Saint Edmund Rich (St Edmund
of Canterbury)
(1175-1240)
St Edmund was born at Abingdon circa 1170-1175. He
was from a wealthy mercantile family and received
his education at the universities of Oxford and Paris.
He lectured in the faculty of arts at Oxford (1195-1201)
and returned to Paris to study theology. His scholarship
was combined with the gift of preaching and a reputation
for holiness. He resided at the Augustinian priory
at Merton, Surrey (1213-1214) and thereafter taught
theology at Oxford. In 1222 he became Treasurer of
Salisbury Cathedral and lectured in the school attached
to it.
In 1233 he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
by Pope Gregory IX after three other candidates had
failed to receive papal approval. He was a reformer
of the Church and gathered around him men of outstanding
calibre, including St Richard of Chichester, who served
as his Chancellor. However, his episcopate was marked
by many difficulties: the threat of civil war in the
territories bordering Wales (1234-1236); disputes
with King Henry III concerning the rights of the Church
in relation to the civil law; and a protracted argument
with the monks of Canterbury Cathedral over his episcopal
right of visitation. In the latter instance Archbishop
Edmund took his case to Rome. His chief extant works
are Moralities on the Psalms and Speculum Ecclesiae
(The Mirror of the Holy Church) a treatise on contemplative
prayer in the English medieval mystical tradition.
In the early autumn of 1240 he left England for a
second visit to Rome. He reached Pontigny in Burgundy
(eastern France), and thereafter the nearby house
of the Augustinian Canons at Soissy, where he died
on 16 November. On his deathbed he exclaimed that
he had 'sought nothing else but God.' At his own request,
his burial took place in the Cistercian Abbey of Pontigny,
where his shrine is still venerated. Pontigny was
the second foundation made from Citeaux (1114) and
because its founder was an Englishman, St Stephen
Harding, the abbey became a frequent place of refuge
for his countrymen, including St Thomas of Canterbury
(1164-1166). Until the Reformation Pontigny was an
important place of devotion for English pilgrims.
St Edmund Rich (or 'of Abingdon' or 'of Canterbury')
was canonised in 1246, and his feast is kept on the
date of his death. Through the Sarum liturgical calendar
St Edmund was a very popular saint in medieval England,
and there was a chapel dedicated to him at the Cistercian
Abbey of Catesby, Northamptonshire, where his younger
sisters Alice and Margaret were nuns.
Bishop Bernard Ward, on appointment to the new Diocese
of Brentwood in 1917, chose St Edmund as a secondary
co-patron of his new see. Bishop Ward had been born
and educated at St Edmund's College, Ware, and was
duly a professor there and from 1893 to 1916 its President.
He had a deep devotion to St Edmund, having first
visited Pontigny in 1874 at the age of seventeen as
part of a pilgrimage from St Edmund's College, and
lies buried in the chapel dedicated to the saint (and
containing a relic) in Pugin's fine church at St Edmund's.
Writing of a pilgrimage made to Pontigny shortly before
his death in January 1920, Bishop Ward gave the following
description: 'Behind the high altar is another smaller
altar, over which, raised high so as to be visible
from the choir, is the gilt chasse containing the
body of St Edmund ... The shrine as we now see it
looks peaceful enough, and the body, clad in pontificals,
may be viewed through square openings at the back,
approached by a special staircase. ' During the French
Wars of Religion the body of St Edmund was hidden
in the monastery cellars. The present shrine dates
from the eighteenth century and miraculously survived
the Revolution. In the Diocese of Brentwood churches
at Loughton and Great Wakering are dedicated to St
Edmund Rich. The dedication at Loughton was specifically
chosen (in 1928) as the first church in the new diocese
to be named after one of its patrons and also as a
tribute to the late Bishop Ward.