Shrines Of Our Lady In England

"O Blessed Confidence, O Safe Refuge, Mother of God and Our Mother!" St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033?1109), Doctor of the Church "What is not generally known and only infrequently studied is the role of Our Lady over the centuries as a catechist: teacher of the faith, in a very real sense, primary teacher because she is Mother of God and Mother of the Church and faithful If any one factor might be singled out for the very high level of faith and religious practice in medieval 'merry England' (merry, because Mary's dowry, because consecrated to Mary as her possession and property) it is this Marian catechesis. Only when England deliberately rejected Mary did it cease to be the happy place it once was. Unfortunately, English colonization of other peoples took place only after the repudiation of Mary by England. That is why this catechetical work is especially valuable for the faithful and those who are seeking faith in America and other English speaking cultures. It will bring to their attention precisely what is central to catechetics and so often missing, the presence of Mary, Mother and Teacher. It will make perfectly clear why we need not fewer Marian sanctuaries, but many, many more in all parts of the country where this quiet, but so real and profound influence of the Marian principle of the Church will be felt at every level. It is my prayer and hope that those who read and study this work will find the same inspiration and stimulus that I found in having the privilege to read the manuscript before publication. We are much indebted to Brother Anthony Josemaria Pasquale, a Franciscan Tertiary of the Immaculate and gifted scholar, for the effort he has expended to find qualified contributors and to offer so well edited a book to the general public." -From the Foreword by Father Peter M. Fehlner, FI, theologian, sponsor of the International Symposium on Marian Coredemption

Drawing on history, art history, literary criticism and theory, gender studies, theology and psychoanalysis, this interdisciplinary study analyzes the cultural significance of the Shrine of our Lady of Walsingham, medieval England's most significant pilgrimage site devoted to the Virgin Mary, which was revived in the twentieth century, and in 2006 voted Britain's favorite religious site. Covering Walsingham's origins, destruction, and transformations from the Middle Ages to the present, Gary Waller pursues his investigation not through a standard history but by analyzing the "invented traditions" and varied re-creations of Walsingham by the "English imagination"- poems, fiction, songs, ballads, musical compositions and folk legends, solemn devotional writings and hostile satire which Walsingham has inspired, by Protestants, Catholics, and religious skeptics alike. They include, in early modern England, Erasmus, Ralegh, Sidney, and Shakespeare; then, during Walsingham's long "protestantization" from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, ballad revivals, archeological investigations, and writings by Agnes Strickland, Edmund Waterton, and Hopkins; and in the modern period, writers like Eliot, Charles Williams, Robert Lowell, and A.N. Wilson. The concluding chapter uses contemporary feminist theology to view Walsingham not just as a symbol of nostalgia but a place inviting spiritual change through its potential sexual and gender transformation.

"O Blessed Confidence, O Safe Refuge, Mother of God and Our Mother!" St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033?1109), Doctor of the Church "What is not generally known and only infrequently studied is the role of Our Lady over the centuries as a catechist: teacher of the faith, in a very real sense, primary teacher because she is Mother of God and Mother of the Church and faithful If any one factor might be singled out for the very high level of faith and religious practice in medieval 'merry England' (merry, because Mary's dowry, because consecrated to Mary as her possession and property) it is this Marian catechesis. Only when England deliberately rejected Mary did it cease to be the happy place it once was. Unfortunately, English colonization of other peoples took place only after the repudiation of Mary by England. That is why this catechetical work is especially valuable for the faithful and those who are seeking faith in America and other English speaking cultures. It will bring to their attention precisely what is central to catechetics and so often missing, the presence of Mary, Mother and Teacher. It will make perfectly clear why we need not fewer Marian sanctuaries, but many, many more in all parts of the country where this quiet, but so real and profound influence of the Marian principle of the Church will be felt at every level. It is my prayer and hope that those who read and study this work will find the same inspiration and stimulus that I found in having the privilege to read the manuscript before publication. We are much indebted to Brother Anthony Josemaria Pasquale, a Franciscan Tertiary of the Immaculate and gifted scholar, for the effort he has expended to find qualified contributors and to offer so well edited a book to the general public." -From the Foreword by Father Peter M. Fehlner, FI, theologian, sponsor of the International Symposium on Marian Coredemption

The definitive history of the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham and its founder Alfred Hope Patten.

The Catholic Church has been a part of English history since the arrival of Christian missionaries to Roman Britain in the first century after Christ. England was evangelized in these early centuries to such an extent that, by the time the Romans withdrew in the fifth century, the Celtic population was largely Catholic. Anglo-Saxon England, prior to the Norman Conquest, was a land of saints. From St. Bede, with his history of the early Church, to the holy king St. Edward the Confessor, Saxon England was ablaze with the light of Christ. During the reign of St. Edward, a vision of the Virgin at Walsingham placed the Mother of God on the throne as England's queen, the land being considered her dowry. Even following the Norman Conquest, the Faith continued to flourish and prosper, making its joyful presence felt in what would become known as Merrie England. Then in the sixteenth century, this Catholic heart was ripped from the people of England, against their will and in spite of their spirited and heroic resistance, by the reign of the Tudors. This made England once again a land of saints—that is, of martyrs, with Catholic priests and laity being put to death for practicing the Faith. The martyrdoms would continue for 150 years, followed by a further 150 years of legal and political persecution. In the nineteenth century, against all the odds, there was a great Catholic revival, heralded by the conversion of St. John Henry Newman, which would continue into the twentieth century. Much of the greatest literature of the past century has been written by literary converts to the Church, such as G. K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and J. R. R. Tolkien. This whole exciting, faith-filled story is told by Joseph Pearce within a single-volume history of "true England", the England that remained true to the faith through thick and thin, in times both "merrie" and perilous. It is a story not only worth telling but worth celebrating.

A detailed and scholarly 1956 history of the priory at Walsingham, built in AD 1130 by Richelde of Fervaques.