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, 30 December 2022

The Glastonbury Thorn


As we come in this Christmas season towards the Octave Day of Christmas and the celebration of the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God, on which the Circumcision of Out Lord took place, it seems appropriate to share a good piece from the Catholic World Report about the Holy Thorn of Glastonbury. The article can be seen at The Glastonbury Thorn: a resurrected symbol of Christmas

I have always known the story of the Holy Thorn and its Christmas flowering, long before I appreciated its incarnational imagery or visited and came to know Glastonbury. On one of my visits I did walk up to the thorn on Wearyall Hill which was subsequently vandalised as the article describes. I am very glad it has now been replaced. 

In 1996 I spent Christmas in Glastonbury and did see the thorn trees at the historic St John’s Church in flower.

There is one comment in the article which I would query. Although the first literary reference to the Thorn may be from anout 1535 I think it featured in the rich fabric of Glastonbury devotions well before that. The fourteenth century third great seal of the abbey has on one side the Blessed Virgin and Child flanked by those ever popular virgin saints in medieval devotion Catherine and Margaret and on the other side St Dunstan flanked by SS Patrick and Benignus. In this work Our Lady does not hold a fleur de lys as in earlier abbey seals but rather a tree eradicated - that is with its roots displayed - and the tree bears flowers. Though assumed by some to be roses, a flower so often associated with Our Lady, but at Glastonbury this is surely meant to signify the blossoming Holy Thorn. Thus new life is linked to the Passion, with the thorns amidst the red berries symbolic of the shedding of Christ’s blood.

This seal, of which there is a drawing at Image: Glastonbury Abbey, was the basis for the twentieth century statue of Our Lady of Glastonbury


The modern statue of Our Lady of Glastonbury


Image: paulwestonglastonbury.com 


There is an interesting travelogue, printed in an early Yorkshire Archaeological Journal ( if my memory serves me aright ), written by aYorkshireman who, after the calendar change of 1752, journeyed all the way from the West Riding in his home county to Glastonbury, to see if the Holy Thorn had adjusted itself to the new date of Christmas and was flowering when it should ….

Our Lady of Glastonbury Pray for us


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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's slightly surprising that the sprig of hawthorne sent to Buck House each year is displayed there indoors, because it has always been considered bad luck to take hawthorne flowers indoors!

I think this superstition stems from its musty, slightly unpleasant, smell, which is reminiscent of death.

John R Ramsden

31 December 2022 at 16:09
Once I was a Clever Boy said...

There was a discussion about this superstition several years ago on the Medieval Religion discussion group, especially in relation to neo-natal deaths. The suggestion there was that it was the scent of the May blossom which had the unfortunate similarity to the consequences of death in utero. There was also the point made that a hedge wow of such blond could smell quite overpowering. I cannot turn up the references off hand but I am trusting to my memory for such snippets.

7 January 2023 at 18:24

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