Something About Mary
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-Luke 1:38a
8 of 25 Days of Christmas
100x Macro 60/100
Today is The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. I would like to say, thank you to Mother Mary for saying YES! :) May we all be so faithful and trusting to let go and let God take us where we need.
An angel interrupts the Virgin at prayer, telling her she will soon die and be re-united with her son in heaven. Bor often chose such unusual subjects for his inventive paintings. To make the scene compelling, without robbing it of its miraculous quality, he sets the earthly next to the prosaic. The impoverished prie-dieu and books project into our space, connecting the viewer to the artwork. The figures are not idealized, and Bor conveys their subtle interaction sensitively: the angel reassures and the Virgin is at peace.
Today is Mothers Day in Ireland and the UK. Timely to post this image of St. Anne, Mother of Mary. It's from Belmullet, Co. Mayo. (by George S. Walsh)
St Anne is one of the Patron Saints of Mothers. She is also the Patron Saint of parents, pregnant women, children, unmarried people, teachers, carpenters, child care providers, seamstresses, lace-makers, secondhand-clothes dealers, equestrians, stable-men, miners, lost things, loving homes, poverty and sterility.
Photographiée à deux reprises ( sur trois visites ) Photo trouvée qu'une fois sur le net ! Vu le nombre de Hoodoos se trouvant dans Bryce Canyon National Park, serait elle passée inaperçue ? J'en doute fort !
D'après diapositive. Localisation ???
The Basilica of St. Lawrence, completed in 1905 is of a distinctive Catalan style with the tallest freestanding elliptical dome in North America. Asheville is a city and Asheville is a city in and the county seat of Buncombe County, North Carolina located at the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers, it is the most populous city in Western North Carolina. Print size 13x19 inches.
Night-Time at Carfin Grotto, Scotland. A replica of Michelangelo’s masterpiece “Madonna della Pieta”. I see true feminine bravery depicted in the sculpture. A mother must hand her child over to the world regardless of how inhospitable and dangerous it may be. For a Mother to give up Her children to society and allow them the freedom to discover heartache, pain and suffering for themselves without interference, is true feminine bravery. Mary gave her son to the world knowing full well He would suffer more than any other human before and after. He in turn gave us, the world, His Mother, as a gift from Heaven to help us carry our crosses up the hill and to strengthen Our resolve & Our faith while we face our deepest fears.
An angel interrupts the Virgin at prayer, telling her she will soon die and be re-united with her son in heaven. Bor often chose such unusual subjects for his inventive paintings. To make the scene compelling, without robbing it of its miraculous quality, he sets the earthly next to the prosaic. The impoverished prie-dieu and books project into our space, connecting the viewer to the artwork. The figures are not idealized, and Bor conveys their subtle interaction sensitively: the angel reassures and the Virgin is at peace.
This is a closer shot fresco or mural on a cave-wall of Virgin Mary enthroned, for whom archangels Michael and Gabriel show respect, as she holds Christ Child in her arms. The fresco lies outside and to the East of the sanctuary of a Virgin Mary’s very old church, nested within a cave 164 ft (50 m) above ground, on a lofty rock formation. The church dates back to 1328 or 1362 A.D., when it was part of an abbey (monastery). It is located 4½ miles (7 km) to the North of the village Vlachava near Meteora, Greece, at a position called Palaeócastro (Greek for Old Castle). Steps were carved out of the rock in 1937.
The name of the church is “Virgin Mary In A Cave” (Panaghía ē Spēlaeōtissa) or “Virgin Mary at Mēkanē” (Παναγία ἡ Σπηλαιώτισσα ἢ τῆς Μήκανης), but the locals simply call it Palaeopanayiá (Palaeopanaghiá, Παλαιοπαναγιά). Palaeopanayiá is dependent on St. Stephen’s monastery (Meteora).
Meteora is the name of the group comprising many impressive and lofty rock formations: The height of the sandstone megaliths ranges between 1,000-2,067 ft (300-630 m). The rock masses which were formed 60 million years ago are geologically unique and listed in UNESCO world heritage sites.
This is a fresco or mural on a cave-wall of Virgin Mary enthroned, for whom archangels Michael and Gabriel show respect, as she holds Christ Child in her arms. The fresco lies outside and to the East of the sanctuary of a Virgin Mary’s very old church, nested within a cave 164 ft (50 m) above ground, on a lofty rock formation. The church dates back to 1328 or 1362 A.D., when it was part of an abbey (monastery). It is located 4½ miles (7 km) to the North of the village Vlachava near Meteora, Greece, at a position called Palaeócastro (Greek for Old Castle). Steps were carved out of the rock in 1937.
The name of the church is “Virgin Mary In A Cave” (Panaghía hē Spēlaeōtissa) or “Virgin Mary at Mēkanē” (Παναγία ἡ Σπηλαιώτισσα ἢ τῆς Μήκανης), but the locals simply call it Palaeopanayiá (Palaeopanaghiá, Παλαιοπαναγιά). Palaeopanayiá is dependent on St. Stephen’s monastery (Meteora).
Meteora is the name of the group comprising many impressive and lofty rock formations: The height of the sandstone megaliths ranges between 1,000-2,067 ft (300-630 m). The rock masses which were formed 60 million years ago are geologically unique and listed in UNESCO world heritage sites.
Marian Exhibit in celebration of the 90th Anniversary of the Apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima [1917-2007]
Parish of Our Lady of Fatima
Philamlife Village, Pamplona Dos, Las Piñas City
September 29 - October 07, 2007
Photographiée à deux reprises ( sur trois visites ) Photo trouvée qu'une fois sur le net ! Vu le nombre de Hoodoos se trouvant dans Bryce Canyon National Park, serait elle passée inaperçue ? J'en doute fort !
D'après diapositive. Localisation ???
An angel interrupts the Virgin at prayer, telling her she will soon die and be re-united with her son in heaven. Bor often chose such unusual subjects for his inventive paintings. To make the scene compelling, without robbing it of its miraculous quality, he sets the earthly next to the prosaic. The impoverished prie-dieu and books project into our space, connecting the viewer to the artwork. The figures are not idealized, and Bor conveys their subtle interaction sensitively: the angel reassures and the Virgin is at peace.
"virgin birth"
n. 1: birth from a virgin 2 often cap V&B: the theological doctrine that Jesus was miraculously begotten of God and born of a virgin mother
ABOVE is from "Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary" (1981 Edition)
Featured Artists today are:
www.flickr.com/photos/8942106@N06/2838208424/
www.flickr.com/photos/stephenbwhatley/2838625401/in/pool-...
www.flickr.com/photos/princepsautemjustus/2837682400/
EXPLORE # 308, # 401on Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Texture 59 from Anna Lenabem www.flickr.com/photos/lenabem-anna/5034586566/in/set-7215...
PeterJ© (off and on) on Flickeflu
PLEASE , do not comment with GROUP INVITATIONS or GLITTER IMAGES !
Marian Exhibit in celebration of the 90th Anniversary of the Apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima [1917-2007]
Parish of Our Lady of Fatima
Philamlife Village, Pamplona Dos, Las Piñas City
September 29 - October 07, 2007
Miguel Sanchez, the author of the 1648 tract Imagen de la Virgen María, described the Virgin of Guadalupe's image as the Woman of the Apocalypse from the New Testament's Revelation 12:1: "arrayed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars."
Mateo de la Cruz, writing twelve years after Sánchez, argued that "the Guadalupe possessed all the iconographical attributes of Mary in her Immaculate Conception".
This statue of Our Lady Immaculate is in the Jesuit church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm Street in London, and today (12 December) is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Mater Dolorosa (Sorrowing Virgin), 1480/1500 (detail)
Workshop of Dieric Bouts
Art Institute of Chicago
During the period of transition between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the great Netherlandish painters worked with traditional forms to create more human and emotional images for personal religious devotion. Paired images of the mourning Virgin and Christ crowned with thorns, made in the workshop of Dieric Bouts, were an especially successful formulation, judging from the many extant versions. Set against a gold background signifying a timeless, heavenly realm, the Virgin was both an embodiment of compassion and an intercessor for humankind with Christ. No autograph example of this pair by Bouts survives; this exceptionally fine painting of the Virgin was probably made by his son, Dieric Bouts the Younger, who carried on the activity of the workshop after his father’s death. (Museum Description)
Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
©2015 Patrick J Bayens
"Carmelites see in the Virgin Mary, Mother of God and archetype of the Church, the perfect image of all that they want and hope to be. For this reason, Carmelites have always thought of Mary as the Patron of the Order, its Mother and Splendour; she is constantly before their eyes and in their hearts as "the Virgin Most Pure." Looking to her, and living in spiritual intimacy with her, we learn to stand before God, and with one another, as the Lord's brothers. Mary lives among us, as mother and sister, attentive to our needs; along with us she waits and hopes, suffers and rejoices. The scapular is a sign of Mary's permanent and constant motherly love for Carmelite brothers and sisters. By their devotion to the scapular, faithful to a tradition in the Order, especially since the 16th century, Carmelites express the loving closeness of Mary to the people of God; it is a sign of consecration to Mary, a means of uniting the faithful to the Order, and an effective and popular means of evangelisation."
- from the Carmelite Constitutions, 1995.
Today, 16 July, is the feast of the patroness of the Carmelite Order, and this statue of the Virgin of Mount Carmel appearing to St Simon Stock, a 13th-century English Carmelite friar is in the church of the reformed (discalced) Carmelites in Salamanca.
To the west of Lourdes, beyond the river Gave, is an old rock promontory, jutting up from the ground. This rock was known locally as the 'Big Rock', or Massabielle as it is called in the local patois.
Here, Our Lady appeared to St Bernadette and a statue marks the spot where she appeared 18 times in 1858.
Candles burn perpetually at this spot as a sign of prayer.
During my visit to Limerick I used a number of different lenses. In this instance I used a Sony A7RM2 body with a Zeiss Batis 25mm Lens which I really like.
St Mary's Cathedral, Limerick, also known as Limerick Cathedral, is a cathedral of the Church of Ireland in Limerick, Ireland which is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is in the ecclesiastical province of Dublin. Previously the cathedral of the Diocese of Limerick, it is now one of three cathedrals in the United Dioceses of Limerick and Killaloe.
Today the cathedral is still used for its original purpose as a place of worship and prayer for the people of Limerick. It is open to the public every day from 8:30 am to 5:30 pm. Following the retirement of the Very Rev'd Maurice Sir on June 24, 2012, Bishop Trevor Williams announced the appointment of the Rev'd Sandra Ann Pragnell as Dean of Limerick and Rector of Limerick City Parish. She is the first female dean of the cathedral and rector of the Limerick parish. The cathedral grounds holds a United Nations Memorial Plaque with the names of all the Irish men who died while serving in the United Nations Peacekeepers.
The Magnificat antiphon for 17 December: "O Wisdom, who came from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from end to end and ordering all things mightily and sweetly: come, and teach us the way of prudence."
This painting of Christ, the eternal Word proceeding from the Father into Our Lady's womb at the Annunciation is in the Capitoline Museum in Rome.
My sermon for today can be read here.
St Mary, Kelvedon, Essex
Edith Webster as the Blessed Virgin at the Annunciation by Louis Davis for Powell and Sons, 1898.
The angel Gabriel from heaven came,
his wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flame;
"All hail," said he, "thou lowly maiden Mary,
most highly favored lady," Gloria!
"For know a blessed Mother thou shalt be,
all generations laud and honor thee,
thy Son shall be Emmanuel, by seers foretold,
most highly favored lady," Gloria!
Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head,
"To me be as it pleaseth God," she said,
"my soul shall laud and magnify his holy Name."
Most highly favored lady, Gloria!
Of her, Emmanuel, the Christ, was born
in Bethlehem, all on a Christmas morn,
and Christian folk throughout the world will ever say--
"Most highly favored lady," Gloria!
- 17th Century Basque carol, translated by Sabine Baring-Gould.
Louis Davis was one of the finest stained glass artists of the Arts & Crafts movement. He was born in 1860 in Abingdon in Oxfordshire, and studied under Christopher Whall. He worked alongside Mary Lowndes in the Glass House, London.
In the summer of 1892 when he was in his early thirties, Davis was on a walking holiday in the Norfolk Broads. It was a hot day, and he knocked on a farmhouse door to ask for a drink of water. The door was answered by the farmer's daughter. Her name was Edith Webster. She was 15 years old, and Davis fell in love with her.
Edith was born in Honing, Norfolk in March 1877. Her father was a farmer with a particular interest in new techniques and developments. He would have found the friendship of a London artist like Davis fascinating. Davis took the young Ethel to be his pupil, and perhaps his lover, and later they lived as man and wife. But there there is no record that they ever actually married. The suggestion in Davis's biography of a date in the mid-1890s cannot be substantiated. At the time of the 1911 census, Davis would claim that he and Edith had been married for ten years, but there is no record for 1900/01 either.
It was not just love. Edith was his muse. The sketches he did of her as a young girl in the early 1890s would provide the figures for his windows for the next thirty years. Again and again the young Edith appears as Faith, Hope, Charity, various angels and above all as the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Adoration.
There were no children, and it is possible that their relationship was never sexually consummated. At the time of the 1911 census Edith's younger sister, the 19 year old Ethel, was also living in the household as a companion.
In 1915, Louis and Edith were poisoned by coal gas leaking from a faulty fire. She recovered, but he didn't. He suffered a stroke, and, confined to a wheelchair, he had to give instructions to his assistants to create his wonderful windows, many still depicting the young Edith as he had drawn her a quarter of a century before. His worsening health meant that his output became less and less, but he lived to the age of 81 and died in 1941. Edith survived him and also lived on into her eighties, dying in the 1960s.
Sabine Baring-Gould was a clergyman, squire, novelist, hymn-writer, social reformer, antiquarian, folklorist and folk song collector. He was born in 1834 on the family estate at Lew Trenchard in Devon. He spent much of his childhood on the Grand Tour, and consequently could speak five languages fluently, as well as Latin and Ancient Greek. From an early age he was fascinated by the past. At the age of 15 he unearthed the floor of a Roman villa in south-western France, and excavated it himself.
But his father was obsessed with the Great Exhibition of 1851, and thoroughly disapproved of the young Sabine's desire to read Classics. Instead, he made him study mathematics, but as Sabine would observe in later life, "I cannot add two numbers together, and when there is a bill to be accounted I must take it into the kitchens for one of the maids to account it." His father eventually relented, although they never really spoke to one another again, and after studying Classics at Cambridge University Sabine Baring-Gould took Holy Orders.
During this period of estrangement from his father, Sabine Baring-Gould worked in a High Anglican church in the London Docks, where the work of the priests among the desperately poor dregs of society showed him his vocation. He became a curate of a poor industrial parish in Yorkshire, and there, at the age of 30, he fell in love with Grace Taylor, the 16 year old daughter of a millhand. Both families disapproved of the relationship, but Baring-Gould's wise vicar arranged for Grace to be sent to learn middle-class manners for two years before marriage, and in the event theirs was a long and happy marriage, lasting half a century and producing fifteen children.
To support himself and his young wife, Baring-Gould began to write novels, which were an instant success. He was inspired by the gothic horrors of the works of Emily Bronte and William Wilkie Collins, although it must be said he was never as good at building up tension as they were. In 1871 he became vicar of East Mersea on Mersea Island in Essex, where he transformed both the parish church and the lives of the poor fishermen. It was on Mersea Island that he wrote his most successful novel, Mehalah, referred to at the time as 'the Wuthering Heights of the Essex salt marshes'.
In 1872 his father died and he inherited the Lew Trenchard estate, but it was not until 1881 that Baring-Gould moved his family down to Devon. This was because he waited until the living of Lew Trenchard church became vacant, and he then installed himself as both Squire and Rector. He spent the next 42 years in Lew Trenchard, working on his threefold project - to nurture the parish into a community based on Christian social justice, to rebuild the houses of the Lew Trenchard estate workers so they were fit to live in, and to restore Lew Trenchard church to the medieval integrity destroyed by his uncle when Rector 40 years previously.
He continued to write and travel widely, becoming interested in antiquarian aspects of Devon and Cornwall. He collected hundreds of folksongs from the Devon farmworkers and fishermen, a precious record of an oral tradition now lost to us, but donated in its entirety by Baring-Gould to Plymouth city library where it can still be explored today. He wrote hymns, most famously Onward Christian Soldiers and Now the Day is Over. The estate was never well off and he relied on income from his books to pursue his projects. At one time, there were more books by Baring-Gould on the British Library catalogue than by any other living author. Meanwhile, Grace managed the household magnificently.
In 1916, during the First World War, Baring-Gould's daughter Mary heard a sermon in London which attacked Onward Christian Soldiers on the grounds that the Church of God, far from being a mighty army, was nothing but an undisciplined rabble. Unsurprisingly perhaps, when she wrote to him about it he agreed with the preacher.
The hymn was in the Methodist Hymn Book by the end of the 19th Century, and in another letter to Mary in 1916 he told her that some char-a-bancs from Bude, packed with Methodies (Methodists) and their minister are arriving this morning to see the church, grounds and house. I hope they will not depart singing 'We are not divided, all One Body We' for it would be a lie.
The story that when the Bishop of Exeter had objected to the line With the Cross of Jesus Going on Before because it suggested ritualism, Baring-Gould had sarcastically offered to substitute it with With the Cross of Jesus left behind the door, turns out to have been made up by Baring-Gould's son. But there is no doubt that the Bishop did object to the hymn. Baring-Gould was scornful of him, partly because the Bishop fancied himself as a hymn writer, and his verses were excrutiating and thankfully long-forgotten today.
Baring-Gould was an old-style paternalistic reformer, and he never really recovered from the First World War, which killed several of his grandsons and devastated English rural life and tradition. His wife Grace died in April 1916, and he buried her under a stone with the inscription Dimidium Animae, 'half my soul'.
Sabine Baring-Gould died on 2nd January 1923. He was 89 years old, and he was buried beside his wife in Lew Trenchard churchyard.
_
A bright day with a northerly wind might not have been an ideal scenario in which to work my way south to north, but it avoided waiting for connections. So at 0920 I was disembarking at Kelvedon station. Kelvedon cum Feering is a joint village, a large one, larger than some towns, but undoubtedly a village in character. The continuous High Street of both is the old A12, which bypassed it as a dual carriageway to the east in the 1960s, but it still seemed pretty busy to me. The two parts are historically separated by the infant River Blackwater, and the old part of Feering is separated from the rest by the Norwich to London railway line. This makes the village sound hellish, but actually it is very pleasant, with some good late Medieval and Georgian domestic buildings.
The two parish churches are at the westerly and easterly extremities of the village, the station about halfway in between. I had already made plans in advance by ringing Kelvedon rectory the day before, where a very nice lady told me that "yes, Kelvedon church is open every day", and she also gave me the contact for Feering, which I had heard was a fortress. So, first to Kelvedon church.
Locked. I'd say I couldn't quite believe it, but I always expect this kind of thing to happen. There was no keyholder notice, so if I hadn't rung the rectory the day before, I would just have assumed that Kelvedon was a fortress too. It isn't: I rang the rectory, but there was no answer. I rang the churchwarden whose number I fortunately still had on the same piece of paper, and he was really apologetic. "The Rector usually opens up on a Tuesday, and he's away on retreat. I'll be there in five minutes." And he was, still apologetic, and he unlocked the church and hurriedly left me to it. This is a big urban church, handsome in its setting of a mature, sloping churchyard, but indistinguishable from any other church of its type from Cromer to Calcutta once you get inside. Excellent 1898 window by Louis Davis for Powell & Co, outstanding of its kind. Execrable adjacent window by the same workshop in 1938. I'd arranged to meet the Feering churchwarden at 10, but the delay in getting into Kelvedon made time tight, so I was glad it had little to detain me!
Stabat Mater Dolorosa. Detalle de la Virgen Dolorosa de Salzillo. En Procesión de Viernes Santo.
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"Perhaps too, there are some who fear that the Rosary is somehow unecumenical because of its distinctly Marian character. Yet the Rosary clearly belongs to the kind of veneration of the Mother of God described by the Council: a devotion directed to the Christological centre of the Christian faith, in such a way that “when the Mother is honoured, the Son ... is duly known, loved and glorified”. If properly revitalized, the Rosary is an aid and certainly not a hindrance to ecumenism!" - Pope John Paul II
This window is from the parish church of Lourdes, and October is the month of the Holy Rosary.
"The primary purpose of the shrine at Lourdes is to be a place of encounter with God in prayer and a place of service to our brothers and sisters, notably through the welcome given to the sick, the poor and all who suffer. In this place, Mary comes to us as a mother, always open to the needs of her children. Through the light which streams from her face, God's mercy is made manifest. Let us allow ourselves to be touched by her gaze, which tells us that we are all loved by God and never abandoned by him!"
– Pope Benedict XVI.
This statue of Our Lady of Lourdes stands in the rock of Massabielle, in the very spot where the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to St Bernadette Soubirous 155 years ago in 1858.
Today is the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, and my sermon can be read here.
A sorrowful Madonna, her gaze weighted with centuries of devotion and longing, framed by a celestial halo of faith. This appears to be a representation of Our Lady of Sorrows (Mater Dolorosa), a depiction of the Virgin Mary in mourning, often seen in Spanish and Latin American religious art. I photographed this statue at a small local museum in Temecula, California. For this composition, I cropped the image to highlight the portrait and substituted a busy background with a textured layer from my personal collection.
"What shall I render to the Lord for all his bounty to me? I will lift up the chalice of salvation and call on the name of the Lord" (Psalm 116:12f).
The Eucharist, which means, Thanksgiving, being offered to the Lord before this image of the Patroness of the Americas.
Happy Thanksgiving!
"Remember, most loving Virgin Mary,
never was it heard
that anyone who turned to you for help
was left unaided.
Inspired by this confidence,
though burdened by my sins,
I run to your protection
for you are my mother.
Mother of the Word of God,
do not despise my words of pleading
but be merciful and hear my prayer.
Amen".
This replica statue of Our Lady of Montserrat is in the Jesuit church of St Aloysius in Glasgow. St Ignatius of Loyola had prayed before the original statue in Spain in 1522.
A beautiful Catholic tradition is to keep a memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Saturdays.
This statue of the Virgin and Child dates to the 15th century and is from the Netherlands or perhaps from Germany.
AWN Pugin had it restored and gave to St Chad's Cathedral in Birmingham, which he had designed. It was erected in the cathedral in 1841 and was believed to have been the first such statue to have been "erected for public veneration in England after the Reformation".
"We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men."
- 1 Corinthians 1:23-25
This is the central panel of the reredos in Christ Church Cathedral, and is posted in reparation for this.
"When the power of the Most High overshadowed the one who had never known the nuptial bed, her fruitful womb conceived, and she became for all a delicious field: for those who wished to reap salvation by singing 'Alleluia!'"
– from the Akathist hymn.
The great feast of the Annunciation is kept today, transferred from 25 March because of Holy Week and the Easter Octave.
Detail from a fine masterpiece of champleve enamelling, called the Triptych of Louis XII, and dating to c.1500. It is part of the Victoria & Albert Museum collection, and more information about it can be read here.
During my visit to Limerick I used a number of different lenses. In this instance I used a Sony A7RM2 body with a Zeiss Batis 25mm Lens which I really like.
St Mary's Cathedral, Limerick, also known as Limerick Cathedral, is a cathedral of the Church of Ireland in Limerick, Ireland which is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is in the ecclesiastical province of Dublin. Previously the cathedral of the Diocese of Limerick, it is now one of three cathedrals in the United Dioceses of Limerick and Killaloe.
Today the cathedral is still used for its original purpose as a place of worship and prayer for the people of Limerick. It is open to the public every day from 8:30 am to 5:30 pm. Following the retirement of the Very Rev'd Maurice Sir on June 24, 2012, Bishop Trevor Williams announced the appointment of the Rev'd Sandra Ann Pragnell as Dean of Limerick and Rector of Limerick City Parish. She is the first female dean of the cathedral and rector of the Limerick parish. The cathedral grounds holds a United Nations Memorial Plaque with the names of all the Irish men who died while serving in the United Nations Peacekeepers.
All Saints, Longstanton, Cambridgeshire
Edith Webster as Hope by Louis Davis.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.
Robert Herrick, To the Virgins, to make much of Time, 1648
Louis Davis was one of the finest stained glass artists of the Arts & Crafts movement. He was born in 1860 in Abingdon in Oxfordshire, and studied under Christopher Whall. He worked alongside Mary Lowndes in the Glass House, London.
In the summer of 1892 when he was in his early thirties, Davis was on a walking holiday in the Norfolk Broads. It was a hot day, and he knocked on a farmhouse door to ask for a drink of water. The door was answered by the farmer's daughter. Her name was Edith Webster. She was 15 years old, and Davis fell in love with her.
Edith was born in Honing, Norfolk in March 1877. Her father was a farmer with a particular interest in new techniques and developments, an open-minded man. Davis got to know the family, and he took the young Ethel to be his pupil, and perhaps his lover, and later they lived as man and wife. But there there is no record that they ever actually married. The suggestion in Davis's biography of a date in the mid-1890s cannot be substantiated. At the time of the 1911 census, Davis would claim that he and Edith had been married for ten years, but there is no record for 1900/01 either.
It was not just love. Edith was his muse. The sketches he did of her as a young girl in the early 1890s would provide the figures for his windows for the next thirty years. Again and again the young Edith appears as Faith, Hope, Charity, various angels and above all as the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Adoration.
There were no children, and it is possible that their relationship was never sexually consummated. At the time of the 1911 census Edith's younger sister, the 19 year old Ethel, was also living in the household as a companion.
In 1915, Louis and Edith were poisoned by coal gas leaking from a faulty fire. She recovered, but he didn't. He suffered a stroke, and, confined to a wheelchair, he had to give instructions to his assistants to create his wonderful windows, many still depicting the young Edith as he had drawn her a quarter of a century before. His worsening health meant that his output became less and less, and but he lived to the age of 81 and died in 1941. Edith survived him and also lived on into her eighties, dying in the 1960s.
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From Willingham I cycled back across the Cambridge Guided Busway into Longstanton, which will in time become the largest of the fen edge villages - the planned 'new village' of Northstowe on the old airbase will have 10,000 houses and facilities for 30,000 people, the largest new settlement built in England since Milton Keynes, and a new dormitory town for Cambridge. Perhaps, then, it was a little lack of foresight which meant that one of the two parish churches in the village was declared redundant in the 1970s. St Michael sulks broodily half a mile to the east, but first I explored the working one, All Saints.
The tower and spire of flint rubble and dressed stone are straight out of the same mould as Landbeach and Chesterton, and the church makes a nice 14th Century trio with neighbouring Over and Willingham. But there is something quieter and more reflective about the architecture here, and this may be because, although the language is still that of the early 14th Century, the church appears to have been reconstructed after the village was burnt in 1349 at the time of the Black Death. The church that heads eastwards of the tower starts conventionally, but then blossoms out into a large, wide, south transept, which houses the Hatton mausoleum. Sir Thomas and Lady Mary Hatton lie inside on a vast double bed, as naked an act of arrogance and privilege that the mid-17th Century can provide.
Hatton, who was MP for Stamford and official surveyor for Queen Henrietta Maria, the consort of Charles I, bought the Hatton estates in 1633, 25 years before his death. An uncontroversial figure, the Parliament On-Line site notes drily that There is little sign that he supported either side during the Civil War, although the parliamentarians accused him of refusing to take the Covenant and only paying taxes under compulsion.
His wife Mary, however, appears to have thought him the very summa cum laude of his age. Her elegiac Latin inscription for him records that Nature rendered him illustrious, and through him the University learned, the Court elegant, the Law just, the Church blessed. A Jacobean knight, a Caroline baronet, he was companion and servant to both kings.
Their characterful children flank their monument, three boys to the north, three girls to the south. Beyond them in the transept is a sepulchrum, the coffins of their descendants walled up in pods each with a memorial inscription on the end, the most recent dating from the mid-19th Century.
There is a beautiful window of about 1920 of Faith, Hope and Charity by Louis Davis in the east end of the north aisle. It depicts the virtues as young girls in his usual semi-erotic style, which may explain why someone has partly blocked it with large vases of dried flowers, a sign of how much more puritanical we have become in the last ninety-odd years. In fact, Davis later lived as man and wife with his muse Edith Webster, who was about 15 years old when he sketched her for these and other windows.
To the west of it is a good late 20th Century window depicting airmen and aircraft from 7 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps and then Royal Air Force, which was based at the nearby Oakington airfield in both World Wars. One panel shows the hangers and standing planes of the airfield, another a plane coming into land above the village of Longstanton, the spire of the church prominent.
Otherwise this is a church full of light thanks to a goodly quantity of clear glass, and if it is not as grand as its near neighbours, this is a likeable church nonetheless.
"The prophets foretold the coming of the Saviour, the angels adored him when he came; today is the great day on which he was made visible. The Magi rejoiced when they saw his star, and brought him gifts.
A holy day has shone upon us: come, you peoples, and worship the Lord. The Magi rejoiced when they saw his star, and brought him gifts."
– Matins responsory for the Epiphany.
Today, 6 January, is the Feast of the Epiphany, and my sermon for today can be read here.
Stained glass window in Cologne Cathedral photographed by my friend, Gilles. Cologne Cathedral houses the shrine of the three Magi, Caspar, Balthasar and Melchior.