history - The Christian Heritage Centre

The English Reformation
& The European Renaissance
[conference]

Saturday 28 March, 3:30 - 6:30pm

This event has been postponed due to Covid-19

An afternoon conference exploring the relationship between Reformation England and Renaissance Europe.

With Professors Peter Davidson (Oxford) and Gerard Kilroy (Academia Ignatium Krakow, U.C.L.)

The expulsion of Catholic scholars and the outlawing of Catholic education from Reformation England in the 1500s was intended to decisively detach England from the Catholic Faith. At the same time, the ongoing Renaissance on the continent was grounded in Europe’s profoundly Catholic roots. To what extent did Henry VIII’s reform succeed in severing English culture from Catholicism? And how far were the English removed from the influence of their Catholic European neighbours?

Professor Davidson will examine how the poetry of the famous Jesuit saint, Robert Southwell, reached and sustained not only its immediate and Catholic audience, but a rather more diverse section of English society.

Professor Kilroy will explore how English Catholicism was maintained and nurtured by exiles on the continent, and how a particular relationship between England and Europe continued as a result.

Conference schedule:

3:00pm Arrivals

3:30pm Prof. P. Davidson – Poetry and Fortress England: Southwell’s Literary Offerings to a Divided Nation

4:30pm Prof. G. Kilroy – Cosmopolitan Jesuits and a Culture of Catholic Exile

5:30pm Q & A session with Profs. Davidson and Kilroy

6:00pm Optional seminar: Practical Problems in the Study of the British Catholic Diaspora

Tea & coffee will be served throughout the afternoon, with breaks following each session.

About the speaker:

Peter Davidson is a Senior Research Fellow at Campion Hall, University of Oxford and a member of the English Faculty of Oxford University, formerly at Aberdeen, Warwick, Leiden. He was the general editor of the Oxford University Press Edition of the Complete Writings of St Robert Southwell. His writings include The Universal Baroque (MUP), The Last of the Light and The Idea of North (Reaktion), as well as editing early modern literature published by OUP. His general focus is on the exile and the culture of the British Catholic community after the Reformation.

For more information about Prof. Davidson, please click here.

About the speaker:

Gerard Kilroy is Professor of English Literature at the Akademia Ignatianum Krakow, and author of Edmund Campion: Memory and Transcription (2005), editor of The Epigrams of Sir John Harington (2009), and author of Edmund Campion: A Scholarly Life (2015). He is currently editing Evelyn Waugh’s life of Edmund Campion (1935) for a 43-volume edition of the Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh (OUP). In 2018, the Polish Embassy in London published a collection of his Poems. He has been attached to University College London for over ten years, first as Honorary Visiting Professor from 2009–2019, and now as Honorary Senior Research Fellow; he gives seminars there on editing from manuscripts, manuscript circulation and the smuggling of subversive books in early modern England. He has been Senior Research Fellow at Campion Hall, Oxford since 2015. He was a Visiting Professor at Masaryk University, Brno for three years. Much of his research was done in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, where he has had four Fellowships, and in Marsh’s Library, Dublin, where he had a Fellowship, and libraries in Oxford, London, Krakow, Warsaw, Prague, Munich, Dillingen and Rome.

For more information about Prof. Kilroy, please click here.

Cost:

Conference ticket: £29

Conference ticket, student discount: £24*

Student special offer: 5 tickets for £100*

Conference and overnight B&B: £65

Conference and overnight B&B, student discount: £60*

*Valid student ID will be required at the door

Please register below:

This event has closed.

Venue:

Friday 3rd February 2017

The CHC @ The Catholic Universe

Relics reveal rich tapestry of England’s Catholic past

Stonyhurst College cares for a spectacular and rich array of historic vestments in its collections, many of which were smuggled across the Channel to the school during the time it was based in St Omers near Calais, between 1593 and 1762.

Vestments were particularly singled out for destruction in Reformation England. In the eyes of the Elizabethan government, they represented priestly authority and the celebration of the forbidden Mass.

From the onset of the Dissolution of the Monasteries until the late 17th century, vestments in England and Wales were systematically sought out and destroyed by government agents, keen to suppress all signs of Catholic worship. Ironically a good many which survived the reign of Protestant Edward VI and were brought out in the reign of his Catholic half-sister, Mary Tudor, were subsequently seized and destroyed in the reign of Elizabeth I.

There are numerous examples of Catholic families and communities hiding precious pre-Reformation vestments from the searchers, storing them in attics, in hidden compartments and even burying them, in an attempt to preserve them. Very few survived, and many of these were sent abroad for safekeeping, to the English seminaries and Colleges in Rome, Valladolid, Douai and St Omers.

Many pre-Reformation vestments were richly embroidered with the intricate needlework known as opus anglicanum. The embroideries were removed from the chasubles and dalmatics to make them easier to hide and transport abroad. Once at St Omers, they were re-attached to new, rich fabrics and used in the celebration of Mass for the young boys attending the college. They symbolised England’s Catholic past and were a sign of hope for the restoration of the Catholic faith in England in the future.

Medieval examples such as the beautiful St Dunstan’s Chasuble survive at Stonyhurst today, smuggled from Canterbury to St Omers, and then brought back to England when the college moved to its present location in 1794. The Dunstan Chasuble is the property of the British Jesuit Province, and is cared for at Stonyhurst. It features highly intricate embroidered 14th century images of saints associated with Canterbury, and probably once adorned a cope, or copes. Thomas Becket features in four scenes, as might be expected for Canterbury’s most famous saint and martyr. The panel depicting his martyrdom is spectacularly fine, and has retained much of its colour and freshness. When these embroideries arrived at St Omers they were re-shaped into their present form on a Roman chasuble, which takes its name from a delightful image of St Dunstan of Canterbury pinching the nose of the devil with tongs.

Another rare medieval chasuble was commissioned in the 1490s by King Henry VII for use in Westminster Abbey. It was originally part of a massively expensive and prestigious matching set of twenty-nine copes, a chasuble, dalmatic and tunicle. These were woven in Florence from cloth of gold and red silk velvet damask, with interloped threads of gold, in a technique known as riccio sopra riccio, or richness upon richness. The design features red rose of the House of Lancaster, the portcullis badge of Henry’s mother, Margaret Beaufort (the Tudor’s main claim to royalty came through Margaret) and embroideries showing the Good Shepherd and angels incensing a monstrance. Of the set (which was taken to the Field of Cloth of Gold by Henry VIII), only two pieces remain; this chasuble and a cope.

Both arrived at St Omers early in its history and were known to have been used in ceremonies at the college as early as 1609.

A poignant reminder of the personal cost paid by Catherine of Aragon for refusing to fall in with her husband’s desire to annul her marriage, can be seen in a set of chasuble, dalmatic and tunicles bearing rich embroidery of grapes and vines. This set is said to have been embroidered by Catherine and her two ladies-in-waiting during her incarceration at Kimbolton in the fifteen months before her death. The set was restored on arrival at St Omers in the late 17th century, and then again in the 1850s, but much of the original embroidery and design remains.

The college also commissioned new chasubles for use in its three chapels. There were many communities of English nuns in the Low Countries in the 17th century, exiled from home because of their faith. It is likely that some of the exquisite Flemish embroideries at Stonyhurst originated in English convents in places like Bruges, Louvain, Antwerp and St Omers. The Lamb Chasuble features rich gold scrolls, laid out like a formal garden parterre, and in between are brilliantly coloured tulips, roses, lilies, violas and honeysuckle, which symbolise different aspects of Mary’s virtues. On the back is a solid panel of silk embroidery with silver and gold thread showing the Lamb of the Apocalypse, lying on the Book with Seven Seals. This chasuble is in remarkably original condition, and is used on special occasions at Stonyhurst.

Missionary priests in 17th century England found it difficult to minister the sacraments to the Catholic communities they visited, as many houses had no place to hide the vessels, books and vestments necessary. It was dangerous for priests to carry these items with them as they were proof that the owner was a priest, which carried the death penalty. Many, however, took that risk as there was no alternative.

In the container known as the Pedlar’s Chest, at Stonyhurst, there is a unique collection of simple vestments made from ladies’ dresses, along with a travelling altar stone, pewter chalice, alb, rosary ring and a quantity of church linen including altar frontals, chalice veils, burses and amices. These were used by priests travelling the Lancashire countryside, visiting remote Catholic farmhouses, manors and hamlets.

The chest itself is made from pine and is covered with ponyskin. The interior is lined with crudely printed wallpaper of hunting scenes. It is exactly the sort of container used by travelling salesmen, or chapmen, using fell ponies over the rough packhorse routes of rural England, and it was this persona that the priests adopted, travelling in disguise.

The packhorse trails had the advantage of bypassing villages with their government-paid ‘watchers’ waiting to interrogate travelling strangers. The paths were rugged and uncomfortable, but they linked Catholic houses, and allowed priests disguised as pedlars to arrive at the back door offering threads and patterns, thimbles and pins. Secret signs and words were exchanged with the lady of the house and the priest was taken to a discreet room to unpack the vestments and celebrate Mass.

A later vestment tells the story of the changing situation for Catholics in the early 19th century. The Arundell Cope is a sumptuous robe, made from rich, dark red velvet, embroidered with jewels, pearls, gold and silver thread. The velvet was originally used for the coronation robes of James Everard, 10th Baron Arundell of Wardour, who wore them to Westminster Abbey for the crowning of George IV in 1821. His attendance at the coronation was an indication that Catholics were becoming accepted after centuries of exclusion.

There is a final, intriguing item worth looking at. Known as the St Norbert Cope, it has a hood decorated with rich 17th century embroidery showing that saint holding aloft a monstrance. The fabric of the cope is bizarre; deep purple, gold and silver asymmetric designs, fringed with silk and paisley motifs. It was originally the umbrella of an Indian Maharajah’s elephant

The English Reformation & The European Renaissance [conference]

Saturday 28 March, 3:30 - 6:30pm

This event has been postponed due to Covid-19

An afternoon conference exploring the relationship between Reformation England and Renaissance Europe.

Conference schedule:

About the speaker:

About the speaker:

Cost:

Please register below:

Venue:

The CHC @ The Catholic Universe

Relics reveal rich tapestry of England’s Catholic past

The English Reformation
& The European Renaissance
[conference]