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.


Wednesday 18 May 2022

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Bolton in Durham Cathedral


The next stage on the Pilgrimage takes us into the main part of the cathedral at Durham to the statue of Our Lady of Bolton. This was a shrine I added to the original list last year..,,, I will now add to what I wrote then that it must have been quite large to contain an image of the Holy Trinity with a Crucifix that could be removed for the Good Friday devotions.

I understand the latest edition from the Surtees Society of the Rites of Durham sees it not as a reminiscence by a surviving member of the pre-reformation cathedral community but rather as a consciously Recusant description largely compiled by an antiquary, William Claxton, and dating from about 1590. That may well be the case but I do not think that in any way diminishes its value as a record of liturgical and devotional life in the cathedral priory both before the dissolution of the monastery and the Henricisn and Edwardian changes and before the codification after the Counvil of Trent of Catholic practice. By 1590 both processes, for very different reasons, would have made what the Rites describes seem remote.

My post about the statue can be read at Our Lady of Bolton in Durham Cathedral

Our Lady of Bolton Pray for us


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