[♦] PLATE XXVIII.
HOSPITAL OF ST. PETRONILLA, BURY ST. EDMUNDS
HOSPITAL OF ST. JAMES, DUNWICH
St. Nicholas.—The dedications in this name amount to twenty-nine, eleven being in Yorkshire. St. Nicholas’, leper-house, Harbledown, was founded by the Italian Lanfranc, whose native land had just acquired the bones of the benevolent bishop, translated to Bari in 1087. The hospitals of Royston and Bury St. Edmunds kept their fairs at the festival of his “Translation.” So great was his popularity that Miss Arnold-Forster remarks that if any dedication to St. Nicholas could be traced in Derbyshire, he would have the distinction of being found in every county. This one lack among the parish churches to which she refers, is supplied by the existence of a hospital in his honour at Chesterfield, and of an almshouse chapel at Alkmonton.
St. Anthony.—Whereas few churches were consecrated in memory of this hermit, twenty-one houses of charity were partly or wholly dedicated to him. His aid was invoked when pestilence (feu sacré) wasted France, and the initiation of the Order of St. Anthony spread his fame. The French priory at Lenton maintained a hospital for “such as were troubled with St. Anthony’s fire,” i.e. erysipelas. An indulgence offered to contributors towards St. Anthony’s in London refers to inmates “of whom p258 some are so tortured and scorched by burnings as of the pit, that being deprived of all use of their limbs, they seem to be rather horrible deformities than human beings.” The saint was invoked against contagion and all diseases. In England most of his foundations were for lepers. One of the latest lazar-houses (Holloway, 1473) had a chapel of St. Anthony; but the full title on the seal is “Holy Jesus and St. Anthony.”
The seals of the London, Hoddesdon, and Holloway hospitals (Figs. 30, 34) show St. Anthony with his tau cross, bell, and pig. When it was forbidden for swine to roam in the streets, the Antonine monks retained the right to turn out their pigs, which were distinguished by a bell. Although the York hospital was not under the Order, the master claimed one pig out of every litter. As late as 1538, when the London house of St. Anthony had been appropriated to Windsor, licence was given “to collect and receive the alms of the faithful, given in honour of God and St. Anthony, . . . together with swine and other beasts.”
St. Augustine; St. Benedict; St. Bernard.—Whether the “hospital for lepers of St. Augustine” at Newport (Isle of Wight) should be considered a true dedication is hard to say; like the “Papey” in London it may merely have been a community under the Austin Rule. A leper-house in Norwich bore the name of St. Bennet’s; although situated in St. Benedict’s parish, this must be regarded as a genuine dedication, for the common seal depicts the patron. “St. Nicholas and St. Bernard’s” at Hornchurch took its designation from the Great St. Bernard in Savoy. (See p. [209].) p259
[♦] PLATE XXIX. THE HOSPITALITY OF ST. JULIAN