24 Hours at Agincourt by Michael Jones

Author:Michael Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780753550496
Publisher: Ebury Publishing

And then the theme is powerfully reiterated:

This story shall the good man teach his son,

And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by

From this day to the ending of the world

But we in it shall be remembered.

This powerful oration was based on solid historical fact. Such was Henry’s veneration for these saints (the two, Crispin and Crispinian, were commemorated together) that he ordained that they should be celebrated in his daily Masses in his own chapel for as long as he lived. He also ensured that their day, 25 October, would be properly observed in England on each returning anniversary of the battle. As one contemporary emphasised:

Because that day was the commemoration by the church of the blessed Crispin and Crispinian, and it seemed to him it was through their intercession to God that he had obtained so great a victory over the enemy…’.

The explanation for this seems simple enough. The medieval calendar was based around its many saint’s days, and these were carefully set out in the beautifully illuminated books of hours that record the days and months, and whose scenes present to us an enduring image of medieval life. Since Agincourt fell on the saint’s day of Crispin and Crispinian it was an obvious way of remembering it, particularly because Henry wanted the outcome of the battle to be surrendered to God’s will.

But it was a surprising choice nonetheless, for Crispin and Crispinian were French saints, cobblers from Soissons who in the third century were martyred for their Christian beliefs. The story was well known in France, and was depicted in a fine early fifteenth-century painting on the altarpiece of St Sepulchre’s church in Saint-Omer, not far from the Agincourt battle site. In short, it was a French way of remembering the battle, subsequently brought out on the tomb memorial to one of the French slain, Jean, Count of Roucy, giving his date of death as ‘the day of Sts Crispin and Crispinian’. Henry, who had always resolutely preferred English saints, and used English symbols to foster a sense of unity within his army, had made a most unusual dedication on the morning of battle.

Another saint’s day fell upon 25 October, and it seemed a far more appropriate choice for a battle commemoration: the feast of the translation of St John of Beverley. St John of Beverley was an English saint, whose piety was extolled by Bede and who had been canonised in the eleventh century. In a clear martial precedent, his banner was used by Edward I, alongside that of St George, to encourage his soldiers on campaign to Scotland – and it was proudly borne on the king’s expeditions of 1296 and 1300.

St John of Beverley was closely connected to England’s ruling Lancastrian dynasty. When Henry’s father, Henry IV, had landed at Ravenspur in Yorkshire in 1399, in his bid to take the throne, it was believed that the saint had shown approval of his actions: witnesses at his shrine claimed that his body had distilled drops of oil at the time of Henry’s return from exile.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.