Laryngitis

Dr Kenneth Kirk, Bishop of Oxford, while in bed suffering from Laryngitis, noticed an interesting coincidence ... if coincidence it is ... about his diocese.

In this area, we have a couple, at least, of medieval shrines; S Frideswide (obiit circa 735) in the Cathedral at Oxford; one of S Birinus (obiit circa 650) in the former Abbey at Dorchester, not many miles down the Thames. Both had formal shrines; each was the focus of pilgrims. Dorchester Abbey vied with Winchester Cathedral for the possession of the relics of S Birinus; he and S Frideswide of Oxford have left us substantial Vitae. And they have this in common: in neither case did the devotion to the respective saint have any discernible effect upon the medieval Church Dedications of the surrounding area. Indeed, they do not appear in lists of their respective Anglican diocesan dedications, or even in those of England, except where Victorian highchurchery or a newly resurgent Victorian Catholicism has been at work (S Frideswide, 1872; S Birinus, 1848 and 1892). (As a boy, I noticed that the shrine of S Osyth in North East Essex appeared to have had no influence on Anglican church dedications.) 

This contrasts strongly with the cult of S Thomas of Canterbury, where talk of 'wildfire' would not be entirely inappropriate. Of course, in the case of S Thomas, we have a national policy at work and a consciousness that the Clergy as a class needed a protector against an over-reaching executive; and also, I suspect, a growing sense of English national identity.

Several possibilities suggest themselves. Perhaps, by a certain date, there weren't any churches left to whom a Patron needed to be assigned (but the case of S Thomas points the other way). However, at the Synod of London in 1237, the papal legate Otto gave orders that all unconsecrated churches should be properly consecrated within a couple of years; and we find bishop Bronescombe of Exeter spending the late summer and the autumn of 1259 busily progressing from hamlet to hamlet consecrating their churches. We should probably regard these initiatives as the end of the careless old culture of leaving great numbers of village churches unconsecrated. Additions to the stocks of consecratable churches ... as in the cases of the S Thomases outside Exeter and Oseney ... may be the results of expanding conurbations.

Or perhaps Common Folk and their Common Clergy had no particular devotion to the saints who were important to important people and their important foundations ... one could argue that parishes needed to assert their independant status.

I have wondered if a memory yet survived of times when the Patron of a church might be expected to be an 'A-list' saint ... our Lady or a New Testament saint.