Thursday, August 21, 2008

A Pleasant Evening

Having heard Mass and made my Communion on the way home, I made some dinner (finishing off the last of the shiraz-viognier in the sauce and in a glass) and lit the fire, then settled back to read, with some tokay...  Michael got home after that, and ate the rest of the pasta; we had a beer...  I read some bits out of my book, Dom Ernest Graf's Anscar Vonier: Abbot of Buckfast...  James came home... the fire was dying, and it struck 11pm, by the time Stephen returned.  So, having finished reading over the memoir of Dom Anscar, I'm off to bed.

Unfortunately, Graf didn't provide the sought-for bibliography of Vonier's œuvre, so I will have to do some hunting about in libraries sometime soon.

Last but not least, a lordly benefactor has sent me a wonderful gift, which arrived to-day:

Augustus Welby Pugin, The Present State of Ecclesiastical Architecture in England and Some Remarks Relative to Ecclesiastical Architecture and Decoration, Leominster: Gracewing, 2004 (1st published 1843 and 1850 respectively);

Augustus Welby Pugin, A Treatise on Chancel Screens and Rood Lofts: Their Antiquity, Use and Symbolic Signification, Leominster: Gracewing, 2005 (1st published 1851).

(Tasmania, my home State, has a rich Pugin heritage, in surviving vestments, sacred vessels, and extant churches built to his designs - two with rood screens still intact! - owing to his friendship with the first Bishop of Hobart Town.)

Retribuere, dignare, Domine, omnibus nobis bona facientibus, proper Nomen tuum, vitam æternam.  Amen.

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