July 5
So we finally went to see the cathedral.
This is the main entrance to the Cathedral area.
It is impossible to show how huge this building is. It was originally made for monks. They kept adding on as the number of pilgrims grew. The pilgrims were and still are coming here to worship Saint Thomas. Thomas Becket was the Archbishop of Canterbury when Henry VIII was king. Henry was not happy with the Catholic Church since the Pope would not let him divorce his wife. So, Henry is said to have complained about the Archbishop and some of his knights killed him. They sliced a piece of his skull off and the brain matter that flew out is said to have performed miracles right then. So the faithful still pilgrim here.
This is a picture of about 1/5 of the church.
Around the church are many, many sculptures but no paintings. It seems that during the time that the Puritans were in power, the church was white washed and the paintings removed and statues had their heads chopped off. This is one of the few paintings saved.
This is the burial place of one of the archbishops. He had this built 14 years before his death. His pulpit was right across from this and he looked at it for 14 years before he died. The sculpture on the top is how the world saw him and the body on the bottom is how G-d sees him, the same as every other person.
We listened to the concert while sitting in the wooden seats the bishops sit in. Boy are they uncomfortable. So we sat in the more comfortable back seats while the angel boy choir sang for evensong. It was too bad, but I ran out of everything and got dizzy, so we left in the middle. I am OK, just too much in one day. We were out and about for about 10 hours.
We spent the next day resting, except for finding a market to buy some food for dinner. Of course that took more walking.
Hopefully, Dover castle tomorrow.
The cathedral looks like Erasmus !
ReplyDeleteDebbie