(As always, the old stuff can be found here.)
Wherever I travel in the world, I spend a lot of time poking around old churches. To be sure, this does not imply any sanctity on my part: I am there to get a sense of the place, or for the history, or the architecture, or the iconography (or lack thereof.) In 2014, I was traveling in Georgia with my friend Michael. This was his first exposure to the country; but my fourth. We would visit a church that I knew would make an impression, and as often as not, there would be a service underway (there usually is in Georgia). He would want to stay and pray. Too soon, I would be ready to move on, which is not exactly to my credit.
And always, I am having a compare-and-contrast going on in my mind: how does this baroque wedding cake of a Portuguese Catholic church compare to this elongated tunnel-like Romanian Orthodox Church in Bucovina to this little Saxon chapel snug as a bug in a nondescript Durham suburb, etc. My selection process is always pre-sorted: there’s no need to visit Protestant churches, as there is simply nothing to see, nothing of beauty; all are, in one way or another, variations of “four walls and a pulpit.” Indeed, the only reason I even visit Church of England churches is because there is usually something there that pre-dates their founding.
And speaking of Anglican churches, I do plan to visit the U.K. this summer, now that we can travel again. Who knows how long this window will remain open (not to mention my age, which I try not to do); so I will take advantage of the opportunity while it is available. I plan to spend about 9 days in Tbilisi with both my sons and my new daughter-in-law, then a few days in Stockholm with a Syrian friend I have not seen in 14 years, then on to the U.K. I will be in London for only one full day, a forensic in-and-out to tag some literary landmarks, then out of the city as quickly as possible. The next two weeks will be spent visiting churches, hanging out at village pubs, tagging some Cornish, Celtic and Saxon crosses, pilgrimages to shrines and holy wells, lots of hiking, tagging the graves of yet more literary figures, more churches, more pubs, more hiking, and for good measure, a heavy dose of visiting Pre-Raphaelite art galleries. My friend Mark has decided to tag along. I’m not sure that he knows what he is in for.
I prefer the Saxon churches, the ones that pre-date William the Bastard and the Norman Conquest. While countless churches in the British Isles have foundations that date to the Old English Age, very few extant churches from this era survive. I have visited all but 4 of the major ones, and plan to check 2 of them off my list this trip.
Why the Saxon churches, and not the Norman churches with their ponderous towers, or Gothic churches with their soaring rooflines and spires? Well, something changed in 1066—perhaps not irrevocably, but for a long time. English (or should I say Englisc) Christianity was quirky and idiosyncratic. The Celtic influence was only part of it. After all, Rome was a long ways away.
The thing that characterized English—I’m going to say it—Orthodoxy was its veneration of the Saints, and it had as many as any land in the East, hundreds of them. The liturgical year revolved around Feasts associated with the local saints and pilgrimages to their shrines and holy wells. This is exactly the practice in the Orthodox lands, and indeed, these Old English saints are fully venerated within the Orthodoxy today. At the time of the Conquest, there were estimated to be 10,000 churches out of a population of 1,500,000 million (I’m not sure if this is just for England, or for the British Isles.) That works out to be about 1 church for every 150 people.
The U.K. is still a land of churches—they are everywhere. But now, instead of being the expression of a living, vibrant faith, they are, to the largely de-Christianized British public, simply an expensive bit of leftover cultural heritage. What to do with them, and how to afford it, is a bit of a problem. In the proof-is-in-the pudding category, this is Exhibit A as to the end result of the Protestant Reformation. Ah, but Evangelicals of all stripes will argue against that with: “But the Anglicans didn’t do it right; we will.” That is, in brief, the very essence of Protestantism; the never-ending mantra of reform, “to get it right.” And so, they will start down the same path, with the same destination, just from a starting point a little further down the road to declension.
But back to the Saxon churches and what came afterwards. Edward Augustus Freeman in The History of the Norman Conquest, notes: “So far from being the beginning of our national history, the Norman Conquest was the temporary overthrow of our national being.” Everything changed. The land was lost, it was now all William the Bastard’s. The thegns had to flee—not a few journeyed to Constantinople where they joined the Varangian Guard. Old English was out, Normanized French was the order of the day; as was feudalism and the subsequent “Lords of the Manor,” heretofore unknown in Britain. The English bishops were expelled, and replaced with Gallic ones, to reform England into an extension of Roman Catholic France. The English saints were now discredited. St. George was imported from the continent to replace the thoroughly local St. Edmund. And on and on it goes. In time, the older culture patiently melded Normanism into its own, but not without a great cost. No greater example of this loss, I think, was the gradual realization that the well of the Saints had run dry, as did the miracles associated with them. There are only a handful of recognized Saints after 1066, all more or less made so by decree, seemingly lacking the organic authenticity of those who went before.
So when I visit an English church today, while I may admire the soaring Gothic architectural exterior; the interior spaces—walls filled with tablets of tribute to past benefactors, the now sterile altar space (apart from an occasional rood screen), the starkness of the stone walls—all leaves me as cold as the stone itself. The only warmth is in the weathered wood pews (themselves a post-Reformation addition). The intent, I suppose, is to convey a sense of awe. There are exceptions, no doubt, but for the most part, this is so foreign to my experience. In Orthodox spaces, even in large cathedrals, one can feel a sense of intimacy and belonging.
Any yet, it was not apparently always such. In recent years, church restorationists have uncovered quite a few wall paintings underneath the Cromwellian whitewash. In a frenzied orgy of iconoclasm during the reign of Henry the Horrible and his henchmen, churches were stripped bare, relics scattered and shrines demolished. The walls were all whitewashed. Most of what survived that rapacious spasm did not survive the ideological spasm of the English Civil War, a hundred years afterwards. Finally, misguided Victorian-era church “restorations” put the final nail in a coffin for all but a few.
These uncovering of wall paintings are beginning to show what was normative in England and Wales before the Reformation. In short, the walls were ablaze with color, in very much the same way that Orthodox temples are. , In Abbey Dore in Herefordshire’s Golden Valley, I saw an artistic representation of what that sanctuary once looked like, based on paint fragments. It was spectacular. This speaks to a commonality in how the Christian fa havith was practiced everywhere for the first 1,500 years, whether high up in the Caucasus, or in the pleasant vales of the Welsh Marches. Some of the best I have seen are the wall paintings in Pickering in Yorkshire, St. Cadoc’s in southern Wale, and at Chaldon, on the south side of London. The painting at the top of the page is from Pickering; a very early Renaissance Italian-style St. Sebastianizing of the martyrdom of St. Edmund. That particular church is full of such on the upper levels, including a long panel on the life of St. Catherine. St. Cadoc’s displays the Seven Deadly Sins. The macabre Last Judgement at Chaldon, while nothing like the Last Judgment iconography of the Orthodox, is still something to behold. I hope to add a few more to my list on this particular trip.
I will note that the English wall paintings, even at their best, are much cruder than what one finds in the East. Even the remotest Svan village church, high in the Caucasus, far from just about all the swirling of civilization, have 12th-century (or earlier) iconography far more sublime than any to be found in the British Isles. And yet, the latter speaks to their common faith, the Svan and the Briton. When I am in such an English church, modern American that I am, I nevertheless feel that I am right at home.
I can't wait for your new travelogue!