A Visit to the Isle of Ely Part III: Oliver Cromwell

My photograph of Oliver Cromwell's house in Ely

(See Part I here and Part II here)

Historians of the Seventeenth century will know that Oliver Cromwell's house, the one in which he lived and worked between 1636 and 1647, is within an arrow's flight of the huge monument to medieval Catholicism that is Ely cathedral.  Cromwell in many ways stood for everything that Ely Cathedral was not. The puritan Celia Fiennes was typical of  Cromwell's puritanical strain of thought:

When Celia Fiennes recorded her visit to Ely in 1698, she could remark, "this church has the most popish remains in its walls as any I have seen" (Ely Cathedral guide page 20)

As a mere dabbler in history I have to confess that I didn't know that Cromwell's house was so close to the Cathedral until I visited Ely in the warm September of 2020! But coming to this fact for the first time in my life meant that I was blown away by the surprising and hugely ironic juxtapositions of these two buildings, both monuments to two very disparate expressions of the faith. Cromwell so epitomized the austerity, the business-like practicality and lack of finesse & decorum that goes together with the resurgence of middle-class puritanical devotion of that day.  According to the Cathedral guide:

The puritans rejected all but the plainest forms of worship - in a letter to the Precentor, Cromwell described  the choir service as "so unedifying and offensive"  - and during the Commonwealth, Ely  ceased to function as a Cathedral. 

Cromwell's reaction to the Cathedral and its form of devotion is nothing but what you'd expect from him. 

Progressively, Cromwell had moved into a popularist position where he had gained the influence and authority to implement his brand of idealism:

Oliver who had undergone a religious conversion in his late twenties believed himself to be one of God's Chosen People or Elect. He was fiercely critical of High Churchmen, like Matthew Wren, Bishop of Ely and of authority generally, defending the rights of the fenmen against  those who sought to drain their land without adequate compensation. The popularity and support that he won from those whose cause he defended earned him the name "Lord of the Fens". In 1640 Cromwell was elected MP for Cambridge and so became increasingly involved in national affairs.  (Guide to Cromwell's House page 2)

Here we see the beginnings of that common political phenomenon where a popularist rebel against established authority (who may otherwise have a just cause) eventually maneuvers themselves into a position of established authority without any sense of irony.  In fact after the 1642 civil war Cromwell became an absolute authority:

During the disturbances of the Civil  War in January 1644 Cromwell warned Mr Hitch, the Precentor of the Cathedral "Lest the souldiers in any tumultuary or disorderly way attempt the Reformation of the Cathedral Church, I require you to forbear altogether your choir service, so unedifying and offensive....". Hitch ignored the warning so Cromwell saying that he was "a man under authority" ordered him to "leave off your fooling and come down"; Cromwell then drove out the congregation. In 1649 Parliament ordered an inquiry into the possible demolition of the Cathedral, which was in a decayed state, so that the sale of the materials might be applied to "the relief of the sick and maimed soldiers, widows and orphans". The Cathedral survived  only because the cost of demolition was estimated as greater in the value of the materials remaining. but was almost certainly closed for about seventeen years. (Guide to Cromwell's house page 5)

The take home lesson here (as if we didn't know already), is that fundamentalists and idealists have no mercy if it cuts across their ideology; ideology first, grace second, if at all. The architectural wonder of Ely Cathedral only survived because practicalities made it too expensive to demolish!  (Let's recall how ruthless the Taliban and Islamic state were toward the heritage of the past). Notice also the time honoured tension between the cost of the monumental and the cost of servicing the less fortunate.

For me Cromwell is a frustrating figure who missed his opportunities for true reform because of his uncompromising idealism; his obsessive anti-Catholic ideals drove an unbending sometimes merciless  agenda. It is axiomatic to idealists and fundamentalists of Cromwell's ilk that critics are assumed to have hidden and malign motives for disagreeing and therefore justifiably dealt with by coercion. Cromwell's self-belief meant that he could see no irony in his wielding absolute authority and in his willingness to use the threat of lethal force, a threat which he excused with the euphemism of "being under authority". He used that threat to drive out Ely's congregation and later squabbling parliamentarians. He became head of a joyless dictatorship that was consequently all too open to a reactionary return to the very things he opposed. But in spite of all that I believe Cromwell had the right idea at least in a theoretical sense; that is, of a parliamentary forum for the common people; but for him only those common people of sufficiently puritanical frame of mind, else he was liable to exercise his "authority". Like idealists the world over Cromwell didn't see that as a sinner he was as much part of the problem as the solution. If he had seen that he might have understood that there is little choice but to work with a morally and epistemically compromised humanity. He might have also understood that a squabbling often corrupt  parliament with a tendency toward selfishness was, as Walpole observed, the natural state of human affairs and must be wisely managed & regulated rather than engaged in a futile struggle to eradicate sin - only God can do that. 

But then the mitigation for Cromwell was that this was early days in the democratic experiment and I suppose a lack of understanding of what real democracy actually looks like in all its messy compromised & argumentative untidiness would have been beyond an idealist who faced the conundrum of all idealists: That is, as the French revolutionaries discovered, the full implementation of an ideology can only be achieved under totalitarian conditions; the very thing many idealists see themselves as rebelling against.  Underneath it, however, I believe Cromwell was not motivated by a desire to seek power and he refused the crown. He genuinely wanted power to be in the hands of the commoners, but at that stage in British history he really had no idea how to implement his vision among sinners and his fall back was his own sense of being right and his willingness to use diktat.  That a noisy contention is a necessary concomitant of true democracy just seemed wrong, wrong, wrong to a buttoned up puritan. I'm tempted to accuse him of being a block-head, but I'll refrain; it's easy to criticize Cromwell in hindsight. 

***

Move on 200 years into another age, the 19th century, and we find the romance of the gothic revival in full swing. The attitude profile had changed; at least in some quarters. The gothic purists found the abuse of the fabric of Ely Cathedral as equally offensive as Cromwell found the Cathedral services of his day: According the the Cathedral guide:

The architect and chief protagonist of the Gothic revival in England, A. W. N. Pugin, on walking into the Lady Chapel, is said to have burst into tears exclaiming, "O God, what has England done to deserve this". 

The Cathedral underwent restoration in the early Victorian period. These post-enlightenment people who were now well into the age of the mechanical, the industrial and the intellectual had acquired a taste for the mysticism of ritual and symbol. Ely Cathedral as a suitably atmospheric & monumental venue serving these tastes suited them down to the ground.

***

In Mat 7:13-14 we read:

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."   

The ways to destruction are many, the ways to life very few; (that sounds like a consequence of disorder theory to my ears!). I would question whether sinners ever find that gate at all; rather it is found for them and revealed to them by a God of Grace.  

The path of human salvation goes through the narrow gate of the Cross, but the path to ultimate salvation (as Bunyan discovered) is a winding way, perhaps even a maze, as the complexities of Christian history testifies. Let me finish this post with these words taken from the Ely Cathedral guide as it comments on one of the millennium sculptures found in the Cathedral:

Adjacent to the labyrinth and complimenting its symbolism, is Jonathan Clarke's The way of Life [sculpture]. It is cast in aluminium with nine sections, each differently jointed. Like the journey of life, its path in irregular and unpredictable and as the journey is sometimes hard, sometimes joyful, so the surface texture and the colour also vary. Perhaps to give a human scale to the journey Jonathan Clarke placed a tiny human figure on the top arm of the cross. (See below)

To me it's also a metaphor for the journey of Christian history itself with its motely mix of heroes, sharp minds, successes, reverses, eccentrics, extremists, fundamentalists, cultists and woolly thinkers (They know who they are!)

Clarke's Way of Life sculpture

I'd call this the Maze of Life, with its dead-ends, opportunities, surprises and openings. 

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. 

A Visit to the Isle of Ely. Part I: Infinite Mystery

 (Click any picture to enlarge)

The picture above isn't of some imaginative building dreamed up as an atmospheric backdrop for fantasy TV; it's real, it's Ely Cathedral. Here's how I saw it one hot mid September day, AD 2020: 

Ely cathedral  is built on a shallow rise on the Cambridgeshire fens, a rise which adds a few more metres to the 66 metre height of Ely's tower and means that the huge pile dominates the flat landscape for miles around. With its pillars, pinnacles, buttresses and mix of arches it could well serve as the location for a Victorian gothic melodrama.  It's exceptionally long nave and chancel  gives Ely cathedral a sprawling appearance. They call it "the ship of the fens" and it does look vaguely like a stretched out oil tanker at sea or even a huge sci-fi space ship crawling through space; after all, mediaeval cathedrals (and churches) were conceived as ships navigating the faithful to heaven with the priesthood at the helm.

Ely cathedral dominates the tiny city of Ely

The cathedral is central to the city of Ely. They call it a city but it is barely 2 kilometres across. In comparison  the relatively modest city of Norwich, with a width  of over 12 km, seems huge. Norwich's size diminishes the significance of its cathedral, a cathedral which in any case is well offset from the modern high-rise centre and tucked away down in the Wensum valley; in spite of its 100m spire it is nowhere near as dominating as Ely's cathedral which in contrast towers over a small cluster of largely traditional buildings, buildings which are probably not much higher than those of medieval times. The Cathedral therefore, leaves one with the strong impression that it continues its medieval role as a mother with her brood of gathered children watching after their spiritual life. I don't think I've been to another cathedral city where this sense of ecclesiastical matriarchal dominance is conveyed so strongly.

The above picture shows the triple viaduct of Romanesque arches which run down both sides of the nave as we see in many cathedrals. The author of the official cathedral guide remarks on the architecture of the building which like many other cathedrals has a...

....cruciform shape symbolising the Cross on which Jesus died. In the very plan of the church we are reminded that its life is founded on the faith in Jesus of Nazareth, a faith that sees in him the human face of God, the one who shows us what God is like. The symbolism is continued in the design of the nave; the ascending sequence of arches with their repeated three fold patterning resonates with the Church's belief that God is both one and three, a trinity of persons in unity of being; God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

The last time I visited this cathedral was in childhood during a school tour. As a safely obedient class we were led through the narrow colonnaded corridor high up in the clerestory of the nave; that is, the very top system of arches you can see in the picture above. There was no barrier and one trip would mean you'd fall 60 feet to your death! Such activities would surely be banned under current health and safety guidelines. But it was exciting, just as exciting as crawling through the dark Neolithic mines at Grimes Graves (also now banned).  We all emerged alive, however, so many thanks to my history teacher, a Mr. Fox, who took us on these fantastic adventures and whose enthusiasm for hands on history was catching! But actually in my case Mr Fox simply encouraged along a deep interest in the mysteries of origins that I already had in place. That times have changed so drastically from the days of flint mines and cathedrals only added to my fascination with the enigmatic dynamic & origins of our world and its cosmic context. I'm constantly being riddled about the meanings and purposes of the divine riddler who seems to take pleasure in regaling us with impossible riddles. Nevertheless in a strange way I welcome those mysteries just as Sherlock Holmes welcomed a new case. Mystery is the bread of life. 

Ely's magnificent architecture. 

As we can see above Ely cathedral has some marvellous architectural features not least the wonderful Octagonal lantern tower that everyone talks about. (Second picture above).  Gothic and Romanesque architecture always connects with my fascination with mystery; this, I suppose, is the l reaction the architects were striving to create as they sought to make us ponder the mystery & majesty of God. The architects of Ely would be glad to hear that I've never lost my interest in the meaning & mystery behind the human predicament, how it all started, where it's all going and humanity's place in divine purposes. The need to seek out and devour mystery has enveloped the whole my life. It is like an insatiable appetite, stronger even than social status & sexual interests. But I must confess that sometimes this mystery deeply frustrates me with its perplexities and paradoxes.

Striving to reach the infinite

The classical architecture of Georgian England is breathtakingly elegant; few would deny that. But in its perfection of completeness it conveys the antithesis of mystery, it's a finished and highly rational work. Of mystery and cypher Georgian architecture says "We've cracked it!". Yes it's a pleasure to experience the aesthetics of a problem rationally and elegantly solved, but then one feels "How boring, where's the next problem please, where's the next mystery!" Georgian architecture is undoubtedly highly satisfying in its appearance, but in another way it is unfulfilling: There is no sense of motion or of going-places; it's a job finished.  In contrast the open ended gothic tells us to reach for the sky; of infinite height that sky may be but it is this infinity which we have been made to grapple with.  Problem neatly solved gives way to  an open ended number of cases yet to be solved. 

Coming next, Part II: The Alpha Females of Ely. 

Status & Temptation in Christian Communities

Blickling Hall: A high status home and like all stately homes 

it was built to impress one's peer group and cement one's status.

 This was my view of it  as I walked up the drive for an interview 

there as a cleaner! (I got the job & was very proud of it!)

 

I have spent sometime pondering the role of status in human society and in fact I have made it one of the labels of this blog. Included under the "status" label is this very post which looks at a pertinent article appearing in the August Edition of Premier Christianity magazine. This article was titled "The Problem with Pedestals" and deals with the subject of  Christian celebrities and leaders who have been caught in wrong doing (i.e. sinned!) and fallen from their position of high regard among their respective Christian communities and following. 

The fact is human beings seek the approval, regard and care of their fellow human beings. For a gregarious animal which depends on a diverse range of support from their communities this is not only natural but in many ways an essential survival instinct; one can't easily live by being at odds with one's social surroundings. It's fairly obvious that at the very least human beings need the material support of their society but once this is satisfied the higher goal of human beings is to get emotional support as well and this takes the form of having a sense of role, purpose, acceptance, recognition, attention, regard, respect, approval, honour, pride, prestige, esteem and kudos etc from one's community; all these are extrinsic properties that can only be conferred by being in relationship with one's community and which I would like to subsume under the general heading of "status" or "community glory". Let me stick my neck out here and say that once one's basic survival needs are satisfied, status seeking is among the primary motives of just about all human beings and constitutes a drive so strong that it often trumps all other considerations. In fact for the really gregarious among us some measure of status is essential for mental health. Like food, sex and other appetites the instinct that seeks status is natural and is part of the repertoire of motives to be expected of healthy human beings needing material and emotional support.  

But like all appetites, especially if there is an ongoing desire for excessive satiation, status seeking can go badly wrong; we can become addicted to status, always demanding more of it. Since the tokens of status hood are a mix of attention and accolade from one's community along with the status symbols of material wealth, the implicit zero sum games which constrain status markers has the potential to lead us into a competitive world where people become rivals in a race for status tokens. Accompanying this competitiveness there are a cluster of negative emotions such as a sense of unfulfillment, envy and bitterness if we don't get our way. Once again, then, we face the age old conflict between service to others vs service to self. In the New Testament Philippians  2:1-11 directly addresses the conflicts of interest that status seeking implies: It is a passage which talks about the mind of Christ and implicitly tells us how status should be handled and why we need salvation. If the meaning of life, the universe and everything is actually found in the goals of successful community then Philippians 2:1-11 tells us why right meaning and right purpose have been lost and how Christ has saved the human community by doing the very thing we ourselves find very difficult -  namely, letting go of our hold on status because strong claims to status come at a cost to other members of the community.

The cut and thrust of human society revolves round the subject of status and so much of human behaviour is about maintaining the facades of status via image control. This was the subject of my series on my trip to the city of Bath. 

***

In the Christianity article I'm thinking of we read a very familiar story: Viz: Otherwise much admired Christian leaders, movers and shakers (now called "influencers"!) who have been exposed in some sin or other and subsequently fallen from grace. One of them is Steve Timmis who I blogged about here. Very common is sexual abuse, but I'm less interested in that than the case of Steve Timmis whose sin wasn't some hidden sexual vice but in fact an on going policy of power abuse at the heart of which was a harmful Restorationist ideology. However, I've always maintained that part of the problem is less to do with the "influencers" than it is the followers of "influencers" whose support has effectively made the celebrity and put them on a pedestal of power in the first place by giving them uncritical adulation, glory and honour they don't deserve. There is a free market of influencers out there and it is the demands of this market which gives these influencers their power.

But in spite of the danger of pratfalls, elevating certain people to a higher status is not only a very human trait found in society but may be entirely necessary; society needs clever leaders and innovators. Where the problem lies is less in status per se than in those celebrities and leaders who, all said and done are only human after all, are potentially corruptible through their power, influence and celebrity. Like life in general celebrity is beset by temptations. 

***

The story that did intrigue me in the Christianity article was about the one time head of Wycliffe Bible Translators, Eddie Arthur, who tells us of the effect on him of stepping down from this prestigious role: 

On his blog, [Arthur] describes the difficulty of leaving this role and his feelings about the subsequent loss of rank and invitations to speak. People who'd called him a "really good friend" have not contacted him since.  Though he was aware he "shouldn't" find it hard, in reality: "This loss of status was horrible.....Leadership is insidious and it is dangerous. I didn't realise how important my role, influence and title were to me until I stepped down....At this distance, I can see that it would have been all too easy to see myself as being more important than I am and to believe that normal rules didn't apply to me. I can understand why leaders fall and I can see why those responsible for monitoring them allow it to happen" 

A very sobering confession that brings one up with a start. The fact is many, if not most of us have (in vary degrees) an appetite for those status markers; attention, recognition, kudos, high position, accolades, praise, social glory, material status symbols and what have you. Nothing wrong there in and of itself but the status appetites, like most appetites, may present us with the temptation of glutting on those appetites in a way which brings ruin. Also at fault are those social scenes which are apt to lavish these things upon us; the tempter is as much a sinner as the tempted.

***

Another instructive article in the same edition of Christianity is by Christian band leader Chris Llewellyn who is a middle ranking Christian celebrity. In an article entitled Confessions of a Christian Celebrity Llewellyn expands further on the temptations of celebrity: He confesses that his minor celebrity makes him feel uncomfortable, especially as a worship leader is supposed to direct glory to Christ and not oneself.  Clearly Llewellyn understands the all too human tension between worshiping "the only one worth worshiping" and the pleasures of celebrity which in his case are bound up with him being a skilled musician and a (relatively) famous rock band member. He tells us of the good example of John Baptist who said "He [Jesus] must become greater; I must become less" (John 3:30). And then in a further confession Llewellyn says: "Honestly, I'm not even fully sure I want to become less for the Kingdom...I'm a minor Christian celebrity - get me out of here!". That's the central conflict of the human predicament in a nutshell; how do we cope with our pleasures in a society full of zero sum games? Well, guess what, Llewellyn ends by quoting Philippians 2:6-8.

There is tight rope to walk here. There's nothing wrong with talent in and of itself and neither I feel is there anything wrong in the wake of celebrity that talent leaves behind it; after all, worthy talent comes from God and deserves celebration. Moreover, there's nothing wrong with good leadership. In fact healthy society and community needs all these things; it needs leaders, movers, shakers, and talented showmen and innovators. But it's how our culture copes with these facts of life that is the crux of the matter. 

Fame, celebrity and concomitant status, are mathematically inevitable: They are extrinsic relationship properties not unlike web site connectivity. Hence, like website connectivity it is likely that celebrity has a power law distribution over the population.  Given, then, that we are likely to be dealing with a  mathematical fact of society then the temptations associated with celebrity and power will also be a fact. But it helps, as Llewellyn suggests, if Christians become more aware of the temptations they are heaping on celebrities and leaders via their accolades, regard and admiration. It may also help if the celebrities themselves become aware that our status appetites, though not wrong in & of themselves, all too easily lead into temptation and corruption.

Like other human appetites our status appetites are not going to go away; they are part and parcel of gregarious humanity; in fact a necessary part. So it is inevitable that these appetites are going to be abused at some point or other; it is a hazard of living, a hazard of community. But the first step is to recognise the inevitable, be braced for it when it comes and then above all recall Philippians 2:5ff:  In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.....

Of Stones, Stars, Circles, Status, Secrets, Sacredness, Mystique and Masons. Part 3

Centre ground: Reconstruction of the temple of Sulis Minerva in Roman Bath

Parts 1 and 2 of this series can be found here and here respectively. 

Bath is a city of facades, a city where at its height in Georgian England image, style and above all displays of status reigned supreme. The ill-tempered queen Anne came to Bath in the early 1700s when it still looked rather medieval. She came to take the warm mineral rich waters bubbling up from the mysterious depths of the Earth in the hope that it might alleviate her ailments. It was her visits which were to the trigger the fashionable culture of Bath, setting the city on a road through heady Georgian elegance to its eventual award as a world heritage site today.

The creative masonic society men whose development businesses thrived in eighteenth century Bath believed their traditions to have descended from both the builders of the stone circles and the architects of Solomon's temple. But I wonder if in all their pretense at being the possessors of  esoteric secrets inherited from ancient craftsmen they were aware of an apparent cultural disconnect between the relatively well documented Solomonic temple and those mysterious stone circles about whose purpose there is very little data indeed.

My meeting with Sulis Minerva

Solomon's temple followed the linear plan that is still very much in the consciousness of modern man: A clear entrance at one end of a brick proportioned building and at the other end facing the entrance was a space dedicated to an effigy of a deity: This layout was the likely pattern of the Roman Temple of the syncretist god Sulis Minerva (See pictures), the deity who was worshipped at Bath's hot springs. This pagan temple configuration was also the pattern for Solomon's temple, but there was one important concession to the living God who suffers no potentially blasphemous depictions to be dedicated to him: In Jerusalem's temple the space normally occupied by a classical god was empty of all but His mysterious presence. The empty space behind the temple curtain was eloquent statement of a God who wanted to speak for himself. However, in many ways the Judaistic model still feels pagan in essence: How can an immanent cosmic God who has created everything be confined to a small space in a small building? This could only be symbolic of God's rightful centrality to the lives of those he has created.

When we turn to the henge circles of northern Europe it appears that they too had a holy of holies at their centres, but these sacred spaces weren't occupied by effigies of gods; as far as I am aware no traces of idols have been found in henges. Apart from an altar they were as absent of idols as the temple at Jerusalem. Moreover, as I have already remarked in part 1 their structures, via divers alignments, connect them with their cosmic surroundings. Unlike classical temples which tended to exclusively look in, the henges also looked out. They were, may be, like huge lenses focusing the power of a cosmic deity (or deities) into the centre of their circles. In this sense they feel less pagan than the classical world of temples and are more akin to our modern vision of an all pervasive, all powerful God. This is not to say, as is typical of human kind, their concept of God was uncorrupted; there is evidence of human sacrifice in at least one henge.

But why this change from an all pervasive God to the localised anthropomorphic God of the classical temples? Was this a knock-on-effect of the information revolution of writing which help facilitate the bureaucracy needed for large cities and a civil service which distributed the power of an absolute  monarch? Did such monarchs become the model for anthropomorphic deities celebrating the glory of  personality? Well, maybe; this is my current working theory!

The glorification and celebration of personality is what Bath, in Georgian days, was all about. Like the henge priesthoods the free-masons of Bath could rightly claim to know a thing or two about the world in which they worked. But to this they added the gloss of a contrived mystique and affectation: They pretended (perhaps even to themselves) that they were the possessors of secrets and this was expressed by the arcane symbols adorning their buildings. But keeping up appearances was useful in a social context: It help maintain the facades of mystery and status.

As I proposed in my first post in this series, the physical form of the henges may echo the fact that for the ancient cultures who built them life was full of circles & cyclic motions both on Earth and in the heavens and these circles and cycles governed those all important agricultural rhythms. So, as the wife and I left the sumptuous surroundings of No 1 The Royal Crescent, where the celebration of personality and status loomed large, it was appropriate that we then went on to the house of William Herschel, the eighteenth century astronomer whose life's work was taken up with a scientific study of the of movements in the heavens. It was Herschel who (re)discovered the dim object that was Uranus and eventually identified as a planet. He no doubt knew that those planetary motions weren't exactly perfect circles. He also knew about those erratically placed smudged patches they called nebulae and those truly wandering stars called comets, many of which were discovered by his sister Caroline. The Herschels therefore were very aware that the heavens did not fit into precisely tidy circular patterns and were full of anomalies.

While the Herschel's worked on discovering more about the pattern, or lack of pattern in the heavens, the celebration of personality and status continued in Bath unabated, oblivious to where the kind of thing the Herschel's were doing was taking us as a race. The Cosmos was looking increasingly less like a celebration of personality; at least certainly not human personality and by the eighteenth century it was well-known not to be the perfectly concentric henge-like temple of the Ptolemaic universe, a temple with man at the centre. The world was changing and the Almighty had some difficult lessons in store for humankind;....as if Philippians 2:1-11 which tells us what we should really be doing with personality, wasn't challenge enough. 

Of Stones, Stars, Circles, Status, Secrets, Sacredness, Mystique and Masons. Part 2

View across Bath from the Landsdowne Grove Hotel. 

See here for Part 1

During a year at Bath University I took the train journey from London to Bath on several occasions. Just before arriving at Bath the train from London passes through Brunel's  two mile long Box tunnel. Shortly after the tunnel breaks out into the open the city of Bath fills the vista, its magnificent magnolia limestone buildings climbing the steep sides of the Avon valley.

For me there was always something a little unreal about the city of Bath: The precipitous setting, the hot springs from deep under the Earth attracting sacred devotion and the relatively systematic architecture give a rather un-English feel to the city. In going through Brunel's tunnel and finding this City at the end of it, it is almost as if one has passed through some kind of wormhole into a parallel universe where the tendency of English towns to host a motley and unplanned collection of often nondescript and ugly buildings has taken an entirely different course:  I can never dispel the feeling that the city of Bath is a little otherworldly. Norwich, where I live, has a well deserved reputation as a picturesque and ancient English city with an eclectic and quaint mix of buildings from across the ages, but in comparison with Bath, it is an architectural mess!

When you've been in Bath for a while, however, you realise that it's no dream or sacred city although it might have had aspirations to be that. It is, in fact, a city based on the very worldly commercial interests of architects, developers and speculators, all of whom were very concerned about their pockets and their careers; status seeking once again is found to be an important driving force of human endeavour. Behind those impressive and elegant facades architectural compromises were made in order to service the constraints of economic exigencies and practicalities. Bath's selling point was its facades, much to the chagrin of Victorian Gothic revivalist Pugin who had no time for Georgian architecture. In his view those facades were for pseuds. For unlike Gothic architecture, we find in Georgian architecture no clear link between form and function: Those elegant pilasters and architraves, in spite of appearances, served little or no structural purpose. To Pugin they were architectural lies which prioritised style over content.

Nevertheless, I don't think many people would venture to gainsay the elegance and beauty of the Palladian style; for some reason it just seems to touch an aesthetic sweet spot in our visual cortex. I see no reason to write it off as architectural deceit: Those facades are simply two-dimensional canvasses in stone where the mason, like the painter, is free to express the artistic impulse. However,  I'm not so sure that Georgian architecture ages with grace, especially when it's made of Bath limestone, a stone which does not weather well and blackens with time. When I was in Bath in the seventies I often felt that Norwich's mishmash of unplanned building looked neater and often less run down than Bath's crumbly stained buildings. But during our recent visit to Bath we happened to stumble across the new development in the south central city, a development that captures the original impact of the Georgian style. This newly built area conveys the real breathtaking effect of freshly minted Bath-stone and the crisp unfussy lines of palladian architecture in its hey-day. From this we can see that palladianism was an expression of bright, optimistic and confident modernism, two hundred years ahead of its time. Modern architecture is meant to have straight edges, unspoiled by the distorting effects of time; it is meant to be eternally new.

Stunning new build in the city centre recreates the fine straight lines of Georgian Bath....

....the eighteenth century equivalent. 

The chief architects of Bath were John Wood and his son John Wood junior. They had such a free hand with the city that for a short while some "central planning" actually erupted in an English city. In fact rumour has it that the Woods succeeded in laying out a street plan that traces out that symbol of Masonic secrecy; namely the key. This "key" is formed from the Circus, Gay street and Queen's square; inspection of a map of Bath will show it. The guide book to the The Building of Bath museum says that one contemporary described the Circus as "the Colosseum turned inside out".  The guide goes on to say of John Wood senior:

An obsessive archaeological, he believed that long before the Romans ever came to Britain, Prince Bladud  had built for his Druid priests a circular temple similar to Stonehenge near the site of the circus. Indeed the Circus shares the same diameter as Stonehenge - according to Wood's rather distorted measurements - and the stone acorns  running round  its parapet  were a reminder of the legend  of how Prince Bladud discovered the hot springs.

The Staircase at the
Royal Crescent. 

These enlightenment men were, to their credit, curious, very curious about their world. This curiosity drove the enlightenment and was also apparent in our visit to No 1 The Royal Crescent which is open to visitors; Henry Sanford, who owned the house from 1777, was an avid collector of curiosities; that's something  I can empathise with.  They were not, however, very critical in their reading of history which they tended to take at face value: It is now believed that the druids had little to do with the construction of henges. However, Wood probably got one thing right; as we have seen: Henges look inward as does the Circus and like the Colosseum they may have hosted some kind of spectacle.

The Royal Crescent

The Royal Crescent may be based on the Masonic Moon symbol and this symbol can be used to allude to the way a subordinate reflects the solar glory of his master. That master may be some respected Masonic patriarch or may even be God himself: The Masons saw their creative efforts as that of following in the footsteps of the Divine architect, their ultimate master.

The Building of Bath guide book says of the Royal Crescent:

It was the first Crescent in Britain - what inspired its unique shape? It is possible that Wood the Younger inherited his father's theory that a crescent shaped Druid "Temple of the Moon"  once stood  near to Stonehenge, or alternatively he may have intended the shape to reflect the curving contours of the landscape. 

I think it is well-known that the Masonic movement gets a lot of mileage out of its esoteric symbolism (and probably more mileage than it deserves); a quick dip into their websites confirms this. It is certainly true that this symbolism gives to the movement the touch and feel of arcane wisdom and mystique; or at least it once did: In today's cynical and nihilistic times people may be less impressed. Nevertheless some still fear the Masonic movement because of it and believe the movement has more malign intelligence than can actually be credited to it and this has fed some fanciful conspiracy theories. I see nothing to fear in the Masonic movement myself, but I do see some very human foibles at work: The tendency to form elite secretive clubs which feed a human weakness for special status and social acceptance is a well established instinct. Secrecy and codes can also be seductive and draw people in, intrigued by the thought of discovering profound truths. The irony is that the conspiracy theorists who target the Masonic movement, have themselves become enthralled with secrecy and intrigue.

But to me the notion that the Masons are a group who remain tuned into to some kind of ancient wisdom known only to an elite, but going as far back as the henge builders and Solomon's temple, is fanciful;  let me express the opinion that just like the stone facades of Bath much of it is bluff and charade.  To me it all looks awfully like the games that boys like to play of initiating one another into secret clubs! They are, in fact, dabblers and dilettantes in fancied secrets. Some Christians are hostile to the Masons. But not me. Like John Wood & son many of them are no doubt hard-working professional people with much expertise that they contribute to society; its just that I can't take the gloss of their symbolism and their cloak of secrecy seriously. Like the henge builders they know their stuff, but the notion that they are custodians of something more esoteric and more intriguing is a myth. The best complexion I can place on the Masonic predilection for theatre and symbolism is that this symbolism is a hook to express our awe in the face of the unknowns of creation. As the saying goes: A word is a raft when the mind is at sea.

In the eighteenth century Bath was at times the grotesque epitome of style over content as Jane Austin knew and regarded with contempt. The following information board at No 1 the Royal Crescent expresses it well:

Click to enlarge. 

Quoting from this board:

Using images to control people's perceptions about your life is not new it has be done for hundreds of years; the only thing that has changed is the medium. Today we use photographs and social media, but over 250 years ago the Georgians used oil paintings, prints and busts to share their status.

Yet again we see how so much about human life revolves round social position and where apparent status is mediated via the control of appearances and the promotion of mystique. Image is as important today as it was in the Bath of the 18th century, a city of facades, a city of image. And going further back I very much suspect that Avebury henge (as we saw in Part 1) also had much to do with image, theatre and the embroidering and inflating one's profile, knowledge and power in order to impress. But let's face it: Even the human weakness for play acting has generated much beauty, art and wealth, such is the paradox of human nature and the human predicament.

...to be continued. 

Of Stones, Stars, Circles, Status, Secrets, Sacredness, Mystique and Masons. Part I

Ancient Neolithic stones march off into the distance 

against the medieval backdrop of Avebury. 

The wife and I recently had a few days holiday in the City of Bath. On the way to Bath we decided to do a short sight seeing tour through Wiltshire. Among England's counties Wiltshire has an unrivaled mystique generated by its reputation for a fascinating mix of UFO sightings and corn circles. On top of this there are the numerous enigmatic ancient monuments, including legendary world heritage sites like Stonehenge and Avebury; in the minds of many these monuments are somehow bound up with those UFOs and corn circles. In previous years we have stopped at West Kennet long barrow, Avebury and even flown a kite with our off-spring on the summit of Silbury hill in the days when you could still climb it. But during those visits we never saw or felt anything of a strange nature,  unless it be the hippy who was soaking up the vibes as he sat in a rather modest looking  corn circle!

This time we decided to stop again at Avebury, a monument which is well worth several visits.  We arrived around 3 pm on a bright but overcast day, weather ideal for this kind of tourist stop.

Avebury: A chocolate box village scene vies with rough hewn stones for camera pixels

Avebury village goes back to medieval times but in comparison with the largely unknown culture which constructed the henge and stone circle during a period of some 500 years well over 4000 years ago, medieval Avebury feels very much like the familiar home culture one has been brought up with and thinks one understands. In any case the strange gnarled old stones of the circle look very anomalous set against the soft grass covered slopes and the chocolate box village. These stones look like alien monoliths dropped from the skies and don't blend in at all, anymore than, say, an electricity pylon or a wind turbine blends in with its idyllic backdrop.

In their day, however, the stones wouldn't have looked at all anomalous given the very different atmosphere and mood conveyed by the magnificent neolithic spectacle that was Avebury. Archaeology has revealed that the original earthworks would have provided a breath taking back drop of brilliant white chalk dazzling the eyes in the sun. Hints of this can be seen in the white tracks on the outer bank worn away by the feet of the many visitors who circumnavigate the site.  In their time the banks and the ditch would have been higher, deeper, steeper and all in gleaming white, bearing no comparison with the smooth green slopes of today.

It is well known that (by definition) henges have an inverted fortification structure. That is, the usual defensive bank and ditch, rather than pointing outwards, point inwards. This immediately suggests that the henge bank was a place of viewing for the rank and file who looked in on the activities inside the circle. In fact this video conjectures that Stanton Drew henge may have been a kind of theatre for blood sports. This is not a theory I have heard before but it is plausible and would explain the inward looking fortification effect; nothing could get out without a struggle; it would in effect be the ultimate ha-ha. However, it is difficult to imagine blood sports taking place in the smaller henge monuments, or at a very large henge enclosure like Avebury as much of the action would be too far away to see. But the general idea of a henge enclosing some kind of spectacle with an audience standing on the perimeter well separated from whatever went on within the circle could well have been the role of all henges.

The ritualistic and religious particulars of henges have, of course, been lost in the mists of time. (Unless some middle eastern traveller has left us a text somewhere). But there are some general conjectures about henges which seem at least plausible if not probable. These monuments must encapsulate the thinking and world view of the neolithic people who built them, a world view that today would probably strike us as otherworldly and supernatural. The environs of Avebury, with its avenues linking it to other monuments and the vicinity of West Kennet long barrow and Silbury hill, has prompted archaeologists to refer to the whole complex as a "Ritual landscape".  I imagine that the farming families on pilgrimage to this complex from their small thatched huts and farms would have been gob smacked by the huge artificial landscape, all garbed in brilliant white, that confronted them. Above all this landscape would have conferred a sense of power, status and mystique upon the aristocracy and/or priesthood which managed it. That power was real at least in the sense that they had enough control of the agrarian labour surplus in order to organise the building and maintenance of this ritual complex. Their power was also real in that their knowledge was genuine: It is clear from the connection that henges and stone circles have with their environment, especially the astronomical environment, that the builders did know something about how the world worked. Moreover, in an agrarian society where everyone's life was so obviously modulated by the beat of the seasons, seasons apparently driven by the configurations in the heavenly vault, this was significant knowledge. In as much as henges and their stones circles encapsulate information about the neolithic perspective on the world they not only look inwards but also outwards towards the cosmic context.

To the plebeians coming to this monument for the first time it must have seemed that its priesthood was surely in touch with the divine. The power of the site resided in the sense of spectacle, mystery and the sheer theatre of it all. A near equivalent in our own culture are the cathedrals of the middle ages which would have taken the breath away of the peasantry and be clear evidence of the aristocracy's and priest's right to rule. Also, I'm reminded of the Victorian Gothic revival and Pugin's attempt to revive the mystique of Catholic power through the sheer intimidating mystery of catholic rituals carried out in the context of lavishly reinterpreted pseudo Gothic churches.

But perhaps an even better modern analogy to the pilgrim's wonder at Avebury may be seen in the visitor to the huge circle of the Large Hadron Collider where we have engineering on an unprecedented scale. Like the circle at Avebury the LHC impresses by its sheer size lending gravitas and status to the techno-scientific elite who have built it, run it and understand it*. As with the neolithic circles the LHC looks both inward and outward by demonstrating that the builders certainly do know a lot about the workings of the cosmos at large. And like the fortified walls of Avebury the LHC has even had its rumour of being a container for potentially dangerous arcane power; there have been conjectures that it might have had the potential to generate a black hole or two, little gateways to unknown dimensions! All this only adds to the wow! effect and glory of its scientific priesthood as they wrestle with dark forces..... well, it would do if it were not for the fact that in these days of reactionary popularism and benighted fundamentalism the ivory tower establishment is less likely to get a blank cheque of kudos! They need to take note of this!

It might be old but engineering on a huge scale will always impress!

 For the priesthood of Avebury spectacle was the name of the game: The monumental level of construction, the dazzlingly white surfaces and the hint of them being responsible for the control of dangerous forces served to inflate the status of the priesthood in the minds of the plebeians. That priesthood need have done little but keep flashing their wares and imagination would have done the rest to keep up the mystique of power and fear of the unknown. Like a huge peacock's tail it doesn't necessarily have to serve any real purpose other than to say "We know this display impresses you!". In fact sometimes human beings can be caught in the act of outright deception in order to keep the mythology and mystique about themselves going. See for example the bazaar case of Bob Lazar where obfuscation, magic and mystery are an end in themselves.

***

In part II we go to the city of Bath where we will find another world of Stone's, stars, circles, status secrecy,  sacredness, mystique and masons. Another world of facades made to impress!

But there remains to tell of a curious ending to our visit at Avebury. We had just finished doing our tour of the circle and had entered the space in front of the National Trust museum when a low flying black helicopter passed over head! Knowing all those legendary associations of black helicopters with UFOs and corn circles I was absolutely gob-smacked! Moreover, even though I had been taking lots of pictures of Avebury I didn't quite have my camera at ready at that moment, just when I wanted it! Some people would say that's down to the camera imp who turns up and does his stuff whenever the strange makes a showing! I don't, of course, believe in black helicopter conspiracies but, I thought, what a fitting piece of symbolic synchronicity to end a day at Avebury! I was left chuckling over it for some time!

Footnote:

* As we know the construction of the LHC required a large number of specialists each very skilled in their particular specialism. It is an interesting question, then, as to the specialism break down at Avebury. The construction and running of the henge at Avebury would require manual skills, engineering skills, knowledge of the heavens and presumably priestly skills. Perhaps even ancillary tasks like catering and miscellaneous services were needed once the crowds converged on the site! An interesting exercise is to look for parallels between the specialisms needed at Avebury and the specialisms needed at the LHC!

NOTE: Link on New Grange: Quotes from the article:

One of the most tantalizing aspects of Newgrange is that it appears to be astronomically oriented: every year, on the morning of the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, sunlight penetrates the passage and illuminates the floor of the chamber. As the sun rises higher, the beam widens within the chamber so that the whole room becomes dramatically illuminated. This event lasts for 17 minutes, beginning around 9 am.

“To the Neolithic culture of the Boyne Valley, the winter solstice marked the start of the New Year– a sign of nature’s rebirth and promising renewed life to crops, animals and humans. It may also have served as a powerful symbol of the inevitable victory of life over death, perhaps promising new life to the spirits of the dead,” said World Heritage Ireland.