Anglican in Burgundy

       Reading Iris Murdoch's 1964 novel The Italian Girl recently, I was interested to find a reference to a Burgundian work of art. In the book, the sculptor Otto, unhappily married to Isabel, blurts out to his brother Edmund: "The spiritual disadvantages of marriage are crippling. I could have been a good man if I hadn't married. Sometimes I think women really are the source of evil. They are such dreamers. Sin is a sort of unconsciousness, a not-knowing. Women are like that, like the bottle. Remember that dreaming Eve at Autun, that dreaming, swimming, dazed Eve of Gislebertus?"       The dreaming Eve of Autun then becomes something of a reference point in the story, which I will not spoil for anyone who hasn't yet read it!      The dreaming, swimming, dazed Eve, as Dame Iris put it so well, was originally part of the west entrance of Autun Cathedral, whose tympanum is regarded, along with that of the basilica of Vézelay, as on...

  L'Angélus (first exhibited 1859), sold at Christie's in 2016      Alphonse Legros (1837-1911) was a Burgundian artist (born in Dijon) who moved to England in 1863, where he spent the rest of his life. Rehearsing the Service , 1870      According to The Connoisseur magazine in February 1912, "The well-known artist, whose death occurred in December last...was a man who practised in almost every branch of art, yet touched nothing but what he did well..." His L'Angélus was bought by a British collector, Sir F Seymour Haden, who encouraged him to come to Britain, and he then exhibited at the Royal Academy prolifically from 1864 until 1882. He became Slade Professor at University College, London, and a naturalised British subject, though his Wikipedia page says "Legros was never a fluent English speaker."      The Connoisseur magazine article stated that while Slade Professor, he "exercised a wider influence over British art teaching tha...

     Après avoir reçu Thomas à Becket, archevêque de Cantorbéry, pendant son exil, les liens entre l'abbaye et l'Angleterre ont continué pendant longtemps. Déjà la fête de St Thomas de Cantorbéry était célébré à Pontigny à partir de 1174. Un deuxième archevêque de Cantorbéry en exil, le cardinal Stephen Langton, est arrivé à l'abbaye en 1207, où il est resté jusqu'en 1213. Dès son retour, suivant la soumission du roi John à Rome, l'archevêque a fait un don généreux annuel à Pontigny, et après sa mort, l'abbaye a commémoré sa vie chaque 28 avril. Du martyrologium de l'abbaye pour ce jour-là: In Anglia beatus Stephanus, Archiepiscopus Cantuariensis, qui pro Ecclesiastica libertate exul, habitum Cisterciensem in Pontiniaco assumpsit, et postmodum ad majores dignitates evectus, sancto fine ad aeternam requiem transivit.      Peu après, l'evêque de Worcester, Mauger, qui était également exilé par le roi John, était enterré dans l'église abbatiale à Pontig...

St Stephen Harding, depicted in 1125, in the Commentary of St Jerome on Jeremiah now in Dijon library, Bibl Dijon ms 130 fol 104      Stephen Harding (c.1060-1134) was an oblate of the Benedictine Sherborne Abbey in Dorset who left the monastic life and went on a pilgrimage to Rome. On the way back, he passed, like so many mediaeval Englishmen, through Burgundy, where he joined the community of monks at Molesme. Already known for their striving for a more literal observance of the Rule, Stephen was one of the group of monks who then left Molesme to start up the new community at Cîteaux, under Alberic as abbot. Stephen became prior and then abbot in succession to Alberic, and was referred to in the  Exordium magnum Cisterciense  (of 1190-1210)  as having been the "dux et signifer" of the whole Cistercian movement. St Stephen wrote two of the key early Cistercian documents, the Exordium Parvum , detailing the history of the first beginnings of the order, and...

  The beginnings of Clairvaux and Britain British Library Yates Thompson 32 f. 9v. A Bruges miniature of Bernard  de Fontaines (Bernard of Clairvaux) taking possession of the Abbey of Clairvaux. From the Chroniques abrégées des Anciens Rois et Ducs de Bourgogne. According to the British Library the church in the background is based on St. Servatius in Maastricht.      Clairvaux is just a few kilometres outside today's Burgundy, being just over the border in the Aube département, but in the Middle Ages it was a key location in the Burgundian monastic revival, and had a great influence upon England. Indeed, it was the English Abbot of Cîteaux, St Stephen Harding, who chose St Bernard to lead a group of monks from Cîteaux, which was growing rapidly, to found the Abbey of Clairvaux in 1115 as the third daughter of Cîteaux (after La Ferté and Pontigny). The growth of the monastery was phenomenal: at St Bernard's death in 1153, it contained about 700 religious, includ...

  La Ferté      The abbaye de La Ferté at Saint-Ambreuil (Saône-et-Loire) provides a link between Burgundy, Hampshire and Carlisle.       Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire was founded by King John in 1204, as Cîteaux's first daughter house in England, with some 30 founding monks sent out direct from Burgundy. The Abbot of La Ferté, first daughter of Cîteaux, had been sent himself with the founding monks the previous year by the Abbot of Cîteaux, with the idea of originally starting the house at Faringdon in Berkshire, but it was decided instead to set up the monastery at Beaulieu. Beaulieu Abbey went on to establish daughter houses of its own at Netley (1239), then later Hayles, Newenham, and St Mary Graces, London.      The picture below shows what is now the church at Beaulieu, but which was the Cistercian monastic refectory: the steps in the wall led up to the pulpitum from which the readings at mealtimes took place.    ...