Pedro Calungsod

  

Pedro Calungsod (c. 1654 – 2 April 1672) is a Filipino Roman Catholic martyr. Calungsod was a lay assistant to the Spanish Jesuit missionary Diego Luis de San Vitores, and both of them were killed by two Chamorro natives while propagating the Christian faith in the Marianas Islands (now Guam). On 5 March 2000, Calungsod became the second Filipino to be beatified by the late Pope John Paul II, the first being San Lorenzo Ruiz in 1981.

 

Life

 

Calungsod was born in 1654, however, four Visayan villages claim to be his hometown: Ginatilan and Tuburan in Cebu, Loboc in Bohol, and Leon in Iloilo. An oral tradition of the Calunsod family from Leon asserts that “an ancient ancestor joined Jesuit missionaries working on an island 'near Hawai'.” [1]

 

In a Jesuit boarding school for boys, Calungsod received his basic education, mastered the Catholic catechism, and learned to communicate in Spanish and Chamorro. He also honed his skills in drawing, painting, singing, acting, and carpentry. Calungsod exhibited notable aptitude when he served the Holy Mass according to the Tridentine Rite, which was only celebrated in Latin.

 

Calungsod, then 14, was among the young exemplary catechists and assistants chosen to accompany the Jesuits in their mission to convert the native Chamorros in the Ladrones Islands (Islas de los Ladrones or “Islands of Thieves”), which was later named Marianas (Las Islas de Mariana) around 1667 in honor of Queen Maria Ana of Austria who supported the mission.

 

Pedro Calungsor

 

In one account, another lay assistant to Fr. Diego Luis de San Vitores was identified with the name Pedro Calungsor. He was a survivor of the 1638 Nuestra Señora de la Concepción shipwreck off the coast of Saipan (the largest among the islands of Marianas) and resided in the islands for thirty years, where he had a wife and a daughter, who was the first Chamorro baptized.

 

Calungsor was said to have been de San Vitores's first assistant and translator when the Jesuit first came to the islands but Calungsor ran away. De San Vitores returned to the Philippines where he found a new assistant in the person of the young Pedro Calungsod.

 

Mission

 

On 15 June 1668, Calungsod and the Jesuit missionaries arrived in Marianas aboard a patache or supply boat named San Diego. The evangelists went on teaching Catholicism and baptizing families but encountered several setbacks such as the Chamorro beliefs, traditions, and way of living.

 

One impediment they had to deal with was the “Guma' Uritao” (men's houses), which the missionaries considered as an institutionalized prostitution. In these houses, adolescent boys were taught skills deemed they would need as men, such as canoe building, navigating, tool making, fishing, and sex, which was taught by women.

 

The missionaries ordered the destruction and burning of Guma' Uritaos, and established the Colegio de San Juan de Letran for boys and Escuela de Niñas for girls.

 

The evangelization efforts were not entirely welcomed pleasantly. A Chinese man named Choco, also shipwrecked in the Marianas two decades before the missionaries arrived, allegedly spread rumors that the baptismal waters and anointing oils caused the death of people. Choco ceded his claims and was baptized after a days-long public debate with de San Vitores. Before long, Choco apostatized from Catholicism.

 

Death

 

The rumors remained and cost Calungsod his life. On 2 April 1672, Calungsod was with de San Vitores to perform baptisms in the village of Tomhom when a former Christian convert refused to have his infant daughter christened. The apostate was said to be the village chief Matap'ang, who enlisted the warrior Hirao to kill the Jesuit priest.

 

Since Calungsod was involved in the administration of the Sacrament of Baptism, the two natives turned against him first. Although able-bodied, Calungsod merely dodged the attacks and chose not to fight back in obedience to the Christian teachings. Instead of running to save his life, Calungsod protected the priest and was hit in the chest by a spear. He was given absolution by de San Vitores before the Jesuit faced his own death. Their bodies were mutilated and thrown into the sea at Tomhom (now known as Tumon).

 

Beatification

 

Calungsod's existence and martyrdom came to the knowledge of the Filipinos during de San Vitores's beatification in October 1985. Led by Ricardo Cardinal Vidal in 1994, the Archdiocese of Cebu commenced the formal process for the beatification of Calungsod. In 1997, the results of the initial process were approved by the Vatican Sacred Congregation for the Causes of the Saints. A positio or biography of Calungsod required by the Vatican was finished and approved in 1999.

 

Calungsod was venerated on 27 January 2000 and proclaimed Blessed by Pope John Paul II on 2 April 2000. The date was also declared by the late pontiff as “Pedro Calungsod's Day."

 

Canonization

 

In 2008, Cardinal Vidal expressed hope that Blessed Calungsod would soon be canonized. A beatified person can be proclaimed a saint only after miracles attributed to him / her are proven. In Calungsod's case, several people have sought his intercession and attested to the miracles that he manifested.

 

One instance was that of a young man whose bone cancer in the leg was said to have disappeared after he sought the intercession of Calungsod, on the advice of his parish priest and spiritual director.

 

A kidnap victim who appealed for his mediation was saved from being killed and was released by his captor when it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity.

 

The daughter of an inebriated widower who could not land himself a job prayed for Calungsod's intervention. After doing so, her father started to limit his drinking, found a good job and a new wife, and led a new life.

 

Prayers

 

The following are two prayers addressed to Blessed Calungsod:

 

* Prayer to Blessed Pedro Calungsod (sometimes referred to as a reading)

 

Almighty God,

by whose gift Blessed Pedro the Martyr witnessed to the Gospel,

even to the shedding of this blood:

grant, by his example and intercession,

that we too may live for you,

boldly, steadfastly, confessing your name

through our Lord, Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

 

* (Official) Prayer to Pedro Calungsod

 

Blessed Pedro Calungsod,

Young migrant, student, catechist,

missionary, faithful friend, martyr,

you inspire us by your fidelity in times of adversity,

by your courage in teaching the faith in the midst of hostility,

and by your love in shedding your blood for the sake of the Gospel.

Make our troubles your own (here mention your request),

and intercede for us before the throne of Mercy and Grace

so that as we experience the help of heaven we may be encouraged

to proclaim and live the Gospel here on earth.

Amen.

 

Festival

 

On 3 April 2004, Cardinal Vidal declared Blessed Calungsod as model and patron of the youth in the archdiocese of Cebu.

 

The first annual feast in honor of Calungsod was celebrated in April 2008 in Naga City with programs and activities prepared by several parish-based youth groups.

 

In 2009, the 2nd Tinubdan Festival was celebrated to honor Calungsod's beatification and the 3rd anniversary of the establishment of the Pedro Calungsod Parish in Cantabaco, Toledo City in Cebu. The name “Tinubdan” was derived from the presence of several tubod (spring) that provides Cantabaco residents with free water.

 

Outstanding catechists in the archdiocese of Cebu are also given an award named after Blessed Pedro Calungsod.

Me, our kids and their Catechism teacher, Mrs. Hendricks, after our son’s Confirmation and our daughter’s First Communion on 2005 Easter at Holy Rosary Catholic School in Edmonds.

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Sony DSC-W1 (Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar T* 38-115mm f/2.8-5.2.)

Over these last few months I have learned much from the Holy Snow Disk. I have learned to cherish simplicity and to respect its power. I've come to understand that bold, bright color can be used with subtlety as well as with assertiveness. I've gained new appreciation for the nuance of composition and I've discovered that color is not just one facet of the palette but an element in its own right. I've learned that the name of a thing doesn't define the thing.

 

It's summer now. Logically, the snow disk ought to be hung back up in the garage, gathering dust and cobwebs, awaiting the next winter. Instead, it stands in a corner beside my doorway. I walk by it several times a day. It serves as a constant reminder of the things I've learned and the things I've yet to learn. It is my catechism and my koan, it's my mezuzah. It is the Holy Snow Disk.

 

"Having passed from this world to the Father, Christ gives us in the Eucharist the pledge of glory with him. Participation in the Holy Sacrifice identifies us with his Heart, sustains our strength along the pilgrimage of this life, makes us long for eternal life, and unites us even now to the Church in heaven, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and all the saints".

 

– Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1419.

 

Through the Mass we learn to pray as the Son prays to the Father.

My sermon for today can be read here.

 

"Called in the Gospels "the mother of Jesus", Mary is acclaimed by Elizabeth, at the prompting of the Spirit and even before the birth of her son, as "the mother of my Lord". In fact, the One whom she conceived as man by the Holy Spirit, who truly became her Son according to the flesh, was none other than the Father's eternal Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity. Hence the Church confesses that Mary is truly "Mother of God" (Theotokos)"

– Catechism of the Catholic Church, §495.

 

My sermon for today can be found here.

 

This icon of Our Lady is in the apse of the Orthodox Cathedral of St Nicholas in Washington DC.

Sonic Youth - LISTEN

 

This gothic style church, in the middle of a Valley, Vallee-de-la-Matapedia, in Matapedia itself, had the most bizarre feel to it. The village itself seemed more like a ghost town. There are blank like memories from this location, a quick drive through, very quick as Ben & I felt we were very unwelcome in their village. Memories of Stephen King like film, in which we seemed that we could've been in the wrong place at the wrong time & it was pretty well much time to leave. Villagers stared at us as we left, and the red pick up truck followed us around to make sure we left.

 

View On Black

 

Our Lady of Loudes at the National Shrine in Retiro

 

Our Lady of Lourdes was the title given to the Blessed Virgin Mary when she appeared in a vision with St. Bernadette in Lourdes, France.

 

[edit] Origin

 

Bernadette Soubirous was the daughter of a flour miller in Lourdes, France. When affliction hit their family, they had to move to a former jail house. Bernadette's aunt took her and brought her to another village to do household chores and to study catechism. Being simple and illiterate, she did not learn much. Back in Lourdes, while she was accumulating firewood together with her sister, Antoinette, and Jeanne, her neighbor, they took a road that brought them to an intersection between a river and a mill. Fearing that her asthma would attack, Bernadette slowly took off her socks and crossed the river with her companions who went ahead.

 

Our Lady appeared to Bernadette in a vision with a strong blast of wind and sparks of light. She looked up towards the grotto. She tried to brush off the image with her rosary. To her astonishment, the Lady brought out her own rosary and prayed along with her. There were 18 apparitions that transpired, each event closely following the other and capturing Bernadette in a trance. Their sequence is as follows:

 

February 11, 1858 - Bernadette prayed the rosary with Our Lady.

February 14, 1858 - Our Lady came closer to Bernadette to establish her heavenly origins.

February 18, 1858 - Fellowship members came along with Bernadette to validate Our Lady's messages. Our Lady asked Bernadette to come back to the grotto with a lighted candle, promising eternal salvation.

February 19, 1858 (4th to 14th apparitions) - Our Lady asked for prayers, sacrifice and for sinners to repent. She ordered Bernadette dig at the ground, and a spring immediately bubbled up and soon gushed forth. She wished for a chapel to be built on the spot and processions to be made to the grotto. Many ill people came to plunge into the spring water and recovered instantly. Fr. Perymale, Bernadette's pastor, sent her off to ask what the Lady's name was.

March 25, 1858 - Our Lady declared that she was the Immaculate Conception.

April 7, 1858 - During this apparition, Bernadette unknowingly held her hands for hours in the candle without being burned.

The apparitions at Lourdes led the Pope to recognize the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception on December 8, 1854. According to the dogma, Mary was conceived without original sin.

 

Bernadette lived with her parents for two years after the apparition before joining the sisters of Charity at Nevers, France. She died of asthma, tuberculosis and bone impairment at the age of thirty five.

 

[edit] Image

 

Our Lady of Lourdes is dressed in white with white veil, blue belt and yellow rose on the feet. Three elements of nature are associated with Lourdes. The element of water which was dug up by St. Bernadette, the element of fire from the candle that Mary asked Bernadette to light, and the rocky cave where Our Lady appeared.

 

[edit] Veneration

 

The image of Our Lady of Lourdes in the Philippines is venerated all over the country, particularly at the Lourdes Shrine in Quezon City. Another place of devotion is at the Lourdes Grotto in Baguio City with its long flight of steps going up the hill. The country's locally carved Lourdes image was operated by the Order of the Friars Minor Capuchins (OFM Cap) headed by Fr. Bernardo of Cleza. Filipino sculptor, Manuel Flores, carved the statue for the Capuchin's garden grotto, which was later transferred to a side altar inside the Capuchin chapel in Intramuros, Manila. The Confraternity of Lourdes was established in the chapel in May 1893, because the image has attracted a large number of devotees.

 

In 1894, Fr. Cleza instructed Flores to make a bigger statue of the Virgin. Many miraculous recoveries occurred before the statue. Eventually, the Capuchin chapel was made into a church wherein the image had been installed. The church was gutted by fire during the World War II but the statue of the Virgin was left unharmed.

 

After the war, the Capuchins bought a new property on Retiro St. Quezon City which became the permanent location of the Lourdes Church in the Philippines. It was blessed on August 15, 1951. It was declared an Archdiocesan Shrine in February 1987. It was declared a National Shrine by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines on January 30, 1996.

 

[edit] The Archonfraternity of Lourdes in The Philippines (Arch-Con)

 

The Archonfraternity of Lourdes in The Philippines was established at the same time the Lourdes devotion was launched in the 1890s. There are a couple of hundred confraternities under the Arch-con that meet twice a year for the Marian Symposia and once every two years for the national convention. The feast of Lourdes is celebrated every February 11 wherein a grand penitential procession is held at dawn by the devotees holding lighted torches on bare feet while chanting canticles.

 

The church of St James in Tlatelolco is built on the site of an Aztec temple using stone recycled from that building. Adjoining the church is the vermilion-red Franciscan convent of the Holy Cross, the place where St Juan Diego attended weekly catechism classes and Saturday Masses in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary. On 9 December 1531 he was on his way to Tlatelolco when Our Lady of Guadalupe first appeared to him at Tepeyac. Today, 9 December, is his feast day.

My husband - J. Howard Duff's - newest CD cover. The painting is an original oil I did named "The Second Coming". CD will be released soon!

One of a set of 36 cards in a boxed set called 'Real Children'.

 

It is recess time and the girls have come out here to play "Green grow the rushes - O". That is the mistress who stands by the door and the boys grouped near her, under her watchful eye, are going through the light gymnastic exercises in which they are drilled as a part of the school programme. The schoolhouse is built of stone, plastered and whitewashed like most of the houses hereabouts; it differs from them chiefly in having its roof covered with slates instead of a thatch of straw. Those small windows let in but a scanty amount of light and the school benches are of a primitive sort, but school keeps only a few weeks in the year.

The lessons are chiefly in reading, writing, the church catechism and elementary arithmetic, with geography for the older pupils. Most of these children live near enough to run home for a dinner of bread and milk between sessions, though a few bring their luncheon with them and eat it sitting on the bank under the trees in the intervals of favourite games. Wrestling and running are popular sports with the boys; tops and marbles are enjoyed in due season.

Most of these children have some share of the household work to do when they are at home. These girls feed the chickens and the pigs, mind the baby, and watch the browsing goat to prevent his getting into mischief. The boys help cut turf in the bogs and spread it to dry; they plant the potatoes and weed turnips; the best fun is when they are big enough to be trusted to drive to town on a market day. Some of these little folks will marry and live out their days in this county where they were born, but probably many will emigrate - there is a constant stream of life from these country districts of Ireland into America across the seas.

Church of St John the Baptist, Somersham Cambridgeshire

The manor of "Someresham" was given to Ely Abbey along with others, in 991 by east saxon earldorman Brihtnoth after he had been lavishly entertained by the monks, and promised that they would be bury him within the abbey, which they did after he was killed in the battle of Maldon. 1086 Domesday book records it as worth £8 with 3 fishponds, 20 acres of meadow & 7 furlongs wide woodland.

After 1109 it became one of the bishop's residences, a convenient resting place after a day's travel by water from Ely to London. By 1279 the palace and gardens covered 4 acres and the fishponds and park 200 acres.

Replacing an earlier church , the present building was built gradually from east to west, starting c1250 with the chancel, followed by nave, aisles, and early 14c west tower, Ralph de Walpole was rector from 1270 - already archdeacon of Ely he later became successively bishop of Norwich, and of Ely. It was also at this time, and under the famous prior Alan de Walsingham, much of the best work in Ely Cathedral was done.

From entries in wills l, the south aisle chapel was dedicated to the BVM and above the altar was a 15c canopied niche with the image and light of Our Lady of Pity.

In late 14c the nave was heightened with clerestory windows & king post roof and the north porch built. . The south porch was erected in 15c , extended in 1885 with an organ chamber On the chancel floor is an early 16c brass of a priest in mass vestments www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/q584Ak holding a chalice and wafer. The inscription is lost, but it probably represents John Alcoke parson of the church who, by his will dated 13 January 1524–5 directed that his body should be buried in this spot.

In 1600 the bishop exchanged the property with the Crown for others, and during the 17c when it was part of the jointure of Queen Henrietta Maria, the palace became dilapidated , the Hammond family living in one wing.

Andrew Perne, rector from 1551-1589 known as "Old Andrew Turncoat" bent with the prevailing religious wind, becoming a zealous reformer under Edward Vl, an enthusiastic papist under Queen Mary & an ardent upholder of the new Church Settlement of Queen Elizabeth.

Henry Caesar rector from 1597-1607 , brother of judge Julius Caesar was twice accused of being a secret papist, who eventually became Dean of Ely and buried in the cathedral.

In 1605 King James gave Somersham and others to the University of Cambridge, their regis professors of divinity becoming automatic rectors here, employing vicars and curates to do the actual work.

It is recorded in a solemnly signed statement that Daniel Whiston on March 1st 1712 repeated the first part of the catechism "well and distinctly" & the 2nd part a fortnight later in the church when he was 2 years, 8 months and 5 days old.

The last person to be hanged for arson, Thomas Savage who set fire to a barn in Somersham causing great damage, was, because of his good conduct while in custody , allowed to be buried in the churchyard in 1824

   

St Peter and St Paul, Salle, Norfolk

 

During their awesome reign over the other great teams of Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, Liverpool football club placed a huge sign in the changing room corridor, so that it was the last thing visiting teams saw before they walked out on to the pitch: This is ANFIELD, it warned. The name alone was enough. Similarly, the cover of the guidebook here proclaims, in a single word, SALLE. Again, it suffices; the word, pronounced to rhyme with call, stands for the building. Perhaps only the name Blythburgh has the same power in all East Anglia.

 

The greatest East Anglian churches were built in the 15th century. It is often observed that there can never have been enough people to fill them, but this is to miss the point. They were never intended for the forms of worship to which they now play host.

 

The shape of a late medieval church is not an accident. East Anglian parish churches of the 15th century had many common features; wide aisles to enable liturgical processions, a chancel for the celebration of Mass, places for other altars, niches for devotional statues, a focus towards the Blessed Sacrament in the east, a large nave for social activities, large windows to fill the building with light, a roof of angels to proclaim a hymn of praise, a pulpit for the preaching of orthodox doctrine, benches to enable the people to hear the preaching, and carvings, stained glass and wall paintings of the sacraments, Gospels and rosary mysteries, of the catechism and teaching of the Catholic Church.

 

As Le Corbusier might have said if he'd been around at the time, a late medieval East Anglian church was a machine for making Catholicism happen.

 

No longer, of course. The radical and violent fracture in popular religion in the middle years of the 16th century gave birth to the Church of England, and the new Church inherited buildings that were often unsuitable for congregational protestant liturgy - a problem that the Church of England has never satisfactorily solved.

 

Over the centuries, the problem has been addressed in different ways; celebrating Communion at a table in the nave, for example, and blocking off the chancel for other uses. Although this was challenged by the Laudian party in the early part of the 17th century, it was the way that many parishes reinvented their buildings, and most were to stay like that until the middle years of the 19th century. Some went further: a pulpit placed halfway down the nave, or even at the back of the church, meant that the seating could be arranged so that it no longer focused towards the east, thus breaking the link with Catholic (and Laudian) sacramentalism. For several centuries, Anglican churches focused on the pulpit rather than the altar.

 

With the rise of the 19th century Oxford Movement, all this underwent another dramatic change, with the great majority of our medieval parish churches having their interiors restored to their medieval integrity, reinventing themselves as sacramental spaces. This Victorian conception of the medieval suited itself to congregational worship, and responded in a satisfactory way to the structure of the building. But still, of course, they weren't full.

 

This 19th century re-imagining is the condition in which we find most of them today, and Anglican theologians everywhere are asking the question that the Catholic Church asked itself at Vatican II in the 1960s - is a 19th century liturgical space really appropriate for the Church of the 21st century?

 

It requires a shift in the mind to recall that these were not originally Anglican buildings, but it is a shift we need to make. The idea of a previously unchanging Church now confronting the demands of the modern age is wholly incorrect. These buildings have faced a variety of challenges over the centuries; they have only ever been truly suitable for the use for which they were originally built six hundred years ago.

 

Two of the largest late medieval churches in East Anglia are just three miles apart, at Cawston and Salle in the middle of Norfolk. These clusters are not uncommon; think of Blythburgh, Southwold and Walberswick in Suffolk, for example, or Lavenham and Long Melford in the same county. But Cawston and Salle are really close - you can see the tower of one from the other. St Peter and St Paul is a complete example of a 15th century rebuilding; St Agnes at Cawston retains its elegant earlier chancel.

 

If not merely for congregational worship, why were these churches built so big? Impressive as they seem now, they must have been awesome at the time they were built, since they were the only substantial buildings outside of the towns, and would have dwarfed the houses of the parish. Some were in villages; but many were not. Salle church has always been out in the fields. Why are earlier East Anglian churches not so massive? Certainly, East Anglia has its cathedrals; Norwich and Ely pre-date the great churches by several centuries, and Bury Abbey was bigger than either before its destruction. The great majority of East Anglia's churches are piecemeal affairs; typically, a 13th century chancel, which must have been the most substantial part of the building when it was first erected, an early 14th century nave and tower, and perhaps later elaborations of the piece with aisles and a clerestory. Salle and Cawston churches are both rebuildings of earlier structures, but a surprising number of East Anglian churches were not rebuilt, until perhaps the Victorians saw the need for a new chancel, or new aisles. Often, these smaller churches are exquisitely beautiful, as if beauty rather than grandeur was the imperative.

 

And then, towards the end of the 1340s, a great pestilence swept across Europe; in East Anglia, outside of Norwich which got off lightly, it killed perhaps a half of the population. In emptying the countryside, it completely altered the economic balance; a shortage of labour gave new power to the survivors, perhaps setting in place the preconditions for the capitalism that we can recognise by the 16th century. And, in extinguishing the flower of Decorated architecture, it also gave birth to the great love affair between the late medieval mind and death.

 

In Catholic theology there is no great divide between the dead and the living. For the medieval Christian, communion was something that existed between all members of the parish, whether alive or dead. Thus, prayers were said for the souls of the dead (who, it was presumed, were saying prayers for the souls of the living).

 

To ensure that prayers were said for them after their death, the very richest people endowed chantries. These were foundations, by which priests could be employed to say masses for their souls in perpetuity. A priest in such a capacity was called a chantry priest. The masses would be said at a chantry altar, probably in the nave; if the person was rich enough, this might be enclosed in a specially constructed chantry chapel. Many churches had them. After the Reformation, many were pressed into service as family mausoleums or pews.

 

For the poorest people, there was the opportunity to join a guild, where, for a penny or so a week, they could ensure that the guild chantry priest would say masses for their soul after their death (along with those of the other dead members of the guild). Many of these guilds were organised around particular occupations or devotions, and became a focus of social activity. The investment that produced the income to pay the chantry priests was most commonly in land. The church or guild oversaw the management of the land, which is one of the reasons we have an image of a wealthy pre-Reformation church. Land bought to produce income in this way was known as chantry land, a name surviving in many places today. Those who invested in chantries (and few and far between must have been those who didn't) presumed that they were ensuring prayers and masses in perpetuity; but, of course, this was not to be.

 

Bequests and chantries seem to have reached their peak in the 15th century. Perhaps the Black Death reinforced the urgency of the task. People did not merely want to be remembered; they wanted to be prayed for. And so, those who could afford it ensured that this was not forgotten by leaving their wealth in the very place that was at the centre of communion: the parish church. The richest paid for the additions of aisles and chapels, or for a new font or rood screen. This was not just a naked desire for the recognition of their family status. There was an underlying insecurity to the new landed classes. They wanted to control their destiny beyond their deaths. And so, their gift would be recorded in the form of a dedicatory inscription. One of these survives on the screen at Cawston, and another on the base of the font at Salle. Orate pro anima, they begin, "Pray for the soul of...", an injunction urgently emphasised by the pre-Reformation liturgy, only to be cursed and defaced by the later Anglicans and puritans. Stained glass was another common gift, as well as images, candlesticks, furnishings. Thus were many churches developed piecemeal.

 

But sometimes, where a parish could rely on a steady supply of substantial bequests, they might be channelled into a complete rebuilding, as at Salle, a summa cum laude apothesosis, where the new church of the late 15th century survives in pretty much its original form. Sometimes, a single wealthy family would shape and direct the rebuilding of a church. One of the richest families in East Anglia in the 14th and 15th centuries was the de la Poles, the Earls of Suffolk. Their mark can be found throughout East Anglia, but most famously and substantially at Wingfield in Suffolk, and at Cawston in Norfolk. Theirs was a long term project; at Cawston, the tower predates the furnishings of the nave and chancel by almost a century.

 

So why so vast? Certainly, it was ad maiorem deo gloria, to the Greater Glory of God; but it was also to the greater glory of the de la Poles and their contemporaries. The great landed families of England came into the late middle ages full of confidence, and they were determined to demonstrate it. They had survived the Black Death. They had grown richer on its consequences. They had assumed a political power unthinkable a few centuries before. They controlled not just the wealth but the imagination of their parishes. They asserted orthodox Catholic dogma in the face of rural superstitions and abuses. They imposed a homogenised Catholicism on late medieval England. And, as they increased their secular power and influence, a time would come when they would embrace the Great Idea already beginning to take shape on the continent - protestantism. But that was still in the future.

 

And so, to Salle. St Peter and St Paul is big. This is accentuated by the way in which it stands almost alone in the barley fields, with only a couple of Victorian buildings and a cricket pitch for company. What an idyllic spot! And yet there is an urban quality to the building, as if this was some great city church in the middle of Norwich or Bristol. It went up in the course of the 15th century, a replacement for an earlier building on the same site, broadly contemporary with neighbouring Cawston. While Cawston was largely the work of a single family, here the building benefited from an accident of history; several very wealthy families owned manors and halls in the parish at the same time, and it so happened that the time was the greatest era of rural church building.

 

Among them were the Boleyns, the Brewes, the Mautebys, the Briggs, the Morleys, the Luces and the Kerdistons, and some of their shields appear above the great west door, along with two mighty censing angels, characteristic of late medieval piety. A steady stream of hefty bequests meant that no expense needed to be spared, and the mighty tower with its vast bell openings was topped with battlements and pinnacles on the very eve of the Reformation.

 

As at Blythburgh, St Peter and St Paul benefited from the restraint of a late restoration, and the building as we see it now has no external Victorian additions. It is all of a piece. The porches either side are huge affairs, matching the transepts, and give the effect of a vast animal, a dragon perhaps, sprawling with erect head in the Norfolk countryside. Its tail is the chancel, in itself longer and higher than many Norfolk churches. The aisles are tall, austere, parapeted, the Perpendicular windows arcades of glass. In the porches, the vaulted ceilings are studded with bosses; the central one in the north porch depicts Christ in Majesty, sitting on a rainbow in judgement.

 

You enter the building from the west, an unusual experience in East Anglia, and your first sight is of the seven sacraments font with its tall 15th century canopy, similar to the cover at Cawston. This one is so big it is supported by a crane attached to the ringing gallery under the tower. The font below is interesting because each panel is supported by an angel holding a symbol of the sacrament above - a pot of chrism oil beneath Baptism, for example. The panels themselves are simply done, and are not particularly characterful, apart from the way that Mary turns away and is comforted at the Crucifixion. This panel faces west, and then anticlockwise are the Mass (viewed sideways, as at nearby Great Witchingham), Ordination (the candidate kneeling), Baptism (a server holds the book up for the Priest to read), Confirmation (the candidate obviously a child), Penance (perhaps the most interesting panel - the penitent kneels in a shriving pew), Matrimony (the couples' hands joined by a stole, she in late 15th century dress) and finally Last Rites (the dying man on the floor under blankets also as at Great Witchingham). The font step has a dedicatory inscription to John and Agnes Luce, asking for prayers for their souls. We know that John died in 1489. Perhaps the fabric of the building was complete by this date.

 

Beyond the font stretches the vastness of the building, the arcades gathering the eyes and leading them forward to the great east window. The chancel arch is barely there at all, just a simple high opening; but as MR James pointed out, it was never intended to be seen.The sheer bulk of the rood screen dado tells us quite how vast the rood apparatus must have been here, and the arch would have been pretty well hidden. Everything is built to scale; although everything has been cut off above the panels, probably in the late 1540s, the panels themselves are enormous, almost six feet high. As at Cawston, St Gregory, St Jerome, St Ambrose and St Augustine, the four Doctors of the Church, are on the doors. Either side are just two surviving paintings; to the north are Thomas and James, to the south are Philip and Bartholomew. The empty panels are a mystery; the screen stood here for a century before its destruction, so it must have been finished; and the dado seems too high to have been hidden by nave altars. And yet, it has all the appearance of never having been painted.

 

Because the building is so vast, the surviving medieval glass seems scattered, but there is actually a lot of it and some of it is very significant. Some was moved during the restoration of the early 20th century, when the modern glass in the north transept was installed, and the yellow galley lozenges were thankfully replaced with clear glass in the 1970s. The images in the east window are mainly figures; old kings kneel before young princes, there are armoured men and angels, the remains of a scaly dragon. In the centre at the bottom is a perfect Trinity shield, displayed by an angel looking askance.

 

Some of the panels are now in the south transept. These include fragments of a set of the orders of angels. A kneeling figure is Thomas Brigg, donor of the transept; the scroll behind him begins Benedicat Virgo, 'Blessed Virgin'. The mother of God sits surrounded by red glory, and two women holding croziers, one of them crowned, may be St Etheldreda and St Hilda. Certainly, the crowned figure holding a cross is St Helena.

 

Despite the wonders of the font, the screen and the glass, the crowning glory of the building is the set of bosses that line the roof of the chancel. They are easily missed, being very high. There are nine altogether, the first and last set against the walls at the ends of the roof ridge, and they form a kind of rosary sequence of joyful and glorious mysteries. They start with the Annunciation in the west (see left) and then continue with the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation in the Temple, the Entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension into Heaven.

 

There is a fine set of return stalls in the chancel. Although Salle probably never had a college of Priests, all those Masses for the dead must have provided plenty of employment, because we know that there were seven Priests here at a time when the population of the parish was barely 200. Bench ends include heads, a dragon tied up in a knot, a cock, a restored pelican in her piety, and a monkey. The misericord seats feature faces, including one that is quite extraordinary.

 

Although the roof isn't up to the glory of neighbouring Cawston, it includes lots of original angels and paintwork, including sacred monograms, and around the wallplate part of the Te Deum Laudamus and Psalm 150. These particular texts seem to have provided the inspiration for many late 15th century interiors; the angels in the roof, the animals on the bench ends, the Saints on the rood screen all in harmony: Let everything that has breath Praise ye the Lord!

 

The nave benches are mostly renewed now, but the pulpit is an elegant example of the 15th century, from the time when a priority began to be placed on preaching. Curiously, it has been rather awkwardly converted into a three-decker arrangement, probably in the 18th century, with the addition of a platform and desk from a set of box pews. A large sounding board has been placed overhead. The box pews suggest that the medieval furnishings were replaced at an early date, although the replacements too have gone now.

 

Salle is one of those churches full of intriguing little details that might easily pass you by, so great is the wonder of everything around. Those two little corbel heads above the south door, for instance - what were they for? Perhaps they supported an image that could be seen from the north doorway as people entered, although not a St Christopher as the guidebook suggests, I think. There is a pretty piscina in the unfortunate north transept that has been outlined in wood, a memorial and helm above, a tall image bracket in the corner of the wall of the south transept, a floreated piscina nearby.

 

There are many brasses and brass inlays in the nave floor; one of the most interesting is a chalice brass (although the chalice is now gone) to Simon Boleyn, a Priest, who died in 1489, and to the east of it a pair of brasses to Geoffrey and Alice Boleyn, great-grandparents to Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII. Another pair of brasses are to Thomas and Katherine Rose and their eight children. Unlike many churches, Salle actually retains some of the 'missing' brasses, now locked away for safety. It would be nice to think they could eventually be reset in the floor.

 

One part of the building that many visitors must miss is the chapel above the north porch. There is no sign indicating it; but the doorway, at the west end of the north aisle, is always open. Inside, the vaulted roof is punctuated by spectacularly pretty bosses which you can view at close quarters. The colour is a bit fanciful, but they are fascinating, particularly the central boss of the Coronation of the Queen of Heaven - how on earth did that survive the Reformation?

 

This is a tremendous building, a box of fascinating delights. What purpose does it serve now? As I said in the introduction, its size was not in response to the needs of a congregation, and as far as worship is concerned it will never be full. It remains constantly in use, however; for regular services in the chancel, sometimes for concerts and recordings, but also of course for the poshest sort of wedding, the kind only the Church of England can provide, and no doubt other elements of the core business of CofE PLC. It is easy to be cynical, but if they ensure the survival of the building, then so be it.

St Ethelbert, Hessett, Suffolk

 

Consider for one moment, if you will, the extent to which the beliefs and practices of a religious community affect the architecture of its buildings. Think of a Mosque, for instance. Often square, expressing the democracy of Islam, but without any imagery of the human figure, for such things are proscribed. Think of a Synagogue, focused towards the Holy Scriptures in the Ark, but designed to enable the proclaiming of the Word, and the way that early non-conformist chapels echo this architecture of Judaism - indeed, those who built the first free churches, like Ipswich's Unitarian Chapel, actually called them synagogues.

 

The shape of a church, then, is no accident. A typical Suffolk perpendicular church of the 15th century has wide aisles, to enable liturgical processions, a chancel for the celebration of Mass, places for other altars, niches for devotional statues, a focus towards the Blessed Sacrament in the east, a roof of angels to proclaim a hymn of praise, a large nave for devotional and social activities, and wall paintings of the Gospels and hagiographies of Saints, of the catechism and teachings of the Catholic Church.

 

As Le Corbusier might have said if he'd been around at the time, a medieval church is a machine for making Catholicism happen.

 

No longer, of course. The radical and violent fracture in popular religion in the middle years of the 16th century gave birth to the Church of England, and the new church inherited buildings that were quite unsuitable for the new congregational protestant theology - a problem that, to some extent, the Church of England has never entirely solved.

 

Over the centuries, the problem has been addressed in different ways; celebrating Communion at a table in the nave, for example, and blocking off the chancel for other uses. Although this was challenged by the Laudian party in the early part of the 17th century, it was the way that many parishes reinvented their buildings, and most were to stay like that until the middle years of the 19th century. Some went further: a pulpit placed halfway down the nave, or even at the back of the church, meant that the seating could be arranged so that it no longer focused towards the east, thus breaking the link with Catholic (and Laudian) sacramentalism. For several centuries, Anglican churches focused on the pulpit rather than the altar.

 

With the coming to influence of the 19th century Oxford Movement, all this underwent another dramatic change, with the great majority of our medieval parish churches having their interiors restored to their medieval integrity, reinventing themselves as sacramental spaces. This is the condition in which we find most of them today, and some Anglican theologians are asking the question that the Catholic Church asked itself at Vatican II in the 1960s - is a 19th century liturgical space really appropriate for the Church of the 21st century?

 

This may seem like a digression, but I hope it will become apparent why I've raised it. For similar questions have been asked throughout the history of Christianity.

 

So, let us hasten at once to Hessett. Here we are, roughly halfway between Bury and Stowmarket - like nearby Woolpit, this must once have been a more important place than it is today, and perhaps St Ethelbert gives us evidence of that.

 

The church sits like a glowing jewel in its wide churchyard, right on the main road through the village. It is pretty well perfect if you are looking for a fine Suffolk exterior. An extensive 15th century rebuilding enwraps the earlier tower, which was crowned by the donor of the rebuilding, John Bacon.The nave and aisles are deliciously decorated, reminding me rather of neighbouring Rougham, although this is a small church, and the aisles make it almost square. A dedicatory inscription on the two storey vestry in the north east corner bids us pray for the souls of John and Katherine Hoo, who donated the chancel and paid for the trimmings to the aisles. Their inscription has been damaged by protestant reformers, who obviously did not believe in the efficacy of prayers for the dead.

 

Although not comparable with Woolpit, the porch is a grand affair, and a bold statement. You may find the south door locked, but if this is the case then the priest's door into the chancel is usually open. If both are locked, then there is a keyholder, because the people of this parish really want you to see inside this church. And it is as well that they do, for, if you didn't know already, this is one of the most fascinating interiors in the county.

 

In a way, it is rather good to enter it from the chancel, because in this way St Ethelbert unfolds its treasures slowly.You step into relative darkness - or, at least, it seems so in comparison with the nave beyond the rood screen. This is partly a result of the abundance of dark wood, and in truth the chancel appears rather overcrowded. The most striking objects in view are the return stalls, which fill the two westerly corners of the chancel. These are in the style of a college or school of priests, with their backs to the rood screen, but then 'returning' around the walls to the east. They are fine, and are certainly 15th or 16th century. But one of the stalls, that to the north, is different to the others, and seems slightly out of place. It is elaborately carved with faces, birds and foliage.

 

Mortlock thought that it might have been intended for a private house. The stall in front of it has heads on it that appear to be wearing 18th century wigs, although I don't know enough about furniture to be sure if this is the case (or about wigs, for that matter). The sanctuary is largely Victorianised, with a great east window depicting Saints. The south windows of the chancel depict a lovely Adoration scene by the O'Connors.

 

The chancel is separated from the nave by the 15th century rood screen, which is elegantly painted and gilt on the west side, the beautifully tracery intricately carved above. The rood screen has been fitted with attractive iron gates, presumably evidence of Anglo-catholic enthusiasm here in the early 20th century, and you step down through them into the light. A first impression is that you are entering a much older space than the one you have left. There is an 18th century mustiness, enhanced by the box pews that line the aisles. And, beyond, on walls and in windows, are wonderful things.

 

The number of surviving wall paintings in England is a tiny fraction of what existed before the 15th and 16th centuries. All churches had them, and in profusion. It isn't enough to say that they were a 'teaching aid' of a church of illiterate peasants. In the main, they were devotional, and that is why they were destroyed. However, it is more complicated than that. Reseach in recent years has indicated that many wall paintings were destroyed before the Reformation, perhaps a century before. In some churches, they have been punched through with Perpendicular windows, which are clearly pre-Reformation. In the decades after the Black Death, there seems to have been a sea change in the liturgical use of these buildings, a move away from an individualistic, devotional usage to a corporate liturgical one. THere is a change of emphasis towards more education and exegesis. This is the time that pulpits and benches appear, long before protestantism was on the agenda. What seems to happen is that many buildings were intended now to be full of light, and devotional wall paintings were either whitewashed, or replaced with catechetical ones.

 

The decoration of the nave was the responsibility of the people of the parish, not of the Priest. The wall paintings of England can be divided into roughly three groups. Roughly speaking, the development of wall paintings over the later medieval period is in terms of these three overlapping emphases.

 

Firstly, the hagiographies - stories of the Saints. These might have had a local devotion, although some saints were popular over a wide area, and most churches seem to have included a devotion to St Christopher right up until the Reformation.

 

Secondy came those which illustrate incidents in the life of Christ and his mother, the Blessed Virgin. Although partly pedagogical, they were also enabling tools, since private devotions often involved a contemplation upon them, and at Mass the larger part of those present would have been involved in private devotions.

 

Lastly, there are catechetical wall paintings, illustrating the teachings of the Catholic church. It should not be assumed that these are dogmatic - many are simply artistic representations of stories, and others are simplifications of theological ideas - the seven deadly sins and the seven cardinal virtues, for example. Some warn against occasions of sin (gossiping, for example) and generally wall paintings provide a local site for discussion and exemplification.

 

To an extent, all the above is largely true of stained glass, as well, with the caveat that stained glass was more expensive, relied on local patronage, and often has this patronage as a subtext, hence the large number of heraldic devices and images of local worthies. But it was also devotional, and so it was also destroyed.

So - what survives at Hessett? The wall paintings first.

 

Starting in the south east corner of the nave, we have Suffolk's finest representation of St Barbara, presenting a tower. St Barbara is a mythical saint, relegated to non-league status in recent years by the Catholic Church, who nevertheless was very popular in early medieval times, because she was invoked against strikes by lightning and sudden fires. This resulted from her legend; her father, on finding her to be a Christian, walled her up in a tower until she repented. As a result, he was struck by lightning, and reduced to ashes. She was also the patron saint of the powerful building trade, and as such her image graced their guild altars - perhaps that was the case here.

 

Above the south door is another figure, often identified as St Christopher, but I do not think that this can be the case. St Christopher is found nowhere else in Suffolk above a south door. The traditional iconography of this mythical saint is not in place here, and it is hard to see how this figure could ever have been interpreted as such. I suspect it is a result of an early account confusing the two images over the north and south doors, and the mistake being repeated in later accounts.

 

In fact, digital enhancement seems to suggest that there are two figures above the south door, overlapping each other slightly. The figure on the left appears to be winged, while the figure on the right is barefoot, and may be carrying a beam or scales. The Archangel St Michael is often shown weighing souls in doom paintings, but I do not think this is part of a doom (again, it would be exceptional for this to appear over a south door) and I do not think it is St Michael.

 

I think that the figure on the left is probably Gabriel, and this is part of a later Annunciation painting overlapping an earlier image, the barefoot man. So who is he? Another suggestion is that it is St John the Baptist, as he is often shown barefoot. But what if the beam of the 'weighing scales' is actually part of a yoke? The supporting beam appears to continue over the figure's right shoulder, but the left side of his body is lost to us.

 

Could it be that it is not a Saint at all, but some representation of an agricultural worker? Perhaps it is part of a larger image (and we should not forget that the surviving paintings are a small part of what must have been there before). Perhaps it is even part of a hagiography - think of the wheel of the bullock cart in the St Edmund sequence at Thornham Parva, interpreted for many years as St Catherine's wheel. However, I wonder if it might even be a lost image of that most circumscribed of East Anglian saints, Walstan. He is carrying a scythe on the wall a few miles off at Cavenham - could this be him here? Whatever, it is likely to be part of a hagiographical sequence which was later replaced by a Life of Christ sequence, which usually ran from west to east along the south wall. This would also explain the location of what might be part of an Annunciation scene.

 

The wall painting opposite, above the north door, is St Christopher. Although it isn't as clear as himself at, say, nearby Bradfield Combust, he bestrides the river in the customary manner, staff in hand. The Christ child is difficult to discern, but you can see the fish in the water. Also in the water, and rather unusual, are two figures. They are rendered rather crudely, almost like gingerbread men. Could they be the donors of the north aisle, John and Katherine Hoo in person?

 

Moving along the north aisle, we come to the set of paintings for which Hessett is justifiably famous. They are set one above the other between two windows, at the point where might expect the now-vanished screen to a chapel to have been. The upper section was here first. It shows the seven deadly sins (described wrongly in some text books as a tree of Jesse, or ancestory of Christ). Two devils look on as, from the mouth of hell, a great tree sprouts, ending in seven images. Pride is at the top, and in pairs beneath are Gluttony and Anger, Vanity and Envy, Avarice and Lust.

 

Mortlock suggests that some attempt has been made to erase the image for Lust, which may simply be mid-16th century Calvinistic prurience on the part of some reformer here. This would suggest that this cathecetical tool was here right up until the Reformation.

 

The idea of 'Seven Deadly Sins' was anathema to the reformers, because it is entirely unscriptural. Rather, as a catechetic tool, it is a way of drawing together a multitude of sins into a simplistic aide memoire. This could then be used in confession, taking each of them one at a time and examining ones conscience accordingly. It should not be seen simply as a 'warning' to ignorant peasants; the evidence is that the ordinary rural people of late medieval England were theologically very articulate. Rather, it was a tool for use, in contemplation and preparation for the sacrament of reconciliation, which may well have ordinarily taken place in the chapel here.

 

The wall painting beneath the Sins is even more interesting. This is a very rare 'Christ of the Trades', and dates from the early 15th century, about a hundred years after the painting above. It is rather faded, and takes a while to discern, and not all of it is decodable. However, enough is there to be fascinating. The image of the 'Christ of the Trades' is known throughout Christendom, and contemporary versions with this can be found in other parts of Europe. It shows the risen Christ in the centre, and around him a vast array of the tools and symbols of various trades. It rises from the medieval perception that Christ was a working man, a carpenter, and it symbolises the dignity of labour and of craftsmanship.

 

I think it is extremely unlikely that it shows symbols of things which shouldn't be done on a Sunday, although Anne Marshall's Painted Churches site contains an interesting argument to the contrary.

 

Perhaps the most fascinating symbol, and the one that everyone notices, is the playing card. It shows the six of diamonds. Does it represent the makers of playing cards? If so, it might suggest a Flemish influence. Or could it be intended to represent something else? Whatever, it is one of the earliest representations of a playing card in England. Why is this here? It may very well be that there was a trades gild chantry chapel at the east end of the north aisle, and this painting was at its entrance.

 

At the east end of the north aisle now is the church's set of royal arms. Cautley saw it in the vestry in the 1930s, and identified it as a Queen Anne set. Now, with additions stripped away, it is revealed as a Charles II set from the 1660s, and a very fine one. It is fascinating to see it at such close range. Usually, they are set above the south door now, although they would originally have been placed above the chancel arch, in full view of the congregation, a gentle reminder of who was in charge.

 

The glass alone is worth coming to Hessett to see. Few Suffolk churches have such an expanse, none have such a variety, or glass of such quality and interest. It consists essentially of three ranges: the life and Passion of Christ in the north aisle (although some glass has been reset across the church), images and hagiographies of Saints in the south aisle, and a heavily restored but nonetheless fascinating sequence of the life of Christ in the west window. This bears close attention, for the fragments set into the restored work include several fascinating details, including the punctured feet of Christ ascending to heaven in a cloud of glory, and a Harrowing of Hell including the crushing of a fallen angel.

 

In the north aisle, the scourging of Christ stands out, the wicked grins of the persecutors contrasting with the pained nobility of the Christ figure. In the next window, Christ rises from the dead, coming out of his tomb like the corpses in the doom paintings at Stanningfield, North Cove and Wenhaston. The Roman centurion sleeps soundly in the foreground.

 

The most famous image is in the east window of the south aisle. Apparently, it shows a bishop holding the chain to a bag, with four children playing at his feet. I say apparently, because there is rather more going on here than meets the eye. The reason that this image is so famous is that the small child in the foreground is holding what appears to be a golf club or hockey stick, and this would be the earliest representation of such an object in all Europe. A rather more sober school of thought argues that it is a fuller's club, used for dying clothes, and the symbol of St James the Less. The whole image has been said to represent St Nicholas, who was a Bishop, and whose legends include a bag of gold and a group of children.

 

Unfortunately, this is not convincing. St Nicholas is never symbolised by a bag of gold, and there are three children in the St Nicholas legend, not four. In any case, the hand in the picture is not holding the chain to a bag at all, but a rosary.

 

What has happened here is that the head of a Bishop has been grafted on to the body of a figure which is probably still in its original location. The three lights of this window contained a set of the Holy Kinship. The light to the north of the 'Bishop' contains two children playing with what ae apparently toys, but when you look closely you can see that one is holding a golden shell, and the other a poisoned chalice. They are the infant St James and St John, and the lost figure above them was their mother, Mary Salome.

 

This means that the figure with the Bishop's head is actually Mary Cleophas, mother of four children including St James the Less, and it really is a fuller's club. The third light to the south, of course, would have depicted the Blessed Virgin and child, but she is lost to us.

 

If the windows and wallpaintings were all there was, then Hessett would be remarkable enough. But there is something else, two things, actually, that elevate it above all other Suffolk churches, and all the churches of England. For St Ethelbert is the proud owner of two unique survivals. At the back of the church is a chest, no different from those you'll find in many a parish church. In common with those, it has three separate locks, the idea being that the Rector and two Churchwardens would have a key each, and it would be necessary for all three of them to be present for the chest to be opened. It was used for storing parish records and valuables.

 

At some point, one of the keys was lost. There is a great story about the iconoclast William Dowsing turning up here and demanding the chest be opened; on account of the missing key, it couldn't be. Unfortunately, this story isn't true: Dowsing never visited Hessett. The chest was eventually opened in the 19th century. Inside were found two extraordinary pre-Reformation survivals. These are a pyx cloth and a burse. The pyx cloth was draped over the wooden canopy that enclosed the blessed sacrament (one of England's four surviving medieval pyxes is also in Suffolk, at Dennington) before it was raised above the high altar. The burse was used to contain the host before consecration at the Mass. They are England's only surviving examples, and they're both here.

 

Or, more precisely they aren't - both have been purloined by the British Museum, the kind of theft that no locked church can prevent.

 

But there are lifesize photos of both either side of the tower arch. The burse is basically an envelope, and features the Veronica face of Christ on one side with the four evangelistic symbols in each corner. On the other is an Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God. The survival of both is extraordinary. It is one thing to explore the furnishings of lost Catholic England, quite another to come face to face with articles that were actually used in the liturgy.

 

In front of the pictures stands the font, a relatively good one of the early 15th century, though rather less exciting than everything going on around it. The dedicatory inscription survives, to a pair of Hoos of an earlier generation than the ones on the vestry.Turning east again, the ranks of simple 15th century benches are all of a piece with their church. They have survived the violent transitions of the centuries, and have seated generation after generation of Hessett people. They were new here when this church was alive with coloured light, with the hundreds of candles flickering on the rood beam, the processions, the festivals, and the people's lives totally integrated with the liturgy of the seasons. For the people of Catholic England, their religion was as much a part of them as the air they breathed. They little knew how soon it would all come to an end.

 

And so, there it is - one of the most fascinating and satisfactory of all East Anglia's churches. And yet, not many people know about it; we are only three miles from the brown-signed honeypot of Woolpit, where a constant stream of visitors come and go. I've visited Hessett many times, and never once encountered another visitor. Still, there you are, I suppose. Perhaps some places are better kept secret. But come here if you can, for here is a medieval worship space with much surviving evidence of what it was actually meant to be, and meant to do.

 

Postscript: I wrote the above in 2000, adapting it in 2003 and 2006. I have left the structure of the narrative as it was when I made those early visits. I have corrected some confusion in the description of the glass, a consequence of my general inability to tell my left from my right. I have also taken the opportunity to go through the text and make myself sound slightly less pompous.

 

One of the delights of Hessett is that there really are genuine mysteries about some of the wall paintings and glass. Digital enhancement has added to these mysteries rather than solving them. In addition, one thing I have learned as I get older, and perhaps a little bit wiser, is that there really are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our early 21st century philosophy. If this has led to an unravelling of the certainties previously offered, then I can only plead that this is another excuse to go back soon.

SANCTUS: Celebrating A Decade of Catechism & Renewed Faith Through Newly Commissioned Religious Images

(The 1st Primera Salida Exhibit)

Museo ng Makati

Brgy. Poblacion, Makati City

November 4-15, 2011

 

1st Regular Exhibit Day

November 8, 2011

  

* Exhibit open everyday (except weekends and holidays), 8 AM thru 5 PM.

 

**Pictures in set unedited due to bulk and time constraints.

 

***Attention all exhibitors: Feel free to grab any of the pictures for your personal use. Please cite the source whenever and wherever applicable. Thanks.

 

youtu.be/eh31j6L95Ok

 

GESU' ISTITUISCE L'EUCARESTIA.IL SACRAMENTO DELL'EUCARISTIA

 

Compendio del Catechismo della Chiesa Cattolica

 

1. Che cos'è l'Eucaristia?

 

È il sacrificio stesso del Corpo e del Sangue del Signore Gesù, che egli istituì per perpetuare nei secoli, fino al suo ritorno, il sacrificio della Croce, affidando così alla sua Chiesa il memoriale della sua Morte e Risurrezione. È il segno dell'unità, il vincolo della carità, il convito pasquale, nel quale si riceve Cristo, l'anima viene ricolmata di grazia e viene dato il pegno della vita eterna.

 

2. Quando Gesù Cristo ha istituito l'Eucaristia?

 

L'ha istituita il Giovedì Santo, «la notte in cui veniva tradito» (1 Cor 11,23), mentre celebrava con i suoi Apostoli l'Ultima Cena.

 

3. Come l'ha istituita?

 

Dopo aver radunato i suoi Apostoli nel Cenacolo, Gesù prese nelle sue mani il pane, lo spezzò e lo diede loro dicendo: «Prendete e mangiatene tutti: questo è il mio corpo offerto per voi». Poi prese nelle sue mani il calice del vino e disse loro: «Prendete e bevetene tutti: questo è il calice del mio sangue per la nuova ed eterna alleanza, versato per voi e per tutti in remissione dei peccati. Fate questo in memoria di me».

 

4. Che cosa rappresenta l'Eucaristia nella vita della Chiesa?

 

È fonte e culmine di tutta la vita cristiana. Nell'Eucaristia toccano il loro vertice l'azione santificante di Dio verso di noi e il nostro culto verso di lui. Essa racchiude tutto il bene spirituale della Chiesa: lo stesso Cristo, nostra Pasqua. La comunione della vita divina e l'unità del Popolo di Dio sono espresse e prodotte dall'Eucaristia. Mediante la celebrazione eucaristica ci uniamo già alla liturgia del Cielo e anticipiamo la vita eterna.

 

5. Come viene chiamato questo Sacramento?

 

L'insondabile ricchezza di questo Sacramento si esprime con diversi nomi, che evocano suoi aspetti particolari. I più comuni sono: Eucaristia, Santa Messa, Cena del Signore, Frazione del pane, Celebrazione eucaristica, Memoriale della passione, della morte e della risurrezione del Signore, Santo Sacrificio, Santa e Divina Liturgia, Santi Misteri, Santissimo Sacramento dell'altare, Santa Comunione.

 

6. Come si colloca l'Eucaristia nel disegno divino della salvezza?

 

Nell'Antica Alleanza l'Eucaristia è preannunziata soprattutto nella cena pasquale annuale, celebrata ogni anno dagli Ebrei con i pani azzimi, a ricordo dell'improvvisa e liberatrice partenza dall'Egitto. Gesù l'annuncia nel suo insegnamento e la istituisce celebrando con i suoi Apostoli l'Ultima Cena durante un banchetto pasquale. La Chiesa, fedele al comando del Signore: «Fate questo in memoria di me» (1 Cor 11,24), ha sempre celebrato l'Eucaristia, soprattutto la domenica, giorno della risurrezione di Gesù.

 

7. Come si svolge la celebrazione dell'Eucaristia?

 

Si svolge in due grandi momenti, che formano un solo atto di culto: la liturgia della Parola, che comprende la proclamazione e l'ascolto della Parola di Dio; la liturgia eucaristica, che comprende la presentazione del pane e del vino, la preghiera o anafora, che contiene le parole della consacrazione, e la comunione.

 

8. Chi è il ministro della celebrazione dell'Eucaristia?

 

È il sacerdote (Vescovo o presbitero), validamente ordinato, che agisce nella Persona di Cristo Capo e a nome della Chiesa.

 

9. Quali sono gli elementi essenziali e necessari per realizzare l'Eucaristia?

 

Sono il pane di frumento e il vino della vite.

 

10. In che senso l'Eucaristia è memoriale del sacrificio di Cristo?

 

L'Eucaristia è memoriale nel senso che rende presente e attuale il sacrificio che Cristo ha offerto al Padre, una volta per tutte, sulla Croce in favore dell'umanità. Il carattere sacrificale dell'Eucaristia si manifesta nelle parole stesse dell'istituzione: «Questo è il mio corpo, che è dato per voi» e «Questo calice è la nuova alleanza nel mio Sangue, che viene versato per voi» (Lc 22,19-20). Il sacrificio della Croce e il sacrificio dell'Eucaristia sono un unico sacrificio. Identici sono la vittima e l'offerente, diverso è soltanto il modo di offrirsi: cruento sulla Croce, incruento nell'Eucaristia.

 

11. In quale modo la Chiesa partecipa al sacrificio eucaristico?

 

Nell'Eucaristia, il sacrificio di Cristo diviene pure il sacrificio delle membra del suo Corpo. La vita dei fedeli, la loro lode, la loro sofferenza, la loro preghiera, il loro lavoro sono uniti a quelli di Cristo. In quanto sacrificio, l'Eucaristia viene anche offerta per tutti i fedeli vivi e defunti, in riparazione dei peccati di tutti gli uomini e per ottenere da Dio benefici spirituali e temporali. Anche la Chiesa del cielo è unita nell'offerta di Cristo.

 

12. Come Gesù è presente nell'Eucaristia?

 

Gesù Cristo è presente nell'Eucaristia in modo unico e incomparabile. È presente infatti in modo vero, reale, sostanziale: con il suo Corpo e il suo Sangue, con la sua Anima e la sua Divinità. In essa è quindi presente in modo sacramentale, e cioè sotto le specie eucaristiche del pane e del vino, Cristo tutto intero: Dio e uomo.

 

13. Che cosa significa transustanziazione?

 

Transustanziazione significa la conversione di tutta la sostanza del pane nella sostanza del Corpo di Cristo, e di tutta la sostanza del vino nella sostanza del suo Sangue. Questa conversione si attua nella preghiera eucaristica, mediante l'efficacia della parola di Cristo e dell'azione dello Spirito Santo. Tuttavia, le caratteristiche sensibili del pane e del vino, cioè le «specie eucaristiche», rimangono inalterate.

 

14. La frazione del pane divide Cristo?

 

La frazione del pane non divide Cristo: egli è presente tutto e integro in ciascuna specie eucaristica e in ciascuna sua parte.

 

15. Fino a quando continua la presenza eucaristica di Cristo?

 

Essa continua finché sussistono le specie eucaristiche.

 

16. Quale tipo di culto è dovuto al Sacramento dell'Eucaristia?

 

È dovuto il culto di latria, cioè di adorazione, riservato solo a Dio sia durante la celebrazione eucaristica sia al di fuori di essa. La Chiesa, infatti, conserva con la massima diligenza le Ostie consacrate, le porta agli infermi e ad altre persone impossibilitate a partecipare alla Santa Messa, le presenta alla solenne adorazione dei fedeli, le porta in processione e invita alla frequente visita e adorazione del Santissimo Sacramento conservato nel tabernacolo.

 

17. Perché l'Eucaristia è il banchetto pasquale?

 

L'Eucaristia è il banchetto pasquale, in quanto Cristo, realizzando sacramentalmente la sua Pasqua, ci dona il suo Corpo e il suo Sangue, offerti come cibo e bevanda, e ci unisce a sé e tra di noi nel suo sacrificio.

 

18. Che cosa significa l'altare?

 

L'altare è il simbolo di Cristo stesso, presente come vittima sacrificale (altare-sacrificio della Croce) e come alimento celeste che si dona a noi (altare-mensa eucaristica).

 

19. Quando la Chiesa fa obbligo di partecipare alla santa Messa?

 

La Chiesa fa obbligo ai fedeli di partecipare alla santa Messa ogni domenica e nelle feste di precetto, e raccomanda di parteciparvi anche negli altri giorni.

 

20. Quando si deve fare la santa Comunione?

 

La Chiesa raccomanda ai fedeli che partecipano alla santa Messa di ricevere con le dovute disposizioni anche la santa Comunione, prescrivendone l'obbligo almeno a Pasqua.

 

21. Che cosa si richiede per ricevere la santa Comunione?

 

Per ricevere la santa Comunione si deve essere pienamente incorporati alla Chiesa cattolica ed essere in stato di grazia, cioè senza coscienza di peccato mortale. Chi è consapevole di aver commesso un peccato grave deve ricevere il Sacramento della Riconciliazione prima di accedere alla Comunione. Importanti sono anche lo spirito di raccoglimento e di preghiera, l'osservanza del digiuno prescritto dalla Chiesa e l'atteggiamento del corpo (gesti, abiti), in segno di rispetto a Cristo.

 

22. Quali sono i frutti della santa Comunione?

 

La santa Comunione accresce la nostra unione con Cristo e con la sua Chiesa, conserva e rinnova la vita di grazia ricevuta nel Battesimo e nella Cresima e ci fa crescere nell'amore verso il prossimo. Fortificandoci nella carità, cancella i peccati veniali e ci preserva in futuro dai peccati mortali.

 

23. Quando è possibile amministrare la santa Comunione agli altri cristiani?

 

I ministri cattolici amministrano lecitamente la santa Comunione ai membri delle Chiese Orientali che non hanno comunione piena con la Chiesa cattolica, qualora questi lo richiedano spontaneamente e siano ben disposti.

Per i membri delle altre Comunità ecclesiali, i ministri cattolici amministrano lecitamente la santa Comunione ai fedeli, che in presenza di una grave necessità lo chiedano spontaneamente, siano ben disposti e manifestino la fede cattolica circa il Sacramento.

 

24. Perché l'Eucaristia è «pegno della gloria futura»?

 

Perché l'Eucaristia ci ricolma di ogni grazia e benedizione del Cielo, ci fortifica per il pellegrinaggio di questa vita e ci fa desiderare la vita eterna, unendoci già a Cristo asceso alla destra del Padre, alla Chiesa del cielo, alla beatissima Vergine e a tutti i Santi.

____________________________________________________________________________

JESUS ​​'instituted the Eucharist. Of the Eucharist

 

Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church

 

1. What is the Eucharist?

 

It is the sacrifice of the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus which he instituted until his return, the sacrifice of the Cross, entrusted to his Church as a memorial of his death and resurrection. It is a sign of unity, bond of charity, a Easter banquet in which Christ, the soul is filled with grace and given the pledge of eternal life.

 

2. When Jesus Christ instituted the Eucharist?

 

Jesus instituted the Holy Thursday "the night he was betrayed" (1 Cor 11:23), as he celebrated with his apostles in the Last Supper.

 

3. How did you set?

 

After he had gathered with his apostles at the Last Supper, Jesus took bread in his hands, broke it and gave it to them saying, "Take and eat it: this is my body given for you." Then he took the cup of wine and said to them, "Take and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood of the new and everlasting covenant, shed for you and for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in remembrance of me. "

 

4. What does the Eucharist in the life of the Church?

 

It is the source and summit of Christian life. Eucharist reach their high point, the sanctifying action of God toward us and our worship of him. It contains the whole spiritual good of the Church: Christ himself, our Easter. The communion of divine life and the unity of the People of God are both expressed in the Eucharist. By the Eucharistic celebration we already uniting ourselves to the liturgy of heaven and anticipation of eternal life.

 

5. How is this Sacrament called?

 

The inexhaustible richness of this sacrament is expressed in different names which evoke its various aspects. The most common are: the Eucharist, Mass, Lord's Supper, Breaking of Bread, the Eucharistic Celebration, the Memorial of the passion, death and resurrection of the Lord, the Holy Sacrifice, Holy and Divine Liturgy, Sacred Mysteries, the Blessed Sacrament, Holy Communion.

 

6. Where does the Eucharist in the divine plan of salvation?

 

In the Old Testament foreshadowed the Eucharist is above all in the annual Passover meal celebrated every year by the Jews with the unleavened bread to remember liberating departure from Egypt. Jesus foretold it in his teaching and establishing celebrating with his apostles during the Last Supper a Passover meal. The Church, faithful to the Lord's command: "Do this in remembrance of me" (1 Cor 11:24), has always celebrated the Eucharist, especially on Sunday, the day of the resurrection of Jesus

 

7. How is the celebration of the Eucharist?

 

It takes place in two great parts that form a single act of worship: the liturgy of the Word involves proclaiming and listening to the Word of God, the Liturgy of the Eucharist includes the presentation of the bread and wine, prayer or anaphora, which contains the words of consecration, and communion.

 

8. Who is the minister for the celebration of the Eucharist?

 

It is the priest (bishop or priest), ordained, which acts in the Person of Christ the Head and on behalf of the Church.

 

9. What are the essential and necessary for celebrating the Eucharist?

 

They are wheat bread and grape wine.

 

10. In that sense, the Eucharist is a memorial of Christ's sacrifice?

 

The Eucharist is a memorial in the sense that it makes present and actual the sacrifice which Christ offered to the Father, once and for all, on the Cross for humanity. The sacrificial character of the Eucharist is manifested in the words of institution, "This is my body which is given for you" and "This cup is the new covenant in my blood which is shed for you" (Lk 22 19-20). The sacrifice of the Cross and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice. Identical are the victim and the agent, only different is the manner of offering: on the bloody cross, Eucharist bloodless.

 

11. How does the Church participate in the Eucharistic sacrifice?

 

In the Eucharist, the sacrifice of Christ becomes also the sacrifice of the members of his Body. The lives of the faithful, their praise, their suffering, their prayers, their work, are united with those of Christ. As sacrifice, the Eucharist is also offered for all the faithful living and dead, in reparation for the sins of all men and to obtain spiritual and temporal benefits from God. The Church in heaven is united to the offering of Christ.

 

12. How is Christ present in the Eucharist?

 

Jesus Christ is present in the Eucharist in a unique and incomparable. It is present in a true, real and substantial way, with his Body and his Blood, with his Soul and Divinity. In it is thus present in a sacramental way, that is, under the eucharistic bread and wine, Christ whole and entire, God and man.

 

13. What does it mean transubstantiation?

 

Transubstantiation means the change of the whole substance of bread into the substance of the Body of Christ, and the whole substance of wine into the substance of his blood. This conversion is carried in the eucharistic prayer through the efficacy of the Word of Christ and of the Holy Spirit. However, the characteristics of bread and wine, that is the "Eucharistic species", remain unaltered.

 

14. Does the breaking of the bread divide Christ?

 

The breaking of the bread does not divide Christ: He is present whole and entire in each being of the Eucharist and in each of their parts.

 

15. How long does the Eucharistic Presence of Christ?

 

It continues until the Eucharistic subsist.

 

16. What kind of worship is due to the sacrament of the Eucharist?

 

It is due to the cult of worship, that the adoration given to God alone, both during the Mass or outside it. For the Church, must keep with the greatest care Hosts, the door to the sick and others unable to attend Mass. She also presents the solemn adoration of the faithful in procession to the door and invites frequent visits to adore the Blessed Sacrament reserved in the tabernacle.

 

17. Because the Eucharist is the Passover meal?

 

The Eucharist is the Passover meal, as Christ sacramentally makes present his Passover, he gives us his Body and his Blood, offered as food and drink, and unites us to Himself and among ourselves as a sacrifice.

 

18. What does the altar signify?

 

The altar is the symbol of Christ himself, present as a sacrificial victim (the altar of the sacrifice) and as food from heaven which is given to us (altar table of the Lord).

 

19. When is the Church is obliged to offer in the Mass?

 

The Church obliges the faithful to attend Mass every Sunday and holy days of obligation, and recommends participation on other days.

 

20. When must one receive Holy Communion?

 

The Church recommends that the faithful who participate at Holy Mass with the proper dispositions also receive Holy Communion, and may require an obligation to at least Easter.

 

21. What is required to receive Holy Communion?

 

To receive Holy Communion one must be fully incorporated into the Catholic Church and be in a state of grace, not conscious of mortal sin. Anyone who is conscious of having committed a grave sin must receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation before coming to communion. Also important are the spirit of meditation and prayer, observance of the fast prescribed by the Church and the attitude of the body (gestures and dress) as a sign of respect for Christ.

 

22. What are the fruits of Holy Communion?

 

Holy Communion augments our union with Christ and his Church, maintains and renews the life of grace received at Baptism and Confirmation and makes us grow in love for our neighbor. It strengthens us in charity, wipes away venial sins and preserves us from future mortal sins.

 

23. When it is possible to give Holy Communion to other Christians?

 

Catholic ministers may lawfully administer Holy Communion to members of the Eastern Churches not in full communion with the Catholic Church, if they so request voluntarily and are properly disposed.

For members of other ecclesial communities, Catholic ministers may lawfully receive Holy Communion to the faithful, that when there is a serious need for the spontaneously ask, are well and give evidence of the Catholic faith regarding the sacrament.

 

24. Why is the Eucharist a "pledge of future glory"?

 

Why is the Eucharist fills us with every grace and blessing of Heaven, strengthens us for the pilgrimage of this life and makes us want eternal life, by uniting with Christ already ascended to the Father, the Church in heaven, the Blessed Virgin and all Saints.

 

Thank Martyn McMad for traslate !

 

www.flickr.com/photos/37159729@N04/

              

Church of St Leonard, Bledington Gloucestershire

The 1086 Domesday Survey records that the manor of

'Bladintun' was among the gifts of Coenwulf of Mercia to the abbey of Winchcombe, and consisted of 7 hides. The presence of a church was confirmed in a record of 1175, when the Pope confirmed all the possessions of the abbey who held it until its mid 16c Dissolution.

This early church consisted of a nave and chancel, the only survivors being the font & bellcote which was moved from the west end to its present position when the tower was built.

c1220 The south aisle was added possibly at the same time as the chancel was restored / rebuilt, followed by the south porch later in the century.

Late 14c / early 15c the nave was heightened with clerestory windows & the two stage tower built.

The 15c stained glass is particularly fine with kneeling donors in the north wall windows in the nave www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/aYa5sA & also in the 1490 Chantry chapel between the chancel and south aisle built by "Nicholas Hobbes & Agnes his wife" ,

 

During the reign of protestant Edward Vl in 1551 the incumbent, John Cooke, was found " wanting in doctrine", and was enjoined to desist from 'superstition'. The vicarage had been vacant for more than a year in 1563 and the church was served by a curate, though in 1566 the churchwardens claimed that there was never a curate there, which suggests that he was not resident. Towards the end of the 16c complaint was made that the chancel was not paved, there had been no sermon for 15 years, and the catechism was not taught.

The tower has 6 bells , one of 1639 by James Keane of Woodstock inscribed "And Charles he is our king" stands on the floor of the chantry chapel www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/374Md6

Winchcombe abbey held the manor until its mid 16c dissolution after which it was given in 1553 to Sir Thomas Leigh, later Lord Mayor of London, and passed from him to his eldest son Rowland and his descendants, the Leigh family of Adlestrop.

The church was restored by John Edward Knight Cutts in 1881 and by Frank Ernest Howard c1923.

   

Divide and Conquer or Unite and Triumph

Make Love, Not War - Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Left

 

Two heads may be better than one, but not if they bash against each other. The human species is pitted against itself and against its own enlightened self interest at the dawn of this bright New Millennium. The unexamined human mind is similarly split and fractured, its potential as yet unrealised.

 

The fracture lines are exposed by our various tribal superstitions and regional lies, but aren’t caused by these outdated totemic religious dogmas and catechisms. Most of the planet is blatantly lorded over by fossilised dynasties and racist dictators. Where you see any single family holding multiple positions of power you’re looking at gangsters in operation, running a parasitic kleptocracy. Cronyism and nepotism are age-old methods of feathering your own nest and fending off rival petty tyrants at everyone else’s expense.

 

Tyrants use racism as the primal wedge to force populations apart, in order to divide and conquer all comers. Every other antagonistic ‘ism’ is another version of a single primordial fear – the fear of the other and of the unknown, embodied in racism and justified by religion and patriotism.

 

The so-called ‘free world’ appears to be trapped in an illusion of democracy that delivers power into the hands of exactly the same classes of mediocre incompetents and all too efficient control freaks - who also believe they’re born to hoodwink and rule over everyone else.

 

While life and liberty are infinitely more secure under a compassionate and swiftly acting rule of law than under the whims of inherently insane brutal overseers, no nation on Earth can honestly boast it has a completely free, independent, incorruptible or efficient legal system – let alone a free one. All democracies face similar hurdles.

 

Under the simple U.N. definition of a democracy – a nation that has given the vote to all its adult citizens for a generation or more – very few countries measure up. Even the United States only qualified as a democracy after the end of the Cold War - twenty-five years after it finally gave the vote to African Americans in all southern states in the mid-sixties.

   

More than one in a hundred US citizens are currently incarcerated in a rapidly expanding privatised penal system - a higher proportion than any other country. Libertarianism and liberty are not the same thing; as President Roosevelt famously remarked, freedom includes freedom from as well as freedom to. He included the freedom from want as one of the essential four freedoms that America embodied, in his almost universally accepted vision of the American Dream. This freedom has been derided and ignored by subsequent corporation-run governments as ‘socialist’, ‘communist’ and, even worse, ‘utopian’.

 

There is no free country on planet Earth – yet – but we can make one! First we have to disassemble all the false divisions that separate us into illusory competing groups, which congeal our shared blood into false notions of nations, states and races. To do this we have to see that our emperors have no clothes except those we choose – or are convinced – to give them.

 

If you want complete control over the human species the oldest trick in the book is to divide the struggling primates into illusory nations and artificial countries, to pit parochial tribes against other nearby ignoramuses. Take a look at Iraq, for instance – a country that was literally invented wholesale by conquering Western interests early last century. It was created with deliberate, easily exploitable faults and fractures so that racist warmongers could hold onto the region’s resources – including energy supplies - and keep control of a vital strategic corridor, with a classic move in what was universally known in Imperial times as the ‘Great Game’.

 

The fact that Iraq’s artificially created borders contained mutually antagonistic groups who had never been able to live together peacefully was a major bonus for the conquering crusaders - a deliberate ploy of the Western Powers that’s been widely used throughout history. Until 1959 they were able to steal all the deeply riven despot-governed “Iraqi” peoples’ energy supplies without paying a single pound or dollar in royalties. The now largely forgotten Iraqi revolution temporarily freed its people from the yoke of Imperialistic oppression, but built-in internal divisions, exploitative neighbours and imperialist retaliation undid the fledgling nation spectacularly. Watch this space for no further developments – just more of the same.

 

The Americans learned the tactic of divide and conquer from the English, who picked up the trick from the Roman Empire. The technique is much older than Rome, originating in primate sibling rivalry and unexamined, culturally entrained competitive behaviour. ‘Division’ is an ancient trick of the divine gods who rule over mortals – the word ‘divide’, ‘divine’ and ‘devil’ all spring from the same root of the Tree of Knowledge of Life and Death, in case you’re interested in that sort of thing.

 

Most self-professed democratic nations literally labour under the illusion that they have freedom of choice – when they only have two nearly identical thumb-twiddling, tweedle-dumber political parties to choose between. Governments are mainly comprised of old men corrupted by power and fear, and officious Oppositions usually only serve to oppose – they hardly ever contribute anything new or meaningful to a rigged debate.

 

When you only have to bribe, coerce and co-opt a handful of figures in Cabinet and Opposition you have little to fear from the many millions of subjects who believe their vote means something. Unless you actually know a politician intimately and personally – know them well enough to be absolutely certain they’re honest and motivated solely by the best ideals - only new faces in politics can be trusted at all; you can more easily see their reactions to the strings attempting to pull them.

 

Some members of the tyranny of despots would like to be good shepherds instead of wily predators, and some are working to remold the world into a more splendid image than their devolutionary fellows – but to exercise power over others is an inherently corrupting Faustian pastime.

 

Under these circumstances your vote can only mean something if you don’t vote for either of the two alternatives that have a chance of winning! In practice the ‘choice’ comes down to a primitive playoff between two corporate-industrial-military front-men, whose faces and voices are almost all that most citizens see or hear of their governments. Meaningful change is rendered impossible in this false gladiatorial contest. If you have no choice but to vote for a party, then vote for a third force that may hold the balance of power without being already corrupted by it.

   

'Feudal';

 

Freedom Exits Under Dominator’s Adversarial Laws

 

The simple but supremely successful trick of duopoly politics holds the world in thrall to a fundamentally feudal hive structure of remote masters, bureaucratic governors and workers who jump for carrots and cringe from sticks.

 

Democracy is far more than the sham of party politics, and real democracy is strangled to death by fat cats enjoying expensive private parties held at everyone else’s expense – lousy parties with tinny music, bland costumes and boring speeches – cringe-worthy parties which are no fun at all. Real democracy requires that people can elect representatives who will represent them – not some other individual, group or party.

 

The whole notion of parties representing the people is an inherently absurd historical error that we now have the means to correct. In the newly emergent interconnected age of distributed networks, we can each become a sovereign of our own true estate – our bodies – and all have a truly equal say and vote in where our species is headed. Modern technologies and widening education bring a truly global democracy within easy reach. Individuals could simply vote for issues and cut out the middleman politicians entirely!

 

But before we can trust majorities with ultimate - if democratic - power over minorities who may be very different from them, we have a multitude of issues to address and rectify. Fortunately, a fair global framework already exists to protect us all from our own potential errors, one which provides an almost universally ratified Bill of Rights covering every child, woman and man on Earth.

 

The various U.N. treaties regarding all sorts of rights have been assembled under an adequate umbrella of universal protection known as the International Bill of Rights. It already forms the basis for many domestic laws that various nations have adopted under its articles – but chances are that as a mere citizen you’ve been kept entirely in the dark as to the true reasons behind your particular government’s apparent wisdom and largesse.

 

The International Bill of Rights is easily accessed via United Nations websites and is easily digested; see if you can find anything in it with which you disagree. It’s likely that the vast majority of humans on the planet will have no problems with its definitions of rights and freedoms, but there are many other issues to deal with if global electronic democracy is to become a reality – for instance, finding a way to curb the power of programmers and technocrats, and the powers of our easily controlled, utterly coercible and censorable mass media. We face ancient dilemmas; who guards the guardians and who watches the watchers? And how do you disarm a paranoid bunch of brainwashed tribalists armed by despots who profit from the continual killing – and who control their civilization?

 

We have to make an end to war. Creating peace involves creating a space without suffering or violence. If we want to end war a good place to start – if you’re serious about changing your attitudes but can’t abandon or thoroughly alter your current life – is at the kindergarten level of competitive training for violent combat and war; sport.

 

Competitive sports train the innocent for war. That’s the whole point behind encouraging the ‘masses’ to back and barrack for tribalistic, totemically differentiated teams, folks; it teaches that life, war friendship, love and politics can all be dealt with using the same brainless reflexive win-lose concepts and simplifies everything to an easily divisible level. Sport and war reduce the multitude to elevate the domineering.

 

If you want to change your world stop paying any attention to the stupid duopolistic distractions of competitive sport and party politics. Many will rebel at this – that’s the whole point. Most current day politics, finance, wars and pieces are equally delusory distractions, keeping your eyes off the prize and your mind off the main game by turning off your mind.

 

All problems with our conscious decision making processes stem from the self-same source, whether they be individual or collective.

 

We have to understand where this global split personality arises from; it comes from within each of us. The adversarial structures of our systems of law and government arise from minds that continually argue with themselves and never know peace or inner silence.

 

This is not just a consequence of the bicameral – twin chambered – nature of our split brain structure – it’s a result of a planetary shockwave that affected us all in prehistory, resulting in our collective and individual inability to recover from a blow to the head delivered simultaneously to the entire species. The Earth was struck by a massive interplanetary discharge – a planet-wide electric shock felt by all, amid a global catastrophe that threatened to extinguish our species.

 

Remember the ancient Babylonian (Iraqi) story of the ‘Tower of Babel’ and humanity’s cleavage into disparate tribes and nations who could suddenly no longer understand each other? It’s instructive to note that the chroniclers of this pre-Biblical narrative averred that the sky god destroyed the tower to divide Humanity and thus render us powerless - because we were beginning to rival the deities themselves. *

 

We have little understanding of what abilities we’ve lost as a species – like many victims of electro-shock therapy, we are afflicted with partial amnesia. Suffice to say that once upon a time we could all ‘hear’ on more than one level… whether we remember or believe it or not – and that ability and many others are well within our reach and grasp. The younger you are when you start to change yourself the easier it will be.

 

Until both hemispheres of our brains can operate together in a balanced synergy - which can only arise from the healing light of clear self-examination and careful tuning - our star-spanning minds are reduced to an argumentative, jostling conversation between two or more equally half-blinded and crippled parts. When we become internally unified and fully integrated we have the ability to tune in with – and on - anything and anyone, anywhere and anytime; and self-styled gods of all creeds and stripes find the idea of such a self-aware Humanity repulsive; it renders us abominably uncontrollable and unbindably free.

 

The almost universal mental imbalance resulting from this lack of internal attunement is the origin of all apparent divisions and false dichotomies that surround us. Our brains are instruments that require tuning – and harmony is only possible when all crazy notions of aloneness and competition are cast aside.

 

When we open ALL our eyes we can easily see that disagreement isn’t required to reach the truth, and argument isn’t necessary to arrive at easily achievable and universally agreeable goals. It’s easy to see that all of us are one being staring through the starry eyes of a multitude - and to know that death is impossible.

 

All it takes is to the ability to do nothing and think nothing. Absolutely nothing. The moment of wonder is only a moment away when you’ve mastered this ‘simple’ trick – the first step to true enlightenment. The world is always waiting for you to reemerge from the delight of the light imbued with immanent innocence; the universe is alive, and responds to your inner sense. The universe is a co-creation and it takes all kinds to make a world. Even if you can transform yourself in the bright void of superconsciousness, your life awaits you on your return. Changing the world means changing your mind and your life; the devil lies in the details you slowly shed with your old discarded skin.

 

The Whole Holy Hologram

 

If you want to change your world, the only place to start is within yourself. This requires continual self examination and an awareness and recognition of your true motives and programming. It requires abandoning the false ideas of notional nations, separate races, superior religious superstitions and parted politics. It means rechannelling all your competitive behaviour and attitudes into a recognition of unity with others – and with all things. It’s easy to recognise the all-powerful unity that lies within our vast diversity of cultures, perspectives and beliefs when you stop identifying with individual idiosyncratic fractions and factions. The whole is far greater than the sum of its parts.

 

The real Great Game is the Royal Maze of the Mind that leads to enlightenment. The gate to the core of the maze resides at the core of your brain, in the central space between and behind your eyes and between your ears, below the crown of your head. If you locate yourself there – right now – and view the world from the perspective of the centre of your own head, you’ll see your view widen from a narrow tunnel to a wide expanse that incorporates everything in your field of view.

 

We’re primates living in a planetary tree that’s scarred with the graffito of our passions – loves and hates born of our illusory fear of mortality and separation, which compel us to make our mark on the world. We can do better than simply making marks and leaving scars.

 

All we have to look beyond the surface differences that camouflage our identically innocent spirits and wise ancient souls. If we want to start making a paradise planet out of this industrialised wasteland we have to recognise where the primal split in our species really lies. The first illusory division in our species - and the hideous result of our ongoing inner distractions and artificially contrived divisions - is the enduring armed truce in the pointless, ultimately unsurvivable battle of the sexes.

 

When peace is made between woman and man the planet can flower into a garden paradise fit for children. When our apparent differences are recognised for what they are – interlinked and interlocking survival strategies designed for life and consciousness to expand on the floating crust of a chaotically changeable ball of hot mud circling a blazing electric fireball – we can celebrate the gift of the interlocking jigsaw puzzles that our bodies and tribes really are.

 

We can learn that our species-split sexuality is a technique of regeneration and transformation on an individual and global scale – we’re not just a tools used by a bunch of genes for their own survival, but companions, lovers and co-creators. We can learn to control our own fertility at will and lovemaking can keep us young and supple, and be a portal to higher consciousness and the abilities it provides.

 

The techniques are miraculously still available, despite being long suppressed by rigid prudes worshipping the same false religions that burned Giordano Bruno at the stake – along with many millions of wise women and men – and which still stone women to death for being outdoors alone, or refuse to allow their sheeple to use contraceptives.

 

The place to make world peace real is in the still core of your mind and the still, pure warmth in the core of your heart. The way to heal yourself and the planet is to still your mind and make love – real, true, non-possessive abundant love – and as the hippies said, if you can’t be with the one you love then love the one you’re with.

 

It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it - it might as well be you. Make love, not war; when we learn to accept each other and work together life is no longer a job or chore, but a work of divinely inspired Art. When we open our eyes in the new fresh dawn of sensuously rational happiness we find we don’t have to climb out of the purblind pit of false dogma and censored history – we’re already free in a brave new world.

    

- R. Ayana

 

Turn on! Tune in! Opt out of the system that’s destroying your world and do something else! You literally create reality as you pass through it.

 

Welcome to the New Aeon. Together we can create an astounding New Millennium!

 

“Time flies when you don’t notice a single thing.”

 

Wonder Boy – Age 9

  

From nexusilluminati.blogspot.com.au/2008/06/divide-and-conque...

 

Image - author's

 

See and be the New Illuminati @ nexusilluminati.blogspot.com

Falstaff: Well, ’tis no matter; honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honour set-to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? No. What is honour? A word. What is in that word “honour”? What is that “honour”? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ’Tis insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I’ll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon. And so ends my catechism.

 

(Act 5, Scene 1, lines 129–139), Henry IV, Part 1.

  

James: Hey sunshine, take it easy!

No (Rom 3:10–12, 23; 1 John 1:8, 10; Rom 7:18†; Jas 2:10†; 3:2†); for I am by nature prone to hate God and my neighbor (Rom 8:7; Eph 2:3, 5; Tit 3:3; Gen 6:5†; 8:21†; Jer 13:23†; 17:9†; Rom 7:23–25†; Matt 6:24‡).

 

The text of the catechism is reproduced from, “The Heidelberg Catechism. A.D. 1563,” in Philip Schaff and David S. Schaff, eds., The Creeds of Christendom (1931; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 3:307–55.

None; for, first, God will not punish, in any other creature, that of which man has made himself guilty (Heb 2:14–18; Gen 3:17†; Ezek 18:4†); and, further, no mere creature can sustain the burden of God’s eternal wrath against sin, and redeem others therefrom (Ps 130:3; Job 4:18; 15:15–16; 25:5–6; Ps 49:7–9; Nah 1:6†; Heb 9:12†; Rev 5:3†).

 

The text of the catechism is reproduced from, “The Heidelberg Catechism. A.D. 1563,” in Philip Schaff and David S. Schaff, eds., The Creeds of Christendom (1931; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 3:307–55.

In Memory

To

Padre Luis Jaume

First California Martyr

Who Was Killed Nov. 4, 1775,

By Indians on This Spot

Erected and Dedicated Sept. 8, 1924

By Native Sons and Daughters

Of the Golden West

 

Considering the significance of this site, I am surprised the plaque is looking so shabby. Perhaps the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West no longer have the resources to maintain their monuments.

 

According to Wikipedia:

 

Luis Jayme (October 18, 1740 – November 4, 1775), born Melchor Jayme, was a Spanish-born Roman Catholic priest of the Franciscan Order. Born at the farm Son Baró in the village of Sant Joan, Majorca, his earliest schooling was acquired from the local parish priest. At the age of fifteen Melchor was enrolled at the convent school of San Bernardino, where Fray Junípero Serra had studied some years earlier.

 

Melchor Jayme was admitted to the Franciscan Order on September 27, 1760 in the Convento de Santa Maria de los Angeles de Jesus.

 

Following a year of strict seclusion and rigorous discipline, Jayme solemnly promised to observe the rule of the Friars Minor for the rest of his earthly lifespan; he was known as Fray Luis from thereon. The friar conducted his theological studies at the Convento de San Francisco, and was ordained to the priesthood on December 22, 1764.

 

Fray Luis was appointed "Lector of Philosophy" upon completion of his coursework (a position he occupied at San Francisco from 1765 to 1770). Jayme arrived in New Spain in early 1770 after a long and arduous trans-Atlantic voyage. There he began the special training course at the missionary College of San Fernando de Mexico wherein "soldiers of the Cross" were conditioned to the privation, fatigue, mortification and penance encountered on the missionary frontier.

 

Fray Luis set out for California along with nine other priests to begin a ten-year commitment ministering to the indigenous population.

 

Jayme was assigned to Mission San Diego de Alcalá, where his earliest efforts were devoted to mastering the complexities of the local Kumeyaay language. Once he had gained a facility with its vocabulary, he was able to compile a polyglot Christian catechism. The lack of a dependable water supply, coupled with the proximity of the military personnel at the Presidio, led to the priest asking for and being granted permission to relocate the mission from its original site, atop Presidio Hill, to the valley several miles east, where it is now situated.

 

Almost immediately there was a noticeable increase in the number of conversions which, by 1775, stood at 431. Some of the local Kumeyaay people resented the Spanish intrusion into their land.

 

At approximately 1:30 a.m., on the moonlit morning of November 4, 1775, more than 600 warriors from the surrounding rancherías silently crept into the mission compound. After plundering the chapel, they set the other buildings ablaze. The commotion soon awakened the two missionaries, the Spanish guards, and the Christian neophytes.

 

Rather than run to the stock hold for shelter, Fray Luis walked toward the band of warriors, uttering the traditional Franciscan greeting: "Amar a Dios, hijos!"—"Love God, my children!" The Kumeyaay seized him, stripped off his garments, shot some eighteen arrows into his torso, then smashed his face with clubs and stones.

 

Jayme's body was, at first, interred in the Presidio chapel. When the new church at the mission was completed, the body was reinterred in the sanctuary. There it rested until November 12, 1813 when it was transferred once more.

 

Today, the remains of Fray Luis Jayme lie in a common vault between the main and side altar. He is considered to be the first Catholic martyr in Alta California.

 

Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcalá, San Diego, California.

 

St Ethelbert, Hessett, Suffolk

 

Hessett is a fairly ordinary kind of village to the east of Bury St Edmunds, but its church is one of the most important in East Anglia for a number of reasons, which will become obvious. Consider for one moment, if you will, the extent to which the beliefs and practices of a religious community affect the architecture of its buildings. Think of a mosque, for instance. Often square, expressing the democracy of Islam, but without any imagery of the human figure, for such things are proscribed. Think of a synagogue, focused towards the Holy Scriptures in the Ark, but designed to enable the proclaiming of the Word, and the way that early non-conformist chapels echo this architecture of Judaism - indeed, those who built the first free churches, like Ipswich's Unitarian Chapel, actually called them synagogues.

 

The shape of a church, then, is no accident. A typical Suffolk perpendicular church of the 15th century has wide aisles, to enable liturgical processions, a chancel for the celebration of Mass, places for other altars, niches for devotional statues, a focus towards the Blessed Sacrament in the east, a roof of angels to proclaim a hymn of praise, a large nave for devotional and social activities, and wall paintings of the Gospels and hagiographies of Saints, of the catechism and teachings of the Catholic Church. As Le Corbusier might have said if he'd been around at the time, a medieval church is a machine for making Catholicism happen.

 

No longer, of course. The radical and violent fracture in popular religion in the middle years of the 16th century gave birth to the Church of England, and the new church inherited buildings that were quite unsuitable for the new congregational protestant theology, a problem that the Church of England has never entirely solved.

 

Over the centuries, the problem has been addressed in different ways. The early reformers celebrated communion at a table in the nave, for example, and blocked off the chancel for other uses. Although this was challenged by the Laudian party in the early part of the 17th century, it was the way that many parishes reinvented their buildings, and most were to stay like that until the middle years of the 19th century. Some went further. A pulpit placed halfway down the nave, or even at the back of the church, meant that the seating could be arranged so that it no longer focused towards the east, thus breaking the link with Catholic (and Laudian) sacramentalism. For several centuries, Anglican churches focused on the pulpit rather than the altar.

 

With the coming to influence of the 19th century Oxford Movement, all this underwent another dramatic change, with the great majority of our medieval parish churches having their interiors restored to their medieval integrity, reinventing themselves as sacramental spaces. This is the condition in which we find most of them today, and some Anglican theologians are asking the question that the Catholic Church asked itself at Vatican II in the 1960s - is a 19th century liturgical space really appropriate for the Church of the 21st century?

 

So, let us hasten at once to Hessett. The church sits like a glowing jewel in its wide churchyard, right on the main road through the village. It is pretty well perfect if you are looking for a fine Suffolk exterior. An extensive 15th century rebuilding enwraps the earlier tower, which was crowned by the donor of the rebuilding, John Bacon.The nave and aisles are deliciously decorated, reminding one rather of the church at neighbouring Rougham, although this is a smaller church, and the aisles make it almost square. A dedicatory inscription on the two storey vestry in the north east corner bids us pray for the souls of John and Katherine Hoo, who donated the chancel and paid for the trimmings to the aisles. Their inscription has been damaged by protestant reformers, who obviously did not believe in the efficacy of prayers for the dead.

 

Although not comparable with that at Woolpit, the dressed stone porch is a grand affair, and a bold statement. You may find the south door locked, but if this is the case then the priest's door into the chancel is usually open. And in a way it is a good church to enter via the chancel, because in this way St Ethelbert unfolds its treasures slowly.You step into relative darkness - or, at least, it seems so in comparison with the nave beyond the rood screen. This is partly a result of the abundance of dark wood, and in truth the chancel seems rather overcrowded. The most striking objects in view are the return stalls, which fill the two westerly corners of the chancel. These are in the style of a college or school of priests, with their backs to the rood screen, but then 'returning' around the walls to the east. They are fine, and are certainly 15th or 16th century. But one of the stalls, that to the north, is different to the others, and seems slightly out of place. It is elaborately carved with faces, birds and foliage.

 

Mortlock thought that it might have been intended for a private house. The stall in front of it has heads on it that appear to be wearing 18th century wigs. The sanctuary is largely Victorianised, with a great east window depicting Saints. The south windows of the chancel depict a lovely Adoration scene by the O'Connors. The chancel is separated from the nave by the 15th century rood screen, which is elegantly painted and gilt on the west side, the beautifully tracery intricately carved above. The rood screen has been fitted with attractive iron gates, presumably evidence of Anglo-catholic enthusiasm here in the early 20th century, and you step down through them into the light. A first impression is that you are entering a much older space than the one you have left. There is an 18th century mustiness, enhanced by the box pews that line the aisles. And, beyond, on walls and in windows, are wonderful things.

 

The number of surviving wall paintings in England is a tiny fraction of those which existed before the 15th and 16th centuries. All churches had them, and in profusion. It isn't enough to say that they were a 'teaching aid' of a church of illiterate peasants. In the main, they were devotional, and that is why they were destroyed. However, it is more complicated than that. Research in recent years has indicated that many wall paintings were destroyed before the Reformation, perhaps a century before. In some churches, they have been punched through with Perpendicular windows, which are clearly pre-Reformation. In the decades after the Black Death, there seems to have been a sea change in the liturgical use of these buildings, a move away from an individualistic, devotional usage to a corporate liturgical one. There is a change of emphasis towards more education and exegesis. This is the time that pulpits and benches appear, long before protestantism was on the agenda. What seems to happen is that many buildings were intended now to be full of light, and devotional wall paintings were either whitewashed, or replaced with catechetical ones.

 

The decoration of the nave was the responsibility of the people of the parish, not of the Priest. The wall paintings of England can be divided into roughly three groups. Roughly speaking, the development of wall paintings over the later medieval period is in terms of these three overlapping emphases.

 

Firstly, the hagiographies - stories of the Saints. These might have had a local devotion, although some saints were popular over a wide area, and most churches seem to have supported a devotion to St Christopher right up until the Reformation.

 

Secondly came those which illustrate incidents in the life of Christ and his mother, the Blessed Virgin. Although partly pedagogical, they were also enabling tools, since private devotions often involved a contemplation upon them, and at Mass the larger part of those present would have been involved in private devotions. These scriptural stories were as likely to have been derived from apocryphal texts like the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew as from the actual Gospels themselves.

 

Lastly, there are catechetical wall paintings, illustrating the teachings of the Catholic church. It should not be assumed that these are dogmatic. Many are simply artistic representations of stories, and others are simplifications of theological ideas, as with the seven deadly sins and the seven cardinal virtues. Some warn against occasions of sin (gossiping, for example) and generally wall paintings provided a local site for discussion and exemplification.

 

To an extent, all the above is largely true of stained glass, as well, with the caveat that stained glass was more expensive, relied on local patronage, and often has this patronage as a subtext, hence the large number of heraldic devices and images of local worthies. But it was also devotional, and so it was also destroyed.

 

So - what survives at Hessett? The wall paintings first.

 

Starting in the south east corner of the nave, we have Suffolk's finest representation of St Barbara, presenting a tower. St Barbara was very popular in medieval times, because she was invoked against strikes by lightning and sudden fires. This resulted from her legend, for her father, on finding her to be a Christian, walled her up in a tower until she repented. As a result, he was struck by lightning, and reduced to ashes. She was also the patron saint of the powerful building trade, and as such her image graced their guild altars - perhaps that was the case here.

 

Above the south door is another figure, often identified as St Christopher, but I do not think that this can be the case. St Christopher is found nowhere else in Suffolk above a south door. The traditional iconography of this mythical saint is not in place here, and it is hard to see how this figure could ever have been interpreted as such. I suspect it is a result of an early account confusing the two images over the north and south doors, and the mistake being repeated in later accounts.

 

In fact, digital enhancement seems to suggest that there are two figures above the south door, overlapping each other slightly. The figure on the right is barefoot, that on the left is wearing a white gown. There appears to be water under their feet, and so I think this is an image of the Baptism of Christ. Perhaps it was once part of a sequence.

 

The wall painting opposite, above the north door, is St Christopher. Although it isn't as clear as himself at, say, nearby Bradfield Combust, he bestrides the river in the customary manner, staff in hand. The Christ child is difficult to discern, but you can see the fish in the water. Also in the water, and rather unusual, are two figures. They are rendered rather crudely, almost like gingerbread men. Could they be the donors of the north aisle, John and Katherine Hoo in person?

 

Moving along the north aisle, we come to the set of paintings for which Hessett is justifiably famous. They are set one above the other between two windows, at the point where might expect the now-vanished screen to a chapel to have been. The upper section was here first. It shows the seven deadly sins (described wrongly in some text books as a tree of Jesse, or ancestry of Christ). Two devils look on as, from the mouth of hell, a great tree sprouts, ending in seven images. Pride is at the top, and in pairs beneath are Gluttony and Anger, Vanity and Envy, Avarice and Lust. Mortlock suggests that some attempt has been made to erase the image for Lust, which may simply be mid-16th century puritan prurience on the part of some reformer here. This would suggest that this catechetical tool was here right up until the Reformation.

 

The idea of 'Seven Deadly Sins' was anathema to the reformers, because it is entirely unscriptural. Rather, as a catechetical tool, it is a way of drawing together a multitude of sins into a simplistic aide memoire. This could then be used in confession, taking each of them one at a time and examining ones conscience accordingly. It should not be seen simply as a 'warning' to ignorant peasants, for the evidence is that the ordinary rural people of late medieval England were theologically very articulate. Rather, it was a tool for use, in contemplation and preparation for the sacrament of reconciliation, which may well have ordinarily taken place in the chapel here.

 

The wall painting beneath the Sins is even more interesting. This is a very rare 'Christ of the Trades', and dates from the early 15th century, about a hundred years after the painting above. It is rather faded, and takes a while to discern, and not all of it is decodable. However, enough is there to be fascinating. The image of the 'Christ of the Trades' is known throughout Christendom, and contemporary versions with this can be found in other parts of Europe. It shows the risen Christ in the centre, and around him a vast array of the tools and symbols of various trades. One theory is that it depicts activities that should not take place on a Sunday, a holy day of obligation to refrain from work, and that these activities are wounding Christ anew.

 

Perhaps the most fascinating symbol, and the one that everyone notices, is the playing card. It shows the six of diamonds. Does it represent the makers of playing cards? If so, it might suggest a Flemish influence. Or could it be intended to represent something else? Whatever, it is one of the earliest representations of a playing card in England. Why is this here? It may very well be that there was a trades gild chantry chapel at the east end of the north aisle, and this painting was at its entrance.

 

At the east end of the north aisle now is the church's set of royal arms. Cautley saw it in the vestry in the 1930s, and identified it as a Queen Anne set. Now, with additions stripped away, it is revealed as a Charles II set from the 1660s, and a very fine one. It is fascinating to see it at such close range. Usually, they are set above the south door now, although they would originally have been placed above the chancel arch, in full view of the congregation, a gentle reminder of who was in charge.

 

And so to the glass, which on its own would be worth coming to Hessett to see. Few Suffolk churches have such an expanse, none have such a variety, or glass of such quality and interest. It consists essentially of two ranges, the life and Passion of Christ in the north aisle (although some glass has been reset across the church), and images and hagiographies of Saints in the south aisle.

 

In the north aisle, the scourging of Christ stands out, the wicked grins of the persecutors contrasting with the pained nobility of the Christ figure. In the next window, Christ rises from the dead, coming out of his tomb like the corpses in the doom paintings at Stanningfield, North Cove and Wenhaston. The Roman centurion sleeps soundly in the foreground.

 

The most famous image is in the east window of the south aisle. Apparently, it shows a bishop holding the chain to a bag, with four children playing at his feet. I say apparently, because there is rather more going on here than meets the eye. The reason that this image is so famous is that the small child in the foreground is holding what appears to be a golf club or hockey stick, and this would be the earliest representation of such an object in all Europe. The whole image has been said to represent St Nicholas, who was a Bishop, and whose legends include a bag of gold and a group of children.

 

Unfortunately, this is not the case. St Nicholas is never symbolised by a bag of gold, and there are three children in the St Nicholas legend, not four. In any case, the hand in the picture is not holding the chain to a bag at all, but a rosary, and the hockey stick is actually a fuller's club, used for dyeing clothes, and the symbol of St James the Less.

 

What has happened here is that the head of a Bishop has been grafted on to the body of a figure which is probably still in its original location. The three lights of this window contained a set of the Holy Kinship. The light to the north of the 'Bishop' contains two children playing with what ae apparently toys, but when you look closely you can see that one is holding a golden shell, and the other a poisoned chalice. They are the infant St James and St John, and the lost figure above them was their mother, Mary Salome.

 

This means that the figure with the Bishop's head is actually Mary Cleophas, mother of four children including St James the Less. The third light to the south, of course, would have depicted the Blessed Virgin and child, but she is lost to us.

 

Not only this, but Hessett has some very good 19th Century glass which complements and does not overly intrude. The best is beneath the tower, the west window in a fully 15th Century style of scenes by Clayton & Bell. The east window, depicting saints, is by William Warrington, and the chancel also has the O'Connor glass already mentioned.

 

If the windows and wall paintings were all there was, then Hessett would be remarkable enough. But there is something else, two things, actually, that elevate it above all other Suffolk churches, and all the churches of England. For St Ethelbert is the proud owner of two unique survivals. At the back of the church is a chest, no different from those you'll find in many a parish church. In common with those, it has three separate locks, the idea being that the Rector and two Churchwardens would have a key each, and it would be necessary for all three of them to be present for the chest to be opened. It was used for storing parish records and valuables.

 

At some point, one of the keys was lost. There is an old story about the iconoclast William Dowsing turning up here and demanding the chest be opened, but on account of the missing key it couldn't be. Unfortunately, this story isn't true, for Dowsing never recorded a visit Hessett. The chest was eventually opened in the 19th century. Inside were found two extraordinary pre-Reformation survivals. These are a pyx cloth and a burse. The pyx cloth was draped over the wooden canopy that enclosed the blessed sacrament (one of England's four surviving medieval pyxes is also in Suffolk, at Dennington) before it was raised above the high altar. The burse was used to contain the host before consecration at the Mass. They are England's only surviving examples, and they're both here. Or, more precisely they aren't, for both have been purloined by the British Museum, the kind of theft that no locked church can prevent.

 

But there are life-size photos of both either side of the tower arch. The burse is basically an envelope, and features the Veronica face of Christ on one side with the four evangelistic symbols in each corner. On the other is an Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God. The survival of both is extraordinary. It is one thing to explore the furnishings of lost Catholic England, quite another to come face to face with articles that were actually used in the liturgy.

 

In front of the pictures stands the font, a relatively good one of the early 15th century, though rather less exciting than everything going on around it. The dedicatory inscription survives, to a pair of Hoos of an earlier generation than the ones on the vestry.Turning east again, the ranks of simple 15th century benches are all of a piece with their church. They have survived the violent transitions of the centuries, and have seated generation after generation of Hessett people. They were new here when this church was alive with coloured light, with the hundreds of candles flickering on the rood beam, the processions, the festivals, and the people's lives totally integrated with the liturgy of the seasons. For the people of Catholic England, their religion was as much a part of them as the air they breathed. They little knew how soon it would all come to an end.

 

And so, there it is - one of the most fascinating and satisfactory of all East Anglia's churches. And yet, not many people know about it. We are only three miles from the brown-signed honeypot of Woolpit, where a constant stream of visitors come and go. I've visited Hessett many times, and never once encountered another visitor. Still, there you are, I suppose. Perhaps some places are better kept secret. But come here if you can, for here is a medieval worship space with much surviving evidence of what it was actually meant to be, and meant to do.

By no means; but on the contrary, we daily increase our debt (Job 9:2–3; 15:15–16; Matt 6:12; Job 4:18–19†; Ps 130:3†; Isa 64:6†; Matt 18:25†; 16:26†; Rom 2:5†).

The text of the catechism is reproduced from, “The Heidelberg Catechism. A.D. 1563,” in Philip Schaff and David S. Schaff, eds., The Creeds of Christendom (1931; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 3:307–55.

Maybe tomorrow...or who knows when?

 

"According to the teaching of the Roman catechism, we must remember how admirable was the intention of divine Providence in entrusting to the angels the mission of watching over all mankind, and over individual human beings, lest they should fall victims to the grave dangers which they encounter. In this earthly life, when children have to make their way along a path beset with obstacles and snares, their fathers take care to call upon the help of those who can look after them and come to their aid in adversity. In the same way our Father in heaven has charged his angels to come to our assistance during our earthly journey which leads us to our blessed fatherland, so that, protected by the angels' help and care, we may avoid the snares upon our path, subdue our passions and, under this angelic guidance, follow always the straight and sure road which leads to Paradise..."

 

- Pope Bl. John XXIII.

 

2 October is the feast of the holy Guardian Angels, and this medieval painting of a seraph is in the British Museum.

Out of the Law of God (Rom 3:20; 7:7†; John 5:45†).

 

The text of the catechism is reproduced from, “The Heidelberg Catechism. A.D. 1563,” in Philip Schaff and David S. Schaff, eds., The Creeds of Christendom (1931; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 3:307–55.

This Christ teaches us in sum, Matt. 22: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first and great commandment; and the second is like unto it: Thous shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.—On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets (Matt 22:37–40; Mark 12:30–31; Luke 10:27–28; Deut 6:4–5†; Lev 19:18†; Luke 5:27†; Rom 13:10†).

 

The text of the catechism is reproduced from, “The Heidelberg Catechism. A.D. 1563,” in Philip Schaff and David S. Schaff, eds., The Creeds of Christendom (1931; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 3:307–55.

Foundation stone 28 Jul 1850 by Bishop Augustus Short, designed by Mr Burnet, opened May 1852, bell installed in tower 1863, new chancel dedicated 20 Dec 1904, re-opened 7 Dec 1930 after renovations, closed c2015, now private. Earliest services had been in the flour mill or Horseshoe Inn.

 

“A Meeting of the subscribers for the erection of a Church at Noarlunga, was held on Friday last, when Messrs Bosworth, Hollins, and J. S. Clark were elected trustees. The church will be a very pretty structure of stone from the neighbouring quarries, and it is to be on an acre in the township presented by Mr Giles for the South Australian Company.” [South Australian 26 Jun 1850]

 

“Noarlunga — The foundation stone of the new church to be dedicated to St. Phillip and St. James, was laid on Friday, the 28th ultimo, by the Bishop of Adelaide, in the presence of a numerous, and highly respectable, concourse of the inhabitants. . . Divine service was performed for the first time on Sunday last, at the ‘Horse Shoe’ Inn. Mr Bock, the worthy landlord, fitted up the room for the occasion, and Miss Plaisted led the various hymns on a splendid organ. . . a great improvement upon the pro tempore places of worship previously used at Noarlunga.” [Adelaide Times 3 Aug 1850]

 

“The towered church of St. Philip and St. James, Noarlunga, perched on a hill, with the silver ribbon of the Onkaparinga winding in and out at its foot, was designed by Mr. Burnet after the model of a church in England.” [Observer 23 Dec 1905]

 

“St. Phillip and St. James' Anglican Church. . . When services were first held there the gospel was preached in somewhat trying circumstances. There were no window panes, strips of calico serving instead. No floor had been set down, and the congregation rested their feet on the soil. . . The name of the church is derived from the Christian names of two of the pioneer workers in the district — Messrs. James Hughes and Phillip Hollins. Before the erection of the church the former conducted a Sunday school in a flourmill nearby.” [News 16 May 1929]

 

“Noarlunga . . . A large bronze bell weighing 120 lbs. has been fixed in the tower of the Episcopal Church here, and will be very useful to the members of that congregation. The gentlemen who have kindly taken the trouble to procure the bell are certainly deserving of the thanks of the members of the church. It is of a good tone, but it has not yet been properly rung. Some trees and shrubs have been planted in the ground adjoining the sacred edifice, but whilst the fence is in an open and decayed state, there can be little hopes of seeing plants grow, as pigs, goats, and calves, are constantly getting into the enclosure.” [Advertiser 22 Aug 1863]

 

“St. Philip and St. James' Church. . . a lecture and concert was held in Mr. Holmes's wheat store in aid of the funds for plastering and ceiling the church. In the afternoon about 100 persons were present, which number was largely increased in the evening.” [Adelaide Observer 14 Apr 1866]

 

“The anniversary festival of the Sunday school belonging to St, Philip and St. James's Church was held on Thursday. Eighty children marched from the church to the district school room, singing hymns, were supplied with fruit, spent some time in play, and then were provided liberally with other refreshments. Between 50 and 60 adults were next regaled, and the whole company had a day of thorough enjoyment.” [Register 15 Mar 1871]

 

“St. Philip and St. James, Noarlunga. . . The Wardens' accounts, which were audited and passed, showed the Church to be in a very satisfactory financial position, and clear of all liabilities. . . discharging the balance of building fund, £25, and left £6 7s. 4d. in hand towards further improvement.” [Register 1 May 1873]

 

“Rev. J. H. Stokes, Incumbent of the Church of St. Phillip and St. James, Noarlunga, was presented with a set of double harness, silver mounted. The presentation was made by Mr. L. Weber on behalf of the members of the Church. . . A large stained-glass window valued an £80 is about to be placed in the eastern end of the Church as the result of the liberality of an old and much esteemed resident in the district, who has been a member of the Church since its erection in 1851.” [Register 15 May 1895]

 

“A stained glass window, the subject of which is ‘The Ascension’, will shortly be placed in the east end of the Anglican Church of Saints Phillip and James,-Noarlunga. The opening, which is unusually large, 8 ft. by 5 ft, will be filled by one complete light unbroken by masonry. The figures depicted in the window are boldly drawn, and the rich and various colors of the drapery blend harmoniously. The central figure, that of our Lord, stands in strong relief in white against the blue of the sky and the yellow rays of the opening heavens, and forms the point of the picture. The window is handsome bordered with vine leaves and grapes, and on the lower margin is the inscription: — ‘Peace be unto you. Lo, I am with you alway’. There is also a tablet with the words: — ‘To the glory of God. Erected by George and Eliza Yates, 1895’. The work entitles Messrs. Montgomery and Grimbly, the designers and executants, to very great credit.” [Advertiser 8 Jan 1896]

 

“On Sunday, February 2, the ceremony of unveiling the stained-glass memorial window presented to the Church of SS. Philip and James, Noarlunga, by Mr. and Mrs. S. Yates, was performed by the Anglican Bishop in the presence of a large congregation. . . Mr. and Mrs. Yates have also caused to be erected a new communion railing in the Church of a light and graceful appearance, and a lady of England is the donor of a new altar and cloth.” [Register 6 Feb 1896]

 

“St Phillip’s and St James' Church, Noarlunga. . . A committee was appointed to consider the question of building new chancel and repairing the church.” [Advertiser 19 Apr 1902]

 

“A new chancel will be dedicated by the Bishop of Adelaide (Dr. Harmer) at Sts. Philip and James, Noarlunga, on Sunday. The church was completed, with chancel and vestry, in 1867, and the present rector is the Rev. T. Wood.” [Advertiser 16 Dec 1903]

 

“Noarlunga. . . A beautiful carved blackwood reredos for the Church of St. Phillip and St. James was dedicated by Archdeacon Clampett, of St. Matthew's Church, Hawthorn, last Friday evening. The reredos is erected to commemorate the seventy-fifth birthday of the sacred edifice. . . After the service the congregation and friends met in the local hall. . . The reredos is the work of Mr. Price, of Adelaide.” [Observer 17 Oct 1925]

 

“Many inconveniences have been suffered by the congregation of St. Phillip and St. James' Anglican Church. . . At present the church is in a sad state of disrepair owing to lack .of funds to cope with the ravages which Time has wrought. Such a pitch has the disrepair reached that on rainy days members of the congregation dare not sit in the back rows, for dripping gutters have no respect for Sunday clothes. Recently, also, two churchgoers were rather fortunate in moving from one of the pews just before a large piece of plaster fell from the ceiling. Large cracks may be seen in various parts of the church, inside and out, and the possibility of more plaster falling presents danger. Some of the window frames has become separated partially from the stonework, and to prevent the entry of wind and rain .newspaper has been stuffed into the space. . . From time to time improvements were made to the church, which now boasts a brick floor and leadlight windows.” [News 16 May 1929]

 

“the third of a series of dances, arranged by Mr. Keith Maynard, for the restoration fund of St. Philip and James Church, Noarlunga.” [Advertiser 11 Jun 1929]

 

“Hawdon in his first overland expedition (1839) struck the Horseshoe after coming down the Onkaparinga, and from thence was able to make a beeline for Adelaide. . . Mr. Peter Giles, an octogenarian comeback, says that in his days there were only six houses, a brewery, and a flourmill in Noarlunga. Beautiful trees and shrubs, wattle, honeysuckle, silver wattle, sheaoak, tea tree, and masses of wild flowers grew in profusion and beauty along the river bank to Port Noarlunga. . . Philip Hollins was the father of Onkaparinga River navigation. The barge Appoline was built to be towed between Port Noarlunga by a horse on a tow path (1857). Hollins was also the proprietor of the Horseshoe Hotel. . . The Rev. A. Burnett held the first Anglican services in the district in its lodgeroom (1848-1853). . . In the seventies and eighties Noarlunga was the great changing place of the Yankalilla-Adelaide mail. At the Horseshoe Inn the passengers transhipped into a larger or smaller coach as the case might be.” [Advertiser 28 Oct 1929]

 

“To celebrate the reopening of St. Philip and St. James Anglican Church, Noarlunga, following renovations at a cost of £200, a back to Noarlunga service will be held on Sunday afternoon. It will be followed by a reunion tea. Archdeacon A. W. Clampett, M.A., will preach. There is a special corner for children in the church. It is in the form of a font presented by scholars of catechism.” [News 3 Dec 1930]

 

“For eighty-one years the Church of St. Phillip and St. James, Noarlunga, has been a prominent landmark on the main South-road. . . Children of the Catechism have furnished the church with a massive font and a shrine of the Blessed Virgin Mary.” [Advertiser 17 Oct 1931]

 

“In the Anglican Church at Noarlunga on Sunday, a memorial window to the late Mrs. Eleanor Maynard was unveiled by the rector (Rev. R. E. Saunders). Designed in a mixture of antique and opaque glass, the window shows the Star in the East shining over Bethleham. Mr. Saunders preached a memorial sermon, taking as text ‘Let your light so shine before men’. Friends of Mrs. Maynard throughout the State contributed to the cost of the window.” [Advertiser 25 Aug 1934]

 

“Noarlunga. Last week ladles of the St. Phillip and St. James's Church of England Guild conducted a pet show in the institute in aid of the Church of England Diocesan Centenary.” [Advertiser 27 May 1947]

 

“A Blossom Ball organised by members of the St. Phillip's and St. James's Church of England Guild in aid of the church centenary fund realised £36.” [Advertiser 14 Aug 1947]

 

“Next Sunday the centenary of St. Philip and St. James Church of England will be celebrated. . . Eucharist, with the Bishop of Adelaide. . . luncheon in Noarlunga Hall. . . Evensong at 3 p.m. . . The first rector was Rev. A. Burnett, who arrived in 1848 and lived in a tent at Willunga. During his term of office the church was contemplated. On July 25, 1850 the land was conveyed under Act 10. 1847, by Messrs. G. F. Angus, Hy. Kingscote and I. R. Todd in trust. . . From 1856 onwards the rectors were Revs. T. R. Neville, E. K. Miller, F. H. Stokes, G. Griffiths, T. Wood, H. C. Thrush, R. E. Saunders and H. J. Hughes, the present rector.” [Advertiser 9 May 1950]

 

“Edward Giles, who was connected with the South Australian Company and had a farm on the opposite side of the river, gave the land for the church. Mrs. F. Rayner, president of the Ladies' Guild, said originally the church had a slate floor and calico windows.” [News 12 Nov 1952]

  

Church of St Michael & All Angels, Blaisdon, Gloucestershire www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/z71E32 - There was a church here in the 13c, in 1262 the Crown granted 3 oaks for its repair and the first rector is recorded in 1294.

The original church consisted of an aisleless nave and chancel, to which was added in 15c a three stage tower with a tiled pyramid roof . It had a large east window, possibly 14c , a south door to the chancel, and a western gallery.

Pre 1280 the rectory was sequestrated for a time because of the rector's non-residence and failure to appear for ordination. William Berkeley, a monk of Flaxley Abbey, was instituted in 1476, having had a papal dispensation; he was presumably the monk of that name who became abbot. William Marten, the rector in 1518, was given penance for immorality. Henry a Fowle was found barely satisfactory in doctrine in 1551 and was deprived, presumably for being married, in 1554. His successor Henry Hooper was a former chantry priest of Mitcheldean. Roger Parsons, who was also Vicar of Brockworth, was non-resident in 1563 but had provided a curate who was said to serve diligently. Thomas Cooke, rector from 1570, was censured in 1576 for failing to preach quarterly sermons and to teach the catechism and for playing cards in low company; in 1584 he was described as neither a graduate nor a preacher

 

During the 19c the church being a poor state of repair was taken down, leaving only the tower standing.

On the 21st of May 1866 the rebuilding began to designs by architect F R Kempson of Hereford consisting of chancel, nave of four bays, north aisle and south porch . The cost of £2000 was borne by Henry Crawshay of Oaklands Park who 2 years earlier had taken over the Blaisdon estate from Mrs Anna Gordon of Kemble. It was built by Messrs Colly & Cullis of Tewkesbury.

In 1680 there were 4 bells recast by Abraham Rudhall in 1732, when probably another was added. One of the five was recast by John Rudhall in 1829 and all 5 bells were again recast and a sixth added in 1912 paid for by Mary Helen MacIver (who had the right to the advowson) in memory of her parents Peter and Isabella Stubs of Blaisdon Hall. At the same time her husband Colin donated the clock made by Joyce of Whitchurch

The organ was installed in 1906 by J W Walker & Sons Ltd .

   

No (Gen 1:31); but God created man good, and after his own image (Gen 1:26–27; Gen 2:7†)—that is, in righteousness and true holiness; that he might rightly know God his Creator, heartily love him, and live with him in eternal blessedness, to praise and glorify him (Eph 4:24; Col 3:10; 2 Cor 3:18; Eph 1:6†; 1 Cor 6:20†; Ps 8†; Rev 21:3†).

 

The text of the catechism is reproduced from, “The Heidelberg Catechism. A.D. 1563,” in Philip Schaff and David S. Schaff, eds., The Creeds of Christendom (1931; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 3:307–55.

This leaf, which appears to have been created as a singular work rather than part of a book, was designed and made by Johann Leonhard Tauber in 1752. Tauber, who identifies himself as a 63 year old gravel-crusher in Nuremberg, Germany, "drew" using lines of texts of Christian doctrine, Martin Luther's Catechism, and daily prayers. He identifies the ultimate design as the "Reichs Apffel," or "Orb of the Empire." Written in the most minute script, with the smallest text in the center of the flower virtually illegible to the naked eye, this work would have been a painstaking act of devotion.

 

To explore fully digitized manuscripts with a virtual page-turning application, please visit Walters Ex Libris.

Plaque of a Church Interior c. 1670

 

Tin-glazed earthenware with blue decoration; reverse unglazed.

 

Netherlands (Delft)

 

In the mid-seventeenth century the Dutch city of Delft was a center of artistic activity, and its thriving ceramic industry began to produce tin-glazed earthenware tile plaques, which were hung on walls as decoration in the same way paintings would have been displayed. Made between 1650 and 1800, these plaques were manufactured from a single slab of clay and usually framed. Prints often served as the principal source for their blue-and-white decoration.

 

Petrus de Witte’s frontispiece to The Heidelberg Catechism, published in 1663, served as the inspiration for this plaque, which shows the interior of a Gothic Church. In the background a large group gathers around a minister who conducts a catechistic discourse a the base of the pulpit inscribed with the numeral “9”. The numbers found on plaques of this sort indicate the psalm number that is subject of the preacher’s sermon.

 

Purchased in honor of Ella Schaap with the Elizabeth Wandell Smith Fund, the John T. Morris Fund, funds contributed by Ida Schmertz, Martina and Michael Yamin, and members of the European Decorative Arts Committee, 2011-53-1.

 

From the Placard: The Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA

 

www.philamuseum.org/

.

First and Second Prizes for Identify the Artist XI were sent to the winners noted below: Trish Mayo and Madeleine – Congratulations:

 

With Mark Sobers a lock for a postcard,… There are still two ART Postcards still up for grabs.. They will be determined in the next two weeks.

Beginning Sunday, April 8 at 8:00 PM ET: Week 9 INSIDE CHURCH (991-995) 4/8 – 4/12/2018

 

Status after week 8:

(1) Trish Mayo 235 *

(2) Madeleine 203 *

(3) Mark Sobers 71 * *

(4) Anton Shomali 30

(5) Viejito 18

Thomas Hawk 13

Eddie Crimmins 12

Bob Dass 11

Paula la Paula 9

Nur Moo 7

Melinda Stuart 5

judy2 chen 5

Sylvia Okkerse 5

Edith VdW 4

Wu-nien 4

Jan Diamond 3

Jim Ingersoll 2

Caty 2

Ana-Marja Veg 2

Andy 2

thierrymuller 2

Laura Sorrells 2

javier morales 2

Colleen Watson-Turner 2

Robert Gross 2

Brigit Rust 1

Urszula 1

Pedro Ribeiro Simōes 1

Brendan Mulcahy 1

Ruthie St. Steven 1

Krzysztof Krr 1

ma wuascht 1

dfretnek 1

Darlene 1

Robert Sparkman 1

axion.atic 1

Charmaine Honeychurch 1

JR P 1

emiliana d 1

joe janecek 1

Stacia Ramirez 1

All This Wonder 1

 

• Confirmed lock for either first and second place. Prizes in the mail some time this week.

** Lock for a postcard.

   

"But if Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you."

– Romans 8:10f, which is part of today's 2nd reading at Mass.

 

2 April is the feast of St Pedro Calungsod who was a teen-aged native of the Visayas region of the Philippines, one of the boy catechists who went with some Spanish Jesuit missionaries from the Philippines to the Ladrones Islands – later renamed “Marianas” – in the western Pacific in 1668, to evangelize the Chamorros. On 2 April 1672, while helping Fr Diego Luis de San Vitores, the rector of the Mission, to recover a runaway servant and to perform some baptisms at the village of Tomhon on the Island of Guam, he was killed by two natives for being a Christian, for catechizing the Chamorros and for helping in the administration of the Sacrament of Baptism. His body was thrown into deep ocean together with that of the rector, who was also killed after him. He was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on 21 October 2012.

 

This statue of the saint is in San Agustin church in Intramuros, Manila.

That by the power of his Godhead (Isa 9:6†; 63:3† [?]) he might bear, in his manhood, the burden of God’s wrath (Deut 4:24†; Nah 1:6†; Ps 130:3†; Isa 53:4–5, 11; Acts 2:24; 1 Pet 3:18), and so obtain for and restore to us righteousness and life (John 3:16; Acts 20:28; 2 Cor 5:21† [cf. HC 15]; Jer 23:5–6† [cf. HC 15]; John 1:4†; 6:51†; 2 Tim 1:9–10†; 1 John 1:2; 4:9–10; Rev 19:15–16†).

 

The text of the catechism is reproduced from, “The Heidelberg Catechism. A.D. 1563,” in Philip Schaff and David S. Schaff, eds., The Creeds of Christendom (1931; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 3:307–55.

ADI SHANKARA / Life History

 

Adi Shankaracharya, One of the greatest philosophers of India, Adi Shankaracharya founded the Advaita Vedanta, which is one of the sub-schools of Vedanta. Adi Shankaracharya whole-heartedly believed in the concept of the Vedas but at the same time advocated against the rituals and religious practices that were over exaggerated. On a closer introspection of the life history of Sri Sankaracharya, we find that he also started the monastic order known as Dashanami and the Shanmata convention of worship. Given here is Adi Shankaracharya biography, which will give you valuable insight into the life of this great poet and philosopher.

 

Born in a simple Brahmin family approximately in the 8th century A.D in Kaladi, Kerala, he was named as Shankara and is considered to be the incarnation of Lord Shiva. It is said that Shankaracharya's mother Aryamba had a vision that Lord himself told her that he would incarnate in the form of her first-born child. Right from childhood he showed a penchant towards spiritual knowledge. He could easily recite the Puranas and the Epics and mastered the Vedas during his early years in Gurukul. Adi Shankara's teachings were thoroughly adopted by his disciples later on.

 

Right from childhood, Shankaracharya was interested in Sanyasa and wanted to lead a meaningful life detached from the worldly pleasures. Once, while taking a bath in Purna River, Shankaracharya was attacked by a crocodile. Though his mother wanted to rescue him, she could not and was helpless. Seeing the haplessness of his mother, he asked her permission for letting him renounce the world. She was left with no choice but to agree. As soon as he recited the mantra, the crocodile left him. Shankaracharya began his life as an ascetic from then on. He proceeded towards further down south of India in search of a Guru.

 

One fine day on the banks of River Narmada he met a man named Govinda Bhagavatpada. Since Shankaracharya was much learned about the Vedas and the Puranas, Govinda Bhagavatpada agreed to be his Guru for attaining spiritual knowledge. Under his tutelage, Shankaracharya gained expertise in different forms of Yoga that included Hatha, Raja and Jnana yoga. He then received the knowledge of Brahma. Thereafter he was known as Adi Shankaracharya whose sole purpose of life was to spread the teachings of Brahma Sutras all over the world.

 

Adi Sankaracharya believed in the philosophy of "non-dualism". He believed in the fact that every individual has a divine existence, which can be identified with the Supreme cosmic power. Though bodies are diverse, the soul is one. The moment someone believes that the concept of life is finite; they are discarding an entirely higher and different dimension of life and knowledge. Self-realization is the key to attain Moksha and connect with God. Though he died young, he left an invaluable treasure of spiritual knowledge for future generations.

  

SRI RAMANUJACHARYA'S LIFE HISTORY

 

(BY SRI UBHAYA VEDANTHA ANBIL RAMASWAMY)

 

Sri Ramanuja (1017 - 1137 CE), the most important philosopher-saint of Sri Vaishnavam and one of the most dynamic characters of Hinduism. He was a philosophical as well as a social reformer, displaying a catholicity that was nearly unparalleled in Hindu religious history before him. He revitalised Indian philosophy and popular religion so much that nearly every aspect of Hinduism has been influenced by his work. His life and works show a truly unique personality, combining contemplativ e insight, logical acumen, catholicity, charismatic energy, and selfless dedication to God.

 

The less known fact even among Srivaishnavas about this well known Acharya by whose name Srivaishnava philosophy is called 'Ramanuja Darsanam' and who is hailed as "Sri Vaishnava Siddhanta Nirdhaarana Saarva bouma" is that he was a 'Vadama' by birth.(Authority :" Periya Thrumudi Adaivu, Pazhanadai Vilakkam and Visishtaadvaita Catechism" - quoted in GLE)

 

HIS AVATARA AND EARLY DAYS

 

Ilaya Perumal was born to Kesava Perumal Somayaji Dikhsitar and Kanthimathi Ammal at Sriperumpudur. Just as Sage Vasishta on seeing the brilliance in the face of the child named him as Lakshmana saying "Lakshmano Lakshmi Sampannaha", Periya Thiru malai Nambi struck by the Tejas of the child, named him after Lakshmana as Ilaya Perumal. (PPM) aka Ilayalwar.

 

There is a sloka in Yadhavaachala Mahatmyam which says:

 

Ananthah Prathamam Roopam Lakshmanascha Tathah Parah |

Balabadram Thritheeyasthu Kalou Kaschit Bhavishyathi ||

 

(meaning) It is the same who was Adhisesha first, Lakshmana after and Balarama in the third who is born as Sri Ramanuja in the Kali yuga. This Kaschit is taken by our Poorva Acharyas as referring to Ramanuja (PPM)

 

HIS BIRTH: (CHITRAI- TIRUVADHIRAI)

 

His date of birth is placed differently by different authorities.As per PPM, he was born in Kaliyuga year 4119 which corresponds to1017 AD. PPM fixes even the exact date as 13th April 1017 AD, interms of English Calendar.

 

PRA, though notes the year as 4118 Kali , maintains the year as 1017 AD only and gives additional information that the Rasi was Karkataka and the time of birth was exactly at noon.

 

VAC, MKS and MSR also agree on the year 1017. PTA gives a few more details like the Yogam being Ayushman, Karanam being Bhadra, Gotra being Harita, Saakha being Yajus, Sutra being Apasthambha and Sect being Vadama ( Vide p.45 of GLE).

 

PPM and ATA mention the year as Pingala, month Chitrai and the constellation Tiruvadirai. PPM adds that it was a Sukla Paksha Panchami, a Friday.

 

It will be for the Research minded scholars to piece together all these details to arrive at the correct date, time etc.

 

Vriddha Padma Purana presages his incarnation thus:-

 

" Long, long afterwards, the Lord himself will come down on earth as a Tridanda Sannyasin, to restore the good law. At that time heretics and men of perverted intellects will confuse the minds of the people. Aasuric Saastraas, based upon fallacious arguments and various schools of thought, very attractive and almost indistinguishable from the Vedanta, will turn away mens' hearts from Vishnu and cause them to forget His glory. That glorious incarnation will, through the good fortune of the Lord's devotees, come down upon earth, to explain and amplify the teachings of the great Sage Baadaraayana and the divine singer of the Gita. The holy one would compose a Bhaashya on the Vyaasa Sutras, to save men from the confusion and despair caused by spurious doctrines and lead them to the True faith" ( Vide p.44 of GLE)

 

While still a boy , he lost his father and was living with his mother at Kanchipuram under the protection of one 'Tiruk kachi Nambi' This Nambi was believed to converse and was on 'speaking terms' with Lord Varadaraja in the Archa form.

 

EVENTS IN THE LIFE OF SRI RAMANUJA

 

(1) Within 16 years of age, he had mastered all the Vedas and Sastras. At age 17, he married Rakshakaambaal ( Tanjammal, in Tamil) (PPM)

 

(2) Ilaya Perumal was placed under the Advaitic Sannyasi called YADAVA PRAKASA at Tirupput kuzhi for training in Advaita Purva Paksha Sastra of Vedanta. Once during this period, Alavandar who desired nominating Ilaya Perumal to succeed himself visited Tirupput kuzhi, met with him but had no opportunity to speak to him and had to return to Srirangam.

 

Very many occasions arose when the Saivite Guru clashed with Ilaya Perumal when the Guru misinterpreted Vedantic statements. Ilaya Perumal fearlessly pointed out the errors in the Guru's interpretations and corrected him. This enraged the Guru. Fearing that one day, Ilaya Perumal would demolish Advaita philosophy, he plotted to kill Ilaya Perumal by drowning him in Ganga while on a pilgrimage tour of the country with his disciples.

 

Learning of the design through one Govinda, another disciple who was also related to him, Ilaya Perumal slipped out into the forest at dead of night. Miraculously, an aged hunter couple appeared and guided him. As Ilaya Perumal who was in a trance, opened his eyes, he found himself at the outskirts of Kanchipuram and the couple had disappeared. He realized that it was Lord Varadaraja and Perundevi Thayar who had come in the guise of the hunter couple. He stayed at Kanchi for a while to assist Tiruk Kachi Nambi in his daily chores of service to Lord Varadaraja.

 

(3) News came that Alavandar was very sick and he desired to meet with Ilaya Perumal. Just as Tirukkachi Nambi and Alavandar arrived, they saw the funeral procession of Alavandar. During the last rites, they noticed that three fingers of Alavandar remained folded signifying three of his last unfulfilled wishes. As Ilaya Perumal swore

 

( i ) that he would write a commentary on Veda Vyasa's Brahma Sutra ( ii ) that he would perpetuate the memory of Vyasa and Parasara and ( iii ) that he would strive to propagate Visishtadvaita on the lines of the 4000 holy collects of Alwars, the fingers unfolded one by one automatically and stretched out to normal position signifying that these were his last wishes. Since he could not meet with Alavandar, he returned to Kanchi without even going into the temple at Srirangam (PPM)

 

(4) Tirukkachi Nambi obtained from Lord Varadaraja the famous ' Six Words ' and passed them on to Ilayalwar. The six words provided the guidelines for Ilayalwar to follow. They were:-

 

( i ) that Lord Narayana is the Paramatma. (ii ) that the individual souls were different from Paramatma. (iii) that Prapatti is the means to attain salvation. (iv) that the last remembrance of the Lord on the part of the departing soul was not necessary. (v) that Moksha can be obtained only on laying off the mortal coils (Videha Mukti) & (vi) that Ilaya Perumal should take refuge at the feet of Periya Nambi.

 

Accordingly, he met with Periya Nambi at Madurantakam , where under the shade of Vakula tree Periya Nambi performed Pancha Samskara to him. As he was initiated into the esoteric of Dvaya Mantra at Madurantakam, the place came to be known as "Dvayam Vilaindha Tiruppathi" (PPM) Both returned to Srirangam and did Kalakshepams on Brahma Sutra etc. for sometime. It was at this time that Lord Ranganatha called him "Nammudaiyavar" (He is ours).(PPM)

 

(5) Ilaya Perumals was not a happy married life. His wife never understood either his greatness nor appreciated his catholicity and always acted on her own wavelength and there was no compatibility as between them. Several instances are cited wherein the lady ensconced in her own in her own pet ideas of being holy or otherwise showed scant respect to Bhagavatas and this greatly annoyed Ilayalwar. When he was about 30 years of age, Ilayalwar took Sannyas with the name of 'Ramanuja Muni'. He was the king among Sannyasis. Hence, he is called ' Yati Rajar'- a honorific invested by Lord Devaathi Rajan.

 

(6) The seat of Acharya at Srirangam was lying vacant without a successor to take over. He was prevailed upon to assume charge. But, before doing so, he wanted to equip himself with the secrets of the three great Mantras. For this purpose, he approached one " Tiruk Koshtiyur Nambi" who made him come several times before actually instructing him. He cautioned Ramanuja that he should not give out the secrets to all and sundry and if he did so, he would go to hell.

 

Immediately on receiving the instructions, Ramanuja climbed up to the top of the steeple of the temple and proclaimed to the large gathering of his disciples assembled there the purport of the instruction.

 

The popular belief that he gave out the Mantras is not correct; What he actually gave out was that he had found out the way to attain Moksha through the three great Mantras and invited those who sincerely wished to follow him and get initiated. Also, he did not advise all and sundry as assumed by some. By the time of this episode, he had already gathered a huge following of disciples who congregated at the main entrance to the temple and he was thus addressing his own disciples (as explained in a separate posting in this series). This is another less known fact about the well known Acharya Tirukkoshtiyur Nambi was so enraged and demanded an explanation. Ramanuja replied that he did not give out the secrets and even if he had transgressed the specific warning of the Guru, only he himself would go to hell but the multitude of humanity that listened to his clarion ' wake - up' call would be saved spiritually. The Guru was overwhelmed by this reply . Embracing Ramanuja appreciating his broad mindedness, he called him 'Emperumanar'- " O! My lord" and declared that Srivaishnavism would thenceforward be known as " Ramanuja Darsanam"- ' the light of Ramanuja'

 

(7) Yadava prakasa, his old Guru had by then returned to Kanchi, became Ramanuja's disciple assuming the name of 'Govinda Yogi'

 

(8) Ramanuja used to go round the streets for his Biksha. An evil minded fellow had mixed poison in the biksha. His wife while serving the biksha fell at Ramanujas feet with tears in her eyes. Ramanuja understood that there was something wrong. When the Sishyas sorted out the biksha for cooking, they found out that poison was mixed with it. Ramanuja went on a fast with a view to cleanse the mind of the evil-doer. On hearing this, Tirukkoshtiyur Nambi rushed all the way to Srirangam. When Ramanuja heard of the coming of his Guru, he rushed to the banks of River Kaveri to receive him. It was the height of summer. Ramanuja ran towards him in the hot Sun to receive him and fell at his feet on the burning sands on the banks of river Kaveri. Nambi did not ask him to get up. Such was his Acharya Bhakti. At that time , Kidambi Aachaan, who was nearby told Nambi " Your action (in not asking Ramanuja to get up) is worse than the poison mixed in the bikshai". Such was the Acharya bhakti of Ramanujas Sishya !(Like master, like pupil !). Tirukkoshtiyur Nambi exclaimed, " After all, now I can cast off my physical body since I have found one who would take the greatest care of Ramanuja"

 

(9) Ramanuja traveled throughout the country spreading the message of Visishtadvaita. Once a votary of the ' illusion theory' Yagna Murthi by name confronted him for 16 days in endless arguments and counter arguments. Finally, he accepted defeat and became a disciple of Ramanuja assuming the name of 'Arulala Perumal Emperumanar' and wrote 'Gnana Saram and Prameya Saram'.

 

(10) One of the most important disciples who was totally devoted to Ramanuja was Kuresan also known as ' Kurattalwan'. Once, Kuresan participated in the shradda ceremony performed for his mother by the famous Tiruvarangathu Amudanar. This Amudanar was in charge of the Srirangam temple. When Amudanar inquired what Kuresan desired as reward for his participation, Kuresan replied that the administration of the temple should be handed over to Ramanuja. Amudanar, who had already known the greatness of Ramanuja was only too glad to hand over the key to Ramanuja. It is this Tiruvarangattu Amudanar who subsequently wrote the Ramanuja Noorrantadhi of 108 verses which was included in the holy collects to make up the total of 4,000.

 

(11) After Mastering the Bodhaayana Vritti of Sage Vyaasa, he wrote several works like Vedanta Sangraham explaining the various viewpoints of Sankara, Yadhava, Bhaskara and others, Vedanta Deepam, Geetha Bashyam etc.

 

(12) During Panguni Uttram, he did Prapatti before the Divya Dhampathi in Serthi and submitted his famous Gadhyatrayam (comprising Saranagathi Gadhyam, Sriranga Gadhyam and Sri Vaikunta Gadhyam ),

 

(13) Later, he wrote a Grantha called Nityam detailing the Tiruvaradhana Kramam

 

(14) While he was on his Sancharam, it is believed that the Lord himself appeared before him at Tiruk Kurum Kudi as a Srivaishnava got Samasrayanam from Udaiyavar (PPM)

 

(15) When he visited Saraswati Peetam, Goddess Saraswati was so impressed with his commentary on Brahma Sutram that she named it "Sri Bhashyam" and conferred on him the title of "Bhashyakaarar". It must be noted that while the other commentaries are known by the names of their authors like 'Sankara Bashyam' written by Aadhi Sankara, the commentary of Ramanuja is always referred to with the venerable honorific 'Sri' denoting its unsurpassed quality and clarity and known as ' Sri Bashyam' (PPM)

 

(16) When he visited Tirumala, a miracle happened. Some argued that the Lord of Tirumalai was Saiva param. It is surprising that such a claim should have arisen about the Lord who had been worshipped as Lord Vishnu by all the Alwars and Acharyas besides Elango Adigal and other Tamil Pulavars for several centuries. This was because the Lord had earlier entrusted His insignia to a King called Tondamaan. (SAA p.57-58). The Lord desired to take back from Tondamaan, these insignia viz., Sankhu, Tiruvaazhi, Soolam, Damarukam etc. They were placed in the Sannidhi the previous night. And, when the doors were opened the next morning, the Lord gave Darshan adorning all his insignia (PPM). Ramanuja was hailed as " Appanukku Sangaazhi Alittha Perumaal" Poet Arunagiri himself sang clearing all doubts in this regard saying "Ulageenra Pachai umaiyanan, Vada Venkadathil Uraibhavan, Uyar Sanga Chakra kara Thalan"

 

(17) Ramanuja "was the greatest synoptic thinker which the world ever produced to systematize Visishtadvaitic philosophy, faithfully interpreting the ancient knowledge in tune with the letter and spirit of the text in the light of revelation and experience tested by stern logic"- [- Hon'ble Justice K.S.Krishnaswami Iyengar of the High Court of Judicture, Madras in his foreword to Desika Prabahandam( P.31) published by Lifco Associates, Madras- 3rd Edition, 1982. ]

 

(18) His magnum opus is his wonderful commentary on Vedavyasa's Brahma Sutram and a simpler commentary thereon called Vedanta Saram. Kuresan was very helpful in publishing his works. Thus, he fulfilled his FIRST PROMISE to Alavandar. It is this Kuresan (aka) Sri Vatsanka Misra who wrote the famous Pancha Sthava consisting of Athi Maanusha Sthava, Sri Sthava, Varadaraja Sthava, Vaikunta Sthava and Sundarabaahu Sthava.

 

(19) He asked Kuresan to name his two sons after Veda Vyasa and Parasara and thus fulfilled his SECOND PROMISE to Alavandar. It was this Parasara Bhattar who subsequently wrote the famous commentary on Vishnu Sahasra Nama as ordained by Ramanuja.

 

(20) Another disciple of Ramanuja was Pillaan. Once, when Ramanuja was alone mentally reciting a particular hymn of Tiruvoimozhi, Pillaan entered his room and inquired if he was meditating on a particular hymn. And, it was indeed the one Ramanuja was actually meditating on!. Ramanuja decided that Pillaan was the person best suited to write a commentary on Tiruvoimozhi. As ordered, he wrote the famous 'AARAAYIRAPPADI' (the commentary known as the 6000 Padi also known as Bhagavad Vishayam) and called Pillaan as 'Tirukkurugai Piraan" after the name of Nammalwar. He was also known as Kurugesar and Braathru Thozhappar. Thus, he fulfilled his THIRD PROMISE to Alavandar. He was one of the Sri Bhashya ubhaya Simhasana Adhipathis.(PPM)

 

(21) Kulothunga Chola was a staunch devotee of Siva. He commanded Ramanuja to come to his court with a view to enlisting his support to establish the superiority of Siva over all other deities. (including Vishnu ). If the support was not forthcoming, the king was planning to kill Ramanuja. Sensing the danger, Kuresa went to the court disguised as Ramanuja along with another disciple called Periya Nambi. The king ordered him to sign a document to the effect that 'Siva is the greatest'. Kuresa added that ' Sivam was no doubt great but Dronam was greater than Sivam'- both expressions referring to units of measurement. The enraged king ordered both of them to be blinded when he came to know that he was Kuresa who was impersonating Ramanuja. Periya Nambi was tortured to death while Kuresa survived. Kuresa, though he himself was blinded, was happy that he had saved Ramanuja. It is this Kulothunga who is reported to have thrown away the idol of Govindaraja in the sea. Ramanuja recovered it and had it installed at Tirupati.

 

(22) While on an itinerary, Ramanuja noticed an officer of state, by name Danur daasa, a hunter by birth was over -concerned and over- protective about the beauty of his wife who was walking along on the hot sands on the banks of the river Kaveri. Ramanuja offered to show him something more beautiful than his wife and took him to the proximity of the image of Lord Ranganatha. Danur daasa was enraptured by the charm of the Lord and became a disciple of Ramanuja assuming the name of ' Uranga Villi Daasar'. Ramanuja never entertained any caste distinctions and was conferring his benedictions even on the lowliest of the lowly whom he called 'Tiruk Kulattar'.

 

(23) Ramanuja went to Tiru narayana puram in search of white clay paste used for applying caste marks by Vaishnavites. The idol of the temple there had been taken away by the muslim invaders and was being used at play as a doll by the muslim princess in Delhi. Ramanuja went to Delhi and when he endearingly called ' Come on! My dear child 'Selva Pillaiye Vaarum', the idol miraculously came onto his lap. Ramanuja reinstalled it in the temple.

 

(24) Once some kids were playing on the road pretending to construct a temple, installing an idol of the Lord, offering fruits and flowers etc all the time using the dust on the road for the purpose. They offered some mud as prasadam to Ramanuja who was passing along , he received it with due respect. He remembered in this connection the words of Poigai Alwar who said that the Lord took whatever name and form his sincere devotees wished and in the instant case though the kids were only playing, they sincerely believed in what they were doing.

 

(25) Another disciple of Ramanuja was Vaduga Nambi who put the sandals of his Guru along with those of the Lord. When questioned, he replied that the Acharya's sandals were for him as holy as those of the Lord. When Lord Ranganatha was coming on his rounds on the streets of Srirangam, Vaduga Nambi remarked that the eyes that had seen the charm in the eyes of Ramanuja would not be able to appreciate the beauty of the eyes of even the Lord.-'En Amudinai Kanda Kangal Marronrinai Kaanaave.' Such was his devotion to his Acharya.

 

(26) Ramanuja arranged to make a lifelike idol of himself and embracing it invested it with his powers and had it installed in Tirumalai at Tirupati. The only temple consecrated in Tirumalai , other than that of Lord Venkateswara, is that of Ramanuja.(SAA p.58) The Archa moorthi of Ramanuja known as "Thaan Ugantha Tirumeni" was installed in Tirunarayanapuram.

 

(27) Once, when he visited Tondanoor in Hoysala State, he happened to meet a Jain king called Devarayan. His daughter was possessed by a demon and none could get rid of her predicament. When Ramanuja's SriPaada Theertham ( water consecrated by association with his feet) was sprinkled on her,she was cured of the devil. The King pleaded to be accepted as Ramanujas Sishya. Ramanuja accepted and named him "Vishnu Vardhana".

 

(28) Ramanuja nominated 74 Acharyas to succeed him. It is he who instituted the 13 day "iyal Goshti in Srirangam. (PPM)

 

HIS ASCENT TO PARAMAPADAM

 

With his head on the lap of Embar and his feet on the lap of Vaduga Nambi, Ramanuja breathed his last in 1137 AD listening to the recitation of the Divya Prabandam.

 

Born in PINGALA year, he left for his heavenly abode also in PINGALA year that followed 120 years from the year of his Avatara. Thus, he lived TWO full cycles of Tamil years after his birth

 

PLV places the date in Saaka era 1009, Pingala, in the month of Magha, the 10 th day of Sukla Paksha under the constellation of Tiruvadirai and at noon ( as in the time of his birth).

 

TKG notes that Lord Ranganatha and Periya Piraatti bathed and purified themselves as relatives do.

 

PRA avers that he died on a Saturday

 

VAC places the date as 4238 Kali yuga which corresponds to 1137 AD.

 

PTA, however, states that he lived for 128 years and died in the year Durmati in the month of Vaisaka.

 

Again, Research scholars may fin ways to piece together all these information to arrive at the correct date.

 

His physical body is preserved even today in a sitting posture in the Sannidhi (Sanctum Sanctorum) dedicated to him on the southwest corner on the fifth round within the Srirangam temple as ordered by Lord Ranganatha himself.

 

The whole world is aghast at the feat of preservation of the mummies of Egypt and the body of St. .Xavier in Goa in India and make so much fuss about them.

 

Even some Srivaishnavas are not aware that here in Srirangam. their holiest place hailed as ' Bhuloka Vaikuntam' ( Heaven on Earth) lies preserved the body of Sri Ramanuja in all its pristine state unostentatiously, without any fanfare or publicity and without using any of the chemical preservatives employed by the Egyptian and Goan models.

Swami Desika in Sloka 10 of his Yathiraja Saptadhi pays obeisance to Bhagavad Ramanuja thus before proceeding with his eulogy.

 

Pranaamam Lakshmana Munih Prathi Grihnaathu Maamakam |

Prasaadhayathi yat Sookthih Svadheena Pathikaam Sruthim ||

 

(meaning) I beseech Sri Ramanuja whose Srisookthis claimed the acclaim of the Lord and adorned the Upanishads to kindly accept my Pranams. There is another famous Sloka which says :-

 

Thasmai Ramaanujaaryaaya Namah Parama Yoginae |

Yah Sruthi Smrithi Sutraanaam Antharjvaramaso Samathaa ||

 

(meaning) I bow to that Sri Ramanuja, the great Yogi who became the very soul of Vedas, Upanishads and other Sutras.

CDM Catechism Class 2022

St Euphemisia church, children going to catechism

more images and items from my collection at my blogspot page:

 

www.ajaxallpurpose.blogspot.com/

 

www.facebook.com/christian.montone/

 

St Peter and St Paul, Salle, Norfolk

 

During their awesome reign over the other great teams of Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, Liverpool football club placed a huge sign in the changing room corridor, so that it was the last thing visiting teams saw before they walked out on to the pitch: This is ANFIELD, it warned. The name alone was enough. Similarly, the cover of the guidebook here proclaims, in a single word, SALLE. Again, it suffices; the word, pronounced to rhyme with call, stands for the building. Perhaps only the name Blythburgh has the same power in all East Anglia.

 

The greatest East Anglian churches were built in the 15th century. It is often observed that there can never have been enough people to fill them, but this is to miss the point. They were never intended for the forms of worship to which they now play host.

 

The shape of a late medieval church is not an accident. East Anglian parish churches of the 15th century had many common features; wide aisles to enable liturgical processions, a chancel for the celebration of Mass, places for other altars, niches for devotional statues, a focus towards the Blessed Sacrament in the east, a large nave for social activities, large windows to fill the building with light, a roof of angels to proclaim a hymn of praise, a pulpit for the preaching of orthodox doctrine, benches to enable the people to hear the preaching, and carvings, stained glass and wall paintings of the sacraments, Gospels and rosary mysteries, of the catechism and teaching of the Catholic Church.

 

As Le Corbusier might have said if he'd been around at the time, a late medieval East Anglian church was a machine for making Catholicism happen.

 

No longer, of course. The radical and violent fracture in popular religion in the middle years of the 16th century gave birth to the Church of England, and the new Church inherited buildings that were often unsuitable for congregational protestant liturgy - a problem that the Church of England has never satisfactorily solved.

 

Over the centuries, the problem has been addressed in different ways; celebrating Communion at a table in the nave, for example, and blocking off the chancel for other uses. Although this was challenged by the Laudian party in the early part of the 17th century, it was the way that many parishes reinvented their buildings, and most were to stay like that until the middle years of the 19th century. Some went further: a pulpit placed halfway down the nave, or even at the back of the church, meant that the seating could be arranged so that it no longer focused towards the east, thus breaking the link with Catholic (and Laudian) sacramentalism. For several centuries, Anglican churches focused on the pulpit rather than the altar.

 

With the rise of the 19th century Oxford Movement, all this underwent another dramatic change, with the great majority of our medieval parish churches having their interiors restored to their medieval integrity, reinventing themselves as sacramental spaces. This Victorian conception of the medieval suited itself to congregational worship, and responded in a satisfactory way to the structure of the building. But still, of course, they weren't full.

 

This 19th century re-imagining is the condition in which we find most of them today, and Anglican theologians everywhere are asking the question that the Catholic Church asked itself at Vatican II in the 1960s - is a 19th century liturgical space really appropriate for the Church of the 21st century?

 

It requires a shift in the mind to recall that these were not originally Anglican buildings, but it is a shift we need to make. The idea of a previously unchanging Church now confronting the demands of the modern age is wholly incorrect. These buildings have faced a variety of challenges over the centuries; they have only ever been truly suitable for the use for which they were originally built six hundred years ago.

 

Two of the largest late medieval churches in East Anglia are just three miles apart, at Cawston and Salle in the middle of Norfolk. These clusters are not uncommon; think of Blythburgh, Southwold and Walberswick in Suffolk, for example, or Lavenham and Long Melford in the same county. But Cawston and Salle are really close - you can see the tower of one from the other. St Peter and St Paul is a complete example of a 15th century rebuilding; St Agnes at Cawston retains its elegant earlier chancel.

 

If not merely for congregational worship, why were these churches built so big? Impressive as they seem now, they must have been awesome at the time they were built, since they were the only substantial buildings outside of the towns, and would have dwarfed the houses of the parish. Some were in villages; but many were not. Salle church has always been out in the fields. Why are earlier East Anglian churches not so massive? Certainly, East Anglia has its cathedrals; Norwich and Ely pre-date the great churches by several centuries, and Bury Abbey was bigger than either before its destruction. The great majority of East Anglia's churches are piecemeal affairs; typically, a 13th century chancel, which must have been the most substantial part of the building when it was first erected, an early 14th century nave and tower, and perhaps later elaborations of the piece with aisles and a clerestory. Salle and Cawston churches are both rebuildings of earlier structures, but a surprising number of East Anglian churches were not rebuilt, until perhaps the Victorians saw the need for a new chancel, or new aisles. Often, these smaller churches are exquisitely beautiful, as if beauty rather than grandeur was the imperative.

 

And then, towards the end of the 1340s, a great pestilence swept across Europe; in East Anglia, outside of Norwich which got off lightly, it killed perhaps a half of the population. In emptying the countryside, it completely altered the economic balance; a shortage of labour gave new power to the survivors, perhaps setting in place the preconditions for the capitalism that we can recognise by the 16th century. And, in extinguishing the flower of Decorated architecture, it also gave birth to the great love affair between the late medieval mind and death.

 

In Catholic theology there is no great divide between the dead and the living. For the medieval Christian, communion was something that existed between all members of the parish, whether alive or dead. Thus, prayers were said for the souls of the dead (who, it was presumed, were saying prayers for the souls of the living).

 

To ensure that prayers were said for them after their death, the very richest people endowed chantries. These were foundations, by which priests could be employed to say masses for their souls in perpetuity. A priest in such a capacity was called a chantry priest. The masses would be said at a chantry altar, probably in the nave; if the person was rich enough, this might be enclosed in a specially constructed chantry chapel. Many churches had them. After the Reformation, many were pressed into service as family mausoleums or pews.

 

For the poorest people, there was the opportunity to join a guild, where, for a penny or so a week, they could ensure that the guild chantry priest would say masses for their soul after their death (along with those of the other dead members of the guild). Many of these guilds were organised around particular occupations or devotions, and became a focus of social activity. The investment that produced the income to pay the chantry priests was most commonly in land. The church or guild oversaw the management of the land, which is one of the reasons we have an image of a wealthy pre-Reformation church. Land bought to produce income in this way was known as chantry land, a name surviving in many places today. Those who invested in chantries (and few and far between must have been those who didn't) presumed that they were ensuring prayers and masses in perpetuity; but, of course, this was not to be.

 

Bequests and chantries seem to have reached their peak in the 15th century. Perhaps the Black Death reinforced the urgency of the task. People did not merely want to be remembered; they wanted to be prayed for. And so, those who could afford it ensured that this was not forgotten by leaving their wealth in the very place that was at the centre of communion: the parish church. The richest paid for the additions of aisles and chapels, or for a new font or rood screen. This was not just a naked desire for the recognition of their family status. There was an underlying insecurity to the new landed classes. They wanted to control their destiny beyond their deaths. And so, their gift would be recorded in the form of a dedicatory inscription. One of these survives on the screen at Cawston, and another on the base of the font at Salle. Orate pro anima, they begin, "Pray for the soul of...", an injunction urgently emphasised by the pre-Reformation liturgy, only to be cursed and defaced by the later Anglicans and puritans. Stained glass was another common gift, as well as images, candlesticks, furnishings. Thus were many churches developed piecemeal.

 

But sometimes, where a parish could rely on a steady supply of substantial bequests, they might be channelled into a complete rebuilding, as at Salle, a summa cum laude apothesosis, where the new church of the late 15th century survives in pretty much its original form. Sometimes, a single wealthy family would shape and direct the rebuilding of a church. One of the richest families in East Anglia in the 14th and 15th centuries was the de la Poles, the Earls of Suffolk. Their mark can be found throughout East Anglia, but most famously and substantially at Wingfield in Suffolk, and at Cawston in Norfolk. Theirs was a long term project; at Cawston, the tower predates the furnishings of the nave and chancel by almost a century.

 

So why so vast? Certainly, it was ad maiorem deo gloria, to the Greater Glory of God; but it was also to the greater glory of the de la Poles and their contemporaries. The great landed families of England came into the late middle ages full of confidence, and they were determined to demonstrate it. They had survived the Black Death. They had grown richer on its consequences. They had assumed a political power unthinkable a few centuries before. They controlled not just the wealth but the imagination of their parishes. They asserted orthodox Catholic dogma in the face of rural superstitions and abuses. They imposed a homogenised Catholicism on late medieval England. And, as they increased their secular power and influence, a time would come when they would embrace the Great Idea already beginning to take shape on the continent - protestantism. But that was still in the future.

 

And so, to Salle. St Peter and St Paul is big. This is accentuated by the way in which it stands almost alone in the barley fields, with only a couple of Victorian buildings and a cricket pitch for company. What an idyllic spot! And yet there is an urban quality to the building, as if this was some great city church in the middle of Norwich or Bristol. It went up in the course of the 15th century, a replacement for an earlier building on the same site, broadly contemporary with neighbouring Cawston. While Cawston was largely the work of a single family, here the building benefited from an accident of history; several very wealthy families owned manors and halls in the parish at the same time, and it so happened that the time was the greatest era of rural church building.

 

Among them were the Boleyns, the Brewes, the Mautebys, the Briggs, the Morleys, the Luces and the Kerdistons, and some of their shields appear above the great west door, along with two mighty censing angels, characteristic of late medieval piety. A steady stream of hefty bequests meant that no expense needed to be spared, and the mighty tower with its vast bell openings was topped with battlements and pinnacles on the very eve of the Reformation.

 

As at Blythburgh, St Peter and St Paul benefited from the restraint of a late restoration, and the building as we see it now has no external Victorian additions. It is all of a piece. The porches either side are huge affairs, matching the transepts, and give the effect of a vast animal, a dragon perhaps, sprawling with erect head in the Norfolk countryside. Its tail is the chancel, in itself longer and higher than many Norfolk churches. The aisles are tall, austere, parapeted, the Perpendicular windows arcades of glass. In the porches, the vaulted ceilings are studded with bosses; the central one in the north porch depicts Christ in Majesty, sitting on a rainbow in judgement.

 

You enter the building from the west, an unusual experience in East Anglia, and your first sight is of the seven sacraments font with its tall 15th century canopy, similar to the cover at Cawston. This one is so big it is supported by a crane attached to the ringing gallery under the tower. The font below is interesting because each panel is supported by an angel holding a symbol of the sacrament above - a pot of chrism oil beneath Baptism, for example. The panels themselves are simply done, and are not particularly characterful, apart from the way that Mary turns away and is comforted at the Crucifixion. This panel faces west, and then anticlockwise are the Mass (viewed sideways, as at nearby Great Witchingham), Ordination (the candidate kneeling), Baptism (a server holds the book up for the Priest to read), Confirmation (the candidate obviously a child), Penance (perhaps the most interesting panel - the penitent kneels in a shriving pew), Matrimony (the couples' hands joined by a stole, she in late 15th century dress) and finally Last Rites (the dying man on the floor under blankets also as at Great Witchingham). The font step has a dedicatory inscription to John and Agnes Luce, asking for prayers for their souls. We know that John died in 1489. Perhaps the fabric of the building was complete by this date.

 

Beyond the font stretches the vastness of the building, the arcades gathering the eyes and leading them forward to the great east window. The chancel arch is barely there at all, just a simple high opening; but as MR James pointed out, it was never intended to be seen.The sheer bulk of the rood screen dado tells us quite how vast the rood apparatus must have been here, and the arch would have been pretty well hidden. Everything is built to scale; although everything has been cut off above the panels, probably in the late 1540s, the panels themselves are enormous, almost six feet high. As at Cawston, St Gregory, St Jerome, St Ambrose and St Augustine, the four Doctors of the Church, are on the doors. Either side are just two surviving paintings; to the north are Thomas and James, to the south are Philip and Bartholomew. The empty panels are a mystery; the screen stood here for a century before its destruction, so it must have been finished; and the dado seems too high to have been hidden by nave altars. And yet, it has all the appearance of never having been painted.

 

Because the building is so vast, the surviving medieval glass seems scattered, but there is actually a lot of it and some of it is very significant. Some was moved during the restoration of the early 20th century, when the modern glass in the north transept was installed, and the yellow galley lozenges were thankfully replaced with clear glass in the 1970s. The images in the east window are mainly figures; old kings kneel before young princes, there are armoured men and angels, the remains of a scaly dragon. In the centre at the bottom is a perfect Trinity shield, displayed by an angel looking askance.

 

Some of the panels are now in the south transept. These include fragments of a set of the orders of angels. A kneeling figure is Thomas Brigg, donor of the transept; the scroll behind him begins Benedicat Virgo, 'Blessed Virgin'. The mother of God sits surrounded by red glory, and two women holding croziers, one of them crowned, may be St Etheldreda and St Hilda. Certainly, the crowned figure holding a cross is St Helena.

 

Despite the wonders of the font, the screen and the glass, the crowning glory of the building is the set of bosses that line the roof of the chancel. They are easily missed, being very high. There are nine altogether, the first and last set against the walls at the ends of the roof ridge, and they form a kind of rosary sequence of joyful and glorious mysteries. They start with the Annunciation in the west (see left) and then continue with the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation in the Temple, the Entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension into Heaven.

 

There is a fine set of return stalls in the chancel. Although Salle probably never had a college of Priests, all those Masses for the dead must have provided plenty of employment, because we know that there were seven Priests here at a time when the population of the parish was barely 200. Bench ends include heads, a dragon tied up in a knot, a cock, a restored pelican in her piety, and a monkey. The misericord seats feature faces, including one that is quite extraordinary.

 

Although the roof isn't up to the glory of neighbouring Cawston, it includes lots of original angels and paintwork, including sacred monograms, and around the wallplate part of the Te Deum Laudamus and Psalm 150. These particular texts seem to have provided the inspiration for many late 15th century interiors; the angels in the roof, the animals on the bench ends, the Saints on the rood screen all in harmony: Let everything that has breath Praise ye the Lord!

 

The nave benches are mostly renewed now, but the pulpit is an elegant example of the 15th century, from the time when a priority began to be placed on preaching. Curiously, it has been rather awkwardly converted into a three-decker arrangement, probably in the 18th century, with the addition of a platform and desk from a set of box pews. A large sounding board has been placed overhead. The box pews suggest that the medieval furnishings were replaced at an early date, although the replacements too have gone now.

 

Salle is one of those churches full of intriguing little details that might easily pass you by, so great is the wonder of everything around. Those two little corbel heads above the south door, for instance - what were they for? Perhaps they supported an image that could be seen from the north doorway as people entered, although not a St Christopher as the guidebook suggests, I think. There is a pretty piscina in the unfortunate north transept that has been outlined in wood, a memorial and helm above, a tall image bracket in the corner of the wall of the south transept, a floreated piscina nearby.

 

There are many brasses and brass inlays in the nave floor; one of the most interesting is a chalice brass (although the chalice is now gone) to Simon Boleyn, a Priest, who died in 1489, and to the east of it a pair of brasses to Geoffrey and Alice Boleyn, great-grandparents to Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII. Another pair of brasses are to Thomas and Katherine Rose and their eight children. Unlike many churches, Salle actually retains some of the 'missing' brasses, now locked away for safety. It would be nice to think they could eventually be reset in the floor.

 

One part of the building that many visitors must miss is the chapel above the north porch. There is no sign indicating it; but the doorway, at the west end of the north aisle, is always open. Inside, the vaulted roof is punctuated by spectacularly pretty bosses which you can view at close quarters. The colour is a bit fanciful, but they are fascinating, particularly the central boss of the Coronation of the Queen of Heaven - how on earth did that survive the Reformation?

 

This is a tremendous building, a box of fascinating delights. What purpose does it serve now? As I said in the introduction, its size was not in response to the needs of a congregation, and as far as worship is concerned it will never be full. It remains constantly in use, however; for regular services in the chancel, sometimes for concerts and recordings, but also of course for the poshest sort of wedding, the kind only the Church of England can provide, and no doubt other elements of the core business of CofE PLC. It is easy to be cynical, but if they ensure the survival of the building, then so be it.

Yes (John 3:6; Gen 6:5–6; 8:21†; Job 14:4; 15:14, 16, 35; Isa 53:6); unless we are born again by the Spirit of God (John 3:3, 5; 1 Cor 12:3†; 2 Cor 3:5†; Phil 2:13†).

 

The text of the catechism is reproduced from, “The Heidelberg Catechism. A.D. 1563,” in Philip Schaff and David S. Schaff, eds., The Creeds of Christendom (1931; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 3:307–55.

St Peter and St Paul, Salle, Norfolk

 

During their awesome reign over the other great teams of Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, Liverpool football club placed a huge sign in the changing room corridor, so that it was the last thing visiting teams saw before they walked out on to the pitch: This is ANFIELD, it warned. The name alone was enough. Similarly, the cover of the guidebook here proclaims, in a single word, SALLE. Again, it suffices; the word, pronounced to rhyme with call, stands for the building. Perhaps only the name Blythburgh has the same power in all East Anglia.

 

The greatest East Anglian churches were built in the 15th century. It is often observed that there can never have been enough people to fill them, but this is to miss the point. They were never intended for the forms of worship to which they now play host.

 

The shape of a late medieval church is not an accident. East Anglian parish churches of the 15th century had many common features; wide aisles to enable liturgical processions, a chancel for the celebration of Mass, places for other altars, niches for devotional statues, a focus towards the Blessed Sacrament in the east, a large nave for social activities, large windows to fill the building with light, a roof of angels to proclaim a hymn of praise, a pulpit for the preaching of orthodox doctrine, benches to enable the people to hear the preaching, and carvings, stained glass and wall paintings of the sacraments, Gospels and rosary mysteries, of the catechism and teaching of the Catholic Church.

 

As Le Corbusier might have said if he'd been around at the time, a late medieval East Anglian church was a machine for making Catholicism happen.

 

No longer, of course. The radical and violent fracture in popular religion in the middle years of the 16th century gave birth to the Church of England, and the new Church inherited buildings that were often unsuitable for congregational protestant liturgy - a problem that the Church of England has never satisfactorily solved.

 

Over the centuries, the problem has been addressed in different ways; celebrating Communion at a table in the nave, for example, and blocking off the chancel for other uses. Although this was challenged by the Laudian party in the early part of the 17th century, it was the way that many parishes reinvented their buildings, and most were to stay like that until the middle years of the 19th century. Some went further: a pulpit placed halfway down the nave, or even at the back of the church, meant that the seating could be arranged so that it no longer focused towards the east, thus breaking the link with Catholic (and Laudian) sacramentalism. For several centuries, Anglican churches focused on the pulpit rather than the altar.

 

With the rise of the 19th century Oxford Movement, all this underwent another dramatic change, with the great majority of our medieval parish churches having their interiors restored to their medieval integrity, reinventing themselves as sacramental spaces. This Victorian conception of the medieval suited itself to congregational worship, and responded in a satisfactory way to the structure of the building. But still, of course, they weren't full.

 

This 19th century re-imagining is the condition in which we find most of them today, and Anglican theologians everywhere are asking the question that the Catholic Church asked itself at Vatican II in the 1960s - is a 19th century liturgical space really appropriate for the Church of the 21st century?

 

It requires a shift in the mind to recall that these were not originally Anglican buildings, but it is a shift we need to make. The idea of a previously unchanging Church now confronting the demands of the modern age is wholly incorrect. These buildings have faced a variety of challenges over the centuries; they have only ever been truly suitable for the use for which they were originally built six hundred years ago.

 

Two of the largest late medieval churches in East Anglia are just three miles apart, at Cawston and Salle in the middle of Norfolk. These clusters are not uncommon; think of Blythburgh, Southwold and Walberswick in Suffolk, for example, or Lavenham and Long Melford in the same county. But Cawston and Salle are really close - you can see the tower of one from the other. St Peter and St Paul is a complete example of a 15th century rebuilding; St Agnes at Cawston retains its elegant earlier chancel.

 

If not merely for congregational worship, why were these churches built so big? Impressive as they seem now, they must have been awesome at the time they were built, since they were the only substantial buildings outside of the towns, and would have dwarfed the houses of the parish. Some were in villages; but many were not. Salle church has always been out in the fields. Why are earlier East Anglian churches not so massive? Certainly, East Anglia has its cathedrals; Norwich and Ely pre-date the great churches by several centuries, and Bury Abbey was bigger than either before its destruction. The great majority of East Anglia's churches are piecemeal affairs; typically, a 13th century chancel, which must have been the most substantial part of the building when it was first erected, an early 14th century nave and tower, and perhaps later elaborations of the piece with aisles and a clerestory. Salle and Cawston churches are both rebuildings of earlier structures, but a surprising number of East Anglian churches were not rebuilt, until perhaps the Victorians saw the need for a new chancel, or new aisles. Often, these smaller churches are exquisitely beautiful, as if beauty rather than grandeur was the imperative.

 

And then, towards the end of the 1340s, a great pestilence swept across Europe; in East Anglia, outside of Norwich which got off lightly, it killed perhaps a half of the population. In emptying the countryside, it completely altered the economic balance; a shortage of labour gave new power to the survivors, perhaps setting in place the preconditions for the capitalism that we can recognise by the 16th century. And, in extinguishing the flower of Decorated architecture, it also gave birth to the great love affair between the late medieval mind and death.

 

In Catholic theology there is no great divide between the dead and the living. For the medieval Christian, communion was something that existed between all members of the parish, whether alive or dead. Thus, prayers were said for the souls of the dead (who, it was presumed, were saying prayers for the souls of the living).

 

To ensure that prayers were said for them after their death, the very richest people endowed chantries. These were foundations, by which priests could be employed to say masses for their souls in perpetuity. A priest in such a capacity was called a chantry priest. The masses would be said at a chantry altar, probably in the nave; if the person was rich enough, this might be enclosed in a specially constructed chantry chapel. Many churches had them. After the Reformation, many were pressed into service as family mausoleums or pews.

 

For the poorest people, there was the opportunity to join a guild, where, for a penny or so a week, they could ensure that the guild chantry priest would say masses for their soul after their death (along with those of the other dead members of the guild). Many of these guilds were organised around particular occupations or devotions, and became a focus of social activity. The investment that produced the income to pay the chantry priests was most commonly in land. The church or guild oversaw the management of the land, which is one of the reasons we have an image of a wealthy pre-Reformation church. Land bought to produce income in this way was known as chantry land, a name surviving in many places today. Those who invested in chantries (and few and far between must have been those who didn't) presumed that they were ensuring prayers and masses in perpetuity; but, of course, this was not to be.

 

Bequests and chantries seem to have reached their peak in the 15th century. Perhaps the Black Death reinforced the urgency of the task. People did not merely want to be remembered; they wanted to be prayed for. And so, those who could afford it ensured that this was not forgotten by leaving their wealth in the very place that was at the centre of communion: the parish church. The richest paid for the additions of aisles and chapels, or for a new font or rood screen. This was not just a naked desire for the recognition of their family status. There was an underlying insecurity to the new landed classes. They wanted to control their destiny beyond their deaths. And so, their gift would be recorded in the form of a dedicatory inscription. One of these survives on the screen at Cawston, and another on the base of the font at Salle. Orate pro anima, they begin, "Pray for the soul of...", an injunction urgently emphasised by the pre-Reformation liturgy, only to be cursed and defaced by the later Anglicans and puritans. Stained glass was another common gift, as well as images, candlesticks, furnishings. Thus were many churches developed piecemeal.

 

But sometimes, where a parish could rely on a steady supply of substantial bequests, they might be channelled into a complete rebuilding, as at Salle, a summa cum laude apothesosis, where the new church of the late 15th century survives in pretty much its original form. Sometimes, a single wealthy family would shape and direct the rebuilding of a church. One of the richest families in East Anglia in the 14th and 15th centuries was the de la Poles, the Earls of Suffolk. Their mark can be found throughout East Anglia, but most famously and substantially at Wingfield in Suffolk, and at Cawston in Norfolk. Theirs was a long term project; at Cawston, the tower predates the furnishings of the nave and chancel by almost a century.

 

So why so vast? Certainly, it was ad maiorem deo gloria, to the Greater Glory of God; but it was also to the greater glory of the de la Poles and their contemporaries. The great landed families of England came into the late middle ages full of confidence, and they were determined to demonstrate it. They had survived the Black Death. They had grown richer on its consequences. They had assumed a political power unthinkable a few centuries before. They controlled not just the wealth but the imagination of their parishes. They asserted orthodox Catholic dogma in the face of rural superstitions and abuses. They imposed a homogenised Catholicism on late medieval England. And, as they increased their secular power and influence, a time would come when they would embrace the Great Idea already beginning to take shape on the continent - protestantism. But that was still in the future.

 

And so, to Salle. St Peter and St Paul is big. This is accentuated by the way in which it stands almost alone in the barley fields, with only a couple of Victorian buildings and a cricket pitch for company. What an idyllic spot! And yet there is an urban quality to the building, as if this was some great city church in the middle of Norwich or Bristol. It went up in the course of the 15th century, a replacement for an earlier building on the same site, broadly contemporary with neighbouring Cawston. While Cawston was largely the work of a single family, here the building benefited from an accident of history; several very wealthy families owned manors and halls in the parish at the same time, and it so happened that the time was the greatest era of rural church building.

 

Among them were the Boleyns, the Brewes, the Mautebys, the Briggs, the Morleys, the Luces and the Kerdistons, and some of their shields appear above the great west door, along with two mighty censing angels, characteristic of late medieval piety. A steady stream of hefty bequests meant that no expense needed to be spared, and the mighty tower with its vast bell openings was topped with battlements and pinnacles on the very eve of the Reformation.

 

As at Blythburgh, St Peter and St Paul benefited from the restraint of a late restoration, and the building as we see it now has no external Victorian additions. It is all of a piece. The porches either side are huge affairs, matching the transepts, and give the effect of a vast animal, a dragon perhaps, sprawling with erect head in the Norfolk countryside. Its tail is the chancel, in itself longer and higher than many Norfolk churches. The aisles are tall, austere, parapeted, the Perpendicular windows arcades of glass. In the porches, the vaulted ceilings are studded with bosses; the central one in the north porch depicts Christ in Majesty, sitting on a rainbow in judgement.

 

You enter the building from the west, an unusual experience in East Anglia, and your first sight is of the seven sacraments font with its tall 15th century canopy, similar to the cover at Cawston. This one is so big it is supported by a crane attached to the ringing gallery under the tower. The font below is interesting because each panel is supported by an angel holding a symbol of the sacrament above - a pot of chrism oil beneath Baptism, for example. The panels themselves are simply done, and are not particularly characterful, apart from the way that Mary turns away and is comforted at the Crucifixion. This panel faces west, and then anticlockwise are the Mass (viewed sideways, as at nearby Great Witchingham), Ordination (the candidate kneeling), Baptism (a server holds the book up for the Priest to read), Confirmation (the candidate obviously a child), Penance (perhaps the most interesting panel - the penitent kneels in a shriving pew), Matrimony (the couples' hands joined by a stole, she in late 15th century dress) and finally Last Rites (the dying man on the floor under blankets also as at Great Witchingham). The font step has a dedicatory inscription to John and Agnes Luce, asking for prayers for their souls. We know that John died in 1489. Perhaps the fabric of the building was complete by this date.

 

Beyond the font stretches the vastness of the building, the arcades gathering the eyes and leading them forward to the great east window. The chancel arch is barely there at all, just a simple high opening; but as MR James pointed out, it was never intended to be seen.The sheer bulk of the rood screen dado tells us quite how vast the rood apparatus must have been here, and the arch would have been pretty well hidden. Everything is built to scale; although everything has been cut off above the panels, probably in the late 1540s, the panels themselves are enormous, almost six feet high. As at Cawston, St Gregory, St Jerome, St Ambrose and St Augustine, the four Doctors of the Church, are on the doors. Either side are just two surviving paintings; to the north are Thomas and James, to the south are Philip and Bartholomew. The empty panels are a mystery; the screen stood here for a century before its destruction, so it must have been finished; and the dado seems too high to have been hidden by nave altars. And yet, it has all the appearance of never having been painted.

 

Because the building is so vast, the surviving medieval glass seems scattered, but there is actually a lot of it and some of it is very significant. Some was moved during the restoration of the early 20th century, when the modern glass in the north transept was installed, and the yellow galley lozenges were thankfully replaced with clear glass in the 1970s. The images in the east window are mainly figures; old kings kneel before young princes, there are armoured men and angels, the remains of a scaly dragon. In the centre at the bottom is a perfect Trinity shield, displayed by an angel looking askance.

 

Some of the panels are now in the south transept. These include fragments of a set of the orders of angels. A kneeling figure is Thomas Brigg, donor of the transept; the scroll behind him begins Benedicat Virgo, 'Blessed Virgin'. The mother of God sits surrounded by red glory, and two women holding croziers, one of them crowned, may be St Etheldreda and St Hilda. Certainly, the crowned figure holding a cross is St Helena.

 

Despite the wonders of the font, the screen and the glass, the crowning glory of the building is the set of bosses that line the roof of the chancel. They are easily missed, being very high. There are nine altogether, the first and last set against the walls at the ends of the roof ridge, and they form a kind of rosary sequence of joyful and glorious mysteries. They start with the Annunciation in the west (see left) and then continue with the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation in the Temple, the Entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension into Heaven.

 

There is a fine set of return stalls in the chancel. Although Salle probably never had a college of Priests, all those Masses for the dead must have provided plenty of employment, because we know that there were seven Priests here at a time when the population of the parish was barely 200. Bench ends include heads, a dragon tied up in a knot, a cock, a restored pelican in her piety, and a monkey. The misericord seats feature faces, including one that is quite extraordinary.

 

Although the roof isn't up to the glory of neighbouring Cawston, it includes lots of original angels and paintwork, including sacred monograms, and around the wallplate part of the Te Deum Laudamus and Psalm 150. These particular texts seem to have provided the inspiration for many late 15th century interiors; the angels in the roof, the animals on the bench ends, the Saints on the rood screen all in harmony: Let everything that has breath Praise ye the Lord!

 

The nave benches are mostly renewed now, but the pulpit is an elegant example of the 15th century, from the time when a priority began to be placed on preaching. Curiously, it has been rather awkwardly converted into a three-decker arrangement, probably in the 18th century, with the addition of a platform and desk from a set of box pews. A large sounding board has been placed overhead. The box pews suggest that the medieval furnishings were replaced at an early date, although the replacements too have gone now.

 

Salle is one of those churches full of intriguing little details that might easily pass you by, so great is the wonder of everything around. Those two little corbel heads above the south door, for instance - what were they for? Perhaps they supported an image that could be seen from the north doorway as people entered, although not a St Christopher as the guidebook suggests, I think. There is a pretty piscina in the unfortunate north transept that has been outlined in wood, a memorial and helm above, a tall image bracket in the corner of the wall of the south transept, a floreated piscina nearby.

 

There are many brasses and brass inlays in the nave floor; one of the most interesting is a chalice brass (although the chalice is now gone) to Simon Boleyn, a Priest, who died in 1489, and to the east of it a pair of brasses to Geoffrey and Alice Boleyn, great-grandparents to Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII. Another pair of brasses are to Thomas and Katherine Rose and their eight children. Unlike many churches, Salle actually retains some of the 'missing' brasses, now locked away for safety. It would be nice to think they could eventually be reset in the floor.

 

One part of the building that many visitors must miss is the chapel above the north porch. There is no sign indicating it; but the doorway, at the west end of the north aisle, is always open. Inside, the vaulted roof is punctuated by spectacularly pretty bosses which you can view at close quarters. The colour is a bit fanciful, but they are fascinating, particularly the central boss of the Coronation of the Queen of Heaven - how on earth did that survive the Reformation?

 

This is a tremendous building, a box of fascinating delights. What purpose does it serve now? As I said in the introduction, its size was not in response to the needs of a congregation, and as far as worship is concerned it will never be full. It remains constantly in use, however; for regular services in the chancel, sometimes for concerts and recordings, but also of course for the poshest sort of wedding, the kind only the Church of England can provide, and no doubt other elements of the core business of CofE PLC. It is easy to be cynical, but if they ensure the survival of the building, then so be it.

The New-England primer, enlarged for the more easy attaining the true reading of English to which is added, the Assembly of Divines catechism (London, 1773).

 

Seen at Washington's Headquarters Museum, Morristown National Historical Park.

 

www.valleyforge.org/revolution/valley-forge/washington-s-...

St Ethelbert, Hessett, Suffolk

 

Hessett is a fairly ordinary kind of village to the east of Bury St Edmunds, but its church is one of the most important in East Anglia for a number of reasons, which will become obvious. Consider for one moment, if you will, the extent to which the beliefs and practices of a religious community affect the architecture of its buildings. Think of a mosque, for instance. Often square, expressing the democracy of Islam, but without any imagery of the human figure, for such things are proscribed. Think of a synagogue, focused towards the Holy Scriptures in the Ark, but designed to enable the proclaiming of the Word, and the way that early non-conformist chapels echo this architecture of Judaism - indeed, those who built the first free churches, like Ipswich's Unitarian Chapel, actually called them synagogues.

 

The shape of a church, then, is no accident. A typical Suffolk perpendicular church of the 15th century has wide aisles, to enable liturgical processions, a chancel for the celebration of Mass, places for other altars, niches for devotional statues, a focus towards the Blessed Sacrament in the east, a roof of angels to proclaim a hymn of praise, a large nave for devotional and social activities, and wall paintings of the Gospels and hagiographies of Saints, of the catechism and teachings of the Catholic Church. As Le Corbusier might have said if he'd been around at the time, a medieval church is a machine for making Catholicism happen.

 

No longer, of course. The radical and violent fracture in popular religion in the middle years of the 16th century gave birth to the Church of England, and the new church inherited buildings that were quite unsuitable for the new congregational protestant theology, a problem that the Church of England has never entirely solved.

 

Over the centuries, the problem has been addressed in different ways. The early reformers celebrated communion at a table in the nave, for example, and blocked off the chancel for other uses. Although this was challenged by the Laudian party in the early part of the 17th century, it was the way that many parishes reinvented their buildings, and most were to stay like that until the middle years of the 19th century. Some went further. A pulpit placed halfway down the nave, or even at the back of the church, meant that the seating could be arranged so that it no longer focused towards the east, thus breaking the link with Catholic (and Laudian) sacramentalism. For several centuries, Anglican churches focused on the pulpit rather than the altar.

 

With the coming to influence of the 19th century Oxford Movement, all this underwent another dramatic change, with the great majority of our medieval parish churches having their interiors restored to their medieval integrity, reinventing themselves as sacramental spaces. This is the condition in which we find most of them today, and some Anglican theologians are asking the question that the Catholic Church asked itself at Vatican II in the 1960s - is a 19th century liturgical space really appropriate for the Church of the 21st century?

 

So, let us hasten at once to Hessett. The church sits like a glowing jewel in its wide churchyard, right on the main road through the village. It is pretty well perfect if you are looking for a fine Suffolk exterior. An extensive 15th century rebuilding enwraps the earlier tower, which was crowned by the donor of the rebuilding, John Bacon.The nave and aisles are deliciously decorated, reminding one rather of the church at neighbouring Rougham, although this is a smaller church, and the aisles make it almost square. A dedicatory inscription on the two storey vestry in the north east corner bids us pray for the souls of John and Katherine Hoo, who donated the chancel and paid for the trimmings to the aisles. Their inscription has been damaged by protestant reformers, who obviously did not believe in the efficacy of prayers for the dead.

 

Although not comparable with that at Woolpit, the dressed stone porch is a grand affair, and a bold statement. You may find the south door locked, but if this is the case then the priest's door into the chancel is usually open. And in a way it is a good church to enter via the chancel, because in this way St Ethelbert unfolds its treasures slowly.You step into relative darkness - or, at least, it seems so in comparison with the nave beyond the rood screen. This is partly a result of the abundance of dark wood, and in truth the chancel seems rather overcrowded. The most striking objects in view are the return stalls, which fill the two westerly corners of the chancel. These are in the style of a college or school of priests, with their backs to the rood screen, but then 'returning' around the walls to the east. They are fine, and are certainly 15th or 16th century. But one of the stalls, that to the north, is different to the others, and seems slightly out of place. It is elaborately carved with faces, birds and foliage.

 

Mortlock thought that it might have been intended for a private house. The stall in front of it has heads on it that appear to be wearing 18th century wigs. The sanctuary is largely Victorianised, with a great east window depicting Saints. The south windows of the chancel depict a lovely Adoration scene by the O'Connors. The chancel is separated from the nave by the 15th century rood screen, which is elegantly painted and gilt on the west side, the beautifully tracery intricately carved above. The rood screen has been fitted with attractive iron gates, presumably evidence of Anglo-catholic enthusiasm here in the early 20th century, and you step down through them into the light. A first impression is that you are entering a much older space than the one you have left. There is an 18th century mustiness, enhanced by the box pews that line the aisles. And, beyond, on walls and in windows, are wonderful things.

 

The number of surviving wall paintings in England is a tiny fraction of those which existed before the 15th and 16th centuries. All churches had them, and in profusion. It isn't enough to say that they were a 'teaching aid' of a church of illiterate peasants. In the main, they were devotional, and that is why they were destroyed. However, it is more complicated than that. Research in recent years has indicated that many wall paintings were destroyed before the Reformation, perhaps a century before. In some churches, they have been punched through with Perpendicular windows, which are clearly pre-Reformation. In the decades after the Black Death, there seems to have been a sea change in the liturgical use of these buildings, a move away from an individualistic, devotional usage to a corporate liturgical one. There is a change of emphasis towards more education and exegesis. This is the time that pulpits and benches appear, long before protestantism was on the agenda. What seems to happen is that many buildings were intended now to be full of light, and devotional wall paintings were either whitewashed, or replaced with catechetical ones.

 

The decoration of the nave was the responsibility of the people of the parish, not of the Priest. The wall paintings of England can be divided into roughly three groups. Roughly speaking, the development of wall paintings over the later medieval period is in terms of these three overlapping emphases.

 

Firstly, the hagiographies - stories of the Saints. These might have had a local devotion, although some saints were popular over a wide area, and most churches seem to have supported a devotion to St Christopher right up until the Reformation.

 

Secondly came those which illustrate incidents in the life of Christ and his mother, the Blessed Virgin. Although partly pedagogical, they were also enabling tools, since private devotions often involved a contemplation upon them, and at Mass the larger part of those present would have been involved in private devotions. These scriptural stories were as likely to have been derived from apocryphal texts like the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew as from the actual Gospels themselves.

 

Lastly, there are catechetical wall paintings, illustrating the teachings of the Catholic church. It should not be assumed that these are dogmatic. Many are simply artistic representations of stories, and others are simplifications of theological ideas, as with the seven deadly sins and the seven cardinal virtues. Some warn against occasions of sin (gossiping, for example) and generally wall paintings provided a local site for discussion and exemplification.

 

To an extent, all the above is largely true of stained glass, as well, with the caveat that stained glass was more expensive, relied on local patronage, and often has this patronage as a subtext, hence the large number of heraldic devices and images of local worthies. But it was also devotional, and so it was also destroyed.

 

So - what survives at Hessett? The wall paintings first.

 

Starting in the south east corner of the nave, we have Suffolk's finest representation of St Barbara, presenting a tower. St Barbara was very popular in medieval times, because she was invoked against strikes by lightning and sudden fires. This resulted from her legend, for her father, on finding her to be a Christian, walled her up in a tower until she repented. As a result, he was struck by lightning, and reduced to ashes. She was also the patron saint of the powerful building trade, and as such her image graced their guild altars - perhaps that was the case here.

 

Above the south door is another figure, often identified as St Christopher, but I do not think that this can be the case. St Christopher is found nowhere else in Suffolk above a south door. The traditional iconography of this mythical saint is not in place here, and it is hard to see how this figure could ever have been interpreted as such. I suspect it is a result of an early account confusing the two images over the north and south doors, and the mistake being repeated in later accounts.

 

In fact, digital enhancement seems to suggest that there are two figures above the south door, overlapping each other slightly. The figure on the right is barefoot, that on the left is wearing a white gown. There appears to be water under their feet, and so I think this is an image of the Baptism of Christ. Perhaps it was once part of a sequence.

 

The wall painting opposite, above the north door, is St Christopher. Although it isn't as clear as himself at, say, nearby Bradfield Combust, he bestrides the river in the customary manner, staff in hand. The Christ child is difficult to discern, but you can see the fish in the water. Also in the water, and rather unusual, are two figures. They are rendered rather crudely, almost like gingerbread men. Could they be the donors of the north aisle, John and Katherine Hoo in person?

 

Moving along the north aisle, we come to the set of paintings for which Hessett is justifiably famous. They are set one above the other between two windows, at the point where might expect the now-vanished screen to a chapel to have been. The upper section was here first. It shows the seven deadly sins (described wrongly in some text books as a tree of Jesse, or ancestry of Christ). Two devils look on as, from the mouth of hell, a great tree sprouts, ending in seven images. Pride is at the top, and in pairs beneath are Gluttony and Anger, Vanity and Envy, Avarice and Lust. Mortlock suggests that some attempt has been made to erase the image for Lust, which may simply be mid-16th century puritan prurience on the part of some reformer here. This would suggest that this catechetical tool was here right up until the Reformation.

 

The idea of 'Seven Deadly Sins' was anathema to the reformers, because it is entirely unscriptural. Rather, as a catechetical tool, it is a way of drawing together a multitude of sins into a simplistic aide memoire. This could then be used in confession, taking each of them one at a time and examining ones conscience accordingly. It should not be seen simply as a 'warning' to ignorant peasants, for the evidence is that the ordinary rural people of late medieval England were theologically very articulate. Rather, it was a tool for use, in contemplation and preparation for the sacrament of reconciliation, which may well have ordinarily taken place in the chapel here.

 

The wall painting beneath the Sins is even more interesting. This is a very rare 'Christ of the Trades', and dates from the early 15th century, about a hundred years after the painting above. It is rather faded, and takes a while to discern, and not all of it is decodable. However, enough is there to be fascinating. The image of the 'Christ of the Trades' is known throughout Christendom, and contemporary versions with this can be found in other parts of Europe. It shows the risen Christ in the centre, and around him a vast array of the tools and symbols of various trades. One theory is that it depicts activities that should not take place on a Sunday, a holy day of obligation to refrain from work, and that these activities are wounding Christ anew.

 

Perhaps the most fascinating symbol, and the one that everyone notices, is the playing card. It shows the six of diamonds. Does it represent the makers of playing cards? If so, it might suggest a Flemish influence. Or could it be intended to represent something else? Whatever, it is one of the earliest representations of a playing card in England. Why is this here? It may very well be that there was a trades gild chantry chapel at the east end of the north aisle, and this painting was at its entrance.

 

At the east end of the north aisle now is the church's set of royal arms. Cautley saw it in the vestry in the 1930s, and identified it as a Queen Anne set. Now, with additions stripped away, it is revealed as a Charles II set from the 1660s, and a very fine one. It is fascinating to see it at such close range. Usually, they are set above the south door now, although they would originally have been placed above the chancel arch, in full view of the congregation, a gentle reminder of who was in charge.

 

And so to the glass, which on its own would be worth coming to Hessett to see. Few Suffolk churches have such an expanse, none have such a variety, or glass of such quality and interest. It consists essentially of two ranges, the life and Passion of Christ in the north aisle (although some glass has been reset across the church), and images and hagiographies of Saints in the south aisle.

 

In the north aisle, the scourging of Christ stands out, the wicked grins of the persecutors contrasting with the pained nobility of the Christ figure. In the next window, Christ rises from the dead, coming out of his tomb like the corpses in the doom paintings at Stanningfield, North Cove and Wenhaston. The Roman centurion sleeps soundly in the foreground.

 

The most famous image is in the east window of the south aisle. Apparently, it shows a bishop holding the chain to a bag, with four children playing at his feet. I say apparently, because there is rather more going on here than meets the eye. The reason that this image is so famous is that the small child in the foreground is holding what appears to be a golf club or hockey stick, and this would be the earliest representation of such an object in all Europe. The whole image has been said to represent St Nicholas, who was a Bishop, and whose legends include a bag of gold and a group of children.

 

Unfortunately, this is not the case. St Nicholas is never symbolised by a bag of gold, and there are three children in the St Nicholas legend, not four. In any case, the hand in the picture is not holding the chain to a bag at all, but a rosary, and the hockey stick is actually a fuller's club, used for dyeing clothes, and the symbol of St James the Less.

 

What has happened here is that the head of a Bishop has been grafted on to the body of a figure which is probably still in its original location. The three lights of this window contained a set of the Holy Kinship. The light to the north of the 'Bishop' contains two children playing with what ae apparently toys, but when you look closely you can see that one is holding a golden shell, and the other a poisoned chalice. They are the infant St James and St John, and the lost figure above them was their mother, Mary Salome.

 

This means that the figure with the Bishop's head is actually Mary Cleophas, mother of four children including St James the Less. The third light to the south, of course, would have depicted the Blessed Virgin and child, but she is lost to us.

 

Not only this, but Hessett has some very good 19th Century glass which complements and does not overly intrude. The best is beneath the tower, the west window in a fully 15th Century style of scenes by Clayton & Bell. The east window, depicting saints, is by William Warrington, and the chancel also has the O'Connor glass already mentioned.

 

If the windows and wall paintings were all there was, then Hessett would be remarkable enough. But there is something else, two things, actually, that elevate it above all other Suffolk churches, and all the churches of England. For St Ethelbert is the proud owner of two unique survivals. At the back of the church is a chest, no different from those you'll find in many a parish church. In common with those, it has three separate locks, the idea being that the Rector and two Churchwardens would have a key each, and it would be necessary for all three of them to be present for the chest to be opened. It was used for storing parish records and valuables.

 

At some point, one of the keys was lost. There is an old story about the iconoclast William Dowsing turning up here and demanding the chest be opened, but on account of the missing key it couldn't be. Unfortunately, this story isn't true, for Dowsing never recorded a visit Hessett. The chest was eventually opened in the 19th century. Inside were found two extraordinary pre-Reformation survivals. These are a pyx cloth and a burse. The pyx cloth was draped over the wooden canopy that enclosed the blessed sacrament (one of England's four surviving medieval pyxes is also in Suffolk, at Dennington) before it was raised above the high altar. The burse was used to contain the host before consecration at the Mass. They are England's only surviving examples, and they're both here. Or, more precisely they aren't, for both have been purloined by the British Museum, the kind of theft that no locked church can prevent.

 

But there are life-size photos of both either side of the tower arch. The burse is basically an envelope, and features the Veronica face of Christ on one side with the four evangelistic symbols in each corner. On the other is an Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God. The survival of both is extraordinary. It is one thing to explore the furnishings of lost Catholic England, quite another to come face to face with articles that were actually used in the liturgy.

 

In front of the pictures stands the font, a relatively good one of the early 15th century, though rather less exciting than everything going on around it. The dedicatory inscription survives, to a pair of Hoos of an earlier generation than the ones on the vestry.Turning east again, the ranks of simple 15th century benches are all of a piece with their church. They have survived the violent transitions of the centuries, and have seated generation after generation of Hessett people. They were new here when this church was alive with coloured light, with the hundreds of candles flickering on the rood beam, the processions, the festivals, and the people's lives totally integrated with the liturgy of the seasons. For the people of Catholic England, their religion was as much a part of them as the air they breathed. They little knew how soon it would all come to an end.

 

And so, there it is - one of the most fascinating and satisfactory of all East Anglia's churches. And yet, not many people know about it. We are only three miles from the brown-signed honeypot of Woolpit, where a constant stream of visitors come and go. I've visited Hessett many times, and never once encountered another visitor. Still, there you are, I suppose. Perhaps some places are better kept secret. But come here if you can, for here is a medieval worship space with much surviving evidence of what it was actually meant to be, and meant to do.

I was initiated, and advanced to the honourary Degree of a Mark Master Mason by Phoenix Chapter No. 34, Cookstown, ON.

www.royalarchmasons.on.ca

 

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Mark_Master_Masons

 

Probably the most beautiful symbol of Freemasonry is that of the Keystone!

 

It does not appear in the symbolism of the Lodge, but is reserved for those degrees dealing with the Chapter and, its symbolism, where it is found in all but one of the degrees of that system. The reason for its absence in lodge symbolism is that the lodge deals with preparation for eternal life, whereas the Chapter deals with the completion. (This reminds me of the Jason Bourne movies which refer to him rebuilding his life)

 

Keystone Symbol - The Keystone is the symbol of completion.

 

For all practical purposes the Keystone is the last stone placed in the arch, and as such represents completion. The placing of the Keystone in the symbolic arch of the Chapter, represents the completion of the individual Temple which each craftsman is erecting.

 

True, the Temple material was destroyed, but it was only the symbol of the Spiritual Temple which can never be destroyed. Royal Arch Masonry efforts are towards building spiritual Temples and its ceremonies, its legends, and its teachings, while beautiful in themselves, are there for the sole purpose of teaching great spiritual truths.

 

Our spiritual Temple can be completed only by death, the great leveller, but if that Temple be built by plumb line, by level, and by square, we are taught that its foundations shall never crumble nor decay, and that when we have reached “that bourne from which no traveller returns” we may enjoy the fruits of our labours here on earth throughout the endless eons of time.

 

And we may add again, the Keystone, the emblem of completion, is the outstanding symbol of Masonic teaching!

 

Cookstown Masonic Temple.

 

THE WAGES OF AN ENTERED APPRENTICE - June 09, 1958

 

PRESENTED TO: PORT ARTHUR LODGE A.F. & A.M. No. 499 BY HORNEPAYNE LODGE A.F. & A.M. No. 636

THUNDER BAY, ONTARIO.

 

THE WAGES OF AN ENTERED APPRENTICE:

 

The catechisms of the Craft and the conventional lecture on the Tracing Board of the Second Degree, all of which speak with that authority that belongs to age, tell us that the wages of an Entered Apprentice are Corn, Wine and Oil. Sometimes it is added that he received Corn for food, Wine for nourishment, and Oil for comfort. The broad difference that was thought to be set up between the Apprentice and the Fellowcraft apparently was that the Fellowcraft was paid in coin while the apprentice was paid in kind. I fear it would be difficult to produce any authority for this, and probably the distinction between the liaisons of the two degrees is the invention of some imaginative brother who may have got the hint from a practise that was not uncommon among early operatives. Two or three centuries ago the conditions of labour were laid down as firmly as they are today by our powerful trade unions. A master could not employ more than a certain very limited number of apprentices - often the number was restricted to one - and these apprentices were taken bound to serve their masters for a period of seven years. Not infrequently, alike in mason and other trades, the apprentice went into residence with his master and during the early years of his apprenticeship received no remuneration except board and lodging. Only when he became a journeyman, or Fellowcraft, and was free from the master who had taught him his business, was he entitled to wages in the form of cash. If, as it is possible, some elaborator of Freemasonry, got the hint here as to the remuneration of an apprentice one can easily understand that commonplace language such as “board and lodging” would not appeal to him, and that he would seek to ornament the matter with just such combination of words as “Corn, Wine and Oil.”

 

One of the traditions of the craft, dearly beloved by uncritical Freemasons, says that the whole number of workmen engaged on the Temple at Jerusalem amounted to 217,281 persons, and that of these 80,000 were Fellowcraft and 30,000 were Entered Apprentices - the latter of whom were arranged into one hundred lodges with three hundred members in each. This immense multitude was paid weekly on the sixth day of the week; and one tradition solemnly asserts that the 80,000 Fellowcraft toiled up the Winding Stair to the Inner Chamber to receive their wages. Mackey tells us in this “Lexicon” that the Fellowcraft “were paid in corn, wine and oil”, and the authors of “The Reflected Rays of Light upon Freemasonry” adopting the same view say “What could be more absurd than to believe that eighty thousand craftsmen had to ascend such a stair, to the narrow precincts of the Middle Chamber to receive their wages in Corn, Wine and Oil? “It is very evident that Mackey and the authors of “Reflected Rays” have misread the Lecture on the Second Tracing Board. It was the Entered Apprentice who received the corn, wine and oil and wherever he got it, he did not receive it in the Inner Chamber. To gain access to that apartment a workmen required the pass-grip and pass-word of a Fellowcraft, and it is obvious that no Entered Apprentice could have possessed these.

 

One may pause here for a moment to remark that according to another tradition, all the workers of every degree were paid in current coin. The total wage bill is alleged to have amounted to about £140,000,000 sterling, and it was distributed among the craftsmen on a progressive scale which was quite obviously adjusted on the principle of the more honour the more pay. At the one end of the industrial line stood the humble Entered Apprentices who received one shekel, or about 2s 3d of English money (.50) per day, while at the other end, was the Super-Excellent Mason who received 81 shekels per day, equal to about £9 2s 3d sterling (One Masonic author very generously described this as “only a fanciful speculation of some of our ancient brethren, “and we may return, therefore, to our Corn, Wine and Oil.

 

If I am right in my theory that the wages of an Entered Apprentice in Speculative Freemasonry were suggested by the board and lodging which were the reward of the operative youth while learning t his trade, I think it is clear that the person who fixed to Wages of the Speculative A found his material in the Volume of the Sacred Law. We read in the Second Chapter of the Second Book of Chronicles that when Solomon appealed to the King of Tyre for assistance in building the Temple, he said, “Behold, I will give to thy servants, the hewers that cut timber twenty thousand measures of beaten wheat, and twenty thousand measures of barley, and twenty thousand baths of wine, and twenty thousand baths of oil.” The offer of Solomon was accepted by the King of Tyre who replied “now, therefore, the wheat, and the barley, the oil and the wine, which my lord hath spoken of, let him send unto his servants; and we will cut wood out of Lebanon as much as thou shalt need.” The account preserved. In the 5th Chapter of the first book of Kings, indicates that the gifts were made annually to Hiram’s work people, but there is a discrepancy as to the amount. In 1st Kings the Wines is omitted, and the oil is set down as “twenty measures” equal to about 1340 gallons, whereas the 20,000 baths of 2nd Chronicles were more than ten times as much, being the equivalent of about 165,000 gallons.

 

Old Sheckels:

www.flickr.com/photos/21728045@N08/31064028256/in/datepos...

 

www.flickr.com/photos/dynamosquito/5723176457/in/photolis...

 

THE WAGES OF A FELLOW CRAFT MASON:

 

From The Grand Lodge Of Texas

 

During the second section of the Fellow Craft Degree, the new initiate is presented with the wages of a Fellow Craft Mason. He is told the reward for the Freemason who has observed the moral and divine law and not wasted his time in idleness or vice is to be corn, wine and oil. Such wages were indeed true in ancient days when corn, wine and oil represented wealth and were used for money. The Fellow Craft Mason received these wages, not in a literal sense, but symbolically.

 

In ancient days, "corn" was not what we think of as corn today. Instead it was a grain, such as wheat or barley, which was called corn. Thus, an ear of grain (corn) represents plenty. It is also a symbol of nourishment.

 

Wine is mentioned in Psalms 104 as something "that gladdens the heart of man" and, as such, can symbolize health and refreshment of body and spirit. On another level, wine can represent the completed and perfected human life. Wine starts as an inferior juice when newly pressed from the grape, representing youth or immaturity. But with time and through fermentation, it can become a completed product, wine. Wine represents the maturity of mind and spirit we should strive to obtain in our relationship with God, while the fermentation process symbolizes the struggles of life we encounter in developing that relationship.

 

The oil is olive oil, which was a necessity in ancient times as it served multiple purposes. It was used in the preparation of food, served as a medicine both internally and externally, and provided a source of light in the ancient oil lamps. In this view, oil can represent nourishment, health, and peace. As a food item, oil symbolizes nourishment for our physical bodies but also the moral development we as Freemasons should be striving to obtain. As a medicine or remedy, it represents physical health and the spiritual health (or joy) we obtain in our relationship to God. As a source of light, oil represents the physical and spiritual peace we obtain by overcoming the vices of life.

 

Taken as a whole, the corn, wine and oil represent both the physical and spiritual nourishment, refreshment and joy the Freemason receives for living an industrious life devoted to the service of God and his fellowman. The faithful Fellow Craft Mason is assured that his wages, his reward, shall not be just sufficient but plentiful to supply all of his physical, moral, and spiritual needs. He will have health of body, mind, and soul. He will enjoy peace in this life, in the hour of death, and in the life to come.

 

The Grand Lodge of Scotland

 

MASTER'S WAGES:

 

It is rewarding to know that we as Freemasons can answer the

question as to what induced us to become Master Masons, and one answer, of course, is to receive Master's Wages.

 

Our Operative Brethren received their Master's Wages in coin of the realm. Speculatives content themselves with intangible wages, and occasionally some are hard pressed to explain to the wondering initiate just what, in this practical age, a "Master's Wages" really are.

 

The wages of a Master may be classified under two heads: first,

those inalienable rights which every Freemason enjoys as a result of payment of fees, initiation and the payment of annual dues to his Lodge; second, those more precious privileges which are his if he will but stretch out his hand to take.

 

The first right of which any initiate is conscious is that of

passing the Tyler and attending his Lodge, instead of being

conducted through the West Gate as a preliminary step to initiation. For a time this right of mingling with his new brethren is so engrossing that he looks no further for his Master's Wages.

 

Later he learns that he has also the right of visitation in other

Lodges, even though it is a "right" hedged about with restrictions. He must be in good standing to exercise it.

 

Generally this right of visiting other Lodges is a very real part of

what may be termed his concrete Master's Wages, and many are the Freemasons who find in it a cure for loneliness in strange places; who think of the opportunity to find a welcome and friends, where otherwise they would be alone, as wages of substantial character.

 

The opportunities to see and hear the beautiful ceremonies of

Freemasonry, to take from them again and again a new thought, are wages not to be lightly received. For him with the open ears and the inquiring mind, the degrees lead to a new world, since familiarity with ritual provides the key by which he may read an endless stream of books about Freemasonry.

 

"Master's Wages" are paid in acquaintance. Unless a newly made Master Mason is so shy and retiring that he seeks the farthest corner of his Lodge-room, there to sit shrinking into himself, inevitably he will become acquainted with many men of many minds, always an interesting addition to the joy of life. What he does with his acquaintances is another story, but at least wages are there, waiting for him. No honest man becomes a Freemason thinking to ask the Craft for relief. Yet the consciousness that poor is the Lodge and sodden the hearts of the brethren thereof from which relief will not be forthcoming if the need is bitter, is wages from which much comfort may be taken.

 

Freemasonry is not, per se, a relief organisation It does not exist merely for the purpose of dispensing charity. Nor has it great funds with which to work its gentle ministrations to the poor.

 

Fees are modest; dues often are too small, rather than too large. Yet, for the Brother down and out, who has no fuel for the fire, no food for his hungry children, whom sudden disaster threatens, the strong arm of the fraternity stretches forth to push back the danger. The cold are warmed, the hungry fed, the naked clothed, the jobless given work, the discouraged heartened. "Master's Wages" surely far greater than the effort put forth to earn them.

 

Freemasonry is strong in defence of the helpless. The widow and the orphan need ask but once to receive her bounty. All Brethren hope to support their own, provide for their loved ones, but misfortune comes to the just and the unjust alike. To be one of a world-wide Brotherhood on which widow and child may call is of untold comfort, "Master's Wages" more precious than coin of gold.

 

Finally, it is the right of Mason's burial. At home or abroad a

Freemason, known to desire it, is followed to his last home by

sorrowing Brethren who lay him away under the apron of the Craft and the sprig of Acacia of immortal hope. This, too, is "Wages of a Master".

 

"Pay the Craft their Wages, if any be due."

 

To some the practical wages mentioned are the important payments for a Freemason's work. To others, the more tangible but none the less beloved opportunities to give, rather than to get, are the "Master's Wages" which count the most.

 

Great among these is the Craft's opportunity for service. The world is full of chances to do for others, and no man need apply to a Masonic Lodge only because he wants a chance to "do unto others as he would that others do unto him". But Freemasonry offers peculiar opportunities to unusual talents which are not always found in the profane world.

 

There is always something to do in a Lodge. There are always

committees to be served and committee work is usually thankless work. He who cannot find his payment in his satisfaction of a task well done will receive no "Master's Wages" for his labours on Lodge committees.

 

There are Brethren to be taught. Learning all the "work" is a man's task, not to be accomplished in a hurry. Yet it is worth the doing, and in instructing officers and candidates many a Mason has found a quiet joy which is "Master's Wages" pressed down and running over.

 

Service leads to the possibility of appointment or election to the

line of officers. There is little use to speak of the "Master's

Wages" this opportunity pays, because only those who have occupied the Oriental Chair know what they are. The outer evidence of the experience may be told, but the inner spiritual experience is untellable because the words have not been invented. But Past

Masters know! To them is issued a special coinage of "Master's

Wages" which only a Worshipful Master may earn. Ask any of them if they were not well paid for the labour.

 

If practical "Master's Wages" are acquaintance in Lodge, the

enjoyment of fellowship, merged into friendship, is the same payment in a larger form, Difficult to describe, the sense of being one of a group, the solidarity of the circle which is the Lodge, provides a satisfaction and pleasure impossible to describe as it is clearly to be felt. It is interesting to meet many men of many walks of life;

 

it is heart-warming continually to meet the same group, always with the same feeling of equality. High and low, rich and poor, merchant and farmer, banker and fisherman, doctor and ditch-digger, meet on the level, and find it happy - "Master's Wages", value untranslatable into money.

 

Finally - and best - is the making of many friends. Thousands of

Brethren count their nearest and dearest friends on the rolls of the Lodge they love and serve. The Mystic Tie makes for friendship. It attracts man to man and often draws together "those who might otherwise have remained at a perpetual distance". The teachings of brotherly love, relief and truth; of temperance, fortitude, prudence and justice; the inculcation of patriotism and love of country, we everyday experience in a Masonic Lodge. When men speak freely those thoughts which, in the world without, they keep silent, friendships are formed. Count gain for work well done in what coin seems most valuable; the dearest of the intangibles which come to any Master Mason are those Masonic friendships of which there are no greater "Master's Wages".

 

Map: www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/147770369...

 

Portable Masonic Wages: From Phoenix Masonry

 

A portable leather case of corn, wine and oil is symbolic of the wages paid to a Fellow Craft Mason as he makes his way or "passes" through the middle chamber. The "corn, wine, and oil are emblematical of nourishment, refreshment and joy and teach us this important lesson... that we should be ever-ready to nourish the needy, refresh the destitute, and pour the oil of joy in the hearts of the afflicted."

 

The corn in the Masonic rituals is a synonym of grain or wheat. In ancient rituals was used as an emblem of the Greek goddess

Demeter, or of the Roman Cybelis. Both female figures were conceived as appearances of the Mother Earth. In Greek pottery someone can see that in festivities in honour of Demeter the priests and the faithful were crowned with ears of wheat. This symbolized the fertility of the earth, which with the grain gives the bread to the mankind. Thus was corn or grain according to this symbolism the personification of the idea of plenty, abundance, and due to the divine intervention promised fertility.

 

Following the same religious beliefs was wine the symbol of Greek God Dionysos. By drinking the wine the Dionysiac priests and initiated participants to the Bacchical mysteries were able to come to the psychic condition of "methexis" - a condition of holy madness -, so they could play the drama of ritual death and rebirth of Dionysos. The wine helped them to loose their identity and come as divine actors to a psychological situation, under which they understood hidden truths and the divine allegory by using their feelings and insights rather than their intellect. The wine was seen

as a symbol of joy, exaltation ,and as a mean towards the initiation through the emotion and the instinct, by acting in Bacchical rituals, after having eliminated the logic.

 

The oil was, as an extract of the olive fruit, a reward of the

Greek goddess of knowledge Athena - Pallas, who had as emblem, among others, the olive-tree. One of the principal uses of oil was to bring the light in homes, so it was seen in its more esoterical significance as a symbol of spiritual Enlightenment, in other words as a symbol of the eternal lantern of divine knowledge. In the same meaning was the oil a symbol of peace through Enlightenment. Plants of the olive tree were given as a reward to the winners of the Olympic games, during which every war must be breached. Thus Athena brought to

the faithful with the present of oil the reward of hidden knowledge, enlightenment and peace.

 

In the Biblical symbolism the three products possessed a similar meaning and significance to this of the Greco-roman world. King Solomon gave corn, wine and oil to the builders of the Temple as a reward for their labors. The ear of corn together with the flood of water personifies in the Hebrew word Shibboleth the abundance and wealth. The wine was seen as an element of consecration and a divine refreshment. The Hebrews anointed their Kings, Prophets and High Priests with oil mixed with other spices, because the oil was the major element of the ceremony, which was leading towards the path of the divine initiation.

 

In the Christian symbolism the corn refers to the bread and this

last one makes someone remember of the body of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, as well as the wine refers to the blood of him. The oil symbolizes the Baptism. The three substances are the most significant of the Christian initiation. In Christian Masonic

degrees these three rewards of the Mason bring with them the

remembrance of the Holy Passion and the promise of the Resurrection.

 

According to all above mentioned symbolical languages the Mason receives as a reward for his labors in the Lodge the present of grain, because he fertilized himself and all other Masons by working in the building of himself and the building of the Temple. He receives the wine to remember that through his emotion and instinct conquered the hidden knowledge by playing in the rituals the passions of God his symbolical murder and his eternal rebirth. Thirdly, he receives the oil to remember that he achieved at the end of the road the spiritual enlightenment, the baptism, and his inner peace as a reflection of the eternal peace of God.

 

Mark Master Degree - Its Ritual and Antiquity

 

R. E. Trebilcock

 

RITUAL OF THE MARK MASTER DEGREE:

 

The degree of Mark Master has continued with as few changes as any Masonic degree of which we have knowledge. It is impossible for anyone to specify accurately what the ritual consisted of previous to 1797, but in that year, Thomas Smith Webb issued the first complete Masonic Monitor which included the Capitular degrees.

 

We have before us, as we write, this first edition of Webb; in it he says of the degree:

 

The first section explains the manner of convocating and opening a Master Mark Lodge. It teaches the duties of the respective officers, and recapitulates the mystic ceremony of introducing a candidate. In this section is exemplified the regularity and good order that was observed by the craftsmen on Mount Libanus, and in the plains and quarries of Zeredathah, and ends with a beautiful display of the manner by which one of the principal events took place.

 

In the second section, the Master Mark Mason is particularly instructed in the history of this degree, and the increased obligation he is under to stretch forth his assisting hand to the relief of an indigent and worthy brother.

 

The distinguishing marks and characteristics are also explained and illustrated in this section. In the course of the lecture the following texts of Scripture are recited, viz.:

 

Then follow five quotations taken from Psalms, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Acts all having to do with the "stone which the builders rejected." In many jurisdictions this has been changed by using quotations which are not so monotonous, since references are made throughout the degree to the same passages.

 

The Charge which follows is identical with that in use to this day; the Parable of the Vineyard occupied an important place; and the Mark Master Song, as now used, was printed in full.

 

The degree of Mark Master in 1797 is that of 1964!

 

THE SCRIPTURE USED IN MARK DEGREE:

 

Quotations from the Scriptures appear very prominently throughout the ritual of the Mark Master degree, beginning with the opening and appearing also in the closing ceremonies.

 

These include extracts from I Peter, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Revelations, Matthew and Proverbs. In a few instances not all of the verse has been used, to enable it to fit into the ritual ceremony. A few changes are necessary so as to be inoffensive to any religious belief.

 

An instance of this appears in the opening ceremonies as taken from I Peter:

 

Wherefore, laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings; if so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious; to whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious; ye also as lively (changed to "living") stones, be ye built up a spiritual house (change to "are built up, etc.), an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. ("by Jesus Christ" stricken out to make acceptable to Hebrew and Moslem.)

 

Verse 3 is omitted entirely, having no connection with the ritual. Instead of continuing to quote from Peter, the next section jumps over to Isaiah 28:16:

 

Therefore thus saith the Lord God (changed to "Wherefore, also it is contained in the Scripture")

 

Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation; he that believeth shall not make haste to pass it over. ("to pass it over" is stricken out in the ritual.)

 

And there are changes made in verse 7 of I Peter, 2:

 

Unto you therefore which believe he is precious (ritual reads "it is an honor") but unto them which be disobedient (ritual says "and even to them which be disobedient,"), the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the comer.

 

And jumping to verses 15-17 of the same chapter, we read:

 

For so is the will of God (the ritual says "Brethren, this is the will of God"), that with well doing, ye may put to silence ("may" is left out of the ritual), the ignorance of foolish men: as free, and not using your liberty for a cloke (spelled cloak in ritual), of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the King. (The ritual says: "Honor all men; love the brotherhood; fear God.")

 

The Scripture of the perambulations is taken from Ezekiel 44, verses 1, 2, 3, and 5, and there is no change in the ritual from that of the Scripture. These passages refer to the vision of Ezekiel, to understand which we must refer to Ezekiel 40 v. 2-3:

 

In the visions of God brought he me into the land of Israel, and set me upon a very high mountain ... and he brought me thither, and behold, there was a man whose appearance was like the appearance of brass ... and he stood in the gate (of the City of Jerusalem).

 

The "man" thereupon conducted him about the Temple giving information and instruction to Ezekiel, when, finally,

 

He brought me back the way of the gate of the outward sanctuary which looketh toward the east; and it was shut.

 

Then follows verses 2, 3, and 5, omitting 4, which has no connection.

 

We encounter in the ritual, the following:

 

what you give, give freely, for the Lord loves a cheerful giver.

 

The passage is taken from II Corinthians 9:7:

 

Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.

 

A passage from Ezekiel is twice used in the ritual (Ezekiel 44:5), where Ezekiel is told to listen carefully to all that has been said; this applies equally to the instruction being given the candidate:

 

Mark well, and behold with thine eyes, and hear with thine ears, all that I say unto thee concerning all the ordinances of the house of the Lord, and all the laws thereof, and mark well the entering in of the house with every going forth of the sanctuary.

 

In the Revelation of St. John the Divine appears a passage of importance to the Mark Master. It is in Revelation 2:17, and refers to the message to the churches:

 

To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he hath received it.

 

The white stone with the name written thereon is one of the principal pieces of furniture of a Mark Master lodge and its traditions and symbolism are carefully explained to each candidate. Not only did the "white stone" convey the name, but it was also the stone found necessary in completing the temple. Just so is the name essential for completing the spiritual temple.

 

And finally, we come to the beautiful parable of the vineyard, quoted exactly from Matthew 20:1-16. The quotation follows a conversation between Jesus and Peter, his disciple. The discussion is on the matter of everlasting life and the parable is used to impress upon Peter that whosoever seeks eternal life shall find it whether that search begins in youth, in manhood, or in age when one comes in "at the eleventh hour," "receiving as much as they who have borne the burden of the day."

 

How appropriately it is introduced into the Mark Master degree, only those who receive it, and study it, may know.

 

The closing passage of scripture is taken from Proverbs 3:1, and carries on the story of eternal life by calling attention to those things necessary to attain it.

 

Read it:

 

Forget not God's law; but let thine heart keep his commandments; for length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to thee.

 

Let not mercy and truth forsake thee; bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart: so shalt thou find favor and good understanding in the sight of God and man.

 

And what a fine theme on which to close a Masonic degree!

 

A MARK MASTER'S WORKING TOOLS:

 

Why were the chisel and mallet chosen as the working tools of a Mark Master? What particular relationship do these tools have with the degree of Mark Master?

 

First, let us see what we are told about these implements:

 

The Mallet morally teaches us to correct irregularities, and to reduce man to a proper level; so that, by quiet deportment, he may, in the school of discipline, learn to be content.

 

What the Mallet is to the workmen, enlightened reason is to the passions; it curbs ambition, depresses envy, moderates anger, and encourages good dispositions; whence arises among good Freemasons, that comely order, Which nothing earthly gives, or can destroy; The soul's calm sunshine, and the heartfelt joy.

 

The Chisel morally demonstrates the advantages of discipline and education. The mind, like the diamond in its original state, is rude and unpolished; but as the effect of the Chisel on the external coat soon presents to view the latent beauties of the diamond, so education discovers the latent virtues of the mind, and draws them forth to range the large field of matter and space, to display the summit of human knowledge, our duty to God and to man.

 

A progressive study of Masonic working tools will show both a practical and a symbolic use of these instruments; this is the teaching of Freemasonry, and how well we absorb this teaching will decide how good a Freemason we are.

 

In the first place, their practical purpose is explained in the Mark Master lecture; but the candidate is not told that with these tools he can communicate with another brother, for it is with these instruments that he makes the Masonic cipher alphabet. It is with these instruments that he can place his individual mark upon each piece of work which he may complete for the building of the temple. And here for the first time he is taught individual responsibility. Heretofore he has been working for the combined interest of the human family; now he is taught that he has an individual responsibility, and that each piece of work which he presents has a distinct personal value; that his work must be square and true and that those who inspect will: through his mark, be able to detect imperfect work, or work presented by imposters.

 

But most important is the thought that each of us must perfect our own lives; that it is in our power to build a substantial structure or an imperfect one. Our lives are like blocks of stone which the sculptor, by striking off bits here and there, may form into a beautiful work of art, the value of which depends solely on the vision of the artist himself. The Chisel and Mallet are his instruments for producing his masterpiece. So, does the Mark Master, using his Chisel and Mallet as spiritual instruments, perfect his character by striking off all those vices and irregularities which mar a life, and reveal a perfect character, the finest gift one can offer to the Great Overseer.

 

In the lodge we are taught the value of each stone that goes into the temple, materially and spiritually. In the chapter we are taught that we are the architects of our own lives and that it is within our power to say whether that life be good or bad.

 

How important to us, as Freemasons, are the teachings of the Chisel and the Mallet which give us an insight into our duties and our possibilities!

 

THE ANTIQUITY OF THE MARK:

 

William J. Hughan, the most famous of the English Masonic historians says of the Mark degree:

 

The antiquity of Mark Masonry cannot be doubted. Operatively considered and even speculatively, it has enjoyed special prominence for centuries; records of the custom being followed by speculative brethren, according to existing records, dating back to 1600, in which year, on the 8th day of June, "Ye principal warden and chief master of maisons, Wm. Schaw, master of work to ye Kingis Maistie", met members of the Lodge of Edinburgh (Now No. 1) at Holyrood House, at which meeting the Laird of Auchinleck was present, and attested the minutes of the assembly by his Mark, as did the operatives, in accordance with the Schaw Statutes of December 28, 1598, which provided "That the day of reassauying (receiving) of said fellow of craft or master be ord'lie buikit and his name and Mark insert in the said buik."

 

Another minute book of the same lodge contains a list of members in 1767, setting out after each name the date on which the member received the degree of R.A. The earliest date given is 1745.

 

Turning to America, we find a reference in a minute book of a lodge in Virginia of the degree being conferred in 1753.

 

Castells in his book "Organization of the Royal Arch Chapter Two Centuries Ago" says, in his opening chapter, that

 

"The question of the fons et origo of our Supreme Degree is a problem; but we claim that we have solved it, for we have shown in previous works that the Royal Arch is only a dilution of Kabbalism."

 

Let us see on what this claim is founded. He admits in his preface that he had only at his disposal "a few scraps of information, which are like the tiny bits of a jigsaw puzzle, most difficult to combine into a pictorial design," but he believes he has put them together in the right order. But do the scraps of information justify the conclusion at which he has arrived?

 

The Kabbala was a secret science of the Jewish Rabbis for the interpretation of the hidden meaning of the scriptures, claimed to be handed down by oral tradition.

 

In his chapter on the Kabbalistic Degrees, the author refers to an ancient work known as the Sepher-ha-Zohar, a book that appeared in Spain in the thirteenth century. The copies of this book (there are two or three still in existence) were in the manuscript of a professional copyist, who apparently had an earlier copy in his possession.

 

The subject matter is undoubtedly considerably older than the 13th century, but probably had been handed down by tradition and reduced to writing only in then comparatively recent times. It professes to be the work of one Simeon bin Jochai who lived in the first century A.D.

 

Speaking of the first word with which we of the R.A. are familiar, Simeon says,

 

"Now come and see the mystery of the Word. There are Three Degrees (in the word) and each Degree, exists by itself, and although the Three constitute One, they are closely united into One, and are inseparable from each other."

 

Simeon was discussing the word, and had explained that there were three ways of writing it:

 

The simple four-lettered word, without points;

The same four letters with certain vowels, taken from another sacred word;

The same with the vowel points of still another sacred word.

From this Castells infers "that the unwritten word of Kabbalism. consisted of three particles, or syllables, each one being capable of standing by itself; and as it had a meaning of its own, it could be considered either singly or separately. The three syllables, however, formed one word, and were actually united and inseparable. This answers exactly to the Word which the R.A. Companions know of."

 

So far we may, perhaps, agree with Castells, but he goes further, and claims that "The statement of the Zohar implies that each part of the Sacred Word was communicated and shared piecemeal by the three who bore sway among the old time companions, and this was done by them as they passed successively from chair to chair, until the climax was reached when the whole Word became known."

 

He submits, therefore, that the passage refers to the Second Word with which we are familiar "which was the Masonic Word" of the seventeenth century.

 

I would like to be able to agree with Castells in this last deduction, but I am afraid he has built too much on very slender premises.

 

Be that as it may, he proves nothing. The first Word (except as to its correct pronunciation) is known to all the world, and has so been known for many centuries, so the possession of it by the R.A. does not indicate that it came from the Kabbalists. As to the second word, Castells' claim that it was possessed by the Kabbalists is entirely without foundation.

 

Further, there is more in our traditions than the knowledge of a word — the tradition as to the finding of what was lost. Even Castells does not suggest that the Kabbalists had a tradition of a loss of something important and its subsequent discovery. If it could be shown that they had, then the conclusion that our Order was a descendant of Kabbalism would be almost irrefutable.

 

Castells says:

 

"the analysis of Kabbalism … leaves no room for doubt … Kabbalism in this country (England) degenerated and gave rise to Freemasonry…. Our views have now been before Masonic students for some years, and if there be any fallacy in them, let those who can disprove them."

 

The fallacy is obvious. He has based his views on insufficient data; the "tiny bits" of his "jigsaw puzzle" are too few and too small to warrant the picture he has built out of them.

 

No, we can trace the Royal Arch back with certainty to a few years before 1744 (say 1740), and the place, England. It is probably very much older, but there we must leave it. Some day, perhaps, some old manuscript may turn up which will give it still greater antiquity, but it is not likely.

My Dad grew up Catholic, and I have a charming picture of him in his alter boy outfit looking angelic from the neck down, and devilish in the eyes. My Mom was a little more vague- "fire, brimstone, and holy roller" was her way of saying that in her rural Indiana upbringing they worshipped with what ever traveling preacher was in town at the time. Since she was not particularly affiliated with any sect, she was a pushover for my feisty paternal grandmother who was insistent that the children be raised under the Catholic holy trinity.

 

I loved, loved, loved church- the Latin mass, the rituals, the nuns, the beautiful church we attended (a miniature blond wood cathedral of sorts), lighting candles in the lady chapel, and most of all Monsignor Anderson, who was a family friend. But I was a skeptical child, and a bit willful, and slowly but surely doubts began to creep into my little brain. If the scapular I was never supposed to take off was really going to guarantee the Virgin Mother would come to purgatory to fetch me to heaven if I died wearing it, shouldn't it be made of something more permanent than the red felt and cardboard that ran dye all over my eight year old neck when I took a bath? And howcome my grandfather and the monsignor needed to have a shot of Irish Whiskey in the back room before 11 o'clock mass if this ceremony was so holy?

 

Further circumstances began to separate me from my beloved church. In high school, I had just two years of Latin under my belt before services were changed to the vernacular. Huh??? And then, as I was going away to college in 1971- the height of the women's liberation movement- I began to feel indignant on behalf of those nuns I'd cherished all my life. Why exactly was it that they could not say mass? And as a child of the hippie era (the original one, not the neo-hippie fashion statement that has nothing to do with living close to the earth) who was concerned about overpopulation (we won't mention personal sexual freedom) I was very concerned about the church's rigid stance about birth control and abortion. I was in a terrible personal crisis.

 

Thinking that perhaps I'd strayed too far from the teachings, I volunteered to teach catechism classes in the church where I'd been confirmed. Every week for three months I took a bus an hour each way to my hometown to teach 7 year olds out of the Baltimore Catechism. Big BIG mistake for me. As a freshman in college, I was way too unwilling to suppress logic to faith, so teaching from that book just widened the chasm that was growing between me and my religion. Finally, in a desperate last-ditch effort to retain the anchor of a faith I'd practiced for more than 20 years, I signed up for a comparative religion class. Surely studying Catholicism in conjunction with other religions would put everything in perspective for me.

 

And it did. But not in the way I'd hoped. The more I studied the differing forms of faith, the more I discovered that they were- in the most basic terms- quite similar. They taught you to be good people and good neighbors. To help others. To not harm people or property. To learn lessons from wise teachers. To think about the larger world around you. To put that world into the context of history.

 

To make a very long story shorter, basically what I figured out was that what most people look for in religion are these four things.

 

They want an answer to the question of how we came to be.

They want guidance for an acceptable code of conduct.

They want a community that accepts them, no matter who they are or what they've done.

They want comforting rituals.

 

With my own peculiar logic, studying how much religions are basically the same made me quite comfortable- for the next almost 30 years- practicing my little religion of one.

 

I am perfectly content to not understand how we came to be. I don't understand physics either, but that doesn't make me skeptical that physics exists.

 

I learned all those "moral" ways to act in church when I was young. I don't have to be Catholic, or any other religion, to know that we need to strive to be good, helpful, giving people for the world to progress in a positive way.

 

I belong to many communities where I thrive... I don't NEED one to validate my beliefs.

 

Over the years, I've developed many personal rituals... around gardening, holidays, seasons, people... I am not lacking in ritual.

 

I was content. Except for one little thing. When my mother was quite ill before she died, and when my father went though a personal crisis, and when crises befell close friends... I was missing the kind of ritual that is a physical manifestation of FAITH. Like lighting candles in the lady chapel at church. Or the way some will pin the photograph of a suffering loved one near a statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe. So there really was something missing. I didn't need the deity or the services. But I did need that specific sort of ritual.

 

Enter my sweetheart Matt. Matt has been practicing in a small sect of Buddhism for decades now. It involves chanting twice a day. For what you need. To improve yourself. To reach your goals. For those you love. There is no deity or fat little iconic Buddha... you are the buddha. There are no rules. There is simply the practice. A community full of people, each with "a little religion of one". And he didn't prostletize at all... just answered my questions when I was curious. There was a lot that was compelling. So now, after being quite content having faith without form, I'm again part of a community that believes much what I do. And I have the ritual I was seeking, even when I didn't know it.

 

So now, twice a day, I take the time at my altar to:

 

think about my place in the world

think about how I can give more than I take

focus on personal goals

think about my ancestors and loved ones who've died

think about what happens in my next lives

celebrate the wonder of the world

pray for peace

 

and now I'm more content

    

Armand Jean du Plessis, 1st Duke of Richelieu; 9 September 1585 – 4 December 1642), known as Cardinal Richelieu, was a French statesman and prelate of the Catholic Church. He became known as l'Éminence rouge, or "the Red Eminence", a term derived from the title "Eminence" applied to cardinals and from the red robes that they customarily wear.

 

Consecrated a bishop in 1607, Richelieu was appointed Foreign Secretary in 1616. He continued to rise through the hierarchy of both the Catholic Church and the French government, becoming a cardinal in 1622 and chief minister to King Louis XIII of France in 1624. He retained that office until his death in 1642, when he was succeeded by Cardinal Mazarin, whose career he had fostered. Richelieu became engaged in a bitter dispute with Marie de Médici, the king's mother, and formerly his close ally.

 

Richelieu sought to consolidate royal power and restrained the power of the nobility in order to transform France into a strong centralized state. In foreign policy, his primary objectives were to check the power of the Habsburg dynasty (reigning notably in Spain and Austria) and to ensure French dominance in the Thirty Years' War of 1618–1648 after that conflict engulfed Europe. Despite suppressing the Huguenot rebellions of the 1620s, he made alliances with Protestant states like the Kingdom of England and the Dutch Republic to help him achieve his goals. However, although he was a powerful political figure in his own right, events such as the Day of the Dupes (French: Journée des Dupes) in 1630 showed that Richelieu's power still depended on the king's confidence.

 

An alumnus of the University of Paris and headmaster of the College of Sorbonne, Richelieu renovated and extended the institution. He became famous for his patronage of the arts and founded the Académie Française, the learned society responsible for matters pertaining to the French language. As an advocate for Samuel de Champlain and New France, he founded (1627) the Compagnie des Cent-Associés; he also negotiated the 1632 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye under which Quebec City returned to French rule after English privateers took it in 1629. He was created Duke of Richelieu in 1629.

 

Richelieu is known as the inventor of the table knife. Annoyed by the bad manners that were commonly displayed at the dining table by users of sharp knives (who would often use them to pick their teeth),[6] in 1637 Richelieu ordered that all of the knives on his dining table have their blades dulled and their tips rounded. The design quickly became popular throughout France and later spread to other countries.

 

Richelieu has frequently been depicted in popular fiction, notably as the lead villain in Alexandre Dumas's 1844 novel The Three Musketeers and its numerous film adaptations.

 

Early life

Born in Paris on 9 September 1585, Armand du Plessis was the fourth of five children and the last of three sons: he was delicate from childhood and suffered frequent bouts of ill-health throughout his life. His family belonged to the lesser nobility of Poitou: his father, François du Plessis, seigneur de Richelieu, was a soldier and courtier who served as the Grand Provost of France, and his mother, Susanne de La Porte, was the daughter of a famous jurist.

 

When he was five years old, Richelieu's father died of fever in the French Wars of Religion, leaving the family in debt; with the aid of royal grants, however, the family was able to avoid financial difficulties. At the age of 9, young Richelieu was sent to the College of Navarre in Paris to study philosophy. Thereafter, he began to train for a military career. His private life seems to have been typical for a young officer of the era; in 1605, aged twenty, he was treated by Théodore de Mayerne for gonorrhea.

 

Henry III had rewarded Richelieu's father for his participation in the Wars of Religion by granting his family the Bishopric of Luçon. The family appropriated most of the revenues of the bishopric for private use; they were, however, challenged by clergymen who desired the funds for ecclesiastical purposes. To protect the important source of revenue, Richelieu's mother proposed to make her second son, Alphonse, the bishop of Luçon. Alphonse, who had no desire to become a bishop, became instead a Carthusian monk. Thus, it became necessary that the younger Richelieu join the clergy. He had strong academic interests and threw himself into studying for his new post.

 

In 1606, Henry IV nominated Richelieu to become Bishop of Luçon. As Richelieu had not yet reached the canonical minimum age, it was necessary that he journey to Rome for a special dispensation from Pope Paul V. This secured, Richelieu was consecrated bishop in April 1607. Soon after he returned to his diocese in 1608, Richelieu was heralded as a reformer. He became the first bishop in France to implement the institutional reforms prescribed by the Council of Trent between 1545 and 1563.

 

At about this time, Richelieu became a friend of François Leclerc du Tremblay (better known as "Père Joseph" or "Father Joseph"), a Capuchin friar, who would later become a close confidant. Because of his closeness to Richelieu, and the grey colour of his robes, Father Joseph was also nicknamed L'éminence grise (lit. 'the Grey Eminence'). Later, Richelieu often used him as an agent during diplomatic negotiations.

 

Rise to power

In 1614, the clergymen of Poitou asked Richelieu to be one of their representatives to the Estates-General. There, he was a vigorous advocate of the Catholic Church, arguing that it should be exempt from taxes and that bishops should have more political power. He was the most prominent clergyman to support the adoption of the decrees of the Council of Trent throughout France; the Third Estate (commoners) was his chief opponent in this endeavour. At the end of the assembly, the First Estate (the clergy) chose him to deliver the address enumerating its petitions and decisions. Soon after the dissolution of the Estates-General, Richelieu entered the service of King Louis XIII's wife, Anne of Austria, as her almoner.

 

Richelieu advanced politically by faithfully serving the queen-mother's favourite, Concino Concini, the most powerful minister in the kingdom. In 1616, Richelieu was made Secretary of State, and was given responsibility for foreign affairs. Like Concini, the Bishop was one of the closest advisors of Louis XIII's mother, Marie de Médicis. The queen had become Regent of France when the nine-year-old Louis ascended the throne; although her son reached the legal age of majority in 1614, she remained the effective ruler of the realm. However, her policies, and those of Concini, proved unpopular with many in France. As a result, both Marie and Concini became the targets of intrigues at court; their most powerful enemy was Charles de Luynes. In April 1617, in a plot arranged by Luynes, Louis XIII ordered that Concini be arrested, and killed should he resist; Concini was consequently assassinated, and Marie de Médicis overthrown. His patron having died, Richelieu also lost power; he was dismissed as Secretary of State, and was removed from the court. In 1618, the king, still suspicious of the Bishop of Luçon, banished him to Avignon. There, Richelieu spent most of his time writing; he composed a catechism titled L'Instruction du chrétien.

 

In 1619, Marie de Médicis escaped from her confinement in the Château de Blois, becoming the titular leader of an aristocratic rebellion. The king and the duc de Luynes recalled Richelieu, believing that he would be able to reason with the queen. Richelieu was successful in this endeavour, mediating between her and her son. Complex negotiations bore fruit when the Treaty of Angoulême was ratified; Marie de Médicis was given complete freedom, but would remain at peace with the king. The queen-mother was restored to the royal council.

 

After the death of the king's favourite, the duc de Luynes, in 1621, Richelieu rose to power quickly. The year after, the king nominated Richelieu for a cardinalate, which Pope Gregory XV accordingly granted in September 1622. Crises in France, including a rebellion of the Huguenots, rendered Richelieu a nearly indispensable advisor to the king. After he was appointed to the royal council of ministers on 29 April 1624, he intrigued against the chief minister Charles, duc de La Vieuville. On 12 August of the same year, La Vieuville was arrested on charges of corruption, and Cardinal Richelieu took his place as the king's principal minister the following day, but the Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld nominally remained president of the council (Richelieu was officially appointed president in November 1629).

 

Amboise is a commune in the Indre-et-Loire department in central France. Today a small market town, it was once home of the French royal court.

 

Amboise lies on the banks of the river Loire, 27 kilometres (17 mi) east of Tours. It is also about 18 kilometres (11 mi) away from the historic Château de Chenonceau, situated on the river Cher near the small village of Chenonceaux. Amboise station, on the north bank of the Loire, has rail connections to Orléans, Blois and Tours.

 

Clovis I (c. 466 – 511) and the Visigoths signed a peace treaty of alliance with the Arvernians in 503, which assisted him in his defeat of the Visigothic kingdom in the Battle of Vouillé in 507.

 

Joan of Arc passed through in 1429 on her way to Orleans to the Battle of Patay.

 

Château du Clos Lucé was the residence of Leonardo da Vinci between 1516 and his death in 1519. Da Vinci died in the arms of King Francis I, and he was buried in a crypt near the Château d'Amboise. The house has lost some of its original parts, but it still stands today containing a museum of da Vinci's work and inventions, and overlooks the river Loire.

 

The Amboise conspiracy was the conspiracy of Condé and the Huguenots in 1560 against Francis II, Catherine de' Medici and the Guises.

 

The Château at Amboise was home to Mary Stewart, Queen of Scots, for much of her early life, being raised there at the French court of Henry II. She arrived in France from Scotland in 1548, aged six, via the French king's favourite palace at Saint-Germain-en-Laye near Paris, and remained in France until 1561, when she returned to her homeland—sailing up the Firth of Forth to Edinburgh on 15 August that year.

  

The Edict of Amboise (1563) conceded the free exercise of worship to the Protestants.

 

Here was born in 1743 Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, French philosopher, known as Le Philosophe Inconnu (d. 1803).

 

Abd el Kader Ibn Mouhi Ad-Din (c. 1807 – 1883) was imprisoned at the Château d'Amboise.

 

In 2019, the 500th anniversary of da Vinci's death, Amboise held many events celebrating the master's life and his work completed in the town. The number of visitors to Château du Clos Lucé, for example, was estimated as 500,000 in 2019, a 30% increase over the typical annual number.

 

The city is known for the Clos Lucé manor house where Leonardo da Vinci lived (and ultimately died) at the invitation of King Francis I of France, whose Château d'Amboise, which dominates the town, is located just 500 m (1,640 feet) away. The narrow streets contain some good examples of timbered housing.

 

Just outside the city is the Pagode de Chanteloup, a 44-metre-tall (144 ft) Chinese pagoda built in 1775 by the Duke of Choiseul. The pagoda is seven levels high, with each level slightly smaller than the last one. An interior staircase to reach all levels is open to the public.

 

The Musée de la Poste (in the Hôtel Joyeuse) is a museum tracing the history of the postal delivery service.

 

A 20th-century fountain by Max Ernst stands in front of the market place.

 

The idea of a shrine of peace to serve as a memorial of the People Power Revolution came as an inspired thought to His Eminence Jaime Cardinal Sin two days after the dictator fled to exile in Hawaii.

 

The Cardinal was riding in the car together with Bishop Gabriel Reyes, then Auxiliary Bishop of Manila, en route to Camp Aguinaldo where they were to celebrate a Thanksgiving Mass. They came upon the intersection of EDSA and Ortigas, and Bishop Reyes pointed it out to the Cardinal as the spot where intrepid but gentle nuns and young men and women stood in front of the tanks and offered flowers to the soldiers.

 

At that corner, on an empty lot had stood two huge billboards of the Family Rosary Crusade, featuring the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the slogans, "The family that prays together stays together" and "A world at prayer is a world at peace." The felicitous coincidence could not but evoke the reality of Our Lady's presence at EDSA during the People Power Revolution.

 

Realizing this, the two could not help but recall the story of the "La Naval de Manila" and the Battle of Lepanto, which was fought on October 7, 1751. At this historic battle, Don Juan of Austria, with only a few ships defeated the Muslim Turks, whose ships had outnumbered theirs. Had the Turks won this battle, they could have overrun Europe, making the entire continent Muslim. The miraculous victory of the Christians was attributed to the intercession of the Blessed Mother to whom the people of Rome prayed unceasingly with their rosaries and in processions, asking for help to win the battle. To thank the Lord for the victory, Pope St. Pius V in 1572 instituted the feast of Our Lady of Victory. A year later, Pope Gregory X changed the name to the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.

 

The Feast of La Naval de Manila was also instituted in thanksgiving to the Lord for another naval victory. During the Spanish times, the Protestant Dutch tried to conquer Manila. However, the Spanish fleet manned by Spaniards and Filipinos roundly defeated the far-superior naval force of the Dutch. This naval victory was attributed to our Blessed Mother of the Most Holy Rosary because as the naval battle was raging, the people of Manila continually prayed the rosary. This is the origin of the Feast of La Naval de Manila, which is celebrated (in a very special way in the Sto. Domingo Parish in Quezon City) on the first Sunday of October.

 

The EDSA Revolution was more miraculous than the Battle of Lepanto or the "La Naval de Manila." Thus did the idea of a memorial structure to thank the Lord and the Blessed Mother for the peaceful EDSA Revolution come to mind.

 

Cardinal Sin then set into motion a series of steps to turn his idea into reality. The owners of the land, the Ortigas and Gokongwei families, were approached and they donated the prime corner lot. The architectural and structural design for the church was undertaken by Architect Francisco Mañosa with preparatory work from National Artist Architect Leandro Locsin and Architect William Coscolluela.

 

Architect Mañosa designed the Shrine to evoke the freedom of movement and celebratory spirit of the original EDSA Revolution. The Shrine is to open out to the streets with the image of Our Lady of Queen of Peace, as sculpted in bronze by the late artist Virginia Ty-Navarro, forming the apex of the structure. The promenade is accessible through cascading stairs and ramps from EDSA and Ortigas Avenue. The center of this plaza faces the convergence of the two main roads and has become the site of the Eucharistic celebration held each year to commemorate the People Power Revolution.

 

Various works of art symbolize the spirit of freedom and peace at the Shrine's promenade area. At one end is the "Flame of Freedom," a sculpture done by artist Manny Casal of three hardy men bearing a cauldron of flame over their shoulders, representing the Philippines' three major islands, Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. Throughout the plaza are the 14 Stations of the Cross as rendered in bronze by national artist Napoleon Abueva.

 

At one corner are the carillon bells, which were crafted by some friends from Holland from the bullets and cannons of the Second World War. At given intervals during the day, the bells chime familiar patriotic and religious tunes, mostly evoking sentiments of the People Power Revolution.

 

The main chapel spans the breadth of the entire intersection and is accessible from either avenue. At each side are chapels, one the San Lorenzo Ruiz chapel and the other the Chapel of Perpetual Adoration. Natural lighting is obtained from all sides, except the main altar wall, which draws light from the skylight above. This skylight is diffused by a stained glass ceiling designed by artist Eduardo Castrillo.

 

Within the main chapel, a floating glass sculpture of the Risen Christ by Ramon Orlina overlooks the main marble altar also created by Abueva. The upper walls are muted murals that depict and interpret the four-day revolution by 15 artists from Angono, Rizal, led by Nemi Miranda. The art works "Doves of Peace," also by Casal, rest gently on the holy water fonts by the entrances.

 

At the chapel of the perpetual adoration the Blessed Sacrament is dramatically exposed through the monstrance-sculpture done by Castrillo.

 

At the other side chapel named after the first Filipino saint, San Lorenzo Ruiz, there is a wall mural depicting the saint's life painted by artist Ben Alano.

 

These works by Filipino artists – architects, sculptors and painters – form a unique collection that pays tribute to the indomitable spirit of the Filipino people. These works inspire, elevate, comfort and cheer, and in their unifying purpose, bring the people who visit, pray and celebrate in the Shrine closer to God, the source of peace.

 

In time, the other rooms in the Shrine gave way to the needs of the people. Thus at the Ortigas side, a small room was built called Silid Leonarda, named after one of the Shrine's dedicated early community members, a Papal awardee, fondly called Tita Leony (Leonarda Torres) who died in 1996. Another room, Silid Assisi, was built at the EDSA side of the Shrine. In 1998, soon after the celebration of the anniversary of the EDSA Revolution in February, construction for the Serviam Hall on a portion of the promenade began. Within three weeks, the hall, named after the motto of Jaime L. Cardinal Sin which means "I serve," was inaugurated. The hall has fittingly become the venue of the Shrine's formation activities (Fullness of Life seminars, catechism for the sacraments of confirmation and matrimony, spiritual nourishment recollections of the Shrine's various groups.) Once again, Architect Mañosa designed the hall to blend with the original architecture of the Shrine, unobtrusive from afar because of its glass walls.

 

The construction of the original Shrine was almost complete by late November of 1989 and preparations were underway to have it inaugurated on December 8, 1978, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.

 

But once again the country was rocked by threats to its democracy. An attempted coup d'etat broke out on November 29, 1989. The inauguration had to be postponed as the government thwarted the rebellion of a military reformist group. At the height of the uprising, some of the military rebels entered the Shrine, but did not do any damage to the unfinished structure.

 

His Eminence did not postpone the set inauguration certain that, with prayers to the Blessed Mother, the Shrine would be completed by December 8. The putschists finally surrendered on December 7. Amid the somber aftermath of the failed coup, but with quiet rejoicing among the faithful, the Shrine of Mary Queen of Peace (Our Lady of EDSA) Shrine was formally consecrated to God and dedicated to the Blessed Mother on December 15, 1989.

  

Saints and Sinner Chapter Two Mount Royal St Josephs Oratory

The only references I had to Saints in my life were through my Roman Catholic elementary classes and the church. As a child of catholic parents I have to assume that becoming a catholic, a member of the Roman Catholic Church was my birth right. I certainly had no say in it nor was I ever asked if I ever wanted to participate in this organization. In Ontario, Canada where I have lived my life the Catholic Church is a very strong organization that is very powerful in that a large portion of the education dollars in our province are meted out to either the catholic school board or the public school board. When you pay your taxes you are asked on your tax return which board you support. I think this system is under some fire as numerous other religion based organizations are looking to operate their own schools under their rules, they need funding approval to do this. It won’t be an easy nut to crack this two tier system. In my opinion the sensible solution is to have a one tier system only, with no preferential treatment towards any religious bodies.

I have no complaints about my education in the hands of the Roman Catholics. In fact there are times when I appreciate the efforts they made to instill some values in me that come in handy from time to time. Those values include the idea of what is right and what is wrong, though some will argue this point is also taught in the public school system. To those I say, ‘yes, but to a lesser degree.’ Part of our time in catholic school was spent studying the lives of the Saints. In my last year at Our Lady of Victory school we had a priest come to the class room one day and the nature of his chat was very interesting. He spoke about the miracles that various Catholic saints had been party to while they were in their human bodies. For some reason the images that the priest presented of the Saints and their miraculous, cures, manifestations of objects and healing of the ill intrigued me. I remember being overwhelmed by the excitement of his talk, until I was told to be quiet and take my seat as the subject was changed to general Catechism study, this was exceptionally boring, for me, in comparison to the Super Hero stories associated with the Saints.

Any recollection of which specific miracles Father Robitaille was discussing in our grade eight Catechism class have all been forgotten. A quick check on the web tells me of hundreds if not thousands of miracles performed by Catholic Saints over the years. They are all interesting, we have a lot of images of the Virgin Mary appearing to people. One of the biggest miracles is Christs own rising from the dead on Easter Sunday. A man named Joseph of Corpernicus was said to be able to levitate or float this was in the 1630s. As far back as 300 AD Saint Januarius produced liquefying blood three separate times each year. In 700 AD we have the miracle of Lanciano in which the wine and wafers used at communion transform into human tissue said to be the body of Christ. Tawdry by the previous standards Saint Malachy of Ireland was able to prophesise the forthcoming popes, the church is still investigating. Healing is often attributed to the Saints, especially issues involving the limbs of those born with defects. For example thousands have been healed who visited the water at Fatima, their left crutches a reminder of the healing. Obviously, miracles come in all sizes and shapes, bleeding statues are quite common and some have gone under the microscope to be proven true. Faith is indeed a very powerful thing.

The keeping of relics is another Catholic habit. There are over a dozen churches in the United States for example that have body parts of revered persons on display, the arm of Saint Jude one of the twelve disciples is housed in a church in the states, it often goes on display. I myself am familiar with the display of the heart of Brother Andre` of Montreal. As a boy I attended the spectacular St Josephs Oratory on Mount Royal and was impressed with the heart on display but also with the thousands of walking sticks and canes on display in this section of the church. Those devices were all given to the church as mementoes from believers who had their lameness and other maladies cured by praying to Brother Andre`

In the sixth grade I remember my teacher, Miss Christopher asking all of us to come to the front of the class and tell the class something about their family history. Before going that day I had peppered my mother with questions of what my grandfather Noel Lemay did in Quebec. I knew he was a master carpenter, someone who could design and build whatever he wanted all the way from homes to fine wooden work in churches. There were paintings in our house that my grandfather had created, oil paintings that hung on our walls, if nothing else these paintings acted as windows to him, his soul. My mom told me his work was on display in some cathedrals in Quebec and for some reason I remember one of churches name as being St Anne de Beaupre`. At the front of the class I recall being extremely proud of my heritage and to be able to tell the class that my grandfather was a craftsman who had done work in a famous Catholic church.

At the time I did not know that Noel Lemay had actually been a friend of Brother Andre` that they hung around together as friends do. Little was ever said of this friendship. Can you imagine how proud I would have been to tell my class that my grandfather knew Brother Andre`! My recollections of my grandpa are not of a man overly involved in religious activities. As I recall he attended church every Sunday as most good Catholics do, but there was not an overwhelming religious spirit in the house, I am trying to recall if they said grace before their meals, they may have but of this I am unsure. I have seen photos of their living rooms and I see crucifixes on the walls here and there. For many, their faith is held within and that may be the case of the Lemay family who were from Garthby Quebec in the townships. There were thirteen children in all, including my mother Gisele. It must have been an enormous task feeding and providing a roof and clothing for that many children. There would not be much left over for a beer at the end of the week. Though one of my fond memories of grandpa is the time we were staying at his house and before dinner one night he took us fishing on one of the many bridges in Montreal. We got to the spot and he took us to the bridge and got us set up and left Alex and I alone to fish while he went into a Tavern to have a few beers, I suppose having a look for our safety every now and then. It was dark when we got home and we were tired out, just boys of eight and nine.

From time to time I think of the small miracles that have taken place in my own life. The time a car on Brownville Avenue hit me as I errantly ran across the street to deliver the Mt Dennis Newsweekly. I remember getting up off the ground and running all the way home! The police came and saw that I was OK, there were no obvious injuries, dad chided me for not telling them I had been hit by a car. Was that a miracle? Another time, it must have been a miracle when my friend Ken Goobie and I had taken a car for a test ride one rainy afternoon. In a rush on our way back to the dealership me at the wheel, I rolled the car down the embankment of the being built Weston Road cloverleaf that is part of Highway 401. After several mid air turns the car landed plomp on the side of the road, cars speeding by, we escaped up the hill and hid until it was safe. Was that a miracle? One time I was washing down a big foam fire extinguisher system at the Ferranti Packard plant and a wet rag I was using touched the overhead crane that was supposed to have been turned off from power, electricity flowed through me for a bit, as I looked down over the paint vat twenty feet below that had steel spikes protruding upwards, if I had lost grip and fallen, I would have drowned in a vat of rustproofing paint if the fall did not kill me! Was that a miracle? One time a few years later in our hippie days, we were broke, tired of eating peanut butter on crackers, me and a friend headed down town we were going to steal a purse, something I had never done, but we were desperate, we got the little Morris Minor into a nice neighbourhood where there were sure to be old ladies coming from church with their purses held loosely, we drove around these streets, I remember this like yesterday, it was near Eglinton and Yonge and we had spotted someone who we were following, looking for the right spot for my friend to jump out and grab the purse when suddenly the car made this odd mechanical sound, as if a wrench had been thrown into the motor, it scared the shit out of me, we continued till we caught up to our potential client and the same noise happened, as if a spirit from somewhere, another dimension had intentionally prevented the car from going forward, I’ll never forget, it was as if my poor old dead dad was up in heaven and he was watching us and he intervened! Was that a miracle? The time in Windsor when Pete Kalci and I had subleased an apartment for the school year. I woke up in a sweat, this thing, this spirit was inside my chest, I could feel it and I woke up and there was Pete simultaneously waking up in the cupboard we converted into a bedroom for him and he said, “I just had a wet dream, I never have wet dreams!” Was that a miracle?

Using my own examples of miracles I have tried to set the stage for the miracle that my grandpa witnessed one day in Montreal. I know this story as it was told to my Uncle George in 1946 by Noel Lemay. In fact Noel took George to the St Josephs Oratory and showed him the very place where the miracle took place. Now, this is an easier story to accept if you have faith. My Uncle George was a good person a serious Catholic in that he obeyed the Ten Commandments and you can bet that every Sunday of his life since childhood he would have attended Mass on Sundays and observed all the religious ideals of the church at that time. I can’t imagine how exalted he would have been to have been with my grandpa that night they went to the Oratory. George it turns out was in Montreal to act as the best man for my father Alexander Gregory who had gotten our mother in a mothers way. It’s odd to discuss this fact today at my age. I don’t think any of the six Gregory children new that Alex Junior had been procreated prior to the sacred act of matrimony. I really was unaware of this till a few years ago when we saw the civil marriage certificate of my mother and father. It didn’t change a thing, though it would certainly have affected the lives of my mother and father, both Catholics. I suppose it became one of those family secrets that people were prone to keep.

Brother Andre` led an interesting life, He prayed to St Joseph the father of Jesus. He was a sickly boy and I gather that the church took him in when both his parents died. Initially they gave him the job of church porter, cleaning the facility and opening the door when necessary, we are going back to the early 1900s. At some point people with medical issues began to come and see him at the Notre Dame school and he would tell them to pray to St Joseph to help them. Well, they did and many were appreciative, they would make donations to the church. In time, so many were coming after hearing of the miracles that the church built a nice hut for him to meet his followers at the tram stop below the grounds of St Josephs. More healing miracles took place, word spread. The church decided to build a proper building for the people to come and pray and visit Brother Andre` and get his blessing this was in 1904. The first chapel was a humble place, built by friends of Brother Andre` and volunteers but it was all that was needed. As the word of the miracles of healing spread amongst the Quebec population it became necessary to extend the chapel four more times in 1909 in 1910 and 1912 and then again in 1918. It was during one of these expansions that the miracle my grandfather witnessed occurred. I have to assume that Brother Andre` became the ‘Headliner’ at the property that was about to grow in leaps and bounds on Mount Royal. Besides all the canes and walking sticks and braces that were left behind after the healings, one can only think that the collection boxes were situated in prime locations to gather the coppers and dimes and folding money to help the church exist. How else were the expansions done. Though we know through looking at the church archives that many a person honoured their church with sweat and tears as the newer bigger buildings went up as did the reputation of Brother Andre`.

My Uncle George relays the story on a video recorded by his son in law. He says that my grandfather and Brother Andre` were friends. I have tried to confirm this with the living sons of Noel Lemay as this just was not discussed at my family dining table. It may be that I was not paying attention. But it may also be that the incident took place so long ago that only a few view it as a significant phenomenon. What happened would have taken place between the years 1904 and 1918 during that busy time when the first chapel was built and the subsequent expansions and relocation in 1918. Brother Andre` and grandpa Lemay were having a walk one evening when the two of them came across this immense excavation where the chapel was going to be moved to. It is guess work on my part but lets say the hole was twenty feet by thirty feet and twenty feet deep. Brother Andre` wanted to see the rest of the excavation and he floated to the other side of the hole levitating above the ground twenty feet below, a summer wind blew his frock about, when he got to the other side, he looked over to where my grandfather was and said, “come Noel, follow me, you will be safe, don’t worry, I will take care of you.” My grandfather was astonished at what he was seeing, a man floating in the air, but he had not the courage to follow Brother Andre` across the excavation.

There is no doubt that Brother Andre` was a person able to heal. His numerous examples of healing were such that a great church was built, a church that today overlooks the city of Montreal and the deeds associated with Brother Andre` continue to marvel all that come into it and to provide a great degree of pride for Catholics all over the world. I don’t know if this recollection was ever presented to the church authorities at any time and if it were what would it accomplish. For a man like Brother Andre` who was responsible for many miracles another one like walking on air would hardly raise a stir. My Uncle George passed in 2010. On his person, in his wallet was a reliquary bought at St Josephs Oratory, in a tiny worn leather satchel/pouch a few inches square, there is a picture of Brother Andre` and a piece of cloth said to have touched one of his frocks, such was my Uncles faith.

At one time in the sixties a criminal element snuck in to the grand cathedral and stole the heart of Brother Andre` that was on display. A ransom of fifty thousand dollars was demanded but never paid to the crooks. Almost two years went by before the heart was found in the basement of a home in Montreal, not harmed in any way. The church was quick to reinstate it in the Oratory for all to see, even in death Brother Andre` was the Main Attraction.

As in Boston and other North American cities scandals of priestly paedophilia also rocked the foundations of the Order to which Brother Andre` belonged, sums upwards of twenty million were ordered to be paid to those who had been abused.

 

"The Order of Owls is a secret fraternal order founded in 1904 in South Bend, Indiana by John W. Talbot. According to its literature, the purposes of the society were "to assist each other in business, to help each other in obtaining employment, to assist the widows and orphans of our brothers, to give aid to our brother in any way that they may need, and assemble for mutual pleasure and entertainment." Its "catechism" said "Owls do good, speak kindly, shake hands warmly, and respect and honor their women". Wikipedia.

 

"Die Ukulele (hawaiisch: ʻUkulele) ist ein gitarrenähnliches Zupfinstrument, das normalerweise mit vier, aber auch mit sechs oder acht Saiten bespannt sein kann. Sie ist in der Regel bei gitarrenähnlichen Proportionen etwa 60 cm lang und 20 cm breit." Wikipedia.