The rediscovery of the catacombs resulted in a sudden relic boom from Europe's 'saint mine' - the possibility of a church acquiring not only part of a saint but a saint's whole body opened up, but there was anxiety about exactly who some of these new saints were
However, the idea of digging in the ground for saints was nothing new - there are numerous medieval stories of churches in need of a foundation relic praying for a vision of where to dig, and then finding a previously unknown saint in the ground
A great example of this is St Amphibalus. A vision directed the monks of St Albans to open a barrow containing the bones of St Amphibalus; he was actually some random Bronze Age dude who was lucky enough to receive full Christian cult honours for the next few centuries #winner
In fact, random Bronze Age guy is *still* winning because @StAlbansCath recently undertook a lavish restoration of the shrine of St Amphibalus. So let no-one tell you the cult of our prehistoric ancestors is extinct!
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A faintly ominous account of Wordwell's Hill of Health by, yes you guessed it, M.R. James...
Somehow these few words have the power to imply unwritten stories of unutterable horror
The barrows of Wordwell Heath also attracted the attention of Basil Brown, who noted that silver bells were found in an adjacent barrow called Traveller's Hill in 1942
It's sobering to reflect that many UK politicians in 1990 were impatient with the Baltic independence movements because they thought Glasnost was the only show in town, and wanted a liberalised USSR not independent Baltic states
And I'm talking about dedicated anti-Communist Tories as well as the centre. Scarcely anyone thought the USSR would fall, so national independence movements were an annoying threat to a post-Communist Soviet future
Hansard of the time makes for fascinating reading...
Today is the second most important Feast of St Edmund, commemorating the translation of the saint's incorrupt body from the ancient rotunda to Abbot Baldwin's new Norman basilica in 1095. 'St Edmund's day in springtime' was a popular time for processions in honour of the saint
This was not, however, the only translation of the relics of St Edmund. Edmund was translated from his original grave at Haeglisdun in 889 (or 904); from Bury to London in 1010, from the London back to Bury in 1013; from the wooden Church of St Mary to the Rotunda in 1032...
While the translation of 1095 was meant to be the last, Edmund was secretly translated *somewhere* between 1535 and 1539
Catching up on this fascinating reflection by Eamon Duffy on The Stripping of the Altars, 30 years on. As for so many historians first formed in the 90s, it was absolutely pivotal to me catholicherald.co.uk/the-stripping-…
'It was in some ways a dangerous book for an academic to publish, for its author’s empathy for the religious system that the book scrutinised was clear, inevitably inviting the accusation of religious bias...'
I didn't read the book straight away because I was too young, so I first encountered it 5 years after it was published, when I was doing A Level History and touring the churches of Suffolk at any opportunity I could get. It was basically a guidebook for me
The goal of my Cumbrian travels today: the Roman bathhouse at Ravenglass!
The reason this particular building interests me so much is that it survived as part of a post-Roman building. So it's the Thermes de Cluny of northwest England
The bathhouse has intact doors and windows and even a niche. But when did it stop being a domestic building and enter a ruined state?