A return visit to the chapel of the Mageough Home in Rathmines, Dublin

The Mageough Home and its chapel on Cowper Road, Rathmines, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

My visit to Dublin this week was little more than 24 hours, and involved a handful of family visits, with little time to meet friends, do any Christmas shopping or visit any of my favourite churches, buildings or places.

I was staying in Rathmines, which gave me time for strolls through parts of Rathmines, Ranelagh and Rathgar, including a short visit to Kenilworth Square. But how I would have enjoyed coffee or a meal with friends or a walk on one of my favourite beaches near Dublin.

When I was visiting my brother in Rathmines yesterday afternoon, I also had the opportunity to have a short visit to the Chapel at the Mageough Home, a Victorian ‘almshouse’ or retirement home on Cowper Road, Rathmines, built as the ‘Mageough Home for Aged Females’ in the late 19th century.

The chapel was the venue for one of my pre-ordination retreats almost 25 years ago. I celebrated the Christmas Eucharist and preached there on Christmas Day 2012, and I celebrated and preached there again during Lent in 2013. So it was a personal pleasure to visit the chapel once again in the days immediately before Christmas.

Inside the chapel of the Mageough Home, facing the liturgical east (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Mageough Home was built thanks to a bequest from Miss Elizabeth Mageough. When she died in 1869, she left a small fortune to fund ‘a suitable place for elderly ladies of the Protestant faith to live.’

The home was built to the designs of James Rawson Carroll on land bought from William Cowper-Temple (1811-1888), 1st Baron Mount Temple, a nephew of one Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, and the stepson of another, Lord Palmerston.

When his mother died in 1869 – the same year as Elizabeth Mageough died – William Cowper inherited a number of estates under his stepfather’s will, and changed his surname to Cowper-Temple. Those properties included land in Rathmines and a 10,000-acre estate on the Mullaghmore peninsula in Co Sligo, with its unfinished Classiebawn Castle.

His family connections give many streets in Rathmines their names, including Palmerston Road and Palmerston Park, Cowper Road and Temple Road.

Facing the liturgical west in the chapel, which is built on a north/south axis (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The site in Rathmines bought by the Mageough Trustees was known locally as ‘The Bloody Fields’. It is said to be the burial place of 2,000 Royalist and Catholic troops who were killed by Roundheads at the Battle of Rathmines in 1649 during the Irish Confederate Wars. Cowper Road is close to Palmerston Road, and the Mageough Home is beside the Cowper Luas station.

Elizabeth Mageough had lived at a house known as Richview at 1 Cowper Road in Rathmines. She died in 1869, and her will revealed the extent of her personal wealth. Her will included a number of personal bequests, but after that the residue was to go to charity.

The ‘residue’ of her estate turned out to be the equivalent of €6.25 million today. Her will stipulated that this bequest was to be spent for ‘the habitation, support and clothing of aged females of good character and sobriety.’

The Advent waiting … a crib beside the altar in the Mageough Chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The initial trustees included the Revd Dr Charles Marlay Fleury, the Revd Edward Metcalf, the Revd Dr Maurice Hodson Neligan, the Revd James Hewitt, Archdeacon Latham Coddington Warren, Francis Low, John Wright Hobart Seymour and Samuel Bewley.

The Mageough trustees bought the site known as ‘The Bloody Fields’ in Rathmines from William Cowper-Temple. Through Neligan’s influence and contacts, the trustees appointed as their architect James Rawson Carroll (1830-1911), who was the personal architect to both Lord Palmerston and William Cowper-Temple, and had been commissioned by them to design the baronial Classiebawn Castle at Mullaghmore, later the home of Lord Mountbatten, who was murdered there by the IRA on 27 August 1979.

Christmas decorations on a window ledge in the Mageough Chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

James Rawson Carroll was a younger son of Thomas Carroll, a writing and English master, of Leinster Street and Waterloo Road, Dublin, and a brother of three other architects, Thomas Henry Carroll, Howard Carroll and Charles Owens Carroll. He was born in 1830 and educated at Delamere’s school, near Delgany, Co Wicklow, and he is probably the James R Carroll who was admitted to study architecture at the Royal Dublin Society’s School of School of Drawing in 1846.

Later, Carroll was articled to George Fowler Jones (1817-1905) of York and worked with him for seven years.

Jones’s work can be seen throughout York, and he was also the architect of Castle Oliver or Cloghanadfoy Castle, Co Limerick, built in 1845-1852, for which Thomas Carroll was the contractor for stonework.

The pulpit in the Mageough Chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

James Rawson Carroll also worked in the office of the Gothic revival architect John Raphael Rodrigues Brandon (1817-1877). Thomas Hardy, who also worked briefly for Brandon, based his description of Henry Knight’s chambers in A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873) on Brandon’s office at Clement’s Inn.

Carroll had returned to Dublin by 1857 to set up his own practice at 180 Great Brunswick Street, an address he shared with his brother Charles. He exhibited at the RDS Exhibition of the Fine Arts in 1861. By the end of 1870, he had become architect to the United Diocese of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh.

The value of land was increasing as Ireland recovered from the famine years, and Carroll built up a considerable country house practice as well as designing several churches and other public buildings. He acted as assessor in selecting the design for the Church of Ireland Glebe House at Rathmines, in 1875, deciding in favour of Thomas Drew.

Carroll and Drew represented Ireland at the General Conference of Architects at the RIBA in London in June 1876, and Carol and John Lanyon represented Ireland in June 1878, when Carroll spoke on the subjects of the rusting of ironwork and the new model by-law.

The bell tower above the entrance to the Mageough Chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Carroll was a member of the Architectural Association of Ireland, a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (FRIAI, 1863), a council member (1864-1901), and vice-president (1875); a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA, 1876), proposed by James Joseph McCarthy, William Henry Lynn, Thomas Drew and George Fowler Jones; and an active member of the Architects’ Club in Dublin.

Carroll took his nephew and pupil John Howard Pentland into partnership in 1882. Pentland left the practice to work for the Office of Public Works at the end of 1884, and some years later, ca 1892, Carroll formed a new partnership with his chief assistant, Frederick Batchelor, which lasted until his retirement in 1905. Carroll’s other pupils and assistants included Frederick George Hicks.

Carroll’s works include the Molyneux Church (later Christ Church and now a Romanian Orthodox parish church) and Asylum (1859-1862, 1871), Leeson Street, Dublin; Saint John the Baptist Church (1860), Clontarf; Saint John’s Church (1869-1870), Abington, Co Limerick; Ardagh House, the village clocktower, school and many houses and buildings in Ardagh, Co Longford; Classiebawn House (1874-1877), Mullaghmore, Co Sligo; the town hall and court house in Sligo; and the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital, Dublin.

A plaque on the chapel wall remembers the legacy of Elizabeth Mageough (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Mageough trustees appointed Carroll as their architect in 1871. His first design was costed at £23,000. After a long argument between Carroll and the trustees, changes were made to bring the building costs within budget, a quote of £16,770 from Moyers Builders of Portobello was accepted, and the Mageough Home was built in 1875-1878 to provide ‘the habitation, support and clothing of aged females professing the Protestant faith.’

Initially, the rector of the local Church of Ireland parish, Saint Philip’s on Temple Road, Milltown, and at least one of the trustees objected to a chapel being built as an integral part of the home. But when the chapel was built, with its clock tower and foundation plaque, it became a central feature of the Mageough, built like the court or quad of a Cambridge or Oxford college.

Because of the site, the chapel was built on a north/south axis rater than the traditional east/west liturgical axis. The chapel was consecrated by Archbishop Richard Chenevix Trench of Dublin on the day the home opened, 28 November 1878. The first residents moved into the Mageough that month. They were required to be ‘of good character and sobriety.’ Carroll may also have designed the new infirmary at the Mageough in 1890. The chapel reopened after a complete renovation in December 1894.

Carroll was unmarried and lived at 56 Mount Street with two unmarried sisters. He died on 30 November 1911 at the age of 81 and was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Harold’s Cross. His obituary in the Irish Builder said he was a ‘kindly, upright, courteous gentleman’, whose ‘clients were in a real sense his friends, no trouble was too great for him to take; indeed, his attention to detail was extraordinary, and therein lay the secret of much of his success.’

The chapel of the Mageough Home was consecrated by Archbishop Richard Chenevix Trench of Dublin on 28 November 1878 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Later alterations at the Mageough Home in 1928 were designed by the architect Richard Francis Caulfeild Orpen (1863-1938), a grandson of Bishop Charles Caulfeild of Nassau and a brother of the painter William Orpen (1878-1931). Orpen was also the architect to Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, in succession to Drew.

He was also the architect to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, Saint Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny, Trinity College Dublin and Saint Columba’s College, Rathfarnham, a guardian of the National Gallery of Ireland, and honorary secretary of the Municipal Gallery.

The Mageough is still run today as a residential complex for older people with 36 small homes. The complex is built of red brick and slate in a Gothic Revival style. It includes 37 houses, an infirmary, a Church of Ireland chapel and towers that surround a central green, forming three sides of a square. The houses, chapel, infirmary, gate lodge, stone boundary walls, gate piers and gates are all protected structures.

The first regular Sunday service in the chapel was held on 1 December 1878. The 13 chaplains of the Mageough have included the Revd Henry Alured Alcock, the Revd Benjamin Gibson, the Revd Thomas Skipton, Canon Richard Neville Somerville, the Revd Reginald Adams Orchard, the Revd William Herbert Charles Walford Turl, Canon John Richards Goff, the Revd Matthew Tobias, Canon William Henry Coulter, Archdeacon Desmond Hilton Patton, Canon Edward Austin Carry (who played international rugby for Ireland in the 1940s), Archdeacon William Butler Heney, and the Revd Robert Kingston.

The present chaplain, the Revd Robert Kingston, is a former Rector of Tallaght and of Mallow, Co Cork. He has written a history of the Mageough Home, which is available online HERE. Services in the Chapel take place on Sundays and Wednesdays.

The houses, chapel and other buildings of the Mageough Home are all protected structures (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on image for full-screen viewing)

With the Saints through Christmas (6): 31 December, John Wycliffe

John Wycliffe depicted in a window in the Chapel of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

John Wycliffe (ca 1330-1384) is remembered as an early Reformer and an early translator of the Bible into English, whose principles led to him losing his academic posts at Oxford. He is honoured in the calendar of Common Worship in the Church of England on this day [31 December], but on 30 December in the Anglican Church of Canada, and on 30 October in the calendar of the Episcopal Church [TEC].

Wycliffe has been called the “Morning Star of the Reformation.” His followers were known as Lollards, are their movement is seen as a precursor to the Reformation. At the end of his life, he completed his translation of the Bible directly from the Vulgate into common English in 1382-1384. In those final years of his life, he increasingly argued for Scriptures as the authoritative source of Christianity, that the claims of the papacy were unhistorical, that monasticism was irredeemably corrupt, and that the moral unworthiness of priests invalidated their office and sacraments.

John Wycliffe was a member of the Wycliffe family of Richmond in Yorkshire and was born in the village of Hipswell in North Yorkshire, before 1330, probably in the mid to late1320s. His family was long settled in Yorkshire and took its name from Wycliffe-on-Tees, about 15 km north of Hipswell.

By 1345, he was at Oxford, where his influential cotemporaries included Roger Bacon, Robert Grosseteste, Thomas Bradwardine, William of Occam, and Richard FitzRalph, later Archbishop of Armagh.

Wycliffe showed an early interest in the natural sciences and mathematics, but concentrated his efforts on theology, canon law and philosophy. He became deeply disillusioned both with the Scholastic theology of his day and with the state of the Church and the clergy.

He was a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and by 1361, Wycliffe was the Master of Balliol College, Oxford. In the same year, the college appointed him the Rector of Fylingham, Lincolnshire. He had to retire from Balliol, but he continued to live at Oxford, where he had rooms in the Queen’s College.

In 1365, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Islip, appointed him Warden of Canterbury Hall, Oxford, where 12 students were preparing for ordination to the priesthood. That year, Pope Urban V claimed a feudal tribute that dated back to the reign of King John but that had not been paid for 33 years. In response, Parliament declared that neither King John nor any other had the right to subject England to any foreign power. Pope Urban recognised his mistake and dropped his claim. Wycliffe, who served as a theological adviser to the government, wrote a tract on the Pope’s claims.

Archbishop Islip died the following year, in 1366, and his successor, Simon Langham, replaced Wycliffe at Canterbury with a monk. Wycliffe appealed to Rome, but lost his case.

Later, Canterbury Hall would be incorporated into Christ Church, Oxford.

In 1368, he moved from Fylingham and became Rector of Ludgershall in Buckinghamshire. The parish was near Oxford, enabling Wycliffe to keep his connections with the university. Six years later, in 1374, he received the crown living of Lutterworth in Leicestershire, where he remained rector until he died.

In that same year (1374), when France and England were involved in negotiations in Bruges, Wycliffe was one of commissioners sent from England to deal with papal delegates from Avignon about Church complaints.

Soon after his return from Bruges he began to write his great work or Summa Theologiae. In his De civili dominio, he argued that the Church should renounce all claims to temporal dominion.

Sometime between 1372 and 1384, Wycliffe became a Doctor of Divinity, giving him the right to lecture on theology at Oxford.

Wycliffe was summoned before William Courtenay, Bishop of London, on 19 February 1377 “to explain the wonderful things which had streamed forth from his mouth.”

Meanwhile, Pope Gregory XI had issued a bull condemning Wycliffe, and on 22 May 1377 he sent five copies to England from Rome – one to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the others King Edward III, to the Bishop of London, the Chancellor, and Oxford University. The Pope also denounced 18 theses of Wycliffe as erroneous and dangerous to Church and State. But Edward III died on 21 June 1377 and was succeeded by Richard II, so that the bull against Wycliffe did not become public until 18 December.

In March 1378, he appeared at a church court in Lambeth Palace and for a time he was confined by the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University in Black Hall. Wycliffe was released on threats from his friends, but was excommunicated.

However, before any further steps were taken against him, Pope Gregory XI died in 1378.

In the space of two years, Wycliffe tried to refute his opponents by writing books dealing with the Church, the office of king, and the power of the Pope. For Wycliffe, the Church is made up of all who are predestined to holiness, including the Church triumphant in heaven, those in purgatory, and the Church on earth. No one who is eternally lost has part in it. There is one universal Church, and there is no salvation outside.

However, his denial of the teaching of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist as expressed in the concept of transubstantiation – not yet an officially defined dogma – lost him his royal protection. In the summer of 1381, when Wycliffe formulated his doctrine of the Lord’s Supper in 12 short sentences, the bishops of England proceeded against him, and the Chancellor of Oxford University had some of the declarations pronounced heretical.

In the midst of the controversy, the Peasants’ Revolt broke out in 1381. Although Wycliffe disapproved of the revolt, he was blamed for it. The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Courtenay, called an ecclesiastical assembly in London in 1382, but as it met an earthquake hit the city. Those present were terrified, but Courtenay declared the earthquake a favourable sign, indicating the earth’s purification from erroneous doctrine.

Of the 24 propositions attributed to Wycliffe, 10 were declared heretical and 14 erroneous. On 17 November 1382, Wycliffe was summoned before a synod at Oxford, and while he was not excommunicated or ejected from his parish, he was forced from his offices at Oxford University.

He returned to his parish in Luttertworth, where he wrote tracts and preached sermons castigating the monks and Pope Urban VI, who disappointed Wycliffe’s hopes of being a reforming pope. He completed translating the Bible directly from the Vulgate into common English in 1382-1384.His last work, Opus evangelicum, was never completed.

While he was celebrating Mass in his parish church on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, 28 December 1384, John Wycliffe suffered a stroke. He died three days later, on 31 December 1384.

A law passed in 1401 extended persecution to Wycliffe’s remaining followers. The Constitutions of Oxford in 1408 banned Wycliffe’s writings and made unlicensed translation of Scripture into English a punishable crime and a heresy.

In 1415, the Council of Constance declared Wycliffe a heretic and decreed that his books should be burned and his remains exhumed. At the command of Pope Martin V, his body was dug up and burned, and the ashes were thrown into the River Swift, which flows through Lutterworth.

Wycliffe was a close follower of Augustine and is seen as one of the first writers to formulate f the two major principles of the Reformation: the unique authority of the Bible, and justification by faith.

Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, founded in 1877, is named after John Wycliffe (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, founded in 1877, was named after John Wycliffe and is one of the Evangelical theological colleges in the Church of England.

Wycliffe has also given his name to Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto and Wycliffe College, Gloucestershire.

Wycliffe Bible Translators, one of the largest international organisations dedicated to translating the Bible, is named in honour of John Wycliffe. The Lutterworth Press, a major evangelical publisher in England, takes its name from his parish.

Collect:

Almighty Father,
you have built up your Church
through the love and devotion of your saints:
inspire us to follow the example of John Wycliffe,
whom we commemorate today,
that we in our generation may rejoice with him
in the vision of your glory;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Readings:

Micah 6: 6-8; Psalm 32; Ephesians 3: 14-19; Matthew 19: 16-21.

Post Communion Prayer:

Faithful God,
who called John Wycliffe to serve you
and gave him joy in walking the path of holiness:
by this Eucharist
in which you renew within us the vision of your glory,
strengthen us all to follow the way of perfection
until we come to see you face to face;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

With the Saints through Christmas (5): 30 December, Josephine Butler

Josephine Butler … ‘God and one woman make a majority’

Patrick Comerford

Josephine Butler (1828-1906) was active campaigner against the way Victorian society and legislation treated prostitutes, most of whom were forced into their lifestyle activity through desperate poverty.

Josephine Butler was born on 13 April 1828 at Milfield House, Milfield, Northumberland, and was baptised on 30 May in Northumberland. She was the seventh child of John Grey (1785–1868) and Hannah Eliza Annett 1792-1860). Her father, John Grey, was an eminent agricultural expert, and the cousin of the reformist Prime Minister, Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey. John Grey was campaigned for the abolition of slavery and played a significant role in Catholic emancipation. He lost most of his savings in 1857 with the failure of the Newcastle Bank.

In 1852, Josephine married the Revd George Butler (1819-1890), who encouraged her in her public work. From her 20s on, Josephine was active in feminist movements, and the Butlers had strong radical sympathies, including support for the Union in the American Civil War.

Josephine and George Butler had four children. In 1863, while they were living in Cheltenham, where George was the vice-principal of Cheltenham College, their only daughter, Evangeline, died at the age of six.

In 1866, the family moved to Liverpool when George was appointed headmaster of Liverpool College. There Josephine decided to seek solace by ministering to people with greater pain than her own. She became involved in the campaign for higher education for women, and with Anne Jemima Clough, later principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, she helped to establish the North of England Council for Promoting the Higher Education of Women.

Against the advice of her friends and family, she began visiting Brownlow Hill workhouse in Liverpool, which led to her first involvement with prostitutes. She saw the women as being exploited victims of male oppression, and attacked the double standard of sexual morality.

Her campaign took on an international dimension when she travelled through Europe in 1874-1875 addressing meetings. Her campaign succeeded with the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act in 1883. In 1885, she became involved in a successful campaign against child prostitution.

She was a devout Anglican and a woman of prayer, and once said: “God and one woman make a majority.” She modelled her spirituality on that of Saint Catherine of Siena, and wrote a biography of the Dominican saint.

When George Butler retired from Liverpool College, he became a Canon of Winchester Cathedral. He died on 14 March 1890. Josephine continued her campaigns until the early 1900s. She died on 30 December 1906.

Josephine Butler is celebrated in the Calendar of Common Worship in the Church of England on 30 May, the anniversary of her baptism, and on 30 December, the anniversary of her death.

She is depicted in windows in the Anglican Cathedral, Liverpool, and Saint Olave’s Church, London.

Many of her papers are in the Women’s Library in London Metropolitan University and in the Josephine Butler Museum, Southend-On-Sea. Durham University honoured her in 2005 by giving her name Josephine Butler College. A building in the Faculty of Business and Law in Liverpool John Moores University is named Josephine Butler House. Her former home in Cheltenham was demolished in the 1970s.

Collect:

God of compassion and love,
by whose grace your servant Josephine Butler
followed in the way of your Son
in caring for those in need:
help us like her to work with strength
for the restoration of all
to the dignity and freedom of those created in your image;
through Jesus Christ our Saviour,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Readings:

Isaiah 58: 6-11; Psalm 12; I John 3: 18-23; Matthew 9: 10-13.

Post Communion Prayer:

God our Redeemer,
who inspired your servant Josephine Butler
to witness to your love
and to work for the coming of your kingdom:
may we, who in this sacrament share the bread of heaven,
be fired by your Spirit to proclaim the gospel in our daily living
and never to rest content until your kingdom come,
on earth as it is in heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Tomorrow (31 December): John Wycliffe.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

With the Saints through Christmas (4): 29 December, Saint Thomas Becket

Saint Thomas Becket ... a 13th century window in Canterbury Cathedral

Patrick Comerford

Thomas Becket (ca 1118-1170), the martyred Archbishop of Canterbury, is commemorated today [29 December] with a Lesser Festival in the Calendar of the Church of England.

Thomas Becket, also known as Thomas à Becket, was a skilled diplomat and Chancellor of England for many years before he succeeded as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1161. Thomas was forced into exile when he insisted on the privileges. Although he returned in triumph to Canterbury in 1170, the king’s words of anger at court prompted four knights to go to Canterbury where they chased Thomas into the cathedral, and there murdered him on the steps of the altar on this day in 1170.

Thomas Becket was born ca 1118-1120 in Cheapside, London. Tradition says he was born on 21 December, the feast day of Saint Thomas the Apostle, and so received his name. He may have been related to Theobald of Bec, Archbishop of Canterbury.

When he was a 10-year-old, Thomas was sent as a student to Merton Priory in England and he then attended a school in London. Later, he spent about a year in Paris around the age of 20.

When his father, Gilbert Beket, suffered a financial setback, Thomas earned a living as a clerk, and then found a position in the household of Archbishop Theobald.

Archbishop Theobald entrusted him with several important missions to Rome and sent him to Bologna and Auxerre to study canon law. In 1154, although he was not yet ordained priest, Thomas was appointed Archdeacon of Canterbury, and he acquired a number of other Church appointments, including becoming a prebendary of both Lincoln Cathedral and Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London, and Provost of Beverley.

In January 1155, on the recommendation of Archbishop Theobald, King Henry II appointed Thomas Lord Chancellor of England.

Several months after the death of Archbishop Theobald, Thomas was nominated as Archbishop of Canterbury and his election was confirmed by a royal council of bishops and noblemen on 23 May 1162.

Thomas was ordained a priest on 2 June 1162 at Canterbury, and a day later he was consecrated a bishop by Bishop Henry of Blois of Winchester and the other bishops of the Province of Canterbury.

The new archbishop resigned as chancellor and changed almost immediately from being a pleasure-loving courtier into a serious-minded, simply-dressed cleric. He took to wearing a hair shirt under his robes, immersed himself in penitential cold baths and washed the feet of 30 paupers each day before he dined.

When he set about trying to recover and extend his rights as archbishop, a rift grew between him and the king, leading to a series of conflicts, including one over the jurisdiction of secular courts over the English clergy.

King Henry’s efforts to win over the other bishops against Thomas began in Westminster in October 1163, when the king sought approval of the traditional rights of the royal government in regard to the Church. At a council in Clarendon Palace, on 30 January 1164, Henry presided over an assembly of the most senior English clergy and in 16 constitutions, sought less clerical independence and a weaker connection with Rome. He drew on all his skills to secure their consent but failed to convince Archbishop Thomas.

Finally, even the archbishop signalled his willingness to agree, but he refused to formally sign the documents. The king summoned the archbishop to Northampton Castle on 8 October 1164 to answer charges of contempt of royal authority and malfeasance while he was Chancellor. When Thomas was convicted of the charges, he stormed out of the trial and fled to the Continent.

King Louis VII of France offered Thomas protection, and he spent nearly two years in the Cistercian Abbey of Pontigny until Henry’s threats against the Cistercians forced Thomas to return to Sens.

Thomas fought back by threatening to excommunicate the king and to place the king, the bishops and England under an interdict. When Pope Alexander III sent Papal legates to arbitrate between the king and the archbishop, Henry offered a compromise that would allow Thomas to return to England from exile.

In June 1170, the Archbishop of York, Roger de Pont L’Évêque, along with the Bishop of London, Gilbert Foliot, and the Bishop of Salisbury, Josceline de Bohon, crowned Henry’s heir as king-in-waiting at York. This action was a direct challenge to the privileges of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and in November 1170 Thomas excommunicated all three. While the three bishops fled to the king in Normandy, Becket continued to excommunicate his opponents in the Church.

When the king heard the news of the archbishop’s actions, tradition says, Henry demanded to know: “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” However, his contemporary and biographer Edward Grim puts other words in Henry’s mouth: “What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?”

Whatever Henry said, it was interpreted as a royal command, and four knights – Reginald fitzUrse, Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy and Richard le Breton – set out to confront the Archbishop of Canterbury.

On 29 December 1170, they arrived at Canterbury, where they placed their weapons under a tree outside the cathedral and hid their mail armour under cloaks before entering to challenge the archbishop. They ordered Thomas to Winchester to account for his actions, but when he refused they retrieved their weapons and rushed back inside.

Meanwhile, the archbishop was preparing himself for Vespers. The four knights drew their swords, caught up with Thomas near a door to the cloister, on the stairs leading to the crypt and the cathedral quire. As the third blow hit him, he fell on his knees and elbows, saying in a low voice: “For the name of Jesus and the protection of the Church, I am ready to embrace death.” The next blow to his head decapitated him, and his brains and blood were splattered on the paved floor.

After killing him, one of the knights said: “Let us away. He will rise no more.”

The murder was reported in minute detail: no fewer than five of Thomas’s companions in Canterbury Cathedral were witnesses on that fateful day. The monks who prepared his body for burial found that Thomas had worn a hair-shirt under his archbishop’s robes.

Selskar Abbey, Wexford ... Henry II is said to have spent Lent 1172 here in penance after the murder of Saint Thomas Becket (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

According to local lore in Wexford, Henry II did penance for the murder by spending Lent in 1172 in Selskar Abbey.

On Ash Wednesday, 21 February 1173, Thomas was canonised by Pope Alexander III. On 12 July 1174, in the midst of a revolt, Henry did public penance for the murder at Becket’s tomb, in an act of penance, donning sackcloth and walking barefoot through the streets of Canterbury while 100 nervous monks flogged him with branches. Henry concluded his atonement by spending the night in the martyr’s crypt, which quickly became a popular place of pilgrimage.

However, the assassins were never arrested and their lands were never confiscated. Pope Alexander excommunicated all four. Seeking forgiveness, the assassins travelled to Rome, where the Pope ordered them to spend 14 years as knights in the Holy Land.

In 1220, Thomas’s bones were moved to a shrine behind the high altar in the Trinity Chapel. The shrine was destroyed on the orders of Henry VIII at the dissolution of the monasteries in 1538. The king also destroyed Becket’s bones and ordered that all mention of his name be obliterated. The paved floor where the shrine stood is now marked by a lit candle.

Saint Thomas Becket was undoubtedly a proud and stubborn man, for all his gifts, and his personal austerities as archbishop were probably an attempt at self-discipline after years of ostentatious luxury. His conflict with Henry II stemmed from their conflicting ambitions, exacerbated by the claims of the papacy. His martyrdom became the emblem of spiritual resistance to secular tyranny, and no king until Henry VIII dared repeat Henry II’s assault on ecclesiastical jurisdiction in England.

The Church Historian Eamon Duffy wrote in The Guardian earlier this year:

“Today’s readers, all too conscious of ecclesiastical cover-up of clerical abuse, are unlikely to warm to Becket’s cause, but more was at stake than clerical privilege. The medieval church was the sole source of moral value, and one of the few contexts within which criticism of tyrannical rule was possible. Kings such as Henry II were rarely concerned with abstract justice, and royal control of the church posed problems not unlike those posed nowadays by state censorship of the press or suppression of the right of peaceful protest. Becket saw himself as a champion of the cause of Christ and the liberties of the church.”

Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is set in a company of pilgrims on their way from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket, the “holy, blissful martyr,” in Canterbury Cathedral.

Peter Glenville’s 1964 movie Becket starred Richard Burton as Archbishop Thomas Becket and Peter O’Toole as King Henry II.

In the interlude in TS Eliot’s play, Murder in the Cathedral, Thomas Becket preaches his Christmas sermon shortly before his murder. He explains that the “peace to men of good will” that the angels announced at the first Christmas was “not peace as the world gives,” but, to the disciples, “torture, imprisonment, disappointment … [and] death by martyrdom.”

He links the birth at Christmas with the death of martyrdom, asking: “Is it an accident, do you think, that the day of the first martyr follows immediately the day of the Birth of Christ? By no means.”

Having remembered Saint Stephen the first martyr on 26 December, Saint John, who reaches soaring heights and whose concept of love reaches the furthest breadths (27 December), and the Holy Innocents, who remind us of all children at risk (28 December), this day to continues to recall the connections between the Incarnation and witnessing to the Gospel, even at the cost of martyrdom.

Collect

Lord God,
who gave grace to your servant Thomas Becket
to put aside all earthly fear
and be faithful even to death:
grant that we, disregarding worldly esteem,
may fight all wrong, uphold your rule,
and serve you to our life’s end;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Readings:

I Kings 19: 9-13a; Psalm 54; Hebrews 13: 10-16; Matthew 10: 28-30.

Post Communion Prayer:

God our Redeemer,
whose Church was strengthened
by the blood of your martyr Thomas Becket:
so bind us, in life and death, to Christ’s sacrifice
that our lives, broken and offered with his,
may carry his death and proclaim his resurrection in the world;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Tomorrow (30 December): Josephine Butler.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

With the Saints through Christmas (3): 28 December, the Holy Innocents

The Killing of the Holy Innocents, by Giotto (ca 1304-1306), Padua

Patrick Comerford

The Church Calendar today (28 December) recalls the massacre of the Holy Innocents, who are sometimes revered as the first Christian martyrs. The Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates the feast tomorrow (29 December).

These dates have nothing to do with the chronological order of the event. Instead, the feast is kept within the octave of Christmas because the Holy Innocents gave their life for the new-born Saviour. Saint Stephen the first martyr (martyr by will, love and blood, 26 December), Saint John the Evangelist (27 December, martyr by will and love), and these first flowers of the Church (martyrs by blood alone) accompany the Christ Child entering this world on Christmas Day.

This commemoration first appears as a feast of the western church at the end of the fifth century, and the earliest commemorations were connected with the Feast of the Epiphany (6 January), bringing together the murder of the Innocents and the visit of the Magi.

The story of the massacre of the Innocents is the biblical narrative of infanticide by King Herod the Great (Matthew 2: 16-18). According to Saint Matthew’s Gospel, Herod ordered the execution of all young male children in the village of Bethlehem to save him from losing his throne to a new-born king whose birth had been announced to him by the Magi:

16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:
18 ‘A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.’

In Saint Matthew’s Gospel, the visiting magi from the east arrive in Judea in search of the new-born king of the Jews, having “observed his star at its rising” (Matthew 2: 2). Herod directs them to Bethlehem, and asks them to let him know who this king is when they find him. They find the Christ Child and honour him, but an angel tells them not to alert Herod, and they return home by another way. Meanwhile, Joseph has taken Mary and the child and they have escaped to Egypt.

Saint Matthew’s Gospel provides the only account of the Massacre. This incident is not mentioned in the other three gospels, nor is it mentioned by the Jewish historian Josephus, who records Herod’s murder of his own sons. When the Emperor Augustus heard that Herod had ordered the murder of his own sons, he remarked: “It is better to be Herod’s pig, than his son.”

Saint Matthew’s story recalls passages in Hosea referring to the exodus, and in Jeremiah referring to the Babylonian exile, and the accounts in Exodus of the birth of Moses and the slaying of the first-born children by Pharaoh.

Estimates of the number of infants at the time in Bethlehem, a town with a total population of about 1,000, would be about 20. But Byzantine liturgy estimated 14,000 Holy Innocents were murdered, while an early Syrian list of saints put the number at 64,000. Coptic sources raise the number to 144,000 and place the event on 29 December.

Later, the Church of Saint Paul’s Outside the Walls in Rome was said to possess the bodies of several of the Holy Innocents. Some of these relics were transferred by Pope Sixtus V to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.

In many cathedrals in England, Germany and France, the boy bishops who were elected on the feast of Saint Nicholas (6 December) officiated on the feasts of Saint Nicholas and the Holy Innocents. The boy bishop wore a mitre and other episcopal insignia, sang the collect, preached, and gave the blessing. He sat in the bishop’s throne or cathedra in the cathedral while the choir-boys sang in the stalls of the canons, when they directed the choir on these two days and had their solemn procession.

The Reconciliation monument in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral ... the ‘Coventry Carol’ recalls a mother’s lament for her doomed child (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Coventry Carol, an English Christmas carol from the 16th century and performed as part of a mystery play, depicts the Massacre of the Innocents in Bethlehem. The carol is traditionally sung a cappella, and there is a modern setting of the carol by Professor Kenneth Leighton (1929-1988).

The lyrics represent a mother’s lament for her doomed child:

Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.
Lullay, thou little tiny Child,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

O sisters too, how may we do,
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling for whom we do sing
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Herod, the king, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day
His men of might, in his own sight,
All young children to slay.

That woe is me, poor Child for Thee!
And ever mourn and sigh,
For thy parting neither say nor sing,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Also dating from the 16th century, or perhaps even earlier from the late 14th century, is the hymn ‘Unto us is born a son.’ It has been translated by both George R Woodward and Percy Dearmer. We sang the Woodward version of this hymn at the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, last week, including the third stanza:

This did Herod sore affray,
And grievously bewilder;
So he gave the word to slay,
And slew the little childer.

Massacre of the Holy Innocents, Alexey Pismenny

Collect:

Heavenly Father,
whose children suffered at the hands of Herod:
By your great might frustrate all evil designs,
and establish your reign of justice, love and peace;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Readings:

Jeremiah 31: 15-17; Psalm 124; I Corinthians 1: 26-29; Matthew 2: 13-18.

Post Communion Prayer:

Eternal God,
comfort of the afflicted and healer of the broken,
you have fed us this day at the table of life and hope.
Teach us the ways of gentleness and peace,
that all the world may acknowledge
the kingdom of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

Tomorrow (29 December): Saint Thomas à Becket.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

An unplanned journey at twilight

The moon at twilight in Greystones this evening (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Patrick Comerford

Oh, the silly things we do as families.

For examples, we were playing charades as an extended family around the dinner table on Christmas Evening.

“A movie?” Yes.

“One word?” Yes.

“Four syllables?” Yes.

“First syllable sounds like gold?” No.

“First syllable is gold?”. Yes.

And so we continued.

But no-one got the answer.

Eventually, we were told: “Goldfinger.”

“Goldfinger doesn’t have four syllables.”

“Well, it does on the northside: Go-ald-fing-her. Anyway, you don’t want to give everything away, do you?”

A calm and quiet night on the River Liffey after Christmas Day (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

On the way back home, it was a bright clear night as we crossed the River Liffey from the northside, with the trees and the Convention Centre lit up like Christmas decorations, the lights of the riverside buildings reflected in the water, and the light of a moon that was almost full.

Saint Stephen’s Day was one for family visits, and it was a delight after celebrating the birth of a child on Christmas Day, to hold in my arms two children born since last Christmas, the sons of a niece and a nephew, and to be reminded how beautiful new life is and that life goes on.

This afternoon, four of us had planned to go to the movies to see The Hobbit: an unexpected journey.

But we never got there. Instead an unexpected journey, or at least unplanned journey, brought two of us to Greystones. The tide was coming in, there was a swell on the water, and there was a crisp bite in the air.

After coffee in Insomia, we were caught in delight by the full moon that risen in the east behind the Dart station. We walked back down to the bridge under the railway line, and onto the beach.

In the twilight, the full moon was shining on the water.

Within just a few minutes it was covered in clouds, and darkness had fallen.

With the Saints through Christmas (2): 27 December, Saint John the Evangelist

An icon of Saint John the Divine in the cave on Patmos listening to the voice that tells him to write

Patrick Comerford

Saint John the Evangelist, the author of the Fourth Gospel, also known as Saint John the Divine and as the beloved Disciple, is celebrated in the Calendar of the Church on today [27 December].

Saint John has a prominent place throughout the Gospels. He is:

● one of the three disciples at the Transfiguration,
● one of the disciples sent to prepare a place for the Last Supper,
● one of the three disciples present in the Garden of Gethsemane when Christ is arrested,
● the only disciple present at the Crucifixion,
● the disciple to whom Christ entrusts his mother from the Cross,
● the first disciple to arrive at Christ’s tomb after the Resurrection,
● the disciple who first recognises Christ standing on the lake shore following the Resurrection.

Scenes from the life of Saint John the Evangelist in the chapel of Saint John’s College, Cambridge: on the left, he survives being thrown into boiling oil outside the Latin gate (ante portam Latinam); on the right, he survives drinking from a poisoned chalice.

After the Ascension, Saint John travels to Samaria and is thrown into prison with Saint Peter (Acts 4: 3). He also travels to Ephesus and is credited with founding the church there.

According to ancient tradition, during the reign of the Emperor Domitian Saint John was once given a cup of poisoned wine, but he blessed the cup and the poison rose out of the cup in the form of a serpent. Saint John then drank the wine with no ill effect.

A chalice with a serpent signifying the powerless poison is one of his symbols, so that the image of Saint John with the poisoned chalice is still seen above the main gate of Saint John’s College, Cambridge (right, photograph: Patrick Comerford).

There is a custom in some places of blessing wine on this day and drinking a toast to the love of God and to the saint.

Tradition also holds that Emperor Domitian had Saint John beaten and thrown into a pot of boiling oil but that he emerged unscathed from each of his trials. The emperor then banished Saint John to the island of Patmos, where he wrote the Book of Revelation. He is also identified with the author of the three Johannine Epistles in the New Testament.

In spite of exile and attempts to kill him, Saint John lived to a great old age. By the late 2nd century, the tradition of the Church was saying that Saint John lived to old age in Ephesus.

The Basilica of Saint John the Theologian gave the later name of Aysoluk to the hill above the town of Selçuk, beside Ephesus (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Jerome, in his commentary on Chapter 6 of the Epistle to the Galatians (Jerome, Comm. in ep. ad. Gal., 6, 10), tells the well-loved story that Saint John the Evangelist continued preaching in Ephesus even when he was in his 90s.

Saint John was so enfeebled with old age that the people had to carry him into the Church in Ephesus on a stretcher. And when he was no longer able to preach or deliver a long discourse, his custom was to lean up on one elbow on every occasion and say simply: “Little children, love one another.” This continued on, even when the ageing John was on his death-bed.

Then he would lie back down and his friends would carry him back out. Every week in Ephesus, the same thing happened, again and again. And every week it was the same short sermon, exactly the same message: “Little children, love one another.”

One day, the story goes, someone asked him about it: “John, why is it that every week you say exactly the same thing, ‘little children, love one another’?” And John replied: “Because it is enough.” If you want to know the basics of living as a Christian, there it is in a nutshell. All you need to know is. “Little children, love one another.”

He is said to have died in Ephesus when he was about 100 years old.

The site of Saint John’s tomb is marked by a marble plaque and four Byzantine pillars (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Traditionally, Saint John is intimately associated with the Christmas celebration, and the prologue to Saint John’s Gospel (John 1: 1-14) is one of the traditional Gospel readings for Christmas Day.

For Saint John, there is no annunciation, no nativity, no crib in Bethlehem, no shepherds or wise men, no little stories to allow us to be sentimental and to muse. He is sharp, direct and gets to the point: “In the beginning …”

1 In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
2 He was in the beginning with God.
3 All things came into being through him,
and without him not one thing came into being.
What has come into being 4 in him was life,
and the life was the light of all people.
5 The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not overcome it.
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
10 He was in the world,
and the world came into being through him;
yet the world did not know him.
11 He came to what was his own,
and his own people did not accept him.
12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word became flesh
and lived among us,
and we have seen his glory,
the glory as of a father’s only son,
full of grace and truth.

As Saint John is sometimes called the Apostle of Love, his message is truly appropriate in the Christmas season. In art, Saint John the Evangelist is frequently represented as an Eagle. He is also shown with a chalice from which a serpent is rising in reference to the attempted poisoning by Domitian.

In the calendars of the Western Church, Saint John is commemorated on 27 December. However, he is celebrated on a wide variety of dates in the Eastern Church: 29 December (Armenians), 30 December (Copts), 7 May (Syrians), and 26 September (Greek Orthodox).

Collect:

Merciful Lord,
cast your bright beams of light upon the Church;
that, being enlightened by the teaching
of your blessed apostle and evangelist Saint John,
we may so walk in the light of your truth
that we may at last attain to the light of everlasting life
through Jesus Christ your incarnate Son our Lord.

Readings:

Exodus 33: 7-11a; Psalm 117; I John 1: 1-9; John 21: 19b-25.

Post Communion Prayer:

Grant, O Lord, we pray,
that the Word made flesh proclaimed by your apostle John
may ever abide and live within us;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Tomorrow (28 December): The Holy Innocents.

Canon Patrick Comerford is lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

With the Saints through Christmas (1): 26 December, Saint Stephen

An icon of Saint Stephen, the first deacon and the martyr

Patrick Comerford

Saint Stephen’s Day today [26 December], Holy Innocents’ Day on 28 December, and the commemoration of Thomas à Beckett on 29 December are reminders that Christmas, far from being surrounded by sanitised images of the crib, angels and wise men, is followed by martyrdom and violence. Close on the joy of Christmas comes the cost of following Christ. As the popular expression says: “No Cross, No Crown.”

Saint Stephen (Στέφανος, Stephanos) is the first martyr of Christianity. His name is derived from the Greek word meaning “crown,” and traditionally, he carries the crown of martyrdom. In iconography, Saint Stephen the Deacon is often depicted as a young, beardless man, with a deacon’s stole and holding three stones of his martyrdom and the martyrs’ palm.

According to the brief New Testament account of his life and death (Acts 6:1 to 8: 2), Saint Stephen is one of the seven deacons selected by the Early Church in Jerusalem to attend to the needs of the Greek-speaking widows whose needs were being neglected. Stephen, and the other six deacons – Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas and Nicholas – all have Greek names.

He was denounced for blasphemy later, and was tried before the Sanhedrin. During his trial, he had a vision of the Father and the Son: “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God” (Acts 7: 56). He was condemned, taken outside the city walls and stoned to death. Among those who stoned him to death was Saul of Tarsus, later the Apostle Paul.

In the Old City of Jerusalem, the Lion’s Gate is also called Saint Stephen’s Gate, after the tradition that Saint Stephen was stoned to death there, although it probably took place at the Damascus Gate.

In the one of the earliest examples of irony in Western Europe, the Mediaeval Church designated Saint Stephen y as the patron saint of stonemasons and, for some time, he was also the patron saint of headaches.

Saint Stephen’s House, an Anglican theological college in Oxford, is at Iffley Road in the former monastery of the Cowley Fathers, where it is said Dietrich Bonhoeffer decided to return to Germany where he met with martyrdom.

Bonhoeffer’s martyrdom illustrates how the extension to the Christmas holiday provided by this saint’s day would have no meaning today without the faithful witness of Saint Stephen, the first deacon and first martyr, who links our faith in the Incarnation with our faith in the Resurrection.

The interior of Saint Stephen’s Church, Mount Street Crescent, Dublin

This day, the “Feast of Stephen,” is also mentioned in the popular carol, Good King Wenceslas. The carol was published by John Mason Neale (1818-1866) in 1853, although he may have written it some time earlier, for he included the legend of Saint Wenceslas in his Deeds of Faith in 1849.

Good King Wenceslas looked out on the Feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even.
Brightly shone the moon that night, though the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight, gathering winter fuel.

“Hither, page, and stand by me, if you know it, telling,
Yonder peasant, who is he? Where and what his dwelling?”
“Sire, he lives a good league hence, underneath the mountain,
Right against the forest fence, by Saint Agnes’ fountain.”

“Bring me food and bring me wine, bring me pine logs hither,
You and I will see him dine, when we bear them thither.”
Page and monarch, forth they went, forth they went together,
Through the cold wind’s wild lament and the bitter weather.

“Sire, the night is darker now, and the wind blows stronger,
Fails my heart, I know not how; I can go no longer.”
“Mark my footsteps, my good page, tread now in them boldly,
You shall find the winter’s rage freeze your blood less coldly.”

In his master’s steps he trod, where the snow lay dinted;
Heat was in the very sod which the saint had printed.
Therefore, Christian men, be sure, wealth or rank possessing,
You who now will bless the poor shall yourselves find blessing.

Although it is included in neither the Irish Church Hymnal nor the New English Hymnal, this carol reains its popularity, and I imagine it is going to sung in many places today.

Wenceslas was a 10th century Duke of Bohemia who was known for his saintly caring works for the poor. He became the patron saint of Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic) and his feast day is on 28 September.

In the calendars of the Western Church, Saint Stephen is commemorated today [26 December], while in the calendars of the Eastern Orthodox Church, his feast day is celebrated tomorrow [27 December].

Collect:

Gracious Father,
who gave the first martyr Stephen
grace to pray for those who stoned him:
Grant that in all our sufferings for the truth
we may learn to love even our enemies
and to seek forgiveness for those who desire our hurt,
looking up to heaven to him who was crucified for us,
Jesus Christ, our Mediator and Advocate,
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Readings:

II Chronicles 24: 20-22; Psalm 119: 161-168; Acts 7: 51-60; Matthew 10: 17-22.

Post Communion Prayer:

Merciful Lord,
we thank you for these signs of your mercy,
we praise you for feeding us at your table
and giving us joy in honouring Stephen,
first martyr of the new Israel;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Tomorrow (27 December): Saint John the Evangelist.

Canon Patrick Comerford is lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

Talking about ‘The Wexford Carol’ on RTÉ on Christmas Day

Winter on the quays in Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

This evening [25 December], RTE Radio 1 is broadcasting a special programme, The Wexford Carol, at 6.05 p.m.

I was interviewed by Aoife Nic Cormaic for this programme, which traces the history of the famous carol and talks to musicians and listeners about what makes it special, and what gives it its distinctly Irish character.

On the programme, I speak about The Wexford Carol, which is said to date from the 12th century. It is one of the oldest Irish carols and is also one of the oldest surviving Christmas carols in the European tradition.

The carol is thought to have originated in Co Wexford, but there are many traditions about this poem and song, and for many years it was said that only men should sing it, although since it gained a new popularity from the 1990s on, many popular female artists have also recorded The Wexford Carol.

Saint Aidan’s Cathedral, Enniscorthy, Co Wexford ... the organist, Dr William Grattan Flood (1857-1928), claimed to have discovered ‘The Wexford Carol’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Wexford Carol achieved a new popularity because of the work of Dr William Henry Grattan Flood (1857-1928), who was the organist and musical director at Saint Aidan’s Cathedral, Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, and the author of The History of the Diocese of Ferns (1916). According to the Revd Joseph Ranson, in a paper in The Past (1949), this carol was discovered by Dr Grattan Flood in Co Wexford. He transcribed the carol from a local singer, and it was published in 1928, the year of his death, as No 14 in the Oxford Book of Carols, edited by Percy Dearmer, Martin Shaw and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

The carol was quickly included collections of carols and Christmas poems around the world, and is sometimes known as the Enniscorthy Carol, and was recorded under this title by the Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, on a Christmas recording in 1997. It is also known by its first verse, “Good people all this Christmas time.”

The New Oxford Book Of Carols, in a detailed footnote following No 162, “Good People All, This Christmastime,” says: “… Dr WH Grattan-Flood (1859-1928) lived in Enniscorthy from 1895 until his death, and [...] took down the words and tune from a local singer; after revising the text, he sent the carol to the editors of The Oxford Book of Carols, who printed it as the ‘Wexford Carol’.” However, the note continues with more detail showing the text to be English in origin, and verses 1, 2, 4, are 5 are from Shawcross’s Old Castleton Christmas Carols.

Certainly, the Irish-language version seems to be a translation from English, as it is unlikely that any carol was written in Irish in English-speaking Co Wexford.

Winter at Kilmore Quay, Co Wexford ... the Wexford Carol is often associated with the tradition of the Kilmore Carols (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Wexford Carol is often associated with the Kilmore Carols from Kilmore, Co Wexford, and it is often attributed too to Bishop Luke Wadding of Ferns and his collection of carols, first published in Ghent in 1684.

Luke Wadding’s little book had a far-reaching influence on the spiritual lives of the people of his diocese in Co Wexford. The book had the lengthy title: A small garland of pious and godly songs composed by a devout man, for the solace of his friends and neighbours in their afflictions. The Sweet and the Sower, the nettle and the flower, the Thorne and the Rose, this Garland Compose.

Bishop Luke Wadding, who should not be confused with his kinsman, the 17th-century Franciscan theologian from Waterford of the same name. Luke Wadding, whose family came from Ballycogley Castle, Co Wexford (which was on the market recently), was the Roman Catholic Bishop of Ferns from 1683 to 1692, and he lived in Wexford town while he was bishop.

Wadding’s book contains some religious “posies” or poems written for the disinherited gentry of Co Wexford, and some verses relating to the “Popish Plot.” It also includes what was to become the foundation of a tradition of carol singing in Co Wexford, with 11 Christmas songs, two of which are sung to this day in Kilmore.

A similar carol is found in the Revd William Devereux’s A New Garland Containing Songs for Christmas (1728). William Devereux (1696-1771), from Tacumshane, was Parish Priest of Drinagh, near Wexford, from 1730 to 1771, and wrote several carols. He called his collection A New Garland to distinguish it from Bishop Luke Wadding’s earlier Pious Garland. The carols were first sung in a little chapel at Killiane.

The Wexford Carol

Good people all, this Christmas-time,
Consider well and bear in mind
What our good God for us has done,
In sending His beloved Son.
With Mary holy we should pray
To God with love this Christmas Day:
In Bethlehem upon that morn
There was a blessed Messiah born.

The night before that happy tide
The noble Virgin and her guide
Were long time seeking up and down
To find a lodging in the town.
But mark how all things came to pass;
From every door repelled alas!
As long foretold, their refuge all
Was but an humble ox’s stall.

There were three wise men from afar
Directed by a glorious star,
And on they wandered night and day
Until they came where Jesus lay,
And when they came unto that place
Where our beloved Messiah was,
They humbly cast them at his feet,
With gifts of gold and incense sweet.

Near Bethlehem did shepherds keep
Their flocks of lambs and feeding sheep;
To whom God’s angels did appear,
Which put the shepherds in great fear.
“Prepare and go,” the angels said,
“To Bethlehem, be not afraid;
For there you’ll find, this happy morn,
A princely Babe, sweet Jesus born.”

With thankful heart and joyful mind,
The shepherds went the Babe to find,
And as God’s angel had foretold,
They did our Saviour Christ behold.
Within a manger He was laid,
And by his side the Virgin Maid,
As long foretold, there was a blessed Messiah born.

The Sussex Carol, by Ralph Vaughan Williams

The Wexford Carol is sometimes confused with The Sussex Carol, which is sometimes referred to by its first line too: “On Christmas night all Christians sing.” It is said the words of this carol were first published by Bishop Luke Wadding in A Small Garland of Pious and Godly Songs (1684). However, it is not clear whether he wrote the song or that he was recording an earlier composition.

Edward Darling and Donald Davison, in their Companion to Church Hymnal, the words are from a traditional English source, that they were adapted by Luke Wadding, and that they were reintroduced to English use through later editions of Wadding’s carols, published in London in the early 18th century, subsequently undergoing considerable modification.

Both the text and the tune to which it is now sung were discovered and written down quite independently by Cecil Sharp in Buckland, Gloucestershire, and Ralph Vaughan Williams, who heard it being sung by a Harriet Verrall of Monk’s Gate, near Horsham, Sussex – hence its name, The Sussex Carol.

The tune to which it is generally sung today is the one Vaughan Williams published in 1919. Several years earlier, he included the carol in his Fantasia on Christmas Carols, first performed at the Three Carols Festival in Hereford Cathedral in 1912.

The Sussex Carol often features in the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in the Chapel of the King’s College, Cambridge, and I hope to return to that service time and again in the coming weeks.

A version of the Sussex Carol also appears in the Irish Church Hymnal (5th edition, 2004) as Hymn No 176.

The words of The Sussex Carol, in the version collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams, are:

On Christmas night all Christians sing
To hear the news the angels bring.
News of great joy, news of great mirth,
News of our merciful King’s birth.

Then why should men on earth be so sad,
Since our Redeemer made us glad,
When from our sin he set us free,
All for to gain our liberty?

When sin departs before His grace,
Then life and health come in its place.
Angels and men with joy may sing
All for to see the new-born King.

All out of darkness we have light,
Which made the angels sing this night:
“Glory to God and peace to men,
Now and for evermore, Amen!”

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

‘The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light’

The First Christmas in a panel on the Oberammergau altarpiece in the Lady Chapel, Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford,

25 December 2012 (Christmas Day)

10.45, The Eucharist

The Chapel of the Mageough Home, Cowper Road, Rathmnes, Dublin 6.

Isaiah 9: 2-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2: 11-14; Luke 2: 1-20.

May I speak to you in the name of + the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

It is a wonderful pleasure to be here on a Christmas morning. As you probably know, the Chaplain [Archdeacon William Heaney] is not well, and the Manager [Alan Nairn] got in touch with me late on Saturday afternoon.

But it is still a pleasure for me to be here this morning. I was here for a quiet day with Archbishop Walton Empey before my ordination, and I have preached here once in the past. But I have not been here since the chapel was re-dedicated in October last year.

Coming here this morning was a short journey, but one of anticipation and wonder:

Slight anticipation, as any of us has when we find ourselves at an important event at short notice. Because celebrating the Eucharist on Christmas morning, celebrating the presence of Christ coming among us, is important, is about as important as it gets.

And wonder, not just because I was wondering how this chapel would look after all the work that has been done here recently, or because I was wondering who was going to be here this morning – and we have all lost some friends here in the past year – but also because Christmas still fills me with a sense of wonder and awe.

And so, it is always a privilege to celebrate the Eucharist, to share the presence of Christ among us on Christmas morning.

Do you remember the sense of anticipation and wonder you had as a child at Christmas?

That sense of awe and wonder never seems to go away, no matter how old we get, no matter – in some cases – how horrid other aspects of our childhood had been.

Nothing today ever seems to match the beauty and the glamour and the glitz of childhood Christmas lights, childhood Santas, childhood presents and love and warmth and care and affection … every tree a real tree, decorated with candles lights, and bundles of presents at its feet.

And we seem as adults to have constantly compared our present, adult Christmases, with our past, childhood Christmases.

Why, in our dreams, it seems that just as every childhood summer had long, sunny days, with wonderful times by the beach, every childhood Christmas was a white Christmas … deep and crisp and even.

But, of course, our adult experiences are often very different. We lose the awe and the wonder and the joy of Christmas as it becomes a chore … wrapping the presents, getting the cards posted in time, cooking the meals, answering the doorbell to a constant stream of visitors, often family members we never see otherwise from one end of the year to another, and so often tipsy while we have to stay sober.

And then there were the sad Christmases: when a child was sick, a job was lost, a loved one died.

But Christmas is always the promise of fresh beginnings, of a new start, of hope returning once again.

Remember how you were filled with awe and wonder on Christmas morning as a child, year after year. The expectations never faded, even when you knew that there had been times when things went wrong, even when things that went wrong could have robbed you of hope.

And Christmas is our image of God always being full of promise. God comes to us in the Christ Child with the promise of fresh beginnings, of a new start, of hope returning once again. God’s expectations for us, for the world, never fade, even when he knows that things have gone wrong, even when things that went wrong have robbed those he loves of hope.

There is a telling, short sentence at the end of our Gospel reading this morning: “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.”

At the heart of the Gospel narrative this morning is the understanding that things aren’t always going to work out the way we would like them to. But at the heart of the Gospel story of Christmas is the truth that God is always with us, and that God’s expectations for us, God’s awe and wonder at being in our presence, should be as much a source of mystery as our awe and wonder at being in the presence of God.

God bless you, may you have a happy and a blessed Christmas, and a New Year that is filled with the love and awe and wonder of God present among us.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer and Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral Dublin. This sermon was preached in the Chapel of the Mageough Home at the Eucharist on Christmas Day 2012.

The Mageough Home, Cowper Road, Rathmines, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Collect:

Almighty God,
you have given us your only-begotten Son
to take our nature upon him
and as at this time to be born of a pure virgin:
Grant that we, who have been born again
and made your children by adoption and grace,
may daily be renewed by your Holy Spirit;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Post Communion Prayer:

God our Father,
whose Word has come among us
in the Holy Child of Bethlehem:
May the light of faith illumine our hearts
and shine in our words and deeds;
through him who is Christ the Lord.

The Chapel of the Mageough Home, Cowper Road, Rathmines, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)