Category Archives: Saints

Walsingham and Prague and Loreto… and Nazareth

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Detail from the marble chapel built around the Prague replica of the Holy House from Nazareth. Construction started in 1626 and the Holy House was blessed on 25 March 1631.

The marble facade of the Holy House in Loreto, Italy is very similar to the marble facade of the Holy House in Prague.

Everyone agrees that Jesus grew up in Nazareth. He lived there with the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph. So how can so many places in Europe claim to have the Holy House of the Virgin Mary?

There was a chapel of the Virgin in Loreto, Italy since the late AD 1200s. It contained a small replica of the house in Nazareth for the faithful to visit if they could not go on pilgrimage to the Middle East. Monks (often referred to as “angels”) brought a few stones from Nazareth to add to the Holy House in Loreto. During the Renaissance, an elaborate marble façade was built around the Holy House to protect it and then a large church was built around the marble chapel. “Our Lady of Loreto” is the title of the Virgin Mary with respect to the Holy House of Loreto and her statue, carved from Cedar of Lebanon, is a “Black Madonna” (owing to centuries of lamp smoke).

Other replicas of the Holy House were constructed in many places. The most famous are in Prague and Walsingham. (The Holy House in Walsingham was destroyed by order of King Henry VIII but new shrines of the Mother of God were built there in the late 1800s and early 1900s.) The original statue of the Mother of God was thought to be destroyed when the Holy House–often called “England’s Nazareth”–was destroyed but it might have been cleverly hidden instead. A statue of the Virgin in the Victoria and Albert Museum might be the original; read about it here.

“Happy Birthday!” to the BVM

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The Nativity of the Virgin by Andrea di Bartolo (1360/70 – 1428). He was an Italian painter, stained glass designer, and illuminator of the Sienese School mainly known for his religious subjects. He was active between 1389–1428 in the area in and around Siena. (This painting hangs in the National Gallery)

A feast in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s birth seems to have been held in Syria and Palestine in the sixth century. This celebration was accepted and adopted by the Roman Church at the end of the seventh century. It spread very slowly through the rest of Europe but by the twelfth century, it was observed throughout both Western and Eastern Europe as one of the major feasts of Mary. It remained a holy day of obligation among Roman Catholics until 1918.

In many places of central and eastern Europe the Feast of Mary’s Nativity is traditionally connected with ancient farming customs and celebrations, much like Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. September 8 itself marks the end of the summer in popular reckoning; September 8 also marks the beginning of “after-summer” and the start of the fall planting season. A blessing of the harvest and of the seed grains for the winter crops is performed in many churches.

In central and northern Europe, according to ancient belief, September 8 is also the day on which the swallows leave for the sunny skies of the South.

In the Alps, the “down-driving” (Abtrieb) begins on September 8. Cattle and sheep are taken from their summer pastures on the high mountain slopes where they have roamed for months, and descend in long caravans to the valleys to take up their winter quarters in the warm stables. The animals at the front of the procession wear elaborate decorations of flowers and ribbons; the rest carry branches of evergreen between their horns and little bells around their necks. The shepherds and other caretakers accompany the procession, dressed in all their finery and decorated with Alpine flowers, yodeling, and cracking whips to provoke a multiple echo from the surrounding mountain cliffs. Arriving at the bottom of the valley in the evening, they find the whole village or town awaiting them in a festive mood. Ample fodder is served to the cattle in the stables, and each family has a banquet that includes the farm hands. In some sections of Austria all the milk obtained on Drive-Down Day is given to the poor in honor of our Lady, together with the meat, bread, and pastries left over from the feast in the evening.

If, however, the farmer who owns the cattle has died during the summer, the “downdriving” is performed without decorations and in silence. Each animal then wears a mourning wreath of purple or black crepe.

In the wine-growing sections of France, September 8 is the day of the grape harvest festival. The owners of vineyards bring their best grapes to church to have them blessed; in Greece, the first grapes are ripe a month earlier so the Greeks bring the grapes into church to be blessed on August 6; the French have the grapes blessed and afterward tie some of them to the hands of the statue of the Virgin. The Feast of Mary’s Nativity is called “Our Lady of the Grape Harvest” in those sections, and a festive meal is held at which the first grapes of the new harvest are consumed.

St. Aidan of Lindisfarne, a Model Pastor

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Full-page miniature of the Evangelist Saint Matthew, accompanied by his symbol, a winged man blowing a trumpet and carrying a book; folio 25v of the Lindisfarne Gospels produced about 100 years after St. Aidan founded the monastery.

St. Aidan of Lindisfarne (died 31 August AD 651) was an Irish monk and missionary credited with restoring Christianity to northern England. He founded a monastic cathedral on the island of Lindisfarne and served as its first bishop. He travelled throughout the countryside, spreading the gospel to both the Anglo-Saxon nobility and the socially disenfranchised (including children and slaves).

In the years prior to Aidan’s mission, Christianity, in northern England was being largely displaced by Anglo-Saxon paganism. However, the young king Oswald vowed to bring Christianity back to his people—an opportunity that presented itself in AD 634, when he gained the crown of Northumbria. King Oswald requested that missionaries be sent from the monastery of Iona in Scotland. At first, they sent him a bishop named Cormán, but he alienated many people by his harshness, and returned in failure to Iona reporting that the Northumbrians were too stubborn to be converted. Aidan criticized Cormán’s methods and was soon sent as his replacement. Aidan became bishop in AD 635.

Allying himself with the pious king, Aidan established a monastic community on the island of Lindisfarne, which was close to the royal castle, as the seat of his diocese. An inspired missionary, Aidan would walk from one village to another, politely conversing with the people he saw and slowly interesting them in Christianity:

“He was one to traverse both town and country on foot, never on horseback, unless compelled by some urgent necessity; and wherever in his way he saw any, either rich or poor, he invited them, if infidels, to embrace the mystery of the faith or if they were believers, to strengthen them in the faith, and to stir them up by words and actions to alms and good works. … This [the reading of scriptures and psalms, and meditation upon holy truths] was the daily employment of himself and all that were with him, wheresoever they went; and if it happened, which was but seldom, that he was invited to eat with the king, he went with one or two clerks, and having taken a small repast, made haste to be gone with them, either to read or write. At that time, many religious men and women, stirred up by his example, adopted the custom of fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays, till the ninth hour, throughout the year, except during the fifty days after Easter. He never gave money to the powerful men of the world, but only meat, if he happened to entertain them; and, on the contrary, whatsoever gifts of money he received from the rich, he either distributed them, as has been said, to the use of the poor, or bestowed them in ransoming such as had been wrong fully sold for slaves. Moreover, he afterwards made many of those he had ransomed his disciples, and after having taught and instructed them, advanced them to the order of priesthood.” (Venerable Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation. Book III: Chapter V)

His pastoral emphasis on prayer, fasting, Christian education and his own personal humility is similar to all the famous pastors such as St. John of Kronstadt and the Cure d’Ars.

There are four wells associated with St. Aidan which are said to work miracles of healing, especially of asthma and skin diseases.

He is known as the Apostle of Northumbria and is recognised as a saint by the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church, and the Anglican Communion.