King Louis IX of France

 

King Louis IX was the only king of France to be declared a saint, a status that he earned through his excessive piety and participation in two crusades.

He was born in 1214 and inherited the throne at the age of 12. His mother, Blanche of Castile, acted as his Regent until Louis was 20. France was largely prosperous and at peace during his reign of 43 years.

Louis was highly religious, hearing mass twice a day and surrounding himself with priests who chanted the hours even when he was on horseback. His piety did not stop him from being a courageous knight, undaunted by adversity and a good companion. He was in many respects the ideal king of the Middle Ages.

He took good care of the poor and needy, building hospitals and ordering that 100 beggars be given food and alms from the Royal provisions every day.

In August 1248 Louis set sail on his first crusade, heading for Egypt together with his wife and 35,000 soldiers. Things did not go well. His brother was killed and the army was struck by a plague. Louis almost died from dysentery and was captured by the Saracens. He was not able to return to France for another four years.

In July 1270 Louis embarked on another crusade, this time heading for Tunis, landing near the ruins of ancient Carthage. After some easy victories the army was again ravaged by plague, and this time Louis was himself a victim. As he lay dying he instructed his son and heir, who reigned as King Philip III, to take special care of the poor.

He died on 25^th August 1270 at the age of 56. His body was returned to Paris in a long funeral procession that was lined by mourners wherever it passed through. From the moment of his burial in the Abbey of St Denis he was thought of as a saint, with people praying at his tomb for miracles. He was officially canonised by Pope Boniface VIII in 1297, which was only 27 years after his death.

© John Welford

 

Ernst Wollweber: saboteur for Communism

 

Ernst Wollweber was born in 1898, the son of a miner in Hamburg, Germany. He joined the German Navy in 1917 and was inspired by what was happening at the time in Russia, namely the Bolshevik Revolution. He was one of the instigators of the German naval mutiny of November 1918, hauling up the red flag on the cruiser ‘Heligoland’ at the entrance to the Kiel Canal, this being the signal for the revolt.

He had hoped that post-war Germany would turn to Communism but was disappointed in this when the Weimar Republic was formed in 1919. His response was to lead another shipboard mutiny and take his vessel to Murmansk as a present for Soviet Russia. He was rewarded by Vladimir Lenin by being appointed chairman of the International Seamen’s Union. In this capacity he sailed round the world, acting as an emissary of Communism in China, Japan, Italy and the United States.

The German Communist Party was destroyed by Adolf Hitler when he came to power in 1933, but Wollweber saw an opportunity to cause havoc for the Nazi regime. He based himself in the Danish capital Copenhagen, from where ships left loaded with supplies for the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. His agents were able to insert pieces of TNT explosive into the supplies of coal that fuelled the ships’ engines, with devastating results.

Sabotage now became Wollweber’s weapon of choice. In 1940 he was able to destroy the ‘Marion’, a German troopship heading for Norway. A shattering explosion sank the ship and badly burned corpses, 4000 of them, floated ashore for weeks afterwards.

When the Nazis invaded Denmark in April 1940, Wollweber escaped to Sweden, where he had already organised a sabotage ring. He was promptly arrested, but his agent had recruited two young waitresses whom nobody suspected of nefarious activity. They were responsible for a massive explosion at a freight yard in July 1941 which destroyed truckloads of German shells.

The Germans demanded that neutral Sweden should hand Wollweber over to them, but he stayed in jail until the end of the war in 1945. He was then allowed to travel to Moscow, where he was treated as a Soviet hero. He returned to Germany and organised a spy ring in what became Communist East Germany.

He continued to work as a saboteur, causing explosions on British and American ships. He was almost certainly responsible for a fire on board the British liner ‘Queen Elizabeth’ in 1953, which was the year in which he was appointed Minister of State Security in East Germany.

He did not always see eye-to-eye with the East German regime. In 1961, Walter Ulbricht, Secretary of the East German Communist Party, ordered Wollweber’s arrest. However, when Wollweber contacted Moscow a telegram arrived in Berlin that read “Let Wollweber alone, he is a friend of mine”. It was signed Krushchev.

Ernst Wollweber died a natural death in 1962.

© John Welford

Manco Capac: legendary founder of the Incas

 

Manco Capac, who died in or around the year 1107, is generally described as the first emperor of the Inca people who occupied much of the western side of South America until their conquest by the Spanish conquistadores in the 16^th century.

The stories told about Manco Capac often sound as though they belong to mythology, but he was a real person, even though various legends have attached to him.

It is said that Manco and his three brothers and four sisters originally lived in a cave in the valley of the Vilcamayu river. They moved to the region of Lake Titicaca and brought civilisation to the tribes that lived there. One of Manco’s sisters taught the women how to weave wool threads into cloth and Manco taught the men how to farm. Manco encouraged them to worship the Sun instead of performing human sacrifices and he outlawed incestuous marriages between brothers and sisters.

There is some evidence that two tribes, the Inca and the Allcovisa, did indeed settle together near Lake Titicaca in the late 11^th century and that there was a certain amount of cultural exchange between them.

However, there is no truth in the legend that Manco founded the city of Cuzco, because this is known to have been settled during the 900s and the Inca did not arrive there until the 1200s.

When Manco died he was succeeded by his son Sinchi Roca, and it was he who led the Inca into the Cuzco Valley which would in due course become the centre of the Inca Empire.

© John Welford

The body of King James IV

 

King James IV of Scotland was killed at the Battle of Flodden Field on 9th September 1513, following his unwise invasion of England while King Henry VIII was out of the country. The battle was a massacre and there was some doubt as to which body was that of the Scottish king.

There then arose a problem, due to the fact that James had died having broken a Treaty of Eternal Peace with England. This treaty had been brokered by Pope Alexander VI, who had decreed that anyone who violated it would suffer excommunication. This meant that James’s body could not be given a Christian burial. It was therefore taken to Berwick, embalmed, sealed in lead, and then transported to Richmond Palace near London.

When King Henry returned to England from France he suggested that the body be buried in St Paul’s Cathedral, but the Pope would have none of it and so it was taken instead to the monastery at Sheen in Surrey where it was left.

Following further problems with the Papacy, King Henry proceeded to declare himself head of the Church of England and dissolved the monasteries, that at Sheen suffering this fate in 1538. King James’s body was moved to an old lumber room and forgotten about.

There are various accounts of what happened next. One is that nothing happened until the early years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, in the 1560s, when a glazier working on the building, which was then falling into considerable disrepair, reported that he could smell embalming spices. A delegation arrived to inspect the source of the smell coming from a lead box and left again, taking no action. The glazier then decided to open the box, cut off James’s head and take it home with him. Not surprisingly, his family was less than impressed with this bizarre trophy so he took it to St Michael’s church in the City of London where it was reburied and may well still be there.

However, a second story relates that the whole body is still at Sheen, buried in an unmarked grave. Evidence for this is entirely lacking.

A third option is much more entertaining but probably the least likely of those on offer. This is that James did not die at Flodden at all. Instead, he was rescued by the Queen of Elfland and has been living with the elves ever since. One day, so it is hoped by those who believe this nonsense, he will return in triumph to continue his reign.

© John Welford

The death of King Henry IV at "Jerusalem"

 

King Henry IV of England died on 20^th March 1413 at the age of 45. His health had been poor ever since he had seized the throne from King Richard II in 1399. He suffered regular blackouts and had serious skin problems, which some contemporaries thought might be leprosy, but some sort of kidney disease is probably closer to the mark.

Henry himself thought that his condition was a form of divine punishment, not only for causing the death of his predecessor (Richard died at Pontefract Castle in 1400, possibly having been murdered) but for executing the Archbishop of York after the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403. He became depressed and slept badly. On top of his health problems, he was on continual bad terms with his son Hal, the future King Henry V.

Henry thought the best way of improving his health would be to obtain a divine pardon, and the best way of doing that would be to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. That was why he was in Westminster Abbey on 20^th March 1413, praying at the tomb of Edward the Confessor, prior to setting forth on his journey.

Edward had consecrated the abbey church of St Peter in 1065, not long before his death the following year. He was buried in the Abbey and later kings venerated his memory. He was canonised as a saint in 1161 and his cult was promoted by King Edward III as an alternative to that of Thomas Becket at Canterbury. That was why the abbey was rebuilt from 1245 to become the tallest of all Gothic churches and a fit setting for all future coronations down to the present day.

While King Henry was praying, another fit seized him, one that was to prove fatal. He was carried to a room that had been added to the abbot’s lodgings in the late 14^th century. The monks of the Abbey had become accustomed to naming such rooms after holy sites, which is why the room where Henry died was known as the Jerusalem Chamber. When Henry briefly and partially recovered his senses he asked where he was and was told “Jerusalem”. Given that this was where he intended to go, Henry died happy.

Henry was not buried at Westminster but at Canterbury. His Queen, Joan of Navarre, had a splendid tomb built for him next to the shrine of St Thomas.

© John Welford

King Edward the Confessor

 

Edward the Confessor was the only English king to become a saint. This was entirely due to his personal behaviour and had nothing to do with his abilities as a monarch, which were far from what the country needed at the time.

Born in 1004, he was the son of King Ethelred II, who is known to history as Ethelred the Unready. Edward was 13 years old when his father died, at which time the throne of England was being disputed between Anglo-Saxons and invading Danes. Queen Emma fled to her native Normandy, taking Edward with her.

However, the new king, Canute the Dane, thought that a good way to make himself acceptable to his new English subjects would be to marry Ethelred’s widow, which is what he did. Emma later gave birth to another son, named Hardecanute.

Canute also had an illegitimate son named Harold and it was he who became king on Canute’s death. This was because Hardecanute was far more interested in looking after Denmark than England. However, when Harold died in 1040 Hardecanute became King of England and he invited his half-brother Edward to return from exile and assume the position of heir to the throne. Edward therefore became King when Hardecanute died in 1042.

Edward had very little interest in the monarchy, much preferring to spend his time in religious devotion. He was known to spend several hours every day praying and was even reputed to perform miracles of healing. He grew a long white beard and therefore looked more like an Old Testament prophet than a king of England.

The real power in the land was the Godwin family, who ruled the roost and whose word was law. Edward married a Godwin daughter but this was a marriage in name only, with no children issuing from it. There have been various theories as to why this was – Edward might have been impotent or homosexual, and it is even possible that he had taken a monkly vow of chastity.

At any event, when Edward died in 1066 after a reign of 24 years he left no heir other than his brother-in-law Harold Godwin. The resulting conflict over the succession between Harold and Edward’s French cousin William of Normandy soon resulted in the Norman conquest and the end of Anglo-Saxon England.

© John Welford

Isabella of Angoulême, Queen of England

 

Isabella was born around 1187 at Angoulême in south-west France, the only daughter of the Count of Angoulême. She was about 12 or 13 years old when she was spotted by King John of England, who had only just come to the throne and was already married. He fell madly in love with her and divorced his first wife so that he could marry Isabella, which he did in the year 1200.

They were to have five children, but the marriage could hardly be described as a happy one, due mainly to John’s spiteful and jealous character. Once, when he thought that Isabella was having an affair, he arranged for the man to be hanged and for his corpse to be suspended over Isabella’s bed.

When King John died in 1216, the new king, who reigned as Henry III, was only nine years old. Isabella was keen to secure Henry’s title and lost no time in having Henry crowned, and this was done in Gloucester Cathedral. There was no actual crown to hand, so Isabella used one of her own gold collars as a substitute.

Isabella had no desire to stay in England so she returned to Angoulême and married her real childhood sweetheart. This was a much happier marriage than her first, and she bore her new husband six sons and five daughters.

Isabella was later accused of conspiring to poison the King of France, a charge that was almost certainly false. She sought sanctuary at Fauntevrault Abbey, where she lived in hiding for the last two years of her life, dying in 1246.

Years later, her son King Henry III visited the Abbey and was shocked to find that his mother had been buried in the open cemetery. He ordered that her remains be reburied inside the Abbey, where a suitably respectful effigy was later supplied.

© John Welford

Isabella of Valois, Queen of England

 

Isabella of Valois, the second Queen of King Richard II of England, was born in 1389. She was not yet eight years old when she was sent to England to marry Richard. It was a marriage in name only, as one might expect with somebody this young, and was engineered purely as a peace-making deal between England and France.

In 1399 King Richard was deposed and disappeared, Isabella having no idea whether he was alive or dead. A new King appeared, calling himself Henry IV, and Isabella was moved out of Windsor Castle to a new home at Sunninghill.

Enemies of the new King Henry plotted to overthrow him and persuaded Isabella to accompany an army of rebels, but at Cirencester the plot fell apart, the ringleaders were beheaded and Isabella was packed off back to London under lock and key.

Henry then had the bright idea that his son and heir, Prince Hal, would be the perfect match for Isabella. They were, after all, the same age – just 11 years old. But Isabella had a mind of her own and refused to have anything to do with it. She now knew that Richard must be dead, and promptly went into mourning, having nothing whatever to do with the new regime.

Henry had no choice but to send her back to France. When she was 16 she married Charles, Duke of Orleans, but was only 20 years old when she died in childbirth.

Six years later, in 1415, the former Prince Hal, now King Henry V, triumphed at the Battle of Agincourt, one consequence of which was that Henry married the French Princess Catherine, who was Isabella’s sister, and Charles, Isabella’s widower, was imprisoned in the Tower of London for the next quarter of a century.

 © John Welford

 

 

Friedrich Nietzsche: a much misunderstood philosopher

 

Friedrich Nietzsche was a philosopher who has been regarded as providing intellectual support to anti-Semitism and Nazism. However, a close reading of his works does little to support this view. The blame for his views being misinterpreted lies very largely with his sister Elizabeth, who edited his work and used it as backing for her own beliefs, which were blatantly in favour of Germany’s National Socialists. When she died in 1935, Adolf Hitler attended her funeral.

Friedrich Nietzsche was born in 1844 in a small town in Saxony which was then part of Prussia. The son of a Protestant minister, he became a professor at the University of Basel but had to retire after only ten years due to ill health. He then wandered across Europe, devoting himself to writing and trying to recover his health. In 1889 he suffered a complete relapse into insanity, dying in 1900 at the age of 55.

Shortly after his death, his writings were edited and published by his sister under the title “The Will to Power”, but there is plenty of evidence to show alterations to his original texts, which has done much to mar the reception of Nietzsche’s thought ever since.

Nietzsche’s writings are varied and cover diverse topics, but he is most renowned for his concept of “the will to power”. He saw that the fundamental driving force of the individual is expressed in the need to dominate and control the external forces operating upon him. He seeks the power to be master of his own destiny.

The frustration of this urge, according to Nietzsche, is responsible for the existence of various moral systems and religious institutions, all of which attempt to bind and subdue the will. This view made Nietzsche particularly hostile to Christianity, which he termed a “slave morality”.

Friedrich Nietzsche saw the will to power as something to be pursued and affirmed, and not to be resisted. However, he did not advocate the dominance of the strong over the weak, nor suggest that mastery of the will to power belongs to some special elite by virtue of birth. The absence of such statements in his work make clear that the Nazis were entirely wrong in their interpretation of his philosophy.

What Nietzsche actually said was that strength is necessary to the evolutionary progress of the human being. But strength, as he understood it, was not constituted in physical but in psychological force. The strong are those who are more complete as human beings because they have learnt to control their passions and have channelled the will to power into a creative force.

Nietzsche used the term “superman”, but his concept had more to do with Aristotle’s notion of a man of virtue than of the Aryan superhero of Nazi philosophy.

Nietzsche’s moral philosophy did not advocate “master morality”, although he clearly believed that being a master was better than being a slave. The point about being strong was that one was then in a position to help the weak, and that was the duty of the man of virtue. Helping the weak was not to be done from a sense of pity, but as a result of the natural urge to have power over one’s own development.

It has to be hoped that in future Nietzsche’s reputation will depend on what he actually wrote rather than on what others may have supposed he did.

© John Welford

Charles Peace: 19th century burglar and murderer

Charles Peace was a notorious 19^th century murderer. He was once described as ‘the greatest and most naturally gifted criminal England has produced’. 

He was born in Sheffield in 1832, the son of an animal trainer. A childhood accident led to him wearing a false arm with a hook at the end of it. He also became a master of disguise as well as a burglar.

In 1876, while burgling a house near Manchester, he shot and killed a policeman who surprised him. Two brothers were arrested for the murder and sent for trial. Peace attended the trial, with a view to ensuring that his involvement was not suspected, and was relieved when one of the brothers, William Habron, was sentenced to death.

Peace did have a legitimate occupation, that of a picture framer, which he carried out at his home in Sheffield. He became friendly with a civil engineer named Arthur Dyson and his wife Katherine. Despite being married himself, Peace became enamoured of Mrs Dyson, who at first encouraged him in his pursuit of her. However, Katherine Dyson eventually thought that Peace was becoming too insistent and tried to break off the attachment.

The Dysons moved to a different part of Sheffield, but Peace continued to bother her. One night, Mrs Dyson discovered Peace in her back yard armed with a revolver and screamed loudly. Her husband chased Peace down the road but Peace turned and fired at him with fatal consequences.

Peace escaped to London where he rented a villa in Peckham. He adopted a new persona, taking the name John Ward, and turned his attention to inventing scientific instruments. At least, this was what he did during the day – at night he continued his old habit of burgling houses. During one such escapade in Blackheath he shot at and wounded a policeman but that did not stop him from being captured.

His true identity as Charles Peace became known and, having been sentenced to life imprisonment for wounding the policeman, he was then sent to Sheffield to stand trial for killing Arthur Dyson. During the train journey he was able to jump from the train in a bid to escape but was injured as he did so and was soon recaptured.

At his murder trial he was found guilty and sentenced to death. While awaiting execution he confessed to the killing of the policeman at Manchester for which the Habron brothers had been found guilty. Fortunately, William Habron’s sentence had been commuted to life imprisonment and he was duly released and pardoned, receiving £1000 in compensation.

© John Welford

Jonathan Wild: 18th century criminal and thief-taker

 

Jonathan Wild was a particularly nasty piece of work, operating on both sides of the law in early 18^th-century London. He was responsible for sending many fellow criminals to the gallows until eventually he overreached himself and suffered the same fate.

He was born in Wolverhampton in 1683 and worked there as a bottle maker. In 1707 he deserted his wife and went to London where he was soon imprisoned for debt for four years. This proved to be a useful introduction to the capital’s underworld. When released, he opened a brothel with his mistress, whom he had met in prison. One of his activities was to act as a prostitute’s associate who picked the client’s pockets while the latter’s attention was otherwise engaged.

For ten years, from 1714 to 1724, he controlled London’s criminals by playing them off one against the one, and against the authorities, in a complicated web of intrigue and influence. He acted as a thief-taker and also as a receiver. He pursued thieves with great tenacity, earning large sums of money under the Parliamentary reward system. However, there was more money to be made by acting as their receiver while continuing to inform on them to the officers at Newgate.

Wild organised the thieves into gangs which he controlled, planning their crimes and then disposing of the proceeds in a highly original way. Instead of fencing the stolen goods, he set up a lost-property office and sold the recovered items back to their original owners who, it seemed, were prepared to pay more for the return of the goods than he would have been able to get from professional receivers.

He instructed his gangs to discover the identities of those they were about to rob so that he could, after a suitable interval, notify the victims that their possessions had been ‘recovered’. He paid his thieves poorly, but kept their loyalty by arranging rigged trials when they were caught and by exacting swift revenge if they double-crossed him.

In 1720 the government was naïve enough to consult him about the rising crime rate. Wild told them that they should increase the rewards for capturing criminals – one of his own sources of profit.

It could not last – Wild’s activities had made him too many enemies. A new Act of Parliament was passed that closed the legal loophole on which Wild had theretofore depended. He was finally charged with receiving ten guineas as a reward for helping a lady to recover some stolen lace, a theft that he himself had organised. The law that brought him low was informally known thereafter as Jonathan Wild’s Act. In his defence he pleaded that he had brought 67 criminals to the gallows.

On the night before his execution, in 1725, he attempted suicide by drinking laudanum but did not succeed. He was therefore in very poor health when he reached the gallows at Tyburn. The executioner was prepared to allow him time to recover his senses but the enraged crowd demanded that the sentence be carried out with no further delay, and this was duly done.

 © John Welford

 

Berengaria, Queen of England and Cyprus

 

Berengaria of Navarre was a Queen of England who never set foot in England as Queen. She was born, in around 1165, in Navarre, was married in Cyprus, lived most of her life in France, where she died in about 1230, and was buried in the abbey she built near Le Mans.

Her husband was King Richard I, known to history as the Lionheart. On the face of it, he might have been a perfect match, given that he was brave, handsome, and the most popular warrior-king in the Christian world. But that was as far as his attraction went. He had no interest in her, being far more concerned about pursuing his Crusade.

Berengaria had been discovered by Richard’s mother, who was convinced that she would make a good wife for her son. She escorted Berengaria to Sicily, where Richard was preparing to journey on his crusade. His route took him via Cyprus, which Richard promptly captured. The marriage took place in Limassol and Berengaria was crowned Queen of England and Cyprus.

After Richard’s campaign in the Holy Land was lost he sent Berengaria off to England, saying that he would travel by land and meet up with her later. However, she never reached England and probably never wanted to.

Richard’s return to England was severely delayed by his being captured by the Duke of Austria and held prisoner for a huge ransom. On his return to England, a whole year later, he decided that he would much prefer to campaign in France, which is where he spent most of the rest of his life. It was years before he and Berengaria were reunited, but they hardly made a happy married couple and no children resulted.

After Richard was killed in 1199 during the siege of a French castle, Berengaria retired to a nunnery and spent the rest of her life helping the poor and caring for abandoned children.

It was only after she was widowed that Berengaria visited England, being a frequent guest of her brother-in-law King John. In 1220 she witnessed the translation of Thomas Beckett’s bones to his new shrine in Canterbury Cathedral.

In 1229 she built an abbey at L’Epau where, under her new name of Juliana, she spent her final days as a nun. This was where she died and where her effigy can be seen in the chapter house today.

© John Welford

 

St Martin of Tours

11^th November is the official saint’s day for St Martin of Tours, who is best remembered for the legend of “St Martin and the beggar”.

Martin was born in what is now Hungary, in the year 316, but grew up in northern Italy because his father was an officer in the Roman army and moved his family to wherever his unit was stationed.

Martin was attracted to Christianity as a boy, although his parents objected. Being a Christian at this time was not as dangerous as it would have been in earlier decades because, since the conversion of Emperor Constantine, Christianity was now recognised as a state religion. This did not mean that it was the sole religion of the Empire, and it was rare for military families to be Christian.

Martin had little choice when it came to his career and he therefore followed his father into the Roman army. There is a question over how long he remained in the army, with some sources claiming that he went nearly the full distance (which would have been 25 years) and others maintaining that he left after only a few years.

The story of the beggar and the cloak seems to belong to an early time in his army career. While on military service in France, Martin came across a beggar who was shivering with cold. He used his sword to cut his military cloak in half, then gave one half to the beggar while keeping the other for himself. The incident has been cited many times down the centuries as an example of Christian charity.

It appears that Martin could not reconcile military service with his Christian principles and eventually refused to fight and shed blood. He was arrested and imprisoned but was later released not only from prison but also from his military duties.

Martin became the protégé of Hilary, the bishop of what is now Poitiers, at a time when Christianity was split between Arians and Trinitarians over the matter of the nature of Christ (i.e. human or divine?). Hilary was a Trinitarian, which caused him serious problems leading to his expulsion in 357. Martin also left Poitiers, wandering across several countries and eventually settling as a hermit on an island off the coast of Italy.

However, when Hilary was restored to office in 361, Martin also went back to Poitiers. He founded a monastery at Ligugé, south of Poitiers, that is the oldest monastic foundation in Europe.

Martin became Bishop of Tours in 371 and founded another monastery, at Marmoutier, in 372. He spent most of his time in the monastery, having been reluctant to accept the post of Bishop. However, he did also travel around France, setting up new monastic communities as he did so. He died in 397 aged 81.

© John Welford

St Wulfstan

19^th January is the saint’s day for Wulfstan who was the Bishop of Worcester at the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066.

Wulfstan was born in about 1008 and was educated at the monasteries of Evesham and Peterborough. He became a monk at Worcester in 1038, where he served as treasurer and prior, and was noted for his dedication to prayer and study.

In 1062 he was appointed Bishop of Worcester and had therefore been in post for only four years before the Anglo-Saxon monarchy was brutally suppressed by the Normans.

Medieval bishops were not just church leaders but also wealthy men in their own right because the church owned large tracts of land from which rents were extracted. The Normans were therefore keen to replace English bishops with their own men, especially as a number of churchmen had fought alongside Duke William at the Battle of Hastings and were on the lookout for a rich diocese as their reward. One very prominent fighting bishop, for example, was William’s brother Odo, the extremely rich and greedy Bishop of Bayeux.

As a result, by the year 1075 every bishop in England was a Norman, with one exception. This was Wulfstan, whose saintliness had impressed even William, one of the least saintly men imaginable. It may well have been that William appreciated the respect in which Wulfstan was held and reckoned that replacing him would be a cause for discontent, of which William had plenty to deal with in other parts of his new kingdom.

Wulfstan remained as bishop for more than 30 years until his death in 1095. During that time he rebuilt the cathedral at Worcester and also ended a slave trading enterprise based at Bristol.

The photo is of the crypt of Worcester Cathedral, this being the only part of Wulfstan's cathedral that still exists.

© John Welford

St Silvester

31^st December is the saint’s day for one of the earliest Christians to die a natural death and yet be accorded the status of saint. The man in question, Silvester, was doubly fortunate because he became pope in the year 314, shortly after Emperor Constantine had declared that Christians were no longer to be persecuted within the Roman Empire. Many of Pope Silvester’s predecessors had been martyred but he knew that he was safe.

The legend of St Silvester concerns Constantine’s baptism. The story runs that Constantine contracted leprosy and his doctor stated that the best cure was to bathe in the blood of children. Fortunately for the health of the local youngsters, the emperor also had a vision in which Saints Peter and Paul told him that a better plan was to get himself baptized by Silvester. This he did and his leprosy was healed, Silvester’s reward being the extremely generous gift of the islands of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica.

It’s a good story but unfortunately it doesn’t fit the facts, because Constantine was not baptized until he was dying, which was after Silvester’s own death in 335.

Leaving impossible legends aside, Silvester’s contribution to the early Church was still considerable. Although he did not attend the Council of Nicaea in 325 which established the future direction of the Church and its relationship to the secular authority of Rome, he did send delegates and he approved the decisions that were made.

He also founded a number of important places of worship in Rome, most notably St John Lateran (the official cathedral of the city of Rome) and the original St Peter’s Basilica.

St Silvester’s bishop’s chair and mitre have survived and are preserved in the church of San Martino ai Monti in Rome.

© John Welford