Best wishes to readers on this annual commemoration of the (formal) end of the Great Rebellion and the Return of our late Sovereign Lord King Charles II. Today, however, not inappropriately, I wish to 'Remember' his Father.
In 2010 there was a small but perfectly formed exhibition about the relics of Blessed Charles Stuart. It is interesting, I think, that the cult of his relics began immediately after his martyrdom in 1648. When we come to the regularisation of his status with the Holy See, the length of the cultus may be canonically significant in establishing beatification by equipollence.
Everything very touching. The pearl earring taken from his ear after his execution and passed on to his daughter (you can see it in the Vandyke triple portrait done for Bernini); relics of his blood; secondary and tertiary relics of which the most moving is the Chalice from which he received the Most Precious Blood on the morning of his execution. Reliquaries containing his hair.
The Royal Martyr shares with Blessed John Henry Newman (though for quite different reasons) the characteristic that there are (I think?) no primary relics in the form of bones.
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Old Style. Caught you there.
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In the deanery at Windsor is the plain table on which his body was laid and reunited with its head. I am told that HM is very particular about it, allowing only flowers to be placed thereon.
Why did he receive the Precious Blood on the morning of his martyrdom?
I'd still like to know how you respind to the fact that so far as the Martyrology is concerned Charles I is responsible for several martyrdoms. It would be more appropriate to beatify Charles II as a Confessor.
There is a small bone relic of Blessed John Henry Newman. I was present when it was enshrined in the feretory in his chapel at the Birmingham Oratory on his feastday in 2011. As I recall, the small -- but very obvious -- bone fragment was discovered in the mass of earth that was retained at the time of the exhumation and examined later. I believe it was thought to be from his hand.
Andrew K, presumably because, unlike the Roman Catholic church of the day, the Church of England was not in the habit of administering half a sacrament to the people.
Patrick, you can't have flesh without blood. Obvs.
@Patrick Sheridan. Not half a sacrament. See the Council of Trent Decree on the Eucharist (11 October 1551) DS 1636, 1640, 1641, 1651, 1653; Decree on Communion Under Both Kinds (16 July 1562) DS 1726, 1729, 1731, 1733.
If it is half a sacrament then do you (singular) not have to consume absolutely everything consecrated by the priest yourself (singular) so as to get the whole sacrament? If Christ is present whole and entire in a single wafer then you don't.
The modern Church of England permits reception of "half a sacrament" Common Worship, Services of Wholeness and Healing, p.73: "Communion should normally be received in both kinds separately, but where necessary may be received in one kind, whether of bread or, where the communicant cannot receive solid food, wine." What is permitted in emergency is permitted in principle. (So far as I understand them, that appears to be the premise of many arguments made by Anglo-Catholics).
I am a Cavalier, not a Roundhead, but find the admittedly romantic idea that Charles I died as a martyr for the Anglican Church rather difficult to reconcile with the historical record. Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley at al. have a better claim in this respect.
Charles's condemnation was unlawful, but the charge against him, that he had levied war on his own subjects, has some substance. The theory of monarchy for which he died is now a dead letter.
How can Charles I regularize his status with the Church if he already died (visibly) outside it? And, therefore, why should he be called blessed? Even if he is in fact saved, e. g. being invincibly ignorant and having lived as best as he could according to his conscience, the Church while on her earthly pilgrimage cannot know it. And did he indeed receive the Precious Blood? In 1649, was there still any pre-Cranmer ordained priest among the Anglican clergy?
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