Virtual Refectory: The Art of Heaven, Part II

Art for Faith's Sake...

Hello, lovely Ecclesiasticals: let’s continue with the taster of the talk I recently gave on holy jewels, gems and relics of the Church…

Moving further down the body, next in importance was arguably a bishop’s pectoral cross.

St Cuthbert was the most revered saint in northern Europe before Thomas Becket was slaughtered by Henry II’s four knights in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. When Cuthbert's shrine was opened at Durham Cathedral again in 1827, this jewelled pectoral cross was found ‘deeply buried among the remains of the robes which were nearest to the breast of the saint’, wrote an eyewitness. The shrine seemingly escaped the savage ransacking during the Dissolution of the monasteries during Henry VIII’s reign (as Durham was a priory run by Benedictine monks at this time), and it can be inferred from the circumstances in which the saint’s stole (neck scarf) and maniple (material hung over the left arm during mass) were found that King Henry’s Commissioners had ceased their plundering before the body had been fully stripped of its wrappings. It was simply luck that the pectoral cross still survived.