United States or São Tomé and Príncipe ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Edmund Rich, afterwards called Saint Edmund of Pontigny, was an Archbishop of Canterbury with whom King Henry the Third was at variance as long as he lived, much in the same way as Henry the Second had been with Becket. Now he was dead, a banished man, the Pope had declared him a saint, and King Henry made humble offerings at his shrine.
He selected the Abbey of St. Columba, a little beyond the walls of Sens, and took leave of the brethren at Pontigny, with such a burst of tears that the abbot remarked them with surprise, and begged to know their cause. "I feel that my days are numbered," said Becket; "I dreamt, last night, that I was put to death." "Do you think you are going to be a martyr?" said the abbot.
After vain appeals to Rome and to the king, Archbishop Edmund retired to an exile of despair at Pontigny, and tax-gatherer after tax-gatherer with powers of excommunication, suspension from orders, and presentation to benefices, descended on the unhappy priesthood. The wholesale pillage kindled a wide spirit of resistance.
But ere long time be over, the Lord our God will send for her, by that angel that taketh no bribe to delay execution of His mandate. And then I knew his meaning: my darling was to die. But the steps of the angel were very slow. The autumn came and went. The child seemed languid and dull, and the Lord King offered a chasuble of samite to the blessed Edmund of Pontigny at his altar at Canterbury."
The monks of Citeaux, of Morimond, of Pontigny, of Clairvaux, amid the wastes of a barren country, with their white habits and perpetual vigils and haircloth shirts and root dinners and hard labors in the field, were yet the counsellors and ministers of kings and the creators of popes, and incited the nations to the most bloody and unfortunate wars in the whole history of society, I mean the Crusades.
This great Norman church of St Nicholas with its partly fourteenth century nave, its clerestory, its fine chancel with sedilia and Easter sepulchre, and noble pinnacled tower is perhaps the greatest building in the Marsh. It belonged to the Abbey of Pontigny and was served by its monks who had a cell here, and the town it adorns and ennobles, was the capital of all this district.
Henry stooped to acts of the meanest persecution in driving the Primate's kinsmen from England, and in confiscating the lands of their order till the monks of Pontigny should refuse Thomas a home; while Beket himself exhausted the patience of his friends by his violence and excommunications, as well as by the stubbornness with which he clung to the offensive clause "Saving the honour of my order," the addition of which to his consent would have practically neutralised the king's reforms.
Hugh de Wells, the chancellor, being elected by the king's appointment Bishop of Lincoln, upon a vacancy in that see, desired leave to go abroad, in order to receive consecration from the Archbishop of Rouen; but he no sooner reached France than he hastened to Pontigny, where Langton then resided, and paid submissions to him as his primate.
"Wer einmal vergottert worden ist, der hat seine Mensetheit unwiederbringlich eingebusst." Strauss, Der alte und der neue Glaube, p. 76. We might have expected him to be very full on that part of his history; but, writing doubtless mainly for the monks of Pontigny, he says that HE WILL NOT ENLARGE UPON WHAT EVERY ONE KNOWS, and cuts that part very short."
In answer to the excommunications he forced the Cistercians in 1166, by threats of vengeance in England, to expel Thomas from Pontigny. When papal legates arrived in 1167 with proposals for mediation, he bluntly expressed his hope that he might never see any more cardinals. His political activity was unceasing.
Word Of The Day