The Dedication and Orientation of Tickhill St. Mary’s
PART 1
Church Dedications
The Dedications of St Mary’s Tickhill and of All Hallows Dadsley
There were some quite early Anglo-Saxon churches dedicated to the Virgin Mary during the seventh century, but at that time dedications to the saints Peter and Paul outnumbered all the rest put together.
However, Dadsley’s dedication to All Hallows was the mostpopular one in pre-Reformation Yorkshire (at 144), with dedications here to the Virgin Mary (129) a close second. It was the same in Lincolnshire, although there St Peter came close second and the Virgin Mary third. The position of All Hallows Dadsley on a prominent hilltop and the mentions of it in Domesday and in old charters, as well as evidence from its excavation in 1987-8, strongly suggest that this was the original dedication of a pre-Conquest church. [1, p. 42; 2 (1995), pp. 7-11; 3, pp. 31, 203, 207]
During the period of the English Reformation (c. 1532 to 1558) one quite early change was that in 1536 Henry VIII proclaimed that every saint’s day should be abolished. Although this was not acted upon immediately, it eventually meant that many churches were re-dedicated, usually by substituting or adding only those saints that were mentioned in the Bible. Some churches were re-dedicated to ‘All Hallows’, or more usually ‘All Saints’. Dedication to St Mary was one of the king’s three favourites along with the Holy Trinity and Christ Church. By 1914 nearly twice as many churches were dedicated to the Virgin Mary (2,335) than to All Saints (1,217), and only 38 were dedicated to All Hallows. [3, pp. 6, 17, 29, 191]
The popularity of dedications to the Virgin Mary during the middle ages resulted from the tremendous gratitude felt by Christian Europe after the year 1000. Mankind’s unexpected emergence from the widely-expected end of the world at the millennium resulted in a surge in the building or rebuilding of churches. Then, during the 1100s, and the ‘Twelfth Century Renaissance’, churchmen began to examine the Christian religion through the framework of the rediscovered philosophies of the ancient world. This led to reflection on the Virgin Mary’s dual nature as both human and the ‘mother of God’and her ability therefore to be a unique intercessor on man’s behalf. Praying to her became a source of consolation and many of the new churches were consequently dedicated to her. [3, p. 31; 7, pp. 122-133;]
So, between the twelfth century (the date of Tickhill St Mary’s foundation) and the Reformation in the mid-sixteenth century, a fifth of all churches were dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Given the probable dates of Tickhill St Mary’s foundation and construction, it is very likely that this dedication was the original. “If a church was rebuilt or changed in such a way that re-consecration was necessary, it was permissible to change the name of the saint; but instances of this are of a very rare occurrence.” [6, p. 181] Once again -as with All Hallows during the Anglo-Saxon period –the most popular dedication of the age was chosen.[1, pp. 41-42; 3, pp. 2, 6, 17, 29, 31]
Patronal Festivals
Because of the prominence given to the Virgin Mary after the Norman Conquest, “between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries the different festivals of the Virgin were brought into greater prominence in the English church” [1, p. 42] Before the Reformation there were six festivals associated with the Virgin Mary: the Annunciation (on 25th March, nine months before Christmas Day); the Visitation or Salutation (on 2nd July: Mary’s meeting with her cousin Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist); the Assumption of Mary into heaven at the end of her earthly life (celebrated on 15th August); her Nativity (on 8th September, celebrating Mary’s birth); the Conception of Mary without original sin (celebrated on 8th December) and her Purification in the temple of Jerusalem forty days after the birth of Jesus (on 2nd February). Churches were dedicated to each of these -and the same dedications can still be found across Roman Catholic Europe to this day.
In what became the year ‘Anno Domini’ 525, the monk Dionysius tabled the dates of Easter for a list of years “calculated, not from the prevailing era of Diocletian, the pagan emperor, but from the Incarnation of Our Lord”, [4, pp. 1-2] and it was his Easter table that was accepted for use in England at the famous Synod of Whitby in 664. Following Dionysius, Bede took for granted that the year must begin with the Nativity (Christmas Day), and gradually the whole of western Europe (except for Spain), including the Anglo-Saxon and Norman kings, accepted this. The year was thus deemed to begin just after the winter solstice, continuing the tradition of pagan times. However, the medieval reverence for the Virgin Mary caused the Annunciation (because it marked the Incarnation) to be regarded as the more correct starting point of the year. [4, pp. 9 & 12]
Of the festivals of the Virgin Mary, this festival of the Annunciation or ‘Lady Day’ had been observed for longest, and, as a result of the emphasis on the purity of the Virgin Mary from the early eleventh century, it thus came to mark the beginning of the ecclesiastical and legal year in England, from late in the twelfth century until 1752, when eleven days ‘disappeared’ from the calendar. Originally introduced in order to avoid a tax year of abnormal length, the British tax year still begins just twelve days after this, after a further adjustment was made to it in 1800. [4, p. 18]
However, “few churches keep their yearly festivals on this day and churches dedicated to S. Mary keep their feast days at widely differing times of year, according to the particular festival of the Virgin of which they have made choice.” [1, p. 46].
The festival of the Visitation was first celebrated in 1316, formally instituted by the Pope in 1389 but “not universally observed until the middle of the fifteenth century”; [1, p. 47] so that seems to be an unlikely festival date to be associated with St Mary’s, a church whose original building was probably already almost two hundred years old. [2 (1987), pp.12-13]
The Assumption is the oldest feast day, dating back to the fourth century and celebrated on the 15th August since the fifth or sixth century: “The dedication festivals of our English churches reflect very unmistakably the honour paid to this day. It is difficult to determine how far churches were actually dedicated to the Assumption, because it is a form that has fallen into disuse; but it is quite certain that it was a most favourite day for Dedication Festivals and their accompanying fairs” [1, p 47; 3, p. 31]. It was sometimes known as ‘Our Lady in Harvest’, but it fell victim to the 1536 proclamation by Henry VIII mentioned earlier –although the date continued into the twentieth century to be “a feast day still observed in many villages”. Today there are only 28 Anglican churches with this dedication, half of them in Norfolk and Buckinghamshire, and the two farthest north in Leicestershire. [1, pp 47-48; 3, p. 191; 5]
In the early fourteenth century Tickhill’s annual fair was held on St Laurence Day (August 10th), immediately prior to the two major festivals of the Virgin (the Assumption on 15thAugust and the Nativity on 8thSeptember), so there seems to be no clue from that to suggest which was the favoured festival, but one or other of these two major festivals would seem to be the likeliest candidate for the date on which the church was dedicated and -possibly -aligned with the sunrise. [2 (1995), p. 431]
Bibliography & References
1. F. Arnold-Foster, Studies in Church Dedications, 1899, vol. 1
2. T. W. Beastall, Portrait of an English Parish Church: the Blessed Virgin Mary Tickhill, Yorkshire, 1987; and, Tickhill, Portrait of an English Country Town, Waterdale Press, 1995
3. Francis Bond, Dedications & Patron Saints of English Churches, Oxford, 1914
4. C. R. Cheney & Michael Jones (eds), Handbook of Dates For Students of British History, Cambridge, 2000
5. Crockford’s Clerical Directory, 2017-18 (available at https://www.crockford.org.uk/ accessed 13/09/18)
6. James Raine “The Dedications of the Yorkshire Churches”, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, vol. 2, 1873
7. Miri Rubin, Mother of God, A History of the Virgin Mary, Yale, 2009
1Quoting NA SC 11/544, ll. 16-17 (downloaded 01/08/17)