Tuesday 12 June 2012

Holsworthy Parish Church - 1885

Ecclesiastical Curiosities - (1898)
Editor: William Andrews
Project Gutemburg

"With the spread of Christianity the belief in human sacrifice died out. In 1885, Holsworthy Parish Church was restored; during the work of restoration it was necessary to take down the south-west angle of the wall, and in this wall was found, embedded in the mortar and stone, a skeleton. The wall of this part of the church had settled, and from the account given by the masons it would seem there was no trace of a tomb, but on the contrary every indication that the victim had actually been buried alive—a mass of mortar covered the mouth, and the stones around the body seemed to have been hastily built. Some few years ago the Bridge Gate of the Bremen city walls was taken down, and the skeleton of a child was found embedded in the foundations".

Monday 11 June 2012

God's Acre - 1898



Ecclesiastical Curiosities - (1898)
Editor: William Andrews
Project Gutemburg
"Among all classes of English people there are mixed feelings relating to our churchyards. They are either places of reverence on the one hand, or superstition on the other. The sacred plot surrounding the old Parish Church carries with it such a host of memories and associations, that to the learned and thoughtful it has always been God’s Acre, hallowed with a tender hush of silent contemplation of the many sad rifts and partings among us. We almost vie with each other in proclaiming that deep reverence for this one sacred spot, so dear to our family life, and affections, by those mementos of love which we raise over the resting-places of our lost ones gone before. This is strangely apparent in the stately monument, where the carver’s art declares the virtues of the dead, either by sculptured figure, or verse engraven, as well as in the ofttimes more pathetic, and perhaps more beautiful, tribute of the floral cross or wreath culled by loving hands, and borne in silence, by our poorer brethren, as the only offering, or tribute, their slender means allows them to make. Be sure of this one fact, that our English Churchyards are better kept—more worthy of the name of God’s Acre than in the times past, for what is a more beautiful sight, than to see the kneeling children around the garden grave of a parent, or a child companion, adorning the little mound with flowers for the Eastertide festival. Here we have a living illustration of the truth of the concluding words of our Great Creed: “I look for the Resurrection of the Dead and the Life of the World to come.”

The idealised Christian couple



© Godric Godricson
 

The Living and the dead

© Godric Godricson
I like this picture because it shows that eternal idea of the living in proximity to the dead. The house is on the boundary of the cemetery and at one point the clergy who lived in the house would have have entered the cemetery through the black door.

Sacrificial Foundations



Ecclesiastical Curiosities - (1898)
Editor: William Andrews
Project Gutemburg

"In early ages a sacrifice of some sort or other was offered on the foundation of nearly every building. In heathen times a sacrifice was offered to the god under whose protection the building was placed; in Christian times, while many old pagan customs lingered on, the sacrifice was continued, but was given another meaning. The foundation of a castle, a church, or a house was frequently laid in blood; indeed it was said, and commonly believed, that no edifice would stand firmly for long unless the foundation was laid in blood. It was a practice frequently to place some animal under the corner stone—a dog, a wolf, a goat, sometimes even the body of a malefactor who had been executed.

Heinrich Heine says:—“In the middle ages the opinion prevailed that when any building was to be erected something living must be killed, in the blood of which the foundation had to be laid, by which process the building would be secured from falling; and in ballads and traditions the remembrance is still preserved how children and animals were slaughtered for the purpose of strengthening large buildings with their blood.”


“ .  .  .  I repent:
There is no sure foundation set on blood,
No certain life achiev’d by other’s death.”
King John, Act iv., Sc. 2. 
Shakespeare.