O children of the forest free, O seed of Manitou,
The holy Child of Earth and Heaven is born today for you.
Come kneel before the radiant boy who brings you beauty, peace and joy.
Jesus your King is born, Jesus is born, in excelsis gloria.
It is said that the word of the Lord is like seed: some falls on good soil and brings forth crops, but some falls on stony ground and it withers. Father Chaumonot was old when he told his story, and it fell on stony ground. After he died the Huron drifted back to hunting on the prairie and to tracking animals in the forest, and their Holy House disappeared. All that remains of the miraculous tale of Joseph the beggar is the name of his settlement, Ancienne Lorette, and the dedication of the church there to the Annunciation; and the fact that, nearby, large structures full of people take to the air and fly to other places. Our Lady of Loreto is, after all, the patron saint of air travel.
But old Father Chaumonot need not have been disappointed. Uncountable others have heard the message of the Holy House and followed the example of Richeldis de Faverches: in Italy and in Mexico, in Holland and in Scotland. The Holy House looks like a simple building, but it is in fact a complex and subtle prayer. Building it is an act of devotion; and like all devotions, it must be repeated again and again. The Holy House is a prayer that exists in time. It abides only for a while before it flits away on a cloud, suffers iconoclastic desecration, dissolves back into the forest, or slides into ruin. Then it must be made again, as all prayers must be made again.
1931
AND LIKE ALL answers to prayer, the Holy House appears when least expected. Once upon a time in England, not so long ago, in the reign of King George V, a new vicar was appointed to the country parish of Walsingham, in Norfolk. One morning, Father Patten walked to the meadow beside the village, which was covered in a sparkling dew. He picked up a small metal disk lying in the grass and held it in his hand, and he had an idea.
Farmers were always plowing up old medals that depicted Our Lady of Walsingham. Father Patten had a local craftsman make a statue out of the image on the medal, and he set it up in his parish church. Soon enough, people started to visit the church to pray to Our Lady of Walsingham to intercede for them. At first just a few showed up from the village itself; then the news spread, and more and more people came to the modest shrine, and regular pilgrimages began.
A decade after Father Patten had established the statue in his parish church, the sacred image was moved through the narrow streets of the village to a new home. On a knoll overlooking the meadow where Richeldis de Faverches had built her shrine nearly a thousand years before, the mother and her child were carried into a new church, taken around the aisles, and borne down the nave to a little house thirty feet long and thirteen feet wide. There they were installed, back at home, as if nothing had ever happened.
Every year in May Our Lady of Walsingham is carried in procession around her village. In a floral litter, she is preceded by acolytes, crucifers, thurifers, priests, bishops, monsignors of the Roman Catholic Church, friars, penitents, choirs, and soldiers. Ombrellini, barks of flowers, and congeries of plaster saints crowd the narrow streets of the village, and high gilded crosses peer into the bedroom windows of the low cottages. Because this is not the fifteenth century, the route of the procession is lined with reformers and the reformed, their placards denouncing superstition and idolatry, the corruption of the Church, and the sheer vulgarity of the scene; and because this is England, everyone pretends not to notice.
At the end of the procession Our Lady is carried back to her home, with its one small room and its square window. There she waits, until she is called forth the next time.
Gloucester Cathedral
In Which a Dead Body Brings a Building to Life
THE GERM OF A CATHEDRAL
The monument of Edward II in Gloucester Cathedral,
engraved by Hubert Gravelot.
EVOLUTION
When the women and the children of the Turkish garrison hid in the Parthenon in 1687, they repeated stories about their place of refuge to reassure themselves; but the stories they told had been repeated so many times that they had long departed from the original script. The doors of the temple had become the gates of Troy, and the Christian apse the throne of Plato. There is no such thing as a perfect copy, and stories and buildings are transformed quite as much as they are preserved in the process of repetition.
The rituals of the Middle Ages sustained a seemingly stable world, but they were also the agents of transformation. The long construction and reconstruction of Gothic cathedrals was a process of copying: each generation of apprentices learned at the feet of the master mason, became master masons themselves, and passed their wisdom on to their own apprentices. But this process was also one of evolution: each generation, in learning from its predecessors, altered what it found, and passed its altered learning on to successors who did the same. The architecture of the earliest cathedrals was an austere, simple affair, but over several centuries it grew into something of wondrous sophistication and complexity.
Because cathedrals took such a long time to build, this evolution manifested itself not only in the construction of new buildings but in the refurbishment of existing ones. Gloucester Cathedral in England provides one of the strangest examples of this process. The original building was a stern Norman basilica, but that church is now festooned with the more florid architecture of later centuries. Each generation of architecture at Gloucester is an increment of refinement laid over its predecessor, and carries tics and quirks derived from its own genealogy.
The origin of the transformations of Gloucester is found in a royal tomb. The architectural development of the cathedral is like the cult of the body that lies within it: an affair of repeated rumors, grown ever wilder with each retelling.
IN 1327, a cart rumbled out of the gate of Berkeley Castle, and its wooden wheels bumped down the track into the gray floodplain of the river Severn. When the cart reached the edge of a forest, two white harts emerged from the trees to meet it. Tall, luminous, and still, they allowed the carters to harness them to the vehicle, and then they bore its burden all the way to Gloucester.
The monks at the abbey in Gloucester were waiting for them. They were fearful; and well might they have been afraid, for the cart that had left Berkeley Castle that morning carried the body of none other than King Edward II. It had been three months since the king had died, and the stories that had spread about his demise were colorful and horrifying. He had been deposed by his faithless wife, Isabella, they said, and her lover, Roger Mortimer; and the monks whispered a poem that the king had supposedly written.
In winter woe befell me,
By cruel Fortune threatened.
My life now lies a ruin.
Once I was feared and dreaded,
But now all men despise me
And call me a crownless king,
A laughing stock to all.
Edward had been imprisoned at Berkeley Castle for five months, murmured the monks, suspended above a cesspit filled with corpses. He had refused to die, and so, tired of waiting, his keepers had murdered him. He had been a sodomite, the story ran, and his executioners had shoved a red-hot poker up his arse. You could hear the screams for miles around, but there were no wounds visible upon the king’s body.
Well might the monks of the abbey have been afraid. The other priories in the shire had refused to take the body, so frightened were they of Isabella and Mortimer; but Abbot John Thokey reassured his charges. He had been a friend to the murdered king, and he reminded the monks of the time the two had dined together. It was right there, in the Historia of the abbey. “Sitting at the table in the abbot’s hall and seeing there paintings of the kings, his predecessors,” Edward II had jokingly asked the abbot whether there was a painting of himself among them. “The abbot replied, prophesying, rather than making it up, that he hoped he would have him a more honourable place than there.” And so he would: Abbot
Thokey had plans for King Edward II. The king had suffered an ignominious end, the abbot told his monks, but now it was time to accord him the honors he had forfeited in life.
On 20 December the king’s body, being in no fit state to be seen, was hidden under a wooden effigy, and it was paraded through the streets of Gloucester on a catafalque carved with gilded lions. Behind the hearse walked the people who had most benefited from Edward’s demise: his wife, Queen Isabella; her lover, Mortimer; and her son, the young King Edward III. A silver vessel containing the heart of the dead king was held aloft for the crowd to see, and then Edward II was laid to rest.
No sooner had it been planted in the abbey church than the royal corpse began to generate activity. The masons of the abbey were called to make a sarcophagus of Purbeck marble around the body of Edward II, and on the top of this sarcophagus they placed another image of the king, carved from alabaster. The longing eyes and petulant lower lip of this effigy recalled Edward to those who had known him. The pillow upon which his head lay was supported by angels, as if they were lifting him up to spy the celestial realm, and at his feet lay two lions, marks of his royal rank.
Above the sarcophagus and the effigy floated the very heaven to which the stone king’s sightless eyes aspired. The masons had constructed around the tomb a miniature cathedral too delicate to be inhabited by rude man in this life, a habitation only for the dead and the sanctified. The arches of its vaulted aisle seemed to flicker with holy flame, and it was crowned with three miniature shrines, which were themselves crowned with openwork spires bristling with crockets and finials.
It was just the sort of building that caused one to wonder how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. It was a minor miracle; but, at the time, it occurred to no one to write the names of the men who had wrought it in the Historia of the abbey.
GLOUCESTER ABBEY HAD been founded by Osric, prince of the Hwicce tribe, in 680. But the building in which Edward was laid dated from 1089, when, after a fire had swept through the abbey, Abbot Serlo commanded that a new church be built in the form of a cross. On 15 July 1100 the head of the cross was completed, and this choir was consecrated for service. Over the high altar was a semicircular apse, and the heavy vault of the choir was supported by thick walls, which the masons had pierced with round arches resting on squat columns.
Four years after the consecration of the choir, Abbot Serlo passed away and was succeeded by Abbot Peter and then by Abbot William. Under the abbacy of William, the nave—the foot of the cross—was completed, so that the congregation might have somewhere to stand as they listened to the chanting of the monks in the choir. Stretching away toward the west, it was as dark as the sanctuary of Abbot Serlo, and its massive arcades were ornamented with chevrons of a savage simplicity.
And then Abbot William passed away and was succeeded by Abbot de Lacy and Abbot Hameline. In the year of Our Lord 1179, Abbot Hameline passed on and was succeeded by Abbot Carbonel, and then Abbot Blunt; and then Abbot Blunt died and was succeeded by Abbot Foliot.
In the time of Abbot Foliot, a tower was raised above the crossing, where the nave and the choir, the foot and head of the cross, met the transepts—the cross’s arms. It was also at this time that the nave was given a new vault, whose pointed arches, slender ribs, and high clerestories relieved some of the heaviness of the ancient architecture.
And when the new vaulting of the nave was complete (but before work could begin on the rest of the abbey), Abbot Foliot died and was succeeded by Abbot John de Felda and then Abbot de Gamages; and when Abbot de Gamages died in 1306, he was succeeded by Abbot Thokey, who received the body of the murdered King Edward II and laid him to rest in the abbey. Soon afterward, Abbot Thokey resigned the abbacy and was succeeded by Abbot Wigmore, who, it is said in the Historia of the abbey, “took much delight in working with his own hands, both in mechanical arts as well as in embroidery.”
It was not long before the wonderful tomb of Edward II erected in the time of Abbot Thokey began to perform wonders, and it was not long before people came to see it in hope of cure and aid. The Purbeck marble of the sarcophagus and even the alabaster face of the king himself are still marked with crosses the pilgrims carved there. Soon, the monks recorded, “the offerings of the faithful and the devotion which the people showed for King Edward who had been buried in the church were such that the city of Gloucester could scarcely hold the multitude of people flowing together there from the cities, towns, and villages and hamlets of England.” The shrine of Edward II glowed and hummed with prayer, a tiny seed germinating in the dark choir of the abbey.
And in the time of Abbot Wigmore, who loved embroidery, the delicate tomb of Edward II spawned the first of its offspring. Soon, the pilgrims who came to gaze upon the tiny shrine of Edward II found themselves inside its progeny: a gigantic reproduction of the original. The new structure was so large, in fact, that it necessitated the partial demolition of the southern transept of the church. The masons broke down the end wall of the transept and replaced it with a huge tapestry of stone and colored glass, through which light flooded into an interior that had hitherto been dark. They replaced the original vault that had covered the transept with a complex triangular mesh of ribs; and then they added new clerestory windows, whose four-centered arches and stiff grid of traceries were ornamented with delicate trefoils. Finally, they embroidered the blank walls of the transept with the same grid of tracery as the windows, so that from some angles it was impossible to tell where the windows ended and the walls began.
It was a complex and delicate task, and the signs of the struggle may still be seen. All that lightening of the ancient structure had reduced its ability to support what was above it. At some stage during the work, the masons realized that the abbey tower was now in danger of collapsing into the transept, and they devised a huge buttress to support it. It was an emergency measure; but rather than hide it away, the masons allowed this diagonal shaft of stone to slice right through the delicate cage of traceries they had made, so that everyone would see and remember that their ingenuity had averted a disaster. Medieval building was always, to some extent, experimental, relying as it did on margins of safety and rules of thumb derived from experience rather than engineering calculation. The flying buttress that slashes through the south transept at Gloucester shows just how experimental it was.
Experimental, and dangerous: another story is told in the south transept on a tiny scale. Affixed to one of the walls is a small stone bracket made in the form of a mason’s T square. It is thought that it once supported an image of Saint Barbara, whom the masons often invoked to protect them from wind and fire. The top of the bracket is crowned with minute castellations, as if it were the roof of a great building, and its underside is carved with a miniature reproduction of a ribbed vault. A tiny figure of a beardless apprentice clings in desperation to this vault, while his master looks on in horror: it appears that the apprentice is about to fall to a certain death on the abbey floor. It happened to masons all the time, but no one thought to record the names of their dead in the Historia of the abbey they had built.
WHEN THE TOMB of Edward II and the southern transept of Gloucester Abbey were finished, Abbot Wigmore was laid to rest, and he was succeeded by Abbot Staunton. In the time of Abbot Staunton, Edward III came to pay his respects at the tomb of his father, and he brought his whole court with him. It was a profitable visit for the abbey. Edward donated a model ship made of gold, in thanks for a safe passage across the sea; his queen, Philippa, gave a golden heart and an ear, in thanks for the cure of some malady or other; and their son, Prince Edward, gave the shrine a cross made of the same material. It is thought that King Edward III saw the offspring of his father’s tomb in the southern transept of the abbey church and desired that the monks and the masons transform the choir where his father was laid in a similar manner.
And so the southern transept of the abbey, which had been generated from the tomb of Edward II, generated its own descendant. The mas
ons started work under the central tower, where all the arms of the cross met one another. Again they took away the ancient ceiling, and again they replaced it with a new vault; but they had learned some lessons from their work in the southern transept. This new vault was even more complex than the one they had made before, and its many ribs sprouted from elaborate bosses carved with angels and saints and wild men of the woods. The new ceiling appeared to be less a structure of stone, resting on heavy walls, than a canopy of creepers hanging in a luminous forest.
When the crossing was complete, Abbot Staunton was taken to God, and Abbot Horton took office in his stead. In the time of Abbot Horton, the new vault was extended toward the semicircular apse of the original choir, where the high altar stood. The masons demolished the apse, replacing it with a great window, the largest in the world at the time; it was so enormous that it had to be reinforced with two tall buttresses lest the wind blast it in. At the heart of this window the glaziers put an image of the Virgin Mary receiving the crown of heaven from her Son. Angels fluttered in the sunny panels above her, and below her the saints, the prelates of the church, and the kings of England stood in multitudinous array. Below these notables were ranked the coats of arms of the nobles and the knights who had fought for King Edward III at the Battle of Crécy.
And just as they had done in the transept, the masons now draped and embroidered the walls of the choir with the same paneling that divided the great window. A screen of narrow shafts and tiny trefoils of stone made it impossible to tell what was window, what was arcade, and what was wall. It was as if the vault above had spread its tendrils down over the heavy walls of the choir, dissolving it into a cage of thin stone ribs webbed with colored glass and sparkling with light. The grandchild of the tomb of Edward II had learned from its predecessors and had evolved into forms and languages of even greater elegance and elaboration.
The Secret Lives of Buildings: From the Ruins of the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in Thirteen Stories Page 11