Cambridge mediaeval...

Hundreds of Cambridge Dominicans are known by name but few other features can be clearly discerned. We catch random glimpses of them around the town; one plays the organ in Great St Mary's;... another goes to hear the confessions of the nuns at St Radegund's and a third receives alms from the fellows of Corpus Christi. The younger ones might receive ordination in churches such as St Clement's or All Saints. Most were English, but there were foreigners too within the priory walls. A few of the friars became distinguished or famous, and the normal routine of the convent might be interrupted by the holding of a parliament, the preaching of a cardinal, or the prior being taken away to the Tower of London. In the eyes of many here and abroad the convent was a place of learning, but we should not forget that it was also a place of prayer and pilgrimage.
(P. Zutshi and R. Ombres, 0. P., 'The Dominicans in Cambridge, 1238-1538', Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum LX (1990), pp. 314-315)

Since 1990, when Dr Patrick Zutshi of Corpus and Fr Robert Ombres of Blackfriars wrote those words, the dedication of the mediaeval priory, which they confessed themselves unable to locate, has been uncovered by Mr Nicholas Rogers of Sidney - thus proving that some yawning gaps in our factual information about the past can betimes be closed (The obit-roll of Prior Robert Ebchester of Durham (died 1484) records the request for prayers made to .'Cantabrigiae Universitatis Coll. S. Trin. Ord. Fr. Praed': thus The Obituary Roll of William Ebchester and John Burny, Priors of Durham, with notes of similar records preserved at Durham from the year 1233 downwards, . Letters of Fraternity, etc, Surtees Society, vol. 31, London 1856, p. 80. I owe this information to a personal communication from Mr Rogers). But, despite the newly discovered title of the collegium - the Holy Trinity (the later and parvenu 'Trinity College, Cambridge' beware!), it was an image of our Lady of Grace which provided the devotional complement to the intellectual and pastoral efforts of the friars, and which continued to attract pilgrims and testators up to the very eve of the Reformation (indeed, the evidence for its prominence in the city of Cambridge and beyond is essentially sixteenth century). It has been claimed that a statue of the Mother and Child venerated in the modern Catholic parish church of our Lady and the English Martyrs is the selfsame image; alas, the claim is more seductive than compelling (W. Hinnebusch, 0. P., The Early English Friars Preachers, Rome 1951, p.155).

The chief work of the Dominicans was, of course, to teach and to write - and both entailed above all, in the mediaeval Scholastic context, the production of commentaries on Scripture. The markedly metaphysical and ethical cast of the Order's philosophical tradition may be apparent, however, in the fact that Holcot, d'Eyncourt, Hopeman, de Ryngstede - all Cambridge friars whose works are extant, albeit in manuscript - chose to write on the wisdom books of the Bible, where these features (metaphysics, ethics) are especially plain. The library facilities open to them - to judge by the cast off books acquired at the Reformation for the Vatican Library by the future pope Marcellus II - consisted largely of classical, patristic and later mediaeval authors, not least the prince of Dominican thinkers, St Thomas Aquinas, and this is wholly unsurprising since Latin Christian culture was built on just these bases. Dominican publications were intended for an international readership of an élite kind; to the city folk of Cambridge far more important would have been the preaching and sacramental ministrations offered in the priory church and, on frequent though irregular occasions, elsewhere. Vernacular preaching, and a liturgy which created around itself the kind of popular devotional penumbra described (with particular indebtedness to East Anglian sources) by Dr Eamon Duffy (The Stripping of the Altars. Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580, New Haven and London 1992) were stimulants to areas the austere liquid of Scholastic exegesis could not reach.

These services did not save the friars, however, from the vagaries of Tudor religious policy and the more predictable constant of hunger for revenue. What the English Crown had given - by way of repeated financial assistance, and the resolution of disputes in the predominant, if not exclusive, favour of the friars, it now - in 1538 - took away. The theological confusion of Henry VIII's reign divided minds among the Cambridge friars: prior Robert Buckenham was doughty as opponent of the reformer Hugh Latimer (both occupied the pulpit of St Edward, King and Martyr, off Market Hill); prior Gregory Dodds became Anglican Dean of Exeter and would later subscribe the Thirty-Nine Articles. Sixteen names appear on the deed of surrender of the house (certainly not the full complement of brethren). They owned nothing save the property, parts of which (and notably the church) would be re-cycled by the founder of Emmanuel College (for buttery, hall and fellows' parlour) under Elizabeth I. The gateposts (or at any rate the stumps thereof) survived to the 1770s when they were bought by a local antiquary for the embellishment of his drive.