Virtual Refectory: A matter of the everyday?

Lay devotion and the cathedral in medieval England

You asked and I have delivered: as 65% of you requested, let’s delve into another post on cathedrals!

The church…rises to the sky so majestically that it inspires devotion even in those who see it from afar…When you enter, the spacious grandeur of the building is disclosed.

The vastness of the building and the beauty of the architecture, along with the rituals of the choristers…make [Evensong] an experience on a completely different level to that of attending a normal Church service.

These visitors’ accounts could have been chronicled minutes apart at any cathedral during the Middle Ages. In fact, while the first description is Desiderius Erasmus’s early fifteenth-century take on Canterbury Cathedral, the second also references Canterbury, but from a twenty-first century visitor perspective, and was recorded for a 2017 report compiled for the Pilgrimage & England’s Cathedrals: Past and Present project.^[1]