The Uncrowned Queen of Ireland: The Life of Isabel of Gloucester

"And if his name be George, I'll call him Peter;

For new-made honour doth forget men's names."

- From William Shakespeare's King John

Isabel of Gloucester was the first woman since 1066 to marry a future king of England, who never became queen herself. She shares that rather sad honour with only four other women in English history - the aristocratic Mary de Bohun, who died before her husband seized the throne as Henry IV in 1399; the feisty Lady Anne Hyde, the mother of Mary II, who died whilst her husband (the last Catholic King of Britain) was still Duke of York; Sophia-Dorothea of Celle, who was divorced and imprisoned in a grim German castle on grounds of adultery, long before her equally-adulterous husband became King George I in 1714 and, of course, one expects, the late Princess Diana, who was divorced and subsequently died in a tragic car crash when her ex-husband is still heir-apparent.

Isabel of Gloucester has more in common with Sophia-Dorothea and Diana than she does with Mary de Bohun and Anne Hyde. Like them, the reason she never made it onto the consort's throne was because she was divorced, not because she died prematurely. Isabel had no say in her divorce, nor in her life after it. In many ways, Isabel's story is a sad reflection of the stultifying and miserable lives that many medieval women were forced to lead - particularly the women of the upper classes. Although they, theoretically, lived lives of far greater comfort than the vast majority of the population, their bodies were so integral to the merger and acquisition of aristocratic lands and assets that most daughters of the nobility were shuttled around depending on their menfolk's whims and political aspirations. For a very long time, there was a pervasive view amongst male historians that the royal and aristocratic women of the Middle Ages had been nothing more than "animated title deeds." And whilst glamorous or tenacious queens like Eleanor of Aquitaine, Marguerite of Anjou, Matilda of Scotland and Matilda of Boulogne might suggest that this is far too simple a view, the lives of women like Isabel of Gloucester indicate that in many ways it's a grim but horrifically fair assessment of wealthy women's role in medieval society.

For instance, despite the fact that she was one of the greatest heiresses of her generation and married to a future king, we are not even one hundred percent sure of Isabel's Christian name. In part, this was because of the multi-lingual nature of the English empire at the time and the Middle Ages' promiscuous attitude towards spelling, but at various points Isabel is referred to as Isabella, Isobel, Avisa, Joan, Eleanor, Hawise or Hawisa. She was born sometime around 1173, probably on one of her father's vast estates. It was a year of rebellion, in which the elder sons of King Henry II openly rebelled against their father's authority and attempted to carve out political careers for themselves. Henry's wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, sided with her boys against her husband, causing international scandal in the process. Isabel's father, William FitzRobert, Earl of Gloucester, was the King's cousin and he loyally sided with him to oppose the Queen and the princes. 

William, Earl of Gloucester was a grandson of the heroically fertile King Henry I, who had ruled England between 1100 and 1135. Unlike King Henry II, however, the Earl was not descended in the legitimate royal line. His father, Robert, had been one of Henry I's many bastards. (As another sign of how lowly women were esteemed, we have no idea who Robert's mother was - several women from Oxfordshire have been suggested, but so has a racy Welsh princess.) This generous dose of royal blood, coupled with his father's loyalty to Henry II's mother during the great civil war of the 1140s, meant that William of Gloucester stood high in the King's favour and he had managed to expand his considerable aristocratic holdings to become one of the great lords of the realm by the time of Isabel's birth. Through her father, the baby Isabel was not just related to the Royal Family, but also to some of the most powerful players in the Anglo-Norman nobility. Her uncle Roger was the Bishop of Worcester, her aunt Matilda was the phenomenally wealthy Countess of Chester and her late uncle Hamon had died a hero's death at the 1159 siege of Toulouse.

Isabel's mother was born Lady Hawisa de Beaumont, the daughter of the Anglo-French Earl of Leicester, who had served as England's de facto prime minister between 1155 and 1168. A powerful politician and a generous benefactor of the Church, Leicester's service to the King was yet another link between Isabel's family and the royals. Through him, Isabel was the niece of the current Earl of Leicester (earl then being the highest title available to the English aristocracy) and the Countess of Huntingdon and Northampton (whom Isabel may have been named after.) 

Despite her father's loyalty to the King during the princes' rebellion, for some reason Henry II began to regard the Earl of Gloucester with suspicion. Desperate to recover royal favour and to prove his loyalty to the regime, the Earl gave Bristol Castle (below) as a gift to the middle-aged monarch, when Isabel was about two years old. Of course, it says something for the Gloucesters' wealth that they were able to part with a castle and still remain one of the most affluent families in the empire. The gesture obviously worked, albeit temporarily, because a few years later Isabel's father accompanied the King on his journey to arbitrate a dispute between the kings of Navarre and Castile. There is some evidence, though, that he fell out of favour again and he was deliberately detained on the King's orders when the princes once again rebelled against their father. Whether this was because of the King's paranoia or because Gloucester had actually done something to justify his suspicions is hard to say.

We know very little about Isabel's childhood or her relationship with her parents, but it is safe to hazard the guess that she would have come as a disappointment to them. Isabel's only brother, Robert, had died before she was born and without a male heir, Lord Gloucester had been forced to negotiate a deal with the King, which would see all of the Gloucesters' vast wealth devolve to the Crown once the Earl passed away. Henry II's youngest, and favourite, son was Prince John, later enshrined as a villain in the Robin Hood legends. With the eldest son due to inherit his father's kingdoms in England and Normandy, the second set to inherit the Queen's ancestral duchy in the Aquitaine and the third married off to the heiress to the duchy of Brittany, King Henry was anxious to provide an inheritance for his youngest son, who was already being cruelly nicknamed "Lackland" by snickering courtiers. The Gloucester inheritance was perfect, because it would turn Prince John into a great magnate in his own right. The agreement hammered out between the King and the Earl therefore prepared the way for John to inherit everything when the Earl died, in return for marrying one of the Earl's three daughters - Mabel, Alice or Isabel.

Why Isabel was picked over her sisters to marry Prince John is anybody's guess, but the two were engaged when Isabel was only about three years-old. Isabel was quite probably the eldest of the three girls, since it is hard to believe that anything like her looks or personality would have influenced the royals in what was, essentially, a balance transfer. Her father died when she was about ten years old, leaving the lion's share of the inheritance to the de facto male heir, Prince John. Mabel later married the Seigneur de Montfort and Alice married the Earl of Hertford.

1st August, 1787: The Death of Alphonso de Liguori, writer and saint

Canonised in 1839 by the conservative Pope Gregory XVI, Saint Alphonsus (or Alphonso) de Liguori is today revered as a Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church, due to his skill in philosophy and his devotion to Mariology (the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary.) Saint Alphonso de Liguori is also the patron saint of the Naples, arthritis sufferers, confessors and moralists.

Born in a suburb of the Naples in 1696, when the entire southern Italian peninsula was still ruled by the Spanish, Alphonso was born into a well-to-do family of the local aristocracy. His father was an officer in the navy of the Spanish king, Carlos II. The eldest of his parents' seven children, he was christened at a nearby church devoted to the Virgin Mary, which was appropriate given his later devotion to her. Like many future saints, Alphonso's initial academic interests seem to have been with law. He qualified and was a very successful lawyer, but not a happy one. In a private letter to a friend, he reflected that a solicitor's life was a "too full of difficulties and dangers; we lead an unhappy life and run risk of dying an unhappy death. For myself, I will quit this career, which does not suit me; for I wish to secure the salvation of my soul." At twenty-seven, Alphonso re-trained as a priest with the Oratorian order and once he was ordained, he spent the first few years of his ministry working with the homeless, particularly the young, in Naples. 

This early experience gave Alphonso de Liguori a passionate belief in the role the young should play in the church. With their help, he set up evening chapels, where the worship and service was led by the young people themselves. Here, Alphonso would deliver his sermons, which were apparently particularly effective at bringing young people back to their faith when they had become disillusioned with it. In time, seventy-two of these youth chapels would have been set-up across the Italian peninsula. Often appalled at the level of poverty in the Naples, Father de Liguori sometimes undertook missions to alleviate rural poverty, as well.

As his reputation grew, Alphonso also threw himself into the great theological debates of the era. At that time, Catholicism was being divided over the issue of a philosophy known as Jansenism. Jansenism was a form of Catholicism that had originated in France in the previous century and it drew heavily on the philosophy of the more extreme Protestant sects. Whilst it emphasised Catholicism's belief in original sin and human weakness, it also adopted the radical Protestant belief in pre-destination and denied the impact of Free Will. This led many to regard Jansenism as heresy. It was seen by many to be too harsh because it combined the worst elements of both strands of Christianity - Catholicism's belief in the innate sinfulness of humanity, with radical Protestantism's belief that there was nothing you could do to save yourself from it. With the help of his friend, Sister Maria-Celeste, Alphonso set-up a new Catholic faith organisation called the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, which combined two of Alphonso's great passions - to alleviate the suffering of the poor and to challenge Jansenism. 

For the next few decades, the work of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer consumed Alphonso de Liguori's life and in 1762, when he was sixty-six, he was made Bishop of Sant'Agata dei Gioti by Pope Clement XIII. As bishop, he kept up the work he had started with the Congregation and worked hard to eradicate poverty in his diocese. He also pursued his interest in theology, by publishing many books including Moral Theology (which was his great attack on Jansenism), The Great Means of Prayer, The Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ, Visits to the Most Holy Sacrament and his series promoting devotion to the Virgin Mary - The Glories of Mary, Marian Devotion, Prayers to the Divine Mother, Visitations to the Blessed Sacrament and the Divine Mother and Spiritual Songs. In total, Alphonso wrote over one hundred works of theology, as well as numerous hymns, some of which are still sung today. His books were aimed at ordinary Catholics and he sought to encourage them to engage emotionally with their faith, rather than be seduced away from it by the scientific rationalism that was being promoted during the 18th century by the "Age of Enlightenment." Within Catholicism, Alphonso was sometimes criticised by his fellow theologians, who either saw his promotion of Marianism as over-zealous (particularly in his repeated references to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which led to his books being briefly banned in some Catholic municipalities, like Venice) or for being too emotional and "crowd-pleasing." Some of his opponents were harsh in their criticism of him; others, like the Dominican pastor, Vincenzo Patuzzi, simply respectfully disagreed with his take on how central Mary should be to Catholicism.

In his old age, Bishop de Liguori resigned his post and went into retirement, living with a community of Redemptorist priests in Campani. He died there on 1st August 1787, at the age of ninety. By that point, his homeland of the Naples was an independent kingdom, ruled over by King Ferdinand IV and his wife (Marie-Antoinette's sister), Queen Maria-Caroline. Alphonso died only two years before the outbreak of the French Revolution, which was to seriously threaten and then, through the strength of its persecution, rejuvenate the pastoral, grass-roots Catholicism that Alphonso was so devoted to.

He was beatified by Pope Pius VII in 1816 and formally canonised as a Roman Catholic saint in 1839. Pope Gregory XVI, anxious to turn back the hands of time to the days before the Revolution and impressed, like many were and are, by the extent of Alphonso's holiness, was a keen champion of the canonisation of Alphonso de Liguori. Today, he is buried in the Basilica of Sant'Alfonso in Pagina, Italy.

"The Lady of Two Kingdoms": The Life of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France and Queen of England (Part 3)

This is part three in this blog's look at the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine, which is part of the ongoing "Queens of England" series. Part one, "The Daughter of Riches" and part two, "A woman out of legend" are available by clicking on the linked titles.

"Why have I, the Lady of two kingdoms, reached the disgrace of this abominable old age?" - Eleanor of Aquitaine (1192)

The Middle Ages is one of the very few eras in history in which scenes from a fairy tale can come close to reality. One such scene took place at the height of summer in 1189 when a man called William Marshal, later described by the Archbishop of Canterbury as 'the greatest knight who ever lived', strode into the presence of the imprisoned Queen Mother of England and informed her that she was free at last. There was certainly a moment of sublime poetic fulfilment when William Marshal handed Eleanor of Aquitaine her freedom, because over twenty years earlier she had done the same thing for him. Long before he had won his reputation as the greatest jouster of the century and before he had distinguished himself by going on Crusade for a dead prince, Marshal, the youngest son of an unpopular family, had only begun his knightly career when he was captured by French warlords. Impressed by stories of the young man's bravery, and perhaps moved by stories of his family's penury, Eleanor had stepped in and paid the ransom, thus buying Marshal his freedom from captivity. Since that day, Marshal's destiny had been inextricably tied up with Eleanor's own and he had been the most trusted companion of her son, Henry the Young King, who had died six years earlier, begging that Marshal go to the Holy Land for him to atone for his sins. Returned, reinvigorated and already a legend of military prowess in his own lifetime, the forty-two year-old Marshal had won the favour of Prince Richard, now the new king. Set to marry Isabel de Clare, the daughter of the famous Strongbow, conqueror of Ireland, and his wife, Princess Aoife of Leinster, it was Marshal who Richard trusted with the special mission of going to England to free his mother from her gilded prison which she had endured since her children's botched rebellion against their father fifteen years earlier. With her husband's sudden death at Chinon and the accession of her favourite son to the throne, Eleanor of Aquitaine was once again being unleashed upon the world.

But the Eleanor who emerged back into the world in 1189 was a very different one to the woman who had been shut away from it in 1174. She was now an old woman, particularly by the standards of her day; she was already well into her sixties. Her first husband, Louis VII, had been dead for nearly nine years, having been succeeded by his son from his third marriage, Philip-Augustus (referred to from now on as Philippe, the Gallic form of his name). Three of Eleanor's sons - William, Henry and Geoffrey - had predeceased her and in the same summer as she became a widow, she also lost her daughter, Matilda, Duchess of Saxony and Bavaria, who had died suddenly at the age of thirty-three and been entombed in the gloomy splendour of the cathedral of Saint Blaise and Saint John the Baptist in Brunswick. Eleanor's eldest child, Marie, the child from her first marriage, was now a widow herself, still living in France as the Dowager Countess of Champagne. Her younger sister, Alix, was still Countess of Blois, married to the son of Eleanor's old rival. Of her daughters with Henry, Eleanor was currently living as Queen-consort of Castile, with a large family of her own, and twenty-four year-old Joanna also bore a crown, as wife to the King of Sicily. With all three of their brothers dead, it was Henry and Eleanor's two surviving sons who now mattered the most politically - thirty-two year-old Richard, the new king, and twenty-three year-old John, the heir-apparent.


If Eleanor felt anything at losing the husband who had been her lover, partner, spouse and jailer, she gave very little sign of it. Regrets or looking back are not things that Eleanor of Aquitaine seems to have overly bothered herself with. In many ways she had the final victory over Henry, not just by outliving him but by having him buried in Fontevrault - her burial ground. A magnificent structure rising splendidly out of the beautiful scenery of the Loire Valley, Fontevrault had been founded in 1100 by Eleanor's grandmother, Philippa of Toulouse, Duchess of the Aquitaine, and formally dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The complex boasted both a monastery and a convent, although in defiance of conventional ecclesiastical practise, Eleanor's family had insisted the convent should always have precedence over the monastery and that the head of Fontevrault as a combined unit should always be an abbess, rather than an abbot. Since becoming Queen of England, Eleanor had spent a fortune expanding and renovating Fontevrault, deliberately crafting its church into what she planned to be the necropolis of the Plantagenet dynasty. And Richard had dutifully honoured his mother's plans by sending his father's body to be buried at Fontevrault (below). After fifteen years in his custody, Eleanor had the satisfaction of knowing that Henry's body would spend all eternity on her land.

Richard had been in France when he heard the news that his father was dead and he was now King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, Count of Anjou, Count of Maine and Count of Nantes. It would take him some time to make the journey back to England for his coronation and in his absence, he showed his trust and love for his mother by giving her the power that both of her husbands had denied her. Freed from captivity, Eleanor was immediately appointed Regent of England and she moved quickly to London to undertake the business of government. And for someone who technically had very little experience of ruling in her own right, Eleanor showed herself to be remarkably good at it in a remarkably short period of time. It leaves the historian wondering what her husbands might have been able to achieve with her at their side, if they had only trusted her enough. The monk and chronicler, Matthew Paris, later wrote that Eleanor's time as Regent after her son's accession made her 'exceedingly respected and beloved' by the people. 

Eleanor's political skill in leading the English government during Richard's short absence before the coronation was theoretically a dress rehearsal for a much longer stint in control. Two years before, the Sultan of Egypt and Syria, Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb, known in the West as "Saladin," had inflicted a terrible defeat and massacre on the Christian orders of the Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller in the Holy Land. Now, as it had been in the time of Eleanor's first marriage, the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem was under threat and, with crusading apparently running in his blood, Richard was determined to go East and finish the job his mother's first husband had so spectacularly failed at - to crush the Islamic caliphates and secure the supremacy of Christianity in the Middle East. He also hoped that in doing so, he would guarantee immortal salvation for his soul and glory for his name.

Ireland shuts down three embassies

One of the things studying history has taught me is never to believe anything until it happens and never to put faith in predictions. I don't necessarily disbelieve them, but if anyone thinks that short-term surprises can't alter long-term trends, then, frankly, they're fools. No-one watching the tercentenary celebrations in 1913 could possibly have imagined that four years later a dissolute preacher, a misguided empress, the most horrific war in human history and one really bad winter would bring three hundred years of Romanov monarchy crashing down in a matter of weeks. History really is proof that the unexpected happens every day. I always remember that when people start predicting the demise of the West and confidently assert that in fifty years China/South Korea/India/Singapore will have overtaken the United States as the world's leading economic/industrial/military power and that the future of Europe/America is one of slow downturn and inevitable failure. Maybe that will happen. Maybe in 2061, Europe will be in terminal decline and South Korea will be the maker and breaker of the world's economies. But maybe all these predictions are just like those of the English aristocrat Lord Bryce who, when he visited Argentina in 1911, pronounced with absolute certainty that in fifty years time, Argentina would have become "the United States of the southern hemisphere". It seemed so obvious to Lord Bryce that Argentina's economy would continue to go from strength to strength until, eventually, it eclipsed that of America, France and Germany. By 1961, Argentina was in the middle of a generation of political unrest and economic ruin. 

Faith in predictions, no matter which historian or economist has made then, can often be as misleading as  confidence in the status quo. Things change, the unexpected happens and the news coming out of Dublin this week proves that. In 1937, Article 44.1.2 of the Irish Constitution proclaimed, "The State recognises the special position of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church as the guardian of the Faith professed by the great majority of the citizens." The article did eventually lead to the fifth amendment of the Irish Constitution in 1973, under pressure from groups which claimed it had institutionalised discrimination against Protestants and Jews. However, since the 1920s, it was held as axiomatic by Northern Irish unionists that the government of the Republic of Ireland in the south would always guard and promote "the special position" of Catholicism in national life, to the expense and detriment of all other religions. It was that confidence which allowed the unionist administrations at Stormont to justify their own shamefully brazen rival promotion of Protestantism. (In the north, the notorious Fethard-on-Sea boycott of 1957 was the endlessly-cited example of a too-powerful church and a too-obedient Irish government.)

The extent of Ireland's devotion to the Catholic faith and its obedience to the Catholic Church was famous and it became as integral to the common collective image of Ireland as heavy drinking, hospitality and lively music. However, over the last decade, chill winds of doubt have blown through the once intertwined relationship of church and state in southern Ireland. Mass attendance has decreased across the island and whilst it is still very high in comparison to the average in the rest of western Europe, the influence of the pulpit on Irish life has diminished. Secularisation isn't quite as rampant as it is elsewhere; piety still exists, but it's changing. Obedience is now selective, rather than total. Ireland, both north and south, is still statistically much more likely to be pro-life than pro-choice, but particularly in the under-thirty demographic, the majority are also in favour of same-sex marriage. The church's teachings on contraception, whilst dutifully re-iterated in Ireland's many excellent faith schools, are all-but ignored. Co-habitation is up; the number of priestly vocations is way down. Divorce and single motherhood no longer produce the recoils of revulsion which they did forty years ago. The numbers going on pilgrimage to Lourdes, Knock and Croagh Patrick are still very high.

But perhaps the biggest news of all, although it hasn't been too widely reported, is the announcement from Dublin yesterday that it's planning to close down its embassy to the Vatican. Officially, the embassy to the Holy See is being closed due to cut-backs. Along with Ireland's embassies to East Timor and Iran, the Vatican embassy apparently "yields no economic return" and the Irish government therefore believes it's best to close it and re-deploy the staff elsewhere. Yet, the closing of the embassies in Rome, Dili and Tehran will save little more €1 million and despite the government's official insistence that its decision is financially-motivated, commentators can't help but see this as yet another "stark illustration that relations between Dublin and the Catholic Church are at a historically glacial low." 

For the last decade, the cause of the estrangement between church and state in Eire hasn't just been because of growing secularisation, which, as I've said, should be used solely in relative terms when it comes to Ireland. Rather, it's been caused by a serious disagreement between the two institutions over the thorniest issue in Ireland today - clerical child abuse. Ireland's prime minister, Enda Kenny, leader of the centre-right Fine Gael party, has repeatedly and openly accused the Papacy of trying to sabotage official inquiries into the extent of the Catholic clergy's abuse of children - sexual, psychological and physical - over the course of the twentieth century. In the aftermath of the frankly horrific Ryan Report (investigating clerical child abuse in Ireland from 1936 onwards, published 2009) and the Cloyne Report (sexual abuse of children in the diocese of Cloyne since 1996, published 2011), Taoiseach Kenny accused the Catholic Church and the Vatican of "dysfunction, disconnection, elitism and narcissism". The Vatican rebutted his claims, both in general and in the specifics, and, understandably, relations between the two bodies have been (at best) frosty ever since. 

Whether it's financial or political, or maybe both, a good thing, a bad thing or a pointless thing, the closing down of the embassy of the Republic of Ireland to the Holy See and the fact that from 2005 to 2011 the British ambassador to the Vatican was a Roman Catholic from Northern Ireland (Francis Martin-Xavier Campbell) are examples of how, in history, the improbable is always possible.

A woman out of legend: The Life of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France and Queen of England (Part 2)

After a very long delay to this blog's Lives of the Queens of England series, here is part II of the three-part life of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Part I - Daughter of Riches - can be read here.

"My life, when it is written, will read better than it lived. Henry Fitz-Empress, first Plantagenet, a king at twenty-one, the ablest soldier of an able time. He led men well, he cared for justice when he could and ruled, for thirty years, a state as great as Charlemagne's. He married out of love, a woman out of legend. Not in Alexandria, or Rome, or Camelot has there been such a queen."- Henry II in the play The Lion in Winter by James Goldman (1966)

History loves a good romance. Some of its most famous couples, like Tsar Nicholas II and the Empress Alexandra, are remembered because of the intensity of their love for one another. Others, like Marc Antony and Cleopatra or Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn are remembered not so much for the nature of their love, but because of the melodrama that surrounded them. On 18 May 1152, a newly married couple emerged from the cathedral of Saint Pierre in the city of Poitiers in modern-day France (below). They were Henry of Anjou, nineteen year-old heir-presumptive to the English throne, and Eleanor of Aquitaine, the twenty-something ex-wife of the King of France. Henry and Eleanor emphatically belong to the latter category of famous historical couples. With them, it’s the drama, not the sentiment, which entices. Their marriage, celebrated less than two months after Eleanor’s divorce from her first husband, was born from political expediency, but it ended in civil war, rebellion, mutual recriminations, heartbreak and imprisonment.

The Pope's letter of condolence to the Austrian royal family

The Pope has written to Archduke Karl, head of the House of Hapsburg, to commiserate with members of the royal family on the recent death of the Archduke's father, Crown Prince Otto, whose sad death on July 4th of this year I commented upon here.

To His Royal Highness, Archduke Karl of Austria: 

With deepest sympathy have I learned about the passing of your father, His Royal Highness Archduke Otto of Austria. In this hour of sadness at your painful loss, I am united with you and all the royal family in prayer for the dead. During his long and full life, Archduke Otto has been a witness to the changing face of Europe. Trusting in God and aware of a significant heritage, he has been a committed European tirelessly working for freedom, for the unity of peoples and for a just order in this continent. May the Lord reward him for his diverse acts for the good of mankind and give him the fullness of life in his heavenly kingdom. Through the intercession of Mary, the mother of God, I offer an Apostolic Blessing to all family members and to all who mourn Archduke Otto, and who pray for his eternal salvation. 

Benedictus PP. XVI

The problem with Međugorje

The small town of Međugorje in western Bosnia-Herzegovina has arguably become the greatest site of Catholic controversy about modern belief in the miraculous. Over the centuries, Catholicism has been no stranger to debate (and often violent disagreement) from within its own ranks about the veracity of various claims of miracles, prophecies and apparitions. Lourdes, Fatima, Knock, Padre Pio and Annaliese Michel have all provoked furious internal discussion within Catholicism about what bits, if any, of these alleged spiritual phenomenons are genuine and what bits, if any, are false - either deliberately or accidentally.

But even within the catalogue of Catholicism's often uneasy relationship with claims of the miraculous, Međugorje has touched a nerve. For those unaware of the story, in 1981 two local Catholic teenagers, Mirjana Dragicevic and Ivanka Ivankovic, claimed to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary. The following day, four of their friends returned with them to the site outside the town where the Virgin had allegedly appeared, to see if Mirjana and Ivanka's story was true. On that day, Maria Pavlovic, Jakov Colo, Vicka Ivankovic and Ivan Dragicevic, all claimed that Mary had appeared to them, too. After making their claims, the six alleged visionaries were cross-examined by a Franciscan Father Bubalo and, since then, they have claimed that the Virgin has been repeatedly but intermittently appearing to them, transmitting messages for people to do penance, fast and pray more often. As with Lourdes, the influx of pilgrims has transformed Međugorje's local economy, turning it into one of the centres of the Balkans' tourist industry.

Unlike his predecessor, the current Pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI, has long been suspected of being sceptical about the shrine at Međugorje, but in 2008 he blessed a statue of Our Lady of Međugorje, sometimes also known as "the Queen of Peace," despite the fact that the Church has yet to formally rule one way or the other on the authenticity of the shrine's claims. Interestingly, however, the Vatican has prohibited priests from making a pilgrimage to the site, once they are ordained and in March 2010, the Vatican announced that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition) would be investigating Međugorje, under the leadership of His Eminence Cardinal Ruini. One bishop who certainly will not be speaking in Međugorje's favour is the Vatican's former exorcist, Bishop Gemma Andrea, who, in this article via Tea at Trianon, savages Međugorje's claims and goes even further, claiming that the shrine is sinister in origin.

We will have to wait for the Congregation's official findings, but the bizarre, fascinating, often unsettling story of Međugorje has not yet reached its climax.

Has Christopher Hitchens mellowed in his attitude towards Christianity?

An article in The Catholic Herald notes the unlikely friendship between Vanity Fair journalist and well-known critic of religion, Christopher Hitchens, and the devout Christian scientist, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, whose pioneering techniques on treating cancer are currently being used by Mr Hitchens in his battle against throat cancer. Dr. Collins (above), who is an evangelical Protestant, also won praise for his scientific research's influence upon his faith in Pope Benedict XVI's book Jesus of Nazareth, where he commended the doctor's work in "the magnificent mathematics of creation, which today we can read in the human genetic code, we recognise the language of God”. Collins actually converted to Christianity, which he was not born into, thanks to his scientific research. 

It's a moving and well written article. However, I think the story (but not the article) might over-state two things. The first is that Christopher Hitchens has always been much more fair in debates with theists than his more militant colleagues and the second is that unlike Richard Dawkins, Hitchens has never claimed that a lively intellect and, more importantly, scientific brilliance are incompatible with a religious faith. He just happens to believe that a religious faith is a waste of time which, contrary to the hysteria which greets the mention of his name amongst some devout Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants, does not make him a bad person. The idea that all those who profess a religious or spiritual faith are either insane or woefully stupid is perhaps the one I have always found most bizarre. The claim that no atheist regime has ever persecuted believers because of their religious faith, however, remains the most offensive.

I hope Christopher's battle against throat cancer, which he has fought doggedly, is successful. Not simply because of how well he is thought of by so many people but, although I disagree with almost everything he thinks both politically and religiously (his critique of The King's Speech was particularly misleading), he is a brilliant writer with a real way with words and the intellectual world would be poorer for his loss.