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 25 July 2020

More relics of St James the Great


Having posted about the Goodyear altarpiece in Santiago de Compostella earlier I see that Gregory Dipippo has a post today on The New Liturgicsl Movement about a relic of St James which has been treasured at Pistoia in Tuscany since the mid-twelfth century. This portion of his scull and the remains of his chapel in the cathedral are described in A Famous Medieval Relic of St James the Greater

I did not know if this relic beforehand, so it was interesting to read the article.

Here in the Thames valley there still survives, miraculously, the prised relic of the Hanf of St James. This, taken from the treasure of the Holy Roman Emperors, was given by the Empress Matilda, mother of King Henry II, to the Cluniac abbey founded and endowed by her father, King Henry I, at Reading. Hidden in a wall of the ruins it was rediscovered in the eighteenth century and is now held at the Catholic church in Marlow. I have posted about it before in The Hand of St James and in More on the Holy Hand of Reading.

St James the Great Pray for us


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