Today April 3

Today is the feast of St. Richard of Wyche This great man was the very model of a medieval man, as his biography well illustrates. He was an orphan who lost his family fortune to an unworthy guardian. He, the younger son and devoted to study, nevertheless took to the soil, ploughing and husbanding the land such that eventually the fortune was restored. The older brother Robert deeded him the land, and a fine match was made for him in the form of a pretty local girl. But Richard was no dummy; he figured out that Robert had turned jealous and resentful of him. Richard abdicated his land, fortune and lady in his brother's favor and went off to Oxford. "Poverty was no drawback, social or educational, in a medieval seat of learning." - Butler's Lives. How different from today! He was often hungry though, often cold, and he and his roommates had but one academic gown among them. In those days a student had to wear what we think of as a graduation gown every time he went to class; Richard and his buddies had to take turns wearing it to classes. Still, he often thought of those Oxford days as the happiest of his life.

And in another way was Richard positively medieval: he was an international man. Back then a person was more a citizen of the world than a citizen of one nation; Europe had a common law, a common language (more or less), a common religion. So Richard thought nothing of going to Paris to continue his studies, then back to Oxford for his MA, then to Bologna in Italy for his doctorate in law. He returned to England as chancellor to his friend St. Edmund Rich, who was archbishop of Canterbury. There the good friends (who'd met years ago in Oxford) could lean on each other in the face of increasing pressure from the very worldly and cynical King Henry III. He would keep dioceses open and bishopless so he himself could enjoy the revenues thereof, later filling them with his own appointees who were his cronies and partners in crime. Richard was still a layman at this point but when St. Edmund retired to Pontigny in France (citizen of the world as he was), Richard went with him, ministered to him til his death and then took holy orders at the Dominican house there. He was ordained a secular priest, however, and on and on returning to England, was parish priest at Deal. He was really overqualified for the position and when the bishopric of Chichester opened up, he was a natural for it. Henry III, however, chose the simoniac Robert Passelewe instead. The new archbishop of Canterbury wouldn't install him, so both parties went before Pope Innocent IV with their cases. Richard won but no matter, the king had locked the chancery doors to him and threatened anyone who aided him with a charge of treason! A simple parish priest, Simon of Tarring, opened his home to him and from there Richard conducted his episcopal duties, much like a missionary priest, for two years.

When Henry III finally relented, Richard got his own house and benefices, although a lot of the treasury had been spent. To Richard, however, it seemed like great riches, which as a typical medieval prelate, was required to support the poor, which he was more than happy to do. He lived an ascetic life and was a strict vegetarian, saying half in jest to the stock animals, "Poor little innocent creatures, if you were reasoning beings and could speak, how you would curse us! For we are the cause of your death, and what have you done to deserve it?" He was strict in his discipline, especially of clerics convicted of sexual sins; he fought simony and nepotism; he preached indefatigably. On one of his parish missions to preach a crusade, he contracted a fever and died, surrounded by his surviving friends. He was 55. Nothing of his relics or tomb survived the English Reformation.