Archives

“Archives” may be thought of as a depository for our history. We return to them to regather our past, where we have been, who has preceded us, how things were done. “Archive” and “archeology” share the same root: “arche” – origin, source. Yet, if “archive” pertains to sources, we should not then see “the archive” as a musty old room containing decaying items that we may occasionally dust off to satisfy a nostalgic curiosity. We should see them as a point of origin, a font encapsulating some of our vital energy. Our archives are not simply collection and reconstruction, then, but a path to self-understanding. They point to who and what we are, and hint at how our self-understanding and even our present-day practices have been shaped. We sometimes live, unawares, with the tangible “archival” evidence of our forebears. We still see in our tabernacle and the tapestry behind it the visible reminder of the inspirations of Effie Fortune and Esther Puccinelli. We hear in the call to prayer of monastic bell, King David, the generosity of Dom Aelred Wall. These individuals have played distinctive roles in informing our community, even now.

One piece of our archival roots “hidden in plain view,” omnipresent in our literature – indeed, on every page of our website – is the monastic coat of arms. It is an intriguing source of information about the community, as its purpose is precisely to capture in images the fundamental character of the place. It is a summary of our mission, abbreviated into densely packed images. It’s encrypted symbols visually portray where we are from and the beliefs for which we stand. While a coat of arms may elicit medieval times, ours was in fact developed in the 20^th century. Its designer, Dom Wilfrid Bayne, O.S.B., was a member of our community who honed his heraldic skills while a monk here, becoming a world-renowned expert by the time of his death in 1974.

Dom Luke Childs'57 (left) and Dom William Wilfrid Bayne

Amidst this extraordinary resume we find understated reference to his heraldry. Father Wilfrid said that he took up “professionally” the designing of coats of arms in 1941. From the portrait of him painted above, it would seem to have suited his temperament, skills, and background. “Being of an old and notable American family of colonial descent, connected through marriages with some of the South's most aristocratic families, Father Wilfrid began to delve into genealogy and heraldry for his own satisfaction. His art training enabled him to draw the coats of arms of the families whose genealogy he traced. His professional standards as an historian compelled him to search out justification and proofs for the arms claimed by families in which he was interested” (Hagerty and Hazelton; Bayne monograph*).

The development of Bayne’s interest beyond avocation to “professional” interest was assisted by his study with the noted heraldic authority, Harvard’s Pierre La Rose. If one wonders that our School’s coat of arms recalls that of Harvard, this may be due not only to our earlier close relationship with that university, in our faculty and in our college admissions results. But it also surely stems from Dom Wilfrid’s close relationship with La Rose, his famous mentor and the designer of the very coat of arms of Harvard. The student, some have argued, surpassed his illustrious master: “Maurice Lavanoux of Liturgical Arts Magazine suggested to a talented Benedictine monk that he take up ecclesiastical heraldry professionally. He agreed and has been at it ever since… That monk was Dom William Wilfrid Bayne, O.S.B., and the intent behind Mr. Lavanoux’s suggestion was that Father Wilfrid Bayne might fill the gap in ecclesiastical art caused by the death of the late Pierre La Rose, the truly gifted and instructed authority on American Church armory. Father Wilfrid has added importantly to American Church and lay heraldry, and far out-stripped, both in armorial painting and antiquarian knowledge, the Authority whose shoes it was hoped he might fill.” (Hagerty and Hazelton; see also Harvard Crimson article on La Rose).

Bayne himself describes in this way the process of creating a coat of arms: “The devising of a coat of arms is an interesting creative experience, and requires, besides knowledge of the laws of heraldry. skill in draftsmanship, and a developed sense of design, imagination, resourcefulness, and even a sense of humour. The necessarily tactful struggle with the person for whom the arms are being designed is largely concerned with keeping the device simple. This involves the necessity of talking the client out of many of the cherished ideas he desires to see embodied. The designer sighs with relief when the matter is left entirely to his discretion. In many cases a pleasing device can be arrived at by using some symbol connected with the prospective bearer's patron, or name-saint combined with an object, or objects, suggesting the place of origin, or, in the case of an institution, the location.”
 

Bayne's coat of arms for The Abbey of Saint Gregory, Portsmouth, RI

Bayne summarizes in a kind of shorthand this monastery’s coat of arms in this way:

Parted per chevron sable and argent, two lions rampant affrontée counterchanged supporting in chief a roundel argent charged with a cross throughout or. These arms are a variation of those attributed to St. Gregory the Great. (OSB Website)

Let us parse out this densely packed summary.

“Parted per chevron” tells us that the design is divided by a V-shape. Those of us whose primary knowledge of “chevron” is from filling up the gas tank may not realize the name’s heraldic roots. It is the V-shaped line, which may be inverted, as in the Portsmouth crest (also as in the petroleum company’s logo). Ancient Sparta was known for its use of the Lambda insignia on its shields, from its Greek name, Lacedaemonia. Heraldry makes much use of the chevron, either as a simple dividing line or as a bar or set of bars.

Here, the chevron divided the coloration of “sable and argent” – black and silver – two common tinctures in heraldry. Here the division of tincture refers to the “background” color of the coat of arms, while the lions are “counterchanged” which expresses their opposing change in tincture, here from white (argent) in the upper body to black (sable) in the legs.

That the two lions are rampant, from the French (as is much terminology in heraldry), rampand, meaning “rearing,” which tells us they stand on their hind legs; affrontée” or full-facing, means they are facing each other, rather than the observer (which would be written “affronty”). Two rampant lions affrontée may be a familiar image to those with just a tangential experience of heraldry. Indeed, the lion is one of the most common animals with which coats of arms are charged.

Roundel, also spelled “roundle”, is a common circular design in heraldry, particularly the “roundle d’argent.” Argent: of the tincture silver – which may be represented as white in painting, as silver tarnishes. The roundel is said to be “charged” with a cross: a “charge” in heraldry is any visible emblem or device, typically appearing on the shield or escutcheon of the coat of arms. Here the roundel serves in a sense as a shield within the shield, bearing its own charge: the cross. The cross is “throughout or” meaning completely, solidly of the color gold. This makes for a striking focus on the shield, as the cross alone is of gold, the rest of the shield’s tincture the more stark and simple “sable and argent.”

What are we to make of these symbols? Some interpretations come to mind that bear out our identity and mission. Surely the cross medallion of gold, presenting a kind of “meta-shield” within the coat of arms, enhances and centers on the Christian mission of the monastery and the faith in Christ, “gold tested by fire,” which marks its central inspiration. Its brilliance seems to find its context against the more stark sable, which echoes the monastic black in its understated simplicity. Wilfrid remarks that the arms are in some way attributed to Gregory the Great. While we do not have evidence of Gregory the Great himself nor pope’s earlier than the eleventh century bearing what we now consider a papal coat of arms, this traditional association to the monastery’s foundational patron saint also elicits our monastery’s identity and flows from its English Benedictine roots.

Photo of the monastic community of the late 1940’s
(standing: Doms Julian Stead, Peter Sidler, and David Hurst; seated: Doms John Hugh Diman and Wilfrid Bayne)

In the fall of 2003, an exhibition of “Fr. Wilfrid’s Shields” in the School’s Saint Thomas More Library was created by Fr. Damian Kearney, together with librarian Roberta Stevens, who noted, “…Father Wilfrid has designed arms for cardinals, bishops, abbots and priests, for dioceses and parishes, as well as for monasteries, schools, associations and other Church institutions. He has painted arms, most generously, for friends, and has accepted commissions from others for paintings of personal arms. He has devised badges and insignia for lay organizations and was commissioned to do the armorial artwork in connection with the making of a reproduction of the Newport (Rhode Island} Artillery Company flag of 1775.” (Library collections). One episcopal design of note the imprint of Bayne was that of our own Bishop Ansgar Nelson’s coat of arms.

Arms of Bishop Ansgar Nelson, O.S.B. (design Wilfrid Bayne)

Dom Wilfrid began his endeavors with Saint Benet’s dormitory on campus, his shields resonating with its Neo-Gothic to produce an ambience some later linked to Harry Potter. Eventually, a long list of Benedictine monasteries and schools came to owe their coats of arms to Bayne and his handiwork. His work was also seen on the Pell Bridge in Newport, Fr. Damian Kearney noted in our oblate newsletter: “Especially noteworthy were his designs for the four shields gracing the Pell Bridge in Newport. These stem from the arms of the Corte Real of Portugal and the navigator who discovered Narragansett Bay, Giovanni de Verezano of Florence, and then was pioneer of New York harbor” (April, 2016). In addition to our own crest, our confreres from Saint Louis find it in their own design (see images).

We present below a small selection of some of his monastic beneficiaries.