Extracts from “A Short Life”, by Bishop John Moorman, published in 1953 (the 700th anniversary), when he was Principal of Chichester Theological College
Reprinted from Theology with the permission of the Editor
FACETUS, LARGUS, CURIALIS, VULTU HILARIS (“jolly, warm hearted, courteous, and of a cheerful countenance”); in these words Friar Ralph Bocking described his old master, St Richard of Chichester, whom he served for many years as companion and confessor. There was something big and impressive about St Richard, something large, and warm, and comfortable.
Elsewhere Bocking says that his name RICARDUS was made up of parts of three words: RIdens, CARus, and DUlciS, “laughing, beloved, and gracious”.
If the Church had not seen fit to canonize him, he would certainly have been canonized by popular opinion, for he was just the sort of man whom people loved and revered.
Richard is remembered and revered not as a great scholar or a great political figure, but as a great pastor — a wise, diligent, and saintly bishop who administered his diocese with a perfect mixture of what St Paul calls “goodness and severity”, of discipline and love.
He found himself called to the administration of a diocese sadly disorganized by neglect and by the fact that he himself was, for the first two years, a homeless vagrant. Yet he pulled it together. As early as 1246, while he was still under the royal ban, he published his Statutes which he expected all his people to observe.
He was a strict disciplinarian in his diocese, in his household, and in himself. Clergy who were lazy or immoral came in for severe rebuke, and he expelled one man from his living in spite of appeals from some of the highest personages in the land, including the king and queen. So also with the laity. A certain knight at Lewes, who had locked up his parish priest, was made to do penance by walking through the town carrying the log of wood to which the priest had been chained. When the people of Lewes dragged a thief out of a church, in which he had sought sanctuary, and lynched him, Richard made them dig up the body, carry it on their shoulders to the church, and give it Christian burial. Richard’s strong sense of law was outraged by acts of violence and lawlessness, and he could punish severely. In his own household (when he was in a position to have one) he was much loved as a wise father, though here again he ruled with severity. Bocking speaks of him as caring “as a master for his pupils, as a father for his sons, and as a nurse for her babes”. He expected high standards of honesty and uprightness among his household and dismissed those who misbehaved. But he was above all things severe with himself. Unlike many of his fellow bishops, he hated ostentation and display, and always dressed soberly and fared simply. Meanwhile his greatest self discipline was in the realm of his prayer life. Early visitors to his chapel sometimes found the bishop stretched on the ground, having spent all night in prayer.
On other occasions he would rise very early in the morning, and, while his chaplains still slept, would steal into the chapel to say his prayers before the day’s work began. He used always to reproach himself if the birds were awake and singing their songs before he was at his prayers and praises before the altar of God.
Richard was, therefore, a disciplinarian; but the quality for which he was so greatly loved by his people was his generosity and affection. He loved to give things away, to the great distress of his stewards and bailiffs who were trying so hard to restore the ravaged resources of the diocese.
When he entered a village he would ask the priest to give him the names of any in his parish who were poor or sick, so that he could visit them himself and relieve them with gifts of food or of money.
Bocking records that, on many occasions, the bishop went out of his way to bury the dead “with his own hands” in order to show his love and compassion.
There are many miracles connected with Richard’s life, many of them very human. Once, when celebrating Candlemas at Cakeham, he joined in a procession which went outside the church, each member carrying a lighted candle. A gust of wind blew all the candles out, but the procession went on. Suddenly it was noticed that the bishop’s candle was alight again. “Who lit my candle?” said Richard to one of his chaplains. “No one, my lord,” came the reply. Richard looked again at the candle, then put his finger to his lips and said, “Not a word.”
Out of a century which produced many great lights the candle of St Richard of Chichester still burns brightly, for he was a great saint, a great pastor, a great lover of God and man.
This is substantially the second reading from the Office of Readings in the Proper of the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton.
The responsory which follows it is:
As a man dedicated to God, you must aim to be saintly and religious,
filled with faith and love, patient and gentle.
Before God and before Christ Jesus, I put this duty to you: proclaim the message and insist on it,
filled with faith and love, patient and gentle.
Extracts from The Story of Saint Richard
These extracts are taken from The Story of Saint Richard to be published by the Dean and Chapter of Chichester. The quotations are from Ralph Bocking’s Life of Saint Richard of Chichester, translated and edited by David Jones. All the material is copyright; it may be used in worship but may not be otherwise reproduced without written permission, which should be sought from the Dean and Chapter.
Richard’s Last Journey
Friar Ralph describes Richard’s last journey in the spring of 1253, laying more stress on his desire to preach the cross to all than on recruiting and fundraising for the crusades:
He set out from his church at Chichester and passing through the towns along the coast and the city of Canterbury... He worked untiringly in the field of the Lord, furrowing weary hearts with the plough of the cross and the ploughshare of his tongue. He rejoiced to see the fruits of justice spring from the seed of God’s word watered by the dew of heavenly grace. Who will be able adequately to describe how he soothed the contrite, heard and instructed those making confession, absolved the penitent, counselled those seeking advice, brought cheer to those in despair, strengthened the fervent, encouraged the timid, and indeed became “all things to all men”? For he wanted to win all men for Christ and therefore strove to make himself bend to “all men on account of Christ.”
At the end of his preaching tour Richard reached Dover. There he stayed at the Maison Dieu where the master and brethren had just completed a chapel in their cemetery for the burial of the poor. They invited Richard to dedicate it to St Edmund.
Friar Ralph quotes from Richard’s sermon on the day of the dedication:
My dearest children, I beg you to join me in blessing God and in praising him who in his grace has permitted us to be present at this dedication in his honour and that of our father, the Blessed Edmund. That is what I have always desired and sought in my prayers ever since I was consecrated as bishop, that before I die I might consecrate at least one church in his honour. Therefore, I thank God from the bottom of my heart, for he has not deprived me of my heart’s desire. And now, dearest children, I know that the “laying away of my tabernacle is at hand” [2 Peter 1:14] and I therefore beg that I may be strengthened and supported by your prayers.
When the mass had been concluded with due ceremony and he had strengthened the people with his holy blessing the bishop returned to Maison Dieu.
Richard’s Death
Richard had rightly foreseen his own death. He had consecrated the new chapel on Sunday 30 March. The next day he went to the chapel of the Maison Dieu and collapsed during morning prayer. Friar Ralph describes how the attendants lifted Richard up and carried him to his bed. His illness grew worse each day, and he knew that the time had come when he would “be summoned from the world”. He made a general confession, received the sacraments, and told his closest attendants to make preparations for his funeral.
Friar Ralph writes movingly of the events that followed:
Father Simon said “My lord, the season of our Lord’s passion is nigh, and as you have shared his sorrows, you will share his consolation.”
At this the holy man seemed to grow more cheerful ... [and] said “Not tomorrow, but the following Friday I shall enjoy a great feast.” The day and hour of his death afterwards proved this to be true...
He was now very weak... He embraced the image of the Crucified, which he had asked to be brought to him... He devoutly kissed and tenderly caressed the wounds as if he had just seen them newly inflicted on his Saviour’s dying body, and cried out, “I thank thee, my Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits which thou hast granted to me, for all the pains and insults which thou hast suffered for me.”
He said to his attendants, “Place this wretched body down on the ground.” For, as he had known in his lifetime to chastise the limbs of his naturally handsome body ... so when dying did he know how to humble it still more with his humility. Often repeating the words of the psalmist, “Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit,” and then turning with both heart and voice to the glorious Virgin, he said, “Mary, mother of grace, mother of mercy, protect us from the Enemy now, and pray for us at the hour of our death.” Thus... the blessed Richard rendered up his soul, soon to join those that dwell in the kingdom above, to his Creator.
He passed from this world in about the fifty-sixth year of his age, in the ninth year of his episcopate, on April 3rd, at about midnight, when it is said that the heavenly Bridegroom will come to the nuptials, to enjoy with the Bride the pleasures of the heavenly court, by the mercy of him who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns as God for ever and ever.
Richard’s Burial
Richard’s body was, as he had required in his will, taken back to Chichester Cathedral for burial, while his heart and other organs were interred in the chapel he had just dedicated to St Edmund.
When they washed him they found that, although he had mortified his body by wearing a hair shirt and various knots and belts, it “shone with such a radiant whiteness that, although dead, it seemed to offer some portent of future resurrection.”
Friar Ralph describes the funeral procession:
So his body was carried to Chichester and as it passed by monasteries, churches, towns or villages, the bells rang and the cortege was greeted with solemn psalms and tears, for although the people knew that they had lost the bodily presence of so great a pastor, they hoped that they would be protected by his heavenly patronage and intervention and regarded themselves as fortunate if so great a treasure rested with them for a single night.
When, therefore, they reached the city which was honoured to have been the seat of his diocese, rich and poor alike rushed eagerly from the streets and alleyways, the rich mourning and weeping on account of the honour he had done them, the poor because of the great amount of alms that he had given them while living... So they carried the body into the cathedral and you would have heard music mix not inappropriately with the sounds of grief...
His venerable body was buried in a humble place in that same church, near the altar of the Blessed Edmund the Confessor which he himself had built on the northern side of the cathedral, where great and wonderful miracles were performed.
The Canonization of St Richard
In 1256, three years after Richard’s death, the bishop and canons of Chichester, supported by King Henry III as well as many bishops and nobles, petitioned the Pope to enquire into Richard’s life and miracles. A commission of three was appointed, comprising the Bishop of Hereford, the provincial prior of the English Dominicans, and a Franciscan friar. They had collected evidence and reported to the Pope by May 1261.
Their evidence was examined by officials of the papal curia, led by Bishop Odo of Tusculum. One of his surviving sermons includes material submitted to the pope in support of Richard’s canonization. Eventually, in Friar Ralph’s words:
The Holy Father, attended by the cardinals and a great throng of both clergy and people, on St Vincent’s day [22 January 1262], at the church of the Friars Minor in Viterbo, most devoutly and solemnly placed him in the ranks of the saints. And the Lord Pope himself pronounced the sentence of canonization amid tears of joy and everyone gave thanks to God who had made St Richard the like of the saints in glory.
The letter of canonization was sent out a month later. In it the Pope, borrowing words from the Easter liturgy, writes:
Let the angelic host of heaven now exult, let the divine mysteries exult ... let the saints exult in glory ... let Mother Church exult ... let England exult ... let the church of Chichester exult and rejoice that she has deserved so great a pastor, who in his lifetime taught her with counsels of salvation, instructed her with praiseworthy examples and after his death fortified her with the goodwill of men and protected her with his intercession before God.