Our Lady of Grace

The title of Our Lady of Grace is an ancient one. In its essence, it goes back to the Angel Gabriel’s greeting ‘Hail, full of grace’ at the Annunciation. The first recording of it in a shrine that is known to us today was in Ipswich in 1152, with similarly named shrines becoming popular in the late Middle Ages all over Northern Europe. There were at least three in England: at Ipswich, St Paul’s Cathedral in London, and in Cambridge.

All three thrived up until the very eve of the Henrician Reformation, with the first two favoured by English Royalty, as well, of course, as Cardinal Wolsey. Wolsey, however, could not succeed in his attempts to have Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled. After his fall from favour, he was replaced as Lord Chancellor by Sir Thomas More, who had himself even written about a miracle wrought upon the daughter of a friend at the Shrine of Our Lady of Grace in Ipswich. Yet, Henry’s desire to marry Anne Boleyn was such that when the ‘wrong’ answercame, he finally decided to no longer recognise the authority of the Pope, and declared himself the Supreme Head of the Church of England.

More, together with John Fisher, and many others, were martyred for refusing to accept this heretical assault on God’s law. Under More’s successor as Lord Chancellor, Thomas Cromwell, the slow programme of monastic reform and dissolution, which was always a feature of the life of the Church, at first continued slowly. Soon enough, though, the dissolutions gathered pace. The greater monasteries were dissolved in 1538, together with various popular shrines. The riches from these were appropriated – one might even say stolen – and the buildings themselves met various fates. The one in Ipswich has eventually been destroyed. Ipswich’s statue dated, probably, from just before its ‘discovery’ in 1327, purportedly under a floor in the shrine. In any case, there was a public destruction of images in London by burning and most historians until the twentieth century (and indeed, some very eminent ones to this day) took this as the point at which the statues of every well-known Marian shrine in England were burnt.

Several images do, though, survive in museums and churches. In England, the most well-known example is a depiction of Our Lady of Walsingham in the V&A known as the Langham Madonna. Our Lady and the English Martyrs’ Church in Cambridge has a medieval statue of Our Lady standing on the Moon that there is a – tenuous and speculative – case to have been venerated at the Shrine of Our Lady of Grace in

Cambridge. In Nettuno, between Rome and Naples, a statue known as Our Lady of Grace is most likely of English origin. Indeed, the town legend has it that the statue arrived in 1550, just after the reign of Edward VI – and a final destruction of the English cult of the saints – had started. If Our Lady of Grace in St Paul’s had survived Henry and Cromwell, it would have perished in the riot that gutted the Cathedral.

Furthermore, the town legend states that the statue arrived when a great storm threw a ship into the cove, and sailors and statue alike were thrown onto the shore. So long as the sailors kept the statue, they could not find a good wind. The statue was

therefore placed in the local church, where it has been venerated ever since as Our Lady of Grace. St Maria Goretti was a local and had a strong devotion to it. There is a Confraternity dedicated to the cult, and reciprocal pilgrimages to Ipswich, where the Parish Priest of St Pancras’ Church has done much to revive the devotion: the church is the ecclesiastically approved shrine of Our Lady of Grace of Ipswich.

By providence, the statue in Nettuno was removed during the Second World War, when the Battle of Anzio raged around it. Ornamental slippers of silver which adorned the statue were lost at this point, and we therefore cannot tell whether the statue was venerated in England in the Late Middle Ages, but a Middle English description was found during examinations in the 1950s stating ‘Thou Art Gracious’ and there is an abnormally high amount of saltwater content. It is more likely than not, therefore, that – somehow – the fourteenth century statue of Our lady of Grace from Ipswich, although now much altered, is, in fact, the same statue as Our Lady of Grace at Nettuno!

Dungeon, fire, and sword were evaded to save certain Marian images – and, more importantly, the Catholic Faith in England. Whilst the statue of Our Lady of Grace is the object of much local devotion at Nettuno, let us pray that one day it will travel back to England…and that if it does, the English Catholics will restrain the temptation to keep it there!

O Lady of Ipswich, who, in that ancient place, was first honoured with the title of Our Lady of Grace, grant, we beg thee, that we, thy children, who approach thee with humble and contrite hearts, may rejoice in obtaining, through thee, those favours for which we now ask. Thou who didst give to the world the incarnate Son of God that we might be redeemed from the sin of Adam, and from our own sins also, be for us a Second Eve and Mother of all who live according to the order of grace. Look not upon our unworthiness, but in thy tenderness hear only our cries to thee, that, pleading for us with thy Son, thou mayest obtain for us His mercy and the fruit of His Divine grace. Amen.

Dignare me laudare te, Virgo sacrata.

Da mihi virtutem contra hostes tuos.

Our  Lady of Grace of Nettuno, replica by Stuflesser. A similar replica from the same studio is now in the Shrine at Ipswich.