Daffodils and Anchorites, Iffley and the Splendour of Light

Chaucer was right: when spring comes, 'then longen folk to go on pilgrimages'. It isn't April yet, but we're having what they call a forward spring, and the young sun and Zephyrus' sweet breath impelled me forth into the open air yesterday. And where to go on a pilgrimage within walking distance of Oxford city centre? Iffley church, I decided. I've lived in Oxford for seven years, but I've never been to Iffley church, having somehow missed the fact that it's both historically interesting and extraordinarily beautiful. Canterbury would of course always be my first choice for a pilgrimage, but Iffley is a good substitute.


So, having decided on Iffley, I set off along the river. It was sunny with the cold sun of early spring, with almost too much light to be comfortable. There were lots of people around - cycling, walking their dogs, rowing (well, this is Oxford). And there was blossom on the trees, and lots of it:




The small birds were making melody very loudly, almost drowning out the ever-present sound of traffic.


Iffley is the kind of church you have to see to believe in. It was built in 1170, at the expense of the local Norman lord of the manor, and in grand style. The outside is covered with Romanesque carving, roughly contemporary with my Kentish favourites at Barfreston and the Bournes, but preserved with a crispness even those two lack; these could have been carved yesterday:




The church itself is unusually long and narrow, since when the original building needed to be extended, previous generations decided to build forwards rather than sideways (I seem to recall the church guide said something about structural reasons for this). And so when you tear yourself away from the carving and peer in, you see something like a long, dark corridor, with light glinting off the altar-cross at the very end:


I was there at about half past three in the afternoon, so the sun was declining a little in the west; it was behind the west window so brightly that there was too much light for my camera:


But if one is prepared to wait a little, the sun always moves in the end; then the west window looks like this:


All the stained glass is delightful; there are two especially good modern windows, including this one by John Piper:


This was installed in 1995 and is based on a story which is most familiar to me as the subject of Charles Causley's The Animals' Carol - a Latin dialogue between various animals at the time of Christ's birth. "Christus natus est," crows the cock; "Quando? Quando?" quacks the goose; "In hac nocte," croaks the raven; "Ubi? Ubi?" asks the owl; and the lamb bleats, "In Bethlehem." You can read Causley's version of the story (which is longer, and matches up animals and words rather differently) here. My mother loved this book when I was a little girl, and taught me to love it; I used to go around chanting, "Cui? cui? rings the chough, On the strong, sea-haunted bluff" without having the slightest idea what a chough was. Anyway, for that reason I was very happy to see this window.

The other window is equally beautiful, and all the more so because I had seen so much blossom on my walk along the river:


This is even newer than the Piper window - just a few years old, I think, and so new that the parish website makes no mention of it. But a blossoming crucifix is one of my favourite things, and this one is gorgeous.

I don't know if it was because these windows are so lovely or because the body of the church was so dark, but I was very conscious of how the light was falling. I took lots and lots of pictures like this, of the coloured light thrown by the west windows:



Even the windows which were less beautiful in themselves had a kind of glory to them, as if they had extra power of trapping light.





I lingered in the empty church for a long time, taking photographs, and thinking, and reading a bit of St Anselm's prayer to St Mary (this is St Mary's church). Then I went outside to study some more of the carving:






I was particularly fond of this collection - a ladybird, a cobweb, and Norman carving. To see such fragile transient things wandering freely across a stone that has looked exactly the same for eight hundred years, as sharp as when its carver set down his tools - at such moments, time is nothing at all.


The churchyard was full of daffodils, a different kind of gold to the honey colour of the stone, or the chilly splendour of the sunlight.


This is the site of one of Iffley's unusual features, the remains of an anchorite's cell:


The anchoress who lived here was called Annora. I wonder if there were daffodils in her day.

When I at last thought it was time to return home, I walked back a little way through Iffley village, which is so golden-stone-and-thatched-cottagey that it's hard to believe we're so close to busy Oxford:


I cheated by getting the bus back into town (don't tell me Chaucer's pilgrims wouldn't have done that if they had the chance) and as I arrived in the High, the sun was beginning to set.



Then I went to Evensong at Christ Church, and by the time I left it was almost dark and the stars were out - the brightest stars I've seen in a long time. It was Venus and Jupiter, together in the western sky above Tom Tower. At Evensong we sang 'Immortal, invisible':

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, thy great Name we praise.

Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might;
Thy justice like mountains high soaring above
Thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love.

To all life thou givest—to both great and small;
In all life thou livest, the true life of all;
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,
And wither and perish—but naught changeth thee.

Great Father of glory, pure Father of light,
Thine angels adore thee, all veiling their sight;
All laud we would render: O help us to see
’Tis only the splendour of light hideth thee.


After the daffodils, I could only think of 'flowers that glide' at the third verse; but at the fourth I thought of the light which was with me in Iffley church, the light too bright to be captured by a little camera, and I thought - maybe.

Audi, benigne Conditor, 'Lustne, mylde Wrouhte'

Gregory the Great, from a late 12th/early 13th-century English manuscript (BL Royal 6 B II, f. 1)

This is a Middle English translation of the Lent hymn 'Audi, benigne Conditor', by the Franciscan friar William Herebert (c.1270-1333):

Lustne, mylde Wrouhte, oure bones wyth wepinge
In þys holy uastinge, vourti dawes lestynge.
Holy secher of monnes þouht, þou wost oure brotelnesse;
To hem þat beth yturnd to þe graunte vorȝyfnesse.
Meche, vorsoht, we habbeht agult; vorȝyf hem þat knoulecheth.
To worshype of þyn oune nome, to sunvol mon be leche.
Graunte ous pyne wyþouteuorth þe body wyth vastinge,
Þat oure gost wyþynneuorth veste vrom sunnynge.
Graunte ous, Holy Trinite, þat in Godhede art on,
Þat þe ȝyft of leyntes vast notfol boe to mon. Amen.

That is:

Hear, merciful Creator, our prayers with weeping
In this holy fasting, forty days lasting.
Holy searcher of man’s thought, thou knowest our brittleness; [frailty]
To them who are turned towards thee, grant forgiveness.
Much, truly, we have sinned; forgive them that acknowledge it.
For the honour of thine own name, be physician to sinful man.
Grant us so to mortify the body outwardly with fasting
That our souls inwardly may fast from sinning.
Grant us, Holy Trinity, who in Godhead art one,
That the gift of Lent’s fast may be beneficial to man. Amen.

William Herebert was a prolific translator of Latin hymns into English verse, and the purpose of his translations was probably to aid in his preaching, making Latin hymns available to an English-speaking audience. To this end, his translations are often dramatic and memorable - once heard, they would stay in your head. This translation makes particularly skillful use of rhyme, both between and within lines: 'this holy fasting, forty days lasting' is my favourite example. It works much better read aloud than seen on the page; in lines 7-8, for instance, Herebert produces a very nice parallelism between fasting outwardly (wyþouteuorth) and inwardly (wyþynneuorth), the echo between the words underlining the point that one kind of fasting supports the other.

As for vocabulary, Herebert's language is always interesting as evidence of how extensive, flexible and creative Early Middle English religious vocabulary was. It's a vocabulary largely derived from Old English, and much of it is still recognisable today, although archaic: examples in this poem include mild ('merciful'), bones ('prayers' - as in 'boon'), leche ('physician'), ghost ('spirit, soul'), and brittleness ('frailty') - the last an especially poetic touch. In the opening phrase of the hymn, 'Lustne, mylde Wrouhte', Herebert translates Latin conditor, 'maker, builder' with a version of the noun wright (from Old English wyrhta), which gave us the second element in words like wheelwright and playwright. Herebert also uses this word in his translation of 'Conditor Alme Siderum' ('Holy wrouhte of sterres bryht'), whereas in his version of 'Veni Creator Spiritus' ('Com, Shuppere, Holy Gost') he translates creator with shuppere, from Old English scyppend, 'creator, one who shapes'. It's interesting to see Herebert making a deliberate choice about which word to use, and preserving the distinction between the Latin terms with the English vocabulary available to him.

Here's the Latin text of the hymn, which is attributed to Gregory the Great:

Audi, benigne Conditor,
nostras preces cum fletibus,
sacrata in abstinentia
fusas quadragenaria.

Scrutator alme cordium,
infirma tu scis virium;
ad te reversis exhibe
remissionis gratiam.

Multum quidem peccavimus,
sed parce confitentibus,
tuique laude nominis
confer medelam languidis.

Sic corpus extra conteri
dona per abstinentiam,
ieiunet ut mens sobria
a labe prorsus criminum.

Praesta, beata Trinitas,
concede, simplex Unitas,
ut fructuosa sint tuis
haec parcitatis munera. Amen.



For comparison, here's a later English translation, from Hymns Ancient and Modern (translated by the compilers):

O Maker of the world, give ear
In pitying love vouchsafe to hear
The prayers our contrite spirits raise
In this our fast of forty days.

All hearts are open unto thee,
Thou knowest each infirmity;
Now, as we turn to seek thy face,
Pour down on us thy pardoning grace.

Help us to grow in self-control,
To make the body serve the soul:
So may thy loving-kindness bless
Our fast with fruits of holiness.

St Felix, the Suffolk Lyonesse, and the Ramsey Relic Race

St Felix at Fritton

Today is the feast of St Felix, who according to Bede introduced Christianity to the kingdom of East Anglia in the first half of the seventh century. Working with the aid of the ill-fated King Sigeberht, he established churches, a school, and an episcopal see at a place called Dommoc (perhaps to be identified with the town of Dunwich, which has since disappeared almost entirely into the sea). Felix had help from the newly-founded church of Canterbury, and was consecrated as bishop by Honorius, the last surviving member of the Gregorian mission to England; he then proceeded to spread Christianity in the world of Sutton Hoo. Bede, in etymological mood, tells us (in Historia Ecclesiastica, II.15):

Bishop Felix... came to Archbishop Honorius from the Burgundian region, where he had been raised and ordained, and, by his own desire, was sent by him to preach the word of life to the nation of the Angles. Nor did he fail in his purpose; for, like a good farmer, he reaped a rich harvest of believers. In accord with the meaning of his own name, he freed the whole province from its ancient iniquity and infelicity (infelicitate), brought it to the faith and works of righteousness, and guided it to eternal felicity (perpetuae felicitatis).

Effigy possibly of St Felix, in Norwich Cathedral

Felix was bishop for seventeen years, until his death on 8 March 647/8. His relics were preserved at Soham, but the shrine and community there were destroyed in the ninth century by a Viking raid. In the eleventh century Cnut gave permission for the monks of Ramsey Abbey to take possession of Felix's relics (as king of England Cnut was involved in a number of such events, probably as a strategic form of reparation to the English church for Viking attacks). There's a memorable story in Ramsey's own chronicle, the Chronicon Abbatiae Ramesiensis, which claims that when the Ramsey monks were sailing home with Felix's relics through the Fens they were pursued by the monks of Ely, also in a boat, eager to have the precious relics themselves. A miraculous fog descended, in which the Ely monks lost their way, and our Ramsey heroes were able to escape with the relics. Rivalry between Ramsey and Ely, two great Fenland monasteries, is a regular feature of their medieval history, and since Soham is closer to Ely than it is to Ramsey you can see why the Ely monks might feel a little aggrieved! It's a great story (though generically typical), but even the Ramsey chronicler who records it expresses doubts about its veracity - with engaging frankness, he says 'the reader is not required to believe the story, provided that he feels it to be certain that every part of the relics of St Felix were translated to the Church of Ramsey, and honourably deposited there'. As indeed there's no reason to doubt.

St Felix in Norwich Cathedral

I was in Suffolk last spring, and visited Dunwich, which was then full of daffodils:


These are the ruins of the thirteenth-century priory of Greyfriars, the only part of the medieval town which survives. Coastal erosion has encroached on everything else that remains of what was once a substantial settlement. It's still going on at a fast rate - Wikipedia has a fantastically evocative list of the buildings which have been swallowed by the sea, including a picture of a church which was standing in 1904 and is now lost except for one single gravestone. The cliffs are getting ever closer to Greyfriars; it may not be long before this too is gone.


Sunken villages have such romantic appeal! Apparently local legend claims that at certain times and tides the church bells of Dunwich can still be heard ringing beneath the waves. A similar belief is common to myths of such places all over the world - the past echoing through the present.



Read more about 'Britain's Atlantis' here.

Time Stops: 'Meeting Point' and 'Dining-Room Tea'

I feel I've been posting a lot about the passage of time, which is something which I think about pretty much constantly (it's sort of my job). But here are two poems about time stopping, just for a moment.


Dining-Room Tea

Rupert Brooke


When you were there, and you, and you,
Happiness crowned the night; I too,
Laughing and looking, one of all,
I watched the quivering lamplight fall
On plate and flowers and pouring tea
And cup and cloth; and they and we
Flung all the dancing moments by
With jest and glitter. Lip and eye
Flashed on the glory, shone and cried,
Improvident, unmemoried;
And fitfully and like a flame
The light of laughter went and came.
Proud in their careless transience moved
The changing faces that I loved.

Till suddenly, and otherwhence,
I looked upon your innocence.
For lifted clear and still and strange
From the dark woven flow of change
Under a vast and starless sky
I saw the immortal moment lie.
One Instant I, an instant, knew
As God knows all. And it and you
I, above Time, oh, blind! could see
In witless immortality.

I saw the marble cup; the tea,
Hung on the air, an amber stream;
I saw the fire's unglittering gleam,
The painted flame, the frozen smoke.
No more the flooding lamplight broke
On flying eyes and lips and hair;
But lay, but slept unbroken there,
On stiller flesh, and body breathless,
And lips and laughter stayed and deathless,
And words on which no silence grew.
Light was more alive than you.

For suddenly, and otherwhence,
I looked on your magnificence.
I saw the stillness and the light,
And you, august, immortal, white,
Holy and strange; and every glint
Posture and jest and thought and tint
Freed from the mask of transiency,
Triumphant in eternity,
Immote, immortal.

Dazed at length
Human eyes grew, mortal strength
Wearied; and Time began to creep.
Change closed about me like a sleep.
Light glinted on the eyes I loved.
The cup was filled. The bodies moved.
The drifting petal came to ground.
The laughter chimed its perfect round.
The broken syllable was ended.
And I, so certain and so friended,
How could I cloud, or how distress,
The heaven of your unconsciousness?
Or shake at Time's sufficient spell,
Stammering of lights unutterable?
The eternal holiness of you,
The timeless end, you never knew,
The peace that lay, the light that shone.
You never knew that I had gone
A million miles away, and stayed
A million years. The laughter played
Unbroken round me; and the jest
Flashed on. And we that knew the best
Down wonderful hours grew happier yet.
I sang at heart, and talked, and eat,
And lived from laugh to laugh, I too,
When you were there, and you, and you.



and:


Meeting Point

Louis MacNeice


Time was away and somewhere else,
There were two glasses and two chairs
And two people with the one pulse
(Somebody stopped the moving stairs)
Time was away and somewhere else.

And they were neither up nor down;
The stream's music did not stop
Flowing through heather, limpid brown,
Although they sat in a coffee shop
And they were neither up nor down.

The bell was silent in the air
Holding its inverted poise -
Between the clang and clang a flower,
A brazen calyx of no noise:
The bell was silent in the air.

The camels crossed the miles of sand
That stretched around the cups and plates;
The desert was their own, they planned
To portion out the stars and dates:
The camels crossed the miles of sand.

Time was away and somewhere else.
The waiter did not come, the clock
Forgot them and the radio waltz
Came out like water from a rock:
Time was away and somewhere else.

Her fingers flicked away the ash
That bloomed again in tropic trees:
Not caring if the markets crash
When they had forests such as these,
Her fingers flicked away the ash.

God or whatever means the Good
Be praised that time can stop like this,
That what the heart has understood
Can verify in the body's peace
God or whatever means the Good.

Time was away and she was here
And life no longer what it was,
The bell was silent in the air
And all the room one glow because
Time was away and she was here.


Here's 'Meeting Point' as read by MacNeice (ignore the video). One of the things I like about both these poems is that while they are about freezing a single moment of time, they also encapsulate, perfectly though inadvertently, their own time-periods: an Edwardian tea-party of 1911, all china cups and flowers and firelight, and the glamorous 1930s, escalators and a radio waltz and cigarette-smoke. And markets crashing, of course. That verse, which I think is my favourite, always reminds me of this Gershwin song:

Fordwich: "I feel I've only to turn my head to see them on the road behind me"

A while ago I posted some extracts from a rather eccentric Victorian history of Fordwich in Kent, A History of the Town and Port of Fordwich, written in 1895 by a clergyman named C. Eveleigh Woodruff. Fordwich is a tiny village now but it's actually a town, the smallest place in England to have a town council, because in the Middle Ages it was the chief port for Canterbury. Well, I should let Mr Woodruff tell it:

The little village of Fordwich is situated on the right bank of the river Stour, about two-and-a-half miles below Canterbury. The excursionist from the Isle of Thanet to the Cathedral city may notice, as he descends the hill from Westbere, a cluster of red-tiled houses, and the neat, broach spire of a church half-a-mile away to the left, but there is nothing to tempt him to inspect more closely what appears to be a commmonplace and not very healthily-situated village; nor would his curiosity meet with much reward should he be induced to linger. Not many of the houses are externally interesting, and the church, though bearing traces of great antiquity, would by the casual observer probably be pronounced rather below than above the standard generally attained in the neighbourhood. The visitor may have been told that the place was once a corporate town and a member of the Cinque Ports’ confederacy; but, without further assistance, he is scarcely likely to identify the humble building of timber and plaster, opposite to the ‘Fordwich Arms’, as the ancient Court Hall, or to suspect that it contains the records of a municipal life extending over more than six hundred years. Nevertheless such is the case; and the town, in spite of its complete insignificance in the present day, possesses a history of exceptional interest.

It really does; and this book is that delightfully Victorian thing, a mixture of sound scholarship and quirky, irrelevant facts. The author consulted the archives of Fordwich, which provide a fascinating picture of a medieval town's self-regulation; but he also feels able to note at one point, describing an ancient house in the village, that "in summer time this garden is well worth a visit, for it contains a very choice collection of old-fashioned flowers". Now that's useful scholarship.

I posted some of Woodruff's extracts from the archives about trouble between vicar and parishioners, and here are a few more passages which amused me - with pictures of said 'commonplace and not very healthily-situated village' and its church.

This is the tiny Town Hall, built in 1544. It's said to be the oldest and the smallest still in use. Like Chilham and Wickhambreaux, Fordwich was used as a location in the 1944 Powell and Pressburger film A Canterbury Tale, going to make up the fictional village of Chillingbourne, one train-stop west of Canterbury (the site of Chilham; Fordwich is the same distance away, but to the east). A Canterbury Tale is the oddest but loveliest of films, a wartime love-letter to 'deep England' - to history and the English land, and all its odd quirks and all the odd, ordinary, but glorious people who have made its story. It's an eccentric but deeply heartfelt response to Chaucer's poem, opening with the jolly pilgrims of his Canterbury pilgrimage, but turning with a jolt to modern warplanes in the skies above Kent, tanks lumbering through rural lanes. The pilgrims in this film are from the twentieth century, brought to Canterbury because of a world torn apart by war: a land-girl mourning the loss of her fiance, a British soldier about to be sent overseas, and a homesick American GI. They're brave, clever, confident young people, but at heart they are all, even if they don't know it, pilgrims in search of blessings, and they have an urgent, painful need Chaucer's pilgrims never manifest - aching grief, longing for a distant home, lost idealism and hope. This film is actually more interested in and engaged with the idea of pilgrimage than The Canterbury Tales is, and with the image of Canterbury (which Chaucer's pilgrims never reach) as England's holy city, the place where all roads lead. The plot really makes no sense at all, but the feeling in this film is utterly heartbreaking.

Anyway, you can see a loving recreation of the town hall's upper chamber in the film, from about 13.00 onwards (not the real thing - I should think the real town hall was too small to film in!). The lower floor is occupied by a tiny jail cell, of which Woodruff observes:

During the present century, this place of detention has been very sparingly used. At the time of the inquiry held by the Commissioners, in 1835, so seldom had his services been required, that the old gaoler was not aware that he had been removed from office and another person appointed in his stead.

Some local laws could be eccentric. This was their way of settling disputes about property boundaries:

The claimant or defendant as they shall agree, shall place his right foot so that his great toe shall extend to the extremity of the land which he claims, and he shall put his foot to the wall if he claim the wall, and shall say: "Hear this ye good men and show J or W my opponent that all the land which I measure with my foot is mine, so help me all Holy Saints," and this custom is called Feche and Have.

You see how sleepy and full of weeds the River Stour is now, as it is in Canterbury too - a dreamy quiet river. But all the stone to build Canterbury Cathedral was landed here when it was brought across the Channel from Normandy. It had other practical uses too:

If a stranger appear as a prosecutor accusing a man of [the town] of felony whether committed within or without the [jurisdiction of the town] the prosecutor shall come to the boundary fully equipped as is fit for a prosecutor to be. Then when he comes to the town he shall be led to a certain running water called ‘Stour’, and in that water he shall stand up to his navel with all his equipment prepared to prove his appeal. Then the accused shall come in a boat with three poles to oppose the prosecutor clothed in a garment called ‘a storrie’ with an instrument called ‘an ore’ three yards long and the boat shall be made fast to the quay by a cord and he shall fight with the said prosecutor until the duel between them is decided.

That conjures up some amusing images...

When it comes to the church, Woodruff is of the opinion that "the present east window is a wretched modern contrivance". The parish appears to have agreed with him, because it was replaced by this beautiful east window which bears the date 1931:


The Norman church has some interesting features, especially this stone:


It's a block of limestone which legend says was the resting-place of the relics of St Augustine of Canterbury. The carving has been dated to the twelfth century and the whole thing is not unlike the kind of monument used to mark the place of a high-status burial; so perhaps it really was associated with St Augustine (the site of whose tomb is visible among the ruins of St Augustine's abbey in Canterbury) or with another of the Canterbury saints whose relics were lost at the Reformation. A similar claim to be St Augustine's resting-place is made of an (empty) tomb now in Chilham church - they can't both be right, but I suppose we might easily imagine such things being moved from Canterbury to local churches for safe-keeping, their original significance being forgotten. Fordwich belonged to St Augustine's abbey in the medieval period, and it's not difficult to see how a 'saint's tomb from St Augustine's' might become 'St Augustine's tomb' in local legend.



There's some gorgeous medieval glass in the church too:

This seems to be the remains of an Annunciation scene (note the lily). And this is the Coronation of the Virgin, in two facing lights:

And a pair of evangelists in blue and white:

And a fierce little lion:

Thinking of Mr Colpeper, I was pleased to see memorials to local magistrates in the church, especially this one to Friend Tomlin, who died in 1819 - 'senior jurat of this town' and father of its then mayor.

I wonder what he would have said to a GI, an organist and a land-girl if they came in search of blessings.