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In the mediaeval Church in England, half of the diocesan cathedrals were also monastic communities; this phenomenon was virtually unique in the Church worldwide. Even after the Reformation, the monastic character of cathedrals continued to have a profound influence on the liturgy of the Church of England and on cathedrals as places to maintain the daily worship of God in solemn and musical form; to be homes for libraries and scholarship, and to be places of retreat and contemplative prayer. Norwich Cathedral was the last of these monastic cathedrals to be established (1096) and the first of the monastic cathedrals to be dissolved (1538). Particularly since the mid-nineteenth century, it has self-consciously been recovering a Benedictine character to its mission and ministry, most recently in the reconstruction of three monastic buildings lost since the Reformation: the Library reading room, the Refectory, and the Hostry. These buildings, while modern in design, build upon the remaining monastic fabric and echo the proportions and materials of their monastic predecessors, exemplifying the monastic vows of stability, obedience, and conversion of life. The Cathedral’s Benedictine principles extend to its ethos as an employer and commercial enterprise.
'Contested heritage' and 'cancel culture' have specific meanings and points of reference in our culture today, but these are by no means new phenomena in the life of cathedrals. At the time of the Reformation and the Civil War, all evidence of traditional Catholic culture was considered fair game for iconoclasts, who systematically destroyed saints' shrines and tombs with their relics. In recent years, in association with the revival of the practice of pilgrimage and in unstated rejection of Reformation tradition, shrines of saints in many cathedrals have been restored, some including relics. It is unsurprising that saints and their shrines can be controversial, since saints themselves are 'signs of contradiction', those whose lives lived according to the standards of the kingdom of heaven challenge the values of earthly kingdoms and cultures. Norwich Cathedral is unusual among the ancient cathedrals of England in never having had a great saint enshrined within it. This study will consider the cases of two figures locally revered as martyrs, William of Norwich and Edith Cavell, whose lives and witness have been causes of international controversy and yet who still merit commemoration by Christians today.
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In 2015, the Anglican cathedrals’ number of Theology (Vol. 118, no. 6) focused on particular roles of cathedrals – as focus of community life, of pilgrimage, of urban regeneration. This article is concerned with the symbolic centre of the cathedral’s identity and purpose.
Yankee bishops. Apostles in the new republic, 1783 to 1873. By Charles R. Henery (Studies in Episcopal and Anglican Theology, 7.) Pp. xxiv + 352 incl. 7 ills. Frankfurt–Oxford, Peter Lang, 2015. £58. 978 1 4331 2361 0 - Volume 68 Issue 3
In this chapter the author argues that church buildings and their architecture influenced by the Oxford Movement cannot be understood apart from their essential grounding in the worship and self-understanding of the Church. This study sets the consideration of such church buildings in the wider context of the history of the Church of England both before and after the Reformation. The churches of the Church of England preceding and following the Oxford Movement articulate an Anglican sense of belonging to the Church universal and are thus a valuable contribution to the faith and witness of the Church far beyond the Anglican Communion.
Church and State in Old and New Worlds. Edited by Hilary M. Carey and John Gascoigne. (Brill's Series in Church History, 51.) Pp. xi+344. Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2011. €99. 978 90 04 19200 3; 1572 4107 - Volume 64 Issue 4
Emile Perreau-Saussine, Catholicism and Democracy: An Essay in the History of Political Thought (trans. Richard Rex; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), pp. ix + 185, ISBN 978-0691153940. - Volume 12 Issue 2
The Episcopal Church in the United States, the first church of the Anglican Communion apart from the Church of England, is torn between two allegiances: one to its historic membership of the Communion and the other to its sharing in an American religious culture of ‘exceptionalism’. This article traces the origin and character of this tension within the current debate over the Anglican Covenant.
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Abstract On the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, a resurgent religious identity in church and state was informed by identifying the English nation with the biblical Israel, and the worship and buildings of the Church of England with those of the Temple in Jerusalem. The dedication of the Church of St Peter, Cornhill (rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666 and designed by Christopher Wren) in 1681 by the Revd William Beveridge was an expression of the Church of England's confidence in its identity with the ‘primitive Church,’ and as the Church of a chosen and favoured people.
