Last summer, in a packed church on a small island in Brittany, the local mayor presented an Englishman with the Medal of Groix, its name taken from the aforementioned island. The recipient was Christopher Edwards, an antiquarian bookseller who also happens to be my father.
He had done what various nationalities have urged the British Museum to do for generations: namely, return a stolen religious artefact. The religious artefact returned in this instance was the Parish Missal, used by the priest to say Mass and upon which he was dependent, and stolen in 1696.
The theft of the missal occurred at the end of a rather complicated war, in which an alliance of armies, including the Dutch, the Holy Roman Empire and the English, took on the French, with conflicts spanning from the Americas to India. The Nine Years’ War (1688 to 1697) has been described as the first-ever world war, but this particular event in question feels about as local as an international conflict could be: the English taking things from their most dear enemies.
The missal was seized during the pillage of Groix by the English Navy and was then given by Captain Henry Phillips to the Rev. William Philps, chaplain of a ship in the same fleet. The good reverend then donated it to King Edward VI School in Southampton, where it had led a solitary life until 2022.
The school decided to sell the book, and it ended up in an auction in Sussex. My father comments: “After I had bought it, I became aware of the history of the island from which it had been taken, and having originally thought I might sell it, I thought it would be more satisfying to give it back to the place from which it should have never been removed.”
For the islanders, it certainly was satisfying, with roughly a tenth of the island population attending the Saturday evening mass during which it was returned. Fr Jean-Pierre Penhouët, who celebrated the 50th anniversary of his ordination in 2023, and visiting priest Fr Claude Philippe SJ (Jesuits of Versailles), were delighted to receive the missal and very moved by the gesture. The mass was followed by a performance of traditional Breton music, a drinks reception, a meal, and much amity.
Between them, the plunderers and King Edward’s school – both of whom presumably had little use for the Propers of the Tridentine Mass – have unwittingly preserved the missal as something of a time capsule for the good people of Groix. I am reliably told by a priest friend, who keeps his church in impeccable order, that the lifespan of a parish missal is in the region of 40 years.
Leaving aside the French Revolution (which destroyed fourteen of the island’s seventeen churches), the usual array of accidents that can be expected and liturgical reforms; the church would have exhausted this missal a long time ago, had it not been preserved. The ironic, or perhaps providential, truth is that its theft meant its survival. Indeed, the school even took the extra expense of rebinding the missal to keep it in good order.
There is a great lesson here. As Christians, we should view ourselves as having a corporate personality or identity with those before and with those after us. What is a loss to one generation may be a gift to another. We do not, as a Church, live in isolation from those who go after us, rather we are reliant on their prayers to push us through St Peter’s gates, and they are reliant on us to hand on the Faith, both in teaching and in substance.
My father, with the help of plunderers and the school, has given a great relic to Groix. With God’s grace, it will connect those living there now with their forefathers and be a welcome gift to their ecclesiastical children.
Photo: This aerial photograph shows Ile de Groix – Groix Island – off the French coast near Lorient. (Photo by DAMIEN MEYER / AFP) (Photo by DAMIEN MEYER/AFP via Getty Images.)
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