Category Archives: Saints

Bake an All Souls’ Cake!

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Cakes for All Souls’ Day

A soul cake, also known as a “soul-mass cake,” is a small round cake which was traditionally made for All Souls’ Day to commemorate the dead in the Christian tradition. The cakes, which can also be known as “souls” for short, were given out to “soulers” who were mainly children and the poor, going from door to door singing and saying prayers for the souls of the dead. The practice in England dates to the Middle Ages and was continued there until the 1930s.

The practice of giving and eating soul cakes continues in some countries today, such as Portugal (where it is known as Pão-por-Deus and occurs on both All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day). Many see souling for cakes as the origin of the practice of trick-or-treating.

In many areas of the eastern Mediterranean or Central and Eastern Europe, the family of the deceased is expected to feed those who pray for the departed. Throughout Eastern Europe, food is left near the candles to be lit by those who pray for the departed; the poor can come into church, lit a candle for the dead and say a prayer, and take whatever food they need. (In one church of Minsk, I saw a dining room table covered with bags of food in the side chapel for these prayers!) The “memorial meal” or reception after a funeral in honor of the deceased is a modern version of this exchange of food for prayers for the deceased.

Any leftover soul cakes are shared among the distributing family or given to the poor the next day.

INGREDIENTS
1 cup (two sticks) butter
3 3⁄4 cups sifted flour
1 cup sugar
1⁄4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon allspice
2 eggs
2 teaspoons cider vinegar
4 -6 tablespoons milk
powdered sugar, to sprinkle on top

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350°F.
Cut the butter into the flour with a pastry blender or a large fork.
Blend in the sugar, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon and allspice; beat eggs, vinegar, and milk together.
Mix with the flour mixture until a stiff dough is formed.
Knead thoroughly and roll out 1/4-inch thick.
Cut into 3-inch rounds and place on greased baking sheets. Prick several times with a fork and bake for 20-25 minutes.
Before Serving:
Sprinkle lightly with powdered sugar while still warm.

Want to print out the recipe? See the original post, with options for printing,here.

Agincourt, Oxford, and All Souls’ Day

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Martyrdom of SS. Crispin and Crispinian

The battle of Agincort, made famous in Shakespeare’s play Henry V, took place on October 25, 1415 the commemoration of St. Crispin. See clips of the famous “Band of brothers” speech with reference to St. Crispin’s Day here.

Born to a noble Roman family in the 3rd century AD, Crispin and his brother Crispinian fled persecution for their faith, ending up at Soissons, where they preached Christianity to the Gauls while working as shoemakers and cobblers at night. They earned enough by their trade to support themselves and also to aid the poor. Their success attracted the ire of the governor of Gaul, who had them tortured and thrown into the river with millstones around their necks. They survived but were beheaded by the Emperor c. 285–286.

The college dedicated to All Souls in Oxford received its foundation charter in 1438 from King Henry VI. It is the only Oxford college to have only graduate students, no undergraduates. It was founded by Henry VI with the religious duty–in addition to academic research–to pray for those who had died at Agincort or in other battles during the Hundred Years War that England fought to control the crown of France. The number of the dead to be prayed for was overwhelming and the religious dedication was broadened to include all the departed, not just those slain in battle with the French. The college marks November 2, All Souls’ Day, as its name’s day; the commemoration of All Souls is 9 days after the commemoration of St. Crispin and his brother, thus including an allusion to the battle fought at Agincort which was the source the college’s original dedication..

All Souls has had many famous students, including Christopher Wren, William Blackstone, William Gladstone, and Lawrence of Arabia. British forces which fought at the Battle of Mons in August 1944 were said to have been protected by the ghosts of archers slain at Agincort.

All Souls College, Oxford with the dome of the Radcliffe Camera behind.

St. Ursula and the Virgin Martyrs of Cologne

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Statue of St. Ursula and her companions (clustered together beneath her cloak) in the church of St. Ursula in Cologne.

St. Ursula (Latin for “little bear”) was among the most popular saints of Western Europe during the Middle Ages. She and her companions–later versions of her life story report that she had 11,000 women with her although there were doubtless a much smaller group of women actually with her, probably 11 that was later expanded by a error in transcription–travelled to Cologne from Wales and were martyred in Cologne; there are records indicating that the women were executed AD 400.

The church of St. Ursula in Cologne is Romanesque, built in the 11th century atop the ancient ruins of a Roman cemetery, where the virgins associated with Saint Ursula are said to have been buried. The church has an impressive reliquary created from the bones of the former occupants of the cemetery. It is one of the twelve Romanesque churches of Cologne and was designated a basilica in the canonical, if not architectural, sense in June 1920.

The “Golden Chamber” of the church contains the remains of St. Ursula and her companions who are said to have been killed by the Huns. The walls of the Golden Chamber are covered in bones arranged in designs and letters along with relic-skulls. The exact number of people whose remains are in the Golden Chamber remains ambiguous but the number of skulls in the reliquary is greater than 11 and less than the 11,000. These remains were found in 1106 in a mass grave and were assumed to be those of the legend of St. Ursula and the virgins. Therefore, the church constructed the Golden Chamber to house the bones.

The small village of Llangwyryfon, near Aberystwyth in west Wales, has a church dedicated to St. Ursula. The village name translates as ‘Church of the Virgins’. She is believed to have come from this area. The Order of Ursulines, founded in 1535 by Angela Merici, and devoted to the education of young girls, has also helped to spread Ursula’s name throughout the world. St. Ursula was named the patron saint of school girls.

It has been theorized that the character of St. Ursula is a Christianized form of the Norse goddess Freya, who welcomed the souls of dead maidens. Other 19th-century scholars have referred to the goddesses Nehalennia, Nerthus and Mother Holda.