Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of the Undercroft in Canterbury Cathedral

The second shrine on the Pilgrimage is that of Our Lady of the Undercroft in Canterbury Cathedral.   

General view of the Chapel of Our Lady in the Undercroft

My post about it from last year can be seen at Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of the Undercroft in Canterbury Cathedral

Edmund Waterton notes on the screeens the presence of coats of arms of members of the nobility from the time of King Henry VI. Presumably they visited the shrine on the way to or from Calais in the latter stages of the French war. He also cites offerings by Queen Elizabeth of York in 1502, and by her son King Henry VIII, who offered 6/8 in both 1514 on the Tournai campaign and 1520 on the Field of Cloth of Gold visit. 

In the 1520s Erasmus described the shrine as follows: 

From the shrine of St Thomas, we returned to the crypt. Here the Virgin Mother has an abode, but somewhat dark, inclosed within a double screen of iron, for fear of thieves, for indeed I never saw a thing more laden with riches. When lamps were brought we beheld more than a royal spectacle, which in beauty far surpassed that of Walsingham. This is only shown to men of high rank or great friends. 

 

Waterton p 9, quoting Erasmus Peregrinatio religionis ergo

  

The screen work of the chapel dated to circa 1370

chapel has a beautiful quality of tranquility and although much damaged retains much of its original decoration. Because it is not on the main tourist route in the cathedral it has, as a Catholic priest and I were discussing a few weeks ago, a profound spiritual impact and one feels close to those who created and adorned it.

   

The modern statue by Mother Concordia Scott OSB

Images: Canterbury Historical and Archaeological Society 

May Our Lady of the Undercroft pray for The King and all the Royal Family and for us all.

The Legend of St Philip the Apostle

 

Today is the traditional date for the Feast of SS Philip and James. This was moved in what became both OF and EF usage following a set of very twentieth century political manoeuvres in respect of the Calendar. Much to be deplored.

The New Liturgical Movement has an interesting article about the Gospel and Acts narratives in respect of St Philip, and of the later legends about him. It also considers how these were selected for devotion according to later centuries assessment of their veracity or indeed probability. Such calculations also extended, as the article shows, to his depiction in art.

The article can be seen at The Legend of St Philip the Apostle

I posted in 2011 about excavations at the reputed site of his ministry and martyrdom at Hieropolis in Tomb of St Philip the Apostle and in 2012 about what is believed to be a a substantial relic of his scull at Limassol in Cyprus in St Philip the Apostle

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Glastonbury

The Pilgrimage begins at Glastonbury, that unique cradle of so many English traditions.

The amended post introducing the Glastonbury devotion to Our Lady can be seen at Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Glastonbury

The statue in the Lady Chapel was claimed - time, circumstance and the catastrophic fire of 1184 notwithstanding - to be the work of St Joseph of Arimathea himself. According to Pynson’s ballad of 1520,

There Joseph lyved with other hermyttes twelfe

That were the chyfe of all the companye,

But Joseph was the chefe hym-selfe;

There led they an holy life and gostely.

Tyll, at the last, Jhesu the mighty,

He sent to Joseph thaungell gabryell,

Which bad hym, as the writing doth specify,

Of our Lady’s Assumpcyon to bylde a chapell

 So Joseph dyd as the aungell hym bad,

And wrought there an ymage of our Lady; 

For to serue her gret devocion he had,

And that same ymage is yet at Glastenbury,

In the same churche; there ye may it se

For it was the fyrst, as I vnderstande

That ever was sene in this countre;

For Joseph it made with his own hande 

From Life of Joseph of Arimathea EETS xliv,43

Waterton, 280

Pynson was, of course, the man who preserved in another ballad the story of the foundation of the Walsingham shrine.

It was at about this time that the chapel of St Joseph was created beneath the twelfth century rebuilding of the “Old Church” or Lady Chapel, and that the penultimate Abbot, Richard Bere added a chapel of Our Lady of Loretto to the north transept. He had visited Loretto whilst in Italy and clearly sought to provide more for pilgrims to his abbey. It’s unusual position is indicative of the way the original house now at Loretto has only three walls in front of a cave. Nothing remains above ground of the Abbot’s chapel but its site is marked out in the turf.

Model of Glastonbury Abbey on the eve of the dissolution in 1539.

The Lady Chapel is to the right, and the Loretto Chapel in the centre foreground extending west of the north transept.

Image: citydesert.wordpress.com

May Our Lady of Glastonbury pray for The King and all the Royal Family and for us all

May Marian Pilgrimage

In 2020 to celebrate the rededication of England as the Dowry of Our Lady I took up an idea of Fr Hunwicke from his blog. This was, in the circumstances of lockdown, to have an online virtual Pilgrimage to medieval Marian shrines in England, visiting one each day in May. 

 

Fr Hunwicke derived this from a booklet outline such a series of virtual shrine visits produced at Walsingham about 1960. This in turn drew on the great scholarly endeavours of Fr.T.E.Bridgett in Dowry of Our Lady (1875) and of Edmund Waterton in Pietas Mariana Britannica (1879). These remainly largely unchallenged as resources for the serious study of medieval English Marian piety. Both are available online, as well as physical reprints of Waterton, and probably also of Bridgett. I will post separately about Edmund Waterton, a man local to my home area and the however many times great nephew of ‘my’ Bishop Richard Fleming.

These books cover the whole range of Marian devotion and this Pilgrimage only scratches the surface. I have basically followed the original route of the Walsingham booklet, adding in a few serious omissions, but not changing its idiosyncratic route from Glastonbury to Walsingham with its curious spurts across country - it is not one to attempt by public transport or by private!

The route takes in well known places for pilgrims and more local sites, but not what may be termed recorded parish devotion to a well-loved and honoured statue in a particular parish or monastic church. These are often recorded as the recipients of bequests in late medieval wills. To include all of these would mean barely leaving one’s home county. 

My original notes have been supplemented with additional notes each year as this Pilgrimage has become an established annual feature of this blog. Last year I focussed in particular on the royal links of many of these shrines to mark the Coronation and suggested that an intention of the Pilgrimage should be The King and The Queen. This year, given the health issues facing His Majesty and the Princess of Wales, I suggest that praying for the King and all the Royal Family should be one intention as well as any private ones we wish to make.

I have thought of including Welsh, Scottish and Irish shrines, using Bridgett and Waterton as a beginning, but to do that will require a separate Pilgrimage, hopefully for Assumptiontide in August.

So, with virtual Palmer scrip and staff in hand let us set off for Glastonbury…

Rural fraud on the Isle of Wight in the 1260s

The third of these articles about farming life  from Medievalists.net looks at the potential for fraud by a farm manager as described by Robert Carpenter in his formulary written in the 1260s.

Like all fraud these schemes require a degree of planning and on occasion co-conspirators. It is not clear if these are examples the author has come across or whether he is admitting to having committed them himself. Their relatively small scale and necessarily ‘hands-on’ nature are a reminder that this was a world where much of life was inevitably local, and low cunning could thereby make a return for its practioner. After all the sheep cannot testify in the manor court…

The article can be read at The secrets of defrauding your medieval lord

 

Farm life near Durham in the later middle ages

The second piece on the Medievalists.net website about gaming life is taken from a 2010 paper by Prof. Richard Britnell which draws on the accounts in the period 1370-1409 of a farm called Houghall just outside Durham. This was not a manor but appears to have been a stock breeding centre owned by the cathedral priory, and one that depended upon hired labour. Their names are often recorded and the fluctuations in employment on short contracts and the flexibility of the labour market p afford a more close-up glimpse of rural life at the time.

The article can be seen at Employment on a Northern English Farm, 1370-1409

 

How to be a Good Shepherd in the middle ages

Medievalists.net has had three recent posts about aspects of medieval farming practice which give insights into the life of the past yet who offer scenes that are still familiar.

The first is a guide to being a good shepherd dictated by Jean de Brie, who came from the area around Paris, in 1379 and had spent his working career herding livestock.

The article, with quotations from the original text, can be seen at How to be a Shepherd in the Middle Ages

The grave of Cerdic

 

The Mail Online reports about the apparent identification near Andover of the burial mound of Cerdic, the founder of the royal house of Wessex and a key ancestor of the Royal Family. 

The identification was made by a researcher who walked the boundaries of an estate as recorded in 900 at the very beginning of the tenth century and which named the mound as being Cerdic’s barrow. 

Assuming the tenth century memory of the fifth century event was accurate - and it seems reasonable to believe that it would have been, then this is an important addition to our knowledge of the formation of Wessex around an initial territory in 495 or thereabouts, although some modern interpretations put it a generation or so later.

 

Little is recorded about Cerdic but one thing that is of great interest, and that is his name. The founder of the West Saxon Kingdom, of Wessex, did not have a Germanic name, but a British one. The suggestion is that he was from one of the post-Roman British ruling families who recruited some Saxon followers and created his own principality centred on Southampton Water and its hinterland. The people who made Wessex may have been not so much the West Saxons as the Gewissae, meaning confederates. Furthermore for the succeeding generations of Cerdic’s descendants until the late seventh century and the accession of King Ine in 688 regnal names began with a C rather than the Æ which dominated thereafter until 1066.

This would tie in with increasing archaeological evidence for co-existence between Britons and Germanic groups in this period as well as literary references.

The Daily Mail article can be seen at Burial site of first King of Wessex is in Hampshire field, author says

There is also a video on YouTube about the identification of the site at The First King of WESSEX - We Found him!!

The book about Cerdic and the identification of his barrow is being published just now.