Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Saturday 8 August 2015

St Dominic


Today is the novus ordo feast of St Dominic. I have recently completed reading a biography of him. This is not a new work, having originally been published in 1857, and reprinted in 1988 by TAN. It is The Life of St Dominic by Augusta Theodosia Drane ( Mother Frances Raphael )


Image: Amazon

Despite being more than a century and a half old as a book it remains readable and informative. The author has collected together many of the early reports of St Dominic's sanctity and the lives and reported miracles of not only him but other early Dominicans. As next year is the eighth centenary of the foundation of their Order of Preachers this is a good preparation for that, and in recounting medieval stories about the life of the founder of the Order a valuable insight into medieval life and attitudes.


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