This colourful document is a petition to Pope Julius II dating from around 1511. It was sent from John Penny, Bishop of Carlisle, John Lowther and several other members of significant local families during the early years of the reign of Henry VIII. England was still a Catholic country at this time - this document was produced just a few short years before the Reformation and the split with Rome which saw Henry declare himself as head of the English Church. It is written in ecclesiastical Latin and a translation is at the bottom of this page.
The petitioners ask for a number of exceptions to be made to the strict religious rules by which everyone was supposed to abide, including the eating of meat and dairy products during Lent which was a traditional period of fasting and restraint. This is still present today, to some extent, with people giving up luxuries like chocolate until Easter.
Other requests involve being able to worship in the privacy of their own homes with a confessor of their choice. At the time, this would have been seen as quite radical as the majority of 'ordinary' people would have attended church at least once a day to hear mass. By celebrating mass somewhere other than the church, the potential for preaching sermons which would not be approved by the Catholic Church was much higher and could not be monitored by the official clergy.
The final request is for more freedom for women to travel and meet other women in nunneries. A small group of ladies of good standing were to be allowed to visit and socialise with the nuns as long as they did not stay overnight. Women in the past have often portrayed by historians as being repressed and sidelined - this document suggests otherwise in the sense that women would be given the freedom to interact with each other without needing to be chaperoned by male companions.
Along the top line, there are three distinct images - on the left, in the letter B, you can see the Pope's coat of arms. The image between the words Beatissime Pater [Blessed Father] represents the story of the face of Jesus miraculously appearing on Saint Veronica's handkerchief after she wiped his brow on the way to his crucifixion. Finally, on the right, the arms of king Henry VIII.
Sir John Lowther (c1487-1553), who is one of the petitioners in this document was Captain of Carlisle Castle, responsible for defending the border with Scotland. He married Lucy Curwen, daughter of another significant Cumbrian family and was appointed Sherrif of Cumberland in 1516. He was involved in stemming civil unrest by both local people and the Scots as part of the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536 and spent much of his life working to keep the peace. In a letter from Sir Thomas Wharton to Henry VIII, Sir John Lowther was described as "a man of good wit, great experience and conduct of matters in these parts. He is something moved with the gout but a man in mine opinion meet to have a charge."
Translation, courtesy of Dr Henry Summerson:
John, Bishop of Carlisle, Sir Edward Ratcliff and his wife Anne, Ralph Senwick, John Herring, priest, Alexander Dawson, clerk, Edward Stephenson, priest, and John Lowther, gentleman, their wives and children, humbly beg for the following.
That each may choose a suitable confessor, either secular or religious, who can once in their lifetimes and at the moment of their deaths absolve them, if they confess with contrite hearts, from excommunications, interdicts and other ecclesiastical censures, from offences against vows, oaths and church orders, from failures to perform fasts, enjoined penances and divine offices, and from sins and crimes concerning which the Apostolic See should properly be consulted. From these last (reserved offences) the offences contained in the [Papal] bull ‘coena domini’ [an annual denunciation of crimes and heresies issued every Holy Thursday] are excepted. The non-reserved offences may be absolved and suitable penance prescribed at any time. [The confessor] able to commute vows, except only of going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago di Compostella, of religion and of chastity, to other works of piety, and to release from vows without prejudice to the rights of others. [And to] grant by apostolic authority plenary remission of all sins and absolution once in their lifetimes and at the moment of their deaths.
That each petitioner, [if] priest, noble or graduate, may have a portable altar, at which he or a suitable priest may in appropriate places, [including] places under interdict when he has not given cause for such a sentence, before dawn and around daybreak, in his own presence and that of his household servants, celebrate mass and other divine offices, and his body can receive ecclesiastical burial without funeral pomp.
And that when the petitioner shall choose to visit devoutly the Stations of the Cross, every day in Lent and on other days, in or two churches, at two or three altars, in those parts where he shall be living at the time, then he may obtain all the indulgences and remissions of sins which he would obtain if he were every day to visit the church in and outside the holy city, in which Christ’s faithful are wont to visit such stations.
That every Lent, and at other prohibited times, they can without scruple eat eggs, butter, cheese and other milk products, and meat, on the advice of each one’s doctor.
And that each woman, with three or four honest women, may four times a year with the permission of their superiors enter the nunnery of any order, and also that of St. Clare, to eat and converse with the nuns but may not stay the night.
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