Amphibalus gets his own scene in Cavalieri’s Ecclesiae Anglicanae Trophaea and doesn’t have to share with St Alban. Alban was Britain’s first Christian martyr (c.209 CE) and he was executed for protecting Amphibalus, a Christian priest. Amphibalus was killed a few days later in a particularly brutal execution that left only his tongue and his […]

There’s an article in the Guardian today that makes a historian smile/cry with frustration/enthusiasm. Richard Godwin in the Guardian quotes Churchill one set of people get control, who compel all others to obey and aid them in folly He also refers to recent attempts by Brexiteers to draw Poland into the fray. Interestingly, Poland (or […]

But I am dwelling too much on money, if it were not that we have such need of it; and truly it is very often a great grief to us that spiritual ends cannot be achieved in these parts except by means of filthy lucre. Robert Persons in Rouen to Claudio Acquaviva in Rome, October […]

Inability to communicate starts at ideological level: the surface hides a deep well of history and expectation. The image comes from Richard Verstegan’s 1582 Praesentis Ecclesiae (courtesy of Stonyhurst College) and shows the theologians behind the torture of Edmund Campion on the rack in August 1581. Although Campion achieved his goal of public disputations, it was […]

This time the USA… In Oswestry in St Oswald’s church is an 18th-century monument to the Yale family, with early 17th-century figures of Hugh and Dorothy Yale. They are the same family that endowed the university in New Haven that now bears their name, thanks to the success of Elihu Yale’s business ventures in India.  

And so does the smell! The Maes Garmon monument commemorates the battle of 420 CE  recorded by the Venerable Bede when faith won out over the Picts and Anglo-Saxons. It was a victory for the Britons (who Bede doesn’t usually back) but this time they were inspired by Germanus of Auxerre who was in Britain […]