- Adam Easton
Adam Easton (13?? -
15 September ,1397 ) was an EnglishRoman Catholic Cardinal, born at Easton inNorfolk .He joined the
Benedictine s atNorwich moving on to the BenedictineGloucester College, Oxford where he became one of the most outstanding students of his generation. He is known to have accompaniedSimon Langham toRome , then Montefiascone and Avignon and he held the post of socius in Langham's household. Being a man of learning and ability, he obtained a post in theCuria .He was instrumental in the attack and subsequent condemnation of
John Wycliff and supporting Catholicorthodoxy in England. He was made a Cardinal byUrban VI , probably in December, 1381. On7 March , 1381 or 1382, he was nominatedDean of York . In 1385 he was imprisoned by Urban on a charge of conspiring with five other cardinals against the pope and was deprived of his cardinalate and deanery. The next pope,Boniface IX , restored his cardinalate18 December , and granted him the honorary title ofCardinal Priest of S. Cecilia in 1389. It has been suggested that for a time Easton returned to England, however there is no evidence for this suggestion. In fact had he done so he would almost certainly have been imprisoned by Richard II with whom he was disputing the rights to a number of benefices in England. It is true that he retained benefices in England throughout this period, including Somersham, the deanery of York and a prebend inSalisbury Cathedral , which he subsequently exchanged for the living ofHeygham in Norfolk.He wrote many works the most significant of which was a massive volume entitled the Defence of Ecclesiastical Power, supporting the position of the Catholic Church and damning Wyclif's theology as false and erroneous. This and a number of his other works still exist, as do some of the manuscripts of his library, which were shipped back to Norwich from Rome in six barrels, and he composed the
Office for the Visitation of Our Lady . He effected the canonization ofBirgitta of Sweden in 1391 with a structured attack on a Perugian detractor, a document in which he defended women's visionary writings.He may have been
Julian of Norwich 's spiritual director, editing her Long Text "Showing of Love" in the same way that Birgitta of Sweden's spiritual director,Alfonso of Jaen , edited her "Revelationes", and became director toCatherine of Siena , whose confessor and executor wasWilliam Flete , the Cambridge-educated Augustinian Hermit of Lecceto, and toChiara Gambacorta . Easton's Defense of St Birgitta echoes Alfonso of Jaen's Epistola Solitarii, and William Flete's Remedies against Temptations, all of which appear in Julian's text.He died at Rome,
15 September (according to others,20 October ) 1397.----External links
* [http://www.adameaston.info/topics Website on Adam Easton]
* [http://www.umilta.net/anchor.html Essay on Julian of Norwich and Adam Easton]
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