Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady at the Pillar in St Edmundsbury

The Pilgrimage returns to East Anglia and to St Edmundsbury.- Bury St Edmunds - to a shrine in the parish church of Saint Mary rather than in the great Benedictine abbey. 

The story of the shrine is set out in my post from last year at Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady at the Pillar St Edmundsbury

May Our Lady at the Pillar in St Edmundsbury pray for Pope Leo XIV

Reading Jocelin of Brakelond

I recently read the edition of Jocelin of Brakelond's Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds edited by Diana Greenway and Jane Sayers for the OUP World's Classic series.

Image:Amazon

Like, I suspect, many people these days this famous Chronicle - often used to teach medieval Latin to undergraduates - is one that is more often cited than read through as a single text. Such was my knowledge of it until a few weeks back. Having found a copy of this excellent edition I sat down to read it for pleasure (yes, I am that sad a person). and it is indeed a pleasure to read.

What marks it out as a thoroughly enjoyable read is that Jocelin rises above the level of those monastic chroniclers who record abbatial elections and deaths and rebuilding programmes or news gleaned from the world beyond the enclosure as recounted to and by the community (however valuable that may all be to historians) to produce an account that is very much a memoir. It has a freshness and immediacy that is striking and entertaining.

We are provided with what might be termed real snapshots of life in the abbey, and there is a concern with detailed observation as well as details of the monastic estates and their vital role in supporting the community around the shrine of St Edmund.

The portrait given of Abbot Samson has made the Chronicle particularly famous.  I posted about the Abbot last year in Abbot Samson of Bury St Edmunds. Samson is often said to be the hero of the work, and Jocelin clearly knew and admired much in the Abbot. However it is also true that Samson is sometimes the anti-hero in his dealings with his monks and with others. Because these exchanges are so well recorded the reader really does see life as it was, and must have been, in not only the abbey at Bury but any monastic community. The monks discussing the suitability of various possible candidates for the abbacy is wonderfully human and a remarkable insight in itself - and there are many other such stories. In addition there are narratives such as that of the knight turned monk at Reading abbey and glimpses of the Angevin dynasty and their dealings with Bury.  

Another feature which is noteworthy is the way in which Jocelin displays his learning by citing classical Latin authors - this was clearly a scholarly community as well as a praying one, and one determined to uphold the honour and authority of St Edmund, and the dignity of his shrine and church.

  

Maps and plans accompany the text plus a full set of useful endnotes which fill in the background to the events and places recorded by Jocelin. My post St Edmund and his abbey gives pictures of the site today and of the model of the buildings which can now be seen in the abbey grounds

If the reader wishes to further envisage the abbey and town as Jocelin and later monks knew it they can learn much from looking at the virtual reconstruction of the Bury St Edmunds complex that was made a few years ago. The VHS video is no longer sold, but you can see a short version on YouTube at The Virtual Abbey of Bury St Edmunds. The full version can also be seen on YouTube at The medieval town and abbey of Bury St Edmunds in a VR model

More on St Edmund

Cate Gunn posted a piece about St Edmund on the Medieval Religion discussion group today which I thought might interest my readers. I have slightly adapted it:

Edmund was born about 840/841 and elected king of East Anglia aged 14.  It is believed he was crowned on the hillside at Bures, overlooking the beautiful Stour valley . He was renowned for his piety in his personal life, and desire for justice. He led the defence of his Christian realm against the Danish chiefs Hinguar and Hubba; Hinguar laid his land waste and killed the people ‘men, women and innocent children’ (according to the account from Alefric’s Lives of Saints translated by Anne Dineen); Edmund refused to defile his hands with Hinguar’s blood but ‘mindful of his Saviour’ he discarded his weapons and imitated Christ’s example. In order to save his people, he submitted to the invaders; he was ‘bound and humiliated and beaten with sticks. Soon the King was taken to a tree rooted in the ground and tied and was beaten there with whips for a long time; and he always, between the beatings, called with true faith to Christ the Saviour. Then, because of his faith, the heathens became made angry, for he called on Christ to help. They shot him then with arrows, as in sport, until he was all covered with arrows like a hedgehog’s bristles, as Sebastian was.’  Finally his head was chopped off. Other sources suggest that he may have had the ‘Blood Eagle’ carved on his back.  This martyrdom is supposed to have occurred on 20th November 869/70, maybe at Hoxne in Suffolk.

When his men went later to recover his body, they couldn’t find his head; eventually it was found guarded by a wolf, who surrendered it and followed the procession to the grave in Heglesdune wood.  Years later the body was removed to Beodricksworth [variously spelt] where a church was built, later to become the great abbey of Bury St Edmunds. When Edmund’s coffin was opened the body was found to be incorrupt and the head reattached to the body, with only a thin red mark round the neck.

Edmund’s shrine was guarded by the Benedictine Ailwin, but when, around the year 1010 there was fresh trouble, the body was moved to London for safety, where it rested in St Gregory’s church. At this time, the martyr’s fame increased; when peace returned Ailwin wanted to take the body back to Suffolk, but Alphun, Bishop of London, planned to retain it and take it instead to St Paul’s. Edmund, however, seemed to have other ideas, and the coffin became too heavy to move until Alphun relented and Ailwin was able to leave London with the body in procession. All along the route people turned out to offer respect to the martyr, and were rewarded with miracles of healing.

Edmund’s body was returned in 1013, and last year a pilgrimage followed the route from London to Bury St Edmunds to celebrate the 1000th anniversary.

Edmund’s cult is discussed in the essays in St Edmund, King and Martyr: Changing Images of a Medieval Saint, ed. by Anthony Bale, published York Medieval Press/Boydell & Brewer 2009.

 

Modern statue of St Edmund by Dame Elizabeth Frink outside the west front of the abbey

Image;eadt.co.uk

Abbot Samson of Bury St Edmunds

Before leaving the theme of the abbey of Bury St Edmunds here is the monastic chronicler Jocelin of Brakelond's description of probably the most famous abbot of the monastery, Samson, born in 1135 and who ruled it from 1182-1211, and was a great patron of the building, and, in many ways, the hero, of Jocelin's Chronicle. Samson’s works for the abbey and general life at the abbey over the period 1173-1202, are the main subjects of the chronicle - famous today as a primer for teaching medieval Latin to historians. There is more by way of an introduction about the abbot himself at Samson of Tottington:

“ABBOT SAMSON was below the average height, almost bald; his face was neither round nor oblong ; his nose was prominent and his lips thick; his eyes were clear and his glance penetrating; his hearing was excellent; his eyebrows arched, and frequently shaved; and a little cold soon made him hoarse. On the day of his election he was forty seven, and had been a monk for seventeen years. In his ruddy beard there were a few grey hairs, and still fewer in his black and curling hair. But in the course of the first fourteen years after his election all his hair became white as snow.

He was an exceedingly temperate man ; he possessed great energy and a strong constitution, and was fond both of riding and walking, until old age prevailed upon him and moderated his ardour in these respects. When he heard the news of the capture of the cross and the fall of Jerusalem, he began to wear under garments made of horse hair, and a horse hair shirt, and gave up the use of flesh and meat. None the less, he willed that flesh should be placed before him as he sat at table, that the alms might be increased. He ate sweet milk, honey, and similar sweet things, far more readily than any other food.

He hated liars, drunkards, and talkative persons; for virtue ever loves itself and spurns that which is contrary to it. He blamed those who grumbled about their meat and drink, and especially monks who so grumbled, and personally kept to the same manners which he had observed when he was a cloistered monk. Moreover, he had this virtue in himself that he never desired to change the dish which was placed before him. When I was a novice, I wished to prove whether this was really true, and as I happened to serve in the refectory, I thought to place before him food which would have offended any other man, in a very dirty and broken dish. But when he saw this, he was as it were blind to it. Then, as there was some delay, I repented of what I had done, and straightway seized the dish, changed the food and dish for better, and carried it to him. He, however, was angry at the change, and disturbed.

He was an eloquent man, speaking both French and Latin, but rather careful of the good sense of that which he had to say than of the style of his words. He could read books written in English very well, and was wont to preach to the people in English, but in the dialect of Norfolk where he was born and bred. It was for this reason that he ordered a pulpit to be placed in the church, for the sake of those who heard him and for purposes of ornament.”

To read more go to http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/jocelin.asp

Source: historicalragbag.wordpress.com

The seal of Abbot Samson
(Original is 3.5 inches long) Image:fordham.edu

St Edmund and his abbey

Today is the feast of St Edmund, King and Martyr. My post from 2010 about him can be read at St Edmund, and there is a good online account of him and his cult, and the possible whereabouts of relics, together with a useful set of links and discussion, and a good bibliography here.

St Edmund crowned by Angels

From a Bury St Edmunds manuscript of circa 1130

Pierpoint Morgan Library New York

Image: Wikipedia

Traditionally said to have been martyred at Hoxne his shrine church was, of course, at Bury St Edmunds, where it was served by a major Benedictine foundation until 1539.

There is a very detailed year by year history of the abbey and its lands at the St Edmundsbury Chronicle site.

I have posted about the twelfth century ivory cross, now in New York, which is believed to have been made for the abbey in The Bury St Edmunds Cross.

The loss of the great church at Bury is agreat and irreparable loss, and all that survices today are foundations and pieces of rubble core - in an area short of ashlar the nasonry was doubtless quickly recycled. A portion of the west front remains, incorporated into later houses. The sheer scale of destruction is shocking and awesome.

Bury St Edmunds abbey today - the view from the east

At the rear is the splendid tower from 2000 of the Anglican cathedral

Image:Wikipedia

One of the more substantial pieces of rubble core walling

Images:historicalragbag.wordpress.com

The crypt which lay under the sanctuary and choir from the north-east

Image: historicalragbag.wordpress.com

The overall design looks to me to owe a lot to the great abbey at Cluny, both in its plan and its massing of the structure and the towers, not least the octagonal ones on the west front - very reminiscent of the transeptal ones at the Burgundian abbey. The central western tower and the apsidal chapels recall Ely, and the recessed arches Lincoln, and were a feature reinterpreted at Peterborough in the fourteenth century.

The remains of the west front of the abbey church

Image: historicalragbag.wordpress.com

One building that has survived the destruction of the abbey is the Norman Tower. It was built 1120-1148 and was designed to be both a gateway to the abbey church and a belfry for the church of St James next door, and to which it still serves as a bell tower. It was funded by Abbot Anselm instead of a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella. It is a tantalising view of what the whole church must have been like.

The Norman Tower

To the left is the present cathedral, and the remains of the west front of the abbey church can be seen to the rear on the right

Image: historicalragbag.wordpress.com

To envisage the complete abbey does, then, require the work of historians, archaeologists and architects as well as artists.

A model in the abbey grounds at Bury St Edmunds showing the abbey in its earlier phase, before the collapse of the west tower in 1430-31 and its subsequent rebuilding

The present cathedral is the church to the immediate north-west of the abbey in the rear centre

Image:bystargooseandhanglands.blogspot.co.uk



The model from the sourtth-east

Image nigelpurdy.co.uk

A plan by A.B. Whittingham of the abbey church at the time of the Dissolution

Image:stedmundsburychronicle.co.uk

There is a virtual reconstruction of the abbey in a Virtual Reality model created in 1998. This can be accessed here and following the links should enable readers to view it. This shows the abbey church as first completed, and is good for the exterior. The interior is less convincing, especially as, for some reason, it aligns the shrine north-south. not east-west.

The late thirteenth century Lady Chapel to the north of the choir - in asimilar position to those at other great East Anglian Benedictine houses at Ely, Peterborough and Ramsey - may have looked somwhat like St Etheldreda's Holborn, the choir of Merton Chapel in Oxford or the nave of York Minster.

In 1430 Abbot Samson's central tower over the west front of the great church collapsed. It came down over a period of days as firstly only the south side fell. Then came the east side, but great jagged parts of the north and west side would stand for the next year or so before rebuilding could begin. The Abbot, William Curteys, blamed the negligence of previous sacrists and the excessive ringing of the bells. M.R. James wrote in 1895 that the two collapses were a year apart, the south side falling in December 1430, and the east side falling in December 1431. In 1432 the tower was taken down and rebuilt. Unfortunately its design appears unrecorded - was it a reconstruction or a new design?

Then in Jaunuary 1465 the roof of the church caught fire when workmen left their leadpans unattended during their morning break. The central tower spire fell in and the choir was burned out. Again the nature and appearance of the repair is unrecorded.

A modern reconstruction of the west front of the abbey as it may have appeared from the mid-fifteenth century

Image: stedmundsburychronicle.co.uk

A reconstruction of Bury St Edmunds in the later middle ages

Image:stedmundsburychronicle.co.uk

Despite its destruction the abbey still looms as a ghostly presence over this very attractive market town, and the cult and story of St Edmund are clearly still promoted by the churchand teh local authority.

In addition Bury now possesses in the cathedral of the diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, created in 1914, and using the medieval church of St James, which lies adjacent to the remains of the west front, a noble church. Of all the twentieth century cathedral extensions in England this is by far the best, a delicate and subtle set of additions to this very late medieval Perpendicular building. Designed by Stephen Dykes-Bower it comprises transepts, a new choir and finally a central tower (paid for by the bequest of the architects estate in 2000 as a Millenium project), plus a cloister and cathedral hall including some Victorian work that was removed to extend the building. Scholarly and thoughtful, respectful of its setting, and very far indeed far from the cheap-looking and nasty extensions of some other Anglican cathedrals, it is a beautiful and prayerful creation, and very well worth going to look at.

English Iconoclasm IV

The fury of English iconolasm came hard upon one of the most prodigious periods of church building in the history of the country. Of the parish churches which ministered to the needs of the faithful virtually none were unaffected by the fifteenth century, If not being rebuilt entirely they were being completed, or extended, or gaining new features, such as clerestories and towers, or chantries, or at very least a few new windows in the latest style. This all reflected the great prosperity of the century. Not until the nineteenth century was there to be such an outburst of church building and improvement. That link is not accidental - the fifteenth and later nineteenth centuries were the two times in English history when wages were consistently ahead of prices. People had money, and they had devotion. 

Parish churches on the whole survived the reformation - the main exceptions were cities which witnessed the union of parishes such as York and Lincoln, and reflecting urban demographic changes.

For great churches - cathedrals, abbeys, collegiate foundations - the future was less certain. Here too there had been considerable building activity, and by 1500 English  architects were displaying not only maturity and confidence, but a renewed inventiveness, as in King Henry VII's Chapel at Westminster. That virtuosity can also be seen in a building linked to it in style if not otherwise, the well chapel at Holywell in North Wales. I cite that both because of its architectural finesse , but also because it is in a fairly remote location, away from the south-east, although it was a popular destination for pilgrims both from the elite and the populace at large - and also because it was sufficiently remote to survive as a place of such pilgrimage through the recusant era.

St Winefride's Well at Holywell, commissioned by the Abbot of Basingwerk circa 1500

Image: Wikipedia

Monastic building was still extensive and for which we have  evidence at Glastonbury, Evesham, Canterbury, Chester, Westminster and in the complete rebuilding of the cathedral priory at Bath. In my home county of  Yorkshire one can still see evidence of that confidence by the Cistercians at Fountains and Kirkstall, and by the Augustinians at Bolton and Bridlington. I did once hear an archaeologist (one of those amongst that community who do not believe in anything unless they have actually dug it up)  asserting that this was the monasteries spending up the money before they were dissolved...

Model of Glastonbury Abbey.

Reconstruction of how the abbey may have appeared in 1539
The easternmost Edgar chapel  and that of Our Lady of Loretto west of the north transept are from the first years of the sixteenth century

Image:skyscrapernews.com/All rights reserved. Copyright Holder - GNU License
 

 

Glastonbury Abbey from the west
 Today the shell of the Lady Chapel and Gallilee in the foreground survive as well as the eastern piers of the central tower and some portions of the aisle walls

Image: Canis Major on Flickr 




The view down the nave today

Image:earlybritishkingdoms.com 

 Evesham Abbey as it may have appeared in 1540
The bell tower is centre right, adjacent to the two surviving parish churches

Image:thealmonry.blogspot.co.uk 

 

The abbey from the south-west

Image:nblazydays.wordpress.com

The bell tower of Evesham Abbey. 
Completed on the eve of the dissolution it is, apart from the doorway of the chapter house and some very low walling all that survives above ground of the central buildings of the complex.

Image: railbus.co.uk

Fountains Abbey

  Image:Copyright Dave MacLeod/cisterciansshef.ac.uk

A reconstruction model of Fountains as seen from the east on the eve of the dissolution of the abbey
 Image:capper-online.de

Of these great churches the cathedrals survived, with the exception of St Mary's cathedral priory in Coventry, about which there is something here. The creation of five new dioceses ensured the survival of the main structure at Bristol, Chester, Gloucester, Peterborough and Oxford, but many others listed as potential diocesan centre - the grand idea seems to have been a diocese for each county, but money constraints doubtless came intp play, leading to the loss of great buildings, including Bury St Edmunds, Colchester and Fountains.

 

A reconstruction of Bury St Edmunds in the later middle ages

Image:stedmundsburychronicle.co.uk 

A model in the abbey grounds at Bury St Edmunds showing the abbey in its earlier phase, before the collapse of the west tower in 1431 and its subsequent rebuilding

The present cathedral is the church to the immediate north-west of the abbey in the rear centre

Image:bystargooseandhanglands.blogspot.co.uk 

Bury St Edmunds abbey today

At the rear is the splendid tower from 2000 of the Anglican cathedral

Image:Wikipedia

An engraving of an early sixteenth century drawing of Colchester Abbey  

Image:thecolchesterarchaeologist.co.uk 

By sheer good luck, and against the odds, churches such as St Albans survived, to become a cathedral in 1877, and parishes saved all or most of  Tewkesbury (bought at scrap value for £453 by the townspeople), Selby, Sherborne, Dorchester, Bridlington, Cartmel, Romsey, Wymondham, Croyland and others as well as Beverley, Ripon and Southwell collegiate churches.

For those with no potential as a cathedral or as a parish church, or where there were already large churches in a city, such as St Augustine's in Canterbury or St Mary's in York - both major buildings of cathedral size - the prospects were grim.

Overall the loss of buildings, let alone their decoration and furnishings was catastrophic. There are accounts of some being rapidly destroyed by new owners to prevent their return to their rightful possessors, and neglect, decay, casual plundering and vandalism took their inevitable toll.

To be continued

John Lydgate was here

David Clayton, whom I knew when he was working here in Oxford, has an interesting post on the New Liturgical Movement, to which he is a regular contributor, about the latest discoveries in Suffolk of medieval graffiti in the chuirch at Lidgate which are the work of the fifteenth century English Benedictine poet John Lydgate. 

David's post can be read at Graffiti in English Medieval Churches,and the link to the article from the Observer about the inscriptions and Lydgate's career is well worth following from the link he provides. 

Both the Observer article and the autograph graffiti are of interest in revealing some very human anecdotes about daily life in rural Suffolk in the late middle ages - a reminder of how life has not changed as much as we are often told it has.

The Bury St Edmunds Cross

Today is the feast of St Edmund King and Martyr about whom I posted in St Edmund in 2010.

This year I thought I would feature the Bury St Edmunds Cross, otherwise known these days as the Cloisters Cross from its present home at the Cloisters Museum in New York, which acquired it in 1963. The depressing story of how it was bought by the Met in New York, and not by the British Museum, is told in toe-curling awfulness in Thomas Hoving's book King of the Confessors.

The cross is believed to come from the abbey at Bury St Edmunds, the great shrine church of St Edmund in Suffolk. Made of five pieces of walrus ivory and standing almost 23 inches high it retains traces of its original polychrome decoration and is dated to 1130-70.

There is an online article about it here.The Metropolitan Museum's website features it here, and gives the texts of the numerous biblical verses carved on the cross.

There is now a copy of the cross at the cathedral of St Edmundsbury, and there is an online article about that which can be read here.

The cross has ninety two figures amd ninety eight inscriptions - this was made for a monastic community that knew its scripture. Shown as the Tree of Life the cross has Moses setting up the brazen serpent as a Type of the Crucifixion in the central boss on the front. To the right is the Deposition, and to the left the Women at the Tomb. Above is the Ascension. At the base of the cross Caiaphas and Pilate dispute the text of the titulus. What is believed to be the corpus from the cross was found in a Museum in Oslo.

On the reverse the Agnus Dei is at the centre, with the emblems of the Evangelists at the cardinal points - although the Angel of St Matthew at the base is now missing.

How the cross survived the dissolution of the abbey in 1539 is unknown - it re-emerged after the Second World War from cenral Europe, and it was the lack of a definite title of ownership by the vendor which, tragically, caused the British Museum to baulk at purchasing it.

The cross is somewhat controversial because of the clear hostility in its selection of verses to the Jews - what was acceptable in a twelfth century East Anglian abbey may not go down too well with potential Jewish patrons of the twentieth century Museum....

Nonetheless this is a wonderful treasure, and a masterpiece from one of the greatest of English abbeys and shrines, and at one of the great periods in its history of which we know a great deal in the life of Abbot Samson by Jocelyn of Brakelond. It is also a window on to the spirituality of the middle twelfth century when new understandings of scripture and tradition blended with those of previous generations. 

 

Images: Metroplitan Museum

The Cross with what is believed to be the original corpus, which is now in a museum in Oslo

Image: tumblr.com

The Agnus Dei

Image: Apo Lakay on Flickr



The Deposition from the Cross and Burial

Image:julianna lees on Flickr



The Ascension

Image:peterjr19 on Flickr




Moses setting up the Brazen Serpent

Image:A. Elizabeth Berg on Flickr

St Edmund

Today is the feast of St Edmund King and Martyr.

Edmund (d. 869 or 870). was a king of the East Angles slain in battle against invading Danes. He has very brief notices in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (under 870) and in Asser's Vita Alfredi (cap. 33). His veneration as a saint is first documented from coinage of the later ninth and early tenth centuries. Abbo of Fleury's late tenth-centuryPassio of Edmund. (BHL 2392) presents him as a willing victim for his people who sacrifices himself to certain torture and death in order to prevent further bloodshed. Abbo further relates the miraculous Inventio of Edmund's head by Christians who already had his body - the head was found being guarded by a wolf - and his later translation to a splendid church at the royal vill of Beadericesworth which in consequence became known as Bury St Edmunds, with one of the greatest of English Benedictine houses.

In the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York  MS M.736 is a richly illustrated, earlier twelfth-century (ca. 1125-35) miscellany of texts related to Edmund, probably compiled at or for the abbey which held his relics. The catalogue description of the manuscript can be read here. The images can be seen here.

To search the catalogue for descriptions start at http://corsair.themorgan.org/ and click on "Search the catalog". In the next screen enter in the box marked "Find This", limit this search to "Medieval Images only", and click on "Search".

The above paragraphs are adapted and extended from John Dillon's post for today on the Medieval Religion discussion group site.

The Wikipedia entry on St Edmund can be read here.

St Edmund's extensive cult meant that he was a frequent patron of churches and a subject for artists, notably in East Anglia.

The second article on this page is a review of a book on the subject and auseful introduction in itself. Here are two examples in stained glass:

Saxlingham Nethergate, St Mary, Norfolk

Mid-13th century panel showing the Martyrdom of St Edmund. It may have come from the other church in the village, Saxlingham Thorpe, the parishioners of which were told in 1688 to give up their church and come and worship in this church. Here Edmund offers up to heaven the arrows of his martyrdom.

Photo by Gordon Plumb

Holy Trinity, Long Melford, Suffolk

Margaret Peyton, St Edmund with Abbot Richard Hengham 1474-79 kneeling at his feet between Margaret and Thomas Peyton.

Photo by Gordon Plumb

Detail from the Wilton Diptych.

The classic depiction of St Edmund as a royal saint for a royal patron, King Richard II

I think it is to be regretted that St Edmund does not appear in the National Calendar for the Catholic Church in England - perhaps that is something the Anglican Patrimony can help to change. Until the fifteenth century he was a national saint, and after St Edward the Confessor the great royal exemplar. The abbey was a frequent host to medieval monarchs.

There is an account of the abbey itself from Wikipedia here , and the Victoria County History account of the monastery can be read here.

There is a tour of the present remains of the great church, once one of the largest in medieval England, here. It concludes with this reconstruction of the abbey on the eve of the dissolution. In some respects it is, I suspect, a little fanciful, but it does give some idea of the scale of the abbey.

In many ways it would have resembled the surviving cathedrals at Ely, Norwich and Peterborough. The later medeval form of the apse may have been similar to what one still sees at Norwich. The great west front is related to those of Ely, Lincoln and Peterborough, and possibly also the remains at Kelso. The basic design of a western tower flanked by octagonal chapels is repeated in the nineteenth century Upper Basilica at Lourdes - though I know of no link between the two to explain the design reappearing sebveral centuries later in another country .

The church had a great number of treasures. One which appears to survive is an ivory altar cross in the Cloisters Museum in New York. The story of its acquisition and identification is discussed in Thomas Hoving's rather awful King of the Confessors; the Wikipedia article about the cross offers auseful critique of Hoving's work and can be read here. It is a tragedy the cross was not saved for the British Museum in 1963 rather than going abroad. That is also true of the Pierpont Morgan manuscript I linked to above - that went in the 1920s.

Writing of tragedy, the abbey was surrendered in 1539 - the last abbot is said to have died shortly afterwards of a broken heart. There was the possibility of utilising it as the cathedral for anew diocese for Suffolk, but that nevwe happened. the body of Henry VIII's sister Mary, sometime, and briefly, Queen of France, and later Duchess of Suffolk, who had been buried in the abbey in 1533 was removed to St Mary's church and the abbey church destroyed - yet another of the catastrophic artistic and cultural casualties of the English "reformation"

The cathedral of the modern Anglican diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, established in 1914, has been created by extending the late medieval church of St James completed in 1503 immediatedly to the north west of the abbey church. The result, ins in my opinion on eof the best pieces if twentieth century church building. It was designed by Stephen Dykes Bower, whose scholarly gothic-revival style was not always appreciated. When I saw it I was most impressed. Since then, using the bequest made by Dykes-Bower himself, the central tower has been completed to his design and funded in as a Millenium project. It was completed in 2005.

Photos from Flickr by Cliff Vale and M. Taza

When I stayed with my mother in Bury St Edmunds, which we both thought a particularly attractive and stylish as well as historic town, in 1973 we agreed how much we liked the new work in the cathedral, but she said I would doubtless have wanted to rebuild the abbey church. True.