The Parochial History of Cornwall, Volume 1 (of 4)
History
The Parochial History of Cornwall, Volume 1 (of 4)
Cornwall (England : County) -- History; Geology -- England -- Cornwall (County)
“When this transaction became known to Roger the Prior of
Bodmin, and to the Canons who served God in the same place,
the aforesaid Prior, with the advice of his brethren, went
to Henry King of England, son of the Empress Matilda, that
by his powerful aid they might again get possession of the
body of St. Petroc, of which they had been fraudulently
deprived. The King granted his aid to their entreaty, and by
his letters commanded Rollandus de Dinamnus, the Justiciary
of Britanny, that, without any delay, he should cause the
body to be restored. When, therefore, Rollandus had received
the King’s command, he came with a powerful and armed band
to the Abbey of St. Mevennus, and ordered that the body
should be given up; and when the Abbat and the Monks were
unwilling to comply, he added threats, that, unless the body
were yielded immediately, he would use force and take it;
which when they heard, they feared to incur the displeasure
of the King of England, and therefore restored that blessed
body to the before-named Roger, Prior of Bodmin, on the
Lord’s Day (Clausi Pentecostes), being the feast of St.
Gervasius and of St. Prothasius, martyrs, the thirteenth
before the calends of July (June the 19th). And that sacred
body was restored in all its integrity, without the least
diminution; the Abbat and Monks of St. Mevennus having sworn
on the relics belonging to their church that they had not
retained any part of the body, but had restored it wholly
unaltered.
“When this was done, the before-named Prior of Bodmin,
returning with joy into England, brought the body of the
blessed Petroc, closed in an ivory case, to the City of
Winchester. And when it was brought into the King’s
presence, the King, having seen and adored it, permitted the
Prior to return in peace with his Saint charge to the Abbey
of Bodmin.”
It would appear that such depredations must have frequently occurred,
since one precisely similar, but not followed by a restoration of the
relics, took place in the neighbouring monastery of St. Neot. In this
case, the stolen body of the Saint, having been enshrined at
Eynesbury, in Huntingdonshire, bestowed his name as a new appellation
to the place. See “A Description, accompanied by sixteen coloured
plates, of the Church of St. Neot, in Cornwall,” by J. P. Hedgeland, 1
vol. 4to. 1830, with Illustrations by Davies Gilbert.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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