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, 21 May 2025

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of the Four Tapers in St Albans


After visiting shrines on the western side of the Midlands and in the Welsh borderlands the Pilgrimage now returns to the south-east of England and to St Albans in Hertfordshire.

In what was the premier Benedictine monastery - a status it was granted by Nicholas Breakspeare, a local man who was the son of a man who entered monastic life as a widower, and who himself reigned as Pope Adrian IV from 1154 to 1159 - was the shrine of Our Lady of the Four Tapers. This has been reinstated in the former abbey which is now the Anglican diocesan cathedral .

The somewhat involved story of the Marian shrines in the medieval monastic church can be accessed through my article last year which is at Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of the Four Tapers at St Albans

May Our Lady of the Four Tapers at St Albans pray for Pope Leo XIV

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