Yep, you guessed it. As evidenced by the Middle English, this is The Canterbury Post. I think every nerdy English major who has ever been to England must have written or thought about his/her trip in terms of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Let me jump on the literary tradition, then.
My day went a little something like this. First, in the morning, I auditioned for Little Shop of Horrors. More on that if I get the part. If I don't, then just forget I mentioned it. After the audition, I met Hayley and Danielle at the train station, and we took the 11:31 to London-Paddington. From Paddington Station, we took the Underground to Victoria Station, and from there we caught a train to East Canterbury. The trip took about 3.5 hours, which is considerably faster than the pilgrimages of the Middle Ages.
The most predominate sight in Canterbury is the cathedral, and as we stepped out of the station, the spire greeted us is the English misty-rainy afternoon. We were so excited walking up the street towards the cathedral, making nerdy jokes about my favorite character in the Tales, The Pardoner, and saying to each other, "Kiss my relics!" See, Chaucer's Pardoner is kind of a bad buy (which is kind of an understatement). He preaches sermons about greed and cursing, especially emphasizing the physical suffering of Christ caused by the congregation's sins, in order to swindle the laity; he scares them into buying Papal pardons, indulgences, and relics. The opening quotation comes at the end of The Pardoner's Tale as he tries to dupe the Host of the pilgrimage, basically saying, "Kiss my relics!" It's like "Kiss my grits," only not. "Kiss my relics," has kind of been my Middle English anthem. I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.
Finally, I have some pictures to show! First, here is the cathedral from outside.
Pretty, yeah? I'm a fan of the flying buttresses. Anyway, the cathedral is where the Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered in 1170. Rumors about miracles occurring at the site of his murder prompted a canonization. Ta-da, we have St. Thomas Becket, and we used to have a nifty little shrine for St. Thomas, but Henry VIII tore it down. But there's a candle burning on the spot to signify the shrine.
Since I cannot turn off my brain, I was thinking how the architecture and iconography in the cathedral relates to the literature of the age. More specifically, since I'm fascinated with the Medieval fascination of the body (oh yeah, lots of fascination going around), I looked at how martyrdom, saints' relics, and physical suffering tied in with lay piety and affective devotion. Very briefly, affective devotion is a form of worship which became very popular in the 14th and 15th Centuries, and it is rooted in the emotional connections between the uneducated laity and Christ's corporeal self. Christ became human and thereby, in his human body, he is connected to the worshipers. Medieval Christians were called to ruminate on Christ's suffering body, especially at the Crucifixion--one of the moments which insist most heavily on his humanity. One of the drawbacks is that the laity, in only engaging with the pathos fail to contemplate higher spiritual matters and are vulnerable to the abuses of the Church. For instance, Chaucer's Pardoner loads his sermon with images of Christ's physical body being torn apart on the cross--very vivid stuff--in order to rob the congregation.
In the cathedral's crypt (where unfortunately picture were not allowed), I noticed a theme of beautifying the bloody body. Lots of affective devotional texts concerning the Crucifixion drew close attention to Christ's wounds in his hands, feet, and side. One writer in The Doctrine of the Heart describes Christ's death as a form of barbecue where he is like meat being roasted upon a spit. It's kind of disturbing. Anyway, as fascinated with Christ's wounds as Medieval writers/worshipers are, there is a need to wipe the blood away when it becomes too much. The sarcophagi in the crypt have the figures of the martyrs on the top of them, statues of the dead. The martyrs are depicted with stigmata, blessed with the same wounds as Christ, connecting their physical suffering to his. But instead of bloody holes in their hands, the wounds become roses, thereby anesthetizing the brutality. So, as much as the clergy and writers emphasized the physical suffering of Christ, there is a contradictory need to hide it when the pain becomes too much.
In keeping with the theme of the body of Christ, pilgrims who made their way to Canterbury Cathedral would have been surrounded by the Eucharist, the literal Body of Christ transubstantiation in the Mass. Central to the pilgrimage was the church,and central to the church was the Eucharist, so pilgrims subjected their bodies to long travels and other exhausting feats in order to connect to the body of Christ. I found an interesting stained glass image which I hope you can see. The sun was setting outside, so it was hard to get a good shot, but here it is:
And one more to really show the lower image:
Got it? So, there is a man vomiting and, more importantly, a priest holding the Eucharist over a bed-ridden man, most likely giving him Last Unction. The Body of Christ is present, even in death. It is absolutely central to the Medieval psyche. And pilgrims who made their way to Canterbury to worship in the church would have seen these images of both physical suffering (the man all throw-upy) and of Christ's body on Earth (the Eucharist). Well, I think that's about it for my Canterbury post. I am so glad I went to all of those Medieval Lit lectures this term; they have really shaped the way I read both texts and images of the Middle Ages. I hope I didn't bore you too much. I just get really excited over bodies in Medieval literature. But, hey, cathedral pretty, right? Thanks for sticking with me this long, and I'll post soon about the other show I went to see in London. Have a great day, and remember, don't get suckered in by every man in a robe yelling, "Kiss my relics!"
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