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Page 10
"The ancient church, 'situated low,' indicated in this vision the
one whose attached monastery had been destroyed by the Danes, but its
little church remained, and was already dear to the Confessor, not
only from the lovely tradition of its dedication by the spirit of St.
Peter;" (you must read that for yourselves;) "but also because of two
miracles happening there to the King himself.
"The first was the cure of a cripple, who sat in the road between
the Palace and 'the Chapel of St. Peter,' which was 'near,' and who
explained to the Chamberlain Hugolin that, after six pilgrimages to
Rome in vain, St. Peter had promised his cure if the King would, on
his own royal neck, carry him to the Monastery. The King immediately
consented; and, amidst the scoffs of the court, bore the poor man to
the steps of the High Altar. There the cripple was received by Godric
the sacristan, and walked away on his own restored feet, hanging his
stool on the wall for a trophy.
"Before that same High Altar was also believed to have been seen
one of the Eucharistical portents, so frequent in the Middle Ages. A
child, 'pure and bright like a spirit,' appeared to the King in the
sacramental elements. Leofric, Earl of Mercia, who, with his famous
countess, Godiva, was present, saw it also.
"Such as these were the motives of Edward. Under their influence
was fixed what has ever since been the local centre of the English
monarchy."
"Such as these were the _motives_ of Edward," says the Dean. Yes,
certainly; but such as these also, first, were the acts and visions
of Edward. Take care that you don't slip away, by the help of the
glycerine of the word "motives," into fancying that all these tales
are only the after colours and pictorial metaphors of sentimental
piety. They are either plain truth or black lies; take your
choice,--but don't tickle and treat yourselves with the prettiness or
the grotesqueness of them, as if they were Anderssen's fairy tales.
Either the King did carry the beggar on his back, or he didn't; either
Godiva rode through Coventry, or she didn't; either the Earl Leofric
saw the vision of the bright child at the altar--or he lied like a
knave. Judge, as you will; but do not Doubt.
"The Abbey was fifteen years in building. The King spent upon it
one-tenth of the property of the kingdom. It was to be a marvel of
its kind. As in its origin it bore the traces of the fantastic and
childish" (I must pause, to ask you to substitute for these blameful
terms, 'fantastic and childish,' the better ones of 'imaginative and
pure') "character of the King and of the age; in its architecture
it bore the stamp of the peculiar position which Edward occupied in
English history between Saxon and Norman. By birth he was a Saxon, but
in all else he was a foreigner. Accordingly the Church at Westminster
was a wide-sweeping innovation on all that had been seen before.
'Destroying the old building,' he says in his charter, 'I have built
up a new one from the very foundation.' Its fame as a 'new style of
composition' lingered in the minds of men for generations. It was the
first cruciform church in England, from which all the rest of like
shape were copied--an expression of the increasing hold which, in the
tenth century, the idea of the Crucifixion had laid on the imagination
of Europe. The massive roof and pillars formed a contrast with the
rude wooden rafters and beams of the common Saxon churches. Its very
size--occupying, as it did, almost the whole area of the present
building--was in itself portentous. The deep foundations, of large
square blocks of grey stone, were duly laid; the east end was rounded
into an apse; a tower rose in the centre, crowned by a cupola of wood.
At the western end were erected two smaller towers, with five large
bells. The hard strong stones were richly sculptured; the windows
were filled with stained glass; the roof was covered with lead. The
cloisters, chapter-house, refectory, dormitory, the infirmary, with
its spacious chapel, if not completed by Edward, were all begun, and
finished in the next generation on the same plan. This structure,
venerable as it would be if it had lasted to our time, has almost
entirely vanished. Possibly one vast dark arch in the southern
transept, certainly the substructures of the dormitory, with their
huge pillars, 'grand and regal at the bases and capitals,' the
massive, low-browed passage leading from the great cloister to Little
Dean's Yard, and some portions of the refectory and of the infirmary
chapel, remain as specimens of the work which astonished the last age
of the Anglo-Saxon and the first age of the Norman monarchy."
Hitherto I have read to you with only supplemental comment. But in
the next following passage, with which I close my series of extracts,
sentence after sentence occurs, at which as I read, I must raise my
hand, to mark it for following deprecation, or denial.
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