Why It's More Than Just St. Francis

This week we observe the feast days of a number of lesser (or completely un-) known figures in the Catholic and Anglican traditions.  This week we also observe the feast day for St. Francis of Assisi (October 4), but virtually everyone knows St. Francis.  Surely, the more scholastic minded might know a thing or two about William Tyndale. And the devout might know who St. Bruno of Cologne was.  Who among us has a familiarity with the worthy and brilliant-minded Robert Grosseteste?  So in effort to broaden our horizons and strengthen our cognizance, we’ll explore the lesser known this week and leave St. Francis to the Blessing of the Animals services to which we’ll subject our beloved pets this week!

St. Bruno of Cologne, born in the mid-9^th  century, was first renowned in Reims, Germany as being an eloquent teacher of philosophy, theology and poetry.  One of his pupils, and for whom Bruno became a life-long advisor, was Pope Urban II.  Quite a number of Bruno’s students became bishops and prelates in their own right.  In medieval times, only religious clerics were allowed to become teachers.  Scholarly education such as what Bruno provided was only given to those who entered into religious orders.  But Bruno felt education, especially theology, should be provided for any man seeking closeness to God. (This was the Middle Ages—women, it was believed,  didn’t have the ability to learn, remember.)  Bruno, like Martin Luther who would follow his footsteps hundreds of years later, renounced the corruption inherent in aristocratic appointments to religious positions.  Bruno himself was Chancellor of the Diocese of Reims and thus Canon to the Archbishop.  When a new archbishop was appointed from the aristocratic class who knew little of the Church, yet used it in his own violent quest for personal gain, especially at the detriment of monasteries, abbeys and convents, Bruno took active steps against him.  When the corrupt bishop was removed from his office, in the typical fashion of medieval intrigue, he retaliated against his accusers by destroying them publicly.  Yet Bruno has friends in high places.  Around 1080, Bruno was about to be appointed bishop in place of the ousted Manasses de Gournai.  But this was not the reward he wanted!  Instead, he thought to join with Robert of Molesme, who founded the Order of the Cistercians.  But they were founded on the Rule of St. Benedict.  This was not precisely what Bruno believed the ideal way of monastic life.  In the end, he founded a new order—the Carthusian Order—in the Chartreuse Mountains with its own rules of order.  This order includes both monks and nuns and combines both a hermetic and cenobitic lifestyle of silence and seclusion in community.  Bruno died on October 6, 1101.  One rather unusual custom of medieval times was that of a roll-bearer.  The roll-bearer would travel about the country with a long roll of parchment hung around his neck announcing the death of a well-regarded figure and collecting eulogies and regrets.  Several of these rolls still exist today, but none are so extensive and full of praise as those for Bruno of Cologne.

Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, one could say was a true “renaissance man” of the Middle Ages, for he was a master scholar of more fields of study than could be found in any single University at the time. He was a teacher of theology and science, of music, art and literature, of mathematics and languages.  (He wrote a treatise about the creation of light that foreshadowed modern “big bang” theories that proposed a great explosion of light from a single source point.)  When elected bishop in 1235, his new position in no way impinged upon his studies. He kept his close connection with Oxford University, which lay in his diocese, and would often intervene in questions of academics and administration and was a strong influence in the education of such famous philosophers as Roger Bacon.  His partiality for Christian antiquities was made most evident in his translations of works by Dionysius of Areopagite, the epistles of St. Ignatius, John of Damascus and others.  Bishop Grosseteste welcomed monastic orders to his diocese, including the Dominicans, Franciscans and Cistercians.  Issues arose concerning ecclesiastical rights to the monasteries—i.e. whether the bishop had the right to visit without prior notice to monitor their increasing corruptible power.  Finding a number of areas requiring significant reform, (particularly that of Italian priests being given appointments to positions of authority, who would collect salaries and tithes from churches,  and who would never even step foot in the country),  his visitations resulted in the deposition of a number of priors and abbots.  He gained the unfortunate reputation of being a persecutor of monks.  His insistence that clergymen be held accountable for high standards of theological and liturgical practice, not to mention literacy, translated to a populace being well-versed in theology and the Gospels.  He believed that the laity can only benefit from a better understanding of the Bible and was a proponent of the Church providing ease of access to the Word of God.  Bishop Grosseteste’s writings became a significant influence on the works of Bible translators like Wycliffe and Tyndale.  An interesting bit of side trivia—Bishop Grosseteste was present at the writing and signing of the Magna Carta and had a role in curtailing the authority of the monarchy.

William Tyndale is most famous for being the first publisher of the New Testament in the English language in 1525 using the new invention of the movable type printing press.  Tyndale was a true linguistic genius and was able to speak eight languages as fluently as a native.  Recognizing the power of one’s own language to his comprehension and understanding of the world around him, Tyndale felt strongly that religion was utterly inaccessible to the masses if presented in any language other than their own. He recognized the corrupt error of the Latin Vulgate Bible and refused to consider it in his translation work, referring only to earlier Greek and Hebrew texts.  But this was heretical according to the papacy and it became a death sentence to own an alternative Bible.  Tyndale was forced to flee from England and in his quest for the text sources used by Erasmus (who wrote a revised Latin version of the Bible using those previously mentioned Greek and Hebrew texts), he spent a considerable amount of time with Martin Luther and refining his own views on the corruption of the Church and Papacy.  Tyndale was the Captain of the Army of Reformers who strove to eradicated “papal heresies” such as the selling of indulgences and the perpetuation of the church-made purgatory.  Surely one can see how he became outlawed.  He published a number of editions and printings of his English translation New Testament, but only one copy is known to survive today.  He was betrayed and imprisoned for nearly 2 years before he was sentenced (in a mock trial) to death by strangulation followed by being burned at the stake on October 6, 1536.  It was only two years later that Henry VIII commissioned The Great Bible, published in 1539, to be written in English to further his own goal of separating from the Catholic Church.  Nearly 90% of that Bible is based on Tyndale’s work and more than 80% of the King James Version was taken directly from Tyndale’s work. Tyndale introduced many new words into the English lexicon with his translation, including, Jehovah, scapegoat and Passover and a myriad of phrases like “seek and ye shall find” and “lead us not into temptation.”

It took more than 400 years for the seed ideas of men like Bruno and Robert Grossetest to germinate into the great works of men like Martin Luther and William Tyndale. It should not be so surprising that their radical actions have such bearing today on the direction of our Church, some 500 years later. So while you take Muffin and Fido to be blessed this week and celebrate the compassion of St. Francis, remember also these great men and their blessed contributions.  St. Bruno of Cologne and William Tyndale are both remembered on October 6 and Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln is celebrated on October 9.