Month: June 2014

So this week our seminar has focused in part on the relationship that the living had with the dead in medieval communities. For lots of reasons, those who had died maintained a much stronger presence-in-absence then they do today. The doctrine of Purgatory certainly contributed to this, as Christians believed that their dear departed had a third option beyond heaven and hell, and that prayers on earth could help souls leave Purgatory more quickly. But death was also much more common in the Middle Ages, as was the experience of watching someone die. I also learned this week the exact function of a charnel house this week. Since all medieval Christians wanted to be buried in consecrated ground (i.e., within the churchyard), grave sites were “recycled” fairly regularly (as often as every five years). Bodies, often buried simply in a grave shroud, were dug up, and the bones were removed to the charnel house for the final stages of decomposition. It was important to keep the bones together, because it was frequently assumed that any un-decomposed remains would be required for bodily resurrection. The presence of charnel houses would have been another reminder to communities about the ultimate end all humans would meet.

Medieval culture also developed literary and artistic tendencies that we today call macabre. There were lots of images of corpses in varying states of decay, which would say to the living things like “As I am now, so will you be. As you are now, so was I once.” Sometimes tomb effigies depicted the body in decay, including worms and other vermin eating at the flesh. (Gross, I know!) We consider this all to be in bad taste, but in the Middle Ages, such memento mori (reminder of death) were part of preparing oneself for a good death. By reflecting on the fate of all human beings, you could help yourself focus on eternal realities. In spite of some of our assumptions about the Middle Ages, during these times, Christians had a robust belief in the resurrection of the body and the hope of the life to come. Corpses were almost always buried facing east, waiting and ready for Christ’s return.

Medieval communities had several ways of remembering their dead. One was chantry chapels, which I mentioned briefly last week. Wealthy individuals could pay to have masses said for their souls, and to have candles lit for them, sometimes only once a year, sometimes daily. The extremely wealthy could found a chantry chapel, which was either a space in a parish church or cathedral that was separated off, or an entirely separate building, and then employ a priest who would say masses daily. On Wednesday we visited Wakefield to see one of the four remaining “bridge chapels” in England. Chantry chapels and tombs were often placed where many people might see them, in hopes that these passersby might say a prayer for the souls of those who erected them. It was even better if, as in the case of Wakefield, the family endowing the chapel also paid for a public service (like a bridge!). Hopefully a safe passage across the river would encourage travellers to say prayers for those of provided the service.

Medieval cathedrals were primo real estate when it came to chantry chapels and burial sights. The walls of the nave in the York Minster would literally have been lined with chantries, which, in this case, would have been comprised mainly of an altar were each priest could say mass. If you added them all up, the cathedral would have had tens of masses said in each day, as each chantry priest went about his liturgy, in addition to the services provided by the clergy actually running the Minster. There was apparently some concern that priests saying mass on the margins of a church space would steal the show from the priest at the main altar. In Holy Trinity Goodramgate, a squint (basically just a hole) was installed in the wall so that the chantry chapel priest could see to the high altar and avoid this conflict. (This chantry is also a good example of a rather large chantry in a parish church.) Chantry chapels were sometimes, but not always, used as burial sites. In the second image below, from the minster, the archbishop was buried in the tomb, and then the altar would have been up above. The final image is of an ornate “stone cage” chapel in Ely. There are two of these chantries at the far east end of the cathedral, built by two archbishops in the later Middle Ages. The term “stone cage” just about says it all. They are completely covered in stonework, all four walls and the ceiling, and, beyond the altar, there is hardly any room inside.

 

 

 

So on Sunday I attended an “evangelical Anglican” church, St Michael le Belfrey. It is the parish church right next to the Minster, and it has a lively and committed congregation. The building dates to the Middle Ages, but the style of worship and preaching was solidly evangelical. If I didn’t know that the congregation belonged to the Church of England, I wouldn’t have guessed it from the service. I was curious in attending, because I wondered whether the service would blend elements from a more typically Anglican liturgy with contemporary praise and worship. Not so. The service didn’t use any elements from the Book of Common Prayer or Common Worship (the Church of England’s updated BCP); in fact, communion wasn’t even celebrated. The worship was led by a band, all the songs were contemporary, and the lyrics were projected up on a screen that blocked half of the nineteenth-century reredos. The priest wore a collar, but his sermon was exegetical and conversational, he used powerpoint, and there was a very well-done video that accompanied the “giving Sunday” theme. (It’s a universal principle that if you are just visiting a church, you will attend on a Sunday that is really meant primarily for the congregation.)

In fact, the church, for those of you who are Bloomington evangelicals, reminded me very much of Exodus Church. There was a time of thanksgiving when congregants were encouraged to simultaneously speak out loud their prayers of gratitude to the Lord. The giving Sunday focus was also the culmination of an entire campaign to raise a chunk of money, much of which went back out into the community through non-profits that were not officially part of the church. The congregation clearly desired to be generous with their money, and to support other organizations in York and Yorkshire that are doing good work. The church, as you can see from their website, is clearly missional.

It was odd for me to be worshiping in a centuries-old building, which belongs to a centuries-old church tradition, and yet to be involved in a service that bears the hallmarks of so many recent developments in Protestant spirituality. What felt to me like a juxtaposition ended up causing me to reflect on both the disjuncitons and contiguities between medieval and modern evangelical spirituality. (And even as I wrote that last sentence, I recognize that I am reducing “medieval spirituality” to one thing, when in fact medieval forms of devotion and practice did vary radically across time and place.) So, for example, we sang a song, new to me, “Ready for You.” Here are some of the lyrics:

Here we are, standing on the edge of something new.

Lead us on, further than we’ve ever been before.

We are living for the glory of the Lord

Hearts open wide, we’re ready for you.

Evangelicals tend to like “new” things. New churches, new ministries, new books, new readings of Scripture. (It’s a tendency we surely share with humanities scholars, who are equally enamored with new paradigms. I say this as both an evangelical and a humanities scholar.) In broad strokes, both the Middle Ages and the contemporary Catholic church can often be dismissed as tending merely to “conserve” tradition, which means, in spiritual terms, missing out on the “new” things God is doing. But this is a matter of perspective. God has, after all, been about the same thing from the beginning of time. The church doesn’t do anything today that it hasn’t also done for all of its two-thousand-year history. We are living for the glory of the Lord, yes, but when have we, the church, not been? Standing in St Michael le Belfrey, looking at the layers of history inscribed in the building, I struck me as odd to be so keen on “something new.”

But then I started thinking about the monks who left St Mary’s Abbey (also in York) in 1132, and founded Fountains Abbey. Those who left found the adherence to the Benedictine Rule at St Mary’s to be lax, and they desired a more rigorous form of religious life. Although they wanted to “return” to an older form of communal devotion, I wonder if they wouldn’t have experienced their exile from St Mary’s as an obedience to some “new” work that God was doing. When Fountains was founded, it joined the Cistercian order, a monastic order that was itself begun in order to reform the Benedictine order. In their reform, however, it is arguable that the Cistercians went beyond the Rule of St Benedict in their austerity. Would the earliest Cistercians thought they were following some new work of the Lord, even as they perceived that new work to be a return to something older? Patty is probably better equipped to answer questions about the confluence of newness and tradition in the Middle Ages, since her book on “the medieval new” is coming out with Penn very soon. But I was pondering the odd mixture of old and new in Christian devotion while singing praise choruses in a medieval church on Sunday morning.

In another, entirely random, observation: one of the greatest differences between modern church architecture and of any other time period is the place assigned for children. Up until very recently, children did not have a separate space carved out for them in the church. I can’t speak to other periods, but in the Middle Ages, children, if they came to church, would just mill around in the nave with everyone else. (Pews are a very late-medieval invention, and even then not every church had them.) I’ve noticed while visiting parish churches that today they all include a space for children in the back of the sanctuary, with toys and other age-appropriate activities. At St Michael le Belfrey, some of the children left the main sanctuary during the sermon, but we could occasionally still hear the sound of their activities drifting up, and there were a number of infants in the service. It’s an entirely different model of the church community. I won’t lie–I’m a big fan of our children’s wing at ECC, with its many classrooms and caring teachers, ready to welcome kids with age-appropriate activities. But there is also something lovely about a church that really only has one room–the whole congregation, regardless of age, sharing the same space and listening to one another.

On a final note–I’m grateful to the St Michael le Belfrey folks for introducing me to this song. I’ll admit to liking the metaphor!

 

I’ve been in a lot of Anglican (Church of England) churches lately. I’ve been going to daily prayer in the Minster whenever I can, and whenever I pass a space in a cathedral or parish church reserved for prayer and reflection, I  pray for William. I’ve also started, when I have the opportunity, lighting candles, which the churches typically provide. This is a new practice for me–I’ve been too Protestant in the past to consider adopting it. The act of lighting the candle while praying seemed to assume that the physical action did something “more” than the prayers themselves, which was an idea I rejected. In the Middle Ages, when wealthy people died, they often arranged for candles to be lit for them, either regularly (every day or every week), or on the anniversary of their death. And religious guilds often maintained “rolls of the dead,” with the names of dead community members written in a book; the names were then read aloud on All Souls and the community prayed that these individuals would be sped out of Purgatory and into eternal bliss. As the concern with having candles lit suggests, however, the idea seems to have been that the action itself was efficacious. (I haven’t read about these practices for a while–I’ll probably be able to tell you more later this week!) So I’ve tended to shy away from lighting candles while I pray.

But I’ve found myself drawn to lighting candles lately. The action is obviously symbolically rich–light in the darkness, hope for those who need it, the candle seems to do physically what we often try to do with our prayers. We are piercing some darkness (our own or someone else’s), or we are expressing our joy and gratitude, all of which seem to befit candle lighting. But I also find that I like lighting a candle when I pray because, when you walk away from the church, your candle is still burning. As I’ve prayed for William, and also for some dear friends of ours, I find that I am focusing in the moment of prayer a love, care, and concern that I am carrying with me constantly. And since “prayer without ceasing” doesn’t mean that I could, even if I wanted, constantly speak to God on their behalf, the candle both enacts and represents my prayers for these loved ones.

When I say “enacts and represents,” I mean both that the candle is a symbol of what I think I am already doing in the act of pausing and spending a few minutes praying in a specific and focused way. And as a symbolic action, it is rich and meaningful. But I also mean that the physical action enhances my own prayers. A prayer doesn’t get “value added” because I lit a candle; I don’t mean that. But the candle spurs me to focus my own prayers, reminds me to continue praying when I leave, and comforts me that my ongoing concern for these loved ones is heard by God, just as the candle is seen by God, after I have left my focused moments of directed prayer.

I was writing to Corey about all of this, and about how lovely it is to pray in the Minster, and he wrote jokingly “maybe Minster candles and prayers get like express-mailed, extra-special consideration?” Minster prayers might not get extra-special consideration, but in a space like the Minster, my act of prayer seems extra special. Praying in such a magnificent space, with a deep and enduring history of Christian faithfulness (and unfaithfulness) causes me to take care with my own requests. I become aware of God’s splendor, but the candle trees outside of chapels remind me of his invitation to “make all my wants and wishes known.” And in a place where my attention is (literally) drawn heavenward, I find myself wanting to pray. The Minster is, in a word, sacred space. And by praying there, I bring into that space with me those I love, I am reminded of how much I do care for them, and I focus on giving these cares to God. The traditional explanation of lighting a candle is that it indicates an intention to pray. But I think that, for me, lighting a candles has been part of the praying itself.

So, my dearest little William, and my very dear friends (you know who you are), I have left candles burning for you. You are in my prayers.

If I can get up to it later, some more thoughts on attending an evangelical Anglican church…

A very long day! Whew. I took a trip with several women from the seminar to Norwich and Ely today. It was going to be a long trip, but when we found out last night that the cathedral in Norwich closed at noon today because they were installing their new dean (and their first-ever female dean), we decided to take a 6:01 am train out of York. Yikes!

I very much wanted to go to Norwich because it is Julian’s home (Julian of Norwich, the subject of one of my dissertation chapters). The cathedral is amazing–it shows a mixture of both romanesque and gothic styles. The columns and arches are Romanesque, but the ceiling is a crazy gothic vault–to busy for my taste. The cloisters were unfortunately closed, because apparently Dame Judy Dench was filming a movie scene inside. No sign of her–just lots of equipment.

There is an amazing modern sculpture of Julian on one side of the west portal (the other sculpture is of St Benedict, because the cathedral was originally a monastic church, associated with a Benedictine house). I love this sculpture because it makes Julian look so very human. There is also a great stained glass window depiction of her with a cat in the chapel in the apse. (According to one of the English guides for anchoresses, these women were allowed to own a cat, but no other animals.) Other highlights of the cathedral included two fourteenth-century reredos, which is the piece of furniture (typically painted or carved) that stood behind the main altar). Especially interesting (take note, Shannon!), was the one which pictured five scenes from the life of Christ, but then around the edges featured small miniatures of the wounds of Christ (the arma christi) and the instruments of his torture, or other items, such as a chalice, meant to represent his last days before the crucifixion.

We visited a few parish churches in Norwich as well. Like York, Norwich had its share of  churches–32 still standing today, but there were even more in the Middle Ages. They are obviously not all in use as houses of worship, but the city seems to have done a better job than most in re-purposing the buildings. We ate lunch in one church that is now a cafe and Christian book store. Another church had been turned into an antique store, with all the clutter and junk that one would expect, but the splendid fourteenth-century wall painting of St George was a little too antiquated to blend in. We also went to St Peter Mancroft, which has a splendid medieval east window. One of our group members had a slip of tongue while we were finding our way around, and called it ‘St Peter Mancave.’ Parishes in medieval Norwich appear to have been quite wealthy; all these churches were all large for parish buildings. We ended with a visit to…St Julian’s! The building isn’t medieval at all; it was bombed in WW2 and the structure that stands is a reconstruction. But you can still get a sense of the size of Julian’s cell, the size of the church (quite small), and the church’s location near the river.

We then took a train to Ely, to see the city’s magnificent cathedral. It was amazing! (I know, I say that every time, but this one really is something else.) Like many of the churches we’ve seen, it is also a romanesque/gothic hybrid. In the first picture, you can actually see the transition from rounded romanesque arches to pointed gothic ones. The next two shots are facing the west portal. You’ll notice the rounded tower on the right, which was part of the earlier romanesque building. You can see an exposed buttress on the left, which is where they had to shore the building after the north tower collapsed in, I think, the fifteenth century. It was never rebuilt.

 

The inside is so spectacular in part because the Victorian inhabitants of the city replaced all the stained glass (so it’s at least a consistent scheme) and painted the ceilings. The pillars are decidedly romanesque (i.e., they are HUGE), but the colonettes (the smaller columns clustered around the pillar) are set out from the pillar a few inches, to give a sense of lighter construction. The arches are also extremely textured (contrast them with the arches in Norwich), which makes them appear more vertical and feel less heavy.

 

The crossing, the bit at the center of the cross-shaped cathedral, is an octagon, which is cool. Someone also brilliantly decided not to put the organ on top of choir screen, which is what happens in many cathedrals, and the instrument then blocks a view of the entire length of the building. But in Ely, they have engineered a way to have it on the side of the choir, which leaves the view from the altar all the way down to the west portal completely open. We were also able to attend evensong in Ely. They had a beautiful choir (the people, not the space), made up of boys and men, and today the church was celebrating the feast of St Aetheldreda. Aetheldreda is a Anglo-Saxon queen who took hoy orders and founded the monastery at Ely, which eventually turned into the cathedral. The bishop during his prayers singled out the role that women have played in the church, and prayed for continued blessing on female clergy.

We ended with dinner at a pub on the river. Ely is on the Great Ouse river, which is part of the Norfolk and Suffolk broads, the wetlands that I mentioned a couple of days ago. The river was full of “house barges,” some of which you can apparently rent and boat around the rivers and lakes for a week. I think this sounds like a fabulous vacation! During the Middle Ages, the city was surrounded by fens, which were only effectively drained in the eighteenth-century with the help of (who else) Dutch engineers.

 

Another long day! Today we drove quite a ways down to East Anglia, the bit of England that sticks out into the North Sea and contains Norwich. It was a much longer trip than our organizers had planned, due in part to construction, in part to the fact that having eighteen people in a bus requires more time, and in part due to British regulations about how often drivers have to have breaks (who would have thought?). We had to cut one church from our slate of three, but we still saw two fabulous parish churches that preserve some spectacular medieval art. I also feel that fourteen hours (ten of which was in a bus) has truly bonded our seminar participants together. These churches, like the ones we visited yesterday, are truly out in Britain’s boon docks, down narrow roads and in the middle of very small communities. The pride (and the wealth) of the medieval congregants is obvious in how lavish these buildings would have been in the Middle Ages.

Both churches we visited today are particularly noted for their preserved rood screens. A rood screen (really a giant structure made out of wood) divided the nave (where the laity hung out) from the chancel (where the clergy were). It was often difficult for the laity to see what was going on in the chancel, so the rood screen became a major focus of their devotion. Rood screens contained depictions of the saints, and the rood loft (the top part of the screen) contained a crucifix typically flanked by statues of the Virgin Mary and St John. Because the nave was the responsibility of the congregation, and the rood screen was the thing they stared at, the screens that remain often show signs of a great deal of care and investment.

Church #1: St Helena’s, Ranworth. The remarkable rood screen contains images of the twelve apostles along the bottom row, deacon (Stephen and Laurence) on the sides, “military” figures (St George and the Archangel Michael) on the sides, female saints including the Virgin on the side of the Lady chapel, and then John the baptist and other local saints (Aetheldreda, Thomas a Beckett) on the final side. Lots of pics today, because I enjoyed these images so much. These images really reflect the life of the community–the depiction of the Virgin is a Maria lactans, a depiction of Mary nursing, while Mary Cleophas is depicted with the four apostles she was thought to have born (James, Joseph, Simon, and Jude) in very lively positions. St Barbara was the patron saint of childbirth, while St Margaret was thought to protect against sudden death (or to provide for you if you did die suddenly). These pictures contain a great deal of detail, including in the depiction of the saints’ clothing. Victorian arts and crafts folks such as William Morris actually designed fabric patterns off of medieval images such as these.

Also very fun at Ranworth: we climbed the tower and had a spectacular view of the Norfolk “broads,”  a giant wetlands area made up of a series of rivers and lakes that ultimately runs to the sea. The Ranworth church ladies have a lovely tea and coffee shop, which serves wonderful scones and pretty awful coffee. But the coffee was warm, and Ranworth had a chilly breeze coming in off the sea, so I didn’t complain.

Church #2: Cawston. Another lovely medieval rood screen. The four Latin doctors (Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory) are depicted on the door. Even more impressive, however, are the wonderful wood ceilings in this church, which contain a great deal of sculpture, including a number of green men. The ceilings in the transepts are painted, which is undoubtedly a more modern update, but reflects what these spaces would have looked like in the Middle Ages.

Cawston had a number of other delights. Another thirteenth-century poor box, and a thirteenth-century trunk which would have been used to store parish records and other church valuables, such as the liturgical vessels. They also have a piscina in the chancel–a very small drain which leftover communion wine would be dumped. And a squint, which was not for an anchorhold, but for a small room of the chancel that was used by lepers.

 

 

I’m rather tired tonight, and we have an early morning tomorrow, so a brief post tonight!

Today we visited three parish churches in Yorkshire to look at wall paintings. Apparently Britain is really not that different from the Midwest, because we got substantially delayed on our way to the first church by road construction, and also got a little bit lost in the country trying to find our way back from the construction. Getting lost in the country here is a more difficult challenge, when one is in a large van on narrow roads, but our driver (a professor of prehistoric history at York) did a valiant job.

Churches, both cathedrals and parish churches, would have been covered in paintings in the Middle Ages, making them appear very different to us today than they would have to medieval Christians. These paintings have almost entirely disappeared, some due to the Reformers, who plastered over them, and some undoubtedly to the ravages of time. When a great deal of church restoration/renovation took place in the nineteenth century, some of these paintings were uncovered, but the early efforts to preserve them (coating them with wax, for example) actually made things worse. So the few paintings we have left are precious.

Church #1: Wensley (yes, home of Wensleydale cheese!). Only a few fragments remain on the wall and on the pillars. Also on a pillar, the shape of a christening cross, which was used in the dedication of the church. More interesting to me, however, were the thirteenth-century poor box (check out the awesome lock), and the fifteenth-century figures carved on the ends of pews. The church in Wensley is no longer used by a congregation, and it is a bit empty and run down. It is sad to be in a church that has survived for at least seven hundred years and now sits empty.

 

Church #2: Pickering. This lovely parish church contains an active congregation, and the vicar met us upon our arrival. The congregation’s care for the church is obvious–they even had a small collection of books for sale, which included a couple of IVP titles! The spandels of the arcades (the bits of wall which stretch between and above the arches) have some magnificent wall paintings, including large depictions of St George killing the dragon, and St Christopher carrying the Christ child across the river, and a “comic-strip” depiction of St Catherine of Alexandria. The story of these paintings, however, is somewhat convoluted–they are not quite as medieval as they appear! They were uncovered in the 1850s when the church was undergoing restoration. The vicar at the time was quite opposed to images in churches, and despite consulting his bishop and receiving instructions to preserve the paintings, the faces of the images were defaced. Then in the 1870s, another zealous antiquarian had the images “touched up.” You can see this in particular in the detail of the St Edmund panel (the guy with all the arrows sticking out of him!). The archer to his left has a decided pre-Raphaelite face, not medieval at all! Still, based on 1850s drawings, we can see that the basic color scheme and the figures are right.

Church #3: Rillington. Very small bit of wall painting remains. I really don’t know how art historians can identify narratives from these bits of image, but these are depictions from the life of St John of Beverley, a local saint.

 

 

 

First of all, many apologies to all those who have an email sitting in my inbox. I am atrociously behind, and I hope to catch up by the end of this week. Today was a “free” day, but instead of using it to advance our research agendas, three other seminarians and myself headed out into the Yorkshire countryside to visit monastic ruins. There are a lot of monastic ruins in England because, of course, Henry VIII left the Catholic Church and enacted the “dissolution of the monasteries,” which shifted all the wealth and property from monastic houses to the crown and moved  monks and nuns from their lives of communal devotion into the world. Julia, Greg, and Steve took their lives into their hands and allowed me to drive them around Yorkshire visiting Fountains Abbey, Mt Grace Priory, and Rievaulx Abbey. Despite extremely narrow roads, driving on the left side, and lots of sheep, we made it safely, with only one minor mishap.

Fountains Abbey: founded in 1132 by monks who had left St Mary’s, in York, due to a fight of some kind or another. Cistercians had a habit of moving out into the wilderness to get away from it all and focus properly on their devotion. However, Cistercians houses also maintained an ideal of being “independent”–the community should support itself–and they had a track record of receiving generous gifts from wealthy patrons. The combination led to monasteries that became economic centers. Fountains is huge–the original parcel of land was 70 acres, but the monastery maintained “granges” (smaller portions of land) all across north Yorkshire. The Wikipedia page contains even more great pictures, but a selection is below. You’ll note first that they were mowing this morning when we visited (it’s a bit off to see a man pushing a mower up and down what used to be the nave of the church).

After stopping for lunch in Ripon (yes, that Ripon, the one where the ladies in Downtown Abbey are always going to shop), we found our way to Mt Grace, a Carthusian priory. Carthusians were a very ascetic order. Each monk actually lived more or less as a hermit, in his own cell. They only left their cells to worship together on Sundays. The layout of Mt Grace is very well preserved in the ruins–you can see where each monk’s cell and private garden were. In addition to praying the seven canonical hours each day, the monks also gardened and may have possibly engaged in other forms of labor. The reconstruction shows what each cell would have looked like–they are actually quite spacious and include a second storey and private fireplace. As Greg said, “by New York city apartment standards, these are luxurious!” You’ll notice the small windows by each door–lay brothers (men affiliated with the hour, but not fully initiated) would bring food around to the monks. The priory also sits on a beautiful piece of land–we were commenting on how quiet and peaceful life in this priory would have been, in contrast with life in or around a cathedral, which were always loud and busy.

We then drove through North Moors national park, dodging sheep, quail, rabbits, and other cars, while stopping to admire the stunning views. It was gorgeous! The road was so narrow, and was dotted with cattle grates, which keep the sheep in their proper fields, and had a number of hairpin turns. But we made it, and arrived at Rievaulx. This is another Cistercian abbey, made famous both for its great wealth, and because St. Aelred was one of its abbots. Rievaulx is currently surrounded by sheep fields (as it probably was in the Middle Ages–English Cistercians were famous for the wool they produced). We got to see lambs running around, and spend the whole visit with a soundtrack of sheep bleating to one another.

 

Steve has graciously posted some of his pictures here, if you have any more desire to look at images of ruins! (Kaley, note that there are a few pictures of people in these galleries!) Two other notes from the day: one, Leah sent me an adorable photo of William today, which warmed my heart. And, two, I bought William a”monastic bear” at the Mt Grace gift shop! It’s a stuffed bear in a brown robe and cowl–obviously a Franciscan, since Carthusians wore white, and Cistercians black and white. But still adorable and appropriate.

 

Parish churches week! So last week our seminar focused on cathedrals and the unique role these churches played in communities. This week we focus on parish churches, which were the religious communities of the laity–these were the places where your average Christian was baptized, worshiped, got married, and was buried. There were 40 parish churches in York in the Middle Ages (yes, you read that right!); 19 survive today. When all 40 were in existence, many of them were just a block or two apart. The “overchurched” nature of York meant that many of the clergy were underpaid, which could be a problem. (You may also remember, dear reader, that the church we visited last week, St Martin-cum-Gregory, was also a parish church.)

All of the parish churches in York that I have seen preserve some signs of the original Anglo-Saxon church (also often called the “pre-Conquest church, referring to churches that were in existence before William the Conqueror invaded in 1066). We don’t know a lot about Anglo-Saxon churches, but  most of them appear to have been fairly simple rectangular structures. The altar was much closer to the congregation, and the priest would have stood behind the altar facing the people when he said the mass. Parish churches grew in piecemeal ways, driven in the Middle Ages by two large developments. The first was the Fourth Lateran Council, which officially established the doctrine of transubstantiation. Along with this theological change, church architecture shifted as well. Parish church altars were required to be placed against a church wall (almost always the east wall), and the priest now faced the altar, with his back to the people, when he said the Mass. As God’s presence came to be located in the elements on the altar, the priest no longer represented God to the people, but rather represented the people to God.

 

The second development had to do with changes in church teachings about the afterlife. As purgatory also became an official doctrine, communities and individuals developed a desire to pray for their dead, in an effort to speed them on their way to heaven. Well-off individuals, in particular, could choose to do a couple of things to make sure that they were remembered in a churches’ prayers and spiritual life. First, they could arrange to be buried in the church. The picture below shows a tombstone with a bronze plaque in All Saints North Street. The more well-off you were, the closer to the chancel, and hence the altar, you could arrange to be buried. You were thus both remembered by your local community, and you were likely to benefit from their prayers and devotion by way of proximity, by way of what one of our guest scholars called “theological physics.”

Wealthy congregants could also found “chantry chapels.” Chantries were places were the Mass was said (or “chanted,” hence the name) for one particular individual or family. The family or individual arranged for the chantry to be built within a parish church, and then paid for a priest to say Mass in that location (in addition to the parish priest, who served all congregants). Some chantry chapels were founded “in perpetuity” (i.e. ‘forever’), while others only remained for a set period of time. Chantry chapels were typically placed in the altars of parish churches, but for the relatively small Anglo-Saxon churches, this was often the motivation for a building expansion.

Today we visited All Saints North Street, All Saints Pavement, and Trinity Goodramgate (because church names like “All Saints” and “Trinity” are so popular, the churches have to be localized to a street or neighborhood). A few notes about each. All Saints North Street is today home to an Anglo-Catholic congregation. They recently renovated their “Lady Chapel” (a chapel devoted to the Virgin Mary). When they excavated the floor, they found remnants of a medieval statue that may have been of Mary. They had a new statue built, and the remnants have been placed to the side of the altar. All Saints also has some marvelous stained glass, including a window that contains text and images from the Prick of Conscience, a very popular didactic Middle English text. Again quoting our guest lecturer: “If the Great East Window in the Minster is a scholarly and theological reflection on all that is, the Prick of Conscience window is the Left Behind Series.” The church also had an anchorhold attached!!

In All Saints Pavement, you can see where the chancel arch was removed during the reformation, in an effort to get rid of the separation between clergy and laity. They also have medieval stained glass from another parish church that was destroyed, a medieval lectern that is somehow preserved, and an awesome medieval door knocker.

 

 

Trinity Goodramgate preserves its nineteenth-century box pews. These must have been great for young children–you could just stick them in and shut the door. The church’s east window also contains one of the few visual images of the Trinity to survive the Reformation. The last photo is of one of our seminar participants reading to us from the pulpit (selections from the Prick of Conscience in Middle English!).

Many apologizes for not posting for several days. The seminar has kept us quite busy, and I did not want to haul my rather heavy laptop up to Durham. So I am just now getting to a post! I have a backlog of pictures and notes about some aspects of cathedral architecture that I will post soon.

Saturday morning I caught an early train up to Durham with several other women from the seminar. We walked from the station up to the cathedral, finding our way through Durham’s charming downtown, and enjoying the stunning view from the train. It was very bittersweet to be in there for the first time without Josh. Upon arrival, we discovered that photography is not allowed in the cathedral without prior arrangements (which means £15 and a clear explanation of why the photography is necessary). But the art historians were persuasive enough about the true necessity of these images for their classroom purposes that we convinced the head steward to let one of us take pictures. We haven’t exchanged the images yet, but will post when I do. Highlights of Durham Cathedral included: Bede’s and Cuthbert’s tombs, finding N.T. Wright’s name on the wall of bishops (dating back to the eleventh century!), walking the cloisters and recognizing Harry Potter scenery, and placing a brick on the lego version of the cathedral that is being built downstairs.

We then walked down from the cathedral, across Prebends bridge, and took pictures of the cathedral from the boathouse. The other ladies headed back up to the city centre then, but I walked up from the boathouse to Durham School, where I met Anne (an old friend of the Kriegers). As I walked up, I could hear the boys on the cricket pitch–I must admit I teared up a bit. It was lovely to be in a place that means to much to Josh. A rapid tour of Durham School (Josh’s school), Durham High (Ashley’s school), and downtown Durham ensued. Anne and I had a lovely lunch overlooking the river, while we watched the regatta teams row by.

Then home to meet Mac and Tosh (two yellow labs), before Anne and Graham took me out to a lovely dinner. I did not stay up for the football match, but if you’re wondering, England lost to Italy. (The English are apparently the least optimistic of the Europeans about their team’s chances at the World Cup.) Sunday morning we visited Crook Hall, which is owned, inhabited, and operated by friends of the Kriegers. It has a thirteenth-century medieval hall, with additions from the Jacobean and Georgian periods. Maggie was able to join us for a quick cup of coffee and a delicious homemade scone before a large from of folks from Wisconsin showed up for lunch and a tour. We finished off the day with tea at Slayley Hall, so that Graham could get a Father’s Day golf in.

 

I caught a 7 pm train back to York, ran to my room, dumped my things, and then raced back to the Minster, for an evening of music put on just for our seminar. A music historian who has worked extensively on medieval music which can be located in York arranged for four singers from the Ebor Singers to perform in several locations throughout the Minster, so we could hear how things would sound in different places. We got to experience music in the nave, both transepts, choir, a small side chapel, and the chapterhouse. How amazing!

I missed Josh and William terribly in Durham, and I wish Joanne could have been there as well. Today I also miss my wonderful dad, who taught me from such a young age to love learning of all different kinds, and my mom, who spent the last week watching William and keeping Josh company so that I could take this wonderful opportunity. For all my loved ones–“The Lord will keep you from all harm—he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore” (Psalm 121). 

Today we got to visit the spectacular Beverley Minster—I think I liked it more than the York Minster. (The appendage of “minster” to a church name just means that it was a “teaching church”—there was a school attached.) Beverley is not, as I understand, a large town, though it is charming, so it’s a bit of a shock to find such a stunning and large church there. The church is so splendid because St John of Beverley, who was educated at Whitby by the Abbess Hild, founded a monastery nearby and is buried in the church, so it became a pilgrimage destination.

The outside of the church is striking because it contains so much statuary. (Most churches in England have very little statuary in or out, because the Protestants, and especially the seventeenth-century Puritans, were so zealous about taking it all down. So all over York Minster, you can see empty niches where statues would have stood.) At Beverley Minster, much of the statuary is new, but the feel of the church is still more medieval. They also had the most charming display of figures and heads, most of which seem to depict vices, on the south aisle—see my first three pictures.

The other super neat part of the church was the fact that we got to tour the towers. Beverley has an amazing tour guide named John, who has a lovely Yorkshire accent. He was christened and married in the minster; his daughter were christened and married there, and his granddaughters were christened there. So he has an investment in the building. At any rate, you have to climb 113 stairs to get up to the towers, and the stair case wraps around 7.5 times before arriving at the top. Here’s a picture of me before heading down! Per Heidi’s suggestion several years ago, I asked someone to come up behind me and leave me plenty of room so I didn’t get claustrophobic.

The climb up was totally worth it. The huge timber cross beams in the first picture were donated by Henry III in, I believe, 1348, to build the south tower. Crazy! You can see in my photo down the tower loft the timber structure, which has been reinforced in the last fifty years.  The other amazing part was the giant hamster wheel! The wheel is the old-fashioned medieval way of raising pieces of the ceiling, such as the giant boss you can see in the next photo. (Bosses are the painted bits at the intersections of vaulting ribs. They don’t look that big from the ground, but as you can see here, they are quite large!) Through the hole in the roof where the boss was, we got to look down on the choir and the organ, and the floor looks 3D. From the tower, we also got to see how folks have, over the years, left graffiti on the window. My picture below isn’t as clear, but you can make out a plane—there’s an RAF base near the church, and the man who last put new glass in the window was working through the second World War.

Speaking of graffiti…here’s some pilgrim graffiti! Pilgrims to the shrine of St John left these marks. There’s a cross and what was clearly meant to be a ship. They left these on the back side of the shrine—John (our tour guide) liked us so much, and was so delighted with our in-depth interest in the church, that he let us on top of the shrine! He said he hasn’t done something like that in fourteen years. The last photo is the one I took from up top.

 

After a long afternoon at the Minster, we headed into Beverley for dinner. We found a local pub that seemed to be the place to meet–everyone from family’s with young children to elderly couples to twenty somethings were eating there. The bartenders both looked to be about 17, and they were rather confused by the amount of detail in our questions about their beer. I had a Sneck Lifter from Jennings Brewery–the bartender told me it was an ESB, but it’s actually a dark strong ale.