STONYHURST - 17 October 2005 - 443 words

Saint's remains moved at Stonyhurst

After almost 150 years of repose, the much-travelled remains of a Roman saint were on the move again at Stonyhurst College last week.

The remains of St Gordianus have rested in the Sodality Chapel at the College since 1859 but the planned restoration of the chapel meant that they had to be found a new, temporary home.

With due reverence, and under the watchful eye of Curator Jan Graffius, a group of A Level religious studies pupils carefully carried the handsome gilt reliquary and casket in a solemn procession from the Sodality Chapel to the Boys' Chapel where prayers were said.

To add to the experience Mrs Graffius explained the background of St Gordianus and how his remains came to be at Stonyhurst.

In the third century Gordianus was in Rome when he was so moved by the sanctity and sufferings of the saintly priest Januarius that he embraced Christianity with many of his household.

He was later cruelly tortured and finally beheaded for his faith. The Christians laid his body in a crypt on the Latin Way beside the body of St Epimachus, who had been recently interred there.

Some time later his remains were moved to the Cyriaca cemetery and there they lay until the 17th century when Brother Ambrose of the Order of St Augustin removed them and gave them to Christopher Anderson, a Jesuit priest in the 1670s.

The Father Provincial of the Jesuits agreed that the body should be given to the Lancashire District of the Society of Jesus because of the depth of the Catholic faith in the county at the time. However, because of the Elizabethan repression, it was taken to the Jesuit College in St Omer, northern France, which was to become the modern-day Stonyhurst, and placed in the Sodality Chapel there.

When the College was forced to move, the body went with the Jesuits and their students to Bruges. On the suppression of the Jesuits the relics were given to the English Augustinian nuns in Bruges for safe-keeping.

In 1794, due to the French revolution, the nuns moved to Hengrave Hall in Suffolk and took the body with them. Eight years later they returned to France but delivered the remains of St Gordianus to the newly restored Jesuits in Stonyhurst before they moved.

The reliquary containing the remains was placed in the Sodality Chapel at Stonyhurst when it was opened in 1859 and there the body lay in peace. Once the restoration of the chapel is completed it is planned that St Gordianus will be returned to his former resting place on his feast day, February 19.

© Independent Catholic News 2005

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