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.


Thursday 19 May 2011

St Dunstan


Today is the feast of that great tenth century Englishman Saint Dunstan (909-988) - Abbot of Glastonbury and Archbishop of Canterbury. Here are two posts I wrote about him last year - St Dunstan and St Dunstan addenda.

I am adding a photograph of the whole page with the self-portrait of St Dunstan prostrate at the feet of Christ from the Glastonbury classbook which is now in the Bodleian Library:


http://www.ariadne.org/cc/mss/stdunstan/dunstan-x.jpg

Note the later inscription at the top of the page about it being in the "proper hand"of St Dunstan.



No comments: