End of Course

One of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse by John Thornton

There has been a lot of talk recently about the end of time, and this talk has resonated here at York because we have reached the end of the course and the end of the magical world we've been living in.  The time for final papers and final grades has arrived.  By tomorrow afternoon, only one Hamline student will remain on this side of the Atlantic.

Our medieval ancestors were always mindful of the approaching end of time, and one of the greatest depictions of the Apocalypse was rendered in glass by John Thornton of Coventry between 1405 and 1408 in the tennis court sized Great East window of the Minster.  That window is currently undergoing extensive painstaking conservation work and we had to content ourselves with viewing selected panels on display in the Lady Chapel and at the Bedern Studio.  But in a way being able to see only a few of the paintings magnified for us the achievement of the whole window, which is overwhelming when seen all at once.

Reproduced above is one of Thornton's Four Horsemen, a square yard of magnificent color and painting.  The photograph was taken by Peter Newton, my professor at York in the 1970s.  He took the slide from scaffolding that was erected in front of the East Window for cleaning it early in that decade.  The X across the Horsman's face is due to the Victorian protective glazing that was just outside the window at that time.  The newly conserved window will have protective glazing that matches the window's lead lines, allowing the image to reach us as it did those who stood in awe of it when it was new, 600 years ago.