Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Grace at Ipswich

The Pilgrimage now returns to East Anglia, and to the famous Shrine of Our Lady of Grace at Ipswich. 

There is an introduction to the Shrine from last year at Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Grace at Ipswich

My longer account and discussion of the shrine from 2021 has links which demonstrates how the votive statue may have survived, and still serves as a focus of devotion at Nettuno on the Italian coast. It also covers the modern re-establishment of the shrine in St Mary at Elms in Ipswich. This can all be seen at Our Lady of Grace of Ipswich

May Our Lady of Grace at Ipswich pray for the King and all the Royal Family and for us all 

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Coventry

The Pilgrimage now veers off into the Midlands  before returning to East Anglia tomorrow. Today’s destination is the Shrine of Our Lady of Coventry which was in the medieval cathedral priory lost at the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539.

My post about the devotion and the new statue on the site of the cathedral, from 2021, can be seen at Our Lady of Coventry

Waterton has a lengthy section about thic Coventry shrine, most of it about the foundation and endowments of the Benedictine house by Earl Leofric and Countess Godgifu ( Godiva ). He mentions in particular the chaplet of jewels created by Godgifu and used rather like a rosary. She bequeathed this to this Coventry image of Our Lady. According to William of Malmesbury in the twelfth century it was valued at 100 marks

(  £66.13.4 ).

He also mentions offerings to the statue of Our Lady in the Tower, which may have been a shrine on the city walls. King Henry VIII made an offering in 1511.

May Our Lady of Coventry pray for The King and all the Royal Family and for us all

King Louis XV

Today is the 250th anniversary of the death of King Louis XV in 1774.

King Louis XV

A 1748 portrait by Maurice-Quentin de La Tour

Image: Wikipedia 

He was 64, and had been King since he succeeded his great grandfather, King Louis XIV, in 1715 at the age of five and a half. 

There is a decent biography of him on Wikipedia which sets out the salient features of his reign and age, and which can be seen at Louis XV

To adequately begin to consider the reign would take far longer than I have time for here and now, but here are a few reflections from my point of view.

The historiography of his reign is very much in terms of his predecessors’ achievements and, inevitably, whether or to what extent he bares all, or much, or some, or none of the blame for the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. Nineteenth century French writers, often sympathetic to the ideas of 1789, or hardline social and moral conservatives deeply opposed to than, seeking for the origins of revolution see them everywhere in the Ancien Régime. As Wikipedia points out a modern, if minority, trend is to be favourable to him.

I am definitely inclined to exonerate the King. Eighteenth century Europe moved at different speeds - reforming and modernising systems that were old and slow - getting the balance right was difficult. An explosion of the entire political and social mechanism was always a risk, yet it did not happen until 1789, and then only in one country to then cause Europe-wide chaos.

I am inclined to see what happened in France as very much a typical failing of France or of the French political system. National folie de grandeur in 1848,1870, 1914,1940, 1958, and indeed in recent decades results in a great power with a self-belief out of touch with the real situation. Eighteenth century France was in advance of much of Europe and believing in what it had achieved did not always see the practical impact of or need for reform like its rival Austria faced with an existential crisis in the 1740s or Spain and Portugal later on realising they were slipping backwards.

The Wikipedia biography shows that King Louis XV did attempt reform - it was not the monarchy that sought to prevent it but rather the Parlements by resisting. Reform was pragmatic for the King, and not ideological. He did not see himself as a Philosopher King like King Frederick the Great or, later on, the Emperor Joseph II. 

It is possible to see France as complacent and intellectually self-indulgent in these years, but that is the country not its ruler. The Philosophes had an easy time in the reign with Mme. de Pompadour as a patron and advocate with the King.

If the Annales school are right - if - and all the issues are structures, then human agency is limited, as probably is awareness. We are all, to some extent, prisoners of our time and place, eighteenth century kings and lawyers, nobles and peasants alike - unless you have the Olympian detachment, blessed by hindsight, of an Annales historian.

French foreign policy remained in the mind set of the seventeenth century in many respects, gained little beyond Lorraine and Corsica, and preferred the Caribbean with its sugar to Canada in 1763. The many conflicts had little show for France as in 1783, save a weakened treasury. The contrast with Great Britain is instructive and to their fortunes over the next thirty or so years.

The Wikipedia entry describes the King’s feelings for his family - as an orphan bereft of close relatives his shyness and seeming lack of self belief alongside a resolve to maintain the constitutional rights of the Crown, and of the other components of the polity, and to resist unbalancing these, may well lie in the concatenation of death which surrounded his early years and accession. 

Perhaps less concern with who King Louis had as his mistress and more with the day to day issues of governance he faced would help to reassess him.

A friend pointed out to me that today is also the 230th anniversary of the death on the guillotine of the King’s granddaughter Mme.Elisabeth. The French Revolution was not just a tragedy for a nation or a system, it was a tragedy for the French Royal Family and for countless others across the nation. Far better the pragmatic muddling through of King Louis XV than the crazed ideology of Robespierre.

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Grace in Cambridge

The Pilgrimage now crosses over to Cambridge and to the lost Shrine of Our Lady of Grace in the Dominican friary. The site is now occupied by the Elizabethan foundation of Emmanuel College.

My article about the statue from 2020 and an additional note from 2021 can be read at Our Lady of Grace in Cambridge and Our Lady of Grace in Cambridge respectively.

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

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Oxford

The Pilgrimage now sets off towards the ancient Universirty cities, with Oxford the first destination. As I point out in my notes below there does not appear to have been a particular statue or image identified as Our Lady of Oxford in the Middle Ages, and each church doubtless had its own. However the likeliest candidate as the one to which St Edmund of Abingdon ‘betrothed’ himself seems to have been in St Mary’s parish church in the High, and the church used then and now by the University. Waterton suggests St Nicholas which was eventually taken over by the Dominicans but I would still favour St Mary’s as the church concerned. 

As Waterton says there were - and still are - many images of the Virgin in the churches of Oxford, but no single image was uniquely ‘Our Lady of Oxford’.

My main post about these statues was written in 2021 and can be seen at Our Lady of Oxford

I added a supplementary note last year at Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Oxford

May Our Lady of Oxford pray for The King and all the Royal Family and for us all

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Muswell

The Pilgrimage now retraces its route and moves eastward from Islington to Muswell.

My first post about this site was written in 2020 in Our Lady of Muswell

The following year I wrote further about the link with King Malcolm IV in Our Lady of Muswell

Last year I added some more information and a link to a 1932 history of the Shrine. These features can be seen at Our Lady of Muswell

May Our Lady of Muswell pray for The King and all the Royal Family and for us all

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.