der spread rapidly. Its growth was increased as the charity and piety of its members was observed; they very often followed Her directive to give themselves up to voluntary slavery when necessary, to aid the good work. It was to return thanks to God and the Blessed Virgin that a feast day was instituted and observed on September 24th, first in this Order of Our Lady, then everywhere in Spain and France. It was finally extended to the entire Church by Innocent XII.
The revival of the Catholic Faith in England in the 19th century saw the establishment of various feasts and traditions, in the conscious desire to restore and revive things that had been lost.
One such feast day was that of Our Lady of Ransom. This ancient medieval title was restored to Mary, and a Guild of Our Lady of Ransom was established, with the idea of praying for the full conversion of England and Wales to the Catholic Faith. The Guild still exists today. Its principal object is to raise funds to enable poor rural parishes -- in districts where few Catholics live -- to survive.
There are some areas of England where Catholicism is very much a minority religion -- Cornwall being one example. Some of these are holiday districts, where Mass attendance rises during the summer because of visitors coming to enjoy the seaside. But the regular work of the parish for most of the year is sustained by grants from the Guild.
Throughout my childhood and teenage years, I remember that this notion of Our Lady "ransoming" England and restoring our country to its true Catholic heritage was something that was mentioned by devout enthusiasts. It became a bit unfashionable in that chaotic period following the Second Vatican Council, but it never really died.
But it was only in the 1990s, when I began researching old feasts and traditions in some detail, that I discovered the origins of Our Lady of Ransom. And I found that the title was in fact of greater significance than I had thought -- and has a curious resonance for the Britain of today, in ways unimaginable in my childhood.
Our Lady of Ransom is a tradition originating in the 13th century, when Islamic forces were strong on the seas around Europe. These Barbary pirates, based in North Africa, made raids on the coasts of Spain and Italy -- and even, as recent research has shown, as far afield as Britain and Ireland -- and took off numbers of the local people as captives. Entire coastal villages would be burned to the ground, and terrified people dragged off to the ships, before help could be summoned.
The legend of being "captured by Saracens" became embedded in Christian folklore and tradition, and with good reason. Once taken away to a distant land, small boys who had been removed from their parents could be transformed into Muslim warriors, and girls into suitable subjects for a harem.
New religious orders were formed to meet the crisis. The Trinitarians were dedicated to helping imprisoned Christians in Islamic countries, and their preachers would travel from parish to parish -- much as visiting speakers from Catholic organizations or pro-life groups do today -- talking about the plight of those imprisoned and begging for funds to secure their release. This order had its own churches in England -- there is a magnificent one at Hickling, in Norfolk, and local legend says that the ghost of a Saracen warrior haunts the village at night. (Some versions of the story say that he was drowned in Hickling Broad, the stretch of water that is today a popular place for boating and fishing, and that he rises from the water on moonlit nights and walks to the church.)
The Trinitarians still flourish as a religious order today -- they run several parishes in the United States and have a range of work in different parts of Africa. Like other orders, they recognize their heritage and pay tribute to their founder (St. John de Matha), but they are busy with their current work, and their origins in the late 12th century, and great work in the 13th, are not widely known today.
And then there were the Mercedarians, another order that sti