“She hath been the devil’s instrument to bring many, I fear, to everlasting fire; now she herself, with her old sister Walsingham, (and) her young sister of Ipswich… would make a jolly muster at Smithfield. They would not be all day burning.” The reforming prelate goes on to refer to an image of Our Lady as, 'That great sybil.'”
There’s plenty more in a similar vein; listen to a layman this time, John Falkes: “it is a foolish thyng to offer to the Image of our Lady… her head shalbe hoare (bef)or I offer to her, what is it but a blocke? If it could speake to me, I would geue it an halpeny worth of ale.”
Latimer, and people like our friend John were pleased because the great shrine statues of the Virgin Mary in England, which the people had venerated for centuries, were being sent to London to be burned. They were to be destroyed, just like the religious houses which had grown up around them. For Latimer and his friends, many of whom were to become vastly rich through the sale of Church land, this was a good thing. Why?
Sheer, unadulterated, demonic greed aside, they felt the Catholic religion, substance and outward sign, doctrine and popular expression, was so much blasphemous fable. They didn’t believe. For them, the statues of the Saints and the devotion centered on them was a simple matter of idolatry; they detracted from the worship due to Christ alone and were therefore idols, fit to be burned. A fitting punishment for graven images that led men to hell fire itself.
Well, they were burnt, sometime in 1538, in Chelsea, and Latimer was a happy man. The idols had gone, the chief ones anyway, and so had their Shrines, not least Walsingam. But not all were pleased at the result; here’s another person writing, about a decade after the destruction of the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. It’s anonymous and runs thus:
Bitter, bitter oh to behould
The grasse to growe
Where the walls of Walsingam
So stately did shewe.
Such were the works of Walsingam
While shee did stand
Such are the wrackes as now do shewe
Of that so holy land.
Levell levell with the ground
The towres doe lye
Which with their golden, glitteringe tops pearsed once to the skye.
Where weare gates no gates are nowe,
The waies unknowen,
Where the press of peares did passe
While her fame far was blowen.
Oules do scrike where the sweetest himnes Lately weer songe,
Toades and serpents hold their dennes
Wher the palmers did thronge.
Weepe, weepe O Walsingam,
Whose dayes are nightes,
Blessings turned to blasphemies,
Holy deeds to dispites.
So who was right, the iconoclasts, or their opposition? The people who destroyed the images and became millioniaires, waxing strong on the despoiling of the Church, or those who stood for the ancient devotion of the land? To put it another way, who was right? Churches like ours or those who scorn us as ignorant idolaters? Obviously, we think we’re in the right, otherwise we wouldn’t be celebrating this Feast of Candlemas, held in honour of the Blessed Virgin and her Son. Even so, we owe it to ourselves and to our opposition, ancient and modern, to clarify our position.
Latimer was wrong, we are not idolaters. When we light a candle at the Walsingham Shrine we are not bowing down to a pagan deity, that “great sybil.” We are not worshipping the Blessed ever virgin Mary as a god, on the contrary, we are asking her to pray for us, because we know that she is alive and in heaven. And just as we ask any holy person alive on earth to intercede on our behalf, so too do we ask the same of those in heaven, especially the holiest of them all, the great Mother of God, Mary most holy, who brought salvation into the world.
More than this, our outward devotion to the Saints, not least the Virgin, with her shrines, statues and candles, isn’t some unnecessary distraction from the worship due to Christ alone, but flows from it. Good Christians naturally want to celebrate the lives of men and women of outstanding sanctity as these people are heroes of the Faith, demonstrating the redeeming power and love of Christ. They show us that the business of our religion is true, and so we set up representations of them in our churches to lead us to greater devotion to Our Saviour who was glorified in their lives. This isn’t graven idolatry, it is the normal piety of the faithful throughout the ages, of people who love Jesus and therefore love His Saints and most especially His Mother.
We see that here at St. XXXX; Bishop Latimer didn’t, and so he moved with his allies to stamp out such devotion. In doing so he destroyed the popular, natural, faith of the English; its no small wonder, I think, that when the statues of the Saints were taken away, so too was sainthood from the people. And for a fact, an England bereft of its Shrines became in short order the most godless country in Europe. It seems, then, that the final verse of our anonymous defender of Walsingham has a prophetic ring. To return:
What we’re doing tonight, on this Feast, is putting right that wrong. We are returning the Saints to the people so that we, in our turn, may strive to be saints, helped on by their glorious example and aided by their powerful intercession So tonight, as we light candles in honour of Our Lady, may the light of Christ’s love burn brightly in us that we too, with her, may join the heavenly host of souls redeemed by the grace and love of God.
