Pilgrimage to the grave of St John Kemble

Today we continued our retreat at Belmont with the Offices and High Mass, an excellent lunch in the refrectory and then went off in the drizzle on pilgrimage to the grave of St John Kemble, who was martyred in 1679 at Hereford, in the churchyard at Welsh Newton, a few miles to the south west of Hereford.

 Fr Jerome and the Brothers on the Retreat in Welsh Newton churchyard

Image: Oxford Oratory 

Fr Jerome had planned to take us there but we found that as tomorrow is the feast day of St John we could join in the annual walking pilgrimage to his grave which took place this afternoon.

There is an online account of St John and his life and martyrdom at John Kemble (martyr) and there is an article about him from the Catholic Herald from 2010 at The English martyr hanged at the age of 80.There is another account of him from the Herefordshire past website at Saint John Kemble – Martyr.

One of the Saint's hands is held as a relic in the church of St Francis Xavier in Hereford, and there is an account of what looks very much like a miracle wrought at his intercession in 1995 through the use of the relic at St. John Kemble's Severed Hand

A quiet Saturday at Belmont

Today was our first full day at Belmont, and given over to our Retreat. We all turned up for Matins at 6.30 this morning and followed the monastic regime through the day.

Belmont Abbey church from the north

Image: Jason Pacey Photography 

Fr Jerome is giving his retreat addresses on the links between the Days of Creation, the Ages of the World and the Virtues.

For these we meet in a book lined room adjacent to the abbey church and its Holy Door, but otherwise read or walk as we wish in the buildings or grounds.

I have been reading John Cassian's Monastic Institutes - which consists of two parts, On the Training of a Monk and The Eight Deadly Sins  - and which was translated by Fr Jerome and published in a very attractive edition by the Saint Austin Press in 1999.

 

Grace before a meal in the refectory at Belmont 

Image:benedictines.org.uk 

Going on retreat at Belmont Abbey

Earlier today I travelled from Oxford over to the Benedictine abbey at Belmont on the western edge of Hereford for what is planned as a combined retreat and pilgrimage holiday. This has been arranged for the Brothers of the Secular Oratory of the Oxford Oratory by our Prefect, Fr Jerome Bertram C.O.

The journey across the Cotswolds and then through the lush countryside of Herefordshire was a relaxation in itself and the car I was travelling in managed to arrive just in time for Vespers in the Abbey church despite the potential perila and pitfalls of undertaking ajourney at Friday teatime.

We are staying within the monastic enclosure and taking our meals with the monks so as to follows their horarium. Vespers this evening was my first opportunity to actually attend a service in the monastic church as on my previous stays at Belmont that was out of action due to a major renovation and refit.

Our rooms are quietr and restful, and well appointed and I look forward to the chance to rest and re-create here. I hope the others enjoy their visit - Belmont was my suggestion and apart from Fr Jerome, who came here for his own retreat earlier in the year, none of the others have visited the abbey before.

Belmont Abbey

Image:Belmont Abbey

Images of St Catherine

Yesterday was the feast of St Catherine of Alexandria Virgin and Martyr.

In The Golden Legend, initially compiled circa 1260 by Jacobus de Voragine, is an account of her life and death, including this passage about the origins of her emblem, the Catherine wheel:

"Thereupon a certain prefect commended the following plan to the furious king: in three days four wheels, studded with iron saws and sharp nails, should be made ready, and by this horrible device the virgin should be cut to pieces, that the sight of so dreadful a death might deter the other Christians. it was further ordered that two of the wheels should revolve in one direction, and two be driven in the opposite direction, so that grinding and drawing her at once, they might crush and devour her. But when the engine was completed, the virgin prayed the Lord for the praise of His name and for the conversion of the people who stood by, the machine might fall to pieces. And instantly and angel of the Lord struck the monstrous mill, and broke it apart with such violence that four thousand pagans were killed by its collapse." 

(Jacobus de Voragine Golden Legend, New York, 1969; p. 713 -
 quotation by Matthew Heintzelman on the Medieval Religion discussion group)

There does seem to be a sense of quiet satisfaction on the part of the writer in the thought of so many pagans being killed by the exploding infernal device.

After centuries in the devotion of the Church St Catherine disappeared in the 1970 Missal, on the basis of the then fairly widespread doubts as to her historicity. However in the 2002 edition she reappeared as an optional memoria.

At our meeting of Brothers of the Oxford Oratory last night Fr Jerome Bertram C.O. examined the case for her existence, basing his talk on the first edition of Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints. Fr Jerome concluded that the probability of St Catherine having lived and died as a witness to the Faith was not to be discounted, and that despite later corruption of her Acta the likelihood was of her existence and that the traditions about her, properly interpreted, were credible.

In past centuries St Catherine was very popular, and there is considerable surviving evidence as to the regard in which her cult was held. On the Medieval Religion discussion group there was a post from John Dillon today about images of her, together with photographs of medieval English and French stained glass and wall-paintings from the Rev Gordon Plumb. This can be seen with the appropriate links at  St. Catherine of Alexandria This is a wonderfully varied collection, and well worth perusing. It subsequently transpired that a couple of the links do not work, and in the second example the image is inaccurately attributed, and for that see the additional post here.

Epiphany

The Epiphany

Fernando Gallego c. 1480-90

National Museum of Catalunya

Image: Wikipedia

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, and as I have said and written in previous years I hope that we shall soon see the decision to transfer it, together with the Ascension and Corpus Christi, to the nearest Sunday rescinded. I was quite happy to have an anticipated celebration of the Epiphany yesterday, but today is the day. Fortunately I was able to observe it in the Extraordinary Form, as well as saying the Office of the Epiphany on the proper day.

As it turned out I did so twice. At lunchtime I attended the Low Mass at the Oxford Oratory celebrated at the High Altar by Fr Jerome Bertram before going off for a light but celebratory lunch with a friend at a new cafe nearby.

Late in the afternoon we went up to the Missa cantata celebrated by Fr John Saward at SS Gregory and Augustine in north Oxford. This had music provided by the Newman Consort and the Schola Abelis, who sang a Palestrina Mass and a motet by Clemens Non Papa. The whole Mass was particularly beautiful in the candlelit church, still splendidly decorated for Christmastide. To one side of the altar was a reliquary containing a fragment of the Manger, empasising our coming as pilgrims with the Magi to the Christ Child.

As my friend and I reflected over dinner we are very fortunate here in Oxford not only to have regular access to the Extrordinary Form , and within the mainstream of the Church, and to celebrations conducted with such care and thoughtfulness, not least in both cases with elegant homilies.

A happy and joyful Epiphany to you all.

How to convert the nation

Last night I went to a talk at the Oxford Oratory given by Fr Jerome Bertram to the members of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy, who had been holding a Colloquium at the Oratory and which was open to the public about strategies for the conversion of the country. This is a topic upon which I know Fr Jerome has spoken before, but this was the first opportunity I had had to actually hear him on the subject.

He made the point that converting the nation is not anew thing to do, not so much a Second Spring but a Fifth. Previously there have been the conversion under the Roman Empire, the missions of St Augustine and of the Hiberno-Scottish monks to the Anglo-Saxons, the tenth century re-establishment of the Church after the Danish invasions, and then, after the playing out of the events of the Reformation and Catholic Emancipation, the "Second Spring" as outlined by Newman. Now we need a new process to approach the situation the Church and country face.

For this he thought that much that had been done before was still applicable - though it is no longer a case of converting Anglo-Saxon pagan chieftains - but the tried and tested methods used appropriately still offered much. These included a disciplined clergy, prayerful and exemplary, the beauty of liturgical celebration and churches, the distinct roles of secular and regular clergy and the active proper participation of the laity - the types or organisations which flourished in the earlier twentieth century and which, despite strong Conciliar endorsement, have withered since Vatican II.

There is a report on the colloquium from the Oratory website which can be read at The Confraternity of Catholic Clergy.

St Paul in Sussex

Last night Fr Jerome entertained the Brothers of the Oratory with a talk based upon a wonderful mixture of archaeological finds, Biblical references, possible hypotheses and a lot of wishful thinking. this was his retelling of the theories and interpretations in Edwin Wilmshurst's St Paul and Britain;notes on the dedication stone of the temple of Neptune and Minerva, at Chichester, which connects the Roman senator Pudens, the British princess Claudia, and St Paul, with the city of Chichester .This pamphlet was published in Chichester in 1910.

In it the author blends together facts and suppositions to talk of the connections berween St Paul, Caractacus, Old King Coel, Young King Coel, St Helena and a Palestinian-Roman-British dynasty based in what is now Sussex. Heady stuffy, and thought provoking in the bemused scratchings of heads kind of way.

Apart from its entertainment value Fr Jerome was making a serious point. Here, once again, was an attempt to create a British Church anterior to that of Rome - thus the British Christian Llyr becomes Linus successor of Paul, not Peter, as Bishop of Rome...

As Fr Jerome pointed out, and as a historian I quite agree, the "Celtic Church" and analagous institutions are modern - very modern - notions. When St Augustine met the native British episcopate, and tried, not perhaps too tactfully, to get them to co-opertate with him in evangelising the pagan Anglo-Saxons, he recognised them as being, like himself, bishops who derived their authority from the Universal Church, not from some autonomous independent origin. Similarly the Synod of Whitby recognised a common episcopate, and sought to resolve procedural and practical difficulties, not fundamental differences in origin. One cannot create an independent paleo-British Christianity just because it satisfies an emotional or national need centuries later.

Which does not deny the theoretical possibility of St Paul coming to Britannia after preaching in Hispania, or indeed the teenage Jesus coming with Joseph of Arimathea, who, as of course we all know was in the tin-trade, to Glastonbury...

 

Baltic Brasses

Fr Jerome Bertram C.O. of the Oxford Oratory is, in addition to his very considerable skills as a priest and preacher, a leading authority on monumental brasses and related matters. In recent years he has spent holidays looking at, and indeed for, brasses in the Baltic coastlands east of Lubeck right round to the remains of East Prussia. Since 1989-91 this has become much easier and his discoveries were presented to the Society of Antiquaries (he is an FSA )in a lecture in 2011. He has now made this available to a wider public in a monograph, Bishops and Burghers, Dukes and Knights.

This is not just a catalogue of brasses, brass indents and incised slabs, but with its illustrations of the churches and castles of the bishops, nobles and Teutonic knights who are commemorated an evocation not only of the splendid things that are once again accessible along the shores of the Baltic but also of the world that created them. Here is the landscape and culture of the Northern Crusades and the medieval conversion and colonisation of the medieval  Ostsiedlung, the origins of the Drang nach Osten. The monuments Fr Jerome illustrates are impressive in themselves and well worthy of being better known, and if it achieves nothing more then his study of them should do that.

Handsomely illustrated and written with knowledge and characteristc good humour Bishops and Burghers, Dukes and Knights is published by Lulu.com and can be ordered online from them, and costs £10.50.

Virgin, maiden or young woman?

In his address at Mass yesterday evening at the Oxford Oratory Fr Jerome spoke about the passage in Isaiah 7:14 which speaks of a young woman who will conceive and give birth to Immanuel, which has of coursetraditionally been identified with the events of Christmas. Critics are keen to point out that the original Hebrew says 'young woman' not 'virgin', and that this is then seized upon to "disprove" the Virgin Birth or Christianity.

As Fr Jerome pointed out to us this fact has been one of which Christians and their critics have been aware since at least the Dialogue of St Justin Martyr with Trypho circa 130, so this is no new discovery. Furthermore the Septuagint, itself seen as inspired, renders the word as 'Virgin', and that two centuries before the birth of Christ. There is nothing exceptional about a young woman conceiving - that is the course of nature; an older woman like St Elizabeth is noteworthy; a vigin - now that is exceptional.

The End of the World

No, this is not more about the crisis in the Eurozone, or global warming, or global overpopulation, or the latest pandemic 'flu, nor is it a few people announcing the date and time and urging others to join them on a mountain top somewhere for The Rapture...

This is about the End of the World as understood by the writers of the New Testament, and is a summary of a typically informed and insightful talk to the Brothers of the Oxford Oratory by Fr Jerome Bertram, our Prefect, last Tuesday evening.

Fr Jerome started by making the point that the consensus of late nineteenth century German biblical scholarship was that the New Testament writers believed, and believed that Jesus believed, that the world was about to end.

As it had not come to an end this led to doubts as to the veracity of Sacred Scripture and to doubts as to the Divinity of Christ - if He got that wrong, well was He really God? Was Jesus merely an outstanding teacher, but not Divine? A new brand of Arianism was born.

By the 1920s C.H.Dodd and George Caird were restating traditional interpretations, but damage had been done, and persists.

In Fr Jerome's view the end of the world as first century Judaism knew it had indeed come with the destruction of the Temple and later of Jerusalem itself - Christians in Jerusalem fled at the signs of the Abomination of Desolation and retreated safely to the rural hinterland. They took the scriptures seriously. He went on to say that the fact that none of the Gospel writers refer in the context of their apocalyptic references to its fulfillment in 70AD, and notably Luke - always anxious to connect prophecy and event - struck him as proof of the anteriority of the Gospels to the fall of Jerusalem, and this their greater antiquity.

When Christ said He was the Alpha and the Omega, that he was The End, it was the truth, indeed Truth. That was what His coming, that which we reflect upon in Advent, was all about. The old has passed away, the new has come. That applies to our reading of the Apocalyptic literature of the Old Testament and to that in the New, not least in the Revelation of St John, composed as it is of intricate cross references to the earlier biblical texts. The Temple worship ceased, the cult abandoned, Judaism reformulated and Christianity established.

It is also true of our own lives here and now. When Christ enters our lives, be it in the sacrament of baptism or in a "conversion moment" or by a slow, gradual process, then the old world has ended and the new arrived.

Remembrance

Here are a few thoughts, not necessarily all connected, about Remembrance and reflections on war in the last century.

I am not a pacifist, not by nature, not by conviction, not as a historian, not as someone who knows something of human nature - but I increasingly find it difficult to see the case for war and destruction, and certainly not the waste of human life, usually at its most hopeful stage in early adulthood, for causes that are politically and morally wrong or stupid. I had, and have, no doubts about the appropriateness of the Falklands campaign, or the First Iraq war, but subsequent campaigns have, I am inclined to think, been unwise, fooling or plain wrong.

When it comes to the Great War I think I agree with this post from the American Mad Monarchist , though I might be more optimistic than he is that some of the tensions of 1914 would have been resolved bilaterally and peacefully. Basically he says what I have thought for years. The events of the summer of 1914 were a disaster with few parallels in history, and not, by any means, inevitable.

In the wake of the war many sought, and continue to seek, to blame the pre-war establishments, the monarchies and social hierarchies for what happened. My own feeling is that the old order appeared to be in control, but were the facade behind which other forces manipulated events. When defeat came the old symbolic institutions could be jettisoned, but the modern state ploughed on regardless. The two generation s before 1914 had seen a transformation of state institutions that was concealed from both the monarchs and their subjects. In their different ways they paid the price, but the forces that shaped events usually emerged unscathed. Thus monarchs on both sides could lament that Queen Victoria was not around to solve the quarrels of her grandchildren, not realising that they were themselves prisoners of a system that reduced them to cyphers much of the time. So the problem was not and is not the old order, but its initial subversion from within by popular and institutional forces, forces which have in a huge variety of forms been strengthened by the century of total war. Restoring government to its proper place in the human scale, but also the Divine scale, of things is part of the way of correcting that development.

Fr Jerome Bertam in his sermon yesterday morning at the Oxford Oratory spoke of the 1914-19 war medal that described it as the "Great War for Civilisation", and said that rather we should see the end of European civilisation in 1914, and that it was followed by the Peace to End Peace. All this he ascribed to the sin of Pride, pointing out that it affects all systems of government, monarchies and republics alike, display this, the sin of Satan.

This is true. The post-1918 experience makes it very clear that the liberal vision that without monarchs there would be less conflict was fatally flawed, and indeed a very dangerous delusion indeed. Nor is post-1945 liberal democracy, let alone popularist, collectivist, radical or revolutionary democracies more peaceable and less bellicose - but being the voice of the people, or rather the Voice of The People - i.e.what they can be conned into believing - are less constrained by human reason and piety.

The Mad Monarchist follows his post with one about the one temporal ruler amongst the combatants of 1914-18 who tried to stop the war - the Emperor Charles I of Austria, to whom I have, as regular readers will be aware, a devotion.

This was already the month of prayer for the dead before it became the season of Remembrance. I prayed for two, not especially close relatives who died in the Second World War, for friends of my parents and for all the war dead. That is something we can do for them. For ourselves and our contemporaries, and for our successors we should take care not to waste human lives as carelessly as the twentieth century became so used to doing - and that requires thought for the individual, thought for the nation, and thought about ourselves and our fallen nature.

Fr Blake from Brighton has some not dissimilar reflections here, which I would also commend to your thoughts.