St Thomas returns to Canterbury

The BBC News website has an article about the visit to England of the relic of St Thomas of Canterbury from Esztergom in Hungary. An elbow bone fragment believed to have come from the body of St Thomas Becket was taken back to Canterbury Cathedral, 845 years after he was murdered there.

The report, with links to related articles and videos about St Thomas and his relics can be seen below, as can a selection of other articles from various websites about the visit:
Thomas Becket bone fragment carried to Canterbury

Hungarian Pilgrimage to Reunite Thomas Becket Relics with Cathedral

rcdow.org.uk/.../hungarian-pilgrimage-to-reunite-thomas-becket-relics-with-cathedral...

The Hungarian pilgrimage dedicated to St Thomas Becket takes place in May. The saint's relics from the Diocese of Esztergom will be reunited with his relics ...

Reuniting the Relics of St Thomas Becket - Diocese of Westminster

rcdow.org.uk/vocations/blog/reuniting-the-relics-of-st-thomas-becket/

In a joint initiative with the Church of England and the Catholic Church of England and Wales, the Embassy of Hungary will bring a relic of St Thomas Becket, ...

St Thomas Becket relic returns to UK from Hungary after 800 years ...

www.catholicherald.co.uk/.../st-thomas-becket-relic-returns-to-uk-from-hungary-after...

23 May 2016 - St Thomas Becket relic returns to UK from Hungary after 800 years ... The trip would likely include the first ever papal visit to Northern Ireland.

Thomas Becket relic will be brought back to Britain for first time in 800 ...

www.dailymail.co.uk/.../Relic-murdered-archbishop-Thomas-Becket-England-pilgrimag...

23 May 2016 - Church leaders hope that the week-long tour of his relics will help to revive awareness of Becket's importance as well as building bridges ...

Becket's bones return to Canterbury Cathedral

www.anglicannews.org/news/2016/.../beckets-bones-return-to-canterbury-cathedral.as...

23 May 2016 - This relic of St Thomas Becket is touring south-east England this week from its home in Esztergom, Hungary, and will be at Canterbury ...

Bones of Thomas Becket to return to Canterbury – via Hungary ...

www.telegraph.co.uk › News › Religion

21 Jan 2016 - Relics which escaped Reformation and became a symbol of resistance to Communism return to site of murder after 800 years in gesture of ... 

Relics of St Thomas from Hungary to visit Canterbury

My attention has been drawn to reports of the visit of relics of St Thomas of Canterbury to his cathedral this coming May. They are coming from Esztergom Cathedral in Hungary as part of an
extended Pilgrimage in honour of St Thomas.

There is a good account of the plans for the events, of the Esztergom relic in particular and of the rise of devotion to St Thomas in Hungary in the Communist era there, in an article in The Daily Telegraph which can be viewed at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/12113298/Bones-of-Thomas-Becket-to-return-to-Canterbury-via-Hungary.html

 

The Esztergom Reliquary of St Thomas

Image: Daily Telegraph

The Translation of St Thomas Becket

Today is the Feast of the Translation of St Thomas Becket, commemorating the removal of his relics into the new shrine in the cathedral at Canterbury in 1220. 

There are posts about that at The Translation of Thomas Becket from the blog Thirteenth century England.and two more from the blog  A Clerk of Oxford, from 2012 A Clerk of Oxford: The Translation of St Thomas Becket and from 2014 A Clerk of Oxford: The Translation of St Thomas Becket. The latter has a good example of the deliberate destruction of the saint's imagery from the roof bosses in the cloisters at Canterbury cathedral.

There is a useful account by J.C.Wall from his Shrines of British Saints, published in 1905, of the shrine and its decoration, with contemporary illustrations and descriptions as well as an account of the Translation of 1220 at  http://www.historyfish.net/shrines/cw_shrines_four4.html#thomas

The Shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury.   

Cottonian MS., Tib. E. viii. f. 269.

Image:http://www.historyfish.net/shrines/cw_shrines_four4.html#thomas

The Translation of 1220 was commemorated later on by the Jubilee of St Thomas, a pilgrimage year every fifty years thereafter - most notably in 1420 when Archbishop Chichele secured it against Papal doubts as to the right of an Archbishop to proclaim a Jubilee year.

The Rev Gordon Plumb posted the following list of images of the saint on the Medieval Religion discussion group last December to mark the feast of St Thomas' martyrdom

York Minster and St Michael-le-Belfrey, York: a series of early 16th century panels, now divided between the Minster and the adjacent church of St Michael, telling the apocryphal life of Thomas Becket, the story doubtless taken from Caxton's translation of the Golden Legend:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/sets/72157625571912991

York, All Saints' North Street, nV, 1c-2c, sainted Archbishop, probably Becket, 1430-40:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/6015093343

Oxford, Christ Church Cathedral, sVII, B2, Martyrdom of Becket, early 14th century

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/2702506856

Yarnton, St Bartholomew, Oxfordshire, nIV, A4, 1400-1420:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/3865372950

Salle, St Peter and St Paul,, Norfolk, sVI, A1 (missing head)  1440--50:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/3675172051

Long Melford, Holy Trinity, Suffolk, nXVII, A3-A4, Becket (with St Edward the Confessor:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/2230905801

Credenhill, St Mary, Herefordshire , sIV alongside St Thomas of Hereford, c.1300:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/7892898476

detail:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/7892905770

Warwick, St Mary, Beauchamp Chantry, East window, 2a, 1447-64 b y John Prudde:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/4898144814

detail of head and mitre:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/4898181727

Canterbury Cathedral, Trinity Chapel Ambulatory, nII, image of St Thomas hovering vengefully over the house of Jordan Fitz-Eisulf, post 1213 return from exile of the Canterbury community:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/4417463491

Shot of all the Fitz-Eisulf panels:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/4417372217

These come from the great series of miracle windows depicring the saint's interventions in human affairs, which have survicved in his shrine church despite the odds.

Harpley, St Lawrence, Norfolk, E2, (alongtside St Martin in D3), 15th century.:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/3319555039

And also some in wall paintings:

St Albans, Cathedral and Abbey Church, north nave arcade pier, 3rd quarter of the 14th century 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/2711005945

Pickering, St Peter and St Paul, North Yorkshire, nave north arcade, wall paintings, c.1475 (repainted in 19thC.).:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/9575883819

detail:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/9578685470

North Stoke, Oxfordshire, north wall, three knights from martyrdom scene

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/5599110000

Given the determined attempt in the 1530s to eradicate the cult of St Thomas it is surprising how many images survived that and later onslaughts and neglect - unless it also shows the ineffectivemess of sixteenth century government at local level. That said the examples which do survive or have been uncovered are moreover an indication of how many more iomage sthere must once have been visible to the eye.

The Ascension in medieval stained glass

Gordon Plumb has posted these medieval images of the Ascension of Christ on the Medieval Religion discussion group:

Le Mans Cathedral, Bay 16, remaining panels of Ascension window, c.1140-45:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/2202440176

and detail:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/2202440196

Canterbury Cathedral, Corona East window, Ascension surrounded by four types - the High Priest in the Holy of Holies, the Ascension of Elijah, the Sundial of Ahaz, and the Ascension of Enoch :

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/13274265553

Chartres Cathedral, Bay 0:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/5304105658

East Harling, St Peter & St Paul, Norfolk, I, 1c:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/2480722697

Newark, St Mary Magdalene, Nottinghamshire, sII, 2c: https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/2879638239

Leicester, Jewry Wall Museum:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/15272549549

St Alphege

A series of posts on the Medieval Religion discussion group marked the fact that yesterday, April 19th, was, or woulld have been had it not been Sunday, the feast of St Ællfheah or Alphege, born c.953 and martyred by the Danes at Greenwich in 1012. I have a previous post about him and his cult, written for the millennium of his martyrdom in 2012, atSt Alphege. There is an online account of his life and career here.

Matt Heinzelman posted as follows:

Ælfheah was the first Archbishop of Canterbury to die a violent death. A contemporary report tells that Thorkell the Tall attempted to save Ælfheah from the mob about to kill him by offering them everything he owned except for his ship, in exchange for Ælfheah's life; Thorkell's presence is not mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, however. Some sources record that the final blow, with the back of an axe, was delivered as an act of kindness by a Christian convert known as "Thrum."

Jane Stemp Wickendon posted:

This is the Peterborough chronicle variant on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:

"And in this year, between the Nativity of St Mary and Michaelmas they besieged Canterbury, and got inside through treachery, because Aelfmaer, whose life Archbishop Aelfheah had earlier saved, betrayed Canterbury to them. And there they seized the archbishop Aelfheah, and Aelfweard the king's reeve, and Abbot Leofwine, and Bishop Godwine - and they let Abbot Aelfmaer go free. And they seized all ordained people, both men and women, in there - and it is impossible for any man to say how much of the people that was - and afterwards were in the town as long as they wanted; and when they had thoroughly searched it, then they turned to the ships, and led the archbishop with them.

Then he who was earlier the head of the English race and of Christendom was a roped thing. There wretchedness might be seen where earlier was seen bliss, in that wretched town from where there first came to us Christendom and bliss before God and before the world.

And they kept the archbishop with them up until the time when they martyred him."

https://classesv2.yale.edu/access/content/user/haw6/Vikings/AS%20Chronicle%20Peterborough%20MS.html

Rev. Gordon Plumb posted these images from the windows at Canterbury Cathedral, Nt IX, dedicated to the saint's life [For larger views click on the links at bottom right]:

Three panels illustrating the martyrdom of St Alphege by the Danes. The ornament is extremely well preserved, and the figured panels are the best preserved of these series, with the upper one showing the siege of Canterbury being especially well preserved. The lower right panel of the Massacre by the Danes is heavily restored.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/3380280990

Detail of the Siege of Canterbury:

A wonderful panel of c.1180, showing the siege of Canterbury in 1011 by the Danes. Eventually the city fell and seven months later the Danes killed Alphege the Archbishop when the ransom demanded was not paid.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/3459991612

Detail of Alphege being taken aboard a Danish ship:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/3459180391

Detail of the martyrdom of St Alphege by the Danes:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/3459184175

◣

The Economy of Redemption

The Crucifixion from the Redemption Window in the Corona Canterbury Cathedral, 

Image: Peter Barritt / SuperStock 

As we are now in Passiontide and the Triduum approaches it seems very appropriate to draw attention to a very interesting recent series of points made on the Medieval Religion discussion group about attitudes to the actual practical process of Redemption by the faithful in the central Middle Ages and beyond.

It started with an enquiry from James Bugslag who had been reading Andre Vauchez's  La saintete en Occident, and he was interested in following up one of the many threads in that book. Vauchez claims that the theme of redemption had known a great success in the West at the time when penitential spirituality was at its height. He does not specify this time, but appears to mean approximately the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Bugslag was looking for sources or studies of redemption and its relationship to penitential spirituality, not so much in terms of the saints (which is Vauchez's interest) but in a more pastoral context.

Dr. David Zbíral, an Associate Professor at Masaryk University (Study of Religions) in Brno replied with what he termed some first and marginal hints not related directly to the redemption of mankind by Christ, but to the economic thought which underpins this idea, and, he suggests, even more since the period originally indicated.

He argued that with the rise of the profit economy, counting, and the economic thought related to that (changes so aptly described in Little’s Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy), Salvation begun to be regarded, more than before, in economic terms, mainly those of debt and (calculable) compensation (how many years, how many Masses, how to assure and finance them etc.).  

New penitential practices around the doctrines of Purgatory and the cura mortuorum in general witness to that, and here Jacques Chiffoleau remains the great classic with his "La comptabilité de l’au-delà", but see also Dominique Iogna-Prat, "Les morts dans la comptabilité céleste des Clunisiens aux XI^e et XII^e siècles“, in: id., Études Clunisiennes, (Les médiévistes français 2), Paris: Picard 2002, 125-150, and G.Todeschini, Il prezzo della salvezza: Lessici medievali del pensiero economico, Roma: La Nuova Italia scientifica 1994.

Zbíral adds that he is also sure that the growing interest in the humanity of Christ also boosted thinking about redemption. In material culture, to begin with, it is evident in the naturalistic depictions(the predominance of the Crucifixion.

He says that one of the interesting questions he would pursue on this topic would be what the growing "economization" of the strategies of Salvation does with the idea of redemption (itself a term with an economic root, re-d-emptio, and economic concepts attached to it. The friars were the foremost bearers and propagators of this economic view of Salvation, which brings us closer to the original question as to pastoral care.

He would also be inclined to look at St Thomas Aquinas’ reformulation, once again closer to economic thought, of St Anselm’s satisfaction theoryof the Redemption.

This struck me as an interesting thread, and line of thought. To some extent an anticipation of Weberian type models as to links between religious practice and the economic circumstances of individuals and societies.

In asense it suggests, as I am always inclined to beleive and argue, that medieval life was not so different from that of subsequent centuries, or, indeed, of our own times.

Archbishop Thomas Arundel

Today is the 600th anniversary of the death of Archbishop Thomas Arundel of Canterbury.

Archbishop Thomas Arundel

The Archbishop is surrounded by monks of the cathedral priory at Canterbury or members of his archiepiscopal household.

Image: oxforddnb.com

Born in 1352 he studied at Oxford, and lived in Oriel, where he and his father, the Earl of Arundel, built the college chapel as an expression of their thanks. Leaving Oxford he was appointed in 1373 as Bishop of Ely at 21 - his youthfulness led the Pope to comment about him being the youngest episcopal appointment he was aware of - then, in 1388, Archbishop of York. He served as Lord Chancellor and was a significant political figure in the 1390s, until his translation to Canterbury in 1396, exile the following year and return with Henry of Lancaster in 1399, serving again as Chancellor twice under King Henry IV.

An aristocrat to his fingertips he was also able and conscientious as an administrator, and was to prove a resolute defender of the Catholic Church against Lollardy. His death was as a conseqence of a stroke which might have been triggered by his exertions in the preceding weeks in suppressing the Lollard Rising of 1414.

In late 1408 he had caustic things to say about the subject of my research, Richard Fleming and his associates in Oxford whom the Archbishop saw as supporting Lollardy even if only by resisting his authority to visit the University to root out the problem at its source.

The Oxford DNB life of Arundel by Jonathan Hughes can be read here. The 1885 DNB life by James Gairdner can be read at Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury and there is another online biographical account, with links to other sites, at Thomas Arundel.

His formal constitutions against the Lollards issued in1408 can be read in translation at Archbishop Thomas Arundel's Constitutions against the Lollards.

 

Archbishop Arundel preaches or addresses the faithful during the revolution of 1399

Image:Wikipedia

The nave of Canterbury Cathedral, completed under Archbishop Arundel about 1405.

His tomb was in the third bay from the east on the north side, just in front of the present pulpit, until it was destroyed by Cranmer in 1540.

Image:paradoxplace.com

The tomb of King Henry IV and Queen Joanna in Canterbury Cathedral.
Archbishop Arundel helped place the King in power and crowned him in 1399, and served him as Chancellor and advisor for much of his reign.

Image:paradoxplace.com

The death of King Edward IV

530 years ago, on April 9th 1483, King Edward IV died. Barely 41 his death was sudden and unexpected. The cause of his death has been attributed to, amongst other things, pneumonia, thyphoid and appendictis. It was to prove a disaster for his immediate family and for the House of York - three months later his son had been dethroned and replaced by the deceased King's brother as King Richard III. Little more than two years later he was defeated and killed at Bosworth, and it was the marriage of Elizabeth of York, eldest daughter of King Edward IV, to King Henry VII which ensured that descendents of both branches of the plantagents would occupy the throne.

As King Edward he had been a man determined, indeed ruthless, in fighting to hold on to, or regain, the crown he had to seized in 1461, and was an effective soldier up to his victory at the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471. Therafter he tended towards enjoying the pleasures of success, notably those of the flesh, putting on weight and increasingly engaged with his wife's family the Woodvilles, a family who were far from popular, and noticeably rapacious even by fifteenth century standards. I have posted about them in Woodvilles and Boleyns and in  Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth Woodville.

In these years the King appears to have become rather more like his grandson King Henry VIII at a similar age both in physique and temperament.

 King Edward IV

A portrait of circa 1520 from an original of 1470-75

Image: Wikipedia

In recent years there has been some discussion as to his legitimacy as can be seen in this online biography and in, for example, these blog posts, Was King Edward IV illegitimate?, Edward IV: A Question of Legitimacy, Was Edward IV illigitimate? and Was King Edward IV Illegitimate? (1442) What should be remembered is that it is not King Edward's legitimacy or otherwise which might affect the present line of succession - that derives from King Henry VII, and the Beaufort claim, legitimated, not from Elizabeth of York.

 

King Edward IV

Canterbury Cathedral glass of circa 1482

Image:paradoxplace.com

King Edward IV and Queen Elizabeth Woodville

Canterbury Cathedral

Image: Sacred Destinations

Antony Earl Rivers and William Caxton presenting a book to King Edward IV,
Queen Elizabeth and Edward Prince of Wales, later King Edward V.

The figures between the King and Earl Rivers may be the Duke of Buckingham and Cardinal Bourchier of Canterbury.

Image: Luminarium.org

King Edward IV was buried in St George's Chapel Windsor - what is left of his tomb can still be seen there.

The tomb of King Edward IV in St George's Chapel Windsor

Image: St George's Windsor/Unofficial Royalty

He had initiated the rebuilding of the chapel a few years earlier, and it remains as his legacy, although not completed until 1528 by his grandson. Within the chapel he concentrated on its relic collection - not only those of St George, but also those of John Schorne and the ancient Welsh treasure of the Cross Neith:

King Edward IV and Bishop Richard Beauchamp of Salisbury (d.1481)
kneel before the Cross Neith (Groes Gnedd)
Boss in the south choir aisle St George's Chapel Windsor

Image: St George's Windsor

The death of King Henry IV

Today is the anniversary of the death 600 years ago of King Henry IV on March 20th 1413

King Henry IV

The head of the effigy on his tomb in Canterbury Cathedral

Image: anglophile.ru

The King, who had been in poor or indifferent health for several years collapsed whilst visiting the shrine of St Edward the Confessor at Westminster Abbey and was taken to the Jerusalem Chamber in the Abbot's house. When told that it was so named the King recalled that it had been prophesied that he would die in Jersusalem, which he had hitherto taken as a sign that he would die on Crusade in the Holy Land.

 

The Jerusalem Chamber as it is today

Image;westminster-abbey.org

The effigy of King Henry IV in profile- it suggests  a tired, careworn man

Image:home.gwu.edu

The scene of the King's deathbed is the occasion for Shakespeare in King Henry IV Part II Scene IV to examine the tensions between the King and his heir the Prince of Wales, centred on the Prince, believing his father to have died, taking the crown which had been placed by his father's pillow, and leaving, and the King, upon waking, imagining his son as being anxious for his death and the succession. How close this is to the facts of history is not clear. It can be seen as Shakespeare providing a dramatic version of the political tensions which had existed between father and son, and indeed between the Prince and his brother Thomas, Duke of Clarence, in the years since 1411 at least, exacerbated by the King's illness - which is suggested by Dr Peter McNiven in an article in the English Historical Review to have been progressively chronic heart trouble, sapping the energy of a hitherto active and fit man who died at the age of 46. 

However the various stories of Prince Henry's youthful indiscretions appear to be perhaps more than just sixteenth century dramatic licence but based on traditions handed down by the family of the Earls of Ormonde, who had been one of his intimates.

What does seem attested is that whatever rebelliousness of spirit, or impatience to take charge of government the Prince had, perhaps understandably, shown was now disciplined into that steeliness of purpose that was to mark him out as King Henry V, and to which Shakespeare indeed alludes in the two plays about the reign of his father. Following the death of the old King his son went that same night to confess to the anchorite attached to the abbey in a cell to the south of the choir and spent the night there in prayer. The remains of the cell were rediscovered after the Second World War. Writers contemporary with the young King bear witness to the disciplined, prayerful and chaste life he lived from his accession onwards. So began the reign of King Henry V.

King Henry V


Image: Wikimedia