St Richard of Chichester

Today is the feast of St Richard of Chichester. I have always had an interest in him as he was on eof the patrons, along with Our Lady and St Dominic of the Dominican friary, founded in 1256, three years after his death, in my home town of Pontefract, and that was to be the only medieval foundation dedicated to him.

Richard Wych was a Worcestershire man, born at Droitwich (then known as Wych) in about 1197. His family were yeomen farmers. His parents died while he was still at school, and the property was administered by guardians, who so mismanaged the estate that Richard and his brother and sister were left almost penniless. The elder brother was equally unable to cope, and it was Richard who got the farm back on its feet, by sheer hard manual work. His brother offered to hand over the whole inheritance to Richard, but with the proviso that he “married and settled down”, as we would say. Richard however had his mind set on being a clerk – a member of the clergy, though that did not necessarily imply priesthood. At all events, he was now free to go to Oxford, where he joined the school of Edmund Rich, the future archbishop of Canterbury and Saint. Edmund had a profound influence on Richard, and their friendship was to be lifelong. After graduating in Law from Oxford, Richard went on to study in Paris and Bologna. In 1235 he returned to Oxford, where he was elected Chancellor.

 

  By now his mentor Edmund had become Archbishop of Canterbury, and within two years he called him to be his own Chancellor. For the next three years Richard lived and worked with Edmund, and grew to revere him for his pastoral concern, his devotion to prayer, and his asceticism. In 1240 he accompanied Edmund on a visit to Rome, and was at his bedside there when he died.

 

  Up to this time there is no indication that Richard felt a call to the priesthood. But now, in his early forties, there came a change. Instead of returning home from Rome, he went to Orleans to study theology, and there after two years he was ordained priest.

 

  Returning to England, he took up the pastoral duties of a parish priest in Kent, but he was not to be left in obscurity for long.

 

  In 1244 the see of Chichester fell vacant. The King, Henry III, instructed the Chapter to elect his own nominee, a certain Robert Passelewe, which they duly did, even though it was well known that this Passelewe was a thoroughly unsuitable candidate. Archbishop Boniface of Canterbury decided to make a stand against what had become in practice royal appointment to episcopal sees, and took the brave and unprecedented step of quashing the election and nominating to Chichester Richard, his Chancellor. The King’s immediate reaction was to refuse to accept the homage of Richard, or to release to him the “temporalities” (the property and income) of the see, which were legally held by the Crown during an interregnum. Richard appealed to the Pope, who upheld his appointment and personally consecrated him bishop at Lyons on 5th March 1245.

 

  It was an unhappy beginning. When Richard came to Chichester to take possession of his see, he found the gates of the city closed against him and access to his estates barred, by order of the King. He was given lodging, in defiance of the royal will, by Simon, the Rector of Tarring, who became a lifelong friend. There and then Richard began the work of chief pastor, working from the Rectory at Tarring. He visited assiduously the parishes, monasteries and homes for the sick and poor in the diocese. After sixteen months the King relented, under threat of excommunication by the Pope, although he still refused to restore the income that had accrued to the royal treasury during the dispute. Richard took possession of his Cathedral amid great rejoicing.

 

  The Bishop could now devote himself fully to much-needed reforms. He instituted diocesan synods, at which the teaching and laws of the Church were expounded, and local statutes enacted. These statutes covered a wide range. The sacraments were to be administered without payment, Mass was to be celebrated in a dignified manner, clergy must practice celibacy, observe residence and wear clerical dress. There were instructions regarding the hearing of confessions, and clergy were reminded of their duty of hospitality and care of the poor. At the same time he made provision for their proper payment and security of tenure. The laity were obliged to attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days, and all must know by heart the Lord’s Prayer, the Hail Mary and the Creed.

 

  He also had to face the task of fund-raising for the maintenance of the Cathedral. He revived the practice of “Pentecostals”, directing that all parishioners should visit the cathedral church once a year at Whitsuntide, there to pay their dues. Those who lived too far away could fulfill this duty at Hastings or Lewes, and those unable to attend at all must still hand in their dues.

 

  Richard set great store by hospitality, and he kept a good table; but he himself was frugal, and refused the good things he provided for his guests. He practised penance, wearing a hair shirt to the day of his death. He was a man of compassion, his biographer mentioning particularly his concern for handicapped children and convicted criminals. His early life on the farm is echoed in some of the miracle stories told about him – the out-of-season flowering of a fruit tree at Tarring, good advice to men fishing on the bridge at Lewes, resulting in an exceptional catch.

 

  In 1252 the Pope appointed Richard to preach the Crusade. The Bishop saw this not just as a means of raising money but as a call to renewal of life – much as we would see a Holy Year. He began a tour along the south coast, which eventually brought him to Dover. Here he consecrated a cemetery chapel for the poor, which he dedicated to his friend and teacher, St Edmund, who had been the chief inspiration for his own life’s work. It was his last public function. A few days later he collapsed. His last prayer has come down to us: “Thanks be to thee, my Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits thou hast bestowed on me, for all the pains and insults thou hast borne for me. And thou knowest, Lord, that if it should please thee I am ready to bear insults and torments and death for thee; and as thou knowest this to be the truth, have mercy upon me, for to thee do I commend my soul.” He died on 3rd April 1253. He was about 56 years of age, and had been bishop no more than eight years.

 

  His body was brought back to Chichester, where he was immediately hailed as a saint. He was canonised within the decade, and his body placed in a new shrine behind the High Altar in his cathedral, where it remained until destroyed at the Reformation. But today Richard is honoured again in that same spot, as a Saint and patron of Sussex.

 

Text: Universalis website

A Tribute to Saint Richard by John R. H. Moorman, sometime Bishop of Ripon and a noted church historian:

A great pastor, a great lover of God and man

Facetus, largus, curialis, vultu hilaris (“jolly, warm-hearted, courteous, and of cheerful countenance”); in these words Friar Ralph Bocking described his old master, St Richard of Chichester, whom he served for many years as companion and confessor. There was something big and impressive about St Richard, something large, warm, and comfortable. If the Church had not seen fit to canonize him, he would certainly have been canonized by popular opinion, for he was just the sort of man whom people loved and revered.

  Richard is remembered not as a great scholar or a great political figure, but as a great pastor – a wise, diligent and saintly bishop who administered his diocese with a perfect mixture of what St Paul calls “goodness and severity”, of discipline and love. He found himself called to the administration of a diocese sadly disorganized by neglect and by the fact that he himself was, for the first two years, a homeless vagrant. Yet he pulled it together. As early as 1246, while he was still under the royal ban, he published his Statutes which he expected all his people to observe.

  He was a strict disciplinarian – in his diocese, in his household, and in himself. Clergy who were lazy or immoral came in for severe rebuke, and he expelled one man from his living in spite of appeals from some of the highest personages in the land, including the king and queen. So also with the laity. When the people of Lewes dragged a thief out of a church, in which he had sought sanctuary, and lynched him, Richard made them dig up the body, carry it on their shoulders to the church, and give it Christian burial. In his own household he was much loved as a wise father, though here again he ruled with severity. He expected high standards of honesty and uprightness among his household and dismissed those who misbehaved. But he was above all things severe with himself. Unlike many of his fellow bishops, he hated ostentation and display, and always dressed soberly and fared simply. Meanwhile his greatest self-discipline was in the realm of his prayer life. Early visitors to his chapel sometimes found the bishop stretched on the ground, having spent all night in prayer. He used always to reproach himself if the birds were awake and singing their songs before he was at his prayers and praises before the altar of God.

  Richard was therefore a disciplinarian; but the quality for which he was so greatly loved by his people was his generosity and affection. He loved to give things away, to the great distress of his stewards and bailiffs who were trying so hard to restore the ravaged resources of the diocese. When he entered a village he would ask the priest to give him the names of any in his parish who were poor or sick, so that he could visit them himself and relieve them with gifts of food or money. Bocking records that, on many occasions, the bishop went out of his way to bury the dead “with his own hands”.

  There are many miracles connected with Richard’s life, many of them very human. Once, when celebrating Candlemas at Cake ham, he joined in a procession which vent outside the church, each member carrying a lighted candle. A gust of wind blew all the candles out. Suddenly it was noticed that the bishop’s candle was alight again. “Who lit my candle?” said Richard to one of his chaplains. “No one, my Lord”, came the reply. Richard looked again at the candle, then put his finger to his lips and said: “Not a word”. Out of a century which produced many great lights the candle of St Richard of Chichester still burns brightly, for he was a great saint, a great pastor, a great lover of God and man.

Text: Universalis - calendar for the Archdiocese of Birmingham

Rites of reburial

A friend has very kindly sent me the link to an online BBC article about the rites of reburial used in the later middle ages when bodies of those killed in battle or by the executioner subsequently received an honourable reburial. It concentrates on the work done by Dr Alexandra Buckle from St Anne's and St Hilda's here in Oxford on a seventeenth century copy in the British Library of a fifteenth century liturgy - the only one known to survive.

The specific point of interest is the proposed reburial of the bones of King Richard III following their rediscovery in Leicester. He himself would have been present when his father and brother Edmund's remains were removed from their initial burial place at the Dominican friary at Pontefract and taken to Fotheringhay in 1476. 

The article can be read here.

Confession and Absolution with the Dominicans

The New Liturgical Movement has another post by Fr Augustine Thompson O.P. about the traditional Dominican usage, this time with regard to Confession and Absolution. Fr Augustine is always an informed and lucid exponent of his Order's traditions. As I go fairly often to Blackfriars in Oxford, and am looking forward to the Traditional Dominican Mass there on October 19th, and as I also have a continuing interest in the history of the medieval Dominican house in my home town of Pontefract, I am always attracted to his posts. This latest one can be read at Penance According to the Dominican Rite.

Dominican Rite in Oxford

On Saturday I took part in the annual LMS Oxford Pilgrimage. The High Mass was celebrated at 11 am in the church of Blackfriars on St Giles, and this year was in the traditional Dominican Rite. I do not know when such a Mass was last celebrated in the church, but I suspect it was forty odd years ago, and it was a wonderful and beautiful occasion.

The celebrant was Fr Richard Conrad, the deacon Fr Thomas Crean and the sub-deacon fr Gregory Pearson, with other Dominicans providing the team of acolytes and thurifer. This was the Mass for which the church was designed, and the dignity and solemnity of the occasion was enhanced by the sunlight streaming in through the windows and the clouds of incense within the sanctuary. One could not imagine a more beautiful way of celebrating the Sacrament, and the consequent ability to be drawn into a prayerful relation with the Divine. It is a precious part of the Dominican heritage, and that of the wider church, and I sincerely hope that it will be celebrated again there in the not too distant future and that others may both witness and benefit by it. I do hope that individual Dominicans and Dominican houses avail themselves of their recently confirmed right to celebrate Mass in this form.

It was very moving to attend Mass in a form with a continuous liturgical history and usage from the thirteenth century, and one which closely parallels the Sarum and other Uses of medieval England, as well as of other monastic orders. Thus it would be largely indistingishable from the Mass as celebrated in, for example, the Dominican friaries in Oxford or in my home town of Pontefract before their dissolution in 1538. There was, of course, something of the liturgical train-spotter about some of us, observing the various features specific or unique to the Rite, but, I hasten to add, it was the totality of the offering which really concerned us, not the minutiae.

The Mass offered was one special to the Dominican Missal - the feast of dedication of all Dominican churches which is assigned to October 22nd - and Fr Conrad preached an elegant and eloquent homily linking the dedication of particular church buildings to the dedication of the believer.

The Pilgrimage was well attended, with some travelling up from the south coast or the south-west to attend. When I can find some photographs online I will post them or links to them.

Following the Mass I had a most enjoyable Italian lunch with my good freinds Andrew Wagstaff of The Noise of the Crusade aka The Last Knight and John Hunwicke, before Andrew and I joined the procession commemorating the Oxford martyrs of 1589. Starting from the site of the Bocado prison adjacent to the tower of St Michael att the Northgate we processed with Fr Crean behind the cross and a statue of Our Lady of Walsingham along the route of the martyrs journey to execution, and past the site of their capture at the Catherine Wheel Inn - now covered by part of Balliol. In warm autumnal sunshine we made our way past tourists and shoppers as well as graduands and their families at a degree day, and the animal rights protesters by the Sheldonian, along Broad Street and Holywell Street to the site of the gallows. Returning the same way we sang the Te Deum in thanksgiving for the martyrs' witness (and, yes, we did genuflect at the appropriate point) and concluded with Benediction given by Fr Crean in the church at Blackfriars.

After that Andrew and I had our own nostalgic pilgrimage to the Eagle and Child (aka the Bird and Baby) before joining other pilgrims - including Paul Smeaton of Smeaton's corner and Sean Wright of Juventutem Oxford- in the Lamb and Flag for further refreshment. After this Andrew and I adjourned to the bar of the Oxford Union before heading off for supper and his departure on the London coach. So, all in all, a very pious and a very convivial day.

St Dominic in art and faith

Today is the feast of St Dominic, who died in 1221 and was canonized in 1234.

His shrine tomb is in Bologna, and there is an article about it and about the reliquary of his skull here. The Arca is piece made in two stages, in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. Here is acontemporary photograph:

Image: Wikipedia



An older photograph showing the altar with a fine display of candles

Image: www.artand architecture.org.uk

This is a photograph of his head reliquary, made by the Bolognese goldsmith Jacopo Roseto in 1383

In England the Thornham Parva retable from the early fourteenth century survives in a small Suffolk parish church, but is thought that, together with afrontal now in the Musee de Cluny in paris, originally belonged to the Dominican friary in Thetford. On the left is St Dominic, and on the right the first Dominican martyr, St Peter Martyr:

The Thornham Parva retable

Image:inkoosmill.co.uk

There is more about the retable with details of the figures here.

Also in Suffolk there is this later fifteenth century English stained glass representation of St Dominic, from the remains of the beautiful glazing of Holy Trinity church at Long Melford:

A figure of St Dominic with at his feet either Henry Hardman or William Thwaytes.

Window nXIX,2a

St Dominic is shown in blue rather than the black of his Order as the latter colour would only be used for details in glass due to its opacity.

Image: Gordon Plumb's photostream of Flickr,

This is a day upon which to give thanks for St Dominic and his Order, which is certainly present and active in Oxford - "Gods Dogs" are a very positive part of Catholic life here. It is also a day upon which I try to remember in my prayers the deceased Dominicans of the medieval house in Pontefract, about which I posted recently.

Pontefract Friary

In two previous posts, St Richard of Chichester in April and St Richard of Chichester in June I referred to the Dominican friary in my home town of Pontefract as being the only medieval church dedicated to St Richard, having been founded by one of his former tutees, Edmund Earl of Lincoln, in 1256.

St Richard of Chichester,
Fourteenth century glass in the choir of Wells Cathedral

Image: therosewindow.com

The site is now largely covered by Pontefract General Infirmary. There were excavations in 1963, in which I took part, before a major extension was built. This revealed a considerable amount of information about the building sequence and gave an indication of the plan. In 1989 more building work revealed something more of the foundations.

New developments on the site mean that the hospital trust and their contractors are planning to level the 1960s infirmary buildings. These cover remains of St Richard's friary which it is believed probably still include standing walling and burials, as well as stratified deposits.
The current timetable involves creating a car park on the 1960s site. Normally this would be encouraged as tarmacking would preserve the remains for the future. However, the plan was to bulldoze to one metre below ground-level and destroy any existing terracing, which probably protects the foundations in places.

Pontefract and DistrictArchaelogical Society and Pontefract Civic Society sponsored the Pontefract Friary Action Group, and gained support not only from archaelogists and academics, but also from the Provincial of the Dominicans and from the Anglican Bishop and Vicar of Pontefract.

As a result of a public meeting held last Tuesday, the petition, and constant lobbying, members of PFAG were invited to a meeting of the local National Health Hospitals Trust, and it was agreed that there will now be no further penetration of the archaeological levels, and the priory site will be buried to protect it in future.

Further excavations are to start on July 26th and continue through August and September on what has been identified as the monastic and post monastic cemetary - there were some burials here during the Civil War.

This is very good news, particularly as Pontefract has not in recent centuries been very good at preserving its historic buildings. I hope to make my contribution towards the historical evaluation of the friary.

One of the intersting features about the friary was its role as a popular place for burial, not only of the founder and his widow but later generations of local people and also, in December 1460, of four victims of the battle of Wakefield. Their heads were exposed over Micklegate Bar in York until they were removed and buried with the bodies at Pontefract by the victorious Yorkists after the battle of Towton in March 1461. In 1463 the bodies of the Earl of Salisbury and his son Sir Thomas Neville were removed to Bisham abbey in Berkshire, and in 1476 the remains of Richard Duke of York and Edmund Earl of Rutland were removed in state to Fotheringhay by King Edward IV. However according to a list of burials in the friary dating from just before the dissolution and drawn up by a herald, the hearts of the four men remained buried in the church.

Richard Duke of York 1411-60
Glass from Cirencester Parish church

Image: Nashford publishing

So it is just possible that excavations might yield these remains encased, presumably in lead, like that of King Robert I of Scots. In any case the fact that the site has been safeguarded is very good news, and the prospect of learning more about the friary opens up many possibilities. Those who organised the campaign are to be congratulated on having achieved so much.

St Richard of Chichester

Yesterday, had it not been Sunday, would have been the feast, or at least the commemoration, of St Richard of Chichester.

A black and white picture of the thirteenth century wall painting of St Richard
in Black Bourton Church Oxfordshire.
There is more about the church and its paintings here and here.

Image: Wikipedia

I have adapted the following piece from the post by Terri Morgan on the Medieval Religion discussion group Saints of the day feature:

Richard de la Wych, born in 1197, was a native of Droitwich in Worcestershire. He studied at Oxford and Paris, and there he lodged in the same room with two other poor scholars, and fed on bread and porridge (potagium); and so poor were they that the three had only one respectable coat between them, and could only go alternately to the lectures in the coat, whilst the others sat at home without.

He became the Chancellor of Oxford University after he returned to England from seven years of studying canon law at the University of Bologna. One of his former tutors, (St.) Edmund of Abingdon (who had become Archbishop of Canterbury), became his dear friend and, impressed by Richard's skills, made him diocesan chancellor. In the words of the Dominican Ralph Bocking, Richard's confessor and biographer: "Each leaned upon the other - the saint upon the saint: the master upon the disciple, the disciple upon the master: the father on the son, and the son on the father."

Richard was a strict vegetarian, but would serve meat to his visitors; when he saw poultry or young animals being conveyed to his kitchen he was wont to say: "Poor little creatures, if you were reasoning beings and could speak, how you would curse us! For we are the cause of your death, and what have you done to deserve it?"

The next archbishop arranged the election of Richard as Bishop of Chichester - which enraged King Henry III, who refused to allow Richard to assume his office. In the two years before Henry acquiesced, Richard lived in a priest's house and did visitations of the diocese on foot. Richard was a reformer and model bishop. Richard died in Dover on this day in 1253 while preaching the crusade. Miracles were reported shortly after his death. A commission of inquiry was established in 1256 and in 1262 Urban IV canonized him. He has two thirteenth-century Vitae, of which the second, by the Dominican hagiographer Ralph Bocking, is full of anecdotes about his solicitude for the poor and the sick.

St Richard is perhaps best remembered by the wider public today for the prayer: "Thanks be to thee, my Lord Jesus Christ for all the benefits thou hast given me, for all the pains and insults which thou hast borne for me. O most merciful redeemer, friend and brother, may I know thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, and follow thee more nearly, day by day."

There is another, longer, online biography here.

Over and above his connections with Oxford, and the presence nearby of the painting at Black Bourton, or the fact that some of my ancestors came from Sussex, I have always had an interest in St Richard because the only medieval church dedicated to him was in my home town of Pontefract. In 1256, three years after the death of the Bishop, Edmund de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, founded a Dominican friary in Pontefract and dedicated to Our Lady, St Dominic and St Richard. According to Bocking the three-fold dedication received divine approval when the flawless foundation stone split into three pieces when the Earl was laid it. The friary was dissolved in 1538 and the the buildings destroyed. The site is now covered by Pontefract General Infirmary. Something of the plan and sequence of buildings was recovered in excavations before the hospital was extended, and as a boy I helped with those.

Many years later as a voluntary chaplaincy assistant there I suggested, and the suggestion was accepted, that the reconstructed hospital chapel be dedicated once more to St Richard. I helped provide a photographic reproduction of a pair of fourteenth century stained glass figures from the north choir clerestory of Wells Cathedral, which fortuitously shows St Richard side by side with St Giles, the patron saint of the parish church in Pontefract. This I had spotted on a visit to Wells whilst on retreat at Glastonbury.

St Richard of Chichester,
Wells Cathedral
Image: therosewindow.com