Our Lady’s Chapel

It seems that within the Catholic faith, traditions of Mary have gradually, quietly appeared over time. They have grown over centuries, handed down through the faithful. Such doctrines as the Assumption or the Immaculate Conception, defined quite recently, may not be seen in Scripture, yet have been consolidated in the doctrine of the church, nurtured by years of faith and practice. The patronage of Our Lady, Queen of Peace similarly took some time to take root in this monastic community. The patron of origin is St. Gregory the Great, and the precise emergence and evolution of Our Lady’s patronage here is not entirely clear, though it seems to have been promoted by Prior Gregory Borgstedt, particularly after the events of the Second World War. While her patronage had not originally been requested here explicitly, the presence of Our Lady in the devotions of the community has been consistent. And with a quietness not unlike her omnipresence in church doctrine, Mary manifests herself around the monastery and grounds in many ways, her presence defining a number of our “places.” Readers of “The Current” may notice from time to time that articles in our monthly columns often overlap in their themes – past “voices” may fit our “archives”; present “artists” may also speak about their work. In this article, our “places” for Mary are defined in many cases by the artists and their works of art that have come to define each place. For the season of Christmas, it is appropriate to consider the role of Mary and the central mystery of the Incarnation. The “places” we highlight in this article provide ample opportunity for such reflection.

Our Lady’s chapel illuminated for a solemnity

Perhaps the most familiar Marian space to this community is Our Lady’s Chapel, prominently situated opposite the Blessed Sacrament, framing the sanctuary of the Abbey Church. The statue of Mary, a version of Our Lady as Sedes Sapientiae, Seat of Wisdom, carries a noble simplicity, its now grey stone subtly emerging from the grey stone wall behind it. Lingering traces of her original coloration can still be seen, emphasized by the natural late afternoon light. One finds in this space devotional candles that are frequently lit, and the chapel becomes the focus of a monthly First Saturday rosary led by Abbot Matthew Stark. The eight candles that frame the image are illuminated for Marian feasts and various solemnities.

Adoration during Advent (2024)

Ade Bethune’s banner of Our Lady with the Child Jesus transforms the entire focus the Abbey church during the seasons of Advent and Christmas. Appropriate to these seasons of the Joyful Mysteries, the visual presence of Mary with her Son expands to define the sanctuary. Bethune designed and fabricated the tapestry for the space, offering it to the monastery in the 1980’s, and it soon came to grace the sanctuary at the beginning of each new liturgical year. Ade Bethune is known for her woodcuts that have enhanced the pages of “The Catholic Worker.” Her friendship with Dorothy Day is well known, and she became a leader of the Catholic Worker’s cell based in nearby Newport, Rhode Island. Ade was herself an oblate of this monastery, and is buried in the monastic cemetery.

St. Thomas More Library, main hall

The School’s library also comes under the gaze of Mary, through the dominant presence of a painting of Mary and the Child Jesus, a replica of a work of Murillo, a 17th century Spanish painter. Situated high on the front wall of the library, the painting provides that space with a distinctively Marian presence. For years, Fr. Gregory Havill taught a course to the senior class on Sacred Art, which included a trip to the library to view this painting. He comments that the artist, Bartolome-Esteban Murillo, was a prolific painter, and that this Madonna and Child was one of his best. Models for his paintings included his “beautiful young wife, Beatriz, and their first child, a daughter, Maria.” The painting in our library is a full-size exact museum replica, “probably purchased in Spain by a wealthy traveler as a keepsake memento.” Aspiring young artists would be paid by museums to replicate paintings in the museum collections. Fr. Gregory calls them “very expensive predecessors to the postcard!”

The Murillo in the More Library

Vecchietta’s Madonna and Child

One of the impressive structures on the grounds is Saint Benet’s Dormitory, whose patron is St. Benedict, using his shortened “nickname” of Saint Benet. The dorm was one of the earlier projects undertaken in the development of the monastery’s school, complete in 1930. In discussing this monastery’s roots in the English Benedictine Congregation, Fr. Damian Kearney spoke of the project’s connection to the community’s early prior, Wulstan Knowles, who had come to America from Fort Augustus Abbey in Scotland. For three years (1926-1929), Knowles served as Prior of the Portsmouth community, “crucial years,” Fr. Damian notes, in which Prior Knowles was “dealing tirelessly with the problems of transforming a gentleman’s country estate into a workable monastery and school.” The vision for the School architecturally soon began to center on the Neo-Gothic style, leading to the construction of Saint Benet’s, designed by the architectural firm of Maginnis and Walsh of Boston – though it is the only building achieved in the vision of a complete Neo-Gothic church and monastery. St. Benet’s still lends its distinctive Gothic grace to the grounds, which maintain a remarkable coherence despite the architectural variations that have arisen in the history of planning and constructing new buildings. Opposite the dorm’s most used entrance, situated within the corridor that might have served as part of a cloister of the unrealized neo-Gothic complex considered in the 1920’s, one finds an understated “Marian space.” It holds a 15th century, marble bas relief of the Madonna and Infant Jesus, the work of Lorenzo di Pietro, known as Vecchietta (1410-1480). This Renaissance artist was of the Sienese School, and is known as a painter, sculptor, goldsmith, and architect. The bas relief was a gift of Mr. and Mrs. Horace Flanigan to the monastery in the 1940’s, and soon found its permanent home in the St. Benet’s cloister.

St. Benet’s “Cloister” Entrance

Della Robbia Madonna

The room connecting the monastery to the Stillman Dining Hall has provided a much utilized reception and dining room, often used by the monastic community to host special dinners and events. The linenfold paneling along one its principal wall provides the space with its warm ambience, as well as with one of its designations - the “Linenfold” Room. At one end of the room is located a Della Robbia relief of Mary with the Infant Jesus. Particularly when it is illuminated, the work produces in that space a reflective sense of Mary. Dom Wilfrid Bayne wrote in the 1943 Portsmouth Raven the following note: “Della Robbia Madonna: A valuable work of religious art has been presented to the Priory by a benefactor who prefers to remain for the present anonymous. The work in question is a representation of the Virgin and Child from the work shop of the famous Florentine artists Luca and Andrea della Robbia. Luca (1400 to 1482) was the elder, and the uncle of Andrea (1435 to 1525). After the death of these two the fame of this family of artists was kept up in Florence and Rome by a second Luca (1475 to 1550), a son of Andrea. The genuineness of the piece which has been presented to the Priory is vouched for by the expert opinion of the late Professor Marquand of Princeton, the greatest authority on the Della Robbias in this country. Professor Marquand was of the opinion that the work in question is from the hands either of Luca the elder or his nephew Andrea. A reproduction of it appears in one of the Professor’s books on subject.”

The Linenfold Room prepared for a Sunday dinner

The Lourdes Grotto at Portsmouth

The most recent addition to our Marian places on the grounds is the Lourdes Grotto, a gift of Hugh J. Markey ’50. The late Mr. Markey had long been a supporter of the School and its participation with Ampleforth College in England in the Ampleforth Lourdes Pilgrimage. The School still sends to this pilgrimage each July, according to Mr. Markey’s vision, a group of students joined by a member of the monastic community and a lay faculty chaperone. Here on campus, there had been much discussion of how to effectively create and where to situate such a grotto. In a video produced by Jamie MacGuire ’70 that reveals the vision and execution of the grotto, Br. Joseph Byron comments that the community, “had been thinking about doing this for quite a long time.” Some members remained “…reticent to put something like this on the campus,” wanting to ensure its fit with the aesthetics of the grounds. The decision was made by Abbot Caedmon Holmes, fulfilling the long-standing hope of Mr. Markey, to place this shrine on the lower campus, accessible and visible, yet also discreet and well-integrated into the grounds. Br. Joseph, a veteran of numerous pilgrimages to Lourdes, oversaw the construction of the grotto. After researching various of the many renditions of the Lourdes Grotto, he discovered a concept using “large rough stones,” which not only seemed to fit the geographical features of Portsmouth, but also allowed for readily available material to be drawn from the land nearby. One immediate difficulty was that the location selected was on a downhill slope, and thus needed to be built up to render the grotto appropriately visible, modeled on the grotto at Lourdes which is in fact set into a cliff face. The challenging scope of the project, planned to be 16-18’ tall, began to unveil itself to the DaPonte Landscaping company that took on the project until its completion. The crew found itself moving and placing multi-ton stones, including those overhanging the cave-like space producing the grotto effect. Br. Joseph notes that the final product clearly succeeded in the aims of integration into the campus, visibility and use in a frequently accessed entrance, and the spiritual sensibility that continues to draw many of the faithful to pray there. In a future article dedicated exclusively to the grotto, we hope to provide more detail on this important place of Our Lady on the grounds.

The Grotto under construction (DaPonte Landscaping)