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3 Principles for How to Meditate on the Word of God

 

By Xiao Xiao, France

 

Contents

1. When reading the Bible, quieting your heart before God is a precondition for gaining the Holy Spirit’s enlightenment and guidance.

2. Don’t read aimlessly, but select corresponding passages according to your actual problems and difficulties.

3. Focus on pondering God’s words and understanding their inner meaning.

 

Let’s look at the following words from the Lord: “Truly I say to you, Except you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). “But let your communication be, Yes, yes; No, no: for whatever is more than these comes of evil” (Matthew 5:37). We can see in God’s words that He loves honest people and is disgusted by liars and cheaters. Only honest people can enter the kingdom of heaven, while sinister and crafty people cannot pass its gates. Only by praying and pondering God’s words can we understand that God wants us to be honest people, as innocent and open as a child with no trickery or deception. Once we’ve thought about things to that point, we can continue to seek: Do we have dishonest parts? By reflecting on our thoughts and actions, we can see that we still display a lot of deceitfulness. Sometimes when we’re before God in prayer, we say all sorts of wonderful things and set our resolve many times, but in our real lives we hardly ever match up to that. Sometimes we do something wrong and want to acknowledge our mistake to someone else, but we’re afraid they’ll look down on us, so in order to preserve our own face and name, we tell a half truth and cover up the truth. Sometimes when we’re talking about our experiences, we’re willing and ready to talk about how we do put God’s words into practice, but very rarely speak of the ways we defy and resist God, and our manifestations of not practicing the truth. We often pretend to be something we’re not so that others will maintain a good image of us. Sometimes we see brothers and sisters doing things that are not in line with God’s will and want to share fellowship with them, but we’re concerned about injuring their pride, or afraid that they won’t accept our opinion and will judge us, so we go on with one eye open and one eye closed, pretending we don’t know anything. The list goes on. Through reflection, we can see how much deceitfulness we display—we are not at all honest people who are pleasing to God. So, how could people such as us enter the kingdom of heaven? After understanding these things, we must continue to mull over the path to becoming an honest person in God’s words. First, we cannot lie with our words, but must speak in accordance with the truth. One is one, and two is two. But primarily, we need to have honest hearts. We cannot have crookedness or deceitfulness within our hearts; anything we say or do is subject to God’s scrutiny. We cannot lie or cheat to protect our own status, reputation, or face, but when we encounter an issue we should be able to forsake our own incorrect motives, speak honestly, and speak out what’s in our hearts. If we can live up to this, we start to enter into the truth of being honest people. If we always earnestly ponder God’s words in this way, seeking to understand the essence of the truth through the literal meaning of God’s words, we will understand the finer points of the truth more and more, and then what we practice in our lives will be more correct. We will become closer to God’s will and requirements and we will feel more and more steady, at peace, and content in our souls.

  

Related Reading：

3 Practices to Develop a Powerful Prayer Life in 2020

 

Image Source: The Church of Almighty God

 

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Date: April 29, 2017

Author: lewislafontaine

  

One needs death to be able to harvest the fruit. Without death, life would be meaningless, since the long-lasting rises again and denies its own meaning. To be, and to enjoy your being, you need death, and limitation enables you to fulfill your being. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 275.

 

Your heights are your own mountain, which belongs to you and you alone. There you are individual and live your very own life. If you live your own life, you do not live the common life, which is always continuing and never-ending, the life of history and the inalienable and ever-present burdens and products of the human race. There you live the endlessness of being, but not the becoming. Becoming belongs to the heights and is full of torment. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 267.

 

At your low point you are no longer distinct from your fellow beings. You are not ashamed and do not regret it, since insofar as you live the life of your fellow beings and descend to their lowliness you also climb into the holy stream of common life, where you are no longer an individual on a high mountain, but a fish among fish, a frog among frogs. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 266.

 

Because I also want my being other, I must become a Christ. I am made into Christ, I must suffer it. Thus the redeeming blood flows. Through the self-sacrifice my pleasure is changed and goes above into its higher principle. Love is sighted, but pleasure is blind. Both principles are one in the symbol of the flame. The principles strip themselves of human form. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 254.

 

If a God ceases being the way the zenith, he must fall secretly. The God becomes sick if he oversteps the height of the zenith. That is why the spirit of the depths took me when the spirit of this time had led me to the summit. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 241.

 

From this we learn how the spirit of the depths considers the soul he sees her as a living and self-existing being, and with this he contradicts the spirit of this time for whom the soul is a thing dependent on man… ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 232.

 

Therefore the spirit of the depths forced me to speak to my soul, to call upon her as a living and self-existing being. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 232.

 

The beginning of all things is love, but the being of things is life. ~Carl Jung; The Red Book; Page 327.

 

My I, you are a barbarian. I want to live with you; therefore I will carry you through an utterly medieval Hell, until you are capable of making living with you bearable. You should be the vessel and womb of life, therefore I shall purify you. The touchstone is being alone with oneself. This is the way. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 330.

 

I hold together what Christ has kept apart in himself and through his example in others, since the more the one half of my being strives toward the good, the more the other half journeys to Hell. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 315.

 

If you have still not learned this from the old holy books, then go there, drink the blood and eat the flesh of him who was mocked and tormented for the sake of our sins, so that you totally become his nature, deny his being-apart-from-you; you should be he himself not Christians but Christ, otherwise you will be of no use to the coming God. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 234.

 

I hold together what Christ has kept apart in himself and through his example in others, since the more the one half of my being strives toward the good, the more the other half journeys to Hell. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 315.

 

The one eye of the Godhead is blind, the one ear of the Godhead is deaf, the order of its being is crossed by chaos. So be patient with the crippledness of the world and do not overvalue its consummate beauty. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 231.

 

Everything that becomes too old becomes evil, the same is true of your highest. Learn from the suffering of the crucified God that one can also betray and crucify a God, namely the God of the old year. If a God ceases being the way of life, he must fall secretly. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 241.

 

The devil is the sum of the darkness of human nature. He who lives in the light strives toward being the image of God; he who lives in the dark strives toward being the image of the devil. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 322.

 

In the light of the possibilities revealed by intuition, man’s earthliness is certainly a lamentable imperfection; but this very imperfection is part of his innate being, of his reality. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 114.

 

In that “spiritualism” and “materialism” are statements on Being, they represent metaphysical judgments. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Pages 97-101

 

… it would be an arbitrary limitation of the concept of God to assume that He is only good and so deprive evil of real being. If God is only good, everything is good…. ~Carl Jung, Letters II, 519

 

Thus the psyche is endowed with the dignity of a cosmic principle, which philosophically and in fact gives it a position coequal with the principle of physical being. ~Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self, Page 33.

 

Without consciousness there would, practically speaking, be no world, for the world exists as such only in so far as it is consciously reflected and consciously expressed by a psyche. Consciousness is a precondition of being. ~Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self, Page 33

 

I know only that I was born and exist, and it seems to me that I have been carried along. I exist on the foundation of something I do not know. In spite of all uncertainties, I feel a solidity underlying all existence and a continuity in my mode of being. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 358.

 

Common is the view that spirit and psyche are essentially the same and can be separated only arbitrarily. Wundt takes spirit as “the inner being, regardless of any connection with an outer being. ~ Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 386

 

I do not know for what reason the universe has come into being, and shall never know. Therefore I must drop this question as a scientific or intellectual problem. But if an idea about it is offered to me – in dreams or in mythic traditions – I ought to take note of it. I even ought to build up a conception on the basis of such hints, even though it will forever remain a hypothesis that I know cannot be proved. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Pages 301-302.

 

Nature, the psyche, and life appear to me like divinity unfolded – and what more could I wish for? To me the supreme meaning of Being can consist only in the fact that it is, not that it is not or is no longer. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 276.

 

We know that Tom Thumbs, dactyls, and Cabiri… are personifications of creative forces… Thus the creative dwarfs toil away in secret; the phallus also working in darkness, begets a living being” ~Carl Jung, CW5, para. 180

 

When they [the mystics] descend into the depths of their own being they find ‘in their heart’ the image of the sun, they find their own life-force which they call the ‘sun’ for a legitimate and, I would say, a physical reason because our source of energy and life actually is sun. Our physiological life, regarded as an energy process, is entirely solar ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para. 176.

 

The God-image thrown up by a spontaneous act of creation is a living figure, a being that exists in its own right and there-fore confronts its ostensible creator autonomously… As proof of this it may be mentioned that the relation between the creator and the created is a dialectical. ~Carl Jung; CW 8, para. 95-96.

 

Our age has shifted all emphasis to the here and now, and thus brought about a daemonization of man and his world. The phenomenon of dictators and all the misery they have wrought springs from the fact that man has been robbed of transcendence by the shortsightedness of the super-intellectuals. Like them, he has fallen a victim to unconsciousness. But man’s task is the exact opposite: to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious. Neither should he persist in his unconsciousness, nor remain identical with the unconscious elements of his being, thus evading his destiny, which is to create more and more consciousness. As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. It may even be assumed that just as the unconscious affects us, so the increase in our consciousness affects the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Page 326.

 

The God-image thrown up by a spontaneous act of creation is a living figure, a being that exists in its own right and there-fore confronts its ostensible creator autonomously… As proof of this it may be mentioned that the relation between the creator and the created is a dialectical. ~Carl Jung; CW 8, para. 95-96.

 

The world comes into being when man discovers it. But he only discovers it when he sacrifices his containment in the primal mother, the original state of unconsciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Page 652.

 

We can find clear proof of this fact in the history of science itself. The so-called “mystical” experience of the French philosopher Descartes involved a . . . sudden revelation in which he saw in a flash the “order of all sciences”. The British author Robert Louis Stevenson had spent years looking for a story that would fit his “strong sense of man’s double being,” when the plot of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was suddenly revealed to him in a dream. ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; Page 25.

 

…a symbol of the unity of personality, a symbol of the self, where the war of opposites finds peace. In this way the primordial being becomes the distant goal of man’s self-development. ~Carl Jung; CW 9i; Para293.

 

Spirit and matter may well be forms of one and the same transcendental being. ~Carl Jung; CW 9i; ¶ 392.

 

Our unconscious, on the other hand, hides living water, spirit that has become nature, and that is why it is disturbed. Heaven has become for us the cosmic space of the physicists, and the divine empyrean a fair memory of things that once were. But ‘the heart glows,’ and a secret unrest gnaws at the roots of our being. Dealing with the Unconscious has become a question of life for us. ~Carl Jung, CW, 9i, Para 50.

 

[The trickster] is a forerunner of the savior . . . . He is both subhuman and superhuman, a bestial and divine being, whose chief and most alarming characteristic is his unconsciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, para 472.

 

The attainment of wholenesss requires one to stake one’s whole being. Nothing less will do; there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 556.

 

This living being appears outwardly as the material body, but inwardly as a series of images of the vital activities taking place within it. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 619.

 

Our concern with the unconscious has become a vital question, a question of spiritual being or non-being. ~Carl Jung, CW 9, §§ 43–52.

 

For there is no coming into being and dying but in time. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dream Seminar, Page 101.

 

The four always expresses the coming into being of what is essentially human, the emergence of human consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 367.

 

We can distinguish no form of being that is not psychic in the first place. All other realities are derived from and indirectly revealed by it, actually with the artificial aid named science. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 59-63.

 

Only after I had written about pages in folio, it began to dawn on me that Christ-not the man but the divine being-was my secret goal. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 479-481.

 

A child, too, enters into this sublimity, and there detaches himself from this world and his manifold individuations more quickly than the aged. So easily does he become what you also are that he apparently vanishes. Sooner or later all the dead become what we also are. But in this reality we know little or nothing about that mode of being, and what shall we still know of this earth after death? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 343.

 

This perfect being is a conception of an optimum of life, and it is symbolically represented as the all-round being. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture 10, Page 81.

 

The goal which the alchemist sets himself, however, is not a direct redemption of the human being, nor is it a propitiation of the Deity nor a defence against evil. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 143.

 

It [Alchemy] is the idea of producing a perfect and complete being, a being which has a redeeming effect and which has many names: panacea, medicina catholica, the philosophers’ stone and innumerable other synonyms. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 143.

 

Without doubt, also, the realization of the opposite hidden in the unconscious, i.e. the ‘reversal’, signifies reunion with the unconscious laws of being, and the purpose of this reunion is the attainment of conscious life or, expressed in Chinese terms, the bringing about of the Tao. ~Carl Jung, Secret of the Golden Flower, Pages 95-96.

 

One source is the unconscious, which spontaneously produces such fantasies; the other source is life, which, if lived with complete devotion, brings an intuition of the self, the individual being. ~Carl Jung, Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 99.

 

And this being has body, soul and spirit, and is, therefore, the principle of life itself, as well as the principle of individuation. Its nature is spiritual, it cannot be seen, and it contains an invisible image. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 221.

 

Man as a spiritual being is made human by essence (hsing). The individual man possesses it. but it extends far beyond the limits of the individual. ~The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 11.

 

Man is the mirror which God holds up before him, or the sense organ with which he apprehends his being.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 111-112.

 

These various formulations indicate the same being that we find in the Gnosis as the ethereal man, light and diaphanous, identical with gold, diamond, carbuncle, the Grail, and, in Indian philosophy, with the Purusha or personified as Christ or Buddha. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 118.

 

Yoga does not lead to the ego but to the knowledge that the ego is only a phenomenon, it is the face, skin or symptom of an incomprehensible being. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 136.

 

Kant himself emphasises that God, the Highest Being, is in no way affected by what we know about him. So the Yogin analyses what he knows about Buddha and takes the last word in the Mantra: “Aham” for this purpose. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 55.

 

We must know how the human psyche came into being for in the unconscious the old ways are always trodden again. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.

 

Nirvana, for instance is a positive non-being, this is something which you cannot say anything about. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Pages 210.

 

The unconscious is a living being with its use, object, and goal, and is eternally looking for a way to reach that goal – a way which is not our personal one, but the human way, mankind’s way. ~ Carl Jung, Lecture VI 2June1934, Page 113.

 

The history of energetics is largely intuitive, it starts primitively as intuitions of archetypes, first they were beings, now they are mathematical formulas. ~Carl Jung, Lecture III, 4May1934, Page 100.

 

Anthropos: Original or primordial man, an archetypal image of wholeness in alchemy, religion and Gnostic philosophy. There is in the unconscious an already existing wholeness, the “homo totus” of the Western and the Chên-yên (true man) of Chinese alchemy, the round primordial being who represents the greater man within, the Anthropos, who is akin to God. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, par. 152.

 

The individual is all-important as he is the carrier of life, and his development and fulfillment are of paramount significance. It is vital for each living being to become its own entelechia and to grow into that which it was from the very beginning. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 19

 

Just as man, as a social being, cannot in the long run exist without a tie to the community, so the individual will never find the real justification for his existence and his own spiritual and moral autonomy anywhere except in an extramundane principle capable of relativizing the overpowering influence of external factors. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Page 258.

 

I cannot define for you what God is. I can only say that my work has proved empirically that the pattern of God exists in every man and that this pattern has at its disposal the greatest of all his energies for transformation and transfiguration of his natural being. Carl Jung, “Jung” Van der Post, Page 216.

 

“The Christian symbol is a living being that carries the seeds of further development in itself.” “its foundations remain the same eternally,” “Christianity must be interpreted anew in each aeon,” otherwise “it suffocates in traditionalism.” ~Carl Jung, Wounded Healer of the Soul, Page 149.

 

Consciousness is obviously the supreme quality: the destiny of the world is to achieve entry into human consciousness. Man is the being God has sought not only to show him the world, but because the Creator needs man to illuminate his creation. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 9.

 

As intelligent beings, however, we are dependent on human society; the unconscious is no substitute for reality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.

 

The psyche is nothing different from the living being. It is the psychical aspect of the living being. It is even the psychical aspect of matter. It is a quality. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 27.

 

If God had foreseen his world, it would be a mere senseless machine and Man’s existence a useless freak. My intellect can envisage the latter possibility, but the whole of my being says ‘No’ to it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, 14Sept1960.

 

Only a mythical being has a range greater than man’s. How then can man form any definite opinions about himself? ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 4.

 

Nobody has ever been entirely liberated from the opposites, because no living being could possibly attain to such a state, as nobody escapes pain and pleasure as long as he functions physiologically. He may have occasional ecstatic experiences when he gets the intuition of a complete liberation, f.i. in reaching the state of sat-chit-ananda. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 303.

 

I may say that I know what is infinite and eternal; I may even assert that I have experienced it; but that one could actually know it is impossible because man is neither an infinite nor an eternal being. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 375-379.

 

But becoming Man, he becomes at the same time a definite being, which is this and not that. Thus the very first thing Christ must do is to sever himself from his shadow and call it the devil (sorry, but the Gnostics of Irenaeus already knew it!). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 133-138

 

But theologians suffer from the fact that when they say “God,” then that God is. But when I say “God,” I know I have expressed my image of such a being and I am honestly not quite sure whether he is just like my image or not, even if I believe in God’s existence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 151-154.

 

I know these moments of liberation come flashing out of the process, but I shun them because I always feel at such a moment that I have thrown off the burden of being human and that it will fall back on me with redoubled weight. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 235-238.

 

I hold the contrary view that there are certain experiences (of the most varied kinds) which we characterize by the attribute “divine” without being able to offer the slightest proof that they are caused by a Being with any definite qualities. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 254-256.

 

A complete life, unconditionally lived, is the work of the Holy Spirit. It leads us into all dangers and defeats, and into the light of knowledge, which is to say, into maximal consciousness. This is the aim of the incarnation as well as the Creation, which wants each being to attain its perfection. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 267-268.

 

Purusha as creator sacrifices himself in order to bring the world into being: God dissolves in his own creation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 304-306.

 

What am I without this individual consciousness of mine? Even what I have called the “self” functions only by virtue of an ego which hears the voice of that greater being. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 381.

 

To the former [Mathematician], number is a means of counting; to the latter [Psychology], it is a discovered entity capable of making individual statements if it is given a chance. In other words: in the former case number is a servant, in the latter case an autonomous being. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 404-405

 

This can be expressed in other words by saying that there is a relativity of the psychic and physical categories-a relativity of being and of the seemingly axiomatic existence of time and space. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 445-449

 

After thinking all this over I have come to the conclusion that being “made in the likeness” applies not only to man but also to the Creator: he resembles man or is his likeness, which is to say that he is just as unconscious as man or even more unconscious, since according to the myth of the incarnatio he actually felt obliged to become man and offer himself to man as a sacrifice. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 493-496

 

Words have become much too cheap. Being is more difficult and is therefore fondly replaced by verbalizing. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 502-503

 

Yet I should consider it an intellectual immorality to indulge in the belief that my view of a God is the universal, metaphysical Being of the confessions or “philosophies.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 525-526

 

We are not convinced that our thoughts are original beings that walk about in our brains, and we invent the idea that they are powerless without our gracious creative act; we invent this in order not to be too much influenced by our thoughts. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 82

 

After all, an animal is not just a thing with fur on it; it is a complete being. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 115

 

It is as though in men the animal likeness stopped at the spinal cord while in women it extends into the lower strata of the brain, or that man keeps the animal kingdom in him below the diaphragm, while in women it extends throughout her being. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 124

 

Writing is a difficult question, since it is not only a blessing but also a bad temptation because it tickles the devil of self-importance. If you want to write something, you have to be quite sure that the whole of your being wants this kind of expression. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 612-613

 

His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 623-624

 

The patient is permeated by what you are—by your real being—and pays little attention to what you say. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, Pages 359-364

 

The self would be the preceding stage, a being that is more than man and that definitely manifests; that is the thinker of our thoughts, the doer of our deeds, the maker of our lives, yet it is still within the reach of human experience. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 977-978

 

It [Self] is a restricted universality or a universal restrictedness, a paradox; so it is a relatively universal being and therefore doesn’t deserve to be called “God.” ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 977-978

 

So if you speak of individuation at all, it necessarily means the individuation of beings who are in the flesh, in the living body. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 202

 

Children also contain a future personality within themselves, the being that they will be in the following years. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 50.

 

But such a thing [Individuation] is only possible if the individual in every moment of existence fulfills his complete being, lives the primitive pattern, fulfills all the expectations that he was originally born with. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 760-761

 

Only man as an individual being lives; the state is just a system, a mere machine for sorting and tabulating the masses. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 194

 

As the individual is not just a single, separate being, but by his very existence presupposes a collective relationship, it follows that the process of individuation must lead to more intense and broader collective relationships and not to isolation. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 758

 

Consciousness is a precondition of being. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 528

 

Since the psychological condition of any unconscious content is one of potential reality, characterized by the polar opposites of “being” and “non-being,” it follows that the union of opposites must play a decisive role in the alchemical process. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 557

 

But if you want to go your individual way, it is the way you make for yourself, which is never prescribed, which you do not know in advance, and which simply comes into being of itself when you put one foot in front of the other. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 132-133

 

Mary is the bud which contains the becoming being that is undergoing transformation. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3rd March 1939.

 

This potential man was not the biological man but the philosophical man, a peculiar being, which is also sometimes called anima. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 24 Feb 1939

 

Man is the mirror which God holds up to himself, or the sense organ with which he apprehends his being. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 112

 

But if you want to go your individual way, it is the way you make for yourself, which is never prescribed, which you do not know in advance, and which simply comes into being of itself when you put one foot in front of the other. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 132-133

 

carljungdepthpsychologysite.blog/2017/04/29/carl-jung-on-...

Each wave like water cleanses

preconditions from the sand

where all studied points of interest

are relieved from their command.

All senses of the organs

abdicate their hold and claim,

dissolve into the instant,

disappear into the Name.

Released once more the anchors

which hold fast afraid of death,

the Wanderer continues

in the tide of every breath;

Offers all of life unfolding

to create the world anew

in the dreamer and the dreaming

aspirations can come through.

 

©Ganga Fondan, 2014

 

In every conscious Breath, we are made whole. We are free to begin again and again. Slowly the layers once so rigid around our thinking fall away and we have an opportunity to look deep within and recognize and create with and from the Limitless Substance or as my Teacher calls " the Exhaust-less Riches." Then we understand the difference between "construction from the unreleased conditioned layers" and "creation" which relies thoroughly on the inner process of complete renewal.

'The Kiss' manifests a duality of day and night, incorporating both a bright blue skyscape and a dark glistening firmament. It has been described as a "cut-out bird against a night sky," but Magritte called it simply "the bird of sky." Like some of Magritte's silhouetted bowler-hat men, this bird holds the canvas like a paper cutout with coulds folding over the curve of its wings.

 

Rene Francois Ghislain Magritte (1898-1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for creating a number of witty and thought-provoking images. Often depicting ordinary objects in an unusual context, his work is known for challenging observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality. His imagery has influenced pop, minimalist and conceptual art.

 

This Magritte original was seen and photographed at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art.

Voigtländer Bessa 66 with Heliar 3.5/75 in Compur Rapid shutter

 

The camera is also called "Baby Bessa" (or "Klein-Bessa" in German), there is a version for the 4.5x6 format too. It was sold with different lenses like "Skopar", "Voigtar" and different shutters like "Prontor II" or a plain Compur. This one with Heliar/Compur-outfit was probably top of the range.

The Heliar is an "extended" Cooke-triplet, designed by Hans Harting for Voigtländer in 1900. It has 5 elements in 3 groups and a characteristic rendering, often discribed as soft or "creamy".

 

The lens is uncoated and not called "Color-Heliar", so I think the camera is a pre-war version.

It seems that it wasn't in use for a long time, inside I found a take-up spool with a wooden core labelled with "Adox". And it is not in the best condition: the bellow is vamped up, the hinged filter is missing, the leather on the door has been replaced, the release lever (yes, it's a lever) is slack and the 1 second takes .., yes, less then 2 seconds. But all in all: you can load a film and start taking pictures.

 

The Bessa 66 is remarkable small, clearly smaller than an Agfa Isolette, it has nearly the size of an Ikonta 520, which is a 4.5x6 format camera. And it has some smart details: if you want to close the camera again, you don't have to reach into the struts, therefore there is a kind of pushbutton at the front between the lens and the door. The lever which locks the back door serves also as a stand. The shutter is released with a lever outside the door, a really unique design. And, a longer story, the camera above features a real frame counter.

 

Normally the film transport of an old folder is controlled by a small red window on its back, this Bessa 66 has this window too, but the number of the present frame is also displayed in the tiny loophole on top. After taking a picture, you have to trip the small slider next to the frame counter, then the number of the frame is increased by one and the wheel for the film advance is unlocked. Now you can advance the film and after winding forward one frame the wheel is locked automatically. When the frame counter shows 12 and the slider is tripped, it changes to zero again and the film advance wheel is unlocked completely, so it is possible to wind up the rest of the film roll. (I've read about other versions of the Bessa, where that slider is missing, there the frame counter is coupled with the shutter release lever directly instead.)

 

Now, to load a new film can be somewhat tricky. A precondition is, that the frame counter shows zero. (If not, you have to trip the slider at the front and then turn the arbor in the film chamber next to the viewfinder until the slider springs back. Repeat this procedure until zero appears.) Now you can put a film into the camera like on usual other folders, changing the spools, etc., closing the door. Remember, when the frame counter is set to zero, the locking mechanism of the film advance wheel is not activ, so you can wind up the film until [1] appears in the red window on the back. If the red window shows an "X", it is covered, to uncover it turn the black button beside it rightwards. Important: now you have to activate the locking mechanism again, for this trip that second slider on the back and the frame counter will spring from zero to 1.

 

Example pictures:

A river, another river and a graffiti.

  

© Ben Heine || Facebook || Twitter || www.benheine.com

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This is a watercolor painting on paper I made in 2009. I love

Magritte's work and I enjoyed making this second portrait of him.

 

René Magritte (1898 –1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images. His intended goal for his work was to challenge observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality and force viewers to become hypersensitive to their surroundings.

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For more information about my art: info@benheine.com

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I wrote the following poem in 2004, it's only available in French, sorry about that...

It's dedicated to Magritte.

 

Equation

 

Par Ben Heine

 

Il existe un système arithmétique

Expliquant l'énigme de la vivante création.

Il exige un processus de l'esprit

Englobant toute la magie de l'Imagination.

 

Cette discrète équation sur l'inventivité

Déroberait à ces croyances superstitieuses

Toute la valeur ésotérique. Malicieuse,

Elle comporterait une respectable complexité.

 

Joyau métaphysique, révèle tes secrets!

Et détache l'homme de cette légère naïveté

Qui le rend si tributaire des religions,

Des Dieux, des Etats, des rois ou d'autres hallucinations.

 

L'œuvre subite est ainsi une succession de chiffres

En cadence nerveuse, d'ici à là, d'ici à ici.

Il ne s'agit point d'un faux bruit

Mais bien de la base pensante de la machine.

 

Dauerregen heute und kalt ist es auch - die Magnolienblüte hat sich trotzdem hervorgetraut.

---

Cold and rainy through the whole day - no good precondition for the magnolia.

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.

In 2002, Jurgen Habermas and Ulrich Beck celebrated the great successes of the European Union: the re-unification of Germany, the expansion to the East, the successful introduction of the Euro. Old enmities had been left behind and former enemies collaborated in peaceful competition creating the most successful economic region in the world. Europe was becoming the model for the future of humanity.

 

The reality is different today. Europe is a dysfunctional entity that has betrayed its foundational values. Politicians, commentators and mainstream academics were aghast at the victories of Brexit and Trump. ‘Politics has gone mad’ said many. ‘The world is crumbling before our eyes’ intoned the French Ambassador to America.

 

Yet the rise of right wing populism and euroscepticism was not unpredictable. The economic, political and cultural trends leading to Brexit, Trump and the rise of the xenophobic and nationalist right-wing are similar and well-known. They did not seem to worry the European elites until recently.

 

My argument is that the current European crisis is the culmination of three overlapping historical cycles, three temporalities which, in a dialectical fashion, both created and are now leading Europe to its decline. The pioneering work of Etienne Balibar on the European Union and its teleologies is crucial in this approach.

 

The first, and longest, started in the fifteenth century with the Renaissance, the discovery and conquest of the New World and is still with us. It is the cycle of European capitalisation and provincialisation.

 

Over five centuries, Europe became the capital, the metropolis and capitalist centre of the world. The Europeans developed and then exported all over the world capitalism as the economic system and the (nation) state as its political organisation. But the cunning of history or reason (Kantian or Hegelian) worked its magic.

 

The colonials adopted the two principles and turned them against the master. The cycle is ending in our days as a process of European decay has set in. The violent economic development, the destruction of traditional communities and the artificial nature of the new states are giving rise to huge population movements.

 

The population movements are a symptom of the changing shift of power from the West to the East. The history of conquest and colonialism is now ending with the reversal of the centre-periphery division which have population flows as an integral part. They cannot be stopped by fences, walls or warships pushing back the dinghies bringing to us the new world dispensation.

 

The historical trajectory set up by the western conquests and reversed by the great anti-colonial struggles cannot be contained. We live the endgame of a five-century European domination and anyone who has experienced the post-imperial tristesse of Britain or France knows that while the reaction can be lethal, the outcome is inescapable.

 

The second cycle is the short twentieth century between 1918 and 1989, the century of the European civil war between Germany and the other European powers and, secondly, between capitalism and communism. The first finished with the pacification between Germany and the rest of Europe, the second with the defeat of communism and the end of the cold war.

 

The social state and the EU were direct consequences of these two conflicts, an attempt to transcend the ethnic and ideological wars that raged over the last century and ravaged the whole world. The social state was a marriage of convenience between capitalism and socialism, the market principle and social justice as distributive mechanisms.

 

It was a major victory for the working class movement, the trade unions and the left. But it was also a concession by capital to the dynamic working class movement in order to present a superior alternative to Soviet communism. It was capitalism with a human face.

 

Anyone who has experienced the post-imperial tristesse of Britain or France knows that while the reaction can be lethal, the outcome is inescapable

 

The marriage of convenience worked because politics intervened in the economy and mitigated market decisions in favour of working people. The all-conquering dialectic worked its magic again however.

 

The adoption of the market principle by the communist states contributed to their demise which, in turn, freed the West from its lukewarm commitment to the social state. What started as the great compromise of our times has finished with the end of both social systems. Soviet communism is dead and the social state is not feeling too well either.

 

Finally, the third cycle of the “end of history” started in 1989. It is an attempt to re-establish Western hegemony at a time of rapid decline. The liberalisation of capitalism, the destruction of the social state, the privatisation of public assets and the commons, the deregulation of the markets and the disrespect and marginalisation of democracy have freed markets from considerations of social justice. Markets have been freed from correction by social justice.

 

Economic performance, productivity, competitiveness and the repayment of debts are prioritised over social justice and the needs of people. We are treated and are turned into little entrepreneurs of ourselves and our families. We have to provide for our education, health, old age and care. Rights and entitlements created by the post-war social contract are now destroyed, state institutions and services privatised, governments become collection agencies of international capital against their own citizens.

 

The unravelling of the social state was facilitated by what became known as the post-democratic condition. Complex social problems require optimal scientific solutions that cannot be put into public deliberation or, even worse, the vote.

 

Politics must promote broad centre-left and centre-right alliances with technocratic and grand coalition governments. Understandably citizens conclude that elections make no difference and turn away from politics. This derogatory treatment of the plebeians and the business as usual mantra lies equally behind Brexit, Trump and Le Pen.

 

The passionate intensity of right wing nationalism offers a message the people respond to: the elites are selfish, corrupt, delinquent. Its promulgation that power must return to the people is the great lie of our times. (The two greatest shocks of 2016 came in the states that most fervently had adopted neoliberalism and the politics of the extreme centre.)

 

But the cunning of history struck again. The victory of the West in the cold war has undermined Europe’s major achievements: prosperity based on solidarity and the pacification of ethnic conflict. Austerity and recession, unemployment and precarious employment, the impoverishment of the middle class and the huge increase in inequality have undermined trust in mainstream politics.

 

Blair, Cameron, Renzi, Macron and the European Commission’s white paper follow the ‘business as usual’ mantra when the citizens have massively abandoned it. Their convergence into the extreme centre has undermined input legitimacy. On the output side, the wall built between economics and politics means that politics has largely given up redistributive aspirations. This is the ground a billionaire or Le Pen have usurped. They claim fraudulently to stand for the social state and the unemployed, stealing from social-democracy its assets and pride.

 

As Jurgen Habermas, the greatest promoter of law-based federalism has insisted, the monetary union has developed into a non-transparent, post-democratic case of ‘executive federalism’

 

The same disaster has befallen the second achievement. The suffering of countries under austerity and the resistance of Greeks is well known. So is the shocking response from mainstream journalists and politicians. The line between acceptable economic and political critique of the Southern states (revealingly nicknamed PIGS) and racial slurs is very thin.

 

The refugee crisis has made things worse: national interests and the election cycles determine foreign policy without regard for Union decisions, international law or humanitarian considerations. Europe is returning to the old nationalisms and ideological or historical spheres of influence. Had the cold war lasted longer, had the victory of capitalism been delayed, perhaps Europe could have moved towards political union, the ultimate defense against the Soviets. This did not happen.

 

All this leads to the conclusion that the new world order announced with fanfare in 1989 will be the shortest in history. It started unravelling in the financial crisis of 2008. Two waves of popular reaction followed. In 2011, the Arab spring, Spain Greece Occupy Wall Street, the world Occupy movement expressed in the anti-austerity and ‘we are the 99%’ slogans the rejection of neoliberal misery. The elites did not listen. In 2016 and 2017, in the absence of progressive alternatives the voters moved to the nationalist right-wing. The disease remains the same, the symptoms were left untreated; the people are choosing quack doctors.

 

President Juncker is fond of asking the Quo Vadis Europa question and repeated it when presenting the Commission White Paper. Perhaps he is making a joke at his own expense. It was St Peter who asked the risen Jesus "Quo vadis?", when he appeared to him as he was about to leave Rome to avoid martyrdom. Jesus replied, "Romam eo iterum crucifigi" ("I am going to Rome to be crucified again") and Peter returned.

 

On March 25, the leaders went to Rome to celebrate Europe. Another Roman reference comes to mind. While the city burned, legend has it that Emperor Nero played the fiddle and sang the lost epic Ιliou Persis (the Sacking of Troy). It is perhaps an ample parable of our state.

 

The failures of Europe

In the 1980s, integration and the ever-closer union became the raison d’etre of Brussels. The method adopted to this effect was the imposed or agreed convergence of states in key areas. The neo-functionalist orthodoxy of the time relied on spill-overs from already integrated fields.

 

These spill-overs were set off by putative causal connections treated as constraints in the further advance of already existing convergences. But as the integration started entering key areas of domestic social order, it was resisted and stalled. New steps became harder and were achieved only through the ECJ, which returned to its earlier model of ‘integration by stealth through Law’. Both methods sideline popular participation.

 

The constitution debacle made it clear that further moves towards integration would be resisted by the European citizens. In part, the answer was the EMU, which constitutively separated the integration process from democratic politics. As Jurgen Habermas, the greatest promoter of law-based federalism has insisted, the monetary union has developed into a non-transparent post-democratic case of ‘executive federalism’.

 

The EMU removed a large tranche of national problem solving capacities, such as exchange and interest rate flexibility, without replacing them with corresponding European mechanisms. What was initially presented as a technocratic exercise morphed by stealth into a fiscal union and started pushing the eighteen towards a federal political entity, without the politics or economics. Was not the 2008 financial crisis a catastrophic failure in economic governance?

 

The answer of the establishment is differentiated speeds, variable groups of states choosing their partners and priorities: Visegrad with a human face.

 

In Britain, the Queen, reversing the story of the Emperor’s new clothes, asked a senior economist at the LSE ‘how come that such a clever lot as you failed to predict and prevent the crisis’? Nobody has asked or answered the question at the European level. As a result, the story of the last eight years resembles a driverless train hurtling towards a coming derailment.

 

If convergence through politics has been marginalised; if the law cannot bear the burden without further loss of legitimacy; if economics has failed spectacularly; the final method is diktat, radical alteration of individual and collective behaviour at gunpoint. The bailout programmes and their conditionalities are a case of integration through diktat. The measures imposed on Greece and currently negotiated include the reduction of the minimum wage, the weakening of the unions, deregulation of employment protection and liberalisation of services.

 

Fiscal and current account deficits are seen solely as the result of lack of competitiveness. This is caused by above average increases in unit labour costs in the large domestic sector of Greek economy. What is the cure? Internal devaluation and reduction in labour costs in order to have the South become a pale imitation of the Northern export-based model.

 

But there can be no export-led recovery, as in Germany in the 2000s, because the measures supposed to help exports are depressing further the much larger domestic sector through fiscal strangulation and wage decreases. This is an experiment in social engineering and brutal biopolitical re-arrangement of whole populations worthy of Jeremy Bentham and nineteenth century England.

 

The monetary union has underperformed economically and is now failing politically. All governing parties in programme countries lost the following elections while Northern political parties use Southern woes for election advantage. Social justice has been abandoned at the European level and is contained in largely impotent domestic politics creating resentment and xenophobia. Citizen alienation is now threatening the whole European project.

 

The answer of the establishment is differentiated speeds, variable groups of states choosing their partners and priorities: Visegrad with a human face. For Greece, entry to the Euro was a mistake but exit would be a disaster and has been rightly ruled out. The desire for flexibility and selection of an emerging hard core Europe will be highly problematic for weaker members.

 

Perhaps, weaker Eurozone members should explore the possibility of a flexible if split euro as Joseph Stiglitz has suggested. Otherwise, Fortress Europe will keep out not just refugees and migrants out but the European South too.

 

The future

The Commission White Paper shows that the ideological straitjacket of ordoliberalism does not allow the theoretical imagination or the will necessary to move in a radically new direction. The white paper half-heartedly acknowledges the chasm between policies and people. For European orthodoxy, crises lead by stealth to greater integration and the hope is that the same will happen in the present travails.

 

Yet, the unprecedented rise of the nationalist right wing, to which European policies have generously contributed indicates that this is not a ‘normal’ crisis. We need a different politics in a different Europe, a serious and far-going critique of the Union while defending the ideal of Europe. The task is to rebuild Europe from the bottom up as a community of democratic nations and peoples, as opposed to a one-size-fits-all top-down construct.

 

A loose confederation of European homelands to replace the failed federal plan should be part of this debate

 

The battle for the soul of Europe will take place on three fronts. First, a reversal of austerity and recession-creating policies. Wide political alliances of social-democracy and the left are necessary for such policies. They could include fiscal policies for growth, a banking union in the Eurozone area, the guarantee of bank deposits and Eurobonds.

 

The second task for the left is the re-politicization of politics after the long post-democratic interval at the European and domestic levels. A European public sphere of debate and action must be created developing and coordinating the many recent campaigns of resistance, the solidarity and social economy initiatives that have saved the name of Europe in Lampedusa and Lesvos.

 

The radical restructuring of politics and a rebooting of the constitution involves the substantial upgrading of the democratically legitimate institutions. Parliaments, including the European, should become independent of the executive and exercise their role of controlling and holding the government to account more energetically. Local regional and national authorities should develop direct democracy institutions, such as local referenda, citizen assemblies and collective budgets.

 

Europe has failed to inspire its citizens in a way similar to other great ideas such as the nation, socialism or human rights. The daily experience of the vast majority of European peoples is one of political, cultural and emotional attachment to the local, regional or national level.

 

Many powers and competencies should therefore return from Brussels to national capitals, regions and local authorities as a precondition for survival. Perhaps the idea of a loose confederation of European homelands to replace the failed federal plan should be part of this debate.

 

It is perhaps the duty of the left with its institutional naivete and youthful audacity to think through these major changes. Such ideas and initiatives can only come from those challenging the tired European establishment.

 

www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/costas-douzinas/...

The Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is located on the site of a former sardine cannery on Cannery Row in Monterey, California, is one of the largest aquariums in the world. It has an annual attendance of 1.8 million and holds 35,000 plants and animals representing 623 species.

 

Among the aquarium's numerous exhibits, two are of particular note. The centerpiece of the Ocean's Edge wing is a 33-foot (10-m) high tank for viewing California coastal marine life. In this tank, the aquarium was the first in the world to grow live California Giant Kelp using a wave machine at the top of the tank (water movement is a necessary precondition for keeping Giant Kelp, which absorbs nutrients from surrounding water and requires turbidity), allowing sunlight in through the open tank top, and pumping in raw seawater. The second exhibit of note is a one million gallon tank in the Outer Bay Wing which features one of the world's largest single-paned windows (crafted by a Japanese company, the window is actually four panes seamlessly glued together through a proprietary process).

 

Sealife on exhibit includes stingrays, jellyfish, sea otters, and numerous other native marine species, which can be viewed above and below the waterline. For displaying jellyfish, the MBA uses an aquarium called a Kreisel tank which creates a circular flow to support and suspend the jellies. Visitors are able to inspect the creatures of the kelp forest at several levels in the building. (Wikipedia)

René François Ghislain Magritte, 21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist, who became well known for creating a number of witty and thought-provoking images. Often depicting ordinary objects in an unusual context, his work is known for challenging observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality. His imagery has influenced pop art, minimalist art, and conceptual art.

 

Magritte's earliest paintings, which date from about 1915, were Impressionistic in style. During 1916–1918, he studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, under Constant Montald, but found the instruction uninspiring. He also took classes at the Académie Royale from the painter and poster designer Gisbert Combaz. The paintings he produced during 1918–1924 were influenced by Futurism and by the figurative Cubism of Metzinger.

 

From December 1920 until September 1921, Magritte served in the Belgian infantry in the Flemish town of Beverlo near Leopoldsburg. In 1922, Magritte married Georgette Berger, whom he had met as a child in 1913. Also during 1922, the poet Marcel Lecomte showed Magritte a reproduction of Giorgio de Chirico's The Song of Love (painted in 1914). The work brought Magritte to tears; he described this as "one of the most moving moments of my life: my eyes saw thought for the first time." The paintings of the Belgian symbolist painter William Degouve de Nuncques have also been noted as an influence on Magritte, specifically the former's painting The Blind House (1892) and Magritte's variations or series on The Empire of Lights.

 

In 1922–1923, Magritte worked as a draughtsman in a wallpaper factory, and was a poster and advertisement designer until 1926, when a contract with Galerie Le Centaure in Brussels made it possible for him to paint full-time. In 1926, Magritte produced his first surreal painting, The Lost Jockey (Le jockey perdu), and held his first solo exhibition in Brussels in 1927. Critics heaped abuse on the exhibition.

 

Depressed by the failure, he moved to Paris where he became friends with André Breton and became involved in the Surrealist group. An illusionistic, dream-like quality is characteristic of Magritte's version of Surrealism. He became a leading member of the movement, and remained in Paris for three years. In 1929 he exhibited at Goemans Gallery in Paris with Salvador Dalí, Jean Arp, de Chirico, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Picabia, Picasso and Yves Tanguy.

 

On 15 December 1929 he participated in the last publication of La Revolution Surrealiste No. 12, where he published his essay "Les mots et les images", where words play with images in sync with his work The Treachery of Images.

 

Galerie Le Centaure closed at the end of 1929, ending Magritte's contract income. Having made little impact in Paris, Magritte returned to Brussels in 1930 and resumed working in advertising.[10] He and his brother, Paul, formed an agency which earned him a living wage. In 1932, Magritte joined the Communist Party, which he would periodically leave and rejoin for several years. In 1936 he had his first solo exhibition in the United States at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York, followed by an exposition at the London Gallery in 1938.

 

During the early stages of his career, the British surrealist patron Edward James allowed Magritte to stay rent-free in his London home, where Magritte studied architecture and painted. James is featured in two of Magritte's works painted in 1937, Le Principe du Plaisir (The Pleasure Principle) and La Reproduction Interdite, a painting also known as Not to Be Reproduced.

 

During the German occupation of Belgium in World War II he remained in Brussels, which led to a break with Breton. He briefly adopted a colorful, painterly style in 1943–44, an interlude known as his "Renoir period", as a reaction to his feelings of alienation and abandonment that came with living in German-occupied Belgium.

 

In 1946, renouncing the violence and pessimism of his earlier work, he joined several other Belgian artists in signing the manifesto Surrealism in Full Sunlight. During 1947–48, Magritte's "Vache period," he painted in a provocative and crude Fauve style. During this time, Magritte supported himself through the production of fake Picassos, Braques, and de Chiricos—a fraudulent repertoire he was later to expand into the printing of forged banknotes during the lean postwar period. This venture was undertaken alongside his brother Paul and fellow Surrealist and "surrogate son" Marcel Mariën, to whom had fallen the task of selling the forgeries. At the end of 1948, Magritte returned to the style and themes of his pre-war surrealistic art.

 

In France, Magritte's work has been showcased in a number of retrospective exhibitions, most recently at the Centre Georges Pompidou (2016–2017). In the United States his work has been featured in three retrospective exhibitions: at the Museum of Modern Art in 1965, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1992, and again at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2013. An exhibition entitled "The Fifth Season" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2018 focused on the work of his later years.

 

Politically, Magritte stood to the left, and retained close ties to the Communist Party, even in the post-war years. However, he was critical of the functionalist cultural policy of the Communist left, stating that "Class consciousness is as necessary as bread; but that does not mean that workers must be condemned to bread and water and that wanting chicken and champagne would be harmful. (...) For the Communist painter, the justification of artistic activity is to create pictures that can represent mental luxury." While remaining committed to the political left, he thus advocated a certain autonomy of art. Spiritually, Magritte was an agnostic.

 

Popular interest in Magritte's work rose considerably in the 1960s, and his imagery has influenced pop, minimalist, and conceptual art. In 2005 he was 9th in the Walloon version of De Grootste Belg (The Greatest Belgian); in the Flemish version he was 18th.

"Untitled" (2013-2015)

by Roni Horn (born New York 1955 - )

 

eponymous show May 2016 at

De Pont Museum

Wilhelminapark 1

5041 EA Tilburg

Noord-Brabant province

The Netherlands

 

although untitled the sculptures are linked to these rather random texts from books:

 

‘I deeply perceive that infinity of matter is no dream.’ (2014)

Note : excerpt from "The Power of Words" by Edgar Allan Poe

 

'In this plain landscape wealth itself had been just another simplicity, an event, like decay.' (2015)

note : excerpt from "The Sum of No Equation" by Sabine Freyling

 

'Supervise things closely for seven years, with the help of your diving girl. Any time after that you may open your oyster, and you have about one chance in twenty of owning a marketable pearl, and a small but equally exciting chance of having cooked up something really valuable.' (2014)

Note: excerpt from "The Art of Eating" by Joan Reardon

 

'She was frightened of mice, snakes, frogs, sparrows, leeches, thunder, cold water, draughts, horses, goats, red-haired humans, and black cats ...' (2013-2015)

Note: excerpt from "Fathers and Sons" by Ivan Turgenev

 

'Two thick ropes of dark blood and two slender rose like snakes from the stump of his neck and arched hissing into the fire. The head rolled to the left and came to rest ... The fire steamed and blackened and a grey cloud of smoke rose and the columnar arches slowly subsided until just the neck bubbled gently like stew ...' (2015)

Note: excerpt from "Blood Meridian", chapter 8, by McCarthy

 

'It is curious to think of all the social, economic, psychological preconditions that are necessary in order for a Jewish actress to win a horse race.' (2014)

 

' I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain. I hated the sunsets of whatever colour, I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its indifference and the cruelty which was part of its loveliness.' (2015)

Note: excerpt from "Wide Sargasso Sea" by Jean Rhys

 

' ... the Aga Khan arrived in Indian costume covered in precious gems ... He has several dozen million ... subjects and a fortune of untold millions in pound sterling and, sitting next to Nijinsky with his jaw and vulgar face, was like a fat sack of real money next to a fantastic dream of wealth.' (2014)

Note: except from a diary by Count Harry Kessler

  

© picture by Mark Larmuseau

সীমার মাঝে অসীম!

( Truly, there are no barriers between limit and unlimited, subject and object)

--------

Spontaneous 'give and take' relationship create beauty and unity! It is the precondition of love, peace and happiness for both subject and object.

 

----

সীমার মাঝে, অসীম, তুমি বাজাও আপন সুর।

আমার মধ্যে তোমার প্রকাশ তাই এত মধুর॥

কত বর্ণে কত গন্ধে, কত গানে কত ছন্দে,

অরূপ তোমার রূপের লীলায় জাগে হৃদয়পুর।

আমার মধ্যে তোমার শোভা এমন সুমধুর।

তোমায় আমায় মিলন হলে সকলি যায় খুলে--

বিশ্বসাগর ঢেউ খেলায়ে উঠে তখন দুলে।

তোমার আলোয় নাই তো ছায়া, আমার মাঝে পায় সে কায়া,

হয় সে আমার অশ্রুজলে সুন্দরবিধুর।

আমার মধ্যে তোমার শোভা এমন সুমধুর॥

 

- রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর

------

 

#unity #love #life #tao #zen #taozenphotography #photooftheday #artphotography #poeticphotography #blackandwhite #truelove #blackandwhitephotography #photographyislife #fineartphotography #finearephotographer #God #conceptualphotography #nature #omnipresent #omni #poetry #bengali #tagore #mystical #artisticphotography #emotive #artofvisuals #sado #niigata #tokyocameraclub

"Untitled" (2013-2015)

by Roni Horn (born New York 1955 - )

 

eponymous show May 2016 at

De Pont Museum

Wilhelminapark 1

5041 EA Tilburg

Noord-Brabant province

The Netherlands

 

although untitled the sculptures are linked to these rather random texts from books:

 

‘I deeply perceive that infinity of matter is no dream.’ (2014)

Note : excerpt from "The Power of Words" by Edgar Allan Poe

 

'In this plain landscape wealth itself had been just another simplicity, an event, like decay.' (2015)

note : excerpt from "The Sum of No Equation" by Sabine Freyling

 

'Supervise things closely for seven years, with the help of your diving girl. Any time after that you may open your oyster, and you have about one chance in twenty of owning a marketable pearl, and a small but equally exciting chance of having cooked up something really valuable.' (2014)

Note: excerpt from "The Art of Eating" by Joan Reardon

 

'She was frightened of mice, snakes, frogs, sparrows, leeches, thunder, cold water, draughts, horses, goats, red-haired humans, and black cats ...' (2013-2015)

Note: excerpt from "Fathers and Sons" by Ivan Turgenev

 

'Two thick ropes of dark blood and two slender rose like snakes from the stump of his neck and arched hissing into the fire. The head rolled to the left and came to rest ... The fire steamed and blackened and a grey cloud of smoke rose and the columnar arches slowly subsided until just the neck bubbled gently like stew ...' (2015)

Note: excerpt from "Blood Meridian", chapter 8, by McCarthy

 

'It is curious to think of all the social, economic, psychological preconditions that are necessary in order for a Jewish actress to win a horse race.' (2014)

 

' I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain. I hated the sunsets of whatever colour, I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its indifference and the cruelty which was part of its loveliness.' (2015)

Note: excerpt from "Wide Sargasso Sea" by Jean Rhys

 

' ... the Aga Khan arrived in Indian costume covered in precious gems ... He has several dozen million ... subjects and a fortune of untold millions in pound sterling and, sitting next to Nijinsky with his jaw and vulgar face, was like a fat sack of real money next to a fantastic dream of wealth.' (2014)

Note: except from a diary by Count Harry Kessler

  

© picture by Mark Larmuseau

Rene Francois Ghislain Magritte (1898-1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for creating a number of witty and thought-provoking images. Often depicting ordinary objects in an unusual context, his work is known for challenging observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality. His imagery has influenced pop, minimalist and conceptual art.

 

In this painting an angry man with a pear-shaped head glares at a hanging pear of the same size twisting its torso as if preparing to strike. Audiences of Magritte's time would have recognized the pear head as a derivation of unflattering caricatures of the French king Louis Philippe I (1773-1850). The king was deposed in the 1848 Revolution by socialists who demanded more say in the country’s affairs. Rendered in sunrise hues, this picture shows the hybrid creature looking disdainfully at the object it resembles, inverting the pun by attacking the idealized fruit rather that the original political target.

 

This original Magritte painting was seen and photographed at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art in an exhibit entitled 'Rene Magritte: The Fifth Season'.

   

"Untitled" (2013-2015)

by Roni Horn (born New York 1955 - )

 

eponymous show May 2016 at

De Pont Museum

Wilhelminapark 1

5041 EA Tilburg

Noord-Brabant province

The Netherlands

 

although untitled the sculptures are linked to these rather random texts from books:

 

‘I deeply perceive that infinity of matter is no dream.’ (2014)

Note : excerpt from "The Power of Words" by Edgar Allan Poe

 

'In this plain landscape wealth itself had been just another simplicity, an event, like decay.' (2015)

note : excerpt from "The Sum of No Equation" by Sabine Freyling

 

'Supervise things closely for seven years, with the help of your diving girl. Any time after that you may open your oyster, and you have about one chance in twenty of owning a marketable pearl, and a small but equally exciting chance of having cooked up something really valuable.' (2014)

Note: excerpt from "The Art of Eating" by Joan Reardon

 

'She was frightened of mice, snakes, frogs, sparrows, leeches, thunder, cold water, draughts, horses, goats, red-haired humans, and black cats ...' (2013-2015)

Note: excerpt from "Fathers and Sons" by Ivan Turgenev

 

'Two thick ropes of dark blood and two slender rose like snakes from the stump of his neck and arched hissing into the fire. The head rolled to the left and came to rest ... The fire steamed and blackened and a grey cloud of smoke rose and the columnar arches slowly subsided until just the neck bubbled gently like stew ...' (2015)

Note: excerpt from "Blood Meridian", chapter 8, by McCarthy

 

'It is curious to think of all the social, economic, psychological preconditions that are necessary in order for a Jewish actress to win a horse race.' (2014)

 

' I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain. I hated the sunsets of whatever colour, I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its indifference and the cruelty which was part of its loveliness.' (2015)

Note: excerpt from "Wide Sargasso Sea" by Jean Rhys

 

' ... the Aga Khan arrived in Indian costume covered in precious gems ... He has several dozen million ... subjects and a fortune of untold millions in pound sterling and, sitting next to Nijinsky with his jaw and vulgar face, was like a fat sack of real money next to a fantastic dream of wealth.' (2014)

Note: except from a diary by Count Harry Kessler

  

© picture by Mark Larmuseau

Loving the self is the precondition to love others!

------

"অন‍্যকে ভালোবাসার আগে নিজেকে ভালোবাসতে হয়। এজন‍্য প্রথমে নিজের শরীর, মন ও আত্নাকে বুঝতে হয়। সঠিক প্রকাশ ও বিকাশের জন‍্য নিয়মিত যত্ন নিতে হয়। যে নিজেকে ভালোবাসতে পারে না, সে অন‍্যকেও ভালোবাসতে পারে না । প্রকৃত ভালোবাসার পূর্বশর্ত অন‍্যের ক্ষতি না করে, সময় ও সুযোগের অপচয় না করে নিজেকে ভালোবাসা। বর্তমানে থাকা!"

- সুবচন/ সিরাজ শাহ

This motivational poster is based on one of my ink drawings titled "empty Buddha". In Buddhism, achieving emptiness (the absence of desire) is a precondition to acheiving the fullness of enlightenment.

 

View "empty Buddha"

View a kaleidoscopic mandala generated from "empty Buddha"

   

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 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.

That evening I was back on the road in Munich after my work commitments. Many people were on the street. Often young people in large groups or tourists on sightseeingtour Where were the Munich? And who could be obtained for the project?

 

I started several attempts, which were unsuccessfully, because people did not react to my speech, as if I was an invisible ghost. I must confess, something like this never happened to me. I was a bit frustrated when I saw two young women who roamed happily on the Marienplatz. Their red scarves and their friendly attitude moved me to to approach them and introduce myself and the project.

 

I was lucky, both were open-minded and very interested in our project. Quickly a casual, interesting conversation developed.

So I met here in Munich Melanie. (This introduction is true for Melanie and Reinhilde equally. Rheinhilde is the other woman, I met.)

 

Melanie works in the city Tettnang as a coordinator for civic involvement . (Hopefully it is in English a suitable translation) Melanie is the contact person in the contact point for civic engagement.

 

The contact point supports citizens to encourage and to develope groups and institutions with the aim of building a broad citizen engagement in Tettnang.

 

Melanie is open, curious, spontaneous and friendly. So her friend Reinhilde would describe her. In her opinion the lack of a culture of conversation it is a really pressing problem. People should talk to each other and listen to each other. Mutual respect is a basic precondition for peaceful coexistence.

 

I asked Melanie even if she is a happy person and, if so, what she determined to that fact. Yes, Melanie is happy, she says, it is an inner feeling, what she gives to herselve.

 

Melanie wholeheartedly supports her professional mission, this I could feel very clearly. I have to complete, that Melanie and Reinhilde are visiting together a professional training near Munich, which is of course focuses on the social engagement.

 

Many thanks to Melanie for these interesting insights. It's great how you burn for your professional mission. I wish you every success and hope that many citizens of Tettnang find their way to your office. All the best at work and privately.

 

This photo is my 13th submission to group "The Human Family".

 

Visit "The Human Family" here and have a look on the photos of the other photographers:

www.flickr.com/groups/thehumanfamily/

 

........................................................................

An diesem Abend war ich wieder unterwegs in München nach meinen beruflichen Verpflichtungen. Viele Menschen waren auf der Strasse. Oft junge Menschen in größeren Gruppen, oder Touristen, die auf Besichtigungstour durch München waren. Wo waren die Münchener? Und wer ließ sich für das Projekt gewinnen?

 

Ich startete mehrer Versuche, die allerdings erfolglos waren, weil die Menschen überhaupt nicht auf meine Ansprache reagierten, so als ob ich Luft wäre. Ich muss gestehen, so etwas ist mir noch nie passiert. Ich war schon etwas frustriert, als ich zwei junge Frauen sah, die fröhlich über den Marienplatz streiften. Ihre roten Schals und ihre freundliche Ausstrahlung bewogen mich, sie anzusprechen und mich und das Projekt vorzustellen.

 

Ich hatte Glück, beide waren aufgeschlossen und sehr interessiert an unserem Projekt. Schnell entwickelte sich ein lockeres, interesanntes Gespräch.

 

Ich traf also hier in München Melanie. (Diese Einleitung gilt für Melanie und für Reinhilde gleichermaßen.)

 

Melanie ist bei der Stadt Tettnang als Ehrenamtskoordinator beschäftigt. (Hoffentlich gibt es im Englichen dafür eine passende Übersetzung) Melanie ist Ansprechpartnerin in der Anlaufstelle für Bürgerengagement.

 

Die Anlaufstelle unterstützt Bürger, Gruppen und Institutionen mit dem Ziel, in Tettnang ein möglichst breites bürgerschaftliches Engagement aufzubauen, zu fördern und weiterzuentwickeln.

 

Melanie ist offen, neugierig, spontan und herzlich. So würde ihre Freundin Reinhilde Melanie beschreiben. Melanie brennt die mangelnde Gesprächskultur auf den Nägeln. Die Menschen sollen miteinander reden und einander zuhören, und nicht nur wild herumdiskutieren. Gegenseitiger Respekt ist für das Miteinander eine Grundvoraussetzung.

Ich fragte Melanie noch, ob sie ein glücklicher Mensch ist und wenn ja, woran sie das festmacht. Ja, Melanie ist glücklich, antwortet sie, es ist ein inneres Gefühl, was sie sich selber gibt.

 

Melanie steht voll hinter ihrer beruflichen Aufgabe, das konnte ich sehr deutlich spüren. Ergänzen muss ich noch, dass Melanie und Reinhilde zusammen in der Nähe auf einer Fortbildung befanden, die sich natürlich auch mir ihrer berufliche Aufgabe beschäftigt.

 

Vielen Dank Melanie, für diese interessanten Einsichten. Es ist toll, wie Du für Deine berufliche Aufgabe brennst. Ich wünsche Dir viel Erfolg und hoffe, dass viele Bürger von Tettnang den Weg in Dein Büro finden um sich für andere Menschen einzusetzen und zu engagieren. Alles Gute beruflich und privat.

 

Dies ist mein 13. Beitrag zu der Gruppe "The Human Family" . Mehr Fotos von anderen Fotografen findest Du hier:

www.flickr.com/groups/thehumanfamily/

 

inspired by peace ... visiting our neighbors, our new friends ... learning and respecting both countries history ...

Info : The Prespa agreement (Greek: Συμφωνία των Πρεσπών, Macedonian: Преспански договор), also known as the Prespes agreement, Prespa accord or Treaty of Prespa, is an agreement reached on 12 June 2018 between Greece and North Macedonia, under the United Nations auspices, resolving a long-standing dispute over the latter's name.

The Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announced on 12 June 2018 that an agreement had been reached with his Macedonian counterpart Zoran Zaev on the dispute, "which covers all the preconditions set by the Greek side".The proposal would result in the Republic of Macedonia being renamed the Republic of North Macedonia (Macedonian: Република Северна Македонија Greek: Δημοκρατία της Βόρειας Μακεδονίας, with the new name being used for all purposes (erga omnes), that is, domestically, in all bilateral relations and in all regional and international organizations and institutions. The agreement was signed at Lake Prespa, a body of water which forms a partial common border between the Republic of Macedonia, Greece and Albania ...

Kiscelli Museum Budapest

 

Kiscelli Múzeum - Museum Kiscell

 

History of the Gallery

 

FÕVAROSI KÉPTÁR/KISCELLI MUSEUM (MUNICIPAL PICTURE GALLERY) was founded in 1889 as the fine art collection of Budapest. The intention to establish a museum was first worded in 1887. The Museum of Budapest to be housed in the Art Palace in the City Park, was eventually founded in 1899. In the first years the Museum collected works of fine art "related excusively to the city". Around 1909 were given new impetus by mayor Istvan Barczy whose very definte ideas about the art patronage of the capital made changes "in the direction that in a view of a future–to–be municipal gallery the pure aesthetic values of the art objects purchased became more decisive than the subject they present". One of the preconditions of a modern gallery, an ever–expanding collection was ready, but the building to house it took decades to find. The problem was eventually sold with the purchase of the Karolyi Mansion (in 1928), where the new institution, the Municipal Picture Gallery was opened on October 16th 1933. Between the world wars, the Municipal Picture Gallery played an important role in making 19th and 20th century art aviable to the public. After World War II. the MPG was the first receive visitors. In 1949 was stated that "the MPG has collected the best pieces of Hungarian created in these last 150 years which in the future could serve as a basis for the National Gallery". Between 1953–57 the works of art purchased out of "purely aesthetic considerations" merged with the collection of the National Gallery (more than 7000 pieces). From 1963 the MPG began to collect art again in a new place calls Kiscelli Múzeum. As the branch museum of the Budapest Historical Museum collects 20th century fine art, and specialised for contemporary art.

Psalm 112:1 assures us: “Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments!” “Greatly delights” translates Hebrew words that can be literally rendered, “takes the highest degree of pleasure.”

 

Hebrew parallelism uses the first line to explain the second. Thus, the person who fears and reverences God is the person who “greatly delights” in his will and word. Such a person is “blessed” by our Lord.

 

Obedience to God is the necessary precondition to understanding the ways of God. Oswald Chambers: “All God’s revelations are sealed until they are opened to us by obedience. You will never get them open by philosophy or thinking. Immediately you obey, a flash of light comes.”

 

Obedience does not earn God’s revelation–it positions us to receive it. That’s because faith in God, like any relationship, requires a commitment that transcends the evidence and becomes self-validating.

 

It is illogical to insist on proof for that which can only be experienced. You cannot prove you should attend a particular college or take a particular job until you do. You cannot prove you should get married until you get married. Some categories of truth are relational by definition. They cannot be understood until they are experienced.

 

If we view Scripture as advice we can accept or reject rather than divine commands we must follow, we will never comprehend its depths. But if we decide to obey God’s word, we will then understand his word.

 

Do you expect to meet God today?

Consider another factor: Perhaps the religious leaders failed to hear new revelation from God because they did not expect new revelation from God. It had been so long since they’d heard a true prophet that they limited God’s truth to what they already knew.

 

We can make the same mistake.

 

If we read the Bible but our lives are no different, we have not truly heard from God. If we pray and remain the same, we have not truly prayed. We cannot encounter the living Lord of the universe and be unchanged.

 

A young pastor once complained to Charles Spurgeon that few people were responding to his sermons.

 

The “Prince of Preachers” asked him, “You don’t expect people to respond every time you preach, do you?”

 

The young man assured him that he did not.

 

“That’s why they don’t,” Spurgeon replied.

 

Do you expect to meet God today in his word and worship? Do you expect him to answer your prayers and to move in power? Do you expect him to do in our world what he did in the biblical world?

 

“The three most terrible truths of our existence”

Hurricane Michael shows us that we need more of God than most of us have experienced. To experience all of God there is, we must understand his ways and know his provision.

 

Here’s the good news: To the degree that we obey his word, we can fully understand his ways. To the degree that we expect him to provide, we can truly know his provision.

 

Last week, we had no idea the hurricane would be so devastating. What don’t we know about next week?

 

Anne Lamott: “If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin by admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little.”

 

When we face circumstances beyond our control, we have three options: We can continue to fight as though we are in control, give up and accept what comes, or work alongside the One who is in control. Only one brings true peace.

 

Choose wisely.

-Jim Denison

"Untitled" (2013-2015)

by Roni Horn (born New York 1955 - )

 

eponymous show May 2016 at

De Pont Museum

Wilhelminapark 1

5041 EA Tilburg

Noord-Brabant province

The Netherlands

 

although untitled the sculptures are linked to these rather random texts from books:

 

‘I deeply perceive that infinity of matter is no dream.’ (2014)

Note : excerpt from "The Power of Words" by Edgar Allan Poe

 

'In this plain landscape wealth itself had been just another simplicity, an event, like decay.' (2015)

note : excerpt from "The Sum of No Equation" by Sabine Freyling

 

'Supervise things closely for seven years, with the help of your diving girl. Any time after that you may open your oyster, and you have about one chance in twenty of owning a marketable pearl, and a small but equally exciting chance of having cooked up something really valuable.' (2014)

Note: excerpt from "The Art of Eating" by Joan Reardon

 

'She was frightened of mice, snakes, frogs, sparrows, leeches, thunder, cold water, draughts, horses, goats, red-haired humans, and black cats ...' (2013-2015)

Note: excerpt from "Fathers and Sons" by Ivan Turgenev

 

'Two thick ropes of dark blood and two slender rose like snakes from the stump of his neck and arched hissing into the fire. The head rolled to the left and came to rest ... The fire steamed and blackened and a grey cloud of smoke rose and the columnar arches slowly subsided until just the neck bubbled gently like stew ...' (2015)

Note: excerpt from "Blood Meridian", chapter 8, by McCarthy

 

'It is curious to think of all the social, economic, psychological preconditions that are necessary in order for a Jewish actress to win a horse race.' (2014)

 

' I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain. I hated the sunsets of whatever colour, I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its indifference and the cruelty which was part of its loveliness.' (2015)

Note: excerpt from "Wide Sargasso Sea" by Jean Rhys

 

' ... the Aga Khan arrived in Indian costume covered in precious gems ... He has several dozen million ... subjects and a fortune of untold millions in pound sterling and, sitting next to Nijinsky with his jaw and vulgar face, was like a fat sack of real money next to a fantastic dream of wealth.' (2014)

Note: except from a diary by Count Harry Kessler

  

© picture by Mark Larmuseau

Preconditioning is an important pre-cursor to reintroducing captive bred black-footed ferrets into the wild. Ferrets are placed in outdoor pens for a minimum of 30 days. While in these pens, they are exposed to natural burrow systems and have the opportunity to encounter live prairie dogs. Most preconditioning is conducted at the National Black-footed Ferret Conservation Center in Colorado.

  

Credit: Ryan Hagerty / USFWS

René François Ghislain Magritte, 21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist, who became well known for creating a number of witty and thought-provoking images. Often depicting ordinary objects in an unusual context, his work is known for challenging observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality. His imagery has influenced pop art, minimalist art, and conceptual art.

 

Magritte's earliest paintings, which date from about 1915, were Impressionistic in style. During 1916–1918, he studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, under Constant Montald, but found the instruction uninspiring. He also took classes at the Académie Royale from the painter and poster designer Gisbert Combaz. The paintings he produced during 1918–1924 were influenced by Futurism and by the figurative Cubism of Metzinger.

 

From December 1920 until September 1921, Magritte served in the Belgian infantry in the Flemish town of Beverlo near Leopoldsburg. In 1922, Magritte married Georgette Berger, whom he had met as a child in 1913. Also during 1922, the poet Marcel Lecomte showed Magritte a reproduction of Giorgio de Chirico's The Song of Love (painted in 1914). The work brought Magritte to tears; he described this as "one of the most moving moments of my life: my eyes saw thought for the first time." The paintings of the Belgian symbolist painter William Degouve de Nuncques have also been noted as an influence on Magritte, specifically the former's painting The Blind House (1892) and Magritte's variations or series on The Empire of Lights.

 

In 1922–1923, Magritte worked as a draughtsman in a wallpaper factory, and was a poster and advertisement designer until 1926, when a contract with Galerie Le Centaure in Brussels made it possible for him to paint full-time. In 1926, Magritte produced his first surreal painting, The Lost Jockey (Le jockey perdu), and held his first solo exhibition in Brussels in 1927. Critics heaped abuse on the exhibition.

 

Depressed by the failure, he moved to Paris where he became friends with André Breton and became involved in the Surrealist group. An illusionistic, dream-like quality is characteristic of Magritte's version of Surrealism. He became a leading member of the movement, and remained in Paris for three years. In 1929 he exhibited at Goemans Gallery in Paris with Salvador Dalí, Jean Arp, de Chirico, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Picabia, Picasso and Yves Tanguy.

 

On 15 December 1929 he participated in the last publication of La Revolution Surrealiste No. 12, where he published his essay "Les mots et les images", where words play with images in sync with his work The Treachery of Images.

 

Galerie Le Centaure closed at the end of 1929, ending Magritte's contract income. Having made little impact in Paris, Magritte returned to Brussels in 1930 and resumed working in advertising.[10] He and his brother, Paul, formed an agency which earned him a living wage. In 1932, Magritte joined the Communist Party, which he would periodically leave and rejoin for several years. In 1936 he had his first solo exhibition in the United States at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York, followed by an exposition at the London Gallery in 1938.

 

During the early stages of his career, the British surrealist patron Edward James allowed Magritte to stay rent-free in his London home, where Magritte studied architecture and painted. James is featured in two of Magritte's works painted in 1937, Le Principe du Plaisir (The Pleasure Principle) and La Reproduction Interdite, a painting also known as Not to Be Reproduced.

 

During the German occupation of Belgium in World War II he remained in Brussels, which led to a break with Breton. He briefly adopted a colorful, painterly style in 1943–44, an interlude known as his "Renoir period", as a reaction to his feelings of alienation and abandonment that came with living in German-occupied Belgium.

 

In 1946, renouncing the violence and pessimism of his earlier work, he joined several other Belgian artists in signing the manifesto Surrealism in Full Sunlight. During 1947–48, Magritte's "Vache period," he painted in a provocative and crude Fauve style. During this time, Magritte supported himself through the production of fake Picassos, Braques, and de Chiricos—a fraudulent repertoire he was later to expand into the printing of forged banknotes during the lean postwar period. This venture was undertaken alongside his brother Paul and fellow Surrealist and "surrogate son" Marcel Mariën, to whom had fallen the task of selling the forgeries. At the end of 1948, Magritte returned to the style and themes of his pre-war surrealistic art.

 

In France, Magritte's work has been showcased in a number of retrospective exhibitions, most recently at the Centre Georges Pompidou (2016–2017). In the United States his work has been featured in three retrospective exhibitions: at the Museum of Modern Art in 1965, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1992, and again at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2013. An exhibition entitled "The Fifth Season" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2018 focused on the work of his later years.

 

Politically, Magritte stood to the left, and retained close ties to the Communist Party, even in the post-war years. However, he was critical of the functionalist cultural policy of the Communist left, stating that "Class consciousness is as necessary as bread; but that does not mean that workers must be condemned to bread and water and that wanting chicken and champagne would be harmful. (...) For the Communist painter, the justification of artistic activity is to create pictures that can represent mental luxury." While remaining committed to the political left, he thus advocated a certain autonomy of art. Spiritually, Magritte was an agnostic.

 

Popular interest in Magritte's work rose considerably in the 1960s, and his imagery has influenced pop, minimalist, and conceptual art. In 2005 he was 9th in the Walloon version of De Grootste Belg (The Greatest Belgian); in the Flemish version he was 18th.

was in June 1992 that an unusual architectural manifesto was launched in Great Britain. For the next ten years or more, the manifesto entitled "Urban Villages, a concept for creating mixed-use urban developments on a sustainable scale" continued to make waves, and was much commented and criticised - often unfavourably - in the specialist and general media.

 

In the language of contemporary British town planning, the expression "urban village" has for many people come to be synonymous with the name "Poundbury", the neo-traditionalist suburban development on the fringes of the rural town of Dorchester, piloted and largely masterminded by the Prince of Wales. Yet although Poundbury is certainly the most extensively developed of Britain's urban village projects, there are many others throughout Britain, and the expression "urban villages" is also used in other English speaking countries to describe modern suburban developments - and in some cases rural developments - that conform (or more or les conform) to certain holistic principles of planning that run against the grain of accepted modern practices in suburban development.

This article takes a concise look at the origins of the "urban village" concept, and its definition, before studying the situation of urban village development in the UK today, looking at Poundbury and the other projects throughout the country that were in 2001 affiliated to the Urban Villages Forum, the think tank set up under the patronage of the Prince of Wales.

 

Indeed, no discussion of "urban villages" in a British context can begin without reference to the role of the Prince of Wales who, long dissatisfied by much of the dreary suburban development that has occurred in Britain during his lifetime, has used his position to spearhead the development of socially and architecturally successful sustainable communities designed to avoid the failures of the recent past.

 

The much-used expression "neo-traditionalist", imported from the United States, clearly establishes the conceptual framework that underlies the urban village movement; urban villages are seen as not just an architectural or planning concept, but one predicated on a form of social organisation that has its roots in a long-established model that has stood the test of time. In Britain, as in the United States, the aim of the proponents of urban villages is not just to design modern living environments that reflect those of a previous and supposedly more stable rural society, but to rediscover the forms of living environment that engendered the stability of such traditional rural communities. In this respect, the "urban village" is a concept that takes its place in a historic British - and notably English - paradigm that has previously been illustrated in the model towns of Lever, Cadbury and others, the garden cities of the first half of the twentieth century, and, in community terms at least, in late twentieth century developments such as Newcastle's Byker village.

The expression "urban village" seems however to be an American invention. The earliest bibliographical reference to the phrase would seem to be a book entitled Urban Village: Population, Community, and Family Structure in Germantown, Pennsylvania, 1683-1800, by Stephanie Grauman, published in 1980. Yet early usages of the expression do not refer to any specific planning concept, but are a more a convenient pairing of words used to describe certain types of close-knit urban communities whose structures reflected traditional rural models. The phrase was even used as a rendering of the Spanish expression "barrio". It was in the early eighties, however, that the first references to the "urban village" as a planning concept began to appear, in the writings of Christopher Leinberger, a Los Angeles based urban affairs consultant (Urban Villages: The Locational Lessons. Wall Street Journal. New York. November 13, 1984) and Charles Lockwood (The Arrival of the Urban Village in Princeton Alumni Weekly November 1986). Leinberger used the phrase "urban villages" to describe what he saw as a new tendency towards mixed-use development in suburban America, resulting from the fact that in post-industrial America, there was no longer any need to separate business and residential areas for environmental reasons (pollution, noise, etc.).

More recently, and notably in the 1990's, the phrase has been used sporadically in discussions of the American "new urbanism" movement, often by and with reference to neotraditionalist planners Leon Krier and the Andres Duany / Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk partnership; yet generally speaking, American writers and planners - until recently - have made considerably more use of the expression "new urbanism", rather than "urban village". The idea of the "village", with its notions of "community", seems to be particularly English, and it was only in the late 1990's, following the international interest aroused by the first of England's "urban villages", Poundbury, that the expression really began to become popular in the United States and Australia.

 

It was the Prince of Wales who introduced the concept of the "urban village" into the vocabulary of British planning; the expression is used briefly in his 1989 book A Vision of Britain (the follow up to a 1988 television documentary), though not at the time directly in conjunction with the Poundbury project, which is mentioned. It was also this book that clearly established the dual parentage of the urban village concept in the English acceptance of the phrase; on the one hand, the historic English village tradition, on the other hand the American neotraditionalist architectural planners, notably Krier and Duany. In the final pages of A Vision of Britain, a presentation of Krier's archetypal neotraditionalist development in Florida, the town of Seaside, covers a full five pages, compared to just two covering the development of "model villages" in the U.K. from Saltaire to the garden cities.

Yet clearly, however great the influence of Krier on Prince Charles has been, it is the historic English concept of the village, and the idealised view of village life, that form the theoretical models that the British proponents of the "urban village" have sought to translate into a modern idiom.

One may speculate as to whether Prince Charles, while thinking over the possibility of creating a planned modern urban village at Poundbury, on the outskirts of Dorchester, had read P.H.Ditchfield's 1908 book The Charm of the English Village, which had recently been reprinted (1985); there is a lot in this book, most notably perhaps its preoccupation with the small details, the use of materials, and the stylistic and functional variety that characterise traditional English villages, that prefigures the Prince's view of the model community. Along with many other publications, both Prince Charles's and Ditchfield's books are also woven on the loom of nostalgia for a supposed almost utopian past, common to the proponents of New Urbanism, and anathema to many modernists. In an article in Harvard Design Magazine in 1997, marxist geographer David Harvey, professor at Johns Hopkins university wrote :

"The New Urbanism in fact connects to a facile contemporary attempt to transform large and teeming cities, so seemingly out of control, into an interlinked series of 'urban villages', where, it is believed, everyone can relate in a civil and urbane fashion to everyone else."

Harvey, however was looking on new urbanism in the fundamentally North American idiom; and although, historically, many earlier settlers in the United States - notably in New England - transposed onto north American soil social models imitated from those of the English village, on the whole the American model was, by definition, different. Early American villages may not have been subject to the rectilinear grid planning of 19th century American towns and villages, but neither did they evolve slowly over time in the manner of the historic English village. In addition, America's "New Urbanism", as exemplified by Seaside, is rather different from the English "urban village" as first exemplified at Poundbury.

 

Ditchfield (1908) more than once stresses the particular nature of English villages, even as opposed to villages in other parts of Europe, referring to the particular social structure of the English village as the "village commonwealth", a structure that would more normally be referred to in modern terms as the "village community". It should be noted that the notion of "community" is a fundamental building block in the societies of modern English speaking countries, and is considerably more deeply rooted in the English tradition (and more broadly speaking the Germanic traditions) than in that of any newer country, or even of other European countries in which the structures of pre-industrial society had evolved out of Roman law.

Since the departure of the Romans, the village has been the core community unit in the British Isles. Though England long boasted, in London, Europe's largest city, and though Britain was the first European nation to undergo major population drift to the towns, the village has always survived - in thought, literature or art - as the ideal, and often idealised, social unit. In Roman times, cities became the nuclei of life in Britain; but after the Romans left, most of their great cities, with the exception of London, were largely abandoned, the British populations moving out to occupy new village sites outside the city walls or further afield; and whilst in continental western Europe the great cities of Roman times remained great cities after the Romans left, and in many cases remain so to this day, the same was not true in the British Isles.

In mediaeval Britain, the extensive devolution of power and authority under the Anglo-Norman feudal system - inherited from the Anglo Saxon period - and the territorial representation that existed in English parliaments from the late thirteenth century onwards, played their role in formulating, in the national psyche, an image of England as being a nation represented emblematically by its villages, rather than by its capital city. In the English mind, London has never been the nexus of national identity in the way that Paris has long been the symbol of France and French life. In Shakespeare, the quintessential images of English life are not those of Henry IV and Bolingbroke at court or on the battle field; they are those of Justice Shallow in his orchard in rural Gloucestershire.

The Industrial Revolution completed, by the mid nineteenth century, a process that had been set in motion by the Enclosures Acts of the eighteenth, precipitating Europe's first massive rural exodus, and with it a further pauperisation of the former rural labourers. It was during this period that poets, artists and novelists, from Blake to Constable to William Morris or Thomas Hardy, began to place rural England at the heart of English art and writing, often in an idealised manner that helped give a new impetus to the longstanding perception of the superiority of English rural society over urban society. The apparent immortality of the BBC's classic radio soap opera, the Archers, set in its fictitious village of Ambridge, is just another more modern illustration of the same point.

It is perhaps significant that Trevor Osborne, chairman of the Urban Villages Group, notes, in the introduction to Urban Villages, that "the term 'urban village' will not be readily understood in mainland Europe; when exported to other EC member states, it will need a different label." One might even add : "or to the USA".

 

It is clearly by another quirk of coincidence that the first English "Urban Village", Poundbury, should have been located on the outskirts of Dorchester, the town immortalised under the name of Casterbridge, in the novels of Thomas Hardy.

Proposals for a major expansion of Dorchester were first debated in 1987, and two years later outline planning permission for the westward extension of the town was granted by West Dorset District Council, for a mixed-use residential suburb that will eventually stretch over 400 acres (about 190 hectares). The initial development was to cover 35 acres of land.

Prince Charles was involved in the project from the start; the greenfield site on the outskirts of Dorchester was in effect his land, agricultural leasehold land belonging to the Duchy of Cornwall. When the Dorchester council applied to the Duchy to purchase the land for development, the answer they received was more favourable than they had imagined possible. Not only would the Duchy make the land available for development, but Prince Charles himself would oversee the operation, with the aim of establishing an attractive mixed-use and socially mixed suburban development; Britain's first "urban village".

For many in the UK architectural and planning establishment, news that the Prince of Wales was to take charge of a major suburban development project was like a red rag to a bull. Relations between the Prince and many of Britain's leading architects and planners had been, to say the least, tense ever since the Prince had begun airing in public his none-too-complimentary opinions on the architecture and planning of the sixties and seventies. His famous description of Birmingham's new library as looking more like an incinerator than a place of learning, or his much quoted speech to the Royal Institute of British Architects, in 1984, when he described the proposed extension to London's National Gallery as being like a "monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend", had done little to endear him to the modernists in British architecture.

Consequently, and unsurprisingly, reactions to the initial proposals for Poundbury were not favourable, neither in the specialised reviews nor in the architectural columns of the British broadsheets. The project was decried variously as an exercise in retrophilia, a pastiche, an irrelevance, or worse.

That was in 1989; and it is true that Leon Krier's bird's-eye sketch of what Poundbury might look like, published at the time in A Vision of Britain (p138), does look more like a heteroclite exercise in nostalgia than a serious plan for a late twentieth century suburban development.

The reality of Poundbury has been somewhat different: with the first phase of building now complete, the earliest streets have already had time to mellow, and as an urban environment, the general consensus among both residents and the press is that this new "urban village" is a success. After its early hostile coverage, the British mainstream press - including the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Mirror and the Mail - has now changed tack, and since 1998 press coverage of the ever-evolving project has been largely positive.

Among the common complaints voiced by residents now is that Poundbury is a victim of its success, with large numbers of tourists and visiting architects and town planners who invade their space, sometimes in coachloads, turning their residential quarter into an unintended tourist attraction.

So why do they come? What is it that has established Poundbury as a stopping point on the architect's and town planner's tour of Britain in the early twenty-first century? Firstly, of course, there is its curiosity value - an unusual - some would still say eccentric - act of royal patronage, an experiment in suburban architecture and planning, masterminded by an amateur planner who is due to become the next King of England. Secondly they come to see how the ten point theory of the "urban village", laid out in the Vision of Britain, transforms into reality.

Over 22 pages, the book sets out a list of "ten principles we can build upon" in order to create a successful modern urban living environment. These are as follows:

1. Place. That planners should understand the local environment, and design their projects to blend with it.

2. Hierarchy. That the design of buildings should always reflect their hierarchical position in the community, that "public buildings ought to proclaim themselves with pride", and others be designed in function of their value in society.

3. Scale. That buildings should bear relation to the human scale, and the scale of other buildings in an area.

4. Harmony. That buildings should blend harmoniously with others in the vicinity.

5. Enclosure. That spatial identity is of major importance, and that new developments should incorporate such public spaces as squares and courtyards

6. Materials. that building materials used should reflect the diversity of local traditions, and not conform to any national or international standard.

7. Decoration. That decorative craftsmanship should still be, as it always has been, a major feature of the urban environment.

8. Art. That artistic decoration has a major and a symbolic role to play in the enhancement of the urban environment, and that artists as well as architects should have a role to play in the designing of new living environments.

9. Signs and lighting. That these also contribute to the success of the built environment, not detract from it, and should therefore be put up with care and attention.

10. Community. That a successful community is a place where residents feel involved, and contribute to the planning and running of their environment.

 

While points 1 - 9 can be - and in the case of Poundbury, are being - ensured through the masterplan, point 10 cannot. A successful community can only be brought about by the people who live in it; and so far, in spite of the fact that Poundbury is still very much an ongoing project, those who live there are happy with their environment and, on the whole, consider it to be a successful community.

Besides the above ten points, which essentially concern the architectural and visual aspects of the environment in urban villages, there are other fundamental aspects that distinguish the urban village from other suburban or rural housing projects, aspects that are perhaps rather more fundamental than aesthetics. These are social mixity, and mixed use - together seen as preconditions for the creation of new sustainable communities.

As well as reflecting the ten principles, the masterplan for Poundbury was for a housing development that would include a seamless and indistinguishable mixture of owner-occupied dwellings and social housing. The mixed-use plan also called for the inclusion, within easy walking distance of the residential streets, of shops, workshops and factories, enabling residents to live and work in the community without the need for commuting.

 

In many details, the masterplan for Poundbury went against conventional planning orthodoxy. Its fundamental tenet, mixed use, ran counter to accepted zoning theory, which prefers to concentrate business in business parks, housing in housing estates, and shops in shopping centers.

As for social diversity, critics of the Poundbury plan argued that the type of home buyers wanting to buy in Poundbury would not wish to buy houses that shared a dividing wall with social housing units; it was also suggested that the densely-packed housing environment was out of keeping with the tastes and expectations of modern middle-class British house-buyers, more usually attracted by the ideal of detached houses in wrap-around gardens.

Others predicted that industry would not want to relocate in the middle, or even on the edge, of a residential area, and that in the end, Poundbury would end up as no more than a "glorified council estate".

So far at least, this has not been the case - which is exactly what its planners expected. Having conceived Poundbury as a carefully planned (or, in its critics' opinions, contrived) recreation of a traditional organically developed village, they did not expect to encounter the problems facing many other suburban developments.

Like the village, the urban village is conceived as a community of mixed housing, catering for all ages and income groups. At Poundbury, the first phase of housing consisted of 55 units of social housing, administered by a housing association, the Guinness Trust, and 141 freehold owner-occupier homes, as well as retail and commercial premises. By the time the development is completed, towards the year 2020, Poundbury will have between 2,000 and 3,000 housing units, with social housing accounting for about 20% of the total, in line with the national average.

 

The question that remains, however, is whether the model of Poundbury can be transposed into other settings, or whether the success of this rather middle-class development on the edge of a rather trouble-free county town in the heart of the Westcountry, can be replicated in other areas?

Following the media coverage - both positive and negative - given to the Poundbury project when it was first mooted in the late 1980's, a forum known as the Urban Villages Group was founded in 1989, at the Prince of Wales's behest, under the wing of Business in the Community, an organisation whose purpose is "to tackle economic, social and environmental issues affecting local communities" (Aldous, p8).

Among the founder members of the Group were Leon Krier, plus the chief executives of a number of property development companies, housing corporations, and the Managing Director of the Cooperative Bank. The aim of the Group was to encourage councils and property developers to take the urban village concept nationwide, as a viable - if slightly more costly - alternative to the monotonous standardized run-of-the-mill developments, the "edge cities" that have mushroomed, and will continue to mushroom, on the outskirts of most British urban areas.

 

As of January 2002, eighteen development projects across England are being carried out in partnership with the Prince's Foundation, according to "urban village" principles; none however is as advanced as Poundbury, and some, such as the Westoe Colliery project at South Shields and the Northwich city centre project, are still on the drawing board. Yet as the location of these two projects shows - one in the heart of the depressed northeast, and the other in the rundown centre of a Cheshire town - the "urban village" concept can be, and is being, applied in areas that are very different from semi-rural Dorset.

Only two other projects are listed, like Poundbury, as "urban extensions" on greenfield sites, one in Basdildon Essex, the other in Northampton; by far the majority of projects are "urban regeneration" projects on brownfield sites.

Some of these are in fact far removed from the "urban village" concept as illustrated by Poundbury. In particular, the Ancoats project in Manchester, the Jewellery quarter in Birmingham and the Little Germany redevelopment in the centre of Bradford appear more like classic industrial heritage preservation programmes, along the lines of the Albert Dock regeneration scheme in Liverpool, or the redevelopment of Butler's Wharf on the South Bank in London.

They are, however, different, inasmuch as these three projects, though they will never become villages in the sense that Poundbury can call itself a large village, have been conceived with the ethos of the urban village concept in mind, and not as just three more chic urban residential areas for the upwardly mobile.

Little Germany and the Jewelry Quarter are interesting cases, both being central urban areas which, in the past, had a clear spatial and social identity, the former as the fiefdom of Bradford's German cloth merchants, the latter as the densely populated network of small streets which housed both the homes and the workshops of Birmingham's hundreds of jewelers and watchmakers - a classic historic example of both mixed usage and a clearly defined urban quarter.

A hundred years ago, Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter provided employment for some 70,000 people – many of whom lived and worked in the quarter. Since then, the number of jobs in the sector has fallen by over 90%, and the residential population has all but disappeared. In 2000, the quarter harboured some 1,200 business, but only about 700 residents. The aim of the project is to redress this imbalance, and rekindle the vibrant community that existed at the start of the twentieth century.

The Ancoats Urban Village, in Manchester, is different - so different indeed that although Ancoats announces itself as an "urban village", the project's development manager herself is not convinced that it really is one.

"I feel uneasy about offering Ancoats as representative of the Urban Villages movement, as it does not conform to many of the criteria that the Urban Villages movement sets out, and although we are still members of the Prince's Foundation, I don't think they would suggest Ancoats as an example of their philosophy; we seem to spend most time disagreeing!" (Lyn Fenton, private letter of 02/01/02).

Ancoats prides itself for its place in urban history, as the world's first industrial suburb – an area in which 13,000 people once lived and worked; the targets of the Urban Village project are to bring people back to live in this historic industrial site, close to the centre of Manchester, through a programme of mixed use residential and business development. Classed as a conservation area in 1989, it is on the UK's short list for designation as a UNESCO world heritage site. In spite of the reservations of the developers, the targets set out in the Ancoats Supplementary Planning Guidance reflect the same principles as those adopted for Poundbury; the fact that this, as some other urban village sites, are not totally new-build areas, does not fundamentally change the perspective.

Naturally perhaps, it is not in Britain's great urban centres that other urban village projects closer to the Poundbury model can be found, but on the edges of Britain's smaller towns and cities, as the following two examples illustrate. The Westoe site in South Shields is being developed by Wimpey on the 17 hectare site of a disused colliery, as a high-density mixed-use and socially mixed suburb with up to 800 homes, its own school, shops and office premises. In Lancashire, the Luneside development at Lancaster, albeit smaller - 6 hectares - is being developed along similar lines.

 

Finally, although only 18 projects are affiliated to the Prince's Trust as recognised "urban village" developments, neither the Prince nor the trust has exclusive rights to the expression, and other new housing development projects elsewhere in Britain, are taking up the label in order to give themselves a certain cachet.

Indeed, the "urban village" approach to the design and planning of residential areas has now found its way into official UK government guidelines, a new guide from the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions showing among its primary inspirations:

" the 'Urban Villages' movement in the UK and neo-traditional design generally. Indeed, the design philosophy promoted is essentially one of working with context, promoting pedestrian friendly environments, returning to traditional perimeter block systems, and - where possible - mixing uses." (DETR Website 2002)

The current popularity of the notion of the "urban village" in contemporary UK planning would tend to indicate that a sea change in planning theory has taken place in the UK since Prince Charles first launched his vision of Britain in 1989. Whether or not this will result in the recreation of something resembling the types of close-knit communities that existed in nineteenth century, or pre-Enclosures English villages, or even in twentieth century industrial villages, and whether "mixed usage" will really have any serious impact on the social habits of the British in the 21st century, other than reducing car usage, are different matters.

And in the end, it is perhaps of little matter in the context of this paper, in which I have set out to show the peculiarly high value attached to the word village in England, and the particularly strong belief that runs through English thought and culture, that the village - and notably the idealised village with its green spaces, flowered gardens, and friendly folk, is the finest possible form of spatial and social organisation - even in the resolutely urban society of the start of the third millennium. In this respect, the phrase "urban village" has readily come to be seen not as a contradiction in terms, but as a means of having one's cake and eating it, or at least getting the best of both worlds.

Bibliography

 

Aldous, Tony. Urban Villages, a concept for creating mixed-use urban developments on a sustainable scale, London, The Urban Villages Group 1992.

Ditchfield, P.H. The Charm of the English Village, 1908, reprinted London, Bracken Books, 1985,

Harvey, David. The New Urbanism and the Communitarian Trap, in Harvard Design Magazine, Winter/Spring 1997, no. 1.

Miller, Anthony. The role of Landscape Architecture in fostering community; Byker, a case study, in L'Espace Urbain Européen, Cahiers du Créhu 6. Annales littéraires de l'Université de Franche Comté 1996

Mumford, Lewis. T, The City in History, Secker & Warburg 1961, reprinted Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1973 &&.

Rossiter, Andrew. Retour à l'Utopie? Poundbury; redéfinir la banlieue en village urbain. In Ville et Utopie, Cahiers du Créhu no. 10, actes du Colloque. Presses Universitaires de Franche Comté, 2001.

Wales, Charles, Prince of. A Vision of Britain, a personal view of architecture. London, Doubleday, 1989

 

Webography:

Thandani, Diriu A. New Urbanism Bibliography, published by the Architectural Resources Network

periferia.org/publications/cnubibliography.html

Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions:

www.planning.detr.gov.uk/livingplaces/02/03.htm

 

Copyright :

About-Britain academic : texts © Authors and About-Britain.com

Andrew Rossiter, Université de Franche Comté

From a paper presented at the International Symposium on Urban and Rural Britain at the University of Valenciennes, France, 2002

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.

Kamera: Nikon FM

Linse: Nikkor-N Auto 24mm f2.8 (1970)

Film: Rollei P&R 640 @ box speed

Kjemi: Rodinal (1:25 / 13:30 min. @ 20°C)

 

Thursday 29 February 2024: Today, at the Nabulsi roundabout just south of Gaza City, Israel committed a horrible massacre shooting into a large crowd of civilians desperate for food who was gathering around humanitarian aid trucks. Israel killed more than 100 people and seriously injured 700 - this is a TOTAL WAR CRIME.

 

Al Jazeera: Cold-blooded massacre (publ. 29 Feb. 2024) [Requires log-in to see]

 

Israelis have confirmed that IDF soldiers shot against a ‘violent crowd’ who moved towards them ‘menacingly’. Israel claim they are ‘investigating’ the event. In the American Fox News, these news are reported as a ‘deadly stampede’ and a ‘deadly aid incident’.

 

Fox News: Deadly stampede over aid in Gaza (publ. 29 Feb. 2024) [Fox changed the title 3 hours later]

 

There have been so many shocking events happening in the last few days - Aaron Bushnell self-immolating, and today this massacre - that I feel we also need to remind ourselves to keep our eyes seriously steady and hyper-focused on what is happening in the background.

 

First of all, the ICJ hearing on the legality of Israel´s occupation of Palestine concluded on monday, and it concluded with some of the best presentations held in all the hearings. I would like to highlight the supreme presentation delivered by the Arab League, and also the presentations of Spain and the Maldives. All nations heard presented similar views, with the exception of USA, the UK, Zambia and Fiji. USA, the UK, Zambia and Fiji’s presentations were more focused on the importance of entering private ‘negotiations’ between the parties rather than the court should decide on anything pertaining to the actual legality of Israel’s occupation. USA, UK, Zambia and Fiji wants this matter to be settled outside the court.

 

In my view, the Palestinians should NEVER EVER enter ANY negotiations on Israel’s occupation led by America and be tricked into settling a ‘deal’ with Israel. There is NOTHING legal about Israel’s occupation of their land. The whole world knows it.

 

Secondly, as the ICJ hearings were being concluded, prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh (b. 1958) suddenly announced that the Palestinian government resigns. This smells America a looong way. First of all, the PA government hasn’t really resigned. The corrupt interloper Mahmoud Abbas (b. 1935) is still in reign as their President, and the old government still continues - only now in an administrative role and not in a political role. To me, it sounds very much like the USA is trying to lay the ground for a new government that they - will choose. I say; let the Palestinians themselves choose their own government in free and open elections.

 

Thirdly, suddenly the geriatric American president Joe Biden (b. 1942) starts talking about his ‘hope’ for a possible hostage deal and a ceasefire within next monday; March 4th. Well dream on, Joe, that ‘deal’ will not be happening because Israel refuses to meet the demands of Hamas of a permanent ceasefire, and the USA does not want to include the resistance movement in Gaza in their future plans for a new Palestinian government.

 

So that is where we stand today. What atrocities will Israel commit tomorrow? We shall see. In the meanwhile, I will present to you the most excellent presentation in the ICJ held by the League of Arab States, represented by Abdel Hakim El Rifai and Ralph Wilde. If there is ONE presentation you need to see, hear or read - it is this one:

 

International Court of Justice: Day 6 hearing on the legal consequences of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories (publ. 26 February 2024) [Video]

  

International Court of Justice: Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem [Transcripts and Documents]

  

The PRESIDENT: I thank the delegation of Zambia for its presentation. I invite the next participating delegation, the League of Arab States, to address the Court and I call Mr Abdel Hakim El Rifai to the podium.

 

Mr EL RIFAI: [ARAB LEAGUE] (26 Feb. 2024)

 

1. Thank you, Mr President, honourable Members of the Court, it is a great honour and privilege to appear before you today, on behalf of the League of Arab States.

 

2. I would like to read a statement by His Excellency Mr Ahmed Aboul Gheit (b. 1942), Secretary- General of the League of Arab States.

 

3. The League of Arab States attaches high importance to the present proceedings, hoping that they contribute to safeguarding the principles of international law, to uphold the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, and end the last oppressive, expansionist, apartheid, settler-colonial occupation, still standing in the twenty-first century.

 

4. The persistence of this occupation, acts of genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, crimes against humanity, displacement of populations, imprisonment of Palestinians behind illegal segregation walls, expansion of illegal settlements, creating new political realities on the ground aiming at complicating the dismantling of the occupation ⎯ all ⎯ will never discourage Palestinians from claiming their legitimate inalienable rights.

 

5. The insistence on placing Israel above the law, through the politicization of accountability and adopting double standards in the application of justice is a direct threat to international peace and stability.

 

6. Ending Israel’s total impunity, and subjecting it ⎯ like any other State ⎯ to the universal rules of international law, will help annul its pretexts to systematically reject peace initiatives, the most serious of which is the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, which offered full normalization of relations with all Arab States, in exchange of Israel only respecting its already established obligations, under the bodies of international law, human rights law, and the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly resolutions.

 

7. This prolonged occupation is an affront to international justice. The failure to bring it to an end has led to the current horrors perpetrated against the Palestinian people, amounting to genocide. There can be no moral or juridical justification for occupying lands, killing, terrorizing and displacing their populations.

 

8. The League of Arab States trusts the esteemed Court will confirm the illegality of this occupation and unambiguously rule on the legal consequences for all parties, especially those who turn a blind eye, facilitate, assist or participate in any way in perpetuating this illegal situation.

 

9. Only the rule of law ⎯ not the prevailing “law of the jungle” ⎯ will pave the way to peace in the whole region. Ending the occupation is the gateway to peaceful coexistence.

 

10. Thank you very much for your kind attention. I now respectfully request, Mr President, that you call on Dr Ralph Wilde, Senior Counsel and Advocate, to address the legal questions before the Court.

  

The PRESIDENT: I thank Mr El Rifai. I now give the floor to Mr Ralph Wilde. You have the floor, Sir.

  

Mr WILDE: [ARAB LEAGUE] (26 Feb. 2024)

 

1. Mr President, distinguished Members of the Court, it is a great honour and privilege to appear before you, and to represent the League of Arab States.

 

1. MORE THAN CENTURY-LONG DENIAL OF SELF-DETERMINATION OF, AND WAR AGAINST, THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE, ON THE BASIS OF RACISM

 

2. The Palestinian people have been denied the exercise of their legal right to self-determination through the more than century-long violent, colonial, racist effort to establish a nation State exclusively for the Jewish people in the land of Mandatory Palestine.

 

3. When this began after the First World War, the Jewish population of that land was 11 per cent. Forcibly implementing Zionism in this demographic context has necessarily involved the extermination, or forced displacement of, some of the non-Jewish Palestinian population; the exercise of domination over, and subjugation, dispossession and immiseration of, remaining non-Jewish Palestinians; the emigration to that land of Jewish people, regardless of any direct personal link; and the denial of Palestinian refugees the right to return. All operating through a racist distinction privileging Jewish people over non-Jewish Palestinian people.

 

4. This has necessitated serious violations of all the fundamental, jus cogens and erga omnes norms of international law — the right of self-determination, the prohibitions on aggression, genocide, crimes against humanity, racial discrimination, apartheid and torture ⎯ and the core protections of international humanitarian law.

 

5. Today I will address, first, violations of international law arising out of the régime of racial domination — apartheid — perpetrated against the Palestinian people across the entire land of historic Palestine, and then, second, the existential illegality of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967.

 

6. As a necessary prerequisite, I must begin with the special right granted to the Palestinian people in the League Covenant.

 

2. PALESTINIAN SELF-DETERMINATION UNDER ARTICLE 22 OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS COVENANT

 

7. The legal right of self-determination of the Palestinian people originates in the “sacred trust” obligations of Article 22 of the League Covenant, part of the Versailles Treaty. Palestine ⎯ an “A” class Mandate under British colonial rule ⎯ was, after the First World War, supposed to have its existence as an independent State “provisionally recognized”: a sui generis right of self-determination. The United Kingdom and other members of the League Council attempted to bypass this, incorporating the 1917 Balfour Declaration commitment to establishing a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine into the instrument stipulating how the Mandate would operate. However, the Council had no legal power to bypass the Covenant in this way. It acted ultra vires, and the relevant provisions were, legally, void. There was and is no legal basis in that Mandate instrument for either a specifically Jewish State in Palestine, or the United Kingdom’s failure to discharge the “sacred trust” obligation to implement Palestinian self-determination.

 

3. SELF-DETERMINATION IN INTERNATIONAL LAW AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR —AN ADDITIONAL RIGHT

 

8. After the Second World War, a self-determination right applicable to colonial peoples generally crystallized in international law.

 

9. For the Palestinian people, this essentially corresponded to, and supplemented, the pre-existing Covenant right, regarding the same, single territory. The 1947 proposal to partition Palestine was contrary to this; the Arab rejection an affirmation of the legal status quo.

 

10. In 1948, then, Palestine was, legally, a single territory with a single population enjoying a right of self-determination on a unitary basis.

 

4. NAKBA IN 1948 — VIOLATION OF SELF-DETERMINATION AND CREATION OF A RÉGIME INVOLVING AN ONGOING VIOLATION OF THIS RIGHT,

AS WELL AS RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AND APARTHEID

AND A DENIAL OF THE RIGHT TO RETURN

 

11. Despite this, a State of Israel, specifically for Jewish people, was proclaimed in 1948 by those controlling 78 per cent — more than three quarters — of Palestine, accompanied by the forced displacement of a significant number of the non-Jewish Palestinian population — the Nakba, catastrophe. This illegal secession was an egregious violation of Palestinian self-determination. Israel’s statehood was recognized, and Israel admitted as a United Nations Member, despite this illegality. Israel is not the legal continuation or successor of the Mandate.

 

12. This violation of Palestinian self-determination is ongoing, and unresolved. Two key elements are:

 

13. First, Palestinian people not displaced from the land proclaimed to be of Israel in 1948, and their descendants, have been forced to live as citizens— presently they constitute 17.2 per cent — of a State conceived to be of and for another racial group, under the domination of that group, necessarily treated as second class, because of their race.

 

14. Second, Palestinian people displaced from that land, and their descendants, cannot return.

 

15. These are serious breaches of the right of self-determination, the prohibitions of racial discrimination and apartheid, and the right of return. They must end, immediately.

 

5. 1967 ISRAELI CAPTURE OF THE PALESTINIAN GAZA STRIP AND WEST BANK (INCLUDING EAST JERUSALEM)

 

16. As if this ongoing Nakba was not catastrophic enough, in 1967 Israel captured the remaining 22 per cent of historic Palestine — the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem — the Naksa. It has maintained that use of force to remain in control for the 57-year period since.

 

6. ILLEGAL RACIAL DOMINATION — APARTHEID — FROM THE JORDAN RIVER TO THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA

 

17. For more than half a century, then, a State defined to be of and for Jewish people exclusively has governed the entire land of historic Palestine and the Palestinian people there. And the régime of racial domination — apartheid — and denying return, has been extended throughout. In the case of Palestinians living in the occupied territory, this has involved the same serious violations of international law, supplemented by serious violations of norms applicable in occupied territory.

 

18. Indeed, these people are subject to an even more extreme form of racist domination, as they are not even citizens of the State exercising authority over them. Even in East Jerusalem, which Israel has purported to annex, the majority non-Jewish Palestinian residents do not have citizenship, whereas Jewish residents, including illegal settlers, are citizens.

 

19. Just as in territorial Israel, in occupied territory, these serious violations concerning how Israel exercises authority over the Palestinian people must end immediately.

 

20. However, here, a more fundamental matter must also be addressed. The illegality of the exercise of authority itself.

 

7. THE GAZA STRIP AND WEST BANK AS PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, WITH THE CONSEQUENCE THAT ISRAEL’S PURPORTED ANNEXATION, AND ATTEMPTED COLONIZATION, ARE ILLEGAL

 

21. The enduring Palestinian right of self-determination means that the Palestinian people, and the State of Palestine, not Israel, are sovereign over the territory Israel captured in 1967. For Israel, the land is extraterritorial, and, given what I said about the Mandate, territory over which it has no legal sovereign entitlement.

 

22. Despite this, Israel has purported to annex East Jerusalem and taken various actions there and in the rest of the West Bank constituting de jure and de facto purported annexation, including implanting settlements. It is Israeli policy that Israel should be not only the exclusive authority over the entire land between the river and the sea, but also the exclusive sovereign authority there.

 

23. This constitutes a complete repudiation of Palestinian self-determination as a legal right, since it empties the right entirely of any territorial content.

 

24. Actualizing this through de facto and de jure purported annexation is, first, a serious violation of Palestinian self-determination and, second, because it is enabled through the use of force, a violation of the prohibition on the purported acquisition of territory through the use of force in the law on the use of force, and so an aggression. Serious violations of further areas of law regulating the conduct of the occupation are also being perpetrated, notably the prohibitions on implanting settlements and altering, unless absolutely prevented, the legal, political, social and religious status quo.

 

25. The occupation is, therefore, existentially illegal because of its use to actualize purported annexation. To end this serious illegality, it must be terminated: Israel must renounce all sovereignty claims and all settlements must be removed. Immediately.

 

26. However, this is not the only basis on which the occupation’s existential legality must be addressed.

 

27. We need to delve deeper into both the law of self-determination and the law on the use of force.

 

8. SELF-DETERMINATION AS A RIGHT TO BE SELF-GOVERNING, REQUIRING THE OCCUPATION TO END IMMEDIATELY

 

28. Beginning with self-determination: this right, when applied to the Palestinian people in the territory Israel captured in 1967, is a right to be entirely self-governing, free from Israeli domination.

 

29. Consequently, the Palestinian people have a legal right to the immediate end of the occupation. And Israel has a co-relative legal duty to immediately terminate the occupation.

 

30. This right exists and operates simply and exclusively because the Palestinian people are entitled to it. It does not depend on others agreeing to its realization. It is a right.

 

31. It is a repudiation of “trusteeship”, whereby colonial peoples were ostensibly to be granted freedom only if and when they were deemed “ready” because of their stage of “development” determined by the racist standard of civilization. The anti-colonial self-determination rule replaced this with a right based on the automatic, immediate entitlement of all people to freedom, without preconditions. In the words of General Assembly resolution 1514, “inadequacy of . . . preparedness should never serve as a pretext for delaying independence”.

 

32. Some suggest that the Palestinian people were offered, and rejected, deals that could have ended the occupation. And, therefore, Israel can maintain it pending a settlement. Even assuming, arguendo, the veracity of this account, the “deals” involved a further loss of the sovereign territory of the Palestinian people.

 

33. Israel cannot lawfully demand concessions on Palestinian rights as the price for ending its impediment to Palestinian freedom. This would mean Israel using force to coerce the Palestinian people to give up some of their peremptory legal rights: illegal in the law on the use of force and, necessarily, voiding the relevant terms of any agreement reached. The Palestinian people are legally entitled to reject a further loss of land over which they have an exclusive, legal, peremptory right. Any such rejection makes no difference to Israel’s immediate legal obligation to end the occupation.

 

9. THE OCCUPATION AS AN ILLEGAL USE OF FORCE IN THE JUS AD BELLUM AS A GENERAL MATTER (BEYOND THE LINK TO PURPORTED ANNEXATION)

 

34. Turning to the law on the use of force: Israel’s control over the Palestinian territory since 1967, as a military occupation, is an ongoing use of force. As such, its existential legality is determined by the law on the use of force, as a general matter, beyond the specific issue of annexation.

 

35. Israel captured the Gaza Strip and West Bank from Egypt and Jordan in the war it launched against them and Syria. It claimed to be acting in self-defence, anticipating a non-immediately imminent attack. The war was over after six days. Peace treaties between Israel and Egypt and Jordan were subsequently adopted.

 

36. Despite this, Israel maintained control of the territory — continuing the use of force enabling its capture.

 

37. Israel’s 1967 war was illegal in the jus ad bellum — even assuming, arguendo, its claim of a feared attack, States cannot lawfully use force in non-immediately imminent anticipatory self-defence.

 

38. Alternatively, assuming ⎯ again arguendo ⎯ that the war was lawful, the justification ended after six days. However, the jus ad bellum requirements continued to apply to the occupation as itself a continuing use of force. In 1967, with self-determination well established in international law, States could not lawfully use force to retain control over a self-determination unit captured in war, unless the legal test justifying the initial use of force also justified, on the same basis, the use of force in retaining control. Moreover, this justification would need to continue, not only in the immediate aftermath, but for more than half a century. Manifestly, this legal test has not been met.

 

39. Israel’s exercise of control over the Gaza Strip and West Bank through the use of force has been illegal in the jus ad bellum since the capture of the territory, or, at least, very soon afterwards.

 

40. The occupation is, therefore, again existentially illegal in the law on the use of force — an aggression — this time, as a general matter, beyond illegality specific to annexation. To terminate this serious violation, the occupation must, likewise, end immediately.

 

10. ILLEGAL FORCE DOES NOT BECOME LAWFUL IN RESPONSE TO RESISTANCE TO IT

 

41. What of Israel’s current military action in Gaza? This is not a war that began in October 2023. It is a drastic scaling-up of the force exercised there, and in the West Bank, on a continual basis, since 1967. A justification for a new phase in an ongoing illegal use of force cannot be constructed solely out of the consequences of violent resistance to that illegal use of force. Otherwise, an illegal use of force would be rendered lawful because those subject to it violently resisted — circular logic, with a perverse outcome.

 

11. ISRAEL CANNOT LAWFULLY USE FORCE TO CONTROL THE PALESTINIAN TERRITORY FOR SECURITY PURPOSES/PENDING A PEACE AGREEMENT

 

42. More generally, Israel cannot lawfully use force to control the Palestinian territory for security purposes pending an agreement providing security guarantees. States can only lawfully use force outside their borders in extremely narrow circumstances. Beyond that, they must address security concerns non-forcibly.

 

43. The United States of America, the United Kingdom and Zambia suggested here that there is a sui generis applicable legal framework, an Israeli-Palestinian lex specialis. This somehow supersedes the rules of international law determining whether the occupation is existentially lawful. Instead, we have a new rule, justifying the occupation until there is a peace agreement meeting Israeli security needs. This is the law as these States would like it to be, not the law as it is. It has no basis in resolution 242, Oslo or any other resolutions or agreements. Actually, you are being invited to do away with the very operation of some of the fundamental, peremptory rules of international law itself. As a result, the matters these rules conceive as rights vested in the Palestinian people would be realized only if agreement is reached, and only on the basis of such agreement. At best, if there is an agreement, this means one that need not be compatible with Palestinian peremptory legal rights, determined only by the acute power imbalance in Israel’s favour. At worst, if there is no agreement, this means that the indefinite continuation of Israeli rule over the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territories, on the basis of racist supremacy and a claim to sovereignty, would be lawful. This is an affront to the international rule of law, to the United Nations Charter imperative to settle disputes in conformity with international law, and to your judicial function as guardians of the international legal system.

 

44. A final potential basis sometimes invoked to justify continuing the occupation should be addressed. Occupation and human rights law — applicable to illegal and lawful occupations alike — oblige Israel to address security threats in occupied territory. However, they only regulate the conduct of an occupation when it exists. They do not also provide a legal basis for that existence itself. Existential legality is determined by the law of self-determination and the jus ad bellum only. There is no “back door” legal basis for Israel to maintain the occupation through the imperatives of occupation and human rights law.

 

12. EXISTENTIAL ILLEGALITY OF ISRAEL’S OCCUPATION OF THE PALESTINIAN GAZA STRIP AND WEST BANK, INCLUDING EAST JERUSALEM

 

45. In sum: the occupation of the Palestinian Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is existentially illegal on two mutually reinforcing bases.

 

46. First, the law on the use of force. Here, the occupation is illegal both as a use of force without valid justification, and because it is enabling an illegal purported annexation. As such, it is an aggression.

 

47. Second, the law of self-determination. Here, it is illegal again because of the association with illegal purported annexation, and also, more generally, because it is, quite simply, an exercise of authority over the Palestinian people that, by its very nature, violates their right to freedom.

 

48. This multifaceted existential illegality — involving serious violations of peremptory norms — has two key consequences.

 

49. First: the occupation must end: Israel must renounce its claim to sovereignty over the Palestinian territory; all settlers must be removed. Immediately. This is required to end the illegality, to discharge the positive obligation to enable immediate Palestinian self-administration, and because Israel lacks any legal entitlement to exercise authority.

 

50. Second, in the absence of the occupation ending, necessarily, everything Israel does in the Palestinian territory lacks a valid international legal basis and is, therefore (subject to the Namibia exception), invalid, not only those things violating the law regulating the conduct of the occupation. Those norms entitle and require Israel to do certain things. But this does not alter the more fundamental position, from the law on the use of force and self-determination, that Israel lacks any valid authority to do anything, and whatever it does is illegal, even if compliant with or pursuant to the conduct-regulatory rules.

 

13. THE WORDS OF REFAAT ALAREER

 

51. I will close by quoting Palestinian academic and poet Refaat Alareer (1979-2023), from his final poem posted 36 days before he was killed by Israel in Gaza on 6 December 2023:

 

If I must die, you must live to tell my story [...]

If I must die

let it bring hope, let it be a story.

 

Thank you for your attention.

 

The PRESIDENT: I thank the delegation of the League of Arab States for its presentation. Before I invite the next delegation to make its oral statement, the Court will observe a break for 10 minutes. The sitting is suspended.

 

The Court adjourned from 11.25 a.m.to 11.40 a.m.

From Wikipedia:

René François Ghislain Magritte (21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images that fell under the umbrella of surrealism. His work challenges observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality.

Naff River originated in Arakan hills, Myanmar and becomes an only international river between Bangladesh and Myanmar at its lower part and finally flows into the Bay of Bengal. Its extended estuary (depth between 39 and 120 meters and width varies between 1600 and 3200 meters) is influenced by tidal activity. Local duellers from both countries use to catch fish and do other economic activities on this river on a regular basis.

Naff River has witnessed the torture, murder and violence against adolescent girls and women of Rohingya Muslim ethnic minority. It has also witnessed many incidents in which local duellers lost their lives and by the member of Myanmar armed forces and border guards. August 2017 crackdown by the Myanmar military and local authorities resulted 950,000 refugees to Bangladesh.

Rohingya people from the small cottage by the bank of Naff in were desperate to save their lives from gun, machete, flame of fire and sexual abuse. Thousands get into boats, moon boats, makeshift boats using wood plank and banana trunk, many try to be crossing the massive river by swimming. Many of those are overloaded, there have been accidents and families with young children, elderly and sick member lost their loved ones during crossing.

True impact in Rakhine state can only be seen from the satellite images which reveal scale of destruction on the Rohingya villages in Myanmar. After all the destruction and burning of the villages, later Myanmar authorities also bulldozed Rohingya villages which left no place for Rohingyas to return their homes.

Peace loving Rohingya people have overwhelming desire to return to Myanmar as soon as possible (70% Rohingya families think this way) given that Myanmar government grant their citizenship and recognize Rohingya ethnicity, prosecution of perpetrators, provision of citizen’s service to the Rohingya population, full halting of violence. Broadening socio-economic opportunities for Rohingya population. Reestablishment of normal political, economic and social life along with deployment of United Nations peace force as additional security (Habib et al 2018). Over 96% Rohingya demanded recognition of Rohingya ethnicity of citizenship by the Myanmar government as a precondition for their repatriation to Myanmar (Habib et al 2018). Bangladesh governments repatriation attempt failed as policy makers failed recognize this research findings. Two year after the genocide on the genocide recognition day hundreds of thousand Rohingya gathered together demanding repatriation. That is clearly indicating there is there is a demand for citizenship, Rohingyas now building pressure on justice and repatriation.

Key reference:

Habib, M., Jubb, C., Ahmad, S., Rahman, M. and Pallard, H, (2018) ‘Rohingya crisis: The Untold Experience’, 1st edition, Ontario International Development Agency, Ottowa, Canada.

Well...that was the General Election that was....almost.

 

After a four week campaign, the UK went to the polls in to vote today.

 

I happen to live in a key marginal...lucky me.

 

"New" Labour have been in power for 13 years.

 

Tony Blair lied and took us to war in Iraq. Gordon Brown repeatedly boasted of an end to "boom and bust"...but apparently he forgot to tell the banks. We had an economic miracle based on people spending money they (mostly) didn't have...to buy things they (mostly) didn't need. Now we're in economic crisis but it was nothing to do with Gordon...all the fault of the Americans apparently...which I don't think he says when he's in America. Since the events of September 11th, 2001...civil liberties have been steadily eroded. We used to hear that changing our way of life in the face of terrorism would be giving victory to the terrorists...."that's what they want". Apparently there has been a rethink...and we had the ugly spectacle of an elderly member of the Labour Party being removed from a Labour Party Conference under anti-terrorism legislation (which we had been assured would be used "responsibly"). David Milliband has said "You've punished us enough about Iraq". Oh really? I think that's our call Dave.

 

As for the Conservatives, they have achieved popularity levels in Scotland which were unseen since bubonic plague arrived in the Middle Ages, thanks to Margaret Thatcher. In 1983 at the beginning of her second term there were 21 Conservative MPs in Scotland...at the last election...there was 1...which was probably one more than they deserved. It is possible that they could have ZERO Scottish MPs tonight (as was the case after the 2001 General Election).

 

The Lib Dems? Well...after the first televised debate three weeks ago, the nation was gripped by Cleggmania...largely on the basis that Nick Clegg came across fairly well, rather than him winning the debate in any conventional sense. He has talked about "new politics"...which appears to be the same thing as "old politics" but with the Lib Dems also having their snouts in the trough.

 

Oh...and we've had the scandal of hundreds of "honourable members" of Parliament being caught with their hands in the till...claiming for all sorts of bizarre things at taxpayers expense...and fighting tooth and nail to avoid their chicanery being exposed to the public gaze. That's seems a little surprising...since all the main party leaders were "shocked" to learn such things were going on. Aye, and the band played "Believe That if You Like!"

 

Most people who vote today in the UK will be (effectively) wasting their time going to vote...since they live in a "safe" seat for one party or another. It is possible that the Labour Party could finish third (in terms of popular share of the vote)...but win the greatest number of seats....while the Liberal Democrats could get almost the same share of the vote...but get a fraction of the seats. Democracy in action?

 

After the election...there will be massive public spending cuts...and increases in taxation...but no party is talking about that...because they want to be elected. Mind you, perhaps we get the politicians we deserve? When the Conservatives started talking about "an age of austerity" their poll ratings plummeted...so they shut up about it.

 

Last week an audience member on Question Time (rightly) ranted at the assembled politicians who had repeatedly failed to answer questions (e.g. "Does your party rule out an increase in VAT...yes or no?" - "Um...er....we have no plans to raise VAT" [which means "We'll be raising it!"]). She asked...."I just wonder if you think we're all ignorant and you think so little of us that you just can't answer questions? We have a right to get questions answered. You work for US...we pay for YOU....you're here to represent US!"

 

You go girl!

 

David Cameron supports "fairer constituencies" of equal size. That would be fairer...and would also be to the benefit of the Conservatives. A mere coincidence, I'm sure.

 

Nick Clegg supports "fairer voting"...which would benefit the Liberal Democrats most...and yet I have the feeling that if they were to become one of "the big two" who benefits from the current system...their enthusiasm for electoral reform might cool just a tad?

 

Still...at least my current MP (who is standing down before he would have been thrown out) is a man of principle...well...er....not quite:

 

www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/230378/Gordon-Browns-pal-Ni...

 

I heard some analysis a few days ago that this election could be decided by 20,000 voters in 100 marginal constituencies...and I think it's not far from being the truth.

 

That is clearly not good for democracy.

 

What will the outcome be? Who knows....the indicators are the Conservatives will be the biggest single party...but with no overall majority.

 

Nick Clegg has said he will support the party with the largest mandate to govern...but has refused to indicate whether he means "largest share of the vote" or "largest number of seats".

 

When pressed on this topic yesterday...as "the voters need to know"...he responded "What the voters need to know is...." and rattled off their key manifesto points.

 

I'm a voter Nick...and I'd like to decide what I need to know...but apparently that's just not part of "new politics" either?

 

He has said that electoral reform is "an absolute precondition for renewal of this country" but also that there would be "no preconditions" for coalition talks. Eh?

 

Alex Salmond (of the SNP) probably called it right when he said that we have a choice between "Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum, or Tweedle Dem".

 

OK...rant over...normal photography will be resumed.

 

Did I vote? Yes...but pretty much on the basis of gritting my teeth and selecting the least distasteful option who had a chance of winning.

 

Where were the Monster Raving Loony party when I needed them? ;-)

  

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.

Rene Francois Ghislain Magritte (1898-1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for creating a number of witty and thought-provoking images. Often depicting ordinary objects in an unusual context, his work is known for challenging observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality. His imagery has influenced pop, minimalist and conceptual art.

 

Staging a conflict between conventional beauty and clashing colors, Magritte clearly indicated in this 1943 painting that he had already "quit the well-trodden path of Surrealism's fixed form." The artist lifted the pose, bedding, and curtains from a composition by the noted French Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir and rendered it otherworldly by depicting the arms, legs, and torso in wild variegated hues. Despite the scene's potential for eroticism, its beguiling mixture of soft flesh and oversaturated color erases any hint of seduction.

 

This Magritte original was seen and photographed on exhibit at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art.

Endangered black-footed ferret in an outdoor preconditioning pen at the National Black-footed Ferret Conservation Center in Colorado.

 

Credit: Stewart Brand

This is a series of photos.

   

My images are 100% copyright protected by Law and cannot be copied or used without my written permission.

 

The presence, absence, color, and size of the mane is associated with genetic precondition, sexual maturity, climate, and testosterone production; the rule of thumb is the darker and fuller the mane, the healthier the lion. Sexual selection of mates by lionesses favors males with the most dense, dark mane.

 

The lion (Panthera leo) is a member of the family Felidae and one of four big cats in the genus Panthera. With exceptionally large males exceeding 250 kg (550 lb) in weight,[4] it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger. Wild lions currently exist in Sub-Saharan Africa and in Asia with a critically endangered remnant population in northwest India, having disappeared from North Africa, the Middle East, and Western Asia in historic times. Until the late Pleistocene (about 10,000 years ago), the lion was the most widespread large land mammal beside humans[citation needed]. They were found in most of Africa, much of Eurasia from western Europe to India and, in the Americas, from the Yukon to Peru.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion

Preconditioning is an important pre-cursor to reintroducing captive bred black-footed ferrets into the wild. Ferrets are placed in outdoor pens for a minimum of 30 days. While in these pens, they are exposed to natural burrow systems and have the opportunity to encounter live prairie dogs. Most preconditioning is conducted at the National Black-footed Ferret Conservation Center in Colorado.

  

Credit: Ryan Hagerty / USFWS

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: rapture.

 

-- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher, classical scholar, critic of culture. Friedrich Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe, vol. 6, p. 116, eds. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Berlin, de Gruyter (1980). Twilight of the Idols, "Skirmishes of an Untimely Man," section 8 (prepared for publication 1888, published 1889).

René François Ghislain Magritte, 21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist, who became well known for creating a number of witty and thought-provoking images. Often depicting ordinary objects in an unusual context, his work is known for challenging observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality. His imagery has influenced pop art, minimalist art, and conceptual art.

 

Magritte's earliest paintings, which date from about 1915, were Impressionistic in style. During 1916–1918, he studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, under Constant Montald, but found the instruction uninspiring. He also took classes at the Académie Royale from the painter and poster designer Gisbert Combaz. The paintings he produced during 1918–1924 were influenced by Futurism and by the figurative Cubism of Metzinger.

 

From December 1920 until September 1921, Magritte served in the Belgian infantry in the Flemish town of Beverlo near Leopoldsburg. In 1922, Magritte married Georgette Berger, whom he had met as a child in 1913. Also during 1922, the poet Marcel Lecomte showed Magritte a reproduction of Giorgio de Chirico's The Song of Love (painted in 1914). The work brought Magritte to tears; he described this as "one of the most moving moments of my life: my eyes saw thought for the first time." The paintings of the Belgian symbolist painter William Degouve de Nuncques have also been noted as an influence on Magritte, specifically the former's painting The Blind House (1892) and Magritte's variations or series on The Empire of Lights.

 

In 1922–1923, Magritte worked as a draughtsman in a wallpaper factory, and was a poster and advertisement designer until 1926, when a contract with Galerie Le Centaure in Brussels made it possible for him to paint full-time. In 1926, Magritte produced his first surreal painting, The Lost Jockey (Le jockey perdu), and held his first solo exhibition in Brussels in 1927. Critics heaped abuse on the exhibition.

 

Depressed by the failure, he moved to Paris where he became friends with André Breton and became involved in the Surrealist group. An illusionistic, dream-like quality is characteristic of Magritte's version of Surrealism. He became a leading member of the movement, and remained in Paris for three years. In 1929 he exhibited at Goemans Gallery in Paris with Salvador Dalí, Jean Arp, de Chirico, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Picabia, Picasso and Yves Tanguy.

 

On 15 December 1929 he participated in the last publication of La Revolution Surrealiste No. 12, where he published his essay "Les mots et les images", where words play with images in sync with his work The Treachery of Images.

 

Galerie Le Centaure closed at the end of 1929, ending Magritte's contract income. Having made little impact in Paris, Magritte returned to Brussels in 1930 and resumed working in advertising.[10] He and his brother, Paul, formed an agency which earned him a living wage. In 1932, Magritte joined the Communist Party, which he would periodically leave and rejoin for several years. In 1936 he had his first solo exhibition in the United States at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York, followed by an exposition at the London Gallery in 1938.

 

During the early stages of his career, the British surrealist patron Edward James allowed Magritte to stay rent-free in his London home, where Magritte studied architecture and painted. James is featured in two of Magritte's works painted in 1937, Le Principe du Plaisir (The Pleasure Principle) and La Reproduction Interdite, a painting also known as Not to Be Reproduced.

 

During the German occupation of Belgium in World War II he remained in Brussels, which led to a break with Breton. He briefly adopted a colorful, painterly style in 1943–44, an interlude known as his "Renoir period", as a reaction to his feelings of alienation and abandonment that came with living in German-occupied Belgium.

 

In 1946, renouncing the violence and pessimism of his earlier work, he joined several other Belgian artists in signing the manifesto Surrealism in Full Sunlight. During 1947–48, Magritte's "Vache period," he painted in a provocative and crude Fauve style. During this time, Magritte supported himself through the production of fake Picassos, Braques, and de Chiricos—a fraudulent repertoire he was later to expand into the printing of forged banknotes during the lean postwar period. This venture was undertaken alongside his brother Paul and fellow Surrealist and "surrogate son" Marcel Mariën, to whom had fallen the task of selling the forgeries. At the end of 1948, Magritte returned to the style and themes of his pre-war surrealistic art.

 

In France, Magritte's work has been showcased in a number of retrospective exhibitions, most recently at the Centre Georges Pompidou (2016–2017). In the United States his work has been featured in three retrospective exhibitions: at the Museum of Modern Art in 1965, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1992, and again at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2013. An exhibition entitled "The Fifth Season" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2018 focused on the work of his later years.

 

Politically, Magritte stood to the left, and retained close ties to the Communist Party, even in the post-war years. However, he was critical of the functionalist cultural policy of the Communist left, stating that "Class consciousness is as necessary as bread; but that does not mean that workers must be condemned to bread and water and that wanting chicken and champagne would be harmful. (...) For the Communist painter, the justification of artistic activity is to create pictures that can represent mental luxury." While remaining committed to the political left, he thus advocated a certain autonomy of art. Spiritually, Magritte was an agnostic.

 

Popular interest in Magritte's work rose considerably in the 1960s, and his imagery has influenced pop, minimalist, and conceptual art. In 2005 he was 9th in the Walloon version of De Grootste Belg (The Greatest Belgian); in the Flemish version he was 18th.

René François Ghislain Magritte, 21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist, who became well known for creating a number of witty and thought-provoking images. Often depicting ordinary objects in an unusual context, his work is known for challenging observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality. His imagery has influenced pop art, minimalist art, and conceptual art.

 

Magritte's earliest paintings, which date from about 1915, were Impressionistic in style. During 1916–1918, he studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, under Constant Montald, but found the instruction uninspiring. He also took classes at the Académie Royale from the painter and poster designer Gisbert Combaz. The paintings he produced during 1918–1924 were influenced by Futurism and by the figurative Cubism of Metzinger.

 

From December 1920 until September 1921, Magritte served in the Belgian infantry in the Flemish town of Beverlo near Leopoldsburg. In 1922, Magritte married Georgette Berger, whom he had met as a child in 1913. Also during 1922, the poet Marcel Lecomte showed Magritte a reproduction of Giorgio de Chirico's The Song of Love (painted in 1914). The work brought Magritte to tears; he described this as "one of the most moving moments of my life: my eyes saw thought for the first time." The paintings of the Belgian symbolist painter William Degouve de Nuncques have also been noted as an influence on Magritte, specifically the former's painting The Blind House (1892) and Magritte's variations or series on The Empire of Lights.

 

In 1922–1923, Magritte worked as a draughtsman in a wallpaper factory, and was a poster and advertisement designer until 1926, when a contract with Galerie Le Centaure in Brussels made it possible for him to paint full-time. In 1926, Magritte produced his first surreal painting, The Lost Jockey (Le jockey perdu), and held his first solo exhibition in Brussels in 1927. Critics heaped abuse on the exhibition.

 

Depressed by the failure, he moved to Paris where he became friends with André Breton and became involved in the Surrealist group. An illusionistic, dream-like quality is characteristic of Magritte's version of Surrealism. He became a leading member of the movement, and remained in Paris for three years. In 1929 he exhibited at Goemans Gallery in Paris with Salvador Dalí, Jean Arp, de Chirico, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Picabia, Picasso and Yves Tanguy.

 

On 15 December 1929 he participated in the last publication of La Revolution Surrealiste No. 12, where he published his essay "Les mots et les images", where words play with images in sync with his work The Treachery of Images.

 

Galerie Le Centaure closed at the end of 1929, ending Magritte's contract income. Having made little impact in Paris, Magritte returned to Brussels in 1930 and resumed working in advertising.[10] He and his brother, Paul, formed an agency which earned him a living wage. In 1932, Magritte joined the Communist Party, which he would periodically leave and rejoin for several years. In 1936 he had his first solo exhibition in the United States at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York, followed by an exposition at the London Gallery in 1938.

 

During the early stages of his career, the British surrealist patron Edward James allowed Magritte to stay rent-free in his London home, where Magritte studied architecture and painted. James is featured in two of Magritte's works painted in 1937, Le Principe du Plaisir (The Pleasure Principle) and La Reproduction Interdite, a painting also known as Not to Be Reproduced.

 

During the German occupation of Belgium in World War II he remained in Brussels, which led to a break with Breton. He briefly adopted a colorful, painterly style in 1943–44, an interlude known as his "Renoir period", as a reaction to his feelings of alienation and abandonment that came with living in German-occupied Belgium.

 

In 1946, renouncing the violence and pessimism of his earlier work, he joined several other Belgian artists in signing the manifesto Surrealism in Full Sunlight. During 1947–48, Magritte's "Vache period," he painted in a provocative and crude Fauve style. During this time, Magritte supported himself through the production of fake Picassos, Braques, and de Chiricos—a fraudulent repertoire he was later to expand into the printing of forged banknotes during the lean postwar period. This venture was undertaken alongside his brother Paul and fellow Surrealist and "surrogate son" Marcel Mariën, to whom had fallen the task of selling the forgeries. At the end of 1948, Magritte returned to the style and themes of his pre-war surrealistic art.

 

In France, Magritte's work has been showcased in a number of retrospective exhibitions, most recently at the Centre Georges Pompidou (2016–2017). In the United States his work has been featured in three retrospective exhibitions: at the Museum of Modern Art in 1965, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1992, and again at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2013. An exhibition entitled "The Fifth Season" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2018 focused on the work of his later years.

 

Politically, Magritte stood to the left, and retained close ties to the Communist Party, even in the post-war years. However, he was critical of the functionalist cultural policy of the Communist left, stating that "Class consciousness is as necessary as bread; but that does not mean that workers must be condemned to bread and water and that wanting chicken and champagne would be harmful. (...) For the Communist painter, the justification of artistic activity is to create pictures that can represent mental luxury." While remaining committed to the political left, he thus advocated a certain autonomy of art. Spiritually, Magritte was an agnostic.

 

Popular interest in Magritte's work rose considerably in the 1960s, and his imagery has influenced pop, minimalist, and conceptual art. In 2005 he was 9th in the Walloon version of De Grootste Belg (The Greatest Belgian); in the Flemish version he was 18th.

René François Ghislain Magritte, 21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist, who became well known for creating a number of witty and thought-provoking images. Often depicting ordinary objects in an unusual context, his work is known for challenging observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality. His imagery has influenced pop art, minimalist art, and conceptual art.

 

Magritte's earliest paintings, which date from about 1915, were Impressionistic in style. During 1916–1918, he studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, under Constant Montald, but found the instruction uninspiring. He also took classes at the Académie Royale from the painter and poster designer Gisbert Combaz. The paintings he produced during 1918–1924 were influenced by Futurism and by the figurative Cubism of Metzinger.

 

From December 1920 until September 1921, Magritte served in the Belgian infantry in the Flemish town of Beverlo near Leopoldsburg. In 1922, Magritte married Georgette Berger, whom he had met as a child in 1913. Also during 1922, the poet Marcel Lecomte showed Magritte a reproduction of Giorgio de Chirico's The Song of Love (painted in 1914). The work brought Magritte to tears; he described this as "one of the most moving moments of my life: my eyes saw thought for the first time." The paintings of the Belgian symbolist painter William Degouve de Nuncques have also been noted as an influence on Magritte, specifically the former's painting The Blind House (1892) and Magritte's variations or series on The Empire of Lights.

 

In 1922–1923, Magritte worked as a draughtsman in a wallpaper factory, and was a poster and advertisement designer until 1926, when a contract with Galerie Le Centaure in Brussels made it possible for him to paint full-time. In 1926, Magritte produced his first surreal painting, The Lost Jockey (Le jockey perdu), and held his first solo exhibition in Brussels in 1927. Critics heaped abuse on the exhibition.

 

Depressed by the failure, he moved to Paris where he became friends with André Breton and became involved in the Surrealist group. An illusionistic, dream-like quality is characteristic of Magritte's version of Surrealism. He became a leading member of the movement, and remained in Paris for three years. In 1929 he exhibited at Goemans Gallery in Paris with Salvador Dalí, Jean Arp, de Chirico, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Picabia, Picasso and Yves Tanguy.

 

On 15 December 1929 he participated in the last publication of La Revolution Surrealiste No. 12, where he published his essay "Les mots et les images", where words play with images in sync with his work The Treachery of Images.

 

Galerie Le Centaure closed at the end of 1929, ending Magritte's contract income. Having made little impact in Paris, Magritte returned to Brussels in 1930 and resumed working in advertising.[10] He and his brother, Paul, formed an agency which earned him a living wage. In 1932, Magritte joined the Communist Party, which he would periodically leave and rejoin for several years. In 1936 he had his first solo exhibition in the United States at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York, followed by an exposition at the London Gallery in 1938.

 

During the early stages of his career, the British surrealist patron Edward James allowed Magritte to stay rent-free in his London home, where Magritte studied architecture and painted. James is featured in two of Magritte's works painted in 1937, Le Principe du Plaisir (The Pleasure Principle) and La Reproduction Interdite, a painting also known as Not to Be Reproduced.

 

During the German occupation of Belgium in World War II he remained in Brussels, which led to a break with Breton. He briefly adopted a colorful, painterly style in 1943–44, an interlude known as his "Renoir period", as a reaction to his feelings of alienation and abandonment that came with living in German-occupied Belgium.

 

In 1946, renouncing the violence and pessimism of his earlier work, he joined several other Belgian artists in signing the manifesto Surrealism in Full Sunlight. During 1947–48, Magritte's "Vache period," he painted in a provocative and crude Fauve style. During this time, Magritte supported himself through the production of fake Picassos, Braques, and de Chiricos—a fraudulent repertoire he was later to expand into the printing of forged banknotes during the lean postwar period. This venture was undertaken alongside his brother Paul and fellow Surrealist and "surrogate son" Marcel Mariën, to whom had fallen the task of selling the forgeries. At the end of 1948, Magritte returned to the style and themes of his pre-war surrealistic art.

 

In France, Magritte's work has been showcased in a number of retrospective exhibitions, most recently at the Centre Georges Pompidou (2016–2017). In the United States his work has been featured in three retrospective exhibitions: at the Museum of Modern Art in 1965, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1992, and again at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2013. An exhibition entitled "The Fifth Season" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2018 focused on the work of his later years.

 

Politically, Magritte stood to the left, and retained close ties to the Communist Party, even in the post-war years. However, he was critical of the functionalist cultural policy of the Communist left, stating that "Class consciousness is as necessary as bread; but that does not mean that workers must be condemned to bread and water and that wanting chicken and champagne would be harmful. (...) For the Communist painter, the justification of artistic activity is to create pictures that can represent mental luxury." While remaining committed to the political left, he thus advocated a certain autonomy of art. Spiritually, Magritte was an agnostic.

 

Popular interest in Magritte's work rose considerably in the 1960s, and his imagery has influenced pop, minimalist, and conceptual art. In 2005 he was 9th in the Walloon version of De Grootste Belg (The Greatest Belgian); in the Flemish version he was 18th.

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 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.

Photo taken at the National Black-footed Ferret Conservation Center in northern Colorado, where the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service leads a captive breeding and recovery program where this endangered species is bred and preconditioned for release into the wild.

 

Photo Credit: Ryan Moehring / USFWS

The city well matured in pain and bruised by history, survives on a stockpile of promises in hope of making an unmakeable dream by boarding a horseless carriage of the European elite. Its unfixable destiny preconditioned a whole generation to the disappointments of life and left it to search for happy endings in a scenography of doubt. Undeterred by the odds, the spirit of hope finds a way through like a fragile flower would in the crack of a security wall.

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.

Secretary-General António Guterres is on his way to brief reporters on 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2021 is awarded to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.

 

UN Photo/Evan Schneider

8 October 2021

New York, United States of America

Photo # UN7912835

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.

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