St Louis 800

Today is the eighth centenary of the death of King Louis VIII of France, and the accession of his eldest son as King Louis IX. The new king was twelve and his mother, Queen Blanche of Castile, became regent. Three weeks after his accession he was crowned at Reims. In contrast to the three year reign of his father he was to reign for forty four years until his death whilst on Crusade in 1270, and just exceeding the forty three year reign of his grandfather King Philip II. Their two reigns were two of the most consequential for the French monarchy and key to its formation of France as a state. In another respect he outdid his father and grandfather being canonised in 1297, and became a focus of French Catholic and royal devotion.

King Louis IX

Queen Blanche

The two portraits are from the Bible of St Louis

and are dated to 1226-34

Images: Wikimedia Commons

I wrote at length about the Bible of St Louis in an article on this blog to mark his feast day in 2014. Unfortunately many of the illustrations have disappeared but the text is still accessible at St Louis and his Bible

Wikipedia has a useful biography of St Louis which not only gives a biography but also outlines the development of royal administration during his reign. This was in part at least directly inspired by the king himself. It can be read at Louis IX of France

An early fourteenth century polychrome statue 

of St Louis. The colour has faded and the fleurons on the crown have been broken off

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Another view of the statue showing more of the decoration of the royal mantle. Presumably the missing hands carried the royal sceptre and the Hand of Justice. The wry smile is an attractive feature, and indicative of the man described in Joinville’s memoir which was commissioned by King Philip IV

Image: Flickr

Every subsequent King of France has been a direct descendant of St Louis. The Valois dynasty descended from his grandson, the younger brother of King Philip IV in 1328, whilst his great great grandson King Edward III of  England advanced his own Plantagenet claim. In 1589 the crown passed to the descendants of his youngest son, Robert, Count of Clermont, in the House of Bourbon. Through these lines and many marriages St Louis is thus an ancestor of all English monarchs from 1327 and of Scottish monarchs from 1437, of nearly all Portuguese monarchs from 1433, of all the branches of the Bourbons and of the Habsburgs, together with those lines in modern times descended from Queen Victoria and King Christian IX.

His acquisition of the Crown of Thorns brought that relic from the East to Paris and to the shrine church St Louis created for it in the Sainte Chapelle. It is now in the care of Notre Dane de Paris, and was rescued from the devastating fire of a few years ago.

 

The Crown of Thorns 

Image: Wikimedia Commons

  

Of St Louis himself Notre Dame also possesses a remarkable survival, which was also saved from the flames. This is one of the king’s shirts, and has been recorded as such since 1480, and there is no reason to doubt that it is of thirteenth century provenance. Although missing a sleeve it is in good condition and quite moving to see just the other side of the glass in an exhibition case in the cathedral. 

Wikipedia has an article about it at Shirt of Saint Louis. That links to a much more detailed study which can be accessed at Another Look at St. Louis' Shirt

The shirt of St Louis

Image: Wikipedia 

If readers want to know more about the Saint King I would heartily recommend the memoir written by his Crusading companion Jean de Joinville and available in translation from Penguin. 

There are modern biographies by Margaret Wade Labarge and by Jacques Le Goff.

Statue of St Louis dated to 1275-1325 from the Grand Reliquary of the Sainte Chapelle. It is suggested this may be the best near contemporary likeness. There appears to be a family resemblance to the effigy at St Denis of his grandson King Philip IV

Image: Ad Imaginem Dei

May St Louis pray for France, for his descendants and for us all

Today is appointed for the liturgical commemoration of Bl. Salvio Huix Mirelpeix C.O., the Oratorian Bishop of Lleida martyred along with twenty of his clergy in the opening weeks of the Spanish Civil War. I wrote about their deaths on the ninetieth anniversary in August in my article Bl. Salvio Huix Mirelpeix

Bl.Salvio Huix Mirelpeix 

Image: santiebeati.it

I have now found another, illustrated, account of his life and death on a Brazilian website - but with an English translation included - and which can be accessed at Beato Salvio Huix-Miralpeix, Bispo e Mártir

The Mass and Benediction in Bl. Salvio’s honour at the Oxford Oratory was celebrated by Fr Dominic Jacob C.O., who has a longstanding devotion to the martyr. At the conclusion of his homily Fr Dominic told the congregation that the lace decorated alb he was wearing was one which had belonged to Bl.Salvio, and of his sense of the privilege of being able to wear it.

May Bl. Salvio and his fellow martyrs continue to pray for the Spanish Church and Realm, for the Oratorian congregation, and for us all

How things have changed…

 

Looking at my Substack feed yesterday I was struck by this post from Alexander Thompson, which can be read below:

How much do you think the average working-class 12-year-old boy read a year in 1940? 

The total is ridiculously enormous. According to Jenkinson’s 1940 study:

48 books for pleasure 

24 books in quiet reading time in school

9-12 books in literature class 

48 “boys magazines” (also known as ‘bloods’)

13 periodical hobby magazines 

26 newspapers 

The 1570 boys studied by Jenkinson read 7371 books a month - and the girls read even more! 

What were they reading? A vast mixture of high and low-brow fiction. Firm favourites included Robinson Crusoe, David Copperfield, Sherlock Holmes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays; Treasure Island; and Gulliver’s Travels. 

I am often reminded of how the past is a foreign country. I can hardly believe these figures, yet Jenkinson did not regard them as particularly impressive. If anything they “needed improvement”. Hence the wholesome reading strategies of the inner-city teacher:

During the first year [of middle school] there is little difficulty. The boys are unsophisticated, avid, joyous in their reading. Moreover, we give them suitable stuff to read – ballads, simple lyrics, the jollier narrative verse (e.g. “Horatius, John Gilpin, the Pied piper, Goblin Market, stories of Greece, Rome, of the Norsemen, of Robin Hood”).

 I shared it with some friends and think it may be of interest to readers of this blog. It was quite an eye-opener to see how the formation of young people has changed, and not, I think, and indeed fear, for the better.

This study antedates the famed 1944 Education Act, let alone the fickle educational policies of successive British governments of all configurations. I know it is before the advent of the restored television service of the1950s, but, alas, television these days has lost the moral seriousness ithad in the 1950s and 1960s, or the quality adaptations of classic books and dramas from the 1970s and 1980s 

The Internet offers so much, but so much therein is bad or just lazy ‘click bait’. 

Reading the post made me all the more grateful for The Queen’s initiatives to get young, and not so young people reading.

The Coronation of King Henry III in 1216

Following the death of King John, who on his deathbed entrusted the care of his son and heir to William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, the deceased monarch was taken, again as he had requested, for burial at Worcester Cathedral under the direction of the Earl.

The effigy of William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke in the Temple Church in London. 

Image: Wikipedia 

 

Meanwhile King John’s heir, his elder son Henry was living with his mother Queen Isabella at Corfe Castke in Dorset. Given that the French Prince Louis controlled the south-east and had been invited to invade with the promise of the crown by the barons opposed to the late king there was urgency to get the boy crowned as it was still coronation rather than accession which made a monarch. This was in fact the last time this was a factor: in 1272 King Edward I automatically succeeded his father whilst in the Holy Land on Crusade and did not return to England to be crowned until 1274.

With Westminster Abbey inaccessible to the royalist party the coronation was arranged at Gloucester Abbey on this day in 1216. The abbey of St Peter at Gloucester - since 1541 it has been Gloucester Cathedral - had long established links with the monarchy. It often hosted the Christmas ‘crown wearing’ court, most famously in 1085 when the Conqueror had commissioned the Domesday Survey, and in later years the abbey also was the place Parliament met in 1278, 1378, and 1407.

Given that many of the royal party were at Worcester and the new king and his mother in Dorset it was a convenient place to meet up and was a confluence of routes.

 

Preparations were hasty, and part of King John’s treasure and chapel furnishings had apparently been lost in the Wash at the beginning of the month. In an absence of a crown, or one at least that fitted the nine year old King Henry III was to be crowned with a circlet belonging to his mother.

Archbishop Stephen Langton of Canterbury was in exile on the continent, and Archbishop Walter de Gray of York presumably out of reach in the north the actual coronation was assigned to the most senior suffragen of Canterbury who was in attendance. This was Bishop Peter des Roches of Winchester, who had been the young King’s tutor. Also in attendance was the Papal Legate, Cardinal Guala Becchieri.

The date chosen was presumably the closest feast day: coronations if not held on a Sunday were often on a major feast such as Christmas Day for King William I or Ascension Day for King John. Friday October 28th was the day of SS Simon and Jude, as the feast of two Apostles, and chosen in preference to the following Sunday or All Saints Day the following Tuesday.

Before the coronation liturgy William Marshal knighted the young King. Inside the abbey church the anointing was performed not be the Bishop of Winchester but by two other diocesans, the newly enthroned Benedictine monk Sylvester Bishop of Worcester and the Italian born Simon of Apulia, Bishop of Exeter. Following that Bishop des Roches crowned King Henry III. 

The mutilated effigy of Bishop Peter des Roches in Winchester Cathedral

Image: Wikipedia 

An innovation was the new monarch paying homage to the Pope as his overlord under the terms of his father’s accord with the late Pope Innocent III.

The coronation of King Henry III in 1216

A stained glass by J.R. Clayton from 1860 in the nave of Gloucester Cathedral

Image: Facebook 

Detail of the central panel

Image: meisterdrucke.uk

The complete window in the south aisle

Image: Facebook

  

This was the last English coronation not to be held in Westminster Abbey. The somewhat improvised liturgy was considered possibly lacking and, following the peace of 1217, on May 17th 1220, and at the insistence of Pope Honorius III the King was crowned again at Westminster, although I think he may not have been anointed afresh. 

The second coronation of King Henry III in 1220

Image: meanderinthroughtime.weebly.com

The court was still at Gloucester on November 11 when the Earl of Pembroke was appointed rector regis et regni and appointed Peter des Roches as tutor to the King.

According to the verse biography of William Marshal written a few years later and following his death in 1219 the Earl was initially pessimistic about his chances, but then said that if the worst came about he would carry the boy king on his shoulders and island hop along the west coast of the country. By this time the Earl was about seventy. As it turned out this was not necessary as the royalist army defeated the rebels and their French allies at the battle of Lincoln in 1217, followed by the naval victory over the French fleet off Sandwich. This, combined with political moves such as the reissue of Magna Carta the same year, brought peace and ensured King Henry III’s tenure of the throne.

The abbey church which witnessed this hasty coronation has been substantially changed since 1216, with thirteenth century vaulting and aisle windows and the marvellous transformation of the sanctuary, choir and transepts in the mid-fourteenth century and the great central tower and Lady Chapel added in the fifteenth century. At first sight the most obvious features that still survive from 1216 are the cylindrical nave pillars, akin to those a few miles north at Tewkesbury Abbey. However a stroll around the choir aisles reveals more of the Norman church behind the great fourteenth century re-packaging that faces the choir.

The nave of Gloucester Cathedral 

Image: gloucestercathedral.org.uk

So began the fifty six year long reign of King Henry III, one which was to profoundly shape the future of the  monarchy and the realm.

The effigy of King Henry III

on his tomb in Westminster Abbey

Image: Dean and Chapter of Westminster 

Anthony van den Wyngaerde’s view of London

I was looking online for a view of early sixteenth century London, and more especially for that drawn by 

Anthony van den Wyngaerde in the 1540s. This was  probably done about 1543 - as well as later depictions of royal residences from 1562. In the search I   came.upon a useful and informative article.

.

The author suggests the drawing may have originated with a commission from King Henry VIII, and may have been intended as the basis for a mural of London in one of the King’s palaces. What appears to be the preliminary or draft sketch is ten feet long. 

The  Ashmolean Museum acquired it at auction in Antwerp in the early nineteenth century. It is often reproduced in part in books on the mid-sixteenth century. Drawn only a few years after the suppression of the monasteries it is an also a valuable resource for envisaging late medieval London when the mendicant orders were still a thriving part of civic life.

The article can be accessed at A picture is worth a thousand words: Drawing Tudor Royal Gardens…

One section that is not reproduced in the blog is that showing St Paul’s with its spire - lost as a result of lightning causing a fire in June 1561. It shows clearly how the cathedral dominated much of London as well as the more distant prospect.

St Paul’s Cathedral 

St Mary Overy, now Southwark Cathedral, can be seen to the bottom right, with Winchester House to the left. Suffolk House, the property of the King's brother-in-law, is at the centre base

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Ridge and furrow

Medieval Way has a new and informative video about ridge-and-furrow cultivation in the English midlands in the medieval and early modern periods before the enclosures of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries created so much of the landscape we recognise today.

Ploughing in the common fields

This may be depicting the plough team turning onto the  headland

Image:thegraceofironclothing.wordpress.com

The video explains the thinking behind the earlier system and illustrates the mechanics of creating the all-important strips, with their ridges and furrows, and what can still be seen by field walking or aerial photography.

The video can be seen at Medieval Way

There is an online 2013 article from Medieval Histories about adding to academic understanding of the significance of the heavy plough between the tenth and the fourteenth centuries which can be seen at The Heavy Plough and the Economic Development AD 900 -1300

The death and burial of King John

During the night of October 18th-19th 1216 as a storm raged outside King John breathed his last at Newark Castle. He was in the midst of a campaign march heading north but was suffering from dysentery which had taken hold of his system whilst he was at Lynn in East Anglia nine days earlier. On his journey towards Newark he had lost a part at least of his baggage train in the treacherous sands of the Wellstream which flowed into The Wash.

The effigy of King John in Worcester Cathedral 

Dated to 1232

Image: Dean and Chapter of Worcester 

The King was forty nine and, until laid low by illness, had been energetically fighting against those of his nobles who had rejected his authority and invited Louis of France, son and heir to King Philip II, to replace him. Louis’ wife, Blanche of Castile, was King John’s niece and a granddaughter of King Henry II and Queen Eleanor.

Wikipedia has a good biography of King John which appears well grounded in current academic studies of the reign, and of the personality of this ever-intriguing monarch. There is also an up to date bibliography. It can be seen at John, King of England

From it one senses that none of his biographers and historians can fail but to find at least one serious personality failing in King John, and that these contributed to his political, diplomatic and military failures. Nevertheless modern historians do recognise his energy and inventiveness in government - often in order to secure money - and that his reign witnessed an expansion of the royal administration. 

For long the subject of the scorn of near contemporary monastic chroniclers and of high-minded nineteenth century academics maybe it has required the moral ambiguities and uncertainties of the twentieth century to re-humanise King John.

It is always dangerous for historians to seek to identify illnesses and mental conditions in their subjects, especially eight centuries ago, but I wonder if King John suffered from one of the non-incapacitating personality disorders of which we hear so much these days. His mood swings and at times hyper active behaviour might suggest that. Of course it could be simply that he had red hair - that can indicate, as I understand it, in all seriousness, a recognisably distinct medical personality.

Following the King’s death his body was embalmed by his physician, the Cistercian Abbot of Croxden, and who took the internal organs for burial at his monastery.

The burial place for the body was more difficult. With the loss of his lands in France the Angevin family monastery at Fontevraud where he had been educated as a child and which held the remains of his parents and predecessor, as well, later on, of his widow, was not practical. The family association remained as King John’s son King Henry III had his heart buried there in the 1270s.

For the same reason Rouen Cathedral where his elder brother the Young King is buried was not possible.

In England the King’s own Cistercian foundation at Beaulieu in Hampshire was not easily accessible in the wartime conditions then prevailing.

It appears to have been the Abbot of Croxden who asked if the dying monarch would wish to be buried in the cathedral at Worcester. This was a place to which he was attached, having prayed at the recently canonised St Wulfstan’s shrine in 1207, funded repairs to the monastic buildings, and spent Christmas there in 1214. It was also, with its two saints in St Oswald and St Wulfstan, church with an English identity, and, for all his strong desire to regain his lost territories in France, King John had also begun to emphasise his role as an English ruler. To this proposal the King agreed, and it was to Worcester that his body was taken, escorted by some of his mercenaries.

The King’s will, which is preserved at Worcester Cathedral 

Image: Dean and Chapter of Worcester 

There are videos about the burial, the tomb and its subsequent openings in 1529 and 1797 from

History Calling at History Calling and from The Antiquary at Opening the Tomb of King John

There is more about the events of the days leading up to the royal demise and those which followed as well as more on the tomb at King John's Bones

The effigy from a slightly different angle

Image: Pinterest

Fabric from the garments that King John was clothed in removed from his tomb in 1797. The animal appears to be an heraldic lion.

Image: Dean and Chapter of Worcester 

The arrangements for the King’s burial brings back the stories of his alleged impiety and lack of attention during the celebration of Mass. Possibly, like his great great uncle King William II, whom he may have resembled physically, he was impatient to do other things. His verbal impiety may reflect something of his upbringing, and the twelfth century Goliard tradition of irreverent literature such as The Gospel according to the Mark of Silver. It may also indicate a cutting sense of humour that was lost on others.

In that respect he may be similar to the Emperor Frederick II who scandalised many churchmen by his 

attitudes in succeeding decades. By contrast King John’s son King Henry III and his near contemporary King Louis IX were notably pious in ways that would be very different. 

Despite the chronicle tradition of shock at his impiety he seems often to be conventionally devout, a patron of the Croxden Cistercians from the beginning of his reign up to his care by the Abbot on his deathbed, and the founder of another Cistercian house, the sizeable one at Beaulieu. 

He was on one occasion reproved by the Carthusian St Hugh of Lincoln when the saint told him not to trust in an amulet the King wore to keep him safe but in the living stone which is Christ, and he left a lengthy sermon preached at him by St Hugh on the duties of kingship. Nevertheless in that same year, 1200, he was a pall bearer at the bishop’s funeral, escorting the body from London to Lincoln.

Whether the deaths for which he is usually deemed particularly responsible, notably of his nephew Arthur of Brittany and of Matilda de Briouse and one of her son, and which are discussed as to their accuracy by History Calling here and here respectively weighed on his mind in his last hours is unknowable. What can be said is that for all the tyranny and horror of both instances, and which contributed to his dreadful reputation, worse was to come from some of his descendants, such as King Edward II in his last years, very probably King Richard III, and was as nothing to the events of the sixteenth century.

Similarly the reports of his promiscuity - evidenced by a number of illegitimate children - on closer examination appear to be from before his accession and before his marriage to Isabella of Angoulême. In that he appears similar to his great grandfather King Henry I, whose vast progeny of children born out of wedlock pre-dated his accession and marriage. 

King John may indeed not have been virtuous but he does not need to be made monstrous.

His reign was a turning point in English history. If Magna Carta came to be seen as a foundational constitutional document that was no thanks to King John, but the loss of most of his landed inheritance in France left his successors with the matter of safeguarding what remained and seeking how to recover those in the hands of the French crown. For the King of France their acquisition made possible the formation of an increasingly powerful and centralised realm - until the English returned with not just an army but a claim to the crown of France. The death of King John was not just the end of one man’s life and of an age but the beginning of a myth about a man and the forging of a new era.

“Putting it all back” at the Oxford Oratory

 It was about a month ago that the Oxford Oratory publicly launched its “Putting it all back” restoration of the sanctuary in the church of St Aloysius.

Several years of planning have gone into this phase of the scheme, and it is clearly at the heart of the project.

The ceiling painting and the reredos were restored several years ago, with the statues being removed for conservation, with missing features restored and the highlight gilding renewed, as was that on the wall beneath. 

In essence the sanctuary will be restored to its original appearance with the High Altar against the wall of the apse and its structural setting recreated. Details of the plans can be seen at Putting it all back

I was one of those who wrote in to the Diocesan advisory committee strongly in support of the project - slightly unusual for me as when I usually write about planning proposals in the secular sphere it is to oppose them… That must have been about five years ago. 

In the intervening time of waiting the spandrel paintings on the side walls have been uncovered and restored. They, like much of the interior decoration of the church, had been painted over in the 1960s or 70s.

The sanctuary has now been screened off and a temporary altar erected in front of it for the time the work takes to complete.

From this week’s Parish E-newsletter:

Progress on the sanctuary is now quite hard to miss.

The previous altar has been completely dismantled and its concrete foundations are now visible. The old flooring has been salvaged. The walls crossing the sanctuary supported the floor and will support the new one. The ledge that formerly held the tabernacle has been taken down. It was surrounded by (now rare) English alabaster pieces recycled from the original altar. These are too small to form any part of the new altar, but they’ve been saved to be reused for something else in the future. The tabernacle will be heading off for restoration soon.

Meanwhile good progress is being made on the apse repairs too, especially the stained glass repairs, despite our poor conservationist being subjected to four seasons per day on top of our scaffolding this week!

Image and text, slightly amended, from the Oxford Oratory website