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, 12 March 2022

Four Spaniards and a Saint


Four hundred years ago, on March 12th 1622, the Feast of St Gregory, Pope Gregory XV canonised five saints. Roman wags at the time described this group as “Four Spaniards and a Saint”. This comment presumably reflects an element of Roman dissatisfaction with the contemporary Spanish domination of the Italian peninsula in the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily and the Duchy of Milan, which were territories of the Spanish crown.

The Saint was, of course, the Romans very own St Philip Neri, and the four Spaniards the medieval St Isidore the Farmer, the patron Saint of Madrid, and three giants of the Catholic Reformation of the sixteenth century - St Ignatius of Loyola, St Francis Xavier and St Teresa of Avila. Rarely can a canonisation ceremony have included a group of saints  who were to be of such influence in the future life and direction of the Church.

To celebrate this quartercentenary the Oxford Oratory celebrated a Solemn Mass and Te Deum this mirning, with Jesuits and Carmelites in attendance as well as Dominicans and Franciscans. Due to my current severe bout of arthritis I was unable to physically attend but was, thanks to the wonder of the internet, to be virtually present.

Fr Dominic Jacob CO preached an excellent sermon which drew upon the lives of the five saints to show how individuals, now as in the past, can seek sanctity in their own lives by following the same principles as that group of five in their daily lives. We may not be called or able to do what they did but we can aim to be the saints God created us, individually, to be.

The YouTube link to this morning’s celebration is at Solemn Mass of the Five Saints — 400th Anniversary of Canonisation

For those who want to know more about the rather endearing figure of St Isidore - who is not as well known in the Anglophone world as the others - the Wikipedia life of him is at Isidore the Laborer

St Isidore Pray for us
St Ignatius of Loyola Pray for us
St Francis Xavier Pray for us
St Teresa of Avila Pray for us
St Philip Neri Pray for us


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