[This is the seventeenth of a series of articles giving a
brief description of each of the 26 ancient Anglican cathedrals coupled with a
sketch of a person, activity or
institution connected to the area]
Ripon Cathedral
in the North Yorkshire Dales is an ancient place. A Saxon church was built by
St Wilfrid, a famously argumentative priest who successfully championed the
Roman rites over those of the Celtic
Church at the Synod of
Whitby in 664. His Saxon Crypt of 672 survives below the cathedral.
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| Ripon Cathedral |
The cathedral we now see was started in the 12th
century by Bishop Roger de Pont L’Eveque. The transepts are in the transitional
Norman style while the West Front is Early English. The rather squat West
towers were designed to carry wooden spires but the originals were never
replaced. After the central tower collapsed in 1450, the Nave and new tower
were rebuilt in the Perpendicular style in the 15th and 16th
centuries.
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| The nave at Ripon |
The choir stalls include some fine misericords, one of which
is said to have inspired Lewis Carroll to write his Alice in Wonderland. The cathedral is a
pleasing surprise in a rather remote location.
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About three miles from Ripon stands the extensive ruins of Fountains Abbey, a Cistercian abbey which
flourished from 1132 until its Dissolution in 1539. The ruins are very
impressive and evocative; much remains of the extensive monks’ cells and church
buildings, workshops, fishponds and grain stores. The monks submitted to the
rule of St Bernard of Clairvaux and its mother church was Citeaux in Burgundy, then at its
peak.
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| Fountains Abbey |
Fountains Abbey, preceded in Yorkshire by Rievaulx, is an
example of those centres of monastic life and religious commitment in Britain and
throughout Christendom which are so alien to the modern mind. .
The title of the Father of Monasticism is conferred
inaccurately on St Anthony the Great (251-356), long preceeded by many hermits
dwelling in Christian Egypt. St Anthony won fame by living a solitary life of
piety and prayer in the Libyan Desert, with
legends of his resistance to Temptation inspiring many later artists.
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| St Anthony fights off the demons |
Early manifestations of the monastic spirit were mainly of
the reclusive sort: persons who sought to isolate themselves from the world and
devote themselves to religious practices and contemplation. This life-style was
often combined with spectacular examples of mortification of the flesh. One
such was Simeon Stylites (390-459) who was shunned by some for his violent
fasting and masochistic self-torments. For the last 37 years of his life he
lived on the top of a narrow 15 metre-high pillar near Aleppo
in Syria.
Large crowds came to revere him and to seek his arbitration on disputes. His
verdicts were surprisingly sensible and free from fanaticism.
 |
| Simeon Stylites |
The other type of monasticism was the living together of
like-minded monks in a community (“cenobitic” monasticism). One of the earliest
was the Orthodox St Catherine’s in Sinai,
Egypt, which
housed unique manuscripts and escaped the iconoclastic destruction of the 8th
and 9th centuries. It still functions as a monastery.
 |
| St Catherine's, Sinai |
In the West, these monasteries soon felt the need for a
governing code and over the years the Rule of Benedict, of Basil or of Bernard
were enunciated. All monks accepted the life of poverty, chastity and obedience
and their monasteries received gifts from kings and the faithful allowing them
to become powerful institutions. Many monks did indeed live an exemplary life
but also quite often discipline was lax or broke down to the scandal of the
poor peasantry. Good works, the distribution of alms and the tending of the
sick and the old added to their popularity. We get a glimpse of this world in Umberto Eco’s
1980 mystery The Name of the Rose and
in Helen Waddell’s notable 1933 historical novel Peter Abelard. Women played a full part in the religious life and
the mystical writings of 14th century anchoress Julian of Norwich
are still much admired.
In 1534 after a long dispute over the annulment of his
marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII declared himself Head of the English Church and broke with the Pope. By this
time the monasteries held a quarter of England’s landed wealth and
received half of all ecclesiastical revenues. It was too tempting a target for
cash-strapped Henry and under Thomas Cromwell he dissolved the monasteries,
seized their land and pensioned off their clergy. Most monasteries surrendered
under pressure. Resistance like Yorkshire’s
Pilgrimage of Grace was brutally suppressed.
The English monasteries were no more. In Victorian times
Anglican religious houses were revived under the influence of the Oxford
Movement. Some thrived but in our times they are in decline as novices are hard
to find. In the Catholic world monasteries have flourished for much longer,
though they too in due course lost much of their wealth and have recruitment
problems. Orthodox monasticism is also stumbling although impregnable Meteora
still hosts its monks and Mount Athos has had
an injection of vocations from the Balkan and Russian faithful.
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| A Monastery at Meteora, Greece |
A walk around the green precincts of Fountains Abbey
conjures up many ghosts: images of dedication and sacrifice; of a life almost
inexplicable amidst the worldly and unspiritual obsessions of 21st century England.
SMD
20.11.12
Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2012
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