St Thomas of Hereford

Today is the Feast of St Thomas of Hereford, who died in 1282, and whose canonisation in 1320 was the last of a non-martyr Englishman until that of St John Henry Newman.

I wrote about St Thomas and his well documented process of canonisation and his cult in St Thomas of Hereford in 2011, and I added to that in the following year in St Thomas of Hereford

St Thomas of Hereford

From a stained glass window commissioned by one of his successors, Thomas Spofford OSB, in 1430 for his episcopal chapel in his Manor House at Stratton Sugwas. Now in the church at Ross on Wye

Image:Flickr

Looking online I see that Wikipedia has a quite detailed account of his life and canonisation at Thomas de Cantilupe. As an article it is superior to many biographies of medieval ecclesiastical figures on that site in drawing out details of his life and career and his family connections.

This does not mention in his early preferments the church at Kirk Deighton in the central West Riding. Though he may well have had little to do with it directly it raised my awareness of him, as it is relatively close to my home area, and a handsome building in its own right. His leading role in the life of thirteenth century Oxford before his elevation to the episcopate caught my attention when studying the history of the University.

There is a really splendidly illustrated 2019 article from the website of Belmont Abbey, which lies just on the western outskirts of the city of Hereford. It is by the Dean of Hereford and  looks at the life and relics of the saint. It can be seen here

The British Medical Journal in 1990 had an interesting article which examined some of the stories of those who believed they had been saved by the intercession of St Thomas, and which looks into the medical conditions which may be being described.  Not only is that interesting but they also are revealing of incidental features of life at the time, both in Herefordshire and further afield. It can be read here

There is an excellent study of the representation of St Thomas in medieval art by Ian L. Blass in ‘Commemorating Cantilupe: England’s Other St Thomas: The Iconography of England’s Second St Thomas’ in The Antiquaries Journal, 2023, pp 1-23 © The Author(s). Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Society of Antiquaries of London.  Together with another article by the same author examining the recorded evidence for the miracles attributed to St Thomas and a recent Oxford D.Phil thesis on his cult by Andrew Fleming can all be accessed on Researchgate. net by entering that and St Thomas Cantilupe. 

May St Thomas of Hereford pray for us