Guest blog post for York Mystery Plays

http://www.yorkmysteryplays.co.uk/guest-blog-trail-mysteries-eleanor-bloomfield/

Have you seen the York Mystery Plays?

Just received university ethics clearance for interviewing people involved with the York Mystery Plays. Now I need people to talk to! Please get in touch or help spread the word!

YORK EVOLVING: CHANGE AND PERMANENCE IN THE 

YORK MYSTERY PLAY CYCLE

CALL FOR INFORMATION

Eleanor Bloomfield, a PhD candidate at the University of Auckland, is researching modern revivals of the York mystery play cycle and is seeking first-hand accounts of the plays. Anyone who has seen, or been involved with, any performances of the York plays from 1951 to the present day, and is willing to be interviewed regarding their memories, impressions and experiences, please contact e.bloomfield@auckland.ac.nz or write to Eleanor Bloomfield, The University of Auckland (English, Drama and Writing Studies), 14A Symonds St, 206-646, Auckland 1010, New Zealand. Confidential interviews will be held in Britain between March and September 2018. Approved by the University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee on 10th October 2017 for three years. Reference Number 020006.

PhD thesis | Preliminary research proposal

Having explored the performance of piety in medieval York for my MA thesis, my doctoral research will expand on this by examining how and why the city’s cycle of medieval mystery plays has been revived in (and for) the present day, becoming an integral part of modern-day York’s identity and culture. I aim to identify the cultural need which has looked to revive and sustain the York play cycle for modern and local purposes, working towards a fuller understanding of the enduring attraction of the mystery plays, and their apparent resilience, or adaptability, to huge changes in culture, language and religious belief.

An important aspect of modern revivals is dealing with the cycle’s overt Christianity. In a multi-cultural, increasingly secular society, the medieval idea of ‘the plays as piety’ no longer holds true. Nor does the cycle’s medieval function as a vehicle for religious expression and a medium for working through religious and theological tensions and concerns. Why, then, do the plays continue to capture the imaginations of both directors and audiences? Modern productions of the plays typically place emphasis on the cycle’s communal and social aspect as well as its importance to York’s cultural and social heritage. Arguably, these were roles also performed by the plays in the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, the cycle’s religious heritage is undeniable; directors must find a way to balance this with the beliefs (or lack thereof) and expectations of modern audiences.

Paying particular attention to the 1951 Festival of Britain revival (the first large-scale production of the plays since the Middle Ages) and subsequent productions, consideration will also be given to the logistics of staging modern productions of the play cycle and the many decisions any director must make - which text or script should be used? Should the language be modernised or the Middle English retained? Which sections of the cycle should be included and which left out, or should a performance of the entire cycle be attempted? How can these medieval religious plays be presented in a way that makes them accessible and relatable to a modern audience? Should the plays be staged in the ‘traditional’ manner on pageant wagons, or on a fixed-place stage? To what extent should the audience be involved in the performance?

Watch this space...

A new mystery play?

This article, describing a Christmas nativity play performed by an entire English village (Calne, in Wiltshire), caught my eye because the cultural and communal aspects (the whole town involved) and, arguably, the religious one ('bringing the Bible to life') are similar to that of the medieval mystery plays. Since my PhD thesis will focus largely on the York mystery plays in modern performance, looking at the cultural and social need which has looked to revive the play cycle in (and for) the present day, it makes an interesting point for comparison and contrast.

As a footnote, some scholars suggest that the British tradition of the Christmas nativity play is directly descended from the mystery play cycles, the only trace of the original medieval drama to survive in modern-day British culture. The people of York, where the mystery plays are still very much alive and kicking, might take issue with that last point!

The Soundscapes of the York Mystery Plays

This project (led by the University of York and part of the Being Human Festival of the Humanities) seeks to recreate the soundscapes of the medieval mystery plays. It also incorporates audio material from modern productions of the plays. For more information see:

https://marianajlopez.wordpress.com/the-soundscapes-of-the-york-mystery-plays/

http://www.york.ac.uk/tftv/news-events/events/2016/soundscapes-york-mystery-plays-4/

http://beinghumanfestival.org/event/the-soundscapes-of-the-york-mystery-plays/

York Minster Mystery Plays June 2016

'Have you come far?' 

- York Minster Mystery Plays volunteer to me

This post is rather late, given that we saw the plays on the 22nd June and it is now the beginning of September... still, better late than never! The reason for the delay is that I have been writing up a review of the plays as an academic paper, and my little brain does not like working on two things at once. Academia comes before blogging, so there you are. However, now that I have finished my paper, which is currently languishing in a long-suffering editor's inbox awaiting review, it is time to turn my attention to my rather neglected blog.

The Minster production of the mystery plays was the original inspiration for this year's English trip - their timing, just a few of months after handing in my MA thesis, was happily fortuitous and an excellent excuse for another trip back to Blighty. So back to Blighty I went, or more specifically back to York - this time with both my Grandmas, which made it even more special.

Despite being born a Lancashire rose I am very fond of the white rose county and of York in particular, which despite visiting only twice I have quite fallen in love with. So it was very nice to be back!

We went to a matinee performance of the plays, which turned out to be a good thing as the running time, billed at three and a half hours, ended up being nearer four. Thanks to jetlag, if we had gone in the evening I would probably have been gently snoozing long before Doomsday. On second thoughts, perhaps I wouldn't, as the Minster - all stone and shadow - was distinctly chilly.

By happy forethought, we had front row seats. It was a full house - testament to the popularity of the plays and this production in particular, which does seem to have been a fairly resounding success both with the critics and the general public. The Minster's nave had been converted into seating for around a thousand people - the third nearest the stage was flat but the back two-thirds was raked scaffolding, soaring up and back towards the West Window. 

The stage and set were huge, spread over four playing levels and linked by a series of wide, broad steps. Like the seating, the set reached upwards and backwards, almost to the top of the organ atop the quire screen. This kind of scale was of course the complete antithesis to the original performances of the play cycle, which were staged on small, mobile pageant wagons, but it worked well. Firstly, it evoked the scale and sweep of the cycle, which spans Biblical history from Creation to Doom, and secondly, well, such a big stage was necessary to accommodate the huge cast! This numbered roughly a hundred and forty, all except one (Philip McGinley, playing Christ) unpaid volunteers and many of them from the local community who have been performing in various productions of the plays for years (sometimes decades).

Out of so many characters, it is hard to pick favourites, but Philip McGinley was very good as Christ - though he puzzled me somewhat by making his first entrance clad rather incongruously in jeans and T-shirt but appearing thereafter in more conventional whitey-grey robes. Toby Gordon, as Lucifer, was (perhaps worryingly...) even better, but he reminded me of Dominic Cooper and once this thought had popped into my head it wouldn't pop out again. Ruby Baker as Mary and Mark Comer (one of the recurring devotees of the mystery plays) as Joseph were also excellent. Abraham I remember chiefly for the fact that he had to read his lines off a piece of paper hidden under his cloak (clearly someone was ill and he gamely stepped into the breach), Noah and Mrs Noah for their comic sparring, and Herod for his massive golden cape which spread over the entire stage and required an army of minions to manoeuver.

This version presented eighteen pageants (the original medieval play cycle has about forty-seven), though several of these consisted of two or three of the original short pageants run together into a longer section. The Middle English script had been 'lightly modernised,' retaining the alliterative rhythm of the original while introducing a few modern touches, such as Noah's 'Don't touch - the paint's not dry!' (said to God, inspecting the ark) and Lucifer's wail of 'It's not fair!' while being thrown into hell.

My two favourite episodes were the Creation and the Passion - the former for its colour, light and incredibly lifelike animal puppets, and the latter (which is really the heart of the entire cycle) for its solemn grandeur. Runners-up were the Nativity, for its tableaux effect, and the Entry into Jerusalem, for its movement and momentum.

No photographs of the actual performance - alas, this was not the free and easy Pop-Up Globe. But there are quite a few on the production's website, here.

2018: Summer of Mysteries

Not one but two productions of English mystery play cycles are planned for the summer of 2018: a wagon production of the (abridged) York cycle, and a version of the Chester plays.

Keep an eye on their respective websites (York Mystery Play Supporters Trust and Chester Mystery Plays).

‘It's not fair! You’ve not seen the last of me —’

Lucifer, The Last Judgement

Mike Poulton, The York Mystery Plays in a New Version (London: Nick Hern Books, 2016), 123.

Colour and light: English stained glass

York Minster

When I was in York last year this was all that could be seen of the Minster's Great East Window...

But happily, conservation work on it is now almost completed and the window is once again on display.

The window, one of the largest surviving medieval windows in the country, tells the story of the beginning and end of the world, as well as incorporating various clerical figures connected with York and the north of England.

This is the St William window in York Minster, depicting William's rather eventful life and some of the miracles attributed to him. There is are more detailed pictures, and an article about the restoration of the window, here.

All Saints North Street

The St Anne window in All Saints North Street, donated by the Blackburn family. This window is now the East Window behind the altar, although this is probably not its original positioning. St Anne, to whom the Blackburns seem to have had a special devotion, is in the centre light, flanked by St John the Baptist on the left and St Christopher (also a favourite saint of the Blackburns) on the right.

And here are the junior Nicholas and Margaret Blackburn, kneeling piously in the bottom left corner of the window. Opposite them, in the bottom right corner [not shown here] are Nicholas and Margaret senior.

Church of St Mary Magdalene, Brampton
(Detailed historical and architectural information about this church, which dates back to the 13th century, can be found here.)

This window (not medieval!) shows, from left to right, St Fidelia, St Peter, St Stephen and St Perpetua (all early martyrs). The small bottom lights are memorials to the soldiers of World War I (detail below).

Ruth - who took my fancy because of the lovely red colouring of her dress, and because I have never seen her in any other window.

This is a tiny little window set low down into the chancel wall.

The West Window, above the West Door.

Behind the scenes of the York Mystery plays

via

 

Interview with Joseph (Mark Comer)

Interview with Young Mary (Ruby Barker)

Interview with the designer, Max Jones

Props department

Much more here: https://yorkminster.org/mysteryplays2016/behind-the-scenes.html

And a couple more reviews:

The Guardian (again)

The Yorker

Next week... I shall be seeing the plays for myself!

2016 York Mystery Plays: reviews

via

The 2016 run of the York Mystery plays has opened to fairly resounding critical acclaim. I spent a happy half-hour reading through the various reviews:

The Guardian
York Press
Yorkshire Post
The Reviews Hub
York Mix
One & Other Creative: Theatre Review

... and am looking forward to writing my own review after seeing the plays on the 22nd June :)

Corpus Christi

                             Laudus thema specialis,                             

Panus vivus et vitalis

Hodie proponitur.

Quem in sacrae mensa caenae,

Turbae fratrum duodenae

Datum non ambigitur.

Sit laus plena, sit sonora,

Sit jucunda, sit decora

Mentis jubilatio.

Dies enim solemnis agitur,

In quae mensae prima recolitur

Hujus institutio.

From Lauda Sion (sequence for Corpus Christi Mass), written by Thomas Aquinas c. 1264.

Today is Corpus Christi, the feast of Christ's Body and Blood. This feast is not a fixed one but varies with the date of Easter; it is celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday and therefore falls between late May and late June.

During the English Middle Ages this feast was one of the most important on the liturgical calendar, probably because it falls very close to Midsummer, when people are in the mood for festival and celebration. English weather being what it is, this is also most likely why it was the feastday with which the mystery play cycles - performed outdoors and needing sixteen or more hours of daylight - came to be associated. York, Chester and Coventry all had play cycles which were performed every year on, or very close to, the Corpus Christi feast.

Pope Urban IV had established the feast in 1264, but it was first celebrated in England only in the early fourteenth century. When it did arrive, however, the feast seems very quickly to have been incorporated into medieval English religious and even national identity. (Even today the feast is still one of England's traditional Holy Days of Obligation.)

Throughout the Middle Ages, devotion to the body of Christ - both as Eucharist and the human body which suffered on the cross - was intense. This devotion to Christ’s body and the significance which it held as metaphor, symbol and Eucharistic reality in (most of) medieval English society has been well documented by scholars including Miri Rubin, Sarah Beckwith and Tony Corbett. The idea of the body as a metaphor for a unified society goes back to Aristotle, but was enthusiastically adopted by what Beckwith has called “medieval political theorists.”1

This image brings together the two aspects of the Body of Christ that so fascinated the Middle Ages - the Eucharist, consecrated here by the priest at Mass, and the human body of Christ which suffered on the cross. As the priest holds up the Host towards the Crucifix, the two are visually linked, a powerful image which was repeated during every Mass at the Elevation of the Host. At the Elevation, the Lay Folks Mass Book instructs the people to "knelande holde vp both þi handes,/And so þo leuacioun pou be-halde,/for þat is he þat iudas salde,/and sithen was scourged & don on rode"2 - an instruction which explicitly describes the relationship between the Crucifixion and the Host. Image via

The image of the body of Christ was invoked and “presented by the official church of the late Middle Ages as a unifying symbol;”3 Christ Himself was seen as “the bringer of unity.”4 Yet, paradoxically, Christ’s body was at the same time yet a source of conflict and discord, “the arena where social identity was negotiated, where the relationship of self and society, subjectivity and social process found a point of contact and conflict.”5 The metaphor of Christ’s body for the wholeness of society was fractured and splintered by different groups who each sought to claim Christ as their own. The Peasants’ Revolt, for example, “was based around identification with the figura of Christ, seeing in him a poor peasant like them.”6

Throughout the York mystery play cycle, the fracturing of Christ’s body, both metaphorically and literally, happens again and again: the Corpus Christi is the cycle’s overarching concern, holding it together as a united entity, but the different pageants of the various guilds focus on how one particular aspect of it relates to each guild’s own (worldly) identity, interests and concerns. Thus the Mercers’ Doomsday is concerned with buying and selling; in the Bakers’ Last Supper the guild’s commercial product, bread, is linked none-too-subtly with the consecrated bread of the Last Supper and of the Mass; the Pinners’ Crucifixio has the guild members, in their roles as the soldiers nailing Christ to the cross, performing and discussing their own craft, tools and materials. 

Given that the Corpus Christi feast centres on transubstantiation, the most important tenet of Catholic belief and the essential difference between Catholicism and Protestantism, the feast was (unsurprisingly) attacked during the English Reformation. Under Edward IV the feast was abolished in 1548. The York Corpus Christi plays managed to survive until 1569, albeit with censorship; many of the pageants focusing the Virgin Mary were censored or repressed, and those dealing with explicitly Catholic doctrine were also selectively 'edited.' This happened with the York Last Supper pageant - the manuscript leaf containing the play's central episode is now mysteriously missing! With the page gone, there is of course no way of saying with certainty what it contained. But, given the closeness with which the other pageants in the cycle follow their scriptural and liturgical counterparts, it is highly likely that the missing page, which occurs precisely where we would expect Christ’s performance of the transubstantiation to occur in the sequence of the play, ran along the lines of:

... this is My Body which shall be delivered for you; this do for the commemoration of Me... This chalice is the new testament in My blood; this do ye, as often as you shall drink, for the commemoration of Me. For as often as you shall eat this bread, and drink this chalice, you shall show the death of the Lord until He come. Therefore whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink of the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord

 - which are the words of the Epistle in the Corpus Christi feastday Mass.

Footnotes

1. Sarah Beckwith, Christ’s Body: Identity, Culture, and Society in Late Medieval Writings (London, New York: Routledge, 1993), 27.

2. "Kneeling, hold up both thy hands,/And so behold the elevation,/For that is He that Judus sold,/and after was scourged and died on the cross [rood]."

3. Tony Corbett, The Laity, the Church and the Mystery Plays: A Drama of Belonging (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009), 199.

4. Ibid., 201.

5. Beckwith, Christ’s Body, 22.

6. Corbett, The Laity, the Church, and the Mystery Plays, 198.

This post contains material adapted from Chapter 1.2 of my MA thesis.

'Firste when I this worlde hadde wroght' | Opening of the York Mystery Plays

The York Mystery Plays open tomorrow (Thursday 26th May), the feast of Corpus Christi - the day on which they were originally performed back in the Middle Ages.

This is a time-lapse video of the stage and seating being built inside York Minster:

Ego sum Alpha et O: vita, via, veritas, primus et novissimus.
I am gracious and great, God without beginning,
I am maker unmade, all might is in me;
I am life, and way unto wealth-winning,
I am foremost and first, as I bid shall it be.
My blessing of blee shall be blending,
And hielding, from harm to be hiding,
My body in bliss ay abiding,
Unending, without any ending.

Opening of The Fall of the Angels [the first pageant in the play cycle], from York Mystery Plays: A Selection in Modern Spelling, edited by Richard Beadle and Pamela King (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
 

The Blackburns: Family Tree

During the research for my MA thesis I dug up - almost literally - the Blackburn family, who lived in York from the late fourteenth century and seem to have been one of the city's leading families. They proved very helpful to me because the family patriarch, Nicholas Blackburn senior, and his wife Margaret left detailed wills, which are available online (translated from the original Latin) here.

The wills are noticeable for the almost obsessive concern they display with churches and chantries. Indeed, the Blackburns' identity, and their relationship to the city of York, is defined not, as might be expected, by the land or property they owned, but through the churches they worshipped at. This became an important part of my thesis, but today I want to look at what else the wills can tell us about the history of the Blackburn family.

Starting with the wills but later scrounging around for other information I managed to produce a Blackburn family tree covering roughly a century. It is still a work in progress - unfortunately most birth and death dates are currently lacking - but the tree still shows the principal family relationships during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Although the Blackburns ended up as a very prominent York family their roots seem to lie not in Yorkshire at all but in Lancashire. They were a family of merchant traders, or mercers, meaning they dealt in cloth and textiles. At this they were obviously successful, since the wills show that they became very wealthy.

As to which part of Lancashire they came from, I would hazard a guess that it was the town of Blackburn or nearby. The evidence for this, such as it is, is two-fold: firstly the Blackburns' name (family names in the Middle Ages were often related to where a person lived); secondly, their occupation. Blackburn, which is old enough to be mentioned in the Domesday Book, was by the mid 1200s a textile manufacturing town. As we know that the Blackburns were mercers, it seems not unreasonable to suggest that they may originally have been linked with the town.

However, at some point they moved over the border into Yorkshire. Nicholas Blackburn senior, who became the head of the York family, was born around 1360 or thereabouts in Richmond, about fifty miles north of York. He married Margaret Ormeshead, the daughter of another prominent local merchant family. They had at least five children: John, Nicholas junior, William, Isabel and Alice. William seems to have been the black sheep of the family as he is scarcely mentioned in his parents' wills - so much so that at first I overlooked him and counted only four children.

By the late 1300s the family had moved to York, to North Street, home to the York Mercers. The parish church of both the Mercers' Guild and the Blackburn family was All Saints North Street. There is no evidence, however, to suggest one way or the other whether Nicholas Blackburn was a member of the Mercers' Guild. But he and his wife were certainly members of the Corpus Christi Guild, one of the most prestigious guilds in York; they joined in 1414, by which time they were clearly well-established members of the York community: in 1406 Nicholas had been made King's Admiral of the North and in 1412 Lord Mayor of York (a position also held by his son, Nicholas junior, in 1429).

Of the Blackburn children, John married twice but died prematurely in 1426 or 1427, leaving Nicholas junior (who like his father also married a Margaret, which is distinctly confusing) their father’s heir. I have found no mention of William marrying, but Isabel and Alice did; between them these four children seem to have supplied their parents with several grandchildren and great-grandchildren, though John's two sons seem to have predeceased him. Several Blackburns, Sandfords and Boltons are mentioned in the wills of Nicholas and Margaret - the descendants of, respectively, Nicholas, Isabel and Alice. The exact relations of the Sandfords to one another, however, are (at least at the moment) not clear, which is why I can only tentatively group them together in the family tree. Certainly they seem to have been a large family.

Nicholas and Margaret senior are buried together in York Minster - as Nicholas puts it in his will,  “under my marble stone which has been prepared on that spot for the purpose.” This is yet a further indication of their prominence and prestige within the York community, since at this time most people were buried within their parish church or its graveyard.

The Blackburns have become my pet project - although they were clearly important to York and particularly the All Saints North Street parish for at least the first third of the fifteenth century there is little information about them readily accessible. Most scholarly studies of the Blackburns relate to the stained glass windows they donated to All Saints North Street. Though the windows are important, they are surely not the only aspects of the Blackburns' lives worth investigating.

However, the evidence is there - in the wills, in the churches, and in the civic records - and I am trying to sift and sort this to build up a more detailed picture of the Blackburns' lives. Doing so offers a way into the complex, rich and detailed world of the faith of medieval York.

Good Friday

The Deposition: detail from the Passion and Resurrection sequence [late fourteenth century], All Saints Pavement, York

At þe tyme of none iesu gun cry;
he wytte his saul to his fadyr, [Eli].
A knyght smat him to þe hert, had he no mercy;
pe sone be-gane to wax myrk qwen iesu gun dy.
lord out of þi syd ran a ful fayre flud
As clere as well water our rannson bi þi blode.

(From the York Hours of the Cross, in The Lay Folks Mass Book (London: Oxford University Press for the Early English Text Society, 1968), 82-87.)

Palm Sunday | The Entry Into Jerusalem

via

JESUS:   To me takis tent and giffis gud hede, My dere discipulis that ben here, I schall you telle that shal be indede; My tyme to passe hense, it drawith nere, And by this skill Mannys sowle to save fro sorowes sere That loste was ill. From heven to erth whan I dyssende Rawnsom to make I made promys, The prophicie nowe drawes to ende; My Fadirs wille forsoth it is That sente me hedyr. Petir, Phelippe, I schall you blisse And go togedir Unto yone castell that is you agayne, Gois with gud harte and tarie noght, My comaundement to do be ye bayne. Also I you charge loke it be wrought That schal ye fynde An asse, this feste als ye had soght, Ye hir unbynde With hir foole, and to me hem bring That I on hir may sitte a space So the prophicy clere menyng May be fulfilled here in this place: “Doghtyr Syon, Loo, thi Lorde comys rydand on an asse, Thee to opon.” (The Entry Into Jerusalem l.1-28)

The York play of the Entry into Jerusalem was performed by the Skinners' Guild. The 'yon castell' referred to by Jesus is probably Clifford's Tower, which stands in the centre of the city, providing a well-known landmark. This fleeting moment both brings together historical and present time within the play and also hints at how inextricably the York play cycle as a whole was linked with the geography and architecture of the city.

The play concludes with the citizens of Jerusalem welcoming Christ into their city:

Hayll, domysman dredfull, þat all schall deme,
Hayll, [þat all] quyk and dede schall lowte,
Hayll, whom worschippe moste will seme,
Hayll, whom all thyng schall drede and dowte.
We welcome þe;
Hayll, and welcome of all abouwte,
To owre ceté. (l.538-44)

The structure of the play is, as Beadle and King point out, very close to a medieval royal welcome: 

the tableau at the end [of the play], with its ordered arrangement of formal greetings, suggests that the dramatist had in mind the conventions of the contemporary royal entry into the medieval town. In the last lines of the play, the local audience must have had a strong sense that the King of Heaven was being welcomed as much to medieval York as to the biblical Jerusalem.

(Beadle and King, introduction to The Entry Into Jerusalem, in York Mystery Plays: A Selection in Modern Spelling (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 106.) 

They also note that "Jesus must have ridden on the ass in the street amongst the audience, who were thus deftly drawn into the illusion of the play, and given a role as the crowd that lined the route into Jerusalem" (ibid.) As with the earlier reference to the castle, Biblical and contemporary time, the sacred (the subjects dealt with in the plays) and the secular (the city of York) are brought together. For the plays' original audiences, Biblical events, happenings and locations were blended with what was for them modern-day York, intertwining them until they became virtually indistinguishable.

Yf any man will you gaynesaye, Say that youre Lorde has nede of tham And schall restore thame this same day Unto what man will tham clayme.

 

York Minster 2016 Mystery Play production | Interviews

York floods

July 2015

Clifford's Tower

River Ouse

Christmas 2015

Clifford's Tower, via

River Ouse, via

Only in England...

via

Thomas à Becket

              ... from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Canterbury they wende,
The holy blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke. 
      - Canterbury Tales, General Prologue

Canterbury, Canterbury, Thomas à Becket, everybody loves a martyr!
      - Sheriff Vaisey, BBC Robin Hood, 2006.

Today is, as every inhabitant of the Middle Ages would have known, the feast day of Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, killed in Canterbury Cathedral on 29th December 1170 by four knights of Henry II. The king and the Archbishop had been at odds as to whether the king had jurisdiction over the church. According to legend, when the Archbishop refused to sign the Constitutions of Clarendon, which would have restricted ecclesiastical powers, Henry cried "Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?" - an invitation which the four knights took literally.

Henry II and Thomas à Becket, via

This is an eyewitness account of the Archbishop's murder, by one Edward Grim, displaying the usual medieval flair for the dramatic:

...The wicked knight leapt suddenly upon [the Archbishop], cutting off the top of the crown which the unction of sacred chrism had dedicated to God. Next he received a second blow on the head, but still he stood firm and immovable. At the third blow he fell on his knees and elbows, offering himself a living sacrifice, and saying in a low voice, 'For the name of Jesus and the protection of the Church, I am ready to embrace death.' But the third knight inflicted a terrible wound as he lay prostrate. By this stroke, the crown of his head was separated from the head in such a way that the blood white with the brain, and the brain no less red from the blood, dyed the floor of the cathedral. The same clerk who had entered with the knights placed his foot on the neck of the holy priest and precious martyr, and, horrible to relate, scattered the brains and blood about the pavements, crying to the others, 'Let us away, knights; this fellow will arise no more...

Thomas was immediately hailed as a martyr and the King was not popular (he later performed public penance - whether out of genuine remorse or political astuteness is debatable...) The Archbishop's tomb quickly became a drawcard for pilgrims (the medieval equivalent of tourists!) - famously, the pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales are all on their way to the shrine of St Thomas.

The site of Becket's murder in Canterbury Cathedral, via

Thanks almost solely to Thomas à Becket, medieval Canterbury became the pilgrimage capital of England. This seems rather to have annoyed its northern counterpart, York; for most of the Middle Ages there was a rather undignified struggle between the two sees, each seeking supremacy and one-upmanship over the other. Rivalry between the north and south of England appears to go a long way back!

If Canterbury's pet saint was Archbishop Thomas, York's was Archbishop William, who died in 1154 (reportedly from poisoned wine in his chalice). Following his burial in York Minster, rumours of miracles abounded, including the miraculous preservation of his body in one of the Minster's many fires (a miracle which was later mirrored almost exactly at Canterbury with St Thomas' body). William's cult, however, only really took off from the 1170s onward - at exactly the time of Thomas à Becket's murder and the outpouring of veneration which followed.

It is probable, however, that the sudden renewed interest in St William at York was not coincidence at all, and that York began to play up its association with William in response to events at Canterbury. The latter, finding itself suddenly the centre of pilgrimages from all over the country, no doubt thought itself immensely important. York must have resented Canterbury and Canterbury's saint being the centre of attention; the sudden blossoming of the cult of St William was surely at least partly an attempt to redress the balance. If this was indeed so it was only partially successful; York did become a popular tourist, sorry, pilgrimage destination, but never to the same degree as Canterbury.

Bonfire Night

The Gunpowder Plotters, via

Remember, remember, the fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason, and plot.
I see no reason 
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

These are the first lines of an old English folk ballad commemorating the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, when English Catholics famously tried to blow up the Protestant King James I and the Houses of Parliament. Also famously (or infamously), Guy Fawkes was caught lighting the fuse to the gunpowder, which was the end of the plot and also (eventually, after chase, capture and torture) of Guy (or Guido, as he was also known) and the other Gunpowder Conspirators.  

The Protestants were (and continued to be) highly gleeful about the failure of the plot and the conspirators' ignominious ends. The rest of the above rhyme, which dates from the latter half of the nineteenth century, runs

Guy Fawkes and his companions
Did the scheme contrive,
To blow the King and Parliament
All up alive.
Threescore barrels, laid below,
To prove old England's overthrow.
But, by God's providence, him they catch,
With a dark lantern, lighting a match!
A stick and a stage
For King James's sake!
If you won't give me one,
I'll take two,
The better for me,
And the worse for you.
A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope,
A penn'orth of cheese to choke him,
A pint of beer to wash it down,
And a jolly good fire to burn him.
Holloa, boys! holloa, boys! make the bells ring!
Holloa boys! holloa, boys! God save the King!
Hip, hip, hooor-r-r-ray! 

via http://www.potw.org/archive/potw405.html


Today most people only remember the first few lines, just as they remember Bonfire Night only for the fireworks, forgetting the bitter political and religious struggles which spawned it.

The last third of Jessie Child's book God's Traitors: Terror & Faith in Elizabethan England deals with the Gunpowder Plot, a thorough and scrupulous account of the conspiracy from a Catholic perspective. Like the rest of the book, it is fair, just and unsentimental. Well worth a read!

Here is poor old Guy Fawkes laying the gunpowder:

via

being tortured on the rack:

via

and finally being hung, drawn and quartered:

via

Guy Fawkes was from York; he was baptised here in April 1570, in St Michael le Belfrey, which is in High Petergate, right next door to the Minster. Alas, I neglected take a picture of the whole church while I was in York, but here is a very nice one of its doors:

Was the baby Guy carried through these doors on his way to baptism?

Across the street is a row of houses, one of which claims to be his birthplace:

via

But there are at least two other buildings in York claiming the same thing!
 

All Saints' Day

The East Window of All Saints Pavement, York (19th century) - see key below

Gaudeamus omnes in Domino, diem festum celebrantes sub honore Sanctorum omnium: de quorum solemnitate gaudent Angeli, et collaudent Filium Dei. Exsultate, justi, in Domino: rectos decet collaudatio.

Introit of the Mass of All Saints


York has two churches named All Saints - one in North Street and one on the Pavement. Both have beautiful stained glass but that of All Saints North Street is particularly famous, mainly because of the Pricke of Conscience Window and the Corporal Acts of Mercy Window, but also because of the Great East Window (also known as the Blackburn Window, after its donors) and the Nine Orders of Angels Window:

The Nine Orders of Angels Window (c.1410-20) in All Saints North Street, York

 (The nine orders, or choirs, are angels, archangels, thrones, dominations, principalities, powers, virtues, cherubim and seraphim.)

 

This panel shows a man wearing medieval spectacles! This is very unusual (and very uncomfortable they look too...)

Key to the All Saints Pavement East Window:

Moses, Abraham, Noah                            Risen Christ             St Lawrence, St Agnes, St Stephen

Isiah(?), St David, John the Baptist  Mary Magdalene, BVM, St John   St Paul, St Peter, St Andrew

St Catherine, St Margaret               St Augustine, St Ambrose       St Hieronymus, St Benedict

Aidan, Wilfrid, Paulinus          Oswald, Alban, St George       V. Bede, William of York, St Cuthbert 

The nine saints in the bottom row were popular English saints throughout the Middle Ages, and (apart from St George, who despite being England's patron saint from the very early Middle Ages never set foot on this damp and foggy island) all have close links with Yorkshire or York in particular.