Cardinal Vincent Nichols this evening celebrated a Requiem Mass for Richard III days before he was due to be reburied in an Anglican cathedral in Leicester.
Cardinal Nichols, who wore vestments from the Plantagenet king’s royal wardrobe for the service, described the Mass at Holy Cross Priory in Leicester as “remarkable” and said it reverberated back across the centuries to the Masses that took place after Richard’s violent death at the Battle of Bosworth Field.
“Surely we can be confident that, despite the haste and the violent confusion of the time, this same sacrifice of the Mass was celebrated by the Greyfriars for the repose of the soul of the defeated King at the time of his burial in their church here in Leicester in August 1485,” he said.
Yesterday more than 35,000 people lined the streets to see the cortege as it was driven from the University of Leicester, where Richard's body has been kept since his remains were discovered underneath a car park in 2012, to the city's Anglican Cathedral. Today hundreds queued for hours to see the coffin of the king whose death ended the Wars of the Roses and marked the start of the 118-year Tudor dynasty.
The cardinal said he was relieved not to be required to pass judgement on the king, who has been accused of murdering his young wards, Edward V of England and Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, and whose reputation was forever blackened by his portrayal as a villain by Tudor historians and by Shakespeare.
In what appeared to be a reference to the BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s historical novel Wolf Hall, in which St Thomas More was depicted as a villain, the cardinal said that contemporary judgement of historical figures was often “fickle”.
“This we see most clearly as reflection continues on the dramatic years of the House of Tudor in both fiction and historical research: saints are recast as sinners and sinners can become saints. But that is not our business,” he concluded.
Yesterday the cardinal defended Richard and described him as “a man of anxious devotion” during a service of Compline at Leicester Cathedral.
“The deepest intentions of Richard have always been hard to fathom,” he said. “Within the depth of his heart, amidst all his fears and ambitions, there surely lay a strong desire to provide his people with stability and improvement.”
He paid tribute to Richard’s efforts to reshape the legal system but acknowledged his reign was “marked by unrest and the fatal seepage of loyalty and support.”
But, said Cardinal Nichols: “This 'King of England and France and Lord of Ireland', to give him his self-styled title, was a man of prayer, a man of an anxious devotion.”
The king who reigned from 1483-85 will be reburied in the Anglican Cathedral in Leicester by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, on Thursday.
Cardinal Nichols welcomed the ecumenical celebrations around his reburial.
“Our Christian histories have become intertwined in a way, we pray, that will now lead to us give a more coherent and united witness to the truths of faith which we proclaim together this evening,” he said.
All photos © Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk
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