Shrines and Relics

Basilica of the Holy Blood, Brugge

Since living in Brugge, on the occasions on which I have visited the Basilica of the Holy Blood in the Burg, I have never failed to marvel at the numerous tourists, usually from Roman Catholic countries of course, who truly and visibly venerate the holy relic. I do not understand it at all though there is no doubting the sincerity and awe exhibited. I always notice how immune the British are to this worship and assume, correctly, that it is a manifestation of the Protestant state religion in Britain and its

The phial of a drop of Jesus's blood

brought back to Brugge by Crusader

Derrick of Alsace in 1150.

The Basilica was built to house this

holy relic.

current post-Protestant atheistic/agnostic culture. What I didn’t know was that this immunity dates directly from the often murderous actions and relentless propaganda of Thomas Cromwell in the 1530s as he sought to suppress monasteries and other religious houses for Henry V111.

Though I knew that it was the extended convolutions of politics and religion in the reign of Henry V111, interacting with his unstable, narcissistic and mercurial temperament which caused the messy split with the all-powerful Pope and the Roman Church, ushering in the creation and growth of what eventually became the Church of England with the King as its virtual Pope, I hadn't known the details nor really understood the life and death aspects of this period. It was a fearful time.

Diarmaid MacCulloch

Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford.

However, as I am at home most of the time at present, I have settled down to reading a large tome: Thomas Cromwell: A Life by Diarmaid MacCulloch. Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford.  As a biography, it is magisterial; unimaginably detailed, the result of sustained and scholarly research and written in crystal clear prose with often unexpected flashes of humour and wry comment. I have enjoyed it enormously in spite of sometimes anxiously trying to recall the place of some of the characters in the chorus who, en passant, inject drama or deception into the discourse. My memory hasn’t been quite up to carrying in my head, this cavalcade of characters involved in the almost decade-long drama of Thomas Cromwell’s service [1532-1540] as Chief Minister to Henry V111.

However, this isn’t a detailed review of this marvellous book; it is to note the realisation of what happened during the years when monasteries and friaries were being suppressed by Cromwell and Henry. Particularly in the case of friaries [always synonymous, wrongly, in my mind with

Greyfriars, Canterbury, founded in 1224, one of 60 Franciscan 

friaries closed between 1534 and 1538 during what became

known as the British Reformation..

monasteries] Cromwell sustained an uninterrupted campaign of vilification to discredit the friars and their friaries, and to destroy the hugely popular Pilgrimages to shrines and relics. Underpinning that was a publicity campaign to inform ordinary people of their now-legal right to read and own an English Bible. 1539 saw the printing of The Great Bible, a fully official Bible in English, overseen by Miles Coverdale but produced, through sheer determination and flexible diplomacy, by Cromwell. It became his Bible, his magnificent achievement, his triumph. This important product was then distributed to all the Churches in Britain, available for all to view.

Canterbury Cathedral today.

The lit candle signifies the spot where Becket's shrine stood.

Monks withdrew from the outside community to pursue the contemplative life within their self-contained, self-supporting landed estates which they owned. Friars were more closely bound to Rome, were not allowed to own land or property and in their true poverty, were reliant on begging from the laity. In return, friars earned high esteem by preaching, hearing confessions and reciting masses for the dead. They tended to be well-educated and intellectually alert, admired by the outside communities, on whom they were reliant and supported by the aristocracy, a weakness exploited by Cromwell in his determination to rid the country of the old religious practices, an important one of which was the veneration extended to holy relics and shrines. Cromwell managed, by often brutal methods, to accomplish, in a relatively short time, the disappearance of friars and the mediaeval relic/shrine-worship. Even the hugely-revered shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral was sacked and removed as was the shrine to St Swithin in Winchester Cathedral.

Thomas Cromwell

whose evangelical zeal seemed to grow with his

increasing power.

And thus began five hundred years of disinterest in, or perhaps disapproval of, the power of holy relics and shrines an attitude common today among the British: an interesting example of the irresistible effect of historical events on present day attitudes.  

Henry V111

particularly interested in transferring the considerable wealth of monasteries and the fewer riches of friaries to the Royal coffers.
Destroying the supposed magic of Processions to worship
shrines and relics encouraged focus on the
new religion.