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Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the United Nations General Assembly - IMG_4052 by VascoPress Comunicações

Statement by

H.E. Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu

Prime Minister of the State of Israel

23 September 2011

Ladies and gentlemen, Israel has extended its hand in peace from the moment it was

established 63 years ago. On behalf of Israel and the Jewish people, I extend that

hand again today. I extend it to the people of Egypt and Jordan, with renewed

friendship for neighbors with whom we have made peace. I extend it to the people of

Turkey, with respect and good will. I extend it to the people of Libya and Tunisia,

with admiration for those trying to build a democratic future. I extend it to the other

peoples of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, with whom we want to forge a

new beginning. I extend it to the people of Syria, Lebanon and Iran, with awe at the

courage of those fighting brutal repression.

But most especially, I extend my hand to the Palestinian people, with whom we seek a

just and lasting peace.

Ladies and gentlemen, in Israel our hope for peace never wanes. Our scientists,

doctors, innovator apply their genius to improve the world of tomorrow. Our artists,

our writers, enrich the heritage of humanity. Now, I know that this is not exactly the

image of Israel that is often portrayed in this hall. After all, it was here in 1975 that

the age-old yearning of my people to restore our national life in our ancient biblical

homeland -- it was then that this was branded shamefully, as racism. And it was here

in 1980, right here, that the historic peace agreement between Israel and Egypt wasn't

praised; it was denounced! And it's here, year after year that Israel is unjustly singled

out for condemnation. It's singled out for condemnation more often than all the

nations of the world combined. Twenty-one out of the 27 General Assembly

resolutions condemn Israel -- the one true democracy in the Middle East.

Well, this is an unfortunate part of the U.N. institution. It's the -- the theater of the

absurd. It doesn't only cast Israel as the villain; it often casts real villains in leading

roles: Gadhafi's Libya chaired the U.N. Commission on Human Rights; Saddam's

Iraq headed the U.N. Committee on Disarmament. You might say: That's the past.

Well, here's what's happening now -- right now, today, Hezbollah-controlled

Lebanon now presides over the U.N. Security Council. This means, in effect, that a

terror organization presides over the body entrusted with guaranteeing the world's

security.

You couldn't make this thing up.

So here in the U.N., automatic majorities can decide anything. They can decide that

the sun sets in the west or rises in the west. I think the first has already been preordained.

But they can also decide -- they have decided -- that the Western Wall in

Jerusalem, Judaism's holiest place, is occupied Palestinian territory.

And yet even here in the General Assembly, the truth can sometimes break through.

In 1984 when I was appointed Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, I visited the

great rabbi of Lubavich. He said to me -- and ladies and gentlemen, I don't want any

of you to be offended because from personal experience of serving here, I know there

are many honorable men and women, many capable and decent people, serving their

nations here -- But here's what the rebbe said to me. He said to me, you'll be serving

in a house of many lies. And then he said, remember that even in the darkest place,

the light of a single candle can be seen far and wide.

Today I hope that the light of truth will shine, if only for a few minutes, in a hall that

for too long has been a place of darkness for my country. So as Israel's prime minister,

I didn't come here to win applause. I came here to speak the truth. The truth is -- the

truth is that Israel wants peace. The truth is that I want peace. The truth is that in the

Middle East at all times, but especially during these turbulent days, peace must be

anchored in security. The truth is that we cannot achieve peace through U.N.

resolutions, but only through direct negotiations between the parties. The truth is that

so far the Palestinians have refused to negotiate. The truth is that Israel wants peace

with a Palestinian state, but the Palestinians want a state without peace. And the truth

is you shouldn't let that happen.

Ladies and gentlemen, when I first came here 27 years ago, the world was divided

between East and West. Since then the Cold War ended, great civilizations have risen

from centuries of slumber, hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty,

countless more are poised to follow, and the remarkable thing is that so far this

monumental historic shift has largely occurred peacefully. Yet a malignancy is now

growing between East and West that threatens the peace of all. It seeks not to liberate,

but to enslave, not to build, but to destroy.

That malignancy is militant Islam. It cloaks itself in the mantle of a great faith, yet it

murders Jews, Christians and Muslims alike with unforgiving impartiality. On

September 11th it killed thousands of Americans, and it left the twin towers in

smoldering ruins. Last night I laid a wreath on the 9/11 memorial. It was deeply

moving. But as I was going there, one thing echoed in my mind: the outrageous

words of the president of Iran on this podium yesterday. He implied that 9/11 was an

American conspiracy. Some of you left this hall. All of you should have.

Since 9/11, militant Islamists slaughtered countless other innocents -- in London and Madrid, in Baghdad and Mumbai, in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, in every part of Israel. I believe that the greatest danger facing our world is that this fanaticism will arm itself with nuclear weapons. And this is precisely what Iran is trying to do.

Can you imagine that man who ranted here yesterday -- can you imagine him armed

with nuclear weapons? The international community must stop Iran before it's too late.

That would be a tragedy. Millions of Arabs have taken to the streets to replace

tyranny with liberty, and no one would benefit more than Israel if those committed to

freedom and peace would prevail.

This is my fervent hope. But as the prime minister of Israel, I cannot risk the future of

the Jewish state on wishful thinking. Leaders must see reality as it is, not as it ought to

be. We must do our best to shape the future, but we cannot wish away the dangers of

the present.

And the world around Israelis definitely becoming more dangerous. Militant Islam

has already taken over Lebanon and Gaza. It's determined to tear apart the peace

treaties between Israel and Egypt and between Israel and Jordan. It's poisoned many

Arab minds against Jews and Israel, against America and the West. It opposes not the

policies of Israel but the existence of Israel.

Now, some argue that the spread of militant Islam, especially in these turbulent times

-- if you want to slow it down, they argue, Israel must hurry to make concessions, to

make territorial compromises. And this theory sounds simple. Basically it goes like

this: Leave the territory, and peace will be advanced. The moderates will best

rengthened, the radicals will be kept at bay. And don't worry about the pesky details

of how Israel will actually defend itself; international troops will do the job.

These people say to me constantly: Just make a sweeping offer, and everything will

work out. You know, there's only one problem with that theory. We've tried it and it

hasn't worked. In 2000 Israel made a sweeping peace offer that met virtually all of

the Palestinian demands. Arafat rejected it. The Palestinians then launched a terror

attack that claimed a thousand Israeli lives.

Prime Minister Olmert afterwards made an even more sweeping offer, in 2008.

President Abbas didn't even respond to it.

But Israel did more than just make sweeping offers. We actually left territory. We

withdrew from Lebanon in2000 and from every square inch of Gaza in 2005. That

didn't calm the Islamic storm, the militant Islamic storm that threatens us. It only

brought the storm closer and made it stronger.

Hezbollah and Hamas fired thousands of rockets against our cities from the very

territories we vacated. See, when Israel left Lebanon and Gaza, the moderates didn't

defeat the radicals, the moderates were devoured by the radicals. And I regret to say

that international troops like UNIFIL in Lebanon and EUBAM in Gaza didn't stopthe

radicals from attacking Israel.

We left Gaza hoping for peace.

We didn't freeze the settlements in Gaza, we uprooted them. We did exactly what the

theory says: Get out, go back to the 1967 borders, dismantle the settlements.

And I don't think people remember how far we went to achieve this. We uprooted

thousands of people from their homes. We pulled children out of -- out of their

schools and their kindergartens. We bulldozed synagogues. We even -- we even

moved loved ones from their graves. And then, having done all that, we gave the keys

of Gaza to President Abbas.

Now the theory says it should all work out, and President Abbas and the Palestinian

Authority now could build a peaceful state in Gaza. You can remember that the entire

world applauded. They applauded our withdrawal as an act of great statesmanship. It

was a bold act of peace.

But ladies and gentlemen, we didn't get peace. We got war. We got Iran, which

through its proxy Hamas promptly kicked out the Palestinian Authority. The

Palestinian Authority collapsed in a day -- in one day.

President Abbas just said on this podium that the Palestinians are armed only with

their hopes and dreams. Yeah, hopes, dreams and 10,000 missiles and Grad rockets

supplied by Iran, not to mention the river of lethal weapons now flowing into Gaza

from the Sinai, from Libya, and from elsewhere.

Thousands of missiles have already rained down on our cities. So you might

understand that, given all this, Israelis rightly ask: What's to prevent this from

happening again in the West Bank? See, most of our major cities in the south of the

country are within a few dozen kilometers from Gaza. But in the center of the country,

opposite the West Bank, our cities are a few hundred meters or at most a few

kilometers away from the edge of the West Bank.

So I want to ask you. Would any of you -- would any of you bring danger so close to

your cities, to your families? Would you act so recklessly with the lives of your

citizens? Israelis prepared to have a Palestinian state in the West Bank, but we're not

prepared to have another Gaza there. And that's why we need to have real security

arrangements, which the Palestinians simply refuse to negotiate with us.

Israelis remember the bitter lessons of Gaza. Many of Israel's critics ignore them.

They irresponsibly advise Israel to go down this same perilous path again. Your read

what these people say and it's as if nothing happened -- just repeating the same advice,

the same formulas as though none of this happened.

And these critics continue to press Israel to make far-reaching concessions without

first assuring Israel's security. They praise those who unwittingly feed the insatiable

crocodile of militant Islam as bold statesmen. They cast as enemies of peace those of

us who insist that we must first erect a sturdy barrier to keep the crocodile out, or at

the very least jam an iron bar between its gaping jaws.

So in the face of the labels and the libels, Israel must heed better advice. Better a bad

press than a good eulogy, and better still would be a fair press whose sense of history

extends beyond breakfast, and which recognizes Israel's legitimate security concerns.

I believe that in serious peace negotiations, these needs and concerns can be properly

addressed, but they will not be addressed without negotiations. And the needs are

many, because Israel is such a tiny country. Without Judea and Samaria, the West

Bank, Israel is all of 9 miles wide.

I want to put it for you in perspective, because you're all in the city. That's about twothirds

the length of Manhattan. It's the distance between Battery Park and Columbia

University. And don't forget that the people who live in Brooklyn and New Jersey are

considerably nicer than some of Israel's neighbors.

So how do you -- how do you protect such a tiny country, surrounded by people

sworn to its destruction and armed to the teeth by Iran? Obviously you can't defend it

from within that narrow space alone. Israel needs greater strategic depth, and that's

exactly why Security Council Resolution 242 didn't require Israel to leave all the

territories it captured in the Six-Day War. It talked about withdrawal from territories,

to secure and defensible boundaries. And to defend itself, Israel must therefore

maintain a long-term Israeli military presence in critical strategic areas in the West

Bank.

I explained this to President Abbas. He answered that if a Palestinian state was to be a

sovereign country, it could never accept such arrangements. Why not? America has

had troops in Japan, Germany and South Korea for more than a half a century. Britain

has had an an air base in Cyprus. France has forces in three independent African

nations. None of these states claim that they're not sovereign countries.

And there are many other vital security issues that also must be addressed. Take the

issue of airspace. Again, Israel's small dimensions create huge security problems.

America can be crossed by jet airplane in six hours. To fly across Israel, it takes three

minutes. So is Israel's tiny airspace to be chopped in half and given to a Palestinian

state not at peace with Israel?

Our major international airport is a few kilometers away from the West Bank.

Without peace, will our planes become targets for antiaircraft missiles placed in the

adjacent Palestinian state? And how will we stop the smuggling into the West Bank?

I bring up these problems because they're not theoretical problems. They're very real.

And for Israelis, they're life-and- death matters. All these potential cracks in Israel's

security have to be sealed in a peace agreement before a Palestinian state is declared,

not afterwards, because if you leave it afterwards, they won't be sealed. And these

problems will explode in our face and explode the peace.

The Palestinians should first make peace with Israel and then get their state. But I also

want to tell you this. After such a peace agreement is signed, Israel will not be the last

country to welcome a Palestinian state as a new member of the United Nations. We

will be the first.

And there's one more thing. Hamas has been violating international law by holding

our soldier Gilad Shalit captive for five years.

They haven't given even one Red Cross visit. He's held in a dungeon, in darkness,

against all international norms. Gilad Shalit is the son of Aviva and Noam Shalit. He

is the grandson of Zvi Shalit, who escaped the Holocaust by coming to the -- in the

1930s as a boy to the land of Israel. Gilad Shalit is the son of every Israeli family.

Every nation represented here should demand his immediate release. If you want to

pass a resolution about the Middle East today, that's the resolution you should pass.

Ladies and gentlemen, last year in Israel in Bar-Ilan University, this year in the

Knesset and in the U.S. Congress, I laid out my vision for peace in which a

demilitarized Palestinian state recognizes the Jewish state. Yes, the Jewish state. After

all, this is the body that recognized the Jewish state 64 years ago. Now, don't you

think it's about time that Palestinians did the same?

The Jewish state of Israel will always protect the rights of all its minorities, including

the more than 1million Arab citizens of Israel. I wish I could say the same thing about

a future Palestinian state, for as Palestinian officials made clear the other day-- in fact,

I think they made it right here in New York -- they said the Palestinian state won't

allow any Jews in it. They'll be Jew-free -- Judenrein. That's ethnic cleansing. There

are laws today in Ramallah that make the selling of land to Jews punishable by death.

That's racism. And you know which laws this evokes.

Israel has no intention whatsoever to change the democratic character of our state. We

just don't want the Palestinians to try to change the Jewish character of our state. We

want to give up -- we want them to give up the fantasy of flooding Israel with millions

of Palestinians.

President Abbas just stood here, and he said that the core of the Israeli-Palestinian

conflict is the settlements. Well, that's odd. Our conflict has been raging for -- was

raging for nearly half a century before there was a single Israeli settlement in the West

Bank. So if what President Abbas is saying was true, then the -- I guess that the

settlements he's talking about are Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jaffa, Be'er Sheva. Maybe that's

what he meant the other day when he said that Israel has been occupying Palestinian

land for 63 years. He didn't say from 1967; he said from1948. I hope somebody will

bother to ask him this question because it illustrates a simple truth: The core of the

conflict is not the settlements. The settlements are a result of the conflict..

The settlements have to be --it's an issue that has to be addressed and resolved in the

course of negotiations. But the core of the conflict has always been and unfortunately

remains the refusal of the Palestinians to recognize a Jewish state in any border.

I think it's time that the Palestinian leadership recognizes what every serious

international leader has recognized, from Lord Balfour and Lloyd George in 1917, to

President Truman in1948, to President Obama just two days ago right here: Israel is

the Jewish state.

President Abbas, stop walking around this issue. Recognize the Jewish state, and

make peace with us. In such a genuine peace, Israel is prepared to make painful

compromises. We believe that the Palestinians should be neither the citizens of Israel

nor its subjects. They should live in a free state of their own. But they should be ready,

like us, for compromise. And we will know that they're ready for compromise and for

peace when they start taking Israel's security requirements seriously and when they

stop denying our historical connection to our ancient homeland.

I often hear them accuse Israel of Judaizing Jerusalem. That's like accusing America

of Americanizing Washington, or the British of Anglicizing London. You know why

we're called "Jews"? Because we come from Judea.

In my office in Jerusalem, there's a -- there's an ancient seal. It's a signet ring of a

Jewish official from the time of the Bible. The seal was found right next to the

Western Wall, and it dates back 2,700 years, to the time of King Hezekiah. Now,

there's a name of the Jewish official inscribed on the ring in Hebrew. His name was

Netanyahu. That's my last name. My first name, Benjamin, dates back a thousand

years earlier to Benjamin -- Binyamin -- the son of Jacob, who was also known as

Israel. Jacob and his 12 sons roamed these same hills of Judea and Samaria 4,000

years ago, and there's been a continuous Jewish presence in the land ever since.

And for those Jews who were exiled from our land, they never stopped dreaming of

coming back: Jews in Spain, on the eve of their expulsion; Jews in the Ukraine,

fleeing the pogroms; Jews fighting the Warsaw Ghetto, as the Nazis were circling

around it. They never stopped praying, they never stopped yearning. They whispered:

Next year in Jerusalem. Next year in the promised land.

As the prime minister of Israel, I speak for a hundred generations of Jews who were

dispersed throughout the lands, who suffered every evil under the Sun, but who never

gave up hope of restoring their national life in the one and only Jewish state.

Ladies and gentlemen, I continue to hope that President Abbas will be my partner in

peace. I've worked hard to advance that peace. The day I came into office, I called for

direct negotiations without preconditions. President Abbas didn't respond. I outlined a

vision of peace of two states for two peoples. He still didn't respond. I removed

hundreds of roadblocks and checkpoints, to ease freedom of movement in the

Palestinian areas; this facilitated a fantastic growth in the Palestinian economy. But

again -- no response. I took the unprecedented step of freezing new buildings in the

settlements for 10 months. No prime minister did that before, ever. Once again -- you

applaud, but there was no response. No response.

In the last few weeks, American officials have put forward ideas to restart peace talks.

There were things in those ideas about borders that I didn't like. There were things

thereabout the Jewish state that I'm sure the Palestinians didn't like.

But with all my reservations, I was willing to move forward on these American ideas.

President Abbas, why don't you join me? We have to stop negotiating about the negotiations. Let's just get on with it. Let's negotiate peace.

I spent years defending Israel on the battlefield. I spent decades defending Israel in the court of public opinion. President Abbas, you've dedicated your life to advancing the Palestinian cause. Must this conflict continue for generations, or will we be able our children and our grandchildren to speak in years ahead of how we found a way to end it? That's what we should aim for, and that's what I believe we can achieve.

In two and a half years, we met in Jerusalem only once, even though my door has always been open to you. If you wish, I'll come to Ramallah. Actually, I have a better suggestion. We've both just flown thousands of miles to New York. Now we're in the same city. We're in the same building. So let's meet here today in the United Nations. Who's there to stop us? What is there to stop us? If we genuinely want peace, what is there to stop us from meeting today and beginning peace negotiations?

And I suggest we talk openly and honestly. Let's listen to one another. Let's do as we say in the Middle East: Let's talk "doogri". That means straightforward. I'll tell you my needs and concerns. You'll tell me yours. And with God's help, we'll find the common ground of peace.

There's an old Arab saying that you cannot applaud with one hand. Well, the same is true of peace. I cannot make peace alone. I cannot make peace without you. President Abbas, I extend my hand -- the hand of Israel -- in peace. I hope that you will grasp that hand. We are both the sons of Abraham. My people call him Avraham. Your people call him Ibrahim. We share the same patriarch. We dwell in the same land. Our destinies are intertwined. Let us realize the vision of Isaiah --(Isaiah 9:1in Hebrew) -- "The people who walk in darkness will see a great light." Let that light be the light of peace.

seven sacrament font by Simon Knott

1

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.

Europes only tea plantation by Jens Böhme

5

On the azorean island São Miguel are stated the only tea plantations in europe. The balanced, mild and moist climate is the best precondition for successfully cultivation of Camellia sinensis.

Auf der Azoreninsel São Miguel befinden sich die einzigen Teeplantagen Europas. Das ausgeglichene, milde und feuchte Klima ist die beste Voraussetzung für die Kultivierung der Teeplanze Camellia sinensis.

misericord: happy lion (15th Century) by Simon Knott