1 The Medieval Period

Introduction

THOMAS M. McCOOG SJ

From stamps to autographs; from bottle tops to empty tins; from postcards to military insignia; from thimbles to keys: anything and everything is collectible. A cursory visit to eBay reveals the present-day extent and diversity of collecting. Many comment how a hobby can become an obsession, but few offer any explanation. Philipp Blom studied the “urge to collect” in To Have and To Hold: An Intimate History of Collectors and Collecting (London, 2002). Blom conducts the reader on a tour from Renaissance cabinets of curiosities to unpacked crates of art, sculpture and architecture purchased by American moguls, memorably filmed in Citizen Kane.

What confers value upon a collected object? Why, asks Blom, “is someone prepared to pay a small fortune for a stamp that is no longer valid, for an empty matchbox that missed the rubbish bin only because its last user had a poor aim, for a bottle that has not contained any wine for decades?” (p.166). The author argues that their value lies in their significance: “they mean something, stand for something, carry associations that make them valuable in the eye of the collector”.

“Where was your church before Luther?”, Catholics across continental Europe demanded of sixteenth-century Protestants. If the reformed Church is the Church established by Jesus Christ, where was it before the publication of Martin Luther’s 95theses in 1517? Jesus promised that his Spirit would remain in the Church and guide it. So where was this Church during the 1500 years prior to Luther’s protest? Were Luther’s antecedents patristic and medieval heretics? Did the reformed Church suddenly appear out of nowhere? How could the Church, under divine guidance, have been so wrong for so long?

In England the situation was different. Inthe reformations initiated by Henry VIII, his son Edward VI, and daughter Elizabeth I, the English Church claimed to be the legitimate descendant of Christianity as established within the kingdom, perhaps by Joseph of Arimathea, before a later introduction of Roman corruption and abuses. Crown officials such as Thomas Cromwell purged colleges, cathedrals, and churches of any manuscript or work of art considered superstitious or “smacking of popery”. Chantries were destroyed, tombs looted, statues maimed, parchments burned and paintings whitewashed. Catholics loyal to the old religion watched in horror as their

7

devotional and religious patrimony was destroyed, and their churches and cathedrals occupied by ecclesiastics loyal to the reform. Prosperous monasteries and abbeys, once institutions integral to England’s social fabric, became now Shakespeare’s famous “Bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang”.

In possession of titles and properties, the reformers portrayed themselves as restorers of the pristine glory of the English Church, now finally cleansed of contamination after centuries of subservience to Roman control. IfEnglish Catholics dared ask the reformers where their Church was before Luther, the said reformers could simply point to the churches and cathedrals currently used for their worship. Possession of the traditional places of worship demonstrated, more clearly and forcefully than any theological argument, Protestant claims of historical continuity with England’s religious past.

English Catholics were disenfranchised intruders. In the ensuing theological and historical publications, Catholic contro versialists, historians and antiquarians refuted Protestant claims that their Church was thelegitimate continuation of England’s past. Left without the buildings, English Catholics claimed as their own, discarded items of England’s Christian past. As reformers defaced England’s Christian heritage, Catholics saved what they could from the looted tombs and the suppressed abbeys. Theycherished what the reformers despised.

The objects in this exhibition truly have significance. As the medieval Church gave way to the Reformation, English Catholics, often unnamed, collected devotional, pious, and liturgical objects, often at considerable danger to themselves. Some, such as the alabaster panel of the adoration of the Magi and the Lucca chasuble, they hid away, perhaps in hope that a better day would dawn. Other objects, such as the St Dunstan and Henry VII chasubles, Cardinal Wolsey’s Book of Hours, and the Aragon Mass vestments, were entrusted to continental institutions such as the English Jesuit colleges at St Omers or Liège for preservation for future generations. English Catholics collected religious items with significance extending far beyond the borders of their kingdom – for example, the relic of the Holy Thorn with its associations with the crusades, the SainteChapelle in Paris, and Mary, Queen of Scots.

Arguably the most treasured objects are those associated with the survival of Catholicism during the approximately three hundred years of legal proscription. Persecution varied depending on time and place, but the anti-Catholic laws remained ever a threat. Anyone not complying with the religious statutes risked everything. Liturgical items were hidden in trunks to avoid detection.Martyrs, such as Sir Thomas More, Edmund Campion, and Edward Oldcorne, were many and their relics cherished.

The accession of James II in 1685 seemed to be an answer to the prayers of English and Welsh Catholics. They would no longer have

8

to worship in embassy chapels, or behind locked, closed doors. Three years later, in 1688, the so-called Glorious Revolution ended their respite but not their hopes. Catholics did not abandon the House of Stuart, and many flirted with Jacobitism as they sought to replace the Hanoverian dynasty with the legitimate Stuarts.

In the late eighteenth century, Parliament began to enact legislation that lifted many of the financial and penal burdens carried by English and Welsh Catholics. The Catholic Relief Act of 1829 removed most of the remaining disabilities. Catholics celebrated their freedom, and reclaimed their heritage, with the construction of numerous churches and cathedrals in the different styles of the Gothic Revival. During this “second spring” Catholicism once again became a prominent feature on the English landscape.

English and Welsh Catholics did not simply look backwards with a world that we have lost simplicity to better times. They honoured their past and hoped to transmit it to the future. But even during the most difficult times, they were also well aware of Catholic missionaries in the new, unknown parts of the globe, and artistic, spiritual developments in Catholic Europe. Catholic culture blossomed in continental Europe; Catholic missionaries disseminated the Gospel throughout the globe. Most likely the first Englishman to visit India was the Jesuit, Thomas Stephens, in 1579. Reports of the success of such missionaries, translated and published, consoled and encouraged persecuted English and Welsh Catholics. A desire for religious freedom even prompted some English Catholics to embark for the New World and establish the colony of Maryland in 1633. New worlds; exotic worlds; worlds to convert; worlds to study. Worlds that slowly and sometimes painfully opened European eyes to “God’s grandeur”.

9

The Medieval Period 1