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 8 December 2022

St Birinus at Dorchester


December 5th was the feast of St Birinus, the apostle of Wessex, who is especially associated with Dorchester on Thames. In past years I have been lucky enough to attend the Solemn Mass for the feast in the wonderful Catholic Church dedicated to him there, designed by William Wardell in the middle of the nineteenth century and wondrously restored and augmented in its decoration and furnishing by its present priest Fr John Osman.

Fr Hunwicke has posted with typical style and sense of history  about St Birinus and devotion to him at Dorchester in his recent post S Birinus, of Dorchester, is celebrated on December 5


There is more about St Birinus from the Wessex Society at St Berin, Apostle of Wessex 

From that website here is the modern icon in St Birinus Church Dorchester of the saint baptising King Cynegils accompanied by his sponsor St Oswald of Northumbria:


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