The Second Council of Lyon 1274

It was on this day in 1274 that Pope Gregory X opened the Second Council of Lyon. According to Western numbering it is the fourteenth Ecumenical Council.

Wikipedia has a useful introduction to the Council at Second Council of Lyon

Some of its achievements were short lived, notably the attempt to heal the Schism of 1054 between East and West. The Couuncil of Florence thought it too had achieved Union in 1439 but it again proved short lived. For all the discussion of recent decades it appears no closer now.

War in eastern Europe and the Middle East was not resolved, and we know today how endemic such conflicts spread to be.

Purgatory was well defined at Lyon, but it is a doctrine still rejected by many Protestants.

Nonetheless much was achieved or presrnted as achievements. However, with the benefits of hindsight we can see that an era in the Catholic Church and the Papal Monarchy was closing. The pontificate of Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303) was to see the achievements of the past two and a half centuries challenged and shaken. As the Wikipedia article points out at Lyon II national delegations were emerging within the Universal Church.

The lead-up to Lyon II and the Council witnessed the deaths of St Thomas Aquinas and St Bonaventure. It also saw in its latter stages the confirmation of the election of a relatively unkown if ambitious Swiss-German noble as the first of his family to be King of the Romans. King Riudolf I of Habsburg and his successors acquitted themselves well in their newly acquired responsibilities.

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Willesden

To the west of Islington and its shrine was the perhaps better known one of Our Lady of Willesden. This has been successfully revived by both the Anglican and Catholic parishes.

My article from 2022 about the Shrine also has a link to an additional piece I compiled citing the work of Michael Carter, another researcher on the topic, about some of these smaller medieval rural places of devotion besides Willesden. This can be seen at More on the rural London shrines of Our Lady

As a result this post, very much in the spirit of the original itinerary compiled by Canon Stephenson, now makes a dash across the Thames to include the ‘lost’ shrine of Our Lady of Crooms Hill on the western side of Greeenwich Park. I describe it as ‘lost’ but near its site is the very handsome Catholic Church of Our Ladye Star of the Sea designed by Pugin’s pupil William Wardell. There is an account of the church with relevant links at Our Ladye Star of the Sea

Returning to Willesden there is an illustrated wq as account of the history of the medieval shrine and of both its modern replacements from Wikipedia at Our Lady of Willesden

There is another introduction to the tradition of pilgrimage there at Our Lady of Willesden: The Black Madonna

My 2021 post about the Shrine can be seen at Our Lady of Willesden

The Anglican shrine of Our Lady of Willesden with the 1972 statue.

Image: Wikipedia 

May Our Lady of Willesden and Our Lady of Croom’s Hill pray for The King and all the Royal Family and for us all.

Enrolling the Coronation

A year ago today it was the Coronation of Their Majesties The King and The Queen. 

In accordance with tradition going back to at least 1308 the official record of the day and ceremonies has now been compiled and last week it was presented to the royal couple by its creators and the National Archives.

The tradition of such rolls - they are sadly missing for the era 1429-1559 inclusive - is outlined in articles from the BBC News website at King's official Coronation scroll is first without animal skin and from the Daily Record at King Charles' cheeky six-word quip as he marks year since Coronation 

The 2023 Coronation Roll can be seen in its entirety at The Coronation Roll

The interactive version with film and interviews can be seen at Videos

The other day the Daily Mail had an article about criticisms of the ceremonial and liturgy from “insiders”. It can be seen at Eight reasons why moaning minnies call it the 'Cut Price Coronation'

The article begins on a slightly hostile note but then appears supportive of the criticisms made. Now the Daily Mail can call me a “Moaning Minnie” if it likes but I would agree with virtually all the points the article makes, and I could add quite a few more. Some innovations were very effective I happily concede, such as the Royal Ladies in their Chivalric mantles, and the presence of the St Augustine Gospels as well as the newly recreated Cros Gneith. I also appreciate the perceived need to adapt for aspects of the ceremony for a Monarch and Consort in their mid-seventies. That said I still think the comments in the article are valid, and I am heartened that “insiders” are making their views known for future Coronations.

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Islington

The next three Pilgrimage stations are on the low hills to the north of London. The first is just outside the medieval city, the shrine of Our Lady of the Oak at Islington. This appears to have been a wayside shrine in the churchyard by one of the principal routes in and out of medieval London. It remained an object of devotion until its destruction by burning alongside other such, more famous, statues at Chelsea in 1538.

My post about it from 2021, which also  includes links to two recent articles about contemporary ideas to restore or recreate it, can be seen at Our Lady of Islington 

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

Fr John Hunwicke RIP

Although it was not altogether unexpected the news last week of the death of Fr John Hunwicke still shocked and greatly saddened me.

I first became aware of him, before I went to Oxford, through the Ordo published by the Church Union which set out clearly and in great detail a wide series of options for saying the Daily Office for those of an Anglo-Catholic persuasion. Fr Hunwicke edited this each year and enquiries were to be sent to him at that citadel of Anglo-Catholic formation, Lancing College.

Some years later when I was a daily attender at Pusey House I met Fr Hunwicke who was there on a study visit. Now I could put a face and an identity to the name. Here was a man of great erudition and one who was also entertaining, with not a little of engaging English eccentricity. This acquaintance deepened and I saw why he was appreciated as a teacher and guide.

At that time he and his wife were living in retirement in north-west Devon and I distinctly recall thinking during the vacancy at St Thomas’ where I was Churchwarden that Fr Hunwicke was just the sort of parish priest the church needed, but alas, he was retired. A few months later, after my reception at the Oratory, I was delighted to be told that Fr Hunwicke was returning to active ministry as Vicar of St Thomas’. I went to his induction, when he graciously cited my history of the church and said in front of the Bishop of Oxford and the congregation that the floor having been paid for in part by John Henry Newman ( still then an Agnglican in the early 1840s) that if “we stand on a floor laid by John Henry Newman we shall not go far wrong.”

It was at St Thomas’ that he was persuaded to start his blog and its wide readership is testimony to his breadth of knowledge and skill in presenting ideas - in part no doubt the legacy of teaching Classics at Lancing. His anniversary of Ordination liturgy at St Thomas’ was one of those services you simply had to have been at, “a simple prayer book service in a little back street church“ using the ‘62 service book ( guess which ), a celebration of his faithful ministry but also of a vision, a very Oxford vision, of what the Ecclesia Anglicana might be.

With the advent of the Ordinariate wand his wife were received at the Oxford Oratory in a service I attended and I was present when he was finally ordained as a priest in full communion with the Holy See. For a man of such clear Anglo-Papalist sympathies and one who felt so keenly a sense of communion with late medieval and sixteenth century English Catholics that raised scruples with him, but ordained he was. As I said as I knelt for his First Blessing outside the Oratory that evening “ Not before time!”.

As Dr Shaw of the LMS has demonstrated in his obituary the succeeding years saw an active and lively ministry as tutor, scholar and blogger based in Oxford.

I am very grateful for having known him and shall miss not just our conversations when we met but also the fact of knowing someone who would know the answer, or a possible answer, to so many obscure, but always, fascinating questions. I can see him seeking out a new ministry in the afterlife as chaplain to his great hero the fourteenth century Bishop John de Grandison of Exeter.

May he rest in peace.

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Grace by the Pillar in St Paul’s

The Pilgrimage now moves from Westminster along The Strand to St Paul’s Cathedral. Within were several statues and chapels in honour of Our Lady which Waterton, drawing upon Dugdale, documents. The one which appears to have been the principal object of pilgrims, and of their offerings was the statue in the nave by the second pillar west of the crossing on the south side. 

Waterton’s account can be seen on pp 68-70 of his work, and details the ceremonies associated with the statue and the management of its revenues. My previous articles about it can be seen, beginning in 2021 with Our Lady of Grace by the Pillar in St Paul’s, from 2022 at Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Grace by the Pillar in St Pauls, and from last year at Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Grace by the Pillar in St Paul’s

May Our Lady of Grace by the Pillar pray for The King and all the Royal Family and for us all

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady at the North Door and Our Lady of Pew in Westminster Abbey

 

The Pilgrimage now moves to Westminster Abbey and Palace to three medieval shrines of Our Lady. The modern Pilgrim can also go along to Westminster Cathedral to see the renewed shrine there with a medieval English alabaster statue of the Virgin and Child as well as seeing a copy of that in the Abbey’s restored chapel of Our Lady of Pew. 

I set out the complexities of these various places of devotion in my 2021 article Our Lady of Westminster

In that I also cite the work of my friend the late Fr Mark Elvins OFM Cap. about the central place of the chapel of Our Lady of Pew in the story of King Richard II and his vow to make England the Dowry of Mary in 1381. 

My 2023 version can be seen at Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Westminster

Edmund Waterton gives reference to both statues in the Abbey. He quotes an inventory which lists the gold cope for the statue at the North Door. He also discusses the origin of the term Pew to describe the chapel and statue in both the abbey and the chapel of both the abbey and the royal chapel in the palace. Waterton inclinded to the view that the term Pew was a term to describe a Pièta, and it is clear from his work that such statues were by non means infrequent in later medieval England. The other explanation is that the chapels both in the Abbey and the Palace were places designed for private devotion by the King and his companions.

 

Edmund Waterton gives many examples from records of financial offerings to Our Lady of Pew by Kings, Queens, and courtiers.

May Our Lady at the North Door and Our Lady of Pew at Westminster pray for The King and all the Royal Family and for us all.

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of the Red Ark in York Minster

The third station on the Pilgrimage is made at the second Metropolitical cathedral of the realm, York Minster. 

Looking at Waterton’s compilation it is not clear why the itinerary as created in 1960 chose the statue of Our Lady of the Red Ark in the Minster when in fact there were so many devotional images of Our Lady in the cathedral. Like Canterbury York Minster had a chapel on her honour in the Undercroft created to support the High Altar and Shrine of St William reusing fabric from the Norman cathedral. That was restored in the early twentieth century with a damaged twelfth century relief of the Virgin and Child discovered in 1829 during restoration work in the east wall of the principal Lady Chapel beneath the east window. To the right of the High Altar was an elaborate decorated statue of the Virgin. Both the  north and south choir aisles had their own statues of her, as well as one over the Treasury and the one by the Red Ark. 

My account of that particular statue, and links to two others, can be found at Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of the Red Ark in York Minster

At Beverley Minster there was a similar arrangement with a statue of the Virgin by their donation Ark which was also painted red. That should no doubt be added to the itinerary.

May Our Lady of the Red Ark in York Minster pray for The King and all the Royal Family and for us all