Lower Centre Panel of the Left Light
Dr Pusey Receives the Monastic Vows of Marian Hughes, with St Etheldreda

Lower centre panel of left light

The third row of panels in the left and right lights depicts scenes from the Catholic revival of the Church of England in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the left light shown here we see Dr Edward Pusey, in surplice and stole, in front of the altar of St Mary's Church, Oxford, in 1841. Kneeling before him is Marian Hughes, making her vows of poverty, chastity and obedience as the first profesed Religious in the Church of England since the Reformation. (The University Church of St Mary, with the coat of arms of the University of Oxford, is depicted in the bottom right of this scene.) Standing on the left is the queenly figure of St Etheldreda (636-679), another significant figure from the history of Saxon Britain. Maynard preached about Dr Pusey and the restoration of the religious life on October 17, 1948.

The figure of Etheldreda is relevant to this depiction of the taking of vows by a more recent female Religious. Etheldreda was born in Suffolk around 636 and was brought up in an atmosphere of piety. St Hilda of Whitby, pictured in the panel above this, was her aunt, and Etheldreda cherished an ambition to become a nun. For political reasons, however, she was given in marriage, against her will, to King Tondbert of an East Anglian sub-kingdom. As part of her marriage settlement, she was given an estate that was later to become Ely. After the deaths of her husband and her father, she settled in religious retirement on her estate. However, politics intervened again, and she married Egfrith, the young second son of Oswiu, King of Northumbria. In 670, Egfrith became King himself. Etheldreda did not want to live with him as his wife, so she took refuge on her own lands at Ely. Here, in 673, Etheldreda built a large double monastery of which she became abbess, and she was widely respected for her wisdom and piety. Etheldreda died in 679, and many stories of miracles surround her memory. The abbey of Ely was constituted a cathedral in 1109.

Marian Rebecca Hughes was born in 1817, and was inspired to a vocation to the Sisters of Mercy by reading an essay by Newman. She took her vows before Pusey in 1841, and in 1849 she moved to Oxford where, with Bishop Wilberforce's approval, she founded a Sisterhood called the Society of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, which served the poor, the sick, and the needy. Within a few years they ran schools, an orphanage, and did parish work. Mother Marian died in 1912, aged 95 and in the 71st year of her profession.

The other figure in this panel is Dr Edward Bouverie Pusey, who was born in the village of Pusey, Berkshire in 1800. He was elected to a Fellowship at Oriel College, Oxford, in 1824, where he joined a society containing people such as John Henry Newman and John Keble. Thus he became an important member of the Oxford Movement for the Catholic revival in the Church of England. In 1833, John Keble preached his Assize Sermon at Oxford, which was followed by the issuing of 'Tracts for the Times', and the movement was underway. The inspiration of the leaders of the Oxford Movement was the desire to bring God back into human life, and to bring the principles of God's Kingdom to bear on the life of the Nation.

Pusey was active in the theological and academic controversies of his time. Some of his sermons were manifestos of the High Church party, and the revival of the practice of confession in the Church of England can be traced to his sermon on this subject. His 1853 sermon, The Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist first formulated the doctrine which, through developments made by his followers, revolutionized the practices of Anglican worship.

Pusey died in 1882, and he is chiefly remembered as the eponymous representative of the earlier phase of a movement which carried with it no small part of the religious life of England in the latter half of the 19th century. The revival of ceremonial that became a characteristic of the new movement, even though that grew out of his doctrine of the Real Presence, was not greatly to Pusey's taste and, even though he defended those who practised it, the 'Ritualists' tended to thrust the 'Puseyites' aside.

Maynard concluded his sermon on this panel with the words: "...you see in this panel two strangely different children of wisdom, both gloriously justified in their way of service. One: a man and a priest, a quiet scholar and a teacher. The other: the woman and vowed Religious, the Mother of her community of dedicated women, pioneering the restoration of a holy way of life, in which God is glorified, and his people blest."

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