Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester: A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal SeeSergeant, Philip Walsingham
History
Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester: A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See
Sergeant, Philip Walsingham
Winchester Cathedral
Bishop de Rupibus, De Lucy's successor, introduced preaching friars into
England, and set up at Winchester in 1225 a Dominican establishment,
while a few years later the Franciscans were also established here. Both
institutions have since vanished.
The middle of the thirteenth century was marked at Winchester by
continual struggles between king, monks, and Pope, as to the right of
electing the bishop of Winchester. Some record of these struggles will
be found in the list of bishops of the see. The contest about the
election of De Raleigh lasted five years, and the king only finally
accepted the monks' choice after the Pope and the king of France had
also lent their influence on his behalf. In 1264-7 the town rose up
against the prior and convent, burning and murdering under pretext of
assisting the king, the bishop being a partisan of De Montfort. After
the battle of Evesham the cathedral was laid under an interdict by the
Papal legate, Ottoboni, and this was not removed until August 1267.
With Wykeham's importance in the story of Winchester we have dealt
elsewhere. His successor, Beaufort, greatly enlarged the foundation of
St Cross, adding to it his "Almshouse of Noble Poverty." It is a
remarkable fact that these two bishops and Waynflete, the founder of
Magdalen College, Oxford, between them occupied the see for no less than
120 years. The history of this period, as far as the cathedral is
concerned, is mainly architectural and therefore uneventful in
comparison with that of the earlier times. The intervals whose history
is less stirring, however, fortunately leave far better marks on the
actual buildings than do the more eventful epochs; and the fact that
Cardinal Wolsey once was Bishop of Winchester could not be gathered from
the cathedral itself. Indeed, he never visited the town at all during
the course of his episcopate--a circumstance which is, perhaps, hardly
to be regretted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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