A Visit to the Isle of Ely. Part II: Alpha Females

See here  for Part I of this series. 

The guide to Ely Cathedral tells of the founding of Ely as a monastery for men and women:

It was said that the body of St Ethel
was was discovered uncorrupted in
her shroud. She seems to have lost
her breasts too. 

Etheldreda was the daughter of Anna, Saxon King of the East Angles and like her father became an ardent Christian.,,,,She always felt called to the religious life, but for political reasons she was married first to Tonbert, leader of the people called the South Gyrwas, who gave her land and royal rights to the Isle of Ely. 

Tonbert died and Ethel married Egfrid heir to the kingdom of Northumbria. The marriage was unsuccessful and Ethel became a nun. She escaped Egfrid's unwelcome attentions by isolating herself on the Isle of Ely where in 673 she founded a double monastery for men and women. Ethel was abbess at Ely for seven years before she died. 

Sometime after Ethel's death stories circulated that her body was moved and in the process discovered  to be uncorrupted and was a source of healing miracles. Well, needless to say I don't believe any of that; not that I think miracles don't happen, but you can't trust some human beings to transmit reliable accounts about such things and I tend to use a "guilty until proved innocent" criterion when assessing these stories.  But what I do think is behind Ethel's story is that of a female frustrated by the strictures of the role forced on her by the male dominated society of the day. When her style wasn't being cramped Ethel was by nature a mover and shaker. In spite of the times, however, she nevertheless managed to find a way to express her character in one of the few avenues open to females with aspirations, thereby leaving her mark for posterity: She founded a monastery at Ely and became an abbess and saint. In an indirect way it is to St. Ethel we owe the marvellous experience that is Ely cathedral. 

A theme of  women of strong character & influence impacts the Cathedral at several points not least the Lady Chapel attached to the north side of the presbytery. Of this the guide says

The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were notable for the rise of the cult of the Virgin Mary, especially in England. Lady chapels in her name were added to many churches....The Lady Chapel of Ely is exceptional....completed in 1349 having taken 27 years to build....it is notable for the richness of its decoration, particularly that of the wall arcade, at the time the most elaborate to have been built in Europe....When it was completed the chapel looked very different to how it is today. It was highly coloured, the windows were alive with stained glass and there were painted statues in the niches.

No doubt much ink has been spilt eulogising the ornate carving and elegant gothic architecture of the Lady Chapel. I can't usefully add to those accounts other than to say that even today the chapel needs to be seen to be believed. But there is one big fly in the ointment that everyone remarks on: All the heads of the delicate statuary have been knocked off. This was the achievement of bishop Thomas Goodrich shortly after Henry VIII turned against Rome. But Goodrich u-turned when the Catholic Mary I become queen (no doubt for his own safety). Mary I was determined to return the country to Catholicism and persecuted protestants, burning hundreds at the stake in her mercifully short five year reign, to be succeeded by the pragmatic and relatively tolerant protestant queen Elizabeth I.

The medieval stonework in the Lady Chapel isn't the only thing that catches the eye today:  At  the head of the chapel we can see this dominating modern sculpture of Mary mother of Jesus (by David Wynne c2000). This striking depiction continues our theme of strong female characters:

This colourful statue, which (perhaps intentionally) clashes with bleached filigree of the chapel, represents Mary at the annunciation and has been controversial. It is a sculpture of a sexually serviceable Saxon blonde bombshell who is hardly the submissive immaculate Mary of Catholic tradition. She may even bring to mind the Celtic Queen Boudicca who once ruled in this part of England. This Mary glories in her exalted and favoured status and accepts her divinely appointed role. Or on second thoughts is she throwing up her hands in horror and anger at the destruction that has been wrought on the now pallid chapel built in her honour? The Ely Cathedral guide book laments the changes:

The windows are now plain glass, all the exquisite figures in the lower niches have been defaced, and above are empty pedestals where statues once stood.  The chapel is an eloquent reminder of the power of religious ideas and the way they can be used destructively.  

Tell me about it! Quite apart from the sins of the medieval church of Rome we now also look back on much destructive and mindless fractious factionalism among protestants. What has taken the biscuit for me personally is the recent evangelical popularist following of a wannabe dictator (a situation which does have some similarities with Germany in the 1930s) and the proliferation of unreason among them (i.e.: young earthism, flat earthism, conspiracy theorism, gnosticism, fideism, authoritarianism and above all hard sectarianism). The persecuted become the potential persecutors in a seemingly inevitable very human cycle of political & cultural debasement that I would put down to a very natural tendency which Sir Kenneth Clarke describes as the most terrible of all delusions; they believe themselves to be virtuous.  But the writer of Ely Cathedral's guide hangs his hope on the core gospel message:

The death of Jesus was the result of the same [destructive] forces at work, and his body, broken on the cross, bears the pain of the brokenness of the world.