St Rumbold’s image at Boxley

3 November · Boxley Abbey, Kent

No longer kept

Boxley Abbey kept a small hollow image of St Rumbold, the infant saint, which a child could lift but which sometimes proved too heavy for strong men to move. Lifting it was made a test of a woman’s chastity. Fuller explained the trick: the image was pinned from behind by a hidden helper, so those who had paid the priest well lifted it with ease.

' The moving hereof,' says Fuller, ' was made the conditions of women's chastity.

From Chambers's Book of Days, vol. 2, p. 541. Read the original

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