HAVING the top of St Thomas More head deteriorating in a vault just isn’t adequate for the multitudes worldwide who venerate him. This is the conclusion of the PCC of St Dunstan’s, Canterbury, in a press release read out to congregations last week on the 490th anniversary of the saint’s death.
With the quincentenary in mind, and subject to receiving all the appropriate permissions, the PCC has agreed to exhume and conserve the relic, which can take several years to dry out and stabilise. The parish is now canvassing opinion on the relic’s future.
The head was retrieved by More’s daughter, Margaret Roper, after his execution on the Tower of London, and placed within the Roper family’s vault at St Dunstan’s. It is the one remaining definable relic, and visitors and pilgrims come usually to venerate it.
Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) was King Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor from 1529 until 1532. He opposed each the annulment of the King’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon and the Act of Supremacy. Found guilty of treason, he was executed in July 1535. Pope Pius XI canonised More as a martyr in 1935 and set 22 June as his feast. In Common Worship, he and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, have a joint commemoration as “Reformation Martyrs”, on 6 July. There is a statue of More outside Chelsea Old Church in London, near his former home.
“Whether we admire Thomas More or not — he’s here, he’s staying here and we want to contemplate our ecumenical responsibility,” a churchwarden, Sue Palmer, said. “He isn’t just ours.
“For conservation purposes, we all know the skull may be very fragmentary. There’s not quite a bit there that’s definable. We would really like to explore properly conserving it. Afterwards, it could just return into the vault, or we are able to have something tangible above ground, a reliquary in some kind of shrine or carved stone pillar within the Roper Chapel, perhaps, which is what lots of our visitors have requested.”
The vault was last opened in 1997, within the living memory of some present members of the congregation. Financial help for the project could be sought from More devotees, pilgrims, and students worldwide, the parish said. The initial stages of opening and shutting, exhumation, and preservation, are estimated to cost about £50,000.
The many pilgrims to St Dunstan’s, which is open each day, include organised groups, individuals, and folks walking the North Downs Way. The Augustine Camino also runs through Canterbury. “We’re here for everybody, pilgrim, visitor, Christian and non-Christian alike, now and all the time,” the PCC statement says. “We must ask God to indicate us the larger picture.”
