Feast of SS Nereus and Achilleus and of St Pancras

This morning I went to a Mass celebrated by Fr Antom Webb at the Oxford Oratory to mark the tenth anniversary of his priestly Ordination.

Fr Webb was ordained on feast of SS Nereus and Achilleus in 2007in the Oxford Oratory, of which he was then a member. This is a feast always important to Oratorians and their church in Rome became Cardinal Baronius' basilica. Fr Anton subsequently left the Oratory and now ministers as a Prison Chaplain and Parish priest in the diocese of Northampton. 

If you are wondering who these two saints were here is the Third Reading from this morning's Office of Matins:

The brothers Nereus and Achilleus were eunuchs of Flavia Domitilla and were baptized by St. Peter at the same time as she herself and her mother Plautilla. Because they persuaded Domitilla to consecrate her virginity to God, they were accused of being Christians by Aurelian, who had been betrothed to her, and were sent to the island of Ponza. Soon afterwards, they were scourged in an effort to make them sacrifice to idols, and were taken to Terracina, where, after they had overcome the torture of the rack and flaming torches, they were beheaded. Their bodies were taken to Rome by their disciple Auspicius and buried on the Ardeatine Way. As for Flavia Domitilla, who had received the sacred veil of a virgin from Pope St. Clement, she also was deported to the island of Ponza, and after a long imprisonment was taken to Terracina. There, by the judge's orders, her dwelling was set on fire, and she won a glorious death, along with the virgins Theodora and Euphrosyna, her foster-sisters, on May 7, under Emperor Trajan. Their bodies were buried by the Deacon Caesarius.

There is more about their cult at Saints Nereus and Achilleus

 The Relics of SS Nereus and Achilleus

Image: New Liturgical Movement 

It is also the feast of St Pancras. Of him the Breviary says that he was born of a noble Phrygian family, was baptized in Rome at the age of fourteen. Under the Emperors Diocletian and Maximian, he was arrested; and when he firmly refused to sacrifice to the gods, he was beheaded and so won the glorious crown of martyrdom. His body was buried secretly on the Via Aurelia by the matron Octavilla.

There is more about him at Pancras of Rome which includes folklore about him and other Ice Saints and why his cult developed in England, and there are more general links at St._Pancras

 

 St Pancras - a northern German statue of circa 1300 now in the Bodemuseum

Image:Wikipedia

It was a happy occasion upon which to meet up with Fr Anton and other friends from the Oratory to help him celebrate this anniversary - and to reflect on how quickly time seems to pass...

 

Lewes Priory

Following on from my post referring to Lewes Priory in my piece about St Pancras Stephanie Mann of Supremacy and Survival has posted about the Priory, with links to the website of Lewes Priory Trust:


More on Lewes Priory

The post on St. Pancras led me to this site for the Lewes Priory Trust, which includes the illustration above (Illustration © Andy Gammon 2010) which depicts what it might have looked like. According to the site:

Lewes Priory was founded by William de Warenne and his wife Gundrada between 1078 and 1082 on the site of a Saxon church dedicated, like the Priory, to St Pancras. William was a leading Norman baron with extensive lands in Sussex and elsewhere in England. He also founded Castle Acre Priory in Norfolk. Lewes was the first Priory in England belonging to the reformed Benedictine Order of Cluny, based in France. It became one of the wealthiest monasteries in England. However, in spite of its wealth it played little role in national affairs, except at the time of the Battle of Lewes in 1264 when it was occupied by the troops of King Henry III.

The main buildings, including the great Priory church, were put up in Quarr limestone in the Romanesque style between c1082 to c1100 and in Caen limestone from c.1145 to the 13th century. Repairs and additions continued up to the monastery's dissolution in November 1537. At this time it owned over 20,000 acres in Sussex with other lands elsewhere, was the patron of 19 parish churches in the county and owned two houses for the poor in Lewes. A number of daughter priories were dependent on Lewes. There were only 24 monks at the time of its dissolution, compared with as many as 100 in the 12th and 13th centuries.

The site also includes links and information about Cluny and the religious houses that were dependent upon Lewes in England.

To Stephanie's post I would add I have always been fascinated by reconstructon drawings that evoke what was once in existence, and this is the first I have seen of the great church and priory at Lewes.

In the light of what the post says about there already being a church dedicated to St Pancras which was taken over to establish the priory might suggest I was going beyond the historical evidence in suggesting that William and Gundrada were referring to Harold Godwinson's oathbreaking in their foundation, but the possibility is intruiging. St Pancras may well have seemed a very suitable patron, and here was a church dedicated to him ready to be expanded into amonastic house

My interest in Lewes Priory comes from three things - as a Cluniac foundation it was of the same family as the priory in my home town of Pontefract, the Warrenne family held the neighbouring lordship of Wakefield (where I was born) from the Conquest until the mid-fourteenth century, and some of my ancestors lived near Lewes - although whether they were there when the priory was in existence I do not know.

St Pancras

Today is the feast of, amongst others, St Pancras.

Of course to most people in Britain St Pancras means a great Victorian railway station - now restored and re designated St Pancras International. The station opened in 1868, the great station hotel front being completed to the designs of Sir George Gilbert Scott in 1873.

In the 1960s there were plans to demolish it, as had happened to the Euston Arch. Campaigners, led by Sir John Betjeman, succeeded here in saving this stupendous piece of Victorian exhuberance, and now, in the restored station, Sir John is commorated by a statue. That is a recognition of how far we have come from those years when anything old was considered fair game for destruction - buildings, institutions, liturgies...

Which last brings me neatly to the saint himself. St Pancras of Rome (d. circa 304, supposedly) is a Roman martyr of the Via Aurelia. Pope St. Symmachus (498-514) erected a basilica over his grave in the cemetery of Octavilla. This was rebuilt by Pope Honorius I (625-38), who added a confessio and placed the altar directly over Pancras' tomb.

In the sixth or early seventh century Pancras received a legendary Passio that made him a wealthy orphan from Phrygia born in the time of Valerian and Gallienus (254-60) and brought to Rome by his uncle and, at the age of fourteen, martyred by beheading under the Emperor Diocletian ( 284-305; started his persecution in 303). His corpse was left for the dogs to eat, but a Christian woman secretly buried it in the nearby catacombs.

Gregory of Tours records that Pancras was considered especially vigilant in punishing those who had broken their word and that oaths were therefore often taken at his tomb. His basilica is included in the seventh-century pilgrim itineraries for Rome; it was rebuilt in the late eighth and early ninth centuries and again in the seventeenth century. Pancras' cult spread widely across Europe. Probably because he has the same feast day as SS. Nereus and Achilleus, he too came to be considered a military saint. There are numerous castle chapel dedications to him from the twelfth century onward. In the later Middle Ages he was one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers.

He is depicted as a youthful knight in stained glass of 1245-60 in the west choir of Naumburg cathedral in Saxony-Anhalt. In this picture he is the figure on the left.

Incidentally Naumburg is yet another of those wonderful German romanesque and gothic cathedrals and churches with marvellous treasures of which we seem so little aware in this country.

In England the cult of St Pancras appears to have begun with the Roman mission of 597 - that is just as his Passio was being written and disseminated. St Augustine dedicated in his honour the first church he erected in Canterbury - later incorporated in what became St Augustine's Abbey. Fifty years later Pope St Vitalian (657-672 ) sent to King Oswy of Northumbria (d.670), in addition to filings from St Peter's Chains, a portion of the martyr's relics, the distribution of which seems to have propagated his cult in England.

Relics of St Pancras that ended up at Waltham Cross could well be those in the portable shrine Harold Godwinson is depicted as swearing on in the Bayeux Tapestry. Pancras as one who punished oath-breakers would clearly fit very well into such an account from the Norman standpoint.

In 1077 William de Warenne established the first Cluniac priory in England at Lewes in Sussex, and dediacted it to St Pancras. Given the relative proximity to Hastings this may reflect an awareness of gratitude to the saint for his intercession in 1066. If that is so, maybe we should take St Pancras more seriously in England than as just the name of a railway terminus.

The priory church, modelled on the great new church of Cluny itself, was larger than Chichester cathedral. The history and remains of the priory can be studied on the excellent and well researched website Lewes Priory.

There was alas no sixteenth century Betjeman to save Lewes Priory from the destructive urges of the sixteenth century, nor to protect its remains from further damage in the nineteenth century when the railway came to the town and cut through the site. Writing this I am beginning to think that in England at least one of the attributes of St Pancras should be a railway engine.

Today, apart from his eponymous parish in London, for which a late Roman origin has been suggested - and if so than the a dedication may point to an early renovation in the years around 604 when the diocese of London was restablished - probably the most famous English church under his patronage is that at Widecome-in-the-Moor in Devon.