“Hospitals . . . founded to the honour of God and of His glorious Mother.” (Parliament of Leicester.)
THE words “God’s House,” and “Maison Dieu” were familiar enough in mediæval England. A hospital was the house of God, for therein Christ was received in the person of the needy:—“I was a stranger and ye took Me in, sick, and ye visited Me.” It was also built in His Name and to His honour, for the principle underlying all dedications was, says Hooker, that they “were consecrated unto none but the Lord only.” But with God’s Name that of one of His saints was often associated, and by this the hospital was commonly called; thus a charter of Basingstoke ran:—“I have given and granted to God and to the glorious Virgin His Mother, and to my venerable patron St. John the Baptist the house called St. John.”
The Holy Trinity.—Hospitals bearing this title are not very numerous, though it often occurs as first of a group. There are a few single dedications early in the thirteenth century, which may be partly attributed to the institution of the Feast of Trinity by St. Thomas of Canterbury. Two hundred years later it was a fairly common p245 dedication for almshouses. The seals depict various symbols. The “majesty” representing the Three Persons, occurs at Walsoken; the Almighty seated upon a rainbow (Salisbury); our Lord enthroned (Berkeley); whilst a triple cross ornaments the Dunwich seal. Bonde’s almsmen at Coventry bore upon their gowns “the cognizance of the Trinity.”
The Holy Saviour; Christ; Corpus Christi.—The Second Person of the Godhead is seldom commemorated, but the dedication to the Blessed Trinity was regarded as synonymous, for the almshouse at Arundel occurs indifferently as Christ’s or Holy Trinity. The Maison Dieu at York, commonly called Trinity, was properly that of the Holy Jesus—or Christ—and the Blessed Virgin, and the chantry certificate is headed “The Hospital of the Name of Jhesus and Our Blessyd Ladye.” St. Saviour was the invocation of houses at Norwich and Bury, and the fair in connection with the latter charity was held at the feast of the Transfiguration. “Ye masendew of Chryste” at Kingston-upon-Hull was originally “Corpus Christi,” but it is remarkable to find that rarely-preserved dedication-name upon an Elizabethan table of rules. The seal of the Holloway hospital, near London, shows Christ (with the orb) and St. Anthony.
The Holy Ghost.—This sacred title, closely associated with the mediæval charities of Germany and famous in Rome, was rarely used in England. At Sandon (Surrey) was a hospital “commonly called of the Holy Ghost,”158 though an alternative name occurs. A hidden dedication is sometimes revealed, for the houses usually known as St. Thomas’, Canterbury, St. Margaret’s, Taunton, p246 St. John’s, Warwick, and St. John’s, Hereford, are mentioned once in documents as being built in honour of the Holy Ghost as well as of the saints named; all the above instances refer to the years 1334–1353. At Lyme there was the suggestive commemoration of the “Blessed Virgin and Holy Spirit.”
The Annunciation; St. Gabriel; St. Michael; The Holy Angels.—Two fourteenth-century foundations at Leicester and Nottingham commemorate the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin. The seal of the former house depicts St. Gabriel delivering his salutation. A kindred thought underlies the dedication “to our lady St. Mary the Mother of Christ and to St. Gabriel the Archangel” at Brough. (It is noteworthy that the parish church was St. Michael’s.) Another institution, built by Bishop Bronescombe of Exeter, who had a special devotion to the Archangel, left its name to Clist Gabriel. The more ancient dedication to St. Michael occurs at Whitby and elsewhere in Yorkshire. Michael de la Pole founded an almshouse at Kingston-upon-Hull, partly in honour of “St. Michael the Archangel and all archangels, angels and holy spirits.” A fraternity at Brentford commemorated “The Nine Orders of Holy Angels,” and in the Valor it is termed hospitalis Angelorum.
The Blessed Virgin; The Three Kings of Cologne; The Holy Innocents.—The statement referring to hospitals in general as “founded to the honour of God and of His glorious Mother” explains more than one difficult point. First, numerous as are the dedications to St. Mary, they are fewer than those of some other saints, for instance, St. Mary Magdalene. Secondly, a certain number of houses are set down as having two patrons, yet the second p247 saint appears to eclipse the Blessed Virgin; that of Newport in Essex (given as St. Mary and St. Leonard) usually bore St. Leonard’s name and kept its fair on his festival. In many such cases there was in truth no double dedication; and although gifts were made by charter to found a hospital at Bristol “in honour of God, St. Mary and St. Mark”, later documents omit the formula and call it “the house of St. Mark.”
On the other hand many houses were dedicated solely in honour of the Blessed Virgin, including five important institutions in London alone. In addition to St. Mary (without Bishopsgate), St. Mary of Roncevalles (Charing Cross) and Our Lady of Elsyng (Cripplegate), there was St. Mary’s hospital or the House of Converts,—a witness to the doctrine of the Incarnate Christ,—and St. Mary of Bethlehem, a name chosen on account of the founder’s intense reverence for the holy Nativity. Stow quotes the deed of gift made by Simon, “son of Mary”:—
“having speciall and singulor deuotion to the Church of the glorious Virgin at Bethlehem, where the same Virgin brought forth our Saviour incarnate . . . and where [to] the same Child to us there borne, the Chiualrie of the heavenly Company sang the new Hymne Gloria in excelsis Deo.”
The Holy Innocents were commemorated in the ancient leper-house outside Lincoln. The existing chapel of an almshouse in Bristol built “in the honour of God and the Three Kings of Cologne” (Leland’s fanam trium regum) is the sole witness in the way of dedication in England to the veneration of the Magi. The title is said to have been the choice of an Abbot of Tewkesbury at the close of the fifteenth century. p248
Holy Cross and Holy Sepulchre.—Names commemorating the Death and Burial of the Saviour are not infrequent. The history of St. Cross, Winchester, touches that of the Knights of Jerusalem, with whom both name and badge are connected. (See p. 207.) On the common seal the master and priests are shown kneeling at the foot of the Cross; the descent from the Cross is depicted upon the walls of the church. This dedication is also appropriately associated with the hospitals usually known as St. Mary Magdalene’s at Stourbridge and near Bath, the fairs of which houses were held on the festivals of the Invention and Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The chapel of St. Thomas of Acon in Cheapside—under the Knights Templars—was dedicated to St. Cross. The church attached to St. Bartholomew’s, Smithfield, was probably named out of veneration for the relics of “the tree of life” which the founder used in healing (see p. 95); and once exemptions were granted “out of the king’s reverence for the Holy Cross, in honour of which the church of the hospital of St. Bartholomew is dedicated.”159
The connection between St. Helen and the Holy Cross is best told in reference to the hospital at Colchester. Although authentic records only carry its history back to 1251, an illustrious antiquity is claimed in an episcopal indulgence purporting to be issued about 1406. The tradition is quoted (but with modernized spelling) from the Antiquarian Repertory:—
“Moreover, in the year of our Lord 670, Constantine, the son of the blessed and holy woman Saint Elyn, sent his mother unto Jerusalem to inquire of the Holy Cross that our Saviour Christ Jesu died upon, likewise as it was shewed to him by p249 token in the air and also by revelation of the Holy Ghost. Then the holy woman, seeing the Will of Almighty God, departed out of the town of Colchester where she was born (there where the said hospital is founded in the honour of Almighty God, the holy Cross and St. Elyn) and took her journey unto Jerusalem and there . . . did win the same Cross. . . . Then the holy victorious woman gave laud and loving to God and took one part of the Holy Cross and closed it with gold and sent it to her hospital to Colchester evermore to be abiding, with her ring, her girdle, and her purse, with other 24 curious reliques.”
Finally, after relating a visit of St. Thomas of Canterbury to that house, the story of the relic, inciting to devotion, pilgrimage visits and contributions, is brought up to date:—
“Also in the year of our Lord 1401, there came thieves unto the hospital by night and brake up the locks where the glorious relique was, and took it away . . . then they took the blessed Holy Cross (as it was, closed in gold the weight of 21 ounces) and cast it into the pond, but it would not sink . . . and so the folks that did pursue took it up and brought it home to the place again.”
This Colchester foundation was associated with the gild of St. Cross (p. 18) and other gilds of that name maintained charities at Stratford-on-Avon, Abingdon and Hedon. In the latter place the hospital of St. Sepulchre gave its title to Newton St. Sepulchre. There were pilgrim-houses at Nottingham and Stamford with the same dedication.
St. John Baptist, St. Mary Magdalene and St. Lazarus.—The cult of these saints is intertwined with the history of the Religious Military Orders of Jerusalem. The work of the Knights Hospitallers was to care for sick and p250 needy pilgrims. They maintained two important infirmaries at Jerusalem, St. John’s for men, and St. Mary Magdalene’s for women. Grateful guests returning from pilgrimage bore the report of these houses far and wide; thus it came to pass that, throughout Europe, hospitals unconnected with the order were founded, and by force of association consecrated in honour of these saints. That of St. John Baptist, Lechlade, is referred to in one deed as “St. John of Jerusalem.” Such “houses of St. John” were usually for travellers. One writer remarks that almost every town had a place to accommodate the sick and wayfarers, and that they “were invariably dedicated to St. John Baptist in connection with his wandering life.” Although this saint did not monopolize the protection of strangers, he was certainly adopted as patron by some hundred hospitals (excluding commanderies of the Order of St. John).
Lanfranc’s foundation in his cathedral city was placed by him under the patronage of St. John Baptist, on one of whose festivals (August 29) the archbishop had been consecrated. The hospital at Thetford kept a fair on that day called “The Decollation of St. John Baptist”; but the lepers of Harting celebrated their wake on June 24, “The Nativity of St. John Baptist.” The strange customs connected with this latter festival were especially observed in houses of which he was patron; in memory of St. John Baptist it was usual at Sherborne for a garland to be hung up on Midsummer Eve at the door of St. John’s, which the almsmen watched till morning.
Seals usually depict the saint with his symbol of the Holy Lamb; sometimes he points to a scroll (Ecce Agnus Dei). In two instances (Banbury and Bristol) a patriarchal p251 cross, one of the symbols of the Knights Hospitallers, is shown; this double-armed cross is likewise found on the gable of St. John’s, Northampton, where it is considered a unique architectural feature.
St. Lazarus became the guardian of lepers partly through the influence of the Order whose aim was to relieve the sick, and especially the leprous, members of their brotherhood. They were introduced into England in Stephen’s reign, when the hospital of the Blessed Virgin and St. Lazarus was founded at Burton, afterwards known as Burton St. Lazarus. The seal of this house depicts a bishop carrying in one hand a fork or trident,160 in the other a book; Dugdale ascribes the figure to St. Augustine, but Mr. de Gray Birch attributes the mitred effigy to St. Lazarus, traditional Bishop of Marseilles. Of the other dedications to St. Lazarus little is known, some being of doubtful authenticity.