St Francis of Assisi 800

Today is the 800th anniversary of the death in 1226 of St Francis of Assisi. For Franciscans, both professed and associates today and tomorrow are celebrated as the  Transitus of their founder, marking his death and his reception into the joys of Heaven.

St Francis of Assisi

The earliest surviving depiction of the saint in a fresco at the Benedictine abbey of Subiaco, and painted between March 1228 and March 1229.

Image:Wikipedia

Wikipedia has a good biography of St Francis, together with an initial assessment of his place in the history and culture of the Church. It can be viewed at Francis of Assisi

There is more about the Transitus, which seeks to enter into the experience for both the saint and his followers in his last hours on earth, at Transitus: St. Francis Embraces Sister Death, at The Transitus of St. Francis of Assisi and at The Transitus (Death) of Francis

To mark this eighth centenary Medieval Histories has a lengthy, illustrated online article by Karen Schousboe,  about the image, in all senses, and often contested in the thirteenth century, of St Francis. She includes Thomas of Celano’s description written soon after the saint’s death and an account of his public ministry in 1222. This can all be accessed at From Jongleur to Icon: The Making of St Francis

His damaged skeleton reveals him to have been fractionally under five feet tall, but regrettably his skull is deemed too fragmented to allow a facial reconstruction. Descriptions vary, and reflect differing emphases by later Franciscans. As Schousboe shows in his earlier ministry St Francis was an energetic and commanding presence before illness, the concerns of his community and the gift of the Stigmata, reshaped his ministry.

The same website also offers a review of the biographies that have been written in the last century and a quarter which is a useful introduction to the range and variety available from scholars, and to the issues involved in the whole matter of St Francis’ biography. The article can be seen at Modern biographies of St. Francis

As both an Anglican and as a Catholic I have had some engagement with Franciscans and Franciscan spirituality. As a historian looking at the Church in the central and later medieval centuries I have also looked at Franciscan history, thought and culture.

Some years ago now there were moves to establish a Centre for Franciscan Studies in Oxford, and promoted by the late Fr Mark Elvins OFM Cap. Amongst the lectures I attended I recall one when the Franciscan friar speaking saying that how work was directed towards rescuing St Francis from the birdbath. This neatly encapsulated a serious truth, and one I heartily endorsed.

St Francis is one of the most beloved and popular of saints, yet is one of the most misunderstood and, in consequence, actually ignored of saints. What he actually said and did was truly radical in the proper sense - that is of going to the root of Christianity, and not seeking a ‘Liberation Theology’ quick fix - and was that in the early thirteenth century and still is in the early twenty first century.

what the Cistercians and St Bernard had been a century earlier St Francis, and also St Dominic, and their mainstream followers were to be to the thirteenth century - rebuilding the Church as in St Francis’ response to the voice from the crucifix at San Damiano or as indicated in Pope Innocent III’s dream of St Francis holding up the Lateran.

St Francis’ spirituality can be understood as a response to the ever more urbanised and commercial world of northern Italy at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but also to the rural world around Assisi. It was very much grounded in Umbrian soil, and as the new Order moved forward the idea of rural hermits in the tradition remained central to the saint’s own vision.

As the Order grew rapidly and compellingly so it led to missions to cities and universities like the Dominicans - the two Orders have much in common, developing as they did in the early decades of the thirteenth century. The Dominicans adopted poverty from the Franciscans, who, in turn, adopted academic study from the Blackfriars.

St Francis reception of the Stigmata was the first recorded instance unless St Paul’s reference to bearing the marks of the Passion be included. In the twentieth century this phenomenon was most famously associated with the Franciscan Padre Pio - St Pio of Pietrolcina - a figure in many ways close to that of St Francis himself and his early followers. This ultimate sign of affective piety and conformity to Christ is very much part of the Franciscan legacy to the wider Church, alongside such routine matters as the Statiobs of the Cross and the Christmas Crib.

St Francis receives The Stigmata

Panel painting by Giotto 1295-1300,

now in The Louvre

There is more about the painting and the three predella images at Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata (Giotto)

Image: Wikipedia 

It came as a great surprise whenI first learned as an undergraduate of the profound conflicts and events of the mid-thirteenth century onwards until the mid-fifteenth century with the arguments, divisions and schisms over St Francis’ vision and intention for his followers. This was especially significant in Italy and southern France, and much more than the preaching to the birds of the popular perception of Franciscanism.  

Conflicting  views as to how to present his life as recorded by Thomas of Celano and then definitively by St Bonaventure, and all that the variants implied reflect the searching nature of the narratives. 

Above all was the crucial and central issue of poverty. This defined and heightened the tensions between the Observants and the Spirituals, led to the continuing tendency to form new Franciscan communities such as the Capuchins.  

More disastrously it led to the emergence of the fraticelli and groups beyond the Order who appealed to its most radical form. These are described by Wikipedia   at Fraticelli

 

Further there was the blending of Franciscan ideas with the prophetic visions of Joachim of Fiore and the millenarian idea of St Francis as the perfect man inaugurating the Age of the Spirit.

In these matters, unconsciously, the poverello of Assisi was Christ-like in another way - he had come to set fire on at least a part of the earth, the Church itself.

 

His life was relatively short, and mostly lived in Umbria, barring visits to Rome and to Egypt, and mostly in and around his home area. His influence was far beyond what he himself could have imagined and has continued to shape the Church, and produced a range of Franciscan saints. He has been celebrated in art and literature, in popular devotion and academic scholarship. He is the saint for everyone, yet remains ever elusive.

May St Francis pray for us

The Lincolnshire Rising 1536

It was on this day, October 1st, 490 years ago, in 1536 that what came to be known as the Lincolnshire Rising, broke out in the parish church at Louth in Lincolnshire. 

 

Louth Church

Image: A Church Near You

The Rising, whether seen as an autonomous event or as the active precursor to the Pilgrimage of Grace, which with similar aims, began just under a fortnight later north of the Humber in the East Riding of Yorkshire, was a reaction to the religious policies as well as taxation and legislation affecting land tenure the had emerged from Westminster and the Council in recent years.

By the autumn of 1536 the mood in the Lincolnshire Wolds was febrile. The dissolution of the smaller religious houses has commenced, including the Cistercian house at Louth Park on the edge of the town. Lincolnshire was rich in monastic foundations, notably, but by no means exclusively, those of the Cistercians, Premonstratensians, and the Gilbertines.

Louth was in the estates of the Bishop of Lincoln and thus closely linked to the diocesan structures. Civic pride was focussed around the parish church whose commanding spire had only been completed to great celebration in1515. Rumours abounded that church plate beyond the bare essentials was to be confiscated. Meanwhile one of the Royal Commissioners, Dr Raynes, had been addressing the local clergy in a meeting at Bolingbroke the day before about the latest regulations and ecclesiastical taxes, as well as implying some of the clergy should look to their learning, or lack of it in his eyes.

The interior of Louth Church

Image: Tripadvisor

News could and did spread quickly in the rural communities and, following a staunch sermon from the Vicar, at the end of Vespers in Louth Parish church as the three processional crosses lined up for the recessional one of the singing-men called out to the congregation to follow them as this might be the last opportunity. This was the event which convulsed the town, neighbouring villages and towns such as Caistor and Horncastle. 

 

Lincoln Cathedral 

A reconstruction showing the Cathedral and the Bishop’s Palace as they were before 1548

Image: Facebook - Historic churches uk - Ben Keating

The ‘commons’ compelled some of the more or less reluctant gentry to join them, and in a few days marched off to Lincoln to formulate their demands. Based for a short period in and around the cathedral tensions seem to have developed between gentry and commons, and the government response was not conciliatory, sending troops north led by the Duke of Suffolk. As a result the Rising stalled and dispersed, leading figures being arrested, and in most cases, ultimately executed. 

These victims over coming months were to include the Cistercian Abbot of Kirkstead, the Premonstratensisn Abbot of Barling, who was an assistant bishop in the Lincoln diocese, Thomas Kendal, the vicar of Louth, Thomas Moigne a lawyer and former MP for Lincoln, who had been the spokesman for the assembled group at Lincoln, and, suggesting aristocratic involvement, the elderly Lord Hussey, a courtier of Catholic sympathies and cousin to another executed peer, the Yorkshire Thomas Lord Darcy. Hussey, unlike the others, was from Kesteven rather than Lindsey, where the Rising occurred. 

 

However just as the government may have thought the matter over news travelled south of the Yorkshire rising with its designation as the Pilgrimage of Grace. This had largely identical aims as the Lincolnshire movement and was a greater challenge, requiring a military response leading to a truce to the embarrassment and fury of the King. 

With regard to the Lincolnshire Rising the King scolded the inhabitants for presuming to oppose him and as being from “one of the most brute and beastly” shires of the whole realm. When he did visit the county and city in 1541 he was received with grovelling gratitude and sizeable gifts of money. Ironically the modern county has chosen October 1st as Lincolnshire Day.

 

  

 The west front of Lincoln Cathedral before the removal of the timber and lead spires in 1807.

The spire on the central tower collapsed in 1548.

Although almost certainly not the 584 feet high often quoted it is now estimated to have been about 525 feet and the tallest building in the world until the later nineteenth century.  

A painting by A.C.Pugin 

Image: Whitworth Art Gallery Manchester

Wikipedia has a not very comprehensive account at Pilgrimage of Grace, which can be supplemented by a timeline on The History Jar, which can be accessed at Lincolnshire Rising Archives

The Lincolnshire Rising, and even the Pilgrimage of Grace are things you either do know about or you do not. The events are well documented, notably in L&P Henry VIII where one can read original letters from those involved in both sides, yet what was never written down at the time that would explain motivation and the hopes and fears of the time means we have to do a lot of interpretation.

Many histories of the period inevitably have a London and Court centred bias, and dismiss these uprisings, and those in the south-west in 1549 and again in the north in 1569, as backward and conservative regions who did not appreciate the ‘benefits’ of government policy - yes, I have read G.R. Elton.

    

Academic historians have offered a range of interpretations. Commons with ‘agency’ are quite popular as a subject these days, as is speculation on covert gentry leadership. The extent there was a secret conservative aristocratic conspiracy linking Court and country is certainly possible, and the links between Lords Hussey and Darcy would suggest the involvement of peers who felt excluded from a voice in government, as with the participants caught up in the Exeter Conspiracy of 1538. If there was a conspiracy or, more likely, a meeting of minds amongst the discontented county elites then it is possible that the Lincolnshire Rising occurred a fortnight too early, before the Yorkshire movement was ready, and thereby harmed its own chances and alerted the government.

Socio-economic grievances beyond objecting to peace-time taxation were not as evident as in the slightly later Pilgrimage of Grace, nor the sense of under-representation in Parliament. The economic situation in Lincolnshire at the time does not appear to have received as much attention as it has for Yorkshire and the Craven and Westmoreland areas. Lindsey had seen enclosuresaffecting long established villages, and a feature of the area to this day are the not infrequent instances of medieval churches which were much reduced in size in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the population contracted. That may have been starting in the sixteenth century. Towns like Louth were clearly wealthy, rebuilding the church in the fifteenth century and the tower and spire a spectacular work of the first years of the sixteenth century. If towns like Louth were prospering, other towns may have suffered decline; at Boston the harbour was suffering from silting and its great trading days were in the past. Lincoln was suffering, like many other long-established centres the contraction of trade as it moved elsewhere and the loss of economic dominance. This seems to have generally crept up on cities and towns, suddenly becoming obvious alongside the upheavals of the 1530s in religion and in daily life such as a rising level of under- or unemployment and inflation. The old order was rumbling and new players emerging.

 

The answer is almost certainly not one, but a blend of the groups and factions. What is clear is that there was widespread dislike of, and opposition to, the religious changes being imposed upon the country.

More popular authors, and often with a northern emphasis or bias, perhaps tend to stress the threat to the regime. For them the figure of the Yorkshire lawyer Robert Aske is central, depicting him as a man who held the future of the realm and dynasty, if only for a few days, in his hands. That, I think, is to exaggerate his chances. It disregards the face that hard power lay in London and the south, and ultimately with the King. A popular movement could be a real threat, as in 1381 and 1450, but without leadership from a great magnate as in 1399, and as at times in the fifteenth century, the chances were against it. What was also lacking was clear support from the continent from the Catholic powers. The death of Queen Katherine of Aragon had possibly diminished her nephew Emperor Charles V’s concern for the immediate moment, and that of Anne Boleyn had removed another tension between the Kibg and his fellow monarchs. Maybe now the King of England, and his advisors would give up their enthusiasm for religious change?

As with the Scottish Jacobites in 1745, moving from home ground was difficult as a concept for significant numbers. The Lincolnshire Rising stayed in Lindsey and Lincoln, and did not move beyond, rather like the Lincolnshire rebellions of 1469 and 1470 along the line of the Great North Road.

 One can at least say that faced with an all pervasive challenge to their way of life the people of Lindsay, like those of Yorkshire a fortnight later, did what they could, often at the ultimate in personal costs, to preserve their heritage of faith and practice.

Bl. Richard Rolle

Today is Michaelmas, the feast of St Michael the Archangel.

it is also the day appointed by the Catholic Church for the commemoration of Bl. Richard Rolle, the Yorkshire mystic and writer who lived in the first half of the fourteenth century.

Bl. Richard Rolle

A fifteenth century manuscript illustration

Image: Wikipedia 

Born about 1300 in the North Riding he studied at Oxford, left without a degree and, returning to his home area adopted the life of a hermit. He created his habit, to her horror, out of two of his sister’s dresses. He may have studied in Paris before returning to his home county. The 1320s when this change of life appears to have occurred were turbulent in Yorkshire with continuing Scottish raids and the political upheaval of the Earl of Lancaster’s downfall in 1322.

Having apparently spent much of his time in Richmondshire, by the late 1340s he was living at the Cistercian nunnery at Hampole close to where the main roads linking Doncaster to Pontefract and to Wakefield diverged. This was in the area of Barnsdale, notorious for its lawless predation in travellers and locals.

It is not clear if he had been ordained and was acting as chaplain, which seems more likely or whether he simply lived alongside the convent.

Rolle died on Michaelmas in 1349, probably a victim of the Black Death. In the years that followed he began to be seen as a candidate for canonisation and material was collected for his cause. In this process his former penitent Margaret Kirby was active and she later joined the Hampole community. Although never formally canonised his tomb and later shrine of ‘St Richard of Hampole’ at the priory was apparently popular with pilgrims up to the 1530s.

Hampole itself appears to have been a stable community, which still had nineteen nuns at the dissolution in 1539.

Rolle had written extensively on spiritual life, responding to a growing market for such works in fourteenth century Yorkshire, and by the fifteenth century he would appear to have been the single most widely read author in English in the country.

By then other distinguished mystical writers, notably Walter Hilton, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, and Julian of Norwich, but also not a few others such as Nicholas Love and the autobiographical Margery Kempe, were bearing witness to a lively interest in mystical experience.

 

Wikipedia has a very good, academically grounded biography of Rolle, with a good bibliography, which can be accessed at Richard Rolle

What that account makes very clear indeed is that Rolle deserves to be better known and appreciated as a writer and figure in fourteenth century life than being the rather specialist subject of Middle English scholars. His life is remarkable and fascinating, a window into the world in which he lived and moved. It is well set out in Jonathan Hughes’ stimulating Pastors and Visionaries.

Late last year Rolle was in the headlines - well some at least - with news that a complete copy of his Latin text of probably his most popular work the Emendatio vitae had been identified in the library of Shrewsbury School.

 

There are online articles, all inevitably somewhat similar, but with their own insights, about the discovery from the Daily Telegraph at Medieval manuscript discovered in Shropshire school, from the BBC at 'Priceless' medieval Shrewsbury school text found to be unique, and from Medievalists.net at Medieval Discovery: Richard Rolle’s Original Emending of Life Survives in One Copy  

ZME has an article about the discovery at Scholars Found a Lost Medieval Masterpiece Sitting on a Shelf in a British School Library and Popular Science has one at Forgotten, priceless medieval book found in school library

May Bl. Richard Rolle pray for us

The Crown of St Wenceslas

Today is the feast day of St Wenceslas, the tenth century murdered Duke of Bohemia who subsequently became the patron of Bohemia and of the Bohemian monarchy, and gaining posthumous promotion to the status of King of that realm.

Six hundred years ago following the death of his father, the blind King John from the house of Luxembourg who had acquired the title by marriage his son, who later became the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV had a new crown made for his coronation as King of Bohemia. 

In 2020 I wrote about the Emperor’s devotion to St Wenceslas in St Wenceslas and the Emperor Charles IV

 

The Emperor Charles IV

In this painting he is depicted wearing the Imperial Crown 

Image: Wikipedia 

This crown he bequeathed to the kingdom as the Crown of St Wenceslas. It is now held in the custody of the cathedral of St Vitus in Prague, where it is held in a secret chamber off the Chapel of St Wenceslas in the south transept. It is only displayed publicly on significant national occasions.

The Crown of St Wenceslas 

Image: ferrebeekeeper

  

In a way similar to the Holy Crown of St Stephen in Hungary the crown became more than a symbol but rather the enduring embodiment of sovereignty and legitimacy. The Lands of the Crown of St Wenceslas became synonymous as a phrase with the territorial integrity of the realm.

The Kings of Bohemia were traditionally crowned with it in Prague Cathedral until the earlier nineteenth century. Sometimes these liturgies occurred during the lifetime of the new monarch’s father so as to ensure hereditary succession in a traditionally elective monarchy. The last Bohemian coronation took place in 1836 when the Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria was crowned as King Ferdinand V, following the death of his father the previous year.

The Coronation of King Ferdinand V in 1836 in Prague Cathedral 

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Following the 1867 Ausgleich creating the Dual Monarchy there was the possibility in 1871 of crowning the Emperor Francis Joseph as King of Bohemia, but the ideas was abandoned. This appears to have been due fears that this would lead to moves to create a Bohemian state separate from Austria in the lines of what had happened in Hungary, and rather like Irish Home Rule and the religious divide, led to fears amongst the German speaking communities of finding themselves under Czech rule.

Unfortunately the tradition was not revived by iris quite conceivable that had the Habsburg Empire had the opportunity to evolve along confederal lines there could have been the coronations of King Karel III, King Otto  I,  and now King Karel IV.

Wikipedia has a relatively short account and description of the crown at Crown of Saint Wenceslas

I have two older posts about the crown from 2010 and 2011 respectively which give more information, particularly about how the crown was originally displayed. The argument is that it was on a bust of St Wenceslas - a companion piece to that of Charlemagne now at Aachen which has the crown of the King of the Romans.

These can be accessed at The Crown of St Wenceslas and at The Crown of St Wenceslas

 

There is another, well illustrated account of the Crown at The Crown of Saint Wenceslas

May St Wenceslas pray for Bohemia and the lands of his Crown, and for us all

Rabbiting on

 

Recently I came upon a video about the medieval, and later, husbandry of rabbits for food and fur. These methods included the creation not just of warrens but actually creating suitably dry and cosy accommodation in artificial burrows, which still remain in those areas where they were necessary such as south west England and the Pennines. 
 

By contrast the sandy soils of the East Anglian Breckland were ideal for the rabbits to burrowing, and this area appears to have been very much the leading centre of the business right down to the 1940s.

A medieval rabbit warren

Image:St Neots Museum

The video, from Medieval Way, brings out the value of the trade in rabbits and its scale, and can be seen here

There is another, quite short, online account from Medievalists.net of the way the rabbit was so important in daily life at Medieval Rabbit Farming

The pillow mounds are also described by Amusing Planet at Medieval Rabbit Warrens

By the by I recall reading many years ago when the apparently tedious and sentimental Watership Down, which its author said was not about a Nuclear Winter or other apocalyptic event, but “It’s about Rabbits”,was all the rage, of a southern English butcher who put a notice in his shop window  as follows - You Read the Book, You Saw the Film, Now Eat the Rabbit.

Good advice.

The Battle of Stamford Bridge 960

Today is the 960th anniversary of the battle of Stamford  Bridge in 1066, and the defeat by King Harold II and his army of the Norwegian force led by King Harald Hardrada - King Harald III by modern reckoning - and the death of the Norwegian monarch in the fighting.

 

Wikipedia has an account of the battle at Battle of Stamford Bridge

 

It has a biography of the much travelled Norwegian king at Harald Hardrada

There is another recent online account of King Harald Hardrada from Ed West on Substack at The greatest Norwegian

King Harold Hardrada

Image Wikipedia 

King Harald’s body was eventually returned to Norway. The church in which he was buried in Trondheim was destroyed in the reformation era and  site is now a public park. Following the recovery of the remains of King Richard III there was some talk of  

undertaking a similar project in Trondheim, but that appears to have been abandoned.

King Harold II 

Image: English monarchs.co.uk

King Harold II and his use of the English fleet has recently been explored in an article which I cannot find at present but which argued the case that after the battle King Harold II sent his troops south by sea to conserve their strength for the impending conflict with Duke William. On this basis the English troops sailed from York or the Humber to the Thames estuary to save time and energy.

Stamford Bridge is not featured in the Bayeux Tapestry but it is, of course, there in the historical background to the events depicted.

Two fifteenth century rings from a field in North Yorkshire

Medievalists.net reported in the discovery of two 
fifteenth century rings from a field at West Harlsey in the central part of the North Riding of Yorkshire.

The two rings from West Harlsey

The one on the left has enamel decoration showing the Blood of Christ. The one on the right shade St Margaret and remains of white enamel on the shoulder

Image: Medievalists.net

What makes these two gold rings interesting is that they both have remnants of the original enamel decoration which had been applied to them.    

   

Gold rings from this period quite often survive in museum collections but I am not aware of examples with enamel decoration. If this was the case it might explain the rather angular nature of the patron saints on these rings, which might have relied on the enameller to add more subtlety. Burial the the earth may have destroyed the enamnel more often than not.

The account of the discovery and of the rings can be viewed at Medieval ‘Blood of Christ’ and St Margaret Rings Discovered in England

The remains of the fifteenth century castle in West Harlsey of the Strangeways family are described and illustrated by Wikipedia at Harlsey Castle

A fourteenth century ring from Suffolk

The ITV News website recently reported about an early to mid-fourteenth century seal ring that had been found by a metal detector in Suffolk. 

The ring which appears to have belonged to Countess Maud

Image: PA, ITV

The ring, with a griffin inscribed gemstone was suggested to have belonged to Maud, or Matilda, of Lancaster, the sister of Henry of Grosmont, first  Duke of Lancaster, and a great granddaughter of King Henry III. Born about 1310 she lived until 1377.

Maud married first the Earl of Ulster, and, after his murder, Sir Robert Ufford, from a prominent Suffolk family, and an important English administrator in the Lordship of Ireland. After his death she returned to England and entered the house of Augustinian Canonesses at Campsey in eastern Suffolk, which was the Ufford family monastery. Subsequently she became a Poor Clare at Bruisyard Abbey, which she was instrumental in establishing. 

Her daughter from her first marriage, Elizabeth de Burgh, married Lionel of Antwerp, son of King Edward III, and the first Duke of Clarence.

Wikipedia has a quite detailed biography of Maud at Maud of Lancaster, Countess of Ulster .

It also has an exceptionally detailed account of Campsey at Campsey Priory, and a shorter one of the Poor Clares’ foundation at Bruisyard which can be seen at Bruisyard Abbey

The ITV report can be seen at Medieval gold ring found in field could fetch £12,000    

The Belfast Telegraph  also reported on the discovery, doubtless be cause of the Countess’ links to the medieval Ulster earldom, at Medieval gold ring discovered on April Fool’s Day to be sold at auction