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.


Friday 22 November 2013

Rites of reburial


A friend has very kindly sent me the link to an online BBC article about the rites of reburial used in the later middle ages when bodies of those killed in battle or by the executioner subsequently received an honourable reburial. It concentrates on the work done by Dr Alexandra Buckle from St Anne's and St Hilda's here in Oxford on a seventeenth century copy in the British Library of a fifteenth century liturgy - the only one known to survive.

The specific point of interest is the proposed reburial of the bones of King Richard III following their rediscovery in Leicester. He himself would have been present when his father and brother Edmund's remains were removed from their initial burial place at the Dominican friary at Pontefract and taken to Fotheringhay in 1476. 

The article can be read here.


1 comment:

John F H H said...

Thank you for posting this fascinating piece. A little research with Google led me to
https://www.academia.edu/1987411/Entumbid_Right_Princely_The_re-interment_of_Richard_Beauchamp_earl_of_Warwick_and_a_lost_rite_in_The_Yorkist_Age_Proceedings_of_the_2011_Harlaxton_Symposium_ed._Hannes_Kleineke_and_Christian_Steer_Donington_2013_
which contains Dr.Buckle's article. I hope in the fulness of time the text of the Ordinacio servicij et observancie . . . may be available online.

Kind regards,
John