The death and burial of King John

During the night of October 18th-19th 1216 as a storm raged outside King John breathed his last at Newark Castle. He was in the midst of a campaign march heading north but was suffering from dysentery which had taken hold of his system whilst he was at Lynn in East Anglia nine days earlier. On his journey towards Newark he had lost a part at least of his baggage train in the treacherous sands of the Wellstream which flowed into The Wash.

The effigy of King John in Worcester Cathedral 

Dated to 1232

Image: Dean and Chapter of Worcester 

The King was forty nine and, until laid low by illness, had been energetically fighting against those of his nobles who had rejected his authority and invited Louis of France, son and heir to King Philip II, to replace him. Louis’ wife, Blanche of Castile, was King John’s niece and a granddaughter of King Henry II and Queen Eleanor.

Wikipedia has a good biography of King John which appears well grounded in current academic studies of the reign, and of the personality of this ever-intriguing monarch. There is also an up to date bibliography. It can be seen at John, King of England

From it one senses that none of his biographers and historians can fail but to find at least one serious personality failing in King John, and that these contributed to his political, diplomatic and military failures. Nevertheless modern historians do recognise his energy and inventiveness in government - often in order to secure money - and that his reign witnessed an expansion of the royal administration. 

For long the subject of the scorn of near contemporary monastic chroniclers and of high-minded nineteenth century academics maybe it has required the moral ambiguities and uncertainties of the twentieth century to re-humanise King John.

It is always dangerous for historians to seek to identify illnesses and mental conditions in their subjects, especially eight centuries ago, but I wonder if King John suffered from one of the non-incapacitating personality disorders of which we hear so much these days. His mood swings and at times hyper active behaviour might suggest that. Of course it could be simply that he had red hair - that can indicate, as I understand it, in all seriousness, a recognisably distinct medical personality.

Following the King’s death his body was embalmed by his physician, the Cistercian Abbot of Croxden, and who took the internal organs for burial at his monastery.

The burial place for the body was more difficult. With the loss of his lands in France the Angevin family monastery at Fontevraud where he had been educated as a child and which held the remains of his parents and predecessor, as well, later on, of his widow, was not practical. The family association remained as King John’s son King Henry III had his heart buried there in the 1270s.

For the same reason Rouen Cathedral where his elder brother the Young King is buried was not possible.

In England the King’s own Cistercian foundation at Beaulieu in Hampshire was not easily accessible in the wartime conditions then prevailing.

It appears to have been the Abbot of Croxden who asked if the dying monarch would wish to be buried in the cathedral at Worcester. This was a place to which he was attached, having prayed at the recently canonised St Wulfstan’s shrine in 1207, funded repairs to the monastic buildings, and spent Christmas there in 1214. It was also, with its two saints in St Oswald and St Wulfstan, church with an English identity, and, for all his strong desire to regain his lost territories in France, King John had also begun to emphasise his role as an English ruler. To this proposal the King agreed, and it was to Worcester that his body was taken, escorted by some of his mercenaries.

The King’s will, which is preserved at Worcester Cathedral 

Image: Dean and Chapter of Worcester 

There are videos about the burial, the tomb and its subsequent openings in 1529 and 1797 from

History Calling at History Calling and from The Antiquary at Opening the Tomb of King John

There is more about the events of the days leading up to the royal demise and those which followed as well as more on the tomb at King John's Bones

The effigy from a slightly different angle

Image: Pinterest

Fabric from the garments that King John was clothed in removed from his tomb in 1797. The animal appears to be an heraldic lion.

Image: Dean and Chapter of Worcester 

The arrangements for the King’s burial brings back the stories of his alleged impiety and lack of attention during the celebration of Mass. Possibly, like his great great uncle King William II, whom he may have resembled physically, he was impatient to do other things. His verbal impiety may reflect something of his upbringing, and the twelfth century Goliard tradition of irreverent literature such as The Gospel according to the Mark of Silver. It may also indicate a cutting sense of humour that was lost on others.

In that respect he may be similar to the Emperor Frederick II who scandalised many churchmen by his 

attitudes in succeeding decades. By contrast King John’s son King Henry III and his near contemporary King Louis IX were notably pious in ways that would be very different. 

Despite the chronicle tradition of shock at his impiety he seems often to be conventionally devout, a patron of the Croxden Cistercians from the beginning of his reign up to his care by the Abbot on his deathbed, and the founder of another Cistercian house, the sizeable one at Beaulieu. 

He was on one occasion reproved by the Carthusian St Hugh of Lincoln when the saint told him not to trust in an amulet the King wore to keep him safe but in the living stone which is Christ, and he left a lengthy sermon preached at him by St Hugh on the duties of kingship. Nevertheless in that same year, 1200, he was a pall bearer at the bishop’s funeral, escorting the body from London to Lincoln.

Whether the deaths for which he is usually deemed particularly responsible, notably of his nephew Arthur of Brittany and of Matilda de Briouse and one of her son, and which are discussed as to their accuracy by History Calling here and here respectively weighed on his mind in his last hours is unknowable. What can be said is that for all the tyranny and horror of both instances, and which contributed to his dreadful reputation, worse was to come from some of his descendants, such as King Edward II in his last years, very probably King Richard III, and was as nothing to the events of the sixteenth century.

Similarly the reports of his promiscuity - evidenced by a number of illegitimate children - on closer examination appear to be from before his accession and before his marriage to Isabella of Angoulême. In that he appears similar to his great grandfather King Henry I, whose vast progeny of children born out of wedlock pre-dated his accession and marriage. 

King John may indeed not have been virtuous but he does not need to be made monstrous.

His reign was a turning point in English history. If Magna Carta came to be seen as a foundational constitutional document that was no thanks to King John, but the loss of most of his landed inheritance in France left his successors with the matter of safeguarding what remained and seeking how to recover those in the hands of the French crown. For the King of France their acquisition made possible the formation of an increasingly powerful and centralised realm - until the English returned with not just an army but a claim to the crown of France. The death of King John was not just the end of one man’s life and of an age but the beginning of a myth about a man and the forging of a new era.

“Putting it all back” at the Oxford Oratory

 It was about a month ago that the Oxford Oratory publicly launched its “Putting it all back” restoration of the sanctuary in the church of St Aloysius.

Several years of planning have gone into this phase of the scheme, and it is clearly at the heart of the project.

The ceiling painting and the reredos were restored several years ago, with the statues being removed for conservation, with missing features restored and the highlight gilding renewed, as was that on the wall beneath. 

In essence the sanctuary will be restored to its original appearance with the High Altar against the wall of the apse and its structural setting recreated. Details of the plans can be seen at Putting it all back

I was one of those who wrote in to the Diocesan advisory committee strongly in support of the project - slightly unusual for me as when I usually write about planning proposals in the secular sphere it is to oppose them… That must have been about five years ago. 

In the intervening time of waiting the spandrel paintings on the side walls have been uncovered and restored. They, like much of the interior decoration of the church, had been painted over in the 1960s or 70s.

The sanctuary has now been screened off and a temporary altar erected in front of it for the time the work takes to complete.

From this week’s Parish E-newsletter:

Progress on the sanctuary is now quite hard to miss.

The previous altar has been completely dismantled and its concrete foundations are now visible. The old flooring has been salvaged. The walls crossing the sanctuary supported the floor and will support the new one. The ledge that formerly held the tabernacle has been taken down. It was surrounded by (now rare) English alabaster pieces recycled from the original altar. These are too small to form any part of the new altar, but they’ve been saved to be reused for something else in the future. The tabernacle will be heading off for restoration soon.

Meanwhile good progress is being made on the apse repairs too, especially the stained glass repairs, despite our poor conservationist being subjected to four seasons per day on top of our scaffolding this week!

Image and text, slightly amended, from the Oxford Oratory website

Archbishop of Birmingham sanctions a Sarum Mass

The Advaticanum website reports that the Archbishop of Birmingham has agreed in principle to the celebration of a Sarum Use - or Rite - Mass within his diocese. 

The story has been picked up by other Catholic websites, but the original article from Advaticanum can be read at Archbishop of Birmingham, UK, gives approval for celebration of medieval Sarum Mass

A page from a Sarum Missal

Image: Cheetham’s Library

The account of recent celebrations includes two by permission of the then Archbishop in 1996 and 1997 in 

the glorious chapel of Merton College in Oxford. I was able to attend those two offerings of the Mass and it was a great privilege, and indeed a beautiful experience, to witness the liturgy of medieval England in a building created for just such a celebration. On the basis of those two occasions I think there can be no doubt that other such celebrations would be very popular.

Photographs from the video  - which can be found online - of the second of these Masses, that of Candlemas in 1997, together with some notes about the Sarum Use, can be seen by scrolling down at Sarum Rite

Properly speaking it is a Use, variant form of the Roman Rite rather than a distinct Rite like Milan, Lyons, or Braga, or the Spanish Mozarabic Rite at Toledo - and akin to the Traditional Dominican form. At the Council of Constance in 1414-17 the different ‘nations’ celebrated Mass according to their home usage and members of other ‘nations’ were especially impressed by the beauty of the English celebration.

Violent death of a bishop in London in 1326

Seven centuries ago the London of 1326 was falling into chaos. The invasion of the country led by the Queen, Isabella of France, and her lover Roger Mortimer, having landed at Orwell, swept through Suffolk, Cambridge and Oxford, and the government had virtually abandoned London.

  

 

  

Queen Isabella

  

A label stop in Beverley Minster

Image: rebeccastarrbrown.com

Her husband, King Edward II and his close adviser Hugh Despenser the Younger, had fled westwards to Gloucester. The former Treasurer, Bishop Walter Stapledon of Exeter, was left in London together with his brother. Both men were in their sixties. As a figure very much associated with the collapsing government Stapledon and his properties in and close to London came under attack. He was also seen as an opponent by the Queen as a result of some of his actions the previous year when she had been in exile at the court of her brother King Charles IV.

As was their wont the population of London was hostile to the government of the day and on October 15th that by now intense hostility was to claim the lives of the Bishop, his brother who was a judge, and at least two of their servants.

The effigy of Bishop Walter Stapledon 

on his tomb in Exeter Cathedral 

Image: Wikipedia 

There is a detailed account of their murders on Kathryn Warner’s Edward II blog at The Murder of Walter Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter, 15 October 1326

According to Walter Stapledon’s modern biographer he was beheaded at the Cross in Cheapside with a bread knife. Since reading that over thirty years ago I have never looked at a bread knife in quite the same way.

Stapledon’s head was reportedly sent to Queen Isabella at Bristol as proof of his death.

 Wikipedia has illustrated biographies of the Bishop and his brother at Walter Stapledon and at Richard Stapledon

Bishop Stapledon has left two enduring monuments. 

The first is the presbytery and choir, with its throne and stalls at Exeter Cathedral. Taking his inspiration no doubt from the Lady Chapel built by a previous bishop a generation earlier the Devon-born Stapledon began the rebuilding of the whole cathedral in the latest style. All that survives of the previous structure are the distinctive transeptal towers. It fell to his successor Bishop John Grandisson to complete the nave in the succeeding decades.

The second is Exeter College in Oxford. Founded in 1314 by the bishop and his brother, and originally known as Stapledon Hall, this was intended to provide for clerical students from the counties of Devon and Cornwall, which comprised the diocese of Exeter. It is the fourth oldest in date of the constituent colleges of the University. 

The Battle of Hastings

As the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum is the hottest ticket in town at the moment it seems appropriate to write about the central event it depicts, the Battle of Hastings, fought in this day 960 years ago in 1066.

The death of King Harold II

The King is the figure being cut down in the right. The standing figure apparently with an arrow in his eye is the result of nineteenth century restoration - originally what is now an arrow was a spear the figure was throwing

Image: Wikipedia 

Duke William, if he did not know it already, took over the most sophisticated royal government in Europe, and being the intelligent and practical man that he was as King William he kept it in place and learned how to use it. Domesday Book may be a great monument to the Normans, but they could not have created it without the institutions created and nurtured by the Anglo-Saxons.

 

The Norman cavalry face the English foot soldiers 

 

Image: historic-uk.com

The battle saw the destruction of much of the military elite of the English realm. Those who survived or were not present were to often go into exile in the years following, but some, with varying success, made their peace with the new dispensation. At least one great English Whig aristocratic family which claims its ancestor fought alongside Duke William at Hastings has been shown by twentieth century scholarship to be of northern English origin who acquired a more glamorous pedigree over the centuries.

The heat and fury, and also the casualties, of the battle

Image: britannica.com

   

There can be no doubt that what happened on the battlefield at Hastings was one of the most momentous events in the history of England, and, by extension, of the British Isles. Virtually everything which has happened since that day is either directly a consequence of the Norman victory, or indirectly conditioned by it. The survival of English as a language, of some national institutions such as the Monarchy and parts of the Common Law and, surprisingly, many Anglo-Saxon churches is a tribute to the vigour and resilience of the kingdom the Duke of Normandy had conquered.

 

The link with Normandy and, consequently, with the Angevin territories shaped the English medieval centuries and the continuing relationship with Europe. Without Hastings there would be little likelihood of such images of national identity as Crécy, Poitiers and, above all, Agincourt. The French territories may have been lost, but the memory shaped the sense of nationhood.

By linking England to the mainstream of European thought and culture England itself, and then the rest of the British Isles, were integrated into the ecclesiastical, cultural and intellectual world of western Europe, and played a major part in transmitting those ideas to Scandinavia.

Within the British Isles the Normans were to have both direct and indirect impact on Wales, in Scotland, and Ireland. These were the new frontiers for territorial and cultural expansion, but yet again, building on Anglo-Saxon precedents.

The sharp distinction between Norman and Saxon so beloved of seventeenth century radicals, nineteenth century novelists and twentieth century filmmakers does seem to have faded quite rapidly. The wealth of England which attracted invaders had already seen successful Danish invasions in the earlier part of the eleventh century and King Harold II’s family were Anglo-Saxon protégés of King Cnut. Within a relatively short time after Hastings men and women of Anglo-Saxon descent were entering into the life of a new Anglo-Norman elite. The very fact that the Bayeux Tapestry is thought to be the work of English embroiderers at Canterbury suggests how early that linkage was taking place.

I have no doubt that the battle of Hastings was terrible and bloody for those who took part, whether they survived or not. It is noteworthy that survivors were required to do penance for what had taken place. It is also an event that has shaped, and continues to shape, not only England, but the English-speaking world.

The Pilgrimage of Grace 1536

Today is the 490th anniversary of the beginning of the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536. This followed on from the Lincolnshire Rising which had collapsed a fortnight beforehand. The what extent they were actually linked remains unclear, and they may be an instance of similar circumstances producing similar, but distinct, events.  

        

   

A surviving embroidered badge of the Five Wounds from the Pilgrimage 

Image.adastpaul.com

As I wrote in my article about the Lincolnshire Rising the Pilgrimage of Grace is one of those events which people either so know about, more especially perhaps if they are northerners, or they do not know about it or dismiss as just a conservative, reactionary movement in opposition to the progressive moves of King Henry VIII and his dreadful lackeys, Cromwell and Cranmer. ….

Wikipedia has a very general and rather superficial account at of the movement at Pilgrimage of Grace

We have a great deal of contemporary source material available but it requires time to read it. A knowledge of the region and places involved helps to locate it not just geographically but also spiritually and culturally.

Although there was strong support in Craven and in north Lancashire, Westmoreland and Cumberland, which might be considered ‘backwoods’ areas the  Pilgrimage began in the prosperous lowlands of the East Riding east of the Ouse and similar areas across that Riding and the West Riding. These were areas much more similar to the eastern Midlands and southern England, and with an inbuilt tradition of being independent-minded, and like the Lincolnshire men who had risen only weeks earlier.

Could it have succeeded? I think the odds were ultimately stacked in favour of the Crown and central government. Like the smaller Lincolnshire uprising it appears to have broken down behind the seeming front of unity, especially after the truce arranged at the end of the year. Those like Sir Francis Bigod who started another uprising early in 1537 played into the government’s hand and enabled the King to call off the truce and go on the offensive.

Although there was aristocratic support there was not the type of leadership from a great magnate or magnates which had proved so potent in the previous century with regional and factional rebellions. We do not really know what discussions took place in  private over a sizeable area beforehand, and the historical debate continues as to who was behind the movement.

Was Robert Aske, like Thomas Moigne in Lincolnshire, the leader or the legally trained spokesman for what was in part a movement by the social and religious elite, but was also a genuinely popular movement?

Any hoped for foreign intervention was lacking, though how likely this was is highly debatable given the international situation. Nor can one see how such an operation could have been mounted, especially at short notice.  

King Henry could have abided by the truce, but again one must ask was that ever likely? It had been negotiated by the Duke of Norfolk who probably sympathised with the Pilgrimage’s aims, yet he was also bound to the King and safeguarding his own position in East Anglia and elsewhere.

In a time when the popular voice could only be heard by rebelling its chances of success were slim without support in other regions. Once the initial impact wore off the momentum changed and the balance of advantage passed to the government in London.

Retribution was severe, with executions continuing into the summer of 1538.

As with the members of the Lincolnshire Rising we can  appreciate the zeal to maintain the traditional faith, and to remedy socio-economic grievances, and say of the Pilgrims that at least they tried to save their way of life and faith. 

St Edward the Confessor

Today is the feast of St Edward the Confessor. It is the anniversary of the day in 1163 when his relics were translated from his original tomb in Westminster Abbey to a new shrine, following his canonisation in 1161 by Pope Alexander III.

King Edward the Confessor.   

 

From the Bayeux Tapestry 

    

Image: Wikipedia 

      

With all the coverage of the events of 1066 we are getting in connection with the visit of the Bayeux Tapestry to the British Museum I wonder if today was chosen so that the liturgical celebration of the new saint king falls on the day before the anniversary of the battle of Hastings. This would, by implication, make King William I the immediate successor of King Edward and thus deny King Harold II the status of ever being a lawful monarch.

 

Detail of St Edward the Confessor from the Wilton Diptych of 1397

 

Image: Historical Britain blog     

 

 The cult of St Edward flourished particularly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, most notably it would appear in the reign of King Richard II. It is noteworthy that in 1399 after the deposition of that king his successor, King Henry IV, chose to be crowned at Westminster on this feast day of St Edward, and by implication, stressing the significance of the role of St Edward as the patron in the monarchy and as the exemplar of divinely approved and sanctioned kingship.

 

A modern icon of St Edward in his shrine chapel at Westminster Abbey. 

Image:Reddit

St Wilfrid

Today is the feast day of the great Anglo-Saxon bishop and missionary St Wilfrid 

 

A modern icon of St Wilfrid 

Image: northumberlandtraveller.wordpress.com - Hexham

Due to the biography written soon after his death by Eddius Stephanus as well as the work of the Venerable Bede we probably know more about the life of St Wilfrid than about that of any of his contemporaries in the episcopate other than the very different life of St Cuthbert.

Wilfrid, born in 633 or 634, probably in what is now Yorkshire, lived to be seventy six, dying at his monastery at Oundle in Northamptonshire in 709. His life was rich and varied as, probably, a monk, the spokesman for the Roman option at the Synod of Whitby, a founder of monasteries and churches, a bishop influenced strongly by Frankish practice, a political figure often clashing with Northumbrian kings, a political exile, who used exile to evangelise in Frisia, and later in Sussex and the Isle of Wight, and later still in the East Midlands, and man who travelled three times to Rome to argue his case before the Pope.

  

 His impact on the long term development and life of the Church in England was probably greater than any of his contemporaries amongst the bishops other than Archbishop Theodore of Tarsus who began the establishment of the parochial system.

 

The biography of him on Wikipedia is, like their others on Anglo-Saxon figures, much better than the average on that website, and indicates a serious academic background. It can be read at Wilfrid

The York Oratory website has a short account which very properly brings to the fore the Roman element in St Wilfrid’s formation and ecclesiastical vision. It can be read at Saint Wilfrid of York 

Tradition in Action has an extract from Eddius Stephanus’ life of the saint in which he received a vision of St Michael as messenger of the Virgin Mary, and refers to his church building activities whilst seriously ill in Meaux in France in 704. This in itself is interesting as it is from the time Marian devotion began to develop in the West, and close in date to the Evesham apparition of Our Lady. It can be accessed at The Vision of St. Wilfrid by Eddius

 

St Wilfrid as depicted in a fifteenth century panel in Hexham Abbey

Image: History Extra  

 

May St Wilfrid pray for us

The Charterhouse of Perth

Having just posted about the Carthusian monastery at Parkminster, in which I mentioned the one Scottish house of the Order, I have now found an online report about the excavations on the site in Perth of that Charterhouse. It was founded in 1429 by King James I and it was where he was buried following his murder in the town at the Blackfriars in 1437.

The report from the BBC News website on the excavations and the masonry fragments that have been discovered, and which includes a link to the website of the research project into the history and archaeology of the site, can be seen at Masonry from Perth's lost monastery may have been reused for drain

 

In the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries European royal and aristocratic patronage often flowed to existing 

Carthusian houses such as Miraflores near Burgos or 

into new foundations such as Champnol at Dijon by the Dujes of Burgundy or in England Sir Walter Manny with the London Charterhouse, the Duke of Norfolk at Axholne, the Duke of Surrey at Mount Grace, and King Henry V at Sheen.

 

King James I had been brought up as a captive from 1406 at the English court, and appears in the view of his modern biographer to have modelled himself on King Henry. When he returned to Scotland in 1424 with an English born Queen in the person of Joan Beaufort 

he apparently set out to emulate English and European practice by establishing a Carthusian house of contemplative prayer.

King James I of Scots

From the Receuil d’Arras

Image: english -history-trip.tumblr.com

 

Inside Parkminster

This past week there was on October 6th the feast of St Bruno, the founder of the Carthusian Order, and next month has the feast of the Carthusian saint Hugh of Lincoln on November 17th.

It is probably linked to these feasts that a video has appeared on the internet from Lux de Coelo which is a tour of Parkminster, the nineteenth century Carthusian monastery in West Sussex. It is the only Carthusian house in the country - at the suppression of the monasteries in the sixteenth century there were nine houses in England and one in Scotland. The English houses produced a significant number of martyrs.

Led by a former member of the community it shows the church, the chapter house with its striking wall paintings, and then library as well as the relic collection and the overall layout. The guide also talks about the Carthusian Rite and the saying of the Divine Office by the two communities.

Amongst the relics is a plain white stole which belonged to St Hugh of Lincoln, which I saw when it was on display at Lincoln Cathedral in 1986 to commemorate his appointment to the See eight centuries earlier.

 

Parkminster from the air

 

The cloister of the choir monks is on the left and that of the lay brothers with the gatehouse to the right

Image : Facebook 

The video can be seen at Lux de Coelo, and there is a charming postscript at Lux de Coelo

Wikipedia has relevant articles about the founder at Bruno of Cologne, at Carthusians  about the Order, and a brief note about the Sussex monastery at St Hugh's Charterhouse 

The Cotswold wool churches

Country Life recently had an article by their Architectural Editor, John Goodall, about the later medieval churches of the Cotswolds, funded by the profits of the wool trade. Hence the term”Wool Churches@ for these wonderful buildings.  

Northleach Church

One of the most famous wool churches

Image: Wikipedia 

  

The article places the churches within the development of the sheep rearing, and shearing, of the region, and is well illustrated. Goodall makes the point that what we see today in these churches are buildings denuded of their stained glass, with the wondrous exception of Fairford with its twenty eight early sixteenth century windows, and the woodwork of screens, and indeed of most of their medieval colour.

It can be accessed at How sheep farming transformed the architectural face of the Cotswolds

 

Fairford Church

Image: Wikipedia 

The early sixteenth century west window of Fairford Church depicting the Last Judgement 

   

Image: Wikipedia 

The Great Barn at Harmondsworth

A regular reader of this blog who on occasion kindly shares online articles with me recently sent me the link to a report in The Guardian.

It is about the remarkable six hundred year old Great Barn at Harmondsworth in Middlesex and about concerns for its structure and, indeed, long-term survival should the dreadful proposal for a third runway at Heathrow go ahead. The barn and the historic parish church lie very close to the proposed new perimeter of the expanded airport and the effect of vibrations on a timber structure like the barn could be very serious, if not actually, catastrophic.

The interior of the Great Barn

Image: English Heritage 

The article can be read at Heathrow expansion ‘is threat to England’s largest surviving medieval barn’

Wikipedia has an entry about the barn and its history at Harmondsworth Great Barn and one about the village which can be seen at Harmondsworth

There is a much more detailed online account of the barn and its history, drawing upon the archives of Winchester College. This gives much about the building of the barn from the initial felling of the  timber through to details of the ironwork for the doors in the years of its construction in 1425-27. It also includes descriptions of how it was used by those working for the College, such as threshing the grain with a flail, together with a fine selection of illustrations, all of which is accessible at Harmondsworth Great Barn

  

The complex timber construction of the Great Barn

Image:astonrowant.wordpress.com

St Francis of Assisi 800

Today is the 800th anniversary of the death in 1226 of St Francis of Assisi. For Franciscans, both professed and associates today and tomorrow are celebrated as the  Transitus of their founder, marking his death and his reception into the joys of Heaven.

St Francis of Assisi

The earliest surviving depiction of the saint in a fresco at the Benedictine abbey of Subiaco, and painted between March 1228 and March 1229.

Image:Wikipedia

Wikipedia has a good biography of St Francis, together with an initial assessment of his place in the history and culture of the Church. It can be viewed at Francis of Assisi

There is more about the Transitus, which seeks to enter into the experience for both the saint and his followers in his last hours on earth, at Transitus: St. Francis Embraces Sister Death, at The Transitus of St. Francis of Assisi and at The Transitus (Death) of Francis

To mark this eighth centenary Medieval Histories has a lengthy, illustrated online article by Karen Schousboe,  about the image, in all senses, and often contested in the thirteenth century, of St Francis. She includes Thomas of Celano’s description written soon after the saint’s death and an account of his public ministry in 1222. This can all be accessed at From Jongleur to Icon: The Making of St Francis

His damaged skeleton reveals him to have been fractionally under five feet tall, but regrettably his skull is deemed too fragmented to allow a facial reconstruction. Descriptions vary, and reflect differing emphases by later Franciscans. As Schousboe shows in his earlier ministry St Francis was an energetic and commanding presence before illness, the concerns of his community and the gift of the Stigmata, reshaped his ministry.

The same website also offers a review of the biographies that have been written in the last century and a quarter which is a useful introduction to the range and variety available from scholars, and to the issues involved in the whole matter of St Francis’ biography. The article can be seen at Modern biographies of St. Francis

As both an Anglican and as a Catholic I have had some engagement with Franciscans and Franciscan spirituality. As a historian looking at the Church in the central and later medieval centuries I have also looked at Franciscan history, thought and culture.

Some years ago now there were moves to establish a Centre for Franciscan Studies in Oxford, and promoted by the late Fr Mark Elvins OFM Cap. Amongst the lectures I attended I recall one when the Franciscan friar speaking saying that how work was directed towards rescuing St Francis from the birdbath. This neatly encapsulated a serious truth, and one I heartily endorsed.

St Francis is one of the most beloved and popular of saints, yet is one of the most misunderstood and, in consequence, actually ignored of saints. What he actually said and did was truly radical in the proper sense - that is of going to the root of Christianity, and not seeking a ‘Liberation Theology’ quick fix - and was that in the early thirteenth century and still is in the early twenty first century.

what the Cistercians and St Bernard had been a century earlier St Francis, and also St Dominic, and their mainstream followers were to be to the thirteenth century - rebuilding the Church as in St Francis’ response to the voice from the crucifix at San Damiano or as indicated in Pope Innocent III’s dream of St Francis holding up the Lateran.

St Francis’ spirituality can be understood as a response to the ever more urbanised and commercial world of northern Italy at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but also to the rural world around Assisi. It was very much grounded in Umbrian soil, and as the new Order moved forward the idea of rural hermits in the tradition remained central to the saint’s own vision.

As the Order grew rapidly and compellingly so it led to missions to cities and universities like the Dominicans - the two Orders have much in common, developing as they did in the early decades of the thirteenth century. The Dominicans adopted poverty from the Franciscans, who, in turn, adopted academic study from the Blackfriars.

St Francis reception of the Stigmata was the first recorded instance unless St Paul’s reference to bearing the marks of the Passion be included. In the twentieth century this phenomenon was most famously associated with the Franciscan Padre Pio - St Pio of Pietrolcina - a figure in many ways close to that of St Francis himself and his early followers. This ultimate sign of affective piety and conformity to Christ is very much part of the Franciscan legacy to the wider Church, alongside such routine matters as the Statiobs of the Cross and the Christmas Crib.

St Francis receives The Stigmata

Panel painting by Giotto 1295-1300,

now in The Louvre

There is more about the painting and the three predella images at Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata (Giotto)

Image: Wikipedia 

It came as a great surprise whenI first learned as an undergraduate of the profound conflicts and events of the mid-thirteenth century onwards until the mid-fifteenth century with the arguments, divisions and schisms over St Francis’ vision and intention for his followers. This was especially significant in Italy and southern France, and much more than the preaching to the birds of the popular perception of Franciscanism.  

Conflicting  views as to how to present his life as recorded by Thomas of Celano and then definitively by St Bonaventure, and all that the variants implied reflect the searching nature of the narratives. 

Above all was the crucial and central issue of poverty. This defined and heightened the tensions between the Observants and the Spirituals, led to the continuing tendency to form new Franciscan communities such as the Capuchins.  

More disastrously it led to the emergence of the fraticelli and groups beyond the Order who appealed to its most radical form. These are described by Wikipedia   at Fraticelli

 

Further there was the blending of Franciscan ideas with the prophetic visions of Joachim of Fiore and the millenarian idea of St Francis as the perfect man inaugurating the Age of the Spirit.

In these matters, unconsciously, the poverello of Assisi was Christ-like in another way - he had come to set fire on at least a part of the earth, the Church itself.

 

His life was relatively short, and mostly lived in Umbria, barring visits to Rome and to Egypt, and mostly in and around his home area. His influence was far beyond what he himself could have imagined and has continued to shape the Church, and produced a range of Franciscan saints. He has been celebrated in art and literature, in popular devotion and academic scholarship. He is the saint for everyone, yet remains ever elusive.

May St Francis pray for us

The Lincolnshire Rising 1536

It was on this day, October 1st, 490 years ago, in 1536 that what came to be known as the Lincolnshire Rising, broke out in the parish church at Louth in Lincolnshire. 

 

Louth Church

Image: A Church Near You

The Rising, whether seen as an autonomous event or as the active precursor to the Pilgrimage of Grace, which with similar aims, began just under a fortnight later north of the Humber in the East Riding of Yorkshire, was a reaction to the religious policies as well as taxation and legislation affecting land tenure the had emerged from Westminster and the Council in recent years.

By the autumn of 1536 the mood in the Lincolnshire Wolds was febrile. The dissolution of the smaller religious houses has commenced, including the Cistercian house at Louth Park on the edge of the town. Lincolnshire was rich in monastic foundations, notably, but by no means exclusively, those of the Cistercians, Premonstratensians, and the Gilbertines.

Louth was in the estates of the Bishop of Lincoln and thus closely linked to the diocesan structures. Civic pride was focussed around the parish church whose commanding spire had only been completed to great celebration in1515. Rumours abounded that church plate beyond the bare essentials was to be confiscated. Meanwhile one of the Royal Commissioners, Dr Raynes, had been addressing the local clergy in a meeting at Bolingbroke the day before about the latest regulations and ecclesiastical taxes, as well as implying some of the clergy should look to their learning, or lack of it in his eyes.

The interior of Louth Church

Image: Tripadvisor

News could and did spread quickly in the rural communities and, following a staunch sermon from the Vicar, at the end of Vespers in Louth Parish church as the three processional crosses lined up for the recessional one of the singing-men called out to the congregation to follow them as this might be the last opportunity. This was the event which convulsed the town, neighbouring villages and towns such as Caistor and Horncastle. 

 

Lincoln Cathedral 

A reconstruction showing the Cathedral and the Bishop’s Palace as they were before 1548

Image: Facebook - Historic churches uk - Ben Keating

The ‘commons’ compelled some of the more or less reluctant gentry to join them, and in a few days marched off to Lincoln to formulate their demands. Based for a short period in and around the cathedral tensions seem to have developed between gentry and commons, and the government response was not conciliatory, sending troops north led by the Duke of Suffolk. As a result the Rising stalled and dispersed, leading figures being arrested, and in most cases, ultimately executed. 

These victims over coming months were to include the Cistercian Abbot of Kirkstead, the Premonstratensisn Abbot of Barling, who was an assistant bishop in the Lincoln diocese, Thomas Kendal, the vicar of Louth, Thomas Moigne a lawyer and former MP for Lincoln, who had been the spokesman for the assembled group at Lincoln, and, suggesting aristocratic involvement, the elderly Lord Hussey, a courtier of Catholic sympathies and cousin to another executed peer, the Yorkshire Thomas Lord Darcy. Hussey, unlike the others, was from Kesteven rather than Lindsey, where the Rising occurred. 

 

However just as the government may have thought the matter over news travelled south of the Yorkshire rising with its designation as the Pilgrimage of Grace. This had largely identical aims as the Lincolnshire movement and was a greater challenge, requiring a military response leading to a truce to the embarrassment and fury of the King. 

With regard to the Lincolnshire Rising the King scolded the inhabitants for presuming to oppose him and as being from “one of the most brute and beastly” shires of the whole realm. When he did visit the county and city in 1541 he was received with grovelling gratitude and sizeable gifts of money. Ironically the modern county has chosen October 1st as Lincolnshire Day.

 

  

 The west front of Lincoln Cathedral before the removal of the timber and lead spires in 1807.

The spire on the central tower collapsed in 1548.

Although almost certainly not the 584 feet high often quoted it is now estimated to have been about 525 feet and the tallest building in the world until the later nineteenth century.  

A painting by A.C.Pugin 

Image: Whitworth Art Gallery Manchester

Wikipedia has a not very comprehensive account at Pilgrimage of Grace, which can be supplemented by a timeline on The History Jar, which can be accessed at Lincolnshire Rising Archives

The Lincolnshire Rising, and even the Pilgrimage of Grace are things you either do know about or you do not. The events are well documented, notably in L&P Henry VIII where one can read original letters from those involved in both sides, yet what was never written down at the time that would explain motivation and the hopes and fears of the time means we have to do a lot of interpretation.

Many histories of the period inevitably have a London and Court centred bias, and dismiss these uprisings, and those in the south-west in 1549 and again in the north in 1569, as backward and conservative regions who did not appreciate the ‘benefits’ of government policy - yes, I have read G.R. Elton.

    

Academic historians have offered a range of interpretations. Commons with ‘agency’ are quite popular as a subject these days, as is speculation on covert gentry leadership. The extent there was a secret conservative aristocratic conspiracy linking Court and country is certainly possible, and the links between Lords Hussey and Darcy would suggest the involvement of peers who felt excluded from a voice in government, as with the participants caught up in the Exeter Conspiracy of 1538. If there was a conspiracy or, more likely, a meeting of minds amongst the discontented county elites then it is possible that the Lincolnshire Rising occurred a fortnight too early, before the Yorkshire movement was ready, and thereby harmed its own chances and alerted the government.

Socio-economic grievances beyond objecting to peace-time taxation were not as evident as in the slightly later Pilgrimage of Grace, nor the sense of under-representation in Parliament. The economic situation in Lincolnshire at the time does not appear to have received as much attention as it has for Yorkshire and the Craven and Westmoreland areas. Lindsey had seen enclosuresaffecting long established villages, and a feature of the area to this day are the not infrequent instances of medieval churches which were much reduced in size in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the population contracted. That may have been starting in the sixteenth century. Towns like Louth were clearly wealthy, rebuilding the church in the fifteenth century and the tower and spire a spectacular work of the first years of the sixteenth century. If towns like Louth were prospering, other towns may have suffered decline; at Boston the harbour was suffering from silting and its great trading days were in the past. Lincoln was suffering, like many other long-established centres the contraction of trade as it moved elsewhere and the loss of economic dominance. This seems to have generally crept up on cities and towns, suddenly becoming obvious alongside the upheavals of the 1530s in religion and in daily life such as a rising level of under- or unemployment and inflation. The old order was rumbling and new players emerging.

 

The answer is almost certainly not one, but a blend of the groups and factions. What is clear is that there was widespread dislike of, and opposition to, the religious changes being imposed upon the country.

More popular authors, and often with a northern emphasis or bias, perhaps tend to stress the threat to the regime. For them the figure of the Yorkshire lawyer Robert Aske is central, depicting him as a man who held the future of the realm and dynasty, if only for a few days, in his hands. That, I think, is to exaggerate his chances. It disregards the face that hard power lay in London and the south, and ultimately with the King. A popular movement could be a real threat, as in 1381 and 1450, but without leadership from a great magnate as in 1399, and as at times in the fifteenth century, the chances were against it. What was also lacking was clear support from the continent from the Catholic powers. The death of Queen Katherine of Aragon had possibly diminished her nephew Emperor Charles V’s concern for the immediate moment, and that of Anne Boleyn had removed another tension between the Kibg and his fellow monarchs. Maybe now the King of England, and his advisors would give up their enthusiasm for religious change?

As with the Scottish Jacobites in 1745, moving from home ground was difficult as a concept for significant numbers. The Lincolnshire Rising stayed in Lindsey and Lincoln, and did not move beyond, rather like the Lincolnshire rebellions of 1469 and 1470 along the line of the Great North Road.

 One can at least say that faced with an all pervasive challenge to their way of life the people of Lindsay, like those of Yorkshire a fortnight later, did what they could, often at the ultimate in personal costs, to preserve their heritage of faith and practice.

Bl. Richard Rolle

Today is Michaelmas, the feast of St Michael the Archangel.

it is also the day appointed by the Catholic Church for the commemoration of Bl. Richard Rolle, the Yorkshire mystic and writer who lived in the first half of the fourteenth century.

Bl. Richard Rolle

A fifteenth century manuscript illustration

Image: Wikipedia 

Born about 1300 in the North Riding he studied at Oxford, left without a degree and, returning to his home area adopted the life of a hermit. He created his habit, to her horror, out of two of his sister’s dresses. He may have studied in Paris before returning to his home county. The 1320s when this change of life appears to have occurred were turbulent in Yorkshire with continuing Scottish raids and the political upheaval of the Earl of Lancaster’s downfall in 1322.

Having apparently spent much of his time in Richmondshire, by the late 1340s he was living at the Cistercian nunnery at Hampole close to where the main roads linking Doncaster to Pontefract and to Wakefield diverged. This was in the area of Barnsdale, notorious for its lawless predation in travellers and locals.

It is not clear if he had been ordained and was acting as chaplain, which seems more likely or whether he simply lived alongside the convent.

Rolle died on Michaelmas in 1349, probably a victim of the Black Death. In the years that followed he began to be seen as a candidate for canonisation and material was collected for his cause. In this process his former penitent Margaret Kirby was active and she later joined the Hampole community. Although never formally canonised his tomb and later shrine of ‘St Richard of Hampole’ at the priory was apparently popular with pilgrims up to the 1530s.

Hampole itself appears to have been a stable community, which still had nineteen nuns at the dissolution in 1539.

Rolle had written extensively on spiritual life, responding to a growing market for such works in fourteenth century Yorkshire, and by the fifteenth century he would appear to have been the single most widely read author in English in the country.

By then other distinguished mystical writers, notably Walter Hilton, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, and Julian of Norwich, but also not a few others such as Nicholas Love and the autobiographical Margery Kempe, were bearing witness to a lively interest in mystical experience.

 

Wikipedia has a very good, academically grounded biography of Rolle, with a good bibliography, which can be accessed at Richard Rolle

What that account makes very clear indeed is that Rolle deserves to be better known and appreciated as a writer and figure in fourteenth century life than being the rather specialist subject of Middle English scholars. His life is remarkable and fascinating, a window into the world in which he lived and moved. It is well set out in Jonathan Hughes’ stimulating Pastors and Visionaries.

Late last year Rolle was in the headlines - well some at least - with news that a complete copy of his Latin text of probably his most popular work the Emendatio vitae had been identified in the library of Shrewsbury School.

 

There are online articles, all inevitably somewhat similar, but with their own insights, about the discovery from the Daily Telegraph at Medieval manuscript discovered in Shropshire school, from the BBC at 'Priceless' medieval Shrewsbury school text found to be unique, and from Medievalists.net at Medieval Discovery: Richard Rolle’s Original Emending of Life Survives in One Copy  

ZME has an article about the discovery at Scholars Found a Lost Medieval Masterpiece Sitting on a Shelf in a British School Library and Popular Science has one at Forgotten, priceless medieval book found in school library

May Bl. Richard Rolle pray for us