Henry of Blois

Today marks the 850th anniversary of the death in 1171 of Henry of Blois, Abbot of Glastonbury from 1126 and Bishop of Winchester from 1129.

Bishop Henry of Blois as depicted in the late fourteenth century Benefacors Book of St Albans Abbey

Image: Wikipedia

Born about 1096 this grandson of King William the Conqueror adopted Cluniac monasticism as his vocation and as a young man was rapidly promoted, directly or indirectly, by his uncle King Henry I to Glastonbury and Winchester. When his brother King Stephen took the throne he was to play a significant part in the ensuing wars, being a ‘Kingmaker’ in his own day. An ambitious Papal Legate for a number of years he was also a great supporter of the abbey at Cluny. A munificent patron of learning and the visual arts, a collector of Classical sculpture whilst visiting Rome, and, as founder of St Cross Hospital, a benefactor whose philanthropy still flourishes in his see city.

The Wikipedia biography can be read at Henry of Blois

Two enamelled plaques of about 1150 that appear to be a gift from him are described and discussed at Henry Blois and the Meusan Plates or Mosan Plaques

It is perhaps surpring that it is only recently that he has once again attracted scholarly interest from historians. His long and well nigh unique career - perhaps the closest is that of another Bishop of Winchester, Cardinal Beaufort in the fifteenth century - links the age of the Investiture Contest and the great age of Cluny across to the era of Becket’s clash with King Henry II resulting in his martyrdom and the reaction of the Schoolmen to the issues involved. Few men of his era had such a range of contact with the leading figures of the age in both the Church and in public life. In an age when anything approaching national boundaries scarcely existed he was securely cosmopolitan, equally at home in the courts of his family at Blois, of King Henry I, the Papal Curia, the cloisters of Cluny and Winchester, or in the castles he built, and conversing with the artists he sponsored.