.

Saint Eustace White, one of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales, was hanged, drawn, and quartered on December 10, 1591. In his entry for the then Venerable Eustace White (declared so in 1886), Father Henry Sebastian Bowden described the priest's conversion, vocation, imprisonment, and torture:

He was born at Louth, Lincolnshire, and his conversion so much offended his father, an earnest Protestant, that he laid his curse upon him ; but God turned the curse to a blessing, and Eustace White became a priest and entered on the English Mission, October 1588. He was apprehended at Blandford, and having confessed himself a priest, a certain minister, one Dr. Houel, a tall man, reputed of great learning, was sent for to dispute with him, but was ignominiously vanquished, as he failed to disprove a certain text which White affirmed to be in the Bible. At the Bridewell, London, he was once hung by Topcliffe in iron manacles for eight hours together; but though the torment caused the sweat from his body to wet the ground beneath, nothing could be extracted from him of the least prejudice to Catholics. Under the extremity of his passion he cried out, “Lord, more pain if Thou pleasest, and more patience.” To his torturer he said, “I am not angry at you for all this, but shall pray to God for your welfare and salvation.” Topcliffe replied in a passion that he wanted not the prayers of heretics, and would have him hung at the next session. Then said the martyr, “I will pray for you at the gallows, for you have great need of prayers.”

Because of the reference to how much Father White sweated as he hung by his wrists, Father Bowden chose the title "The Sweat of the Passion" and the verse from the Gospel of St. Luke 22:44, "And His sweat became as drops of blood running down to the ground." (p. 390 in the Sophia Institute Press edition)

The torture technique of being "hung by iron manacles" was described by Father John Gerard, SJ in his Autobiography of a Hunted Priest:

My arms were then lifted up and an iron bar was passed through the rings of one gauntlet, then through the staple and rings to the second gauntlet. This done, they fastened the bar with a pin to prevent it from slipping, and then, removing the wicker steps one by one from under my feet, they left me hanging by my hands and arms fastened above my head. The tips of my toes, however, still touched the ground, and they had to dig the earth away from under them. They had hung me up from the highest staple in the pillar and could not raise me any higher, without driving in another staple. Hanging like this I began to pray. The gentlemen standing around me asked me whether I was willing to confess now. 'I cannot and I will not,' I answered. But I could hardly utter the words, such a gripping pain came over me. It was worst in my chest and belly, my hands and arms. All the blood in my body seemed to rush up into my arms and hands and I thought that blood was oozing from the ends of my fingers and the pores of my skin. But it was only a sensation caused by my flesh swelling above the irons holding them. The pain was so intense that I thought I could not possibly endure it, and added to it, I had an interior temptation. Yet I did not feel any inclination or wish to give them the information they wanted.   

Saint Eustace White was hanged, drawn, and quartered on December 10, 1591 at Tyburn Tree, the same day that Saints Edmund Gennings, Polydore Plasden (priests), and Swithun Wells (layman), and Blesseds John Mason and Sidney Hodgson (also laymen who had assisted Catholic missionary priests) suffered near Saint Swithun Wells' home on Grays Inn Road. 

Richard Topcliffe, Elizabeth I's chief pursuivant of Catholic priests, and an expert torturer, was present at that site. He didn't show up at Tyburn--was it maybe because he did not want to hear Father White's prayers for him? He did hear Saint Swithun Wells pray that like Saul, Topcliffe would hear the voice of Jesus on his own road to Damascus, stop persecuting Catholics, and become like Saint Paul!

A layman suffered at Tyburn with Father White:

Brian Lacey was a Yorkshire country gentleman. Cousin, companion, and assistant to Blessed Father Montford Scott. Arrested in 1586 for helping and hiding priests. Arrested again in 1591 when his own brother Richard betrayed him, Brian was tortured at Bridewell prison to learn the names of more people who had helped priests. Finally arraigned at the Old Bailey, he was condemned to death for his faith, for aiding priests and encouraging Catholicism. Pope Pius XI beatified him in 1929. Blessed Brian Lacey was also related to Blessed William Lacey, a 1582 martyr in York.

Saint Eustace White, pray for us!

Blessed Brian Lacey, pray for us!

A Cistercian Seal found in Smithfield, Virginia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Preview: Saint Edmund Campion, SJ in Father Bowden's "Mementoes"

There are many reasons to admire, imitate and be inspired by Saint Edmund Campion, SJ: his intelligence, his courage, his care for his flock (he went back to a house to minister to the Catholics there and was thus captured), his ability to defend the teachings of the Church, and of course, his holiness, well attested by his martyrdom. 

Thus it's no surprise that Father Henry Sebastian Bowden mentions Campion 20 (twenty) times in his Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors For Every Day in the Year, not counting the poem Saint Henry Walpole, SJ wrote about his mentor in martyrdom (Campion's blood splashed on Walpole and he left London to study for the priesthood and return to England as a missionary and martyr) included as an appendix ("Why do I use my paper, ynke and penne?") 

And it's no surprise that we'll look at what Father Bowden says about Campion's martyrdom in our next segment on the Son Rise Morning Show on Monday, December 4.

I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time at 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.

I chose the most dramatic of the mementoes Father Bowden offers, the description of the day of Campion's martyrdom, December 1, 1581, with the title "A Sight to God and Man" because of the richness of the details in the account. As we read the description, we can try to imagine what that day was like, as though we are witnessing it:

In the splash and mud of a wet December morning, Campion was led forth from the Tower, still in his old gown of Irish frieze. Undaunted he saluted the vast crowd, saying, “God save you all, gentlemen! God bless you and make you all good Catholics!” 

Irish frieze was a coarse, woven woolen cloth, very durable, with the nap left on one side. This garment would have been stripped from Campion once his execution began. On his way to a horrible death, Campion is both undaunted and loyal to his mission as a Catholic priest: to offer blessings and good will.

After kneeling in prayer he was strapped on the hurdle, Sherwin and Briant being together bound on a second hurdle. They were dragged at the horses’ tails through the gutter and filth, followed by an insulting crowd of ministers and rabble. 

Saint Ralph Sherwin, SJ (31 years old) and Saint Alexander Briant (25 years old) had been imprisoned, tortured, and tried at the same as Campion (41 years old). They and other Catholic priests had been accused of complicity in the Rome and Reims Plot, an invention of the Court. The gutters and streets would have been wet, and dirty not just from mud but from horses' dung and other waste. That was below them; above them were insults and curses.

Still some Catholics were consoled by a word from him, and one gentleman, like Veronica on another Via Dolorosa, most courteously wiped his face all spattered with mire and filth. Passing under the arch of Newgate, whereon still stood an image of Our Lady, Campion raised himself and saluted the Queen of Heaven, whom he hoped so soon to see. 

These two gestures of honor, one to comfort Campion and the other to show devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, are moving intervals as the martyrs are drawn to brutal executions.

At the gallows he began with a sweet firm voice, “Spectaculum facti sumus Deo Angelis et hominibus,”* but the Sheriffs interrupted him, and urged him to confess his treason. He repeatedly maintained his innocence, and having declined to join in prayer with the ministers, asked all Catholics for a Credo for him in his agony, and while again professing his loyalty to the Queen he went to his reward.

Campion begins by citing the verse Father Bowden includes in this memento, from St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians: *“ We are made a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men.”—1 Cor. 5:9. 

In his biography of Saint Edmund Campion, Richard Simpson cited the martyr's last words:

"I am a Catholic man and a priest; in that faith have I lived, and in that faith do I intend to die. If you esteem my religion treason, then am I guilty; as for other treason, I never committed any, God is my judge. But you have now what you desire. I beseech you to have patience, and suffer me to speak a word or two for discharge of my conscience."

He was not allowed to continue and his execution was almost another trial as he was questioned again about his loyalty to the Pope as the head of the Catholic Church and/or to the Queen of England. His final statement was:

"Wherein have I offended her? In this I am innocent. This is my last speech; in this give me credit — I have and do pray for her." Then the Lord Charles Howard asked of him for which queen he prayed, whether for Elizabeth the queen. To whom he answered, "Yea, for Elizabeth, your queen and my queen, unto whom I wish a long quiet reign with all prosperity."

Then he was stripped, hanged until barely conscious, eviscerated, beheaded, and quartered. During this agony, his blood splashed on the bystander, Henry Walpole. Then Sherwin and Briant endured the same agony. 

How long could I -- or you -- have watched it?

He and his companions, and Henry Walpole, were canonized among the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales by Pope St. Paul VI in Rome on October 25, 1970.

Saint Edmund Campion, pray for us!
Saint Ralph Sherwin, pray for us!
Saint Alexander Briant, pray for us!
Saint Henry Walpole, pray for us!