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 30 July 2020

Papal Ceremonial of Yesteryear


The New Liturgical Movement has a post today with two pieces of archive film from 1961 of a Cardinal’s Requiem in St Peter’s and of Pope John XXIII and senior figures in the hierarchy attending meetings in the Vatican.

The post can be seen at The Funeral of Cardinal Tardini, 1961

Looking at the two short films one is transported to a world that now, less than sixty years later, seems as remote as Rome before 1870 or before the 1790s or indeed of the age of St Philip Neri. In that sense it is deeply moving and sad that so much had been lost or abandoned in so short a time of the heritage of the Church, of the Holy See, and for no appreciable gain. 


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