George Herbert, † this day in 1663.

Today the Church of England lectionary commemorates George Herbert, poet and priest (and Welshman) with a lesser festival. The collect of the day is rather good, and was clearly written by a Herbert fan:

King of glory, king of peace,
who called your servant George Herbert
from the pursuit of worldly honours
to be a priest in the temple of his God and king:
grant us also the grace to offer ourselves
with singleness of heart in humble obedience to your service;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Amen

Though it's a shame there are no gratuitous references to "The Collar", so I shall post it here instead (under the cut for the sake of your flists)

( Two well-known Herbert Poems, and one obscurer )

I think I'd had too much coffee when I wrote this...

It's odd, going back over notes you've made a while ago, especially when they were evidently made in a snarky mood. The context is Peter Dinzelbacher, who is a bit... inclined to get touchy about people casting aspersions on the authenticity of visionary texts, though he's a good textual scholar, discussing Agnes Blannbekin and the visions about Christ's foreskin (which, as regular readers of this journal may remember, she held was in heaven rather than in a church somewhere being venerated, as was confirmed by a vision in which she repeatedly felt it in her mouth and swallowed it, experiencing great 'sweetness', and that for this reason the first edition of her revelations, published in the early eighteenth century, were condemned by the Jesuits).

"Begins by discussing the circumstances of the first publication of the revelations by Pez in 1731 The foreskin controversy:
Mary told Brigitta of Sweden [no ref to location in text] that she gave S John the foreskin of Christ to look after [an interesting conversation that must have been!] and that he then buried it [sensible man] only for it to be dug up by certain persons after an angel led them to it [and I can’t imagine what the angel thought of that particular errand, other than ‘humans are weird and God’s ways are pretty damn mysterious’]. Brigitta's vision confirm validity of cult, whereas AB's visions attack it - this is the source of the problem for SJ subsequently, not the reasons moderns think it's icky.
232 in a footnote PD (4) says it can’t be erotic because the same description is given to her feelings on communicating – and the foreskin is part of the body of Christ, therefore not sexual but rather Eucharistic. [I’m not a friend of Freudian interpretations, but I’m still not sure that logic holds up] [Sometimes a foreskin is just a cigar?]"

I hasten to add that the notes get more sensible subsequently