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, 19 August 2026

Devotion to King Henry VI


Readers will, hopefully, recall that I have shared in the past the link to articles I have had published in Mass of Ages, the magazine of the Latin Mass Society. The latest issue has another of my articles, and that will,I hope, be of interest to readers of this blog

“A prayerful, humble life” looks at the development ofdevrion to King Henry VI following his murder in 1471 and the subsequent development of a cultus, and serious attempts to get him canonised. 
 
The article is on page 8 and the autumn edition can be accessed here 
    
It is clear that King Henry was encouraged into a life of prayer and piety from his earliest years:
    
  
King Henry VI is presented by St Katherine, his mother’s patron saint, to the Virgin and Child
From the Psalter of King Henry VI, in the Royal MSS circa 1428-30 in the British Library  

The image clearly recalls the iconography of the Wilton Diptych commissioned by King Richard II a generation earlier


Image:Print Collector  

 

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