The Cathars
Before thinking about the Cathars we need to ask what was heresy and why did it matter? Amongst all the sometimes crazy-seeming heresies of the C12th and C13th, the Cathars stand out as the most significant, not least because they…
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Icons
They have been called spectacles to help you see right into heaven and they have caused one of the greatest theological debates, lasting over a century. They have caused grown men to convert to Christianity and others to fling them…
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The Topsy-Turvy World of Misericords
The Topsy-Turvy World of Misericords This lecture takes the audience on a tour of some of the extraordinary images that exist in over 400 churches in England. The art form was in vogue mainly from C13th – C15th and rarely…
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The Green Man: Myth and Reality
More correctly called ‘foliate heads’, there was a proliferation of Green Man images around the middle of the C14th. The lecture discusses how the image may have evolved from pagan and Classical times and what its purpose may have been.…
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Crowds and Clouds of Angels
There are so many angels there could almost seem to be an avalanche of them. It’s unusual for there not to be an image of at least one angel, if not many in our churches and cathedrals and yet passers-by…
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Glad Tidings
In the quietness of an enclosed garden filled with symbolic plants, or glimpsed inside a sturdy house, a young woman reads quietly, blissfully unaware that her life is about to change. Not just her life, but that of the western…
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The Second or Third Coming?
When we think of the history of the Church in the British Isles, it’s natural to focus on the most famous events and people: the murder of Thomas Becket, the building of our great cathedrals, Henry VIII and the Reformation…