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.


Tuesday, 22 January 2013

St Vincent of Saragossa


Today is the feast of St Vincent, the third of the great martyr deacon saints along with St Stephen  and St Lawrence. Deacon to the Bishop of Saragossa and martyred in Valencia circa 304 his cult remained especially strong in Iberia.



File:Vicente de Zaragoza anonymous painting XVI century.jpeg

  St Vincent

Anonymous sixteenth century painting

Image:Wikipedia


There is an online account of him and his cult and its diffusion here.

I suspect that the Cluniac connection with the Santiago Pilgrimage may well have helped in this process of promoting his cult. It could well explain the existene of a chapel dedicated to him in the Cluniac priory in my home town of Pontefract as recorded in the twelfth century benefactions listed in the cartulary. Like other saints from beyond the region I have posted about such as St Nicholas and St George popular devotion spread very rapidly in the later eleventh and twelfth centuries across western Europe.

My previous posts about depictions of St Vincent can be seen at St Vincent, at Another red pileus and at Conferring the Diaconate



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