Douai Abbey: Publications, Newsletter, Magazine

DOUAI ABBEY

DOUAI ABBEY NEWSLETTER

No 16 Winter 2002

Bishop Remi De Roo visits Douai

THIS year marks the fortieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, the most important event for the church in the twentieth century. Bishop Remi De Roo is one of the few surviving English speaking bishops who were council fathers. Since his retirement after thirty-seven years as bishop of Victoria, Canada, Bishop De Roo has devoted his life to spreading the teaching of the Council.

He came to England to take part in the day of talks organised at Heythrop College, London, on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Bishop Christopher Butler OSB to celebrate the vital role he had in the development of the Council’s teaching. Butler, who was Abbot of Downside, had been a Council Father in his position as Abbot President of the English Benedictine Congregation. All the papers given on that day will be published in the January edition of the Downside Review.

Happily Bishop Remi had time to come to Douai and give a talk on the Council and its reception as part of our Pastoral Programme. He was an inspiring and encouraging speaker with a great breadth of knowledge and understanding of the church. An account of his talk and the questions and answers will be published in the next issue of The Douai Magazine. We hope Bishop De Roo will return again next year.‡

Centenary celebration

ARRANGEMENTS for the centenary celebrations are proceeding, the main event will be a Mass on June 21, 2003, the Saturday nearest June 18, the actual date the majority of the community and the pupils arrived at Charing Cross Station in London. Cardinal Murphy O’Connor, the archbishop of Westminster, has kindly agreed to preside, and the Abbot Primate, Notker Wolf OSB, will preach.

We will be publishing a commemorative volume and a CD has been recorded featuring a monks’ schola and the Douai Singers.

The volumn will contain a history of the community, 1615 - 2003. Chapters have been written by Abbot Geoffrey Scott, Fr Alban Hood OSB and former pupils of Douai School, Paul Arblaster, Henry Mayr-Harting and P.J. Kavanagh who contributes the introduction. It will include a data CD featuring lists of the whole community and pupils of the school. The Music CD will include the Mass composed for the Douai Singers by Roxanna Panufnik , and works by Bárdos, Byrd, Victoria and others which are part of the repertoire sung in the Abbey Church.

Both book and music CD can be ordered at a pre-publication price of £24.99 or the book alone at £14.99 or music CD alone at £10.99 by writing to ‘Douai 1903-2003’, Douai Abbey, Upper Woolhampton, Reading, RG7 5TQ, including postage of £3 (£4 abroad); [book or CD alone postage of £1.50 (£2.50 abroad)].‡

The Westminster Succession Returns to Douai by Abbot Geoffrey Scott

AS the Community comes close to celebrating its centenary at Woolhampton, it is appropriate that it picks up a tradition which it possessed in 1905, nearly a century ago.

Until the English Benedictines were united together in one Congregation, known as the English Benedictine Congregation, or EBC, there were three groups of monks. The first two consisted of those Englishmen professed as monks in the late 16th century and early 17th century at Monte Cassino or in various Spanish monasteries, since all the monasteries in England had been dissolved by King Henry VIII. The third group was made up of English monks who had been aggregated in 1607 to Westminster Abbey by Fr Sigebert Buckley, the only survivor of the Westminster monks who had returned to that abbey during the reign of Queen Mary Tudor. There were seven of these English monks by 1612.

When the various groups were united in the Union of 1619, the monasteries of St Gregory in Douai [now at Downside], St Laurence in Dieulouard, Lorraine [now at Ampleforth], St Edmund in Paris [now at Woolhampton], and St Malo [suppressed in the late 17th century] coalesced to form the revived English Benedictine Congregation. Fr Buckley had actually clothed, in a London apartment in 1607, two young Englishmen in the Benedictine habit, Edward Maihew and Robert Vincent Sadler. Maihew became prior of St Laurence’s, Dieulouard, and in turn, was responsible for handing on the habit to successive generations of novices, and with it, the Westminster tradition. By a long involved process, this tradition of the Westminster succession ended up in the abbey of Lambspring, near Hildesheim, which had been founded by the English Benedictines in 1643.

The succession, therefore, runs as follows:

1. John Feckenham was clothed as a monk of Evesham by Abbot Clement Lichfield about 1530.

2. As the last Abbot of Westminster, Feckenham clothed Sigebert Buckley at Westminster sometime between 1556 and 1558.

3. Sigebert Buckley clothed Edward Maihew and Robert Vincent Sadler in the English Benedictine habit in 1607, aggregating them to Westminster.

4. Prior Edward Maihew probably clothed, but certainly professed, Placid Gascoigne at Dieulouard sometime between 1614 and 1616.

5. Abbot Placid Gascoigne of Lambspring clothed Maurus Knightley in the habit in 1669.

6. Abbot Maurus Knightley of Lambspring clothed Joseph Rokeby in the habit in 1702.

7. Abbot Joseph Rokeby of Lambspring clothed Maurus Heatley in the habit in 1739.

8. Abbot Maurus Heatley of Lambspring clothed Austin Birdsall in the habit in 1795.

9. Abbot Austin Birdsall, President of the English Benedictine Congregation, clothed Adrian Hankinson in the habit at Broadway in 1835 [There was at Broadway a short-lived attempt to refound Lambspring after that abbey’s suppression in 1803].

10. Prior Adrian Hankinson, who was affiliated to St Edmund’s, Douai, when Broadway broke up, clothed Aloysius Wilkinson in the habit at Douai in 1857.

11. Father Aloysius Wilkinson, a monk of Douai, and parish priest of Cheltenham, was brought to a hotel in Bath in 1905 to clothe Sigebert Trafford in the habit, and so ensure the continuity of the Westminster tradition. The photograph of him on the right was taken in 1864.

Arian Hankinson had been prior of St Edmund’s, Douai, 1854-1863, and clothed six choir monks in the habit. He professed them after their year in the novitiate. They were Benedict Rowley [clothed 1854], Aloysius Wilkinson [1856], Romuald Turner [1856], Dunstan Ross [1857], Oswald Burchall [1857], and Francis Barry [1857]. After that date, Douai novices seem to have been clothed by the prior of Belmont Priory, since the common novitiate of the English Benedictines opened there in 1859. By 1905, the date of Brother Sigebert Trafford’s clothing by Father Aloysius Wilkinson, all these Douai novices had died, except Aloysius Wilkinson who died in 1907 and Romuald Turner, who was ill and died in 1906. This explains why it was thought important by Downside to preserve the tradition through Aloysius Wilkinson, even though he had never been a superior.

12. Abbot Sigebert Trafford of Downside clothed John Roberts of Downside in the habit in 1946.

13. Abbot John Roberts of Downside clothed Aidan Bellenger of Downside in the habit in 1982.

14. Prior Aidan Bellenger clothed Brothers PatrickJørgenssen and Petroc Kimm of Douai in the habit on 17 September 2002, thus returning the Westminster succession to St Edmund’s, Douai Abbey, which henceforth shares the privilege with St Gregory’s, Downside Abbey. The Community at Douai thank the Community at Downside for allowing Prior Aidan Bellenger to participate in the clothing ceremony of our two novices on 17 September 2002.‡

Anthony Milner 1925 - 2002

ANTHONY Milner who died on September 22, had been a pupil at Douai School from 1939 to 1943. In his obituary in The Guardian (Oct 1) he was called the ‘foremost British Catholic composer of his generation. His faith marked every inch of his career’. At school his musical training had been under Fr Aloysius Bloor OSB, Fr Philip Robinson OSB and John Fry who taught him the violin.

After leaving school he won a piano scholarship to the Royal College of Music in 1945. He studied composition privately under Mátyás Seibas, a Hungarian, and at the RCM under R.O. Morris, who taught him ‘the disciplined contrapuntal technique which he employed in his compositions and teaching throughout his life’.

In 1947 he was appointed tutor in music theory and history at Morley College, London, where he came into contact with the composer Michael Tippet who was the director. They became friendly and had a mutual influence, although Milner was more cautious and conservative than Tippet. In 1954 Milner joined the extra-mural department of the University of London, moving on to become a lecturer at Kings College, London, from 1965 to 1971, thence senior lecturer at Goldsmith’s College in 1971 becoming principal lecturer in 1974. He had also become a part time lecturer at the Royal College of Music in 1961, principal lecturer and professor of composition in 1980 until his retirement in 1990.

Milner’s Opus 1, Salutatio Angelica, appeared in 1950. It is a cantata for voices and chamber orchestra in praise of Our Lady. The Daily Telegraph reported in its obituary "An astonishingly mature and professional piece, it won the composer immediate respect ... Many critics felt that he failed to fulfil this early promise in his later works."

Among Milner’s more important works are Variations for Orchestra first performed in 1959 by the Hallé Orchestra under Sir John Barbirolli at the Cheltenham Festival. This is based on the Rosary, with fifteen movements, one for each decade. The Three Choirs Festival commissioned an Oratorio The Water and the Fire which was performed at Hereford in 1964, and which shows the influence of Benjamin Britten, a composer he admired. Another Cantata Roman Spring appeared in 1969, a setting of Latin love poems by Catullus, dedicated to a group of students. There were three symphonies, the last in 1987 was written for the centenary of the Royal College of Music.

For a short time, 1964-5, Milner was director and harpsichorist of the London Cantata Ensemble, a baroque group in the early days of the baroque revival. This group gave the first broadcast performances of Biber’s Rosary sonatas, as well as solo cantatas of Buxtehude.

Anthony Milner contributed to the corpus of congregational Catholic music. Before the introduction of the vernacular he had written settings of Sunday Vespers and Compline for congregational use and after the introduction of English he produced some of the first responsorial psalms to be published, a group for the Sundays of Lent. He wrote some of the music used at Wembley for the Mass during the papal visit in 1982. His tune for Love is His Word is probably his most well known work. As a recognition of his work for Catholic music he was made a Knight of St Gregory in 1985.

While a pupil at Douai School he had written a comic opera Victor Vindicated which was produced and performed entirely by pupils. The Douai Magazine said "We were prepared to suffer in a good cause and took our seats in a mood of smug self-sacrifice. But soon we were smiling, then we were tapping our feet and only self-consciousness prevented our joining in lustily in the final chorus". The two performances raised £12. 7s 0d for the RAF Benevolent Fund.

Milner always maintained affection for Douai and was especially pleased that a party from the school attended the première of his first symphony at the Festival Hall in 1972 by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sir John Pritchard.

In the early fifties he had written a setting of a Latin hymn in honour of St Edmund for Douai. In 1980 he was commissioned to write an Introit for the celebration of the 1500th anniversary of St Benedict at Westminster Cathedral.

All his life he had suffered from deafness, as well as a slight speech impediment which made communication a little difficult. Nevertheless he developed lasting friendships with some of his pupils. Sadly in his forties he was diagnosed with multiple scelerosis which became progressively worse. At his last visit to Douai, for the dedication of the Abbey Church in 1993, he was in wheel chair. In 1997 he retired to Spain where he lived until his death.‡