Preview: Saint Edmund Arrowsmith, SJ

After two segments featuring martyrs during the reign of King James I of England, we're already moving on in our survey of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales on the Son Rise Morning Show to the reign of Charles I, who succeeded his father in 1625. Matt Swaim and I will discuss the life and death of St. Edmund Arrowsmith, SJ, a martyr from Lancashire on Monday, October 5.

Arrowsmith suffered hanging, drawing, and quartering on August 28, 1628 in Lancaster. His feast is celebrated in the Diocese of Lancaster and his mission in southern Lancashire is well documented, with sites of his last Mass, his capture, imprisonment, etc. A family has maintained the house in which he said that last Mass for two generations. He is certainly a saint whose memory has remained alive through the centuries.

Baptized Bryan Edmund Arrowsmith, he was born during the reign of Elizabeth I in 1585. His parents and their families were faithful Catholic recusants. His mother Margery (nee Gerard) was related to Father John Gerard, SJ and Blessed Miles Gerard, who was executed during Elizabeth's reign in 1590 and beatified in 1929. His parents, Robert and Margery, were arrested for recusancy when he was child. Bryan used his middle name Edmund because he had an uncle who trained men for the priesthood at Douai.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

He entered Douai College in 1605, but ill-health compelled him to interrupt his studies; he was, however, ordained priest in 1612. Lancashire was the scene of his missionary labours and he was eminent for "fervour, zeal and ready wit." Apprehended, probably in 1622, he was brought before Bridgeman, Protestant Bishop of Chester, and had a lively discussion with him and his ministers. Regaining his liberty he entered the Society of Jesus in 1623, and made his noviceship on the Mission, retiring to Essex for a spiritual retreat. He was eventually betrayed by false brethren, tried at Lancaster in 1628, and was found guilty of high treason for being a Jesuit priest and a seducer in religion. His fellow-prisoner, Father John Southworth, afterwards a martyr, absolved him as he went forth to undergo the usual butchery.

The old Dictionary of National Biography offers these details about his execution:

He was drawn to the place of execution on a hurdle, and after having been hanged, his body was cut down, dismembered, embowelled, and quartered. His head was also cut off, and with the quarters boiled in the cauldron; the blood, mixed with sand and earth, was scraped up and cast into the fire. Lastly, his head, as the sentence directed, was set up upon a pole amongst the pinnacles of Lancaster castle, and the quarters were hung on four several quarters of the building.

In spite of all those efforts to prevent any gathering of relics from his execution (mixing his blood with sand and earth, etc.), someone managed to cut off one of his hands which has been kept as a relic called "The Holy Hand" and is venerated at the Church of St. Oswald and St. Edmund Arrowsmith.

In 1630 an anonymous pamphlet describing Arrowsmith's arrest, trial, and execution, along with that of Blessed Richard Hurst, a lay recusant martyr, was published: A True and Exact Relation of the Death of Two Catholicks, who suffered for their religion at the Summer Assizes, held at Lancaster in 1628 and it is the source of much of the information we know of this saint.

Dom Bede Camm in his Forgotten Shrines told the story of Saint Edmund Arrowsmith with many photos. The Catholic Truth Society has published a booklet on his life, drawing upon these resources.

The Catholic Church of St. Oswald and St. Edmund Arrowsmith honored him on Sunday, August 30 this year, celebrating the Baptisms, Confirmations, and First Holy Communions that should have occurred on the Easter Vigil, postponed because of COVID-19. 

Saint Edmund Arrowsmith, pray for us!

Eamon Duffy on Reginald Pole

Eamon Duffy, who included a chapter on Reginald Cardinal Pole, the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury in his 2017 Reformation Divided:Catholics, Protestants and the Conversion of England, presented a lecture for the Ordinariate's pilgrimage to Canterbury last Saturday, July 13. There's a video/audio recording of his talk uploaded here.

One of the interesting aspects of his talk is that he calls for a new biography of Reginald Pole in spite of the fact that the late Thomas F. Mayer of Augustana College wrote a biography, Reginald Pole: Prince and Prophet, published by Cambridge University Press in 2000 and now available in paperback:

This is the first biography in ninety years of Reginald Pole (1500-1558), one of the most important international figures of the sixteenth century. Pole's career is followed as protege; and then harshest critic of Henry VIII, as cardinal and papal diplomat, legate of Viterbo, a nearly successful candidate for pope, and finally as legate to England, archbishop of Canterbury, architect of the English Counter-Reformation, and victim of both Pope Paul IV and of himself.

• A comprehensive, illustrated biography of Cardinal (Reginald) Pole, one of the most influential and charismatic figures of the sixteenth century
• Covers Pole's career from his years as Henry VIII's protégé to his years in Italy, and his return to England during the reign of Mary I as archbishop of Canterbury
• Delves deeply into archival material, including the records of the Inquisition, and includes startling new evidence about Pole's sexual orientation [ugh]

So why does Duffy want a new biography--or perhaps one that's more accessible (price!)--than this recent effort?

Duffy's main issue is that Mayer has no sympathy for his subject: he did not like Reginald Cardinal Pole and Duffy says it shows: in fact, Duffy states, Mayer "loathed Pole"! Duffy also cites Mayer's entry for Pole in the new Dictionary of National Biography, noting the same problem.

Duffy believes that Reginald Pole was "a holy man; a troubled man" and that Mayer judges him too harshly. Mayer thought he was a hypocrite and a sham! Duffy opines that Mayer's biography of Pole is "dense" and "elusive" as this review seems to agree:

Pole's life was lived in a number of contexts; he was a cousin of Henry VIII, a major figure in the European reform, and Mary's advisor and archbishop of Canterbury. In addition to his many roles, however, Mayer argues that Pole's biography is complicated by the nature of the sources about and by him. Pole was a prolific writer, but refused the appellation, arguing that he never wrote to publish. Partly for this reason, the authorship of works attributed to him, and his circle, is confused. Further, Pole and his contemporaries wrote and rewrote his life story, both during his life and after his death. As a result of all of this textual revision, Mayer argues that "Pole always existed in two phases, the life as lived and the life as written" (p. 3). Rather than trying to evade this difficulty, Mayer has chosen to build his biography around it, giving equal focus to the texts and the man, and hoping that the juxtaposition will help to explain both. This ambitious aim has spawned more than simply the biography, which stands as the keystone to an entire Polian edifice.[2] . . .

This is not an easy book. For those who are not already familiar with the broad outlines of Pole's life, it may be difficult to follow.[3] This biography is concerned with drawing the links that lie below the surface of such a narrative, setting Pole's life in the nest of his relationships with people like Contarini, Morone, Priuli, Bembo, Carafa and Vittoria Colonna. An astonishing amount of work has gone into tracing those networks, and the density of the narrative can be dizzying at times. However, it provides a remarkable richness of context, and allows Mayer to draw a character of formidable complexity. He paints a picture of Pole as an influential thinker, a conscientious and tolerant reformer, a warm and sustaining friend and a prolific writer who was, admittedly, a bad diplomat and politician. Mayer concludes that "Pole had greatness thrust upon him and it missed" (p. 439); what strikes the reader is how effectively Pole avoided greatness. He was placed in numerous positions of influence, importance and opportunity, and regularly fled them, only to be offered another chance. Mayer argues that Pole "succeeded best in private away from the public stage" (p. 442), but given his birth, his education, and the times, it seems that Pole never had the option of privacy.

Although it's not a complete biography by any means, I think Philip Hughes' analysis of Reginald Cardinal Pole's role in the Catholic Counter-Reformation and the revival of Catholicism in England in his book Rome and the Counter-Reformation in England is masterful. Hughes notes Pole's strengths and weaknesses, as I commented in my review a couple of years ago:

Hughes covered three periods of the efforts to revive, save, and restore Catholicism in England after the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI:

looking first at the Marian efforts to re-establish the Catholic Church with the papacy and hierarchy in England (during the reign of Mary I), then the long recusant period of missionaries, martyrs, and hopes of political conquest (during the reign of Elizabeth I), and finally the divisive disasters of the effort to bring on-site leadership to the clergy and the laity with the Archpriest controversy and the Bishops of Chalcedon failures (during the reigns of James I and Charles I).

Rome and the Counter-Reformation in England is divided into three parts, one for the leading figure of the eras described above: 1) Reginald Cardinal Pole; 2) William Cardinal Allen; 3) Richard Smith, Bishop of Chalcedon. For each man Hughes provides an insightful character sketch and analysis, noting his strengths and weaknesses. Those strengths and weaknesses contribute, of course, to each man's successes and failures.

Of Reginald Pole, Hughes demonstrates that for all his knowledge and love of Jesus and His Church, he lacked "irascible passion"; he was too ready to be a victim--and that he had "a temperament that instinctively turned from the hard, unpleasant realities of a problem to the ideal way in which it ought to be solved." (p. 43) Although Pole was a man of action and ready to promote reform and renewal, Hughes claims that he lacked audacity: he was not bold and he could not be stirred to righteous anger. Therefore, he wasn't able to take crucial action in a crisis. Nevertheless, Hughes does not blame the failure of the Marian revival and re-establishment of the Catholic Church in England on Pole's character; he acknowledges that time was the main factor. Mary and Pole died too soon to effect a long-lasting Catholic revival. They left great resources for Catholicism in England, however, in the good bishops they'd appointed, but they left also left the disastrous legacy of the burnings of Smithfield to the memory of Protestants in England. Unlike Eamon Duffy, who proposed that the prosecution of heretics was working in Fires of Faith, Hughes notes that even this effort was made ineffective by the too early deaths of Mary and Pole, especially without a Catholic heir. The other great legacy Mary and Pole left to Catholics in England was William Allen.

Jesus, the King and Savior of the Gentiles

From Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the Cathedral in Cologne during World Youth Day in 2005:

The city of Cologne would not be what it is without the Magi, who have had so great an impact on its history, its culture and its faith. Here, in some sense, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Epiphany every day of the year! And so, before addressing you, dear inhabitants of Cologne, before greeting you, I wanted to pause for a few moments of prayer before the reliquary of the three Magi, giving thanks to God for their witness of faith, hope and love.

You should know that in 1164 the relics of the Magi were escorted by the Archbishop of Cologne, Reinald von Dassel, from Milan, across the Alps, all the way to Cologne, where they were received with great jubilation. On their pilgrimage across Europe these relics left visible traces behind them which still live on today, both in place names and in popular devotions.

In honour of the Magi the inhabitants of Cologne produced the most exquisite reliquary of the whole Christian world and raised above it an even greater reliquary: Cologne Cathedral. Along with Jerusalem the "Holy City", Rome the "Eternal City" and Santiago de Compostela in Spain, Cologne, thanks to the Magi, has become down the centuries one of the most important places of pilgrimage in the Christian West.

I do not want here to continue to sing the praises of Cologne, although it would be possible and meaningful to do so; it would take too long, for it would be necessary to say too many important and beautiful things about Cologne.

However, I would like to recall that we venerate St Ursula and her companions here; that in 745 the Holy Father named St Boniface Archbishop of Cologne; that St Albert the Great, one of the most learned scholars of the Middle Ages, worked here and that his relics are venerated in the Church of St Andrew; that Thomas Aquinas, the greatest theologian of the West, studied and taught here; that in the 19th century Adolph Kolping founded an important social institution; that Edith Stein, a converted Jew, lived here in Cologne at the Carmelite Convent before being forced to flee to the Convent of Echt in Holland to be deported subsequently to Auschwitz, where she died a martyr. Thanks to these and all the other figures, both known and unknown, Cologne possesses a rich legacy of saints.

I would like to add, at least as far as I know, that here in Cologne one of the Magi has been identified as a Moorish King of Africa, so that a representative of the African Continent has been seen as one of Jesus Christ's first witnesses.

You may see images of Cologne Cathedral and the reliquary of the Magi that Pope Benedict references here.

Happy Epiphany! Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

Our Lady of Walsingham, First Shrine to the Mother of God

This recent Catholic News Agency (CNA) story comments upon the continuing popularity of the shrine of Our Lady of Walshingham, which is a Memorial today in the dioceses of England, noting that it was the first pilgrimage shrine to Mary, the Mother of God in Christendom, with its origins in 1061:

“From that time, through till the reformation, in 1538, Walsingham was one of the great shrines of Christendom,” and the only shrine dedicated to Our Lady, Msgr. Armitage said.

It is a great source of pride that Walsingham is the site of the oldest Marian shrine in the world, he said.

“Indeed, if you go to Nazareth, and you stand in front of the Holy House in Nazareth, if you look up, you’ll see all the different images of the Shrines to Our Lady around the world. And the first one that is displayed there is the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.”

Although the shrine itself was destroyed in 1538, a small nearby chapel where pilgrims en route to Walsingham would stop remained. “It’s where the pilgrims would come and before they entered the shrine ground, they would go to confession and then they would take their shoes off, and leave them at the slipper chapel – hence its name – and would walk barefoot into the shrine in the village.”

This tradition continues to this day, the rector added. “Once (the pilgrims) have finished their devotion at the slipper chapel shrine, they then walk along what’s called the Holy Mile into the village.”

After the shrine was rebuilt in the 20th century, the site began to see a resurgence of pilgrims which continues to this day.

“Walsingham is a great crossroads of Catholics in England,” Msgr. Armitage said, and many consider it to be the “spiritual heart” of the country.

CNA also provides this prayer to Our Lady of Walsingham:

O Mary, recall the solemn moment when Jesus, your divine son, dying on the cross, confided us to your maternal care. You are our mother, we desire ever to remain your devout children. let us therefore feel the effects of your powerful intercession with Jesus Christ. make your name again glorious in the shrine once renowned throughout England by your visits, favours, and many miracles.

Pray, O holy mother of God, for the conversion of England, restoration of the sick, consolation for the afflicted, repentance of sinners, peace to the departed.

O blessed Mary, mother of God, our Lady of Walsingham, intercede for us. Amen.

News About Walsingham and Canterbury

In The National Catholic Register, Joanna Bogle writes about the honor given to the Catholic shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham:

Pope Francis has declared Walsingham a minor basilica. It was a dramatic scene, as Bishop Alan Hopes of East Anglia made the announcement at Mass on the feast of the Holy Family in Walsingham, reading aloud a Latin document from Rome.

Applause broke out as, with a sweep of his arms, he included the large modern church, the domain with its Stations of the Cross and the medieval Slipper Chapel, and announced, “All of this is now a minor basilica!”

The rector, Msgr. John Armitage, said that this wonderful news was a tribute to all the people who have worked and prayed at Walsingham over the years, as well as the pilgrims who have come in large numbers from across Britain. “It represents so much of what has been happening in the shrine for so long,” Msgr. Armitage said. “It’s a recognition by the Holy Father of the long history of this shrine. This is a rare privilege, and it says so much for Walsingham and for the great heart and witness of so many people. This is about history, and faith, and everything that makes up Walsingham.”

More here, including a video of the announcement, read first in Latin, from the shrine website.

There's also the news that pilgrims from Hungary will be on pilgrimage to Canterbury this May, bringing relics of St. Thomas a Becket to the site of his martyrdom. From the Hungarian Embassy in London, comes this announcement from Ambassador Péter Szabadhegy:

His Excellency informed the press that in a joint initiative with the Church of England and the Catholic Church of England and Wales, the Embassy of Hungary would bring the relic of St. Thomas Becket having kept in Esztergom/Hungary to the United Kingdom. As an important part of the set of events, a Holy Mass at Westminster Cathedral will be celebrated on 23 May by Cardinal Péter Erdő, Primate of Hungary, Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest and Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, in the presence of János Áder, President of Hungary and Archbishop Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury.

During the ‘Becket-week’, the relic from Esztergom will be displayed and celebrated together with other rare relics of St. Thomas at Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, Lambeth Palace and Mercer’s Chapel. At the end of the week, the relics will be transferred to Rochester Cathedral and to Canterbury Cathedral.

The Ambassador underlined that this would be the first time for the British public to have the opportunity to see the relic of St. Thomas Becket, having been kept with great reverence in Esztergom/Hungary for 800 years. The relic represents the deep and manifold historical and cultural links between Hungary and the UK.

The Telegraph offers some background on how the relic came to Hungary and also notes why St. Thomas a Becket was so honored there:

More recently, the relic took on added significance in Hungary as the focal point of a renewed cult of the saint which grew up under Communism as a symbol of resistance to over-mighty state.

The Hungarian Ambassador, Péter Szabadhegy, said Becket is revered in his country as “representative of the struggle of the church against repression for religious liberty”. . . .

It is traditionally held that the surviving relic in Hungary was acquired by Cardinal Lukács Bánffy, a friend of Becket’s from their student days in Paris, who went on to become Archbishop of Esztergom.

But is also thought possible that Margaret of France, who spent much of her life in England as wife of Henry II’s son, known as the “young King”, but was widowed and went on to become Queen of Hungary. Becket negotiated the marriage pact which brought her to England and would have been a major influence on her life.

Poor Henry VIII; all his good work being undone! Deo Gratias!

The Murder in the Cathedral

Eyewitness to History has this detail about how Henry II's knights accosted and murdered the Archbishop of Canterbury on December 29, 1170, from the report of Edward Grim, a monk at the cathedral:

"The murderers followed him; 'Absolve', they cried, 'and restore to communion those whom you have excommunicated, and restore their powers to those whom you have suspended.'

"He answered, 'There has been no satisfaction, and I will not absolve them.'

'Then you shall die,' they cried, 'and receive what you deserve.'

'I am ready,' he replied, 'to die for my Lord, that in my blood the Church may obtain liberty and peace. But in the name of Almighty God, I forbid you to hurt my people whether clerk or lay.'

"Then they lay sacrilegious hands on him, pulling and dragging him that they may kill him outside the church, or carry him away a prisoner, as they afterwards confessed. But when he could not be forced away from the pillar, one of them pressed on him and clung to him more closely. Him he pushed off calling him 'pander', and saying, 'Touch me not, Reginald; you owe me fealty and subjection; you and your accomplices act like madmen.'

"The knight, fired with a terrible rage at this severe repulse, waved his sword over the sacred head. 'No faith', he cried, 'nor subjection do I owe you against my fealty to my lord the King.'

"Then he received a second blow on the head but still stood firm. At the third blow he fell on his knees and elbows, offering himself a living victim, and saying in a low voice, 'For the Name of Jesus and the protection of the Church I am ready to embrace death.'"Then the unconquered martyr seeing the hour at hand which should put an end to this miserable life and give him straightway the crown of immortality promised by the Lord, inclined his neck as one who prays and joining his hands he lifted them up, and commended his cause and that of the Church to God, to St. Mary, and to the blessed martry Denys. Scarce had he said the words than the wicked knight, fearing lest he should be rescued by the people and escape alive, leapt upon him suddenly and wounded this lamb who was sacrificed to God on the head, cutting off the top of the crown which the sacred unction of the chrism had dedicated to God; and by the same blow he wounded the arm of him who tells this. For he, when the others, both monks and clerks, fled, stuck close to the sainted Archbishop and held him in his arms till the one he interposed was almost severed.

"Then the third knight inflicted a terrible wound as he lay, by which the sword was broken against the pavement, and the crown which was large was separated from the head. The fourth knight prevented any from interfering so that the others might freely perpetrate the murder."

Like St. Thomas More, Becket is sometimes viewed as a controversial character, as this History Today article notes:

Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, is probably best known in history for his infamous clashes with King Henry II of England in the 12th century. What started as a supposedly close relationship between king and clerk eventually led to a irreconcilable falling out as Church clashed with State. Their drama culminated with four knights from Henry's court who went to Christ Church in Canterbury to confront Becket. When the archbishop remained defiant, he met a grisly end, dying at the altar with the top of his skull severed. In death, however, he seemed to have the last laugh. His murder in the cathedral was seen as martyrdom, which resonated with the medieval people. An immense following built up after his death, with reports of miraculous healing occurring near his place of death, and ecclesiastical writers hastened to promote his cult with a flurry of hagiographical writings. The cult became so widespread, in fact, that it overtook St Cuthbert's cult in Durham as the most popular saint cult in England during the late Middle Ages, eventually reaching an international level of fame. The impact of Becket's cult was not limited to hagiography either. The pilgrims in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales travel to Canterbury to pay their respects to St Thomas Becket's shrine. Clearly Becket's cult had appealed to many different members of society by the end of the fourteenth century. For a holy man lauded as the most popular saint in England during the late Middle Ages, however, the question remains: what generated such polarised controversy?

Despite the surge of devoted hagiographical texts in the wake of his demise, not everyone spoke highly of Becket. In Draco normannicus, royalist Stephen Rouen viewed him as a villain who was guilty of peculation. Cluniac monk Gilbert Foliot's opinion of Becket was particularly critical, showing that some members of the ecclesiastical community were responding unfavourably to Becket as well. Gilbert claimed that he bought his way into his chancellor position and then used his royal connections to become archbishop, and thus he felt as if he had to overcompensate for this and prove himself as a worthy and capable archbishop. Other accounts criticised Becket for his stubborn and self-indulging behaviour, which made him dangerous, and that he showed few signs of piety and saintliness in life. The implications of hagiographic rhetoric are worth considering as well. Hagiography idealises the saint with the intention of edification in imitation of Christ. The ecclesiastical community wanted to promote his cult and tailor his life to fit a Christian image. The success of this rhetoric benefitted them financially and spiritually, and thus it was essential that they idealised Becket's death, comparing him to a martyr dying for his faith. . . .

While the interpretation of his historical role is ultimately complex and disputable, Becket's controversial nature is understandable. Becket had plenty of criticism in life and in death, but the impact of his cult is undeniable, influencing the literature, history, life, and even spirituality of the medieval world and beyond. There are still traces of Becket across England, with numerous churches named after him. Although Henry VIII reportedly destroyed his bones during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the sixteenth century, Becket's memory lives on in the subconscious of the English people, whether one views him as a saint or quite the opposite.

The question about whether or not Henry VIII's minions destroyed Becket's bones--there's no doubt that they destroyed the shrine--was the subject of a 1995 book from Yale University Press: The Quest for Becket's Bones by John Butler:

Thomas Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. Fifty years after his martyrdom, his remains were placed in a spectacular shrine behind the high altar, which became a place of pilgrimage and miracle. The shrine was destroyed during Henry VIII's reformation in 1538, and the bones disappeared.

For 450 years the whereabouts of the remains of the greatest English saint have been the subject of speculation and rumor. The generally accepted view is that they were burned by the King's Commissioners. But others have suggested that the monks secreted them outside the cathedral precincts and later reinterred them in an unmarked grave. In 1888, workmen excavated the eastern crypt of the cathedral and uncovered ancient bones of a tall man whose skull had seemingly been cleft by a sword. In 1948 the bones were reinterred and re-examined by medical scientists. In 1990 two Foreign Legionnaires—Peregrine Prescott and Risto Pronk—were arrested attempting to break into the cathedral to liberate Becket's bones from a site reputedly known only to a small group of Catholics. Each of these events stimulated interest and spurred debate in private and public.

The history of the quest for Becket's bones is a compelling story of politics, science, conjecture, romanticism, and mystery. This book tells that story, sifting the known evidence, uncovering much that is new, and suggesting several hypotheses for the resting place of the elusive bones.

More here on Henry VIII's campaign against St. Thomas a Becket, in which he proclaimed that violation of a secular law precluded his canonization.

It's Not April, But . . .

Two priests in England are leading a pilgrimage to Canterbury:

An ancient trail of pilgrimage runs through south-east England; a pathway along which so much of English identity converges. It is the way of St Thomas Becket, the martyr who stood up to a King and inspired Christendom. It is a route that drew countless pilgrims in ages past, captured the imagination of Chaucer and is reviving in our own time.

This film follows Fr Marcus Holden and Fr Nicholas Schofield as they journey from London to Canterbury. Along the way they discover the story of St Thomas and some fascinating traditions: the Rood of Boxley, the splendour of Rochester, the 'second Carmel' at Aylesford and many more.

By retracing the steps of the medieval pilgrims, this film draws out the rich Christian heritage of England and reflects on what it means 'To Be A Pilgrim.'

When I read The Canterbury Tales in a Catholic High School we certainly did not skip over the faults and foibles of the clergy as Chaucer depicts them. Only the Parson has any of the virtues of his office and vocation: the Monk, the Prioress, the Friar are each corrupt and venal in some way. But the Pardoner, who dispenses indulgences, is worst of all:

With him there rode a gentle PARDONER 

Of Rouncivalle (comrades and friends they were), 

Who'd come straight from the court of Rome. 

And he Would loudly sing "Come hither, love, to me!" 

The Summoner bore him a stiff bass staff; 

No trumpet ever sounded so by half. 

The Pardoner's hair was as yellow as wax, 

But hung as smoothly as a hank of flax; 

In little strands the locks ran from his head 

Till over both his shoulders they were spread 

And thinly lay, one here, another there. 

In jolly spirit, he chose not to wear 

His hood but kept it packed away. 

He rode (Or so he thought) all in the latest mode; 

But for a cap his long loose hair was bare. 

Such glaring eyes he had, just like a hare! 

A veronica was sewn upon his cap. 

He had his bag before him in his lap, 

Brimming with pardons hot from Rome. 

He'd speak In voice as dainty as a goat's. From cheek 

To cheek he had no beard and never would, 

So smooth his face you'd think he'd shaved it good. 

I think he was a gelding or a mare. 

But speaking of his craft, Berwick to Ware 

There was no pardoner could take his place. 

For in his bag he had a pillowcase 

That used to be, he said, Our Lady's veil; 

He claimed he had a fragment of the sail 

That took Saint Peter out upon the sea 

Before Christ called him to his ministry; 

He had a cross of latten set with stones, 

And in a glass he had some old pig's bones; 

And with these relics, when he saw at hand 

A simple parson from the hinterland, 

He'd make more money in one day alone 

Than would the parson two months come and gone. 

So he made apes, with all the tricks he'd do, 

Of parson and of congregation too. 

And yet I should conclude, for all his tactic, 

In church he was a fine ecclesiastic, 

So well he read a lesson or a story, 

And best of all intoned the offertory. 

For well he knew that when the song was sung, 

He then must preach, and not with awkward tongue. 

He knew how one gets silver from the crowd; 

That's why he sang so merrily and loud.

The British Library has more information about the Pardoner's role.

Next to Read: Robert Barlett's History of Saints

One of my birthday presents is Robert Bartlett's Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? from Princeton University Press:

From its earliest centuries, one of the most notable features of Christianity has been the veneration of the saints--the holy dead. This sweepingly ambitious history from one of the world's leading medieval historians tells the fascinating story of the cult of the saints from its origins in the second-century days of the Christian martyrs to the Protestant Reformation. Drawing on sources from around the Christian world, Robert Bartlett examines all of the most important aspects of the saints--including miracles, relics, pilgrimages, shrines, and the saints' role in the calendar, literature, and art.

As this engaging narrative shows, a wide variety of figures have been venerated as saints: men and women, kings and servant girls, legendary virgins and highly political bishops--and one dog. The book explores the central role played by the bodies and body parts of saints, and the special treatment these relics received: how they were treasured and enshrined, used in war and peace, and faked and traded. The shrines of the saints drew pilgrims, sometimes from hundreds of miles, and the book describes the routes, dangers, and rewards of pilgrimage, including the thousands of reported miracles. The book surveys the rich literature and images that proliferated around the saints, as well as the saints' impact on everyday life--from the naming of people and places to the shaping of the calendar. Finally, the book considers how the Christian cult of saints compares with apparently similar aspects of other religions.

At once deeply informative and entertaining, this is an unmatched account of an immensely important and intriguing part of the religious life of the past--as well as the present.

Robert Bartlett is the Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Mediaeval History at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and a fellow of the British Academy. His books include The Making of Europe, joint winner of the Wolfson History Prize, andThe Hanged Man: A Story of Miracle, Memory, and Colonialism in the Middle Ages (Princeton). He has also written and presented documentaries on the Middle Ages for BBC television.

Bartlett takes his title from St. Augustine's The City of God. Looks fascinating. Here's the first chapter.

St. Anthony of Padua in Scotland and England

As my husband and I attend Sunday Mass nearly every week at the Church of St. Anthony of Padua, this news about the relics of that great saint in Scotland and England caught my attention. As The Catholic Herald notes,

Catholics filled Westminster Cathedral on Saturday to venerate the relics of St Anthony of Padua.
The arrival of the saint’s relics, which comprised a small piece of petrified flesh and a layer of skin from the saint’s cheek, was part of a UK tour marking the 750th anniversary of the discovery of St Anthony’s incorrupt tongue.

Following an afternoon of veneration, where pilgrims queued for hours outside the cathedral in order to visit the relics, Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster celebrated Mass in honour of the great saint.

During his homily, Archbishop Nichols said that St Anthony was a guide to those who have lost their way. He said: “On this most fundamental of all journeys we often get lost, taking a wrong path, ending up in a cul-de-sac, distracted by bright lights or misjudgement. St Anthony is well known for helping us to find lost things. And he can help us in this way too. He can help us to find again our true path whenever we have lost our way.”

[I'm not surprised that Archbishop Nichols has supported the veneration of these relics, as he urged Catholics throughout England to visit an exhibition at the British Museum in 2011 on relics and reliquaries:

All British Catholics should try to visit the new exhibition of relics and reliquaries at the British Museum in London, Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster has said.

Treasures of Heaven: saints, relics and devotion in medieval Europe opened in the historic Round Reading Room at the museum today.

“I think this is a very, very unique and remarkable exhibition. There are objects here, for example the Mandylion, the face of Christ, which will never leave the Vatican again,” the archbishop said.

“I would just urge Catholics in England and Wales and from further afield to make the effort to come to the British Museum some time between now and October to take up this very unique opportunity. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime, and it’s well worth the journey.”]

The relics of St. Anthony continue their journey through Scotland and England, as The Catholic Herald continues:

Following their visit to Westminster Cathedral, the relics’ tour concluded at St Peter’s Italian Church in Clerkenwell. It is estimated that the relics have attracted 250,000 people across the UK during their tour.

Prior to their arrival at Westminster Cathedral, St Anthony’s relics had visited Belfast, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool and Chester.

During their veneration at the Franciscan Church in Chester, the Church of St Francis, Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury reminded pilgrims that they were too called to be saints.

Addressing a packed church last Thursday, Bishop Davies said: “In Rome yesterday Pope Francis reminded us of the startling fact that the term ‘saint’ refers to you and to me, to everyone who believes in the Lord Jesus and are incorporated in Him and in the Church through Baptism. We are to be all saints!”

St. Anthony of Padua, pray for us!

Image: Guercino's St Anthony of Padua with the Infant Christ.

St. Winifred, Shrewsbury, and Holywell

Today is the feast of St. Winifred, Welsh abbess and niece of St. Beuno, who raised her back to life after her beheading by Caradog of Hawarden. This site outlines her life and provides this Sarum Rite hymn:

A virgin flourishing as the rose,
The comely bride of Him Who is the Lamb,
As the precious martyr of Christ,
Hath Winifred richly blossomed.

Sprung from the stock of Britons,
Unshakable in faith, joyful in hope,
Holy in deeds, and pure of mind,
She was free of this world’s deceptions.

This virgin was slain by Caradoc,
And immediately the pit of Orcus hell swallowed him up.
For that is the place for the wicked,
And there with Satan he is burning.

In demonstrating proof of this happening,
A fountain welleth up at the bidding of God,
In the likeness of crimson reddening,
Where she was deprived of her head.

There many miracles are performed;
The blind see, and the dumb are given speech,
All manner of disease is put to flight,
When those who ask have faith.

O Winifred, our glorious lady,
Calm for us the billows of the sea,
Lest we become the ready prey of the enemy,
O compassionate one, afford us thy protection.
Amen.

Holywell, St. Winifred's well in northern Wales, was a tremendous shrine of pilgrimage and cures in medieval England--the English Lourdes of its day. Henry VIII dissolved the Abbey at Shrewsbury in 1540 and had the saint's relics and shrine destroyed. Blessed Edward Oldcorne, SJ, a martyr who suffered after the Gunpowder Plot was discovered in 1605, had traveled to Holywell when suffering from throat cancer during his sixteen years of missionary work--and was cured. Holywell is still a place of pilgrimage and, indeed, the town touts itself as "The Lourdes of Wales".

Image credit: Wikipedia commons.

September 24: Our Lady of Ransom and Our Lady of Walsingham



Until the year 2000 when the Vatican approved the new calendar for the Dioceses of England and Wales, today was the Feast of Our Lady of Ransom. A guild was founded in 1887 with "three special intentions:

~~the conversion of England and Wales in general, and of individuals in particular;
~~the rescue of apostates and those in danger of apostasy;
~~the forgotten dead, who, owing to the Reformation, or to being isolated converts, or other causes, are without special Masses and prayers."

The origins of the feast and its connection to St. Raymond of Penyafort and the Mercedarian Order:

The Blessed Virgin appeared in 1218 in separate visions to St. Peter Nolasco, St. Raymond of Penafort and James, king of Aragon, asking them to found a religious order dedicated to freeing Christian captives from the barbarous Saracens or Moors, who at the time held a great part of Spain. On August 10, 1218, King James established the royal, military and religious Order of our Lady of Ransom (first known as the Order of St. Eulalia, now known as the Mercedarian Order), with the members granted the privilege of wearing his own arms on their breast. Most of the members were knights, and while the clerics recited the divine office in the commanderies, they guarded the coasts and delivered prisoners. This pious work spread everywhere and produced heroes of charity who collected alms for the ransom of Christians, and often gave themselves up in exchange for Christian prisoners. This feast, kept only by the Order, was extended to the whole Church by Innocent XII in the 17th century.

More here from the same site. You might note the scapular Our Lady is holding in her right hand, as her left hand holds the chains and manacles of captivity. More about the scapular here. With the increased violence against Christians in the Middle East and in Africe, revival of this devotion seems appropriate!

O God, through the glorious Mother of Your Son You enriched the Church with a new religious congregation dedicated to freeing Christians from slavery among the heathens. We venerate Mary as the foundress of this institution and pray that she may also deliver us from our sins and the slavery of the devil through her own merits and intercession. Through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord . . . Amen.

Since the year 2000, September 24 is the Feast of Our Lady of Walsingham in England, and in 2011 the shrine(s) celebrated the 950th anniversary of the founding of "England's Nazareth". Today in Walsingham there are two shrines--one Catholic, one Anglican. Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's vice regent in these spiritual matters, had the first (Catholic) shrine destroyed along with other shrines to the Mother of God throughout England. The statues were brought to the Chelsea area of the London and destroyed in a bonfire. Walsingham calls itself "England's Nazareth" and promotes both the Catholic and the Anglican shrines on its tourism website.

In 1893, Pope Leo XIII promised: "When England returns to Walsingham, Our Lady will return to England." Even after Pope Leo restored the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in 1897, it took some time for [Catholic] England to return to Walsingham. In 1922, the Anglo-Catholic Father Hope Patton established the Anglican shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. In 1934, the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Bourne, led a major pilgrimage to the Catholic Walsingham and it became the National Marian Shrine.

With Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI's foundation of the first Personal Ordinariate for groups of former Anglicans on January 15, 2011, named for Our Lady of Walsingham, Our Lady's return to England was even more firmly established.

O alone of all women, Mother and Virgin, Mother most happy, Virgin most pure, now we sinful as we are, come to see thee who are all pure, we salute thee, we honour thee as how we may with our humble offerings; may thy Son grant us, that imitating thy most holy manners, we also, by the grace of the Holy Ghost may deserve spiritually to conceive the Lord Jesus in our inmost soul, and once conceived never to lose him. Amen.

All Holy and ever-living God, in giving us Jesus Christ to be our Saviour and Brother, You gave us Mary, His Mother, to be our Mother also; grant us, we pray you, to live lives worthy of so great a Brother and so dear a Mother, that we may come at last to you the Father of us all, Who lives and reigns for ever. Amen.

Our Lady of Walsingham, Pray for us.

Becoming Jane Austen, 21st Century Style

From The Wall Street Journal, Joy Y. Wang writes about her attempt at time travel, including wearing clothing from Jane Austen's era:

IT IS A TRUTH universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a spare room must be in want of a lodger.

That was the case, at least, with the room in London I booked through the home-rental website Airbnb. My host was an attractive 33-year-old Australian solicitor, and for a spell I imagined a romance playing out like a Jane Austen plotline.

Such an encounter would fit neatly into the story arc of the trip. Days before my 30th birthday, I was on a mission: to experience Jane Austen's England and decide if that world holds any relevance for a single woman of today—especially one who, by the standards of Austen's time, would be considered positively spinsterly.

I've been an Austen devotee since first reading "Pride and Prejudice" at the age of 15, and my milestone birthday felt like the right time to explore a country I'd read about extensively but never visited. I'd see if the mineral waters of Bath could cure me of too many hours spent in front of a computer screen and too few spent at the gym. Perhaps a visit to Jane Austen's house in the village of Chawton, where she lived when "Pride and Prejudice" was first published 200 years ago, would fire up my writerly ambitions. I would wander the grounds of Chatsworth, the grand estate in Derbyshire that is thought to have inspired Austen's description of Pemberley in "Pride and Prejudice."

Read the rest here.

The word "devotee" intrigues and puzzles me. Merriam-Webster's on-line dictionary defines "devotee" as  being "an ardent follower, supporter, or enthusiast (as of a religion, art form, or sport)". I am not a devotee of Jane Austen: I am a reader of Jane Austen; I have written about Jane Austen (I wrote my M.A. thesis on "Jane Austen's Persuasion and Hugh Blair's Rhetoric"); I appreciate Jane Austen's art and ability; I enjoy watching adaptations of Jane Austen's works--but I am not "ardent follower, supporter, or enthusiast". I will stipulate that I am odd, but I don't think that Austen needs me to follow, support, or enthuse about her.

On the other hand, the question of Jane Austen as "an ardent follower, supporter, or enthusiast" of Christianity is a topic seldom addressed in criticism of her work, because, as this author notes, her works seem so secular and her clerical characters are so often mocked. Yet, he concludes his analysis of religion in her works in the context of her age:

I read Jane Austen’s novels against a “long eighteenth century” in which Austen firmly stood; against the intellectual prisms that dominated the period—neoclassical hermeneutics, British Empiricism, and Georgian Anglicanism; and against the pervasive and unrelenting reality of unregulated capitalism. My reading does not seek to make theological that which is not theology; but it does seek to make religious that which, for too long, has been misunderstood as secular. In Austen’s world, religious issues are indivisible from secular issues; and religious observance still has a public importance and is not a matter of private observance or psychological journey as it is now considered to be.

If we have become so dedicated to understanding Austen’s novels in the context of their period, then recognizing the unity of Austen’s social and religious vision, whether we choose to believe in it or not, is an urgent critical task. Austen is a Christian humanist who belongs to the neoclassical Enlightenment. She is not a secular humanist whose work can be appropriated to validate the post-Enlightenment critique of the traditional western and Christian world-view. Austen may be a feminist and a capitalist but she is also an Anglican who writes Christian stories. If we—her readers, biographers, and literary critics—fail to grasp the centrality of that fact, and do not rise to the challenge that it presents to reading, biography, criticism, then we will misunderstand her life and misread her novels at their most profound level of interpretation.

Michael Giffen has written a book about Jane Austen and religion, titled Jane Austen and Religion: Salvation and Society in Georgian England, available from Palgrave Macmillan in the UK (Print on Demand):

Jane Austen is often thought of as a secular author, because religion seems absent from her novels, because she satirises her clerical characters, and because history and literacy criticism - and the literary sensibility of the twenty-first century reader - is overwhelmingly secular. Michael Giffin offers a reading of Austen's published novels against the background of a 'long eighteenth century' that stretched from the Restoration to the end of the Georgian period. He demonstrates that Austen is a neoclassical author of the Enlightenment who writes through the twin prisms of British Empiricism and Georgian Anglicanism. His focus is on how Austen's novels mirror a belief in natural law and natural order; and how they reflect John Locke's theory of knowledge through reason, revelation and reflection on experience. His reading suggests there is a thread of neoclassical philosophy and theology running through and between each of Austen's novels, which is best understood in its cultural context.

St. Augustine of Canterbury

In honor of St. Augustine of Canterbury today. My husband and I visited the Cathedral in Canterbury several years ago. Here are some pics from that visit.







Also, here's a link to an interesting site on sacred (Anglican) destinations in England. St. Augustine's in Ramsgate, designed and built by Augustus Pugin, is Catholic England's national shrine. More about it here and some pictures of the very recent Ordinariate pilgrimage to Ramsgate.

The Feast of the Martyrs of England and Wales on the Radio

I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show Friday morning, May 3 to highlight once again the great Feast of the Martyrs of England and Wales, which is on Saturday, May 4 in the Dioceses of England and Wales. Brian Patrick and I will discuss the martyrs and their feast, which is set on the day the protomartyrs of the English Reformation suffered and died at Tyburn in 1535, at 7:45 a.m. Eastern--6:45 a.m. Central (where I am!)

Then on Monday afternoon, May 6, I'll be on Kresta in the Afternoon to discuss the same feast (Al Kresta is on retreat this week so we'll talk then from 4:35 to 4:55 p.m. Eastern--3:35 to 3:55 p.m. Central.

With both of these interviews, I do want to highlight the upcoming Catholic Martyrs of England Pilgrimage, pointing out that our tour will visit several sites and shrines associated with these martyrs:

York: St. Margaret Clitherow and St. Henry Walpole, and several other priests, including two of the Carthusians of the Charterhouse in London, were martyred there; York was a major center of recusancy;

Oxford: Many of the priests who suffered martyrdom during the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I were former students at the University of Oxford, including St. Edmund Campion, St. Cuthbert Mayne, St. Ralph Sherwin; and four martyrs were executed in Oxford: Blessed George Nichols and Blessed Richard Yaxley, priests; Blessed Thomas Belson and Blessed Humphrey Pritchard, laymen;

Canterbury: Not only the site of St. Thomas a Becket's martyrdom but also of St. John Stone, Augustinian Canon (executed after Christmas in 1539) and the Oaten Hill martyrs, executed after the failure of the Spanish Armada: Blessed Edward Campion, Blessed Christopher Buxton, Blessed Robert Wilcox, and Blessed Robert Widmerpool--and there's the St. Thomas More connection as his head is buried in St. Dunstan's Anglican church;

London: St. Thomas More, St. John Fisher and many, many others (St. Robert Southwell, St. Oliver Plunkett, St. Anne Line, et al) suffered both at the Tower of London and at Tyburn Tree, and at various other sites in London, including Smithfield, where Blessed John Forrest was burned alive;

Arundel: not the site of martyrdom, but an important shrine at the Cathedral of St. Philip Howard and the location of splendid Arundel Castle, with its exhibit of "relics" of Mary, Queen of Scots and a fascinating chapel.

This pilgrimage, since I developed the itinerary at Corporate Travel Services' request, is unique in its focus on the English martyrs and in the selection of cities and sights to visit. With daily Mass in so many historically significant places (the Parish of English Martyrs in York; St. Aloysius Oratory Church in Oxford; St. Thomas of Canterbury Catholic Church in Canterbury; the Cathedral of St. Philip Howard in Arundel, and St. Etheldreda's and Westminster Cathedral in London!) the spiritual blessings of the pilgrimage will be as great as the historical background we'll all share. All the English Martyrs, pray for us!

How to Prepare for a Pilgrimage

Vanessa Denha-Garmo asked a very good question at the end of her interview of Father Steve Matejas and me on Catholic Connection last week: How should people prepare for going on the Catholic Martyrs of England Pilgrimage? Here are some hints:

1) All travel involves planning and preparation. When my husband's career provided him with many opportunities to travel and I could go with him, I would plan and prepare my own itinerary for our destination. I would usually research three or four categories of things to see and visit: churches, bookstores, and colleges or universities, plus the usual monuments or museums as applicable. At first, back in the twentieth century, that often involved buying guidebooks or writing to tourism offices for brochures. Now, of course, the internet provides those resources. Corporate Travel Services, Father Steve, and I have taken care of some that planning--CTS books the flights, makes the hotel reservations, arranges the tours; Father and I have given our input to the itinerary.

Pilgrims might want to do their own planning about what they want to do in the evenings when the tour events are over--what sights to see or other places to visit; where to eat in York or London when dinner is not part of the schedule, for example. And there is a half-day in London "on your own" before we conclude the pilgrimage with a visit to St. Etheldreda's for Mass and the Tyburn Convent for a visit to the Martyrs' Shrine and Relics.

2) Pilgrimage travel involves not only practical but spiritual preparation. The Canterbury pilgrims, pictured above, went on pilgrimage for a spiritual purpose: expiation of sin; as penance after confession; for healing; for some other special intention. Pilgrims to England in September this year might prepare a special intention on the tour. The overall intentions of the pilgrimage, as Father Steve and I articulated them, are for us all to increase our devotion to these English martyrs and to meditate on their sacrifices for Jesus and His Church--considering the implications and impact on each of us today. Before a pilgrimage, we should go to Confession, receive Holy Communion, and pray, pray, pray for the grace to complete the tour with devotion, compassion for each other, and for the success of all the travel arrangements, connections, and reservations.

3) A participant on a tour like this might indeed benefit from some supplemental reading and viewing. A copy of my book, Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation, is part of the package from Corporate Travel Services. Father Steve mentioned two other good books to read: Edmund Campion by Evelyn Waugh and The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest by Father John Gerard, SJ. I'd also recommend Saint Robert Southwell and Henry Garnet: A Study in Friendship by Philip Caraman, SJ and Into the Lion's Den: The Jesuit Mission in Elizabethan England and Wales, 1580-1603 by Robert E. Scully, SJ, published by The Institute of Jesuit Sources (St. Louis, Missouri), c. 2011. They could read about St. Thomas More in various biographies, including this one I reviewed last year. With some reservations about Robert Bolt's view of conscience, they could watch A Man for All Seasons, or watch some of the Mary's Dowry productions on the Catholic Martyrs of the English Reformation. They could watch Playing Elizabeth's Tune for some musical background on the era and the conflicts caused by the State imposition of religious orthodoxy. There are more reading ideas for the Stuart era and even more for Blessed John Henry Newman (Oxford) and St. Thomas a Becket (Canterbury), but the works listed above are more accessible.

The Big Announcement

I hinted at a big announcement at the end of last year! Now I can make it! I have been working with Corporate Travel Services on designing and planning a CATHOLIC MARTYRS OF ENGLAND PILGRIMAGE.

From September 4 to 12, 2013, we will visit major sites in connection with the martyrs: in York, Oxford, London, Canterbury, and Arundel, focusing on martyrs like St. Margaret Clitherow, St. Edmund Campion, St. Thomas More, St. John Fisher, St. Philip Howard, St. John Southworth, St. Robert Southwell--even St. Thomas a Becket, so symbolic for Henry VIII in the 16th century. While in Oxford, we'll even include sites associated with Blessed John Henry Newman.

We'll visit York Minster, the St. Margaret Clitherow shrine in The Shambles, the ruins of St. Mary's Abbey, and celebrate Mass at the Parish of the English Martyrs in York; see the memorials to the Reformation martyrs in Oxford, tour Trinity and Oriel Colleges (Newman) and celebrate Mass at the Oxford Oratory (which features a mural of St. Edmund Campion's martyrdom and a shrine to Blessed John Henry Newman).

In London, there will be free time for shopping or other sight-seeing, but we will go to Westminster Abbey, Westminster Hall, and Westminster Cathedral, the Tower of London, St. Etheldreda's and Tyburn Convent--and from London we'll visit Canterbury and Arundel (Mass in the Cathedral dedicated to St. Philip Howard!

Our only difficulty was having to leave places out--Cambridge, for example, and other London locations (the Charterhouse, St. Giles-in-the-Fields, etc).

Link here for the official information from CTS about the pilgrimage--and you may download a four color brochure too!

The Spanish Netherlands and Scherpenheuvel

Mentioning the Archduke Albert and the Spanish Netherlands in the post about composer Peter Philips the other day reminded me of our visit to Scherpenheuvel (Sharp Hill) in Belgium during the 2000 Jubilee Year. During our second visit to Belgium (work related for my husband; fun related for me), our hosts took us to the Basilica of Our Lady of Scherpenheuvel in the Flemish Brabant region of Belgium. A series of accidents led both Mark and I to the shrine--the wife of the manager of the parts distribution company located near Brussels was taking me to Scherpenheuvel; her car broke down; she called her husband and her cousin. Her husband (and my husband) left work to meet us at her cousin's house/business (he had a tow truck) to drive us on to Scherpenheuvel. On the way to her cousin's house, the brakes failed on the tow truck as we exited the highway! He had to use the handbrake.

We waited at her cousin's house for her husband--everyone spoke Flemish in the household but we did have the universal language of a silly little jack russell puppy who played fetch and tug of war. The cousin's daughter was a flight attendant on the now defunct Belgian airline, Sabena, and when she spoke English she had a perfect Midwest American accent. Mark and his contact arrived, and we went off to Scherpenheuvel. This was in the days before digital cameras when, gasp, we took pictures and then came home, took the film out of the camera and went to a store to have it developed, waited for the store to call us and then went to the store to pick up the pictures!! (I am speaking of 12 years ago, in the Dark Ages of 35 mm and APS film.) That explains why the two pictures I've posted are from the wikipedia commons on Scherpenheuvel:

 

And the websites for Scherpenheuvel are in Flemish, so here's a link to the wikipedia entry for the Basilica and its role as a Marian pilgrimage shrine in Belgium. The Archduke Albert whom Peter Philips served, and his wife, the Spanish Infanta Isabella (Philip II's daughter) gave funds for the establishment of the shrine, the town, and the basilica. It was a major pilgrimage site and the city that grew up around it provided all the services of lodging, restaurants, and shopping--and protections with its walls. We ate lunch, as I recall, in a big restaurant called The Golden Ram, large enough to accommodate the big pilgrimage groups during the season from May to November.

A couple of years later, I read this book about the Archbishop of Mechelen, Mathias Hovius, by Craig Harline of BYU and Eddy Put: A Bishop's Tale: Mathias Hovius Among His Flock in Seventeenth-Century Flanders (which is now out-of-print at Yale University Press). Charlotte Allen reviewed it for First Things here:

 

Fortunately for scholars (and for us), Hovius kept a detailed daybook of all his activities—his building projects, his ceaseless and wearying parish visits, and the endless round of petitions and disputes, on issues ranging from pornography and marriage annulments to questions of heresy—that he adjudicated in his busy ecclesiastical court. Most of the journal has been lost, but in 1987, Harline, a history professor at Brigham Young University, and Put, a Belgian archivist, discovered in a seminary library in Mechelin the last volume, covering the period from 1617 to Hovius’ death. This book is the fruit of their reconstruction of Hovius’ life from that diary and other contemporary documents.

Harline, author of the well–received Burdens of Sister Margaret: Inside a Seventeenth–Century Convent, decided to focus on Hovius for his second book as a corrective to the worthy but perhaps exaggerated preoccupation of today’s medievalists with eclectic and colorful “ordinary” Catholicism in contrast to the official kind. Harline and Put decided that the career of a bishop would offer as good a vantage point as any for looking into the seventeenth–century social world. They thought that since “religious life was a constant negotiation among all parties rather than a simple matter of the hierarchy proclaiming and the flock obeying, then being a bishop was hardly the mundane, absolutist task it has been made out to be.”

Making one’s way as a Catholic prelate in seventeenth–century Flanders required negotiating skills and many other skills besides. To the north lay the staunchly Calvinist Dutch Republic, product of a protracted war of secession that had begun in the 1560s, when Hovius, born in 1542, was a young man. Until the Dutch formally declared their independence in 1581, more or less ending the strife, all of the Low Countries belonged to Philip II of Spain, who had inherited them from his father, the Flanders–born Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.

After the Dutch breakaway, Flanders became known as the Spanish Netherlands, an uncomfortable moniker. Even the Catholics of the Low Countries detested the dour and culturally alien Philip, who tried to reduce their once–auto­ nomous territories to a Spanish province and who introduced the Inquisition to Flanders. At the very end of his life in 1599, Philip turned the Spanish Netherlands over to his daughter Isabella and her husband, Prince Albert of Austria, and made it a quasi–independent archduchy. Isabella and Albert were popular sovereigns, and a measure of peace finally prevailed.

St. John the Baptist and The English Reformation

Today is the Solemnity of the Birth of St. John the Baptist. Only two other birthdays are celebrated on the Church Calendar: The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Otherwise, saints and blessed are remembered on the dates of the deaths (or perhaps the "translation" of their remains or some other important date--not usually their birthdate). The saint's day of earthly death is the beginning of their eternal life in Heaven. This site offers the reason for honoring St. John the Baptist on his birhday--because he was cleansed from Original Sin, baptised as it were, when Mary visited her cousin Elizabeth and he leapt in his mother's womb when the unborn Jesus in Mary's womb came near him. St. Augustine pointed to this understanding of St. John the Baptist's holy birth. (St. John the Baptist has another feast, that of his Beheading, on August 29, and a friend of mine pointed out that the Orthodox churches honor St. John the Baptist even more often: September 23 —Conception of St. John the Forerunner; January 7 — The Synaxis of St. John the Forerunner; February 24 — First and Second Finding of the Head of St. John the Forerunner; May 25 — Third Finding of the Head of St. John the Forerunner; June 24 — Nativity of St. John the Forerunner, and August 29 — The Beheading of St. John the Forerunner!)

Devotion to St. John the Baptist is ancient in the Church and his Nativity was celebrated with a vigil and with bonfires on the feast. This site points out a pilgrimage site in Norfolk before the English Reformation demonstrating devotion to the saint as a martyr, as it had a replica of the head of St. John the Baptist. The image was destroyed at some point during the Reformation, of course.

Another mark of devotion to St. John the Baptist in England was the presence of the Knights Hospitaller of St. John in England, suppressed by Henry VIII. He had Sir Thomas Dingley and Sir Adrian Fortescue executed under Attainder in July of 1539 and seized the order's property in England:

The Order in Britain

From the beginning the Order grew rapidly and was given land throughout Western Europe. Its estates were managed by small groups of brothers and sisters who lived in communities that provided resources to the headquarters of the Order. These communities were gradually gathered into provinces called Priories or Grand Priories.

In Britain these estates were first administered from one of the communities (called a Commandery) at Clerkenwell, London from about 1140 and the original Priory Church was built at the same time.

However, over time, the extensive amount of land the Order owned in Britain meant that it needed to be managed by several different Commanderies. In 1185 the Commandery at Clerkenwell became a Priory, and had responsibility for Commanderies that had been set up in Scotland and Wales as well as the ones in England. Ireland became a separate Priory.

Henry VIII

In 1540 the Order was suppressed by King Henry VIII, as part of the process known as the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It was restored and incorporated by Queen Mary I in 1557, but when Queen Elizabeth I again confiscated all its estates in 1559 she did so without annulling its incorporation. These acts by English Sovereigns did not directly affect the Order in Scotland, but the influence of the Reformation ended the Order’s activities there in about 1564. The Order in Britain then fell into abeyance.

One may, today, however visit the Museum of the Order of St. John in London today.

The provisions of Elizabeth I's Act of Uniformity of 1559 all took effect on this feast:

Where at the death of our late sovereign lord King Edward VI there remained one uniform order of common service and prayer, and of the administration of sacraments, rites, and ceremonies in the Church of England, which was set forth in one book, intituled: The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of Sacraments, and other rites and ceremonies in the Church of England; authorized by Act of Parliament holden in the fifth and sixth years of our said late sovereign lord King Edward VI, intituled: An Act for the uniformity of common prayer, and administration of the sacraments; the which was repealed and taken away by Act of Parliament in the [Page 459] first year of the reign of our late sovereign lady Queen Mary, to the great decay of the due honour of God, and discomfort to the professors of the truth of Christ's religion:

Be it therefore enacted by the authority of this present Parliament, that the said statute of repeal, and everything therein contained, only concerning the said book, and the service, administration of sacraments, rites, and ceremonies contained or appointed in or by the said book, shall be void and of none effect, from and after the feast of the Nativity of St. John Baptist next coming; and that the said book, with the order of service, and of the administration of sacraments, rites, and ceremonies, with the alterations and additions therein added and appointed by this statute, shall stand and be, from and after the said feast of the Nativity of St. John Baptist, in full force and effect, according to the tenor and effect of this statute; anything in the aforesaid statute of repeal to the contrary notwithstanding.

Finally, the Catholic Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Norwich, pictured above (source is Wikipedia commons) was built after Catholic Emancipation and Restoration the nineteenth century, and dedicated as the Cathedral in 1976:

The Cathedral of St John the Baptist is a fine example of the great Victorian Gothic Revival. Designed by George Gilbert Scott Junior, it was the generous gift to the Catholics of Norwich of Henry Fitzalan Howard as a thank-offering for his first marriage to Lady Flora Abney-Hastings. Duke Henry, following an approach by Canon Richard Duckett, commissioned the building and took a keen interest in every aspect of its design from its initial conception in the early 1870s to its completion and dedication in 1910. Until 1976 when it became the Cathedral of the new Diocese of East Anglia, this great church was believed to be the largest parish church in England.

Now a Grade 1 listed building, the Cathedral of St John the Baptist is one of Norwich’s iconic buildings, rising above the city skyline. Its external grandeur and magnificent interior, especially the fine stonework and beautiful stained glass make it well worth a visit for those interested in architectural history; they will also find an inspiring and tranquil place of prayer.

St. John the Baptist, the Forerunner, Prophet and Martyr, pray for us!