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.


Saturday, 18 July 2020

A Bonfire of the Virgins


Returning to a theme I explored in part back in May with the virtual Marian Pilgrimage I see that Stephanie Mann has a post today on her blog Supremacy and Survival: The English Reformation that is relevant to that.

In July 18, 1538: Cromwell's Marian Bonfire  she writes about the burning of famous Marian images on this day in 1538 and similar cts of destructive iconoclasm that summer. The deeply unpleasant Hugh Latimer features quite extensively in her narrative as an enthusiastic initiator of change and one who celebrated it in his sermons. His fate is somewhat ironic - not merely burned at the stake himself in 1555 but then commemorated by a statue - a devotionsl image more or less- in 1841 just around the corner here in Oxford....


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