On his return from pupilage under St. Theodorus, in Kent, St. John of
Beverley settled at Whitby, in the monastery of St. Hilda, till, in the
reign of Alfred, he was made bishop of Hexham, which see he vacated in
favour of St. Wilfrid, and sometime afterwards was seated in the
archi-episcopal chair of York. He occasionally retreated to a monastery
he had built at Beverley, which was then a forest, called Endeirwood, or
Wood of the Deiri. In 717 he resigned the see of York to his chaplain,
St. Wilfrid the younger, and finally retired to Beverley, where he died
on the 7th of May, 721.[406]
According to Bede, St. John of Beverley being at a village near Hexham,
there was brought to him a youth wholly dumb, and with a disorder in the
head, “which entirely hindred the grouth of haires, except a few which,
like bristles, stood in a thinn circle about the lower part of his
head.” He desired the child “to putt forth his tongue, which the holy
man took hold of, and made the sign of the crosse upon it. And having
done this, he bid him speak: Pronounce, said he to him, _gea, gea_,
(that is, _yea, yea_.) This the child pronounced distinctly, and
presently after other words of more syllables; and, in conclusion, whole
sentences: so that, before night, by frequent practice, he was able to
expresse his thoughts freely.” Then St. John “commanded a surgeon to use
his skill; and in a short time, by such care, but principally by the
prayers and benedictions of the good prelat, he became of a lovely and
chearfull countenance, adorned with beautifully curled haire, and ready
in speech. This _miracle_ was wrought in his first diocese.”[407]
Notwithstanding the author of the “Church History of Brittany” calls
this a “miracle,” the story rather proves that John of Beverley used a
judicious method to remove impediments of speech, and obtained the
growth of the boy’s hair by surgical aid.
The same writer adds, on the same authority, that the wife of “a count,
named Puch,” was cured of a forty days’ sickness, by John of Beverley
giving her holy water, which he had used in dedicating the count’s
church. Also, according to him, when the lusty men of Beverley drag wild
bulls into the church-yard (to bait them) in honour of the saint, they
“immediately loose all their fury and fiercenes, and become gentle as
lambes, so that they are left to their freedom to sport themselves.”
William of Malmsbury relates this “as a thing usually performed, and
generally acknowledged by the inhabitants of Beverley, in testimony of
the sanctity of their glorious patron.”
Again, it is related in the Breviary of the church of Sarum, concerning
St. John of Beverley, that while he governed in the see of York, “he was
praying one day in the porch of St. Michael, and a certain deacon
peeping in saw the Holy Ghost sitting upon the altar, excelling in
whiteness a ray of the sun:” and the face of this deacon, whose name was
Sigga, “was burnt by the heat of the Holy Spirit,” so that the skin of
his cheek was shrivelled up; and his face was healed by the touch of the
saint’s hand: and “the saint adjured him, that whilst he lived he would
discover this vision to no man.”[408]
The more eminent fame of the patron of Beverley is posthumous. In 937,
when England was invaded by the Norwegians, Danes, Picts, and certain
chiefs of the Scottish isles, under Analaf the Dane, king Athelstan,
marching with his army through Yorkshire to oppose them, met certain
pilgrims returning from Beverley, who “informed him of the great
miracles frequently done there, by the intercession of St. John.”
Whereupon the king, with his army, went to Beverley, and entering into
the church there performed his devotions before St. John’s tomb; and,
earnestly begging his intercession, rose up before the clergy, and
vowed, that if victory were vouched to him by the saint’s intercession,
he would enrich that church with many privileges and plentiful revenues.
“In token of which,” said he, “I leave this my knife upon the altar,
which at my return I will redeem with an ample discharge of my vow.”
Then he caused an ensign, duly blessed, to be taken out of the church,
and carried before him. And at the sea-coast “he received a certain hope
of victory by a vision, in which St. John of Beverley, appearing to him,
commanded him to passe over the water, and fight the enemy, promising
him the upper hand.” Athelstan was suddenly surprised by Analaf; but a
sword fell “as from heaven” into the king’s scabbard, and he “not only
drove Analafe out of his camp, but courageously sett upon the enemy,
with whose blood he made his sword drunk, which he had received from
heaven.” This battle, which was fought at Dunbar, was the bloodiest
since the coming of the Saxons. The victory was entirely for the
English: five kings were slain, and among them the Scottish king
Constantine. Athelstan, returning in triumph, passed by the church of
St. John at Beverley, where he redeemed his knife. He bestowed large
possessions on the church, with privilege of sanctuary a mile round;
ordaining that whoever should infringe it should forfeit eight pounds to
the church; if within the three crosses, at the entrance of the town,
twenty-four pounds; if within the church-yard, seventy-two pounds; but,
if in sight of the relics, the penalty was the same that was due to the
most enormous capital crime. A testimony of this privilege of sanctuary
at Beverley was a chair of stone, thus inscribed:--“This stone chair is
called Freed-stoole, or the Chaire of Peace: to which any offender
flying shall enjoy entire security.” In the charter of the privilege,
“King Athelstan,” saith mine author, “expressed it elegantly, in this
distich:--
As free make I thee,
As heart may think or eye may see.”[409]
Moreover, respecting the great victory of Athelstan, an ancient
biographer of the saints[410] relates, that the king prayed that through
the intercession of St. John of Beverley he might show some evident
sign, whereby both future and present ages might know, that the Scots
ought, of right, to be subject to the English. And thereupon, saith this
writer, “the king with his sword smote upon a hard rock by Dunbar, and
to this day it is hollowed an ell deep by that stroke.”[411] This, saith
another author, was near Dunbar castle; and “king Edward the first, when
there was question before pope Boniface of his right and prerogative
over Scotland, brought this historie for the maintenance and strength of
his cause.”[412]
The monastery of St. John at Beverley having been destroyed by the
Danes, king Athelstan founded in that place a church and college of
canons, of which church St. Thomas à Becket was some time provost.[413]
In 1037, the bones of St. John were “translated” into the church by
Alfric, archbishop of York, and the feast of his translation ordained to
be kept at York on the 25th of October.[414] “On the 24th of September,
1664, upon opening a grave in the church of Beverley a vault was
discovered of free-stone, fifteen feet long and two broad; in which
there was a sheet of lead, with an inscription, signifying that the
church of Beverley having been burnt in the year 1188, search had been
made for the relics of St. John, anno 1197, and that his bones were
found in the east part of the sepulchre and there replaced. Upon this
sheet lay a box of lead, in which were several pieces of bones, mixed
with a little dust, and yielding a sweet smell: all these were
reinterred in the middle alley of the church.”[415] Another writer[416]
states the exhumation to have taken place “on the _thirteenth_ of
September, not the _twenty-fourth_;” and he adds, “that these relics had
been hid in the beginning of the reign of king Edward VI.”
It must not be omitted, that the alleged successful intercession of St.
John of Beverley in behalf of the English against the Scotch, is said to
have been paralleled by patronage as fatal to the French. The memorable
battle of Agincourt was fought in the year 1415, on the anniversary of
the translation of St. John of Beverley, and Henry V. ascribed the
decisive victory to the saint’s intercession. In a provincial synod,
under Henry Chicheley, archbishop of Canterbury, is a decree, at the
instance of that king, “whereby it appeares, that this most holy bishop,
St. John of Beverley, hath been an ayde to the kings of England in the
necessitie of their warres, not only in auncient, but allsoe in these
later ages.”[417] In consequence of this ascription, his festivals were
ordained to be celebrated annually through the whole kingdom of England.
The anniversary of his death has ceased to be remembered from the time
of the Reformation; but that of his translation is accidentally kept as
a holiday by the shoemakers, in honour of their patron, St. Crispin,
whose feast falls on the same day.
*
[406] Alban Butler.
[407] Father Cressy.
[408] Capgrave: in bishop Patrick’s Devotions of the Roman Church.
[409] Father Cressy.
[410] Capgrave.
[411] Bishop Patrick’s Devotions of the Roman Church.
[412] Father Porter’s Lives.
[413] Britannia Sancta.
[414] Alban Butler.
[415] Britannia Sancta.
[416] Alban Butler.
[417] Father Porter.
* * * * *