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.


Monday, 3 February 2025

St Bede on Candlemas


Following on from my post yesterday for Candlemas I see that Christopher Howse wrote about the feast on its eve in his regular Saturday column Sacred Mysteries in the Daily Telegraph

In it, as he so often does, he links the celebration of the feast to its place in the history of the Church. In particular he highlights the writings of St Bede and the great age of Northumbrian Christianity in the seventh and eighth centuries. Thus he links the universally applicable theology of the only British Doctor of the Church, St Bede, to a surviving codex in the form of a spectacular and expensive copy of the Bible made in that Northumbrian monastic world and sent as a gift to the Pope. That in turn is an indicator of the fact that the Christians of Northumbria were very conscious of, and loyal to, their Catholic heritage.



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