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 19 March 2021

Surveying Medieval English and Welsh Monasteries


Following on from my post yesterday Valor Ecclesiasticus on the ground I have now located the next two posts in the series from Stained Glass Attitudes and I am publishing the links:

MonasteryQuest™ Pt 2: The Tudor cathedrals that almost were looks at those monastic churches which might have survived if more new dioceses had been established in the early 1540s. This is a topic which has not, I think, received the attention it deserves. Why the plan was not carried through was doubtless for crude financial reasons or through government inertia or distraction, but it would be interesting to know more as to the reasons. This post is therefore a useful contribution to that discussion.

It is once again sobering to get some idea of what was lost in terms of art and architecture, of physical and cultural history, not to mention the spiritual impact of such buildings.

MonasteryQuest™ Pt 3: Map of all houses suppressed 1535-40 considers the nature, distribution and dissolution of the medieval monasteries of England and Wales, again with photographs and plans.


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