James Hannington, Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa

James Hannington was born in 1847 and was ordained after studying at Oxford. He was a curate for five years and then and then went to Uganda for the CMS. He was consecrated bishop for that part of Africa in 1884 and soon led a mission inland. The King of the Buganda, Mwanga seized the whole party, and after torture they were butchered to death on this day in 1885. His life and death move and challenge us to costly mission too.

 

Collect

Most merciful God,
who strengthened your Church by the steadfast courage
   of your martyr James Hannington:
grant that we also,
thankfully remembering his victory of faith,
may overcome what is evil
and glorify your holy name;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

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Flocking

Snettisham featured on Autumnwatch this week, with magnificent synchronized swoops of massed Nott or dunlins. As it happens we were up there today and wnt down to the beach to see if anything was happening. The tide was not fully in so the birds were out on the mudflats having a feed, but there was a superb display of the flocking behaviour of twitchers, many of whom like us must have seen the site on the telly.

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New season Blackberry

Snettisham also had a terrific display of Blackberries – the edible kind, as mobile signal is nearly nonexistent in this corner of North Norfolk. Apple and pear pie tonight!

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Frideswide, Abbess of Oxford

Frideswide was born c.690, another Anglo-Saxon princess, this time the daughter of a Mercian king called Didanus,

She founded a double monastery (St Frideswide’s Priory) which was part of the growing settlement now called Oxford. She was formally adopted as the patron of Oxford University in the early fifteenth century.

Cardinal Wolsey suppressed Frideswide’s monastery to provide revenues for his Cardinal College (now Christ Church where the Burne-Jones stained glass window pictured here stands), possibly built on the same site.

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Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London & Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester

 

Both Latimer and Ridley were Cambridge men, both bishops, and both were burnt at the stake together in Oxford on this day in 1555, near where the Martyr’s Memorial now stands at the foot of St Giles. (Rumours that the Memorial is the spire of an underground cathedral in their memory are sadly not true, but many tourists have been beguiled by them.)

Hugh Latimer was the older man, from Leicestershire. He was a popular preacher, becoming close to Henry VIII after the break with Rome and being made Bishop of Worcester, but then falling out of favour when we would not support the ‘Six Articles’ which tried to limit the influence of Protestant teaching. He returned to favour under Edward, but fell foul of Mary.

Nicholas Ridley was fifteen years younger, born in 1500. He served as one of Cranmer’s chaplains, and was successively Bishop of Rochester and London. He came out as a Protestant under Edward, and supported Jane Grey’s claim to the throne when Edward died, which guaranteed his fate when Mary succeeded.

Gruesomely, every household in Oxford was required to send a representative to their burning, and a sermon preached as they stood bound with the text of 1 Cor 13.3, “Though I give my body to be burned, but have not charity, it availeth me nothing.” Some charity. Latimer died quickly but Ridley did not; and that such horrendous treatment can be meted out by Christians of all traditions to one another is sobering.

Latimer’s famous words to Ridley

Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.

do not appear in the first edition of Foxe’s Martyrs where Foxe says he has not been able to find out what the bishops said – but may as well be true as apocryphal. They have certainly helped the sad death of these two devout men inspire many others.

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Ethelburga, abbess of Barking

This isn’t the Queen Ethelburga who went north to marry Edwin. Nor is is Etheldreda of Ely. This Ethelburga was sister to a bishop of London, Erkenwald, in the seventh century, and probably a royal princess, who like others became an abbess, of Barking Abbey. The abbey grew and became the highest ranking in the country, usually continuing to have a member of the royal family as abbess – if only because she had the patronage of nearly thirty other houses in her gift. Bede gives Ethelberga and Barking a good write up for their devotion to Scripture and many miracles, but we know nothing more. Ethelburga died on this day in the year 675.

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Is there anyone out there …

Image via CrunchBase

It’s Saturday morning and time for a dabble on the computer. I discovered a site called Website Grader (run by Hubspot) recently that can analyse your website or blog’s profile and give you some numerical feedback. Which helps to answer the question as to whether anyone really is out there, or am I just talking to myself?

I’m pleased to report that Bishop’s Blog achieves a ranking of 74/100 for ‘marketing effectiveness’ putting it into the top quarter, just, of those they’ve looked at. I fear that says more about the others than mine… It’s a shame WordPress.com don’t allow me to carry advertising. Let’s try again:

The Blog’s current Google Page Rank is 4 (out of 6 I think) which isn’t spectacular – which is all about how many other web-pages link back to it. and how high their rank is. It’s not surprising as I tend to keep away from controversy. 

"Google PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves important weigh more heavily and help to make other pages important." – From Google

Alexa though, an online service that measures traffic for millions of sites on the Internet in a similar way to Nielsen television show ratings, puts Bishop’s Blog in the top 11.987 % of all websites. My own page-read stats look quite healthy too, but I suspect that a 5 to 10% of blogs get enormous traffic, and an awful lot get very little, leaving minnows like me somewhere in the middle.

And Technorati, the popular blog directory service, ranks the blog 266,049, which puts it in the top 0.38%. Wow! it doesn’t half make you realise just how many blogs there are out there …

End of playtime. Time now to go and do something far more important and attend the presentation of the Cambridgeshire Young People of the Year awards, which I’ve been helping judge. More on that later.

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Thomas Traherne

Inspiration: Thomas Traherne, depicted by Tom Denny, as part of a series of stained-glass windows at Hereford Cathedral

Thomas Traherne was born in Hereford around 1636. He followed a typical career of Oxford, a parish, and then a chaplaincy connected to the court, writing ‘Metaphysical’ poetry (comparable to that of Donne or Herbert) – but with the twist that only one of his works was printed in his lifetime, and only emerged from their manuscripts in the twentieth century.

Here is Denise Inge writing about him in the Church Times

Traherne’s theology is world-affirming, joy-seeking, and quint­essentially Anglican. Reformed, in as much as it is indebted to Calvin and Luther, and Catholic in its continuity with the Early Church, its reverence for the sacraments, and for church order and liturgy; it is also world-affirming in its emphasis on the giftedness of creation, and the belief that God is constantly revealing him­self in a world that is essentially good.

But what strikes me is his par­ticular insight into desire. Where Eastern religions, and some astrin­gent forms of Christianity, require a paring down of appetite, Traherne suggests that desire is a primary route to God: Traherne’s God also desires. “You must want like a God you that may be satisfied like God,” he asserts, “He is from eternity full of want. . . He made us want like Gods.” That the hungry shall be filled is his foun­dational promise; the scripture — “Oh taste and see that the Lord is good” — is fulfilled in the everyday life of this world.

He died on this day in the year 1674.

The world is a mirror of Infinite Beauty, yet no man sees it. It is a Temple of Majesty, yet no man regards it. It is a region of Light and Peace, did not men disquiet it. It is the Paradise of God. It is more to man since he is fallen than it was before. It is the place of Angels and the Gate of Heaven. First Century, Meditation 31

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Paulinus

Paulinus was among the second group of monks sent by Pope Gregory from Italy to England to assist Augustine in his work, along with Mellitus and others. He accompanied Ethelburga to Northumbria to marry the king, Edwin, who subsequently took his wife’s Christian faith. Paulinus built the first church in York in about the year 627 and was its first bishop. One of the women he baptised was Hilda of Whitby. He had to flee for his life, however, when Edwin was killed in battle by the pagan king, Penda of Mercia, and Paulinus became Bishop of Rochester. Bede describes Paulinus as "a man tall of stature, a little stooping, with black hair and a thin face, a hooked and thin nose, his aspect both venerable and awe-inspiring". Bede probably obtained this description from James the Deacon, one of Paulinus’ associates, who still was alive in Bede’s time. He died on this day in the year 644.

Collect

God our Saviour,
who sent Paulinus to preach and to baptise,
and so to build up your Church in this land:
grant that, inspired by his example,
we may tell all the world of your truth,
that with him we may receive
   the reward you prepare for all your faithful servants;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

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Women in the Episcopate/2

Quick clarification: the text in my recent post is of the press release/interim statement on behalf of the Revision Committee. Their final report is expected later in the year. Sorry if my wording led you to expect a leak!

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