The Royal Wedding

The dignitaries, the dresses, the hats (!), the DRESS, and finally the vows.

A bit of Chaucer, quoted in the ceremony.

From the Franklin's Tale, here in interlinear translation.


761         For o thyng, sires, saufly dar I seye,
                    For one thing, sirs, I dare say confidently,
762         That freendes everych oother moot obeye,
                    That friends must obey each other,
763         If they wol longe holden compaignye.
                    If they will long hold company.
764         Love wol nat been constreyned by maistrye.
                    Love will not be constrained by mastery.
765         Whan maistrie comth, the God of Love anon
                    When mastery comes, the God of Love immediately
766         Beteth his wynges, and farewel, he is gon!
                    Beats his wings, and farewell, he is gone!
767         Love is a thyng as any spirit free.
                    Love is a thing free as any spirit.
768         Wommen, of kynde, desiren libertee,
                    Women, by nature, desire liberty,
769         And nat to been constreyned as a thral;
                    And not to be constrained like a slave;
770         And so doon men, if I sooth seyen shal.
                    And so do men, if I shall say the truth.

Translation provided on
http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/teachslf/frkt-par.htm#PROLOGUE

Still to come: "the kiss."

A bit of tourism

Today, a formal guided tour of York Minster.  For a guide we had an a retired fellow, as interested and knowledgeable  in what he called the quirks of the Minster as he was in the history.  A little sketchy on the dates, especially of the glass, but charming nonetheless.  It's interesting to do the same tour with different guides who have fun bringing out different details.  This fellow showed us a Victorian memorial plaque which actually states that, if you want more information on the character and accomplishments of the deceased, you should have a look at a certain issue of Gentleman's Magazine!

The tour was somewhat compromised by the presence of a full brass band playing for a high profile military service in commemoration of the battle of Kohima (against the Japanese in India in 1944), in which 10,000 soldiers were killed.  But it served to remind us that the Minster is a working building.  On 24 January, 1328, (when there would have been no question about the dating of the windows just installed in the nave) King Edward III was married to Philippa of Hainault in the Minster.  Edward was in the neighborhood fighting the Scots.  His father, Edward II, had been defeated by the Scots at Bannockburn 14 years earlier in a battle in which perhaps 20,000 soldiers were killed.

Hamline atop the South Transept of York Minster

After the tour we all climbed the 275 narrow spiraling steps to the top of the Minster's central tower.  The climb involves a somewhat precarious walk along the roof gutter of the Early English south transept, built in 1230 or so.

Tomorrow we have another Royal Wedding, and most of the Hamline students left this afternoon to be in London to celebrate.  People are stringing up hundreds of little plastic Union Jacks around town.  Students who stayed in York to take exams from their spring term courses will have to content themselves with the champagne parties in the college common rooms.  It's a national holiday, so we can't hold class.

Behind the scenes at the museum

York's Museum Gardens today.  Reminds one of Seurat.

Another superb spring day in York.  We spent half of it on the excellent Bedern Glaziers Studio tour, learning the intricacies of ancient stained glass restoration, and half of it exploring the ruins of Saint Mary's Abbey, the museum gardens, the Yorkshire museum, and Saint Olav's Church on Marygate.

St Dunstan at St Olav's, c 1410.

At Saint Olav's we had a good look at the current East window, painted probably by John Thornton, master painter of the Minster Great East Window, panels of which we got to see in the conservation studios earlier.  One of the saints in the St Olav window is Saint Dunstan, the most popular English saint up until the martyrdom of Saint Thomas of Canterbury.  Saint Dunstan was also archbishop of Canterbury, 200 years before Saint Thomas.  In his early life, while a hermit at Glastonbury, he was said to have encountered the devil, and to have taken the devil's nose in a pair of tongs (Dunstan was an artist and metalworker).  So Saint Dunstan is often depicted with the tongs of his metalworking trade.  In this glass, according to  Pevsner, St Dunstan carries "tongs and devil's nose."  After you get over that, you can look at the superb painting of the head of the saint, which bears the tell-tale bulbous nose, an attribute of many of John Thornton's heads.  St Dunstan's feast day is May 19, the final day of the current course.  We'll be celebrating!

First Day of Class

A rather brilliant first day of class, though the first in recent memory without the sun shining.  We had lecture in the morning and then a tour of city parish churches in the afternoon.  Above, the class assembled on top of Clifford's tower with the Minster, All Saints Pavement and Saint Mary's Castlegate in the background.

The Trinity, C15.

In 1400, York had 45 Parish churches.  Nineteen of these remain, and we managed a quick look at nine of them on a tour that ended in the park to the north of the Minster.  Holy Trinity Goodramgate appeared to be closed (as it always seems to  be when I bring a class around to see it), but this time we scored a private session: it was reopened specially for us by a compassionate church warden who heard me beefing outside the gate.  From him we learned something I'd forgotten, that the central light of the east window depicts the eponymous Holy Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  The Father head is an insert in both this depiction and it the one we saw earlier at Saint Martin le Grand, Coney Street.

It's simply amazing how much there is to see and learn in this city.

Course begins tomorrow

It's the Easter Monday Bank Holiday, so we all have the first day of Summer Term off.  We will meet tomorrow at 9:00 for our first intensive session dedicated to the study of mostly local medieval art.  In relief of a little preparation fatigue, and to get some needed exercise, I took a busman's holiday and rode the 10 miles or so south to the small town of Ricall where Pevsner tells me there is a fine Norman doorway.  It's a sunny day with a north breeze and I was there in just half an hour taking the old railway line, now converted into a popular bicycle path, directly there.

The superb ornately carved doorway is protected by a porch facing south into a quiet churchyard.  It was made there in the early to mid 12th century, probably by the master sculptors working on the well funded and sumptuous Selby abbey (q.v.) five miles down the river.  It has  four orders becoming more abstract moving outwards.  The overall effect is stunning.

Unfortunately, there's a locked gate across the porch, so I couldn't get very close.

 There are several surviving Norman doorways in the city of York and we'll visit a couple of them tomorrow on our first look tour of the city's monuments.  Nine hundred years ago, we suppose, most of the churches had entrances like this one.  You would pass under them often, the hair on the back of your neck standing up in the presence of the scary beaked birds, your heart pumping a little faster in the presence of the serpent curled around the tree in the garden of Eden.

Pevsner tells us that the entire church except this door was dismantled in the 1830s.  Each stone was labeled, then put back in its original location once the foundations were updated.  So the church looks very healthy despite its impressive age.  This kind of love of heritage has a lot to do with why England is such a treasure trove of art and architecture today.

Walmgate Stray

The city of York has had, from as far back as history can inform us, common land for the grazing of cattle. Grazing rights were granted to every Freeman of the City of York on one of the many commons, and Walmgate stray is among the largest.  The land is apparently untouchable for development even though it represents very attractive real estate potential, near the University and close to the city walls.
For the citizens of York, and for visitors, it is a welcome break from the cityscape, a large tract of undeveloped land.  In the summer, animals are still let out upon it to graze, and the popular walking and cycling route from the river and points south through to the University becomes all the more pastoral.

The stray looking towards the Retreat from Heslington Lane

The Loos of York: 1

When we were in France in 2003, our daughter's English teacher remarked to her class that in England there were a lot of public toilets because they drink so much tea there and therefore they were always in need.  This may or may not be true, but what is true is that there are a lot of excellent public facilities in English towns, and York has its share. They even give out awards for distinguished loos, the loo of the year award was awarded to the men's loo at Ely cathedral.  So from time to time I'll introduce the readership to a loo in York.

Bootham Bar with Minster behind. Loo under steps to right.

The first one has to be the Bootham Bar loo, which occupies the ground floor of Bootham Bar, the western gate to the city.  Bootham Bar is now a medieval gate with an excellent barbican upstairs, but it was built on the roman gate that has been there since the first century CE.  It isn't known if there were always facilities in the gatehouse.

Thirsk to Knaresborough

We took the Grand Central service to Thirsk on Saturday and  biked from there to Knaresborough, a distance of about 25 miles.  It took five hours with frequent stops and a harsh spring wind that made it necessary to pedal even on steep downhill slopes.  We stopped in Ripon, where the noble Norman minster is built on the foundations laid by Saint Wilfrid in 673.  As we approached that fabulous building, pretty much in the middle of nowhere (Ripon is a modest market town without a train station), I thought about how it's both a burden and a treasure to have monuments like this one slowly crumbling across the countryside, hardly used and visited only by eccentric tourists.  But the Minster was overrun with people!  There was a rehearsal in progress of Britten's War Requiem with two choruses and two orchestras, not to mention a large number of auditors and a few eccentric tourists.  Music filled the place, and light, and life, though life crying out against death.

Burne-Jones Window at Topcliffe

Half the way to Ripon we rode through the village of Topcliffe which has a fine small church with a spectacular Pre-raphelite window painted by Burne-Jones before he was famous.  It depicts the Annunciation, the Visitation and the Nativity.  Lush coloring and brilliant in design.


We missed our train in Knaresborough, but the next train came an hour later, just enough time for an excellent coffee on the High Street.