21 Lincoln September 7, 2007

Lincoln September 7, 2007



Last evening (Thursday 9/13) the faculty gathered in the Vander Elst room (I will try to tell you about her a bit later) for a Seminar. That is code for a party. Several times a semester the visiting faculty hosts an evening of conversation, food and drink for the British faculty. It was a fun evening with conversations ranging from the virtues of vodka soaked gummy bears to the university system in Romania. At one point someone mentioned and most everyone agreed that it feels to most everyone that we have been at Harlaxton for a life time.

Time goes extraordinarily fast for something that seems to crawl at a slug’s pace at times. Somehow it did not get around to blogging about last weekend and I am writing this on Friday (9/14) at 11:39 on a train to London. This trip was a trip to begin with and I might as well fess up to that at this point in time rather than putting off the telling until it comes in the proper sequence. I might conveniently forget to confess at some point in the future.

We had train reservations for London at 10:36. There are shuttles that convey folks the 3 miles from Harlaxton to Grantham several times in the mornings. One is scheduled for 10:10. Penny had talked to the driver and learned that the traffic in Grantham was backed up and that it was iffy as to our making the train. This was about 9:15. Now we are faced with a decision. Do we risk the shuttle or do we walk. I weighed the possibilities and made the decision. It was the wrong one. Not a disastrously wrong one but a highly inconvenient wrong one none-the-less. We walked. By the time we left it was 9:30, plenty of time to make the walk if you run or least if you walk briskly.

Huffing, puffing and dripping we trudged on to the train station. We were passed by the shuttle from Harlaxton as we were very near the station. We did arrive at 10:32 for our 10:36 train. We had time to sit and catch our breath before the train arrived. Indeed we had time to write the great American novel before the train arrived because it was delayed. We are not on our train. We were advised that the next train was at 11:07 and the one after was at 11:14. The advice was to let everyone else from our train get on the 11:07 and then wait for the next train a few minutes later and get on that one. It worked and here we are. Most everything else this morning has gone well, most everything but not all things. I did manage to put the water bottle in a bag on top of our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches resulting in compacted sandwiches. The paper bag the sandwiches were in was also damp seeing as how I did not get the cap back on the water bottle in a secure fashion. I must say that the sandwich were still exquisite. Penny made the sandwiches and she actually used peanut butter. The cafeteria people either do not understand the concept of PB&J or they were raised during the rationing years of WWII. They spread the peanut butter on the bread in such a way that the thin layer of peanut butter turns the bread only the palest shade of beige. Scotland Yard detectives are required to locate the jelly.


But I digress. Let’s talk about Lincoln, England. The entire college took a school field trip to Lincoln last Friday. Lincoln is one of the oldest cities on the island. There is evidence of a settlement here long before the Romans arrived in Brittany in the centuries following the birth of Christ. Lincoln has preserved its history very well. There are Roman arches, walls and roads. There is a great Cathedral that has been built over the centuries by expanding and incorporating and expanding again the previous houses of worship that have stood on the sight.




There is also a medieval castle that has been around since the time of the Normans or earlier.




It is still in use as regional court house and there were armored vehicles ferrying prisoners from their abodes to appear in front of the magistrates while we were visiting.


We arrived in Lincoln and the students gathered around their sign holding pre-designated leaders who would show them around. Penny and I chose to tag along with Dr. Edward Bujack. Dr. Bujack is a Historian who is evangelical in his zeal for History. He was a blast.


Our first stop, however, was not with Bujack but at the Castle. We were escorted around the castle which served as a prison for many years including much of the 18th and 19th centuries. The prison philosophy at that time was to totally isolate prisoners from contact with any other person. They lived in individual cells with no way to talk with other.




The exception was for a condemned person. On the night before execution he or she was allowed to sleep on a real bed. I doubt many people slept much.



They were led out daily to an exercise yard with bags over their heads and holding on to a knot on a long rope that prevented them from touching anyone else.



Daily trips to chapel were accomplished the same way and they were escorted into small upright chambers (called coffin chambers) where they stood and listened to a preacher.


Our next venue was an escorted tour of the Lincoln cathedral.

Dr Bujack brought the past into the presence of his students and for me as well. He stopped as we entered and said to look around at the beauty and grandeur.




We were awestruck. Then the lesson begins. Dr Bujack: That is what most people see. If you want to know the history you have to look at the details. How do you think they paid for all of this? No one answered. The same way they pay for things now. Corporate sponsors. Look there on the ceiling. That is the name of the man who gave a lot of money to build this building.

He then took us to one of the columns holding up the roof and found a wooden trap door in the floor right next to it. He lifted it up and said this is the base of the column for the Norman Church that was here before the 1300s. A stone mason cut and smoothed that column with hammer and chisel. Put your hand here. 700 years ago someone else’s hand was feeling that very stone to see if he had smoothed it enough. Put your hand where his was.







Look here at this carved stone wall.





What is unusual about this? This is the old catholic screen that separated the people from the alter where the priests would have been. It should not be here. Look around at the rest of the cathedral. Do you see any icons? Are there any statues of the Virgin Mary? No, Look here where during the reformation they came in with sledge hammers and knocked all of that stuff down.



But for some reason they decided not to knock down this wall.


Who was the man who carved all of these figures from the stone? What did he look like? Well maybe we can know. Look at this one. It has a human face and by his ear are the tools of a stone mason. Perhaps he carved a self portrait.



Now look at the windows.



Then look at the beige wall. Why are the windows so bright and the wall so plain? But look closely at this beige wall. It was not always so. This wall like the windows was once alive with color.




The medieval world was a visual one. Most of the people could not read nor write so pictures in stone, wood and glass told stories.

What do you suppose they were trying to teach in this tomb carving of a great bishop who died during the apocalyptic time of the black death.





In life he was a great man with wealth and power but when he dies his body rots along with his possessions. It is best to store up for yourself treasures in heaven rather than rely on this life which can be over in a heartbeat.

Look up at the ceiling can you see where they added on to the church? It did not quite line up with the old church as well as it might have. Oh, well, close enough.




Do you suppose other tour groups have been through this building? Look what othesr have left behind as they toured the church.



When we went into the chapter room it looked like there were these great old wall painting.


But it turns out that these were not on the wall but on canvas that was hanging on the walls. It turns out that when they were filming a scene in the Divinci Code that was supposed to be in Westminister Abbey that they could not get permission to film there. They asked Lincoln and they said yes. So they hired a reformed art forger who painted these scenes to mimic what was in another location (or at least what Hollywood thought it should look like.

While Dr Bujack was talking to the students I was chatting with one of the curators. When Dr Bujack asked if there were questions I asked why they called it a Chapter room? He said he did not know. I said I did. It was because when they called a meeting in the room they always began by reading a chapter from the Bible.

Outside the cathedral, students got an object lesson on how they could have such big stain glass windows and yet not have the walls fall down. It was the invention of the flying buttress that supported the walls from outside.









We then walked around the city and found evidence that long before the cathedral was built that the Romans were here. This arch was in the North wall of the city and the road that went under this arch went straight to London and then by boat they would cross the channel. There the road continued and went across the Alps and then straight to Rome.




The directions were easy. How do you get to Rome? Take this road and when you see the Coliseum you are there. This is history. Touch the stone, be the stone. Feel history.




And now for a closing contest. Who lives on this lane?




Ray