65
edits
Changes
no edit summary
'''Our Lady of Walsingham''' is a title used for the [[Theotokos|Virgin Mary]]. The title derives from the belief that Mary appeared in a vision to [[Richeldis de Faverches]], a devout [[Anglo-Saxons|Saxon]] noblewoman, in 1061 in the village of [[Walsingham]] in [[Norfolk]], [[England]]. Lady Richeldis had a Holy House built in Walsingham which became a shrine and place of pilgrimage, and the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham is the most renowned sanctuary of the Mother of God in the whole of the British Isles.
In passing on his guardianship of the Holy House, Richeldis's son Geoffrey left instructions for the building of a priory in [[Walsingham]]. The priory passed into the care of [[Canons Regular]] sometime between 1146 and 1174.
The site of the priory with the churchyard and gardens was granted by the Crown to Thomas Sydney. All that remained of it was the gatehouse, the chancel arch and a few outbuildings.
==Orthodoxy at Walsingham==
After nearly four hundred years the 20th century saw the restoration of pilgrimage to Walsingham as a regular feature of Christian life in the British Isles and beyond. Not only the Roman Catholic and the Anglicans honor the Mother of God at Walsingham, but also Orthodox.
In 1897 the Roman Catholics restored the 14th century Slipper Chapel as a Roman Catholic shrine, now the centre of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. The Holy House had been rebuilt at the Church of the Annunciation at King's Lynn (Walsingham was part of this Roman Catholic parish in 1897). Augustinian monk Alfred Hope Patten, appointed as the Anglican Vicar of Walsingham in 1921, ignited Anglican interest in the pre-Reformation pilgrimage. It was his idea to create a new statue of Our Lady of Walsingham based on the image depicted on the seal of the medieval priory. In 1922 the statue was set up in the Parish Church of St Mary and regular pilgrimage devotion followed. From the first night that the statue was placed there, people gathered around it to pray, asking Mary to join her prayers with theirs.
Before the first World War, Russian Orthodox Archbishop Seraphim of Paris blessed a plot of land close to the nave of the Shrine Church, where it is hoped one day to establish a permanent place for Orthodox worship. As of 2011, a chapel has still not been built.
Throughout the 1920s the trickle of pilgrims became a flood of large numbers for whom, eventually, the Pilgrim Hospice was opened (a hospice is the name of a place of hospitality for pilgrims) and, in 1931, a new Holy House encased in a small pilgrimage church was dedicated and the statue translated there with great solemnity. In 1938 that church was enlarged to form the Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. At the consecration of this enlarged church, a delegation from the Russian Church, led by Archbishop Nestor and Archimandrite Nicolas Gibbes, was present. Father Patten combined the posts of Vicar of Walsingham and Priest Administrator of the Anglican shrine until his death in 1958.
At Pentecost 1944, a small and temporary Chapel for Orthodox worship within the walls of the Anglican Shrine was the Polish Orthodox Archbishop Sava of Grodno. It is still being used by Orthodox pilgrims. Despite the small size, it has an icon screen and everything necessary for Eastern Orthodox worship. After the War
==Modern revival==
There is frequently an ecumenical dimension to pilgrimages to Walsingham, with pilgrims arriving at the Slipper Chapel and then walking to the Holy House at the Anglican shrine.
