Downside Abbey
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Saint Gregory's Abbey, commonly known as Downside Abbey, is a Benedictine monastery of the English Benedictine Congregation. One of its main apostolates is a school for children aged nine to eighteen. Its graduates are known as Old Gregorians.
Both monastery and school are located at Stratton-on-the-Fosse, southwest of the English city of Bath.
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[edit] Abbey Church
Downside Abbey Church was built in the Nineteenth Century, and the Nave was built after the War. The Abbey Church also houses the relics of St. Oliver Plunkett, an Irish martyr, who entrusted his body to the care of a Benedictine monk of the English Benedictine Congregation. The church is one of only two in the United Kingdom to be designated a minor basilica by the Roman Catholic Church.
[edit] The Community's Martyrs
[edit] Blessed George Gervase
George Gervase was born at Bosham, Sussex in 1569, and seems to have been received into the Catholic Church when he was aged about thirty. He studied for the priesthood at the English seminary at Douai and was ordained in 1603. In 1604 he came to England to begin his missionary work among the recusant Catholic families. In February 1605 he was arrested and banished, at which time he returned to his old college in Douai. In September 1607 he returned to England, but before doing so he visited the monastery of St Gregory at Douai and was clothed as a novice. His novitiate was to be in England, but proved to be very short.
He was arrested only two months after his return to England and condemned to death for his refusal to take the new oath of allegiance, accepting the King as the head of the Church. He was brutally martyred on 11 April 1608 at the age of thirty-nine years.
[edit] Saint John Roberts
John Roberts was born in North Wales in 1576 and educated at St John’s College, Oxford and the Inns of Court, London. He was received into the Catholic Church in Paris and entered the English seminary at Valladolid, Spain, in 1598. In the following year he joined the Benedictine Order and made his vows at St Martin’s Abbey, Compostella on 26 April 1600. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1602 and arrived in England in 1603, where he was appointed vicar of the English monks of the Spanish Congregation on the Mission.
Though arrested, imprisoned and banished, he returned four times. During one exile, he played a role in the foundation of St Gregory’s at Douai in Flanders. On his fifth visit to England, whilst working in London, he was seized immediately after Mass on Advent Sunday 1610 and dragged through the streets, still wearing his vestments. He was arrested for the crime of being a Catholic priest, and refused to gain his freedom by taking the oath against papal authority.
On 10 December 1610 he was drawn to Tyburn where he was hanged and quartered. Two nights later his body was rescued by a party of Catholics, and his relics were taken to St Gregory’s, Douai.
[edit] Blessed Maurus Scott
Maurus Scott was born in about 1578 of Protestant parents in Chigwell, Essex. He studied law at Cambridge and in 1603 met John Roberts and was received into the Church. He entered a Benedictine monastery in Spain, made his vows and was ordained to the priesthood in 1610. It was at this time that he went to Douai where he stayed at St Gregory’s before crossing over to England. He arrived in England in time to witness the martyrdom of St John Roberts and was himself arrested and imprisoned for a year before being banished to France. On his arrival in France he went to St Gregory’s and asked to be received into the community. After staying there for a few months he returned to England and once more was arrested.
On 25 May 1612 he was tried at the Old Bailey and condemned to death for being a Catholic priest. He was taken to Tyburn where he was hanged.
[edit] Saint Ambrose Barlow
Ambrose Barlow was born in 1585, the son of Sir Alexander Barlow, a fervent Lancastrian Catholic. He entered the English seminary in Douai in 1608 and in 1610 was sent to continue his studies at Valladolid, Spain, returning to Douai two years later.
On a visit to England in 1614 he was imprisoned, and on release he returned to Douai where he entered the Benedictine community of St Gregory’s, where he made his vows on 5 January 1616. After his ordination in 1617 he was sent to England, where he worked diligently on the English Mission in Lancashire for twenty-four years. He was four times arrested for the crime of being a Catholic.
Shortly after celebrating Mass on Easter Sunday, he was arrested by the local Anglican parson and a mob numbering 400, tried and condemned for being a Catholic priest. He was hanged and quartered at Lancaster on 10 September 1641.
[edit] Blessed Philip Powell
Philip Powell was born in Wales in 1594. He studied in London and then became a novice at St Gregory’s in Douai in 1619. After making his vows and being ordained to the priesthood, he returned to England where he was chaplain to the Poyntz family at Leighland in Somerset.
Whilst sailing to South Wales, he was arrested, taken to London and imprisoned. At his trial he freely acknowledged that he was indeed a Benedictine monk and a priest.
On 30 June 1646 he was drawn on a hurdle to Tyburn where he was hanged until dead and then quartered. His only crime was that of being a Catholic priest.
[edit] Blessed Thomas Pickering
Thomas Pickering was born in 1621 and in 1660 made his vows at St Gregory’s in Douai as a lay brother. In 1665 he was sent to London to be steward for the Benedictine monks who were chaplains to the Catholic wife of King Charles II.
In 1678 Titus Oates bore false witness that Blessed Thomas had attempted to shoot the King. The story was believed and he was arrested.
Although reprieved by the King many times, pressure to execute Blessed Thomas was too great, and on 9 May 1679 he was taken to Tyburn where he was hanged and quartered.
[edit] The School
Downside School and Abbey is a Benedictine Abbey and Roman Catholic Public School near Bath. Monks from the monastery of St. Gregory's, Douai, in Flanders, came to Downside in 1814. In 1607 St. Gregory's was the first house after the Reformation to begin conventual life with a handful of exiled Englishmen. For nearly 200 years St. Gregory’s trained monks for the English mission and six of these men were beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929. Two of these monks, SS John Roberts and Ambrose Barlow, were among the forty English and Welsh Martyrs canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970.
Driven from France following the French Revolution, the community settled for twenty years at Acton Burnell, Shropshire, before finally arriving at Downside in 1814. The Monastery was completed in 1876 and the Abbey Church in 1925, being raised to the rank of a minor basilica in 1935 by Pius XI.
The School attached to the Monastery is for Roman Catholic boys from the age of 10 to 18 years and one of Britain's most distinguished Catholic schools. The school began accepting girls in certain year groups from October 2005. As in most Roman Catholic schools in the 21st century, non-Catholic students are accepted.
During the nineteenth century Downside remained a small monastic school. It was Dom Leander Ramsay who was the founder of modern Downside. He planned the new buildings that opened in 1912 and now form two sides of the Quad.
Downside has been undergoing something of an academic renaissance in the last two years. With the decision to accept girls and to build a new Music School, Downside has become a more viable option for Catholic families in the South West of England who are seeking a Benedictine education for their son or daughter.
The current headmaster is Dom Leo Maidlow Davis.
[edit] Superiors
- John Bede Polding [later archbishop](1805-1819)
- Prior/Abbot Edmund Ford (1894-1906)
- Abbot Cuthbert Butler (1906-1922)
- Abbot Leander Ramsay (1922-1929)
- Abbot John Chapman (1929-1933)
- Abbot Bruno Hicks (1933-1938)
- Abbot Sigebert Trafford (1938-1946)
- Abbot (later Bishop) Christopher Butler (1946-1966)
- Abbot Wilfrid Passmore (1966-1974)
- Abbot John Roberts (1974-1990)
- Abbot Charles Fitzgerald-Lombard (1990-1998)
- Abbot Richard Yeo (1998-2006)
- Abbot Aidan Bellenger (2006-present)
[edit] External links
- [1] Official website of Downside Abbey & School
- [2] Downside on the website of the English Benedictine Congregation
- [3] Downside Abbey in the Catholic Encyclopaedia
Archbishop of Sydney, John Bede Polding (1805) started school at Benedictine secondary schools.
