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.
Visiting Oxford?
Allow me to be your guide... and discover the history of Oxford with an Oxford historian.
I offer a wide range of guided walks around the city and university. These can be a general introduction to the history and architecture or looking at specific themes and subjects.
I am a Catholic and a historian based in Oxford, where I am a member of Oriel College. My research, for a long delayed D.Phil., is a study of Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln in the second decade of the fifteenth century. I also work as a freelance tutor in History and as an independent tour guide.
I was received into the Church in 2005 and am a Brother of the External Oratory of St Philip Neri at the Oxford Oratory.
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
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O Lord, look unto my aid; let them be confounded and ashamed, who seek
after my soul to take it away. O Lord, look unto my aid. (The Offertory of
the Sixte...
Obituary of a very failed Pontificate
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"Nun khre methusthen kai tina per bian ponen, epei de katthane
Mursilos."Such would have been the reaction of the unchristianised Greeks.
But for us, for t...
Saint Gabriel
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The angels call for our veneration and awe as part of God’s creation. Part
of the destructive modernism of the 1970s included advice to Catholic
school t...
Prayer and Reality
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[image: Image result for kneeling "low Mass"]
"It is not the healthy who need a physician but the sick"
Jesus is supposed to be our Saviour but most of us...
Today is the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. In the Catholic tradition this absorbed the other feast, that of the Invention of the Holy Cross - Invention meaning discovery - which was celebrated on May 3rd infer Pope John XXIII. In the East these two observances are supplemented by a number of other feasts and customs, as is well set out in the Wikipedia article Feast of the Cross
I wrote in 2015 about the feast and linked to some late medieval English depictions in stained glass of the story of the True Cross. Photographed by the late Gordon Plumb these windows at Tattershall and Ashton-under-Lyne are wonderful survivals from the last years of the fifteenth and early years of the sixteenth centuries. That article can be seen at The Exaltation of the Holy Cross
In 2019 the New Liturgical Movement had a good account of the late fourteenth century frescoes dated to 1385-7 by Agnolo Gaddi on the legend of the True Cross on the side walls of the sanctuary of the great Franciscan church of Santa Croce in Florence. This can be accessed at The Legend of the True Cross, by Agnolo Gaddi
The sanctuary of Santa Croce
The Gaddi frescoes are on the flanking north and south walls*
Image: Wikipedia
*pity about the forward altar
As the author points out these were in part a source and inspiration for the more famous, if sadly damaged, series from 1447-66 by Piero della Francesca for the Franciscan church in Arezzo. These are technically superior to those by Gaddi. I posted about the Arezzo frescoes in The Legend of the True Cross
Santa Croce is one of the great churches of late medieval and Renaissance Florence and Wikipedia has a good account at Santa Croce, Florence
On a more parochial and domestic level Fr William Rock recently had an article on the FSSP website about the traditional forms of blessings for crucifixes in the home and those set up in churchyards or precincts. This can be read at Blessings of Crosses and Crucifixes
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