Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Monday 1 July 2013

Liturgical combs


Christopher Howse has an interesting piece in his regular column in the Daily Telegraph last Saturday about the use of the liturgical comb in connection with the new exhibition in Durham about the Lindisfarne Gospels.
His article can be read at Why St Cuthbert combed his hair.

As he points out the survival of these great Anglo-Saxon objects is a triumph of chance and good fortune over the events of history. As with St Cuthbert's portable altar which i saw in London the other year in the British Museum's exhibition on relics these are profoundly moving relics, linking us to the great age of the Northumbrian church, and also illustrating how that formed part of the universal Church.



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