ECHA Newsletter September 2017
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Reg. Charity No. 1072269 NEWSLETTER VOL. 2, No. 76 SEPTEMBER 2017 CONTENTS News and Notes Upcoming events Visit reports Articles Future Programme Back cover ============ Membership of the English Catholic History Association is open to all who are interested in furthering its aims. Annual membership £11 with reductions for additional members at same address and students under 25 Membership forms and further details are available from: The Secretary or Treasurer, addresses on page 3, or on the website - http://echa.org.uk/ NEWSLETTER ARTICLES AND FEEDBACK AND COMMENTS always welcome Please send contributions to the Editor Mrs Sheila Mawhood, the ECHA Publicity Officer at the address on page 3. [By email please and if possible saved with file extension of .doc in Word, photos in .jpg format. 2 Patrons: Rt. Rev. Dom Geoffrey Scott, OSB, MA, PhD, FSA, FRHist S Abbot of Douai. Lord Clifford of Chudleigh President: Abbot Aidan Bellenger, OSB, MA, PhD, FSA, FRHist.S, FRSA Committee: Chairman: Dr Simon Johnson Deputy Chairman: Mr Bernard Polack Treasurer: Mr Vincent Burke Secretary: Mrs Angela Hodges Members: Mrs Sheila Mawhood Mr Nigel Parker Address for Correspondence: 45 High Street, Stoke-sub-Hamdon, Somerset. TA14 6PR 01935 823928 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.echa.org.uk Website Administrator Mrs Lynne HUNTER JOHNSTON Email: [email protected] Programme Co-ordinators: Ursula and Bernard Polack (address below) Membership Secretary: Mr Vincent Burke 16 Brandhall Court, Wolverhampton Road , Oldbury, West Midlands, B68 8DE 0121 422 1573 Newsletter Editor and Publicity Officer: Mrs Sheila Mawhood (address below) Regional Co-ordinators: Leeds, Middlesborough, Hexham & Newcastle Mrs Lalage ROBSON, Dunelm, Black Dyke Lane, Upper Poppleton,York, YO26 6PT 01904 794929 South East (East Anglia, Brentwood, Arundel & Brighton & part of Southwark): Bernard POLACK, 4 Woodstock Grove, Farncombe, Godalming, Surrey, GU7 2AX. 01483 421412 Diocese of Westminster: Nigel PARKER, 17 Salcombe Gardens, Clapham Common North Side, London SW4 9RY 020 7978 4329 Email: [email protected] Kent: Christopher BULL, 48 Reed Avenue, Canterbury, Kent, CT1 1ES 01227 451139 Email: [email protected] Northampton and Nottingham Dioceses: Mrs Sheila MAWHOOD, 21 The Retreat, Princes Risborough, Bucks HP27 0JG 01844 343669 Email: [email protected] West Midlands, North West England, South West England, Wessex and Wales: VACANT 3 NEWS & NOTES I apologise for the late arrival of your September newsletter. We had a change of speaker for the afternoon slot at our AGM, so I held fire to give you a few details. We are very fortunate that Dom Geoffrey Scott who is one of our Patrons and is the Abbot at Douai, is able to come and talk to us. I recall our visit to Douai a couple of years ago. A magnificent place and it was a very informative afternoon spent there. So please come to the AGM on 21st October. I have website news for you. Regarding our website administrator. Lynne Hunter Johnston, who has been South West Regional Organiser for some years now, has had to stand down as she has moved abroad for a period with her husband, James. She will be continuing to update our website due to the wonders of modern communications but we are seeking a new person to take over as Regional Organiser in the South West of England. Would any of our members be interested? If so, please be in touch with our Secretary, Mrs Angela Hodges. The Regional Co-ordinators are encouraged to suggest to the Committee possible venues for visits and possible speakers in their area and, ideally, to organise such visits and meetings. All necessary help would be given by the Committee. We have been contacted by a Benedictine Nun, Sister Beda Brooks OSB from the Abtei St Walburga in Eichstätt, Bavaria which is 100 miles north of Munich. Sister Beda has published a history of St Walburga (a Wessex kinswoman of St Boniface). St Walburga was born in Devon around 710. The publication is available from Minster Abbey (St Mildred’s Abbey) In Thanet Kent. I have not been given any other details, such as the price but will attempt to give you more info in the December newsletter. She has also published a history of Minster Abbey. 4 UPCOMING EVENTS GUIDE Saturday 21 October Day Conference and AGM St John the Evangelist Church in Bath. Our morning will be Dr Giles Mercer, the author of the recently published biography of Bishop Brownlow. He will be presenting this time on St Alphege. Here again, to refresh your memory are some notes on this Saint, notes which Giles sent to us. St Alphege: Saint of Bath and Saint for our Times Alphege, born in Bath in 954, became a monk at Deerhurst in Gloucestershire and then at Bath, where he was a (much-visited) hermit on Lansdown and later abbot of the community in Bath. His inclinations were towards the contemplative life but his abilities and leadership qualities meant he was needed for wider responsibility in the Church. Made bishop of Winchester in 984 he led that diocese with determination, compassion, and courage for twenty years, after which he was translated to Canterbury at a time when England was being ravaged by Danish invasions. Alphege was captured by the Danes and a ransom was demanded for him. He would not allow this to be paid, because he did not want the people to suffer further. For this he was killed brutally by Danes at Greenwich in 1012. His life sheds light on reformed monasticism, on diocesan life, and on perennial issues of justice, faith, witness, and evangelisation. The cult of St Alphege, endorsed especially by St Anselm, was one of the greatest of the pre-Reformation period. Today his life and example provide inspiration across the Christian spectrum and beyond, but he deserves to be much better known. After lunch, our Patron Dom Geoffrey Scott will present to us. As we go to press, the title of his presentation had not been advised. Dom Geoffrey has been Abbot since 1998. He also acts as Librarian and Archivist and teaches Church history at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford. Currently he is also President of the Catholic Archives Society. 5 VISIT REPORTS London - The Museum of the Order of St John in Clerkenwell and The Charterhouse, former Carthusian monastery. Saturday 8 July. We were lucky that the worst of that now forgotten early summer heatwave had relented when we travelled to London on Saturday 8th July. It was pleasantly warm and sunny. The capital is a different animal on weekends with offices closed and the commuters at home. But the area round Farringdon Tube and Clerkenwell was unexpectedly quiet. Not a single tourist coach in sight. And the only tourists around seemed to be us, a group of the 20 or so making our way to the Museum of the Order of St John and its Priory Church. This part of London is home to the Royal Mail Mount Pleasant Sorting Office, the magnificent Smithfield Market .and the offices of ASLEF, the train drivers’ union. And several pubs, cafes and restaurants. When we turned into St John’s Lane we saw, at the end of the road, the Gate - St John’s Gate and Arch with the Order’s red and white flag flying from a mast out the front. The Order of St John. Some brief notes on its long history. The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem also known as the Order of Saint John, Order of Hospitallers, Knights Hospitaller or Hospitallers, is the medieval Catholic Military Order that continued into the contemporary Sovereign Military Order of Malta. It was headquartered variously in Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta over the centuries and its headquarters are now in Rome. The Clerkenwell Priory. “In the 1140s the Priory in Clerkenwell was set up as the English headquarters of the Order. When King Henry VIII split from the Catholic Church and established a new Anglican Church, the Order in England was dissolved and all its lands and wealth were seized by the Crown. The Order was restored briefly by Henry’s Catholic daughter, Queen Mary, who granted it a Royal Charter. However, on the accession of her Protestant sister, Queen Elizabeth I, the Order in England was dissolved for good. The buildings in Clerkenwell were put to different uses in the years that followed. During the sixteenth century, they were used as the offices of the Master of the Revels. Thirty of Shakespeare’s plays were licensed here. In the eighteenth century, the Gate was briefly used as a coffee house, run by Richard Hogarth, father of the artist William Hogarth. Dr Samuel Johnson was given his first job in London at St John’s Gate, writing reports for The Gentleman’s Magazine. At the end of the eighteenth century, the Gate was used as a pub, The 6 Old Jerusalem Tavern, where artists and writers, including Charles Dickens, used to meet..” Notes from the Museum website. The modern Order of St John in England was granted a Royal Charter by Queen Victoria in 1888. Our guide explained that the symbol of the Order, a white eight- pointed cross on a black background, is an international symbol of first aid. It is known as the logo of St John Ambulance, emblazoned on the sides of ambulances and on the uniforms of its highly trained volunteers. However, the eight-pointed cross was also worn on the robes of those first Brother Knights in the hospital in Jerusalem, and it has remained unaltered through the centuries, as an enduring emblem of humanitarian care, and of a charity that dates back almost 1000 years.