By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY
Faith of Our Fathers: A True History of England by Joseph Pearce: Ignatius Press, 2023; Ignatius.com.
Joseph Pearce’s Faith of our Fathers: A True History of England, is a fascinating and informative survey of the history and literature of England — the ancient Albion — in the light of the Catholic faith, with a view to discovering the “True and Timeless England,” of which figures like Alfred the Great, St. Edward the Confessor, St. Thomas More, Shakespeare, and St John Henry Newman, are the best exemplars.
The book begins with the idea expressed in William Blake’s poem, Jerusalem, that according to legend, the Christ Child came to England with St. Joseph of Arimathea. While, as Pearce says, that is very unlikely, it is possible that Joseph, who was present at Christ’s burial, may well have come to Albion, and in particular to Glastonbury, in the years following the Resurrection.
As the author says, “Shrouded as they are in mist, mysticism, and mystery, the holy legends surrounding Glastonbury have shaped England’s history, and indeed the history of the whole of Christendom.” The latter point is a reference to the great influence later exerted by the stories of the Holy Grail, and King Arthur and Camelot.
Certainly, the little chapel dedicated to our Lady which was said to have been founded by St Joseph of Arimathea was cherished by the Anglo-Saxon invaders of the country.
According to the medieval historian William of Malmesbury, Glastonbury was later on connected with distinguished figures such as St. Patrick, St. Bridget and St. David, while we are on firm ground as regards Pope Gregory the Great sending St. Augustine of Canterbury to evangelize the Anglo-Saxons at the end of the sixth century.
Pearce points out that the late seventh and early eighth centuries heralded the birth of English literature, due to influence of the poet Caedmon, and also through works like Beowulf, an epic poem which the author regards as a profoundly Catholic work.
He also deals with figures such as Alfred the Great. He became king of England in 871, at a time of great danger to Europe as a whole due to the inroads of paganism and Islam. Pearce echoes Hilaire Belloc’s assessment that Alfred was not only crucial to the survival of England but also of Christendom as a whole. Another very important figure was St. Dunstan, who became abbot of Glastonbury, and who radically shaped tenth century England.
But Anglo-Saxon England came to an end with the Norman Conquest in 1066, and Pearce discusses this crucial event in the light of the differing views taken about it by Hilaire Belloc and J.R.R. Tolkien. For Belloc it was a great blessing, since it served to integrate England more fully into the Europe of the Faith, while for the Anglo-Saxon scholar Tolkien it was an unmitigated disaster.
The signing of Magna Carta, the Great Charter, in 1215, was a milestone in English and indeed world history. It limited the power of the monarchy, a power which had been much abused by King John. His misdeeds had led to the country being placed under interdict by Pope Innocent III because he had refused to accept Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury.
The Magna Carta was also important because it laid the foundations of the English legal system, and would later influence the United States Declaration of Independence and also the U.S. Constitution.
This was the era of “Merrie England,” of Robin Hood and his band of followers, a time when the Church and the Catholic faith were central to the life of the people, a situation which would last until the Reformation. It was also a time of growing importance for literature, as expressed in works such as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
Pearce devotes a chapter of the book to the ideal of England as Our Lady’s Dowry, and certainly devotion to the Blessed Virgin was very widespread in the country. This was exemplified by the devotion of the many pilgrims who journeyed to Walsingham, following the apparition to Richeldis de Faverches in 1061, and also in the pilgrimages made by many monarchs in the following centuries, right up to the destruction of the shrine under Henry VIII.
England is also privileged as the land where the Brown Scapular was revealed by Our Lady to St. Simon Stock, in 1251, most probably at Cambridge.
And going back to Glastonbury, according to a medieval chronicler, the bodies of King Arthur and his queen, Guinevere, were discovered there in 1191, before being translated to the Abbey church in 1278, during the reign of King Edward I.
At the time of the Peasant’s Revolt, in the late fourteenth century, King Richard II officially dedicated England as “Our Lady’s Dowry,” such that she was acknowledged as the “protectress” of the country, an event which is commemorated in the famous painting, the Wilton Diptych.
Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII, was victorious over King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, and England’s religious troubles began with the accession of Henry’s son, Henry VIII, to the throne in 1509. From this point on, English history becomes more somber, as the long shadow of the Reformation begins to steal across the country,
Ultimately, the result of this revolution was the violent wrenching away of the kingdom from Catholicism, a tragedy which saw the heroic witness of the many martyrs who were prepared to suffer terribly for the old Faith. These included such luminous figures as St. Thomas More, probably most well known, in a literary sense, for his book, Utopia.
The two chapters in Faith of our Fathers: A True History of England, covering this period are aptly titled, “The Tudor Terror,” and “Pilgrimage and Pillage,” titles which very neatly sum up what happened during the Tudor period, which certainly was a time of terror for English Catholics, as their whole religious heritage was trampled upon and destroyed.
The “pillage” Pearce refers to is the dissolution and plundering of the monasteries, while the “pilgrimage” is the Pilgrimage of Grace during which many in the north of the country rose up in protest against the religious changes, only to be brutally crushed by Henry’s forces.
The author also deals with the other Tudor monarchs, and chronicles the rise of Protestantism and the eventual creation of a largely secular state, one which demanded, on the way, the lifeblood of many truly heroic martyrs, including men like St. Edmund Campion.
Their witness was glorious, but without priests and the sacraments, the Old Faith gradually dwindled, to be reinvigorated only in the nineteenth century mainly through immigration, but also due to the Second Spring, when many illustrious converts entered the Church — and in particular Henry Edward Manning and John Henry Newman, both of whom became cardinals.
The final chapters of the book look at literary converts, and the Catholic literary revival, which particularly featured Belloc and G.K. Chesterton. There was also a revival in the fortunes of Walsingham and other shrines, a sign that England is still the Dowry of Mary, despite all the upheavals and vicissitudes the country has suffered over the centuries.
As Joseph Pearce concludes, “True England will not perish because it is made of imperishable things, such as truth itself. It exists in eternity liberated from transient things, such as evil.”
Faith of our Fathers provides solid grounds for the inspiring belief that just as the Faith was once all-important in England, so once again it can flourish — with Glastonbury and Walsingham as the nation’s spiritual capitals.
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