Our. Holy Places
The Pilgrlin Shrines of England. Deiteribed and illustrated by B. C. Boulter. (Philip Allan. 108. Bd.) Tax religious pilgrimage is an exercise of piety which hangs rather uncertainly between two worlds. Whilst on one hand it is perhaps the most widespread and enduring of all human expressions of devotion—reproducing on physical levels the laborious journey of the soul-7on the other it can hardly avoid some of the advantages and inconveniences of a conducted tour. This character already distinguished it in the days of the Pilgrim Etheria, and receives its classic expression in the Canterbury Tales. Therefore the successful revival of the pilgrimage, which is now being attempted by the Anglp- Catholic branch of the English Church, would seem to .require a peculiar degree of spiritual tact ; and possibly a keener scent for devotional anachronisms and absurdities than has yet been vouchsafed to some of its promoters.. Whilst only the strongest mind would deliberately take Mr. G. G. Coulton as guide when visiting the shrines of the saints—still, the exuberant mediaevalism which sees our whole religious past bathed in pink light, revels in archaic language, and notes with a certain surprise in York Minster that " the beauty of holiness is even now a characteristic of this hallowed place," is only too ' likely to defeat its own legitimate ends.
Mr. Boulter—whose interesting and delightfully illustrated book seems to have been composed largely in the interests of this revival, and does not entirely escape its pitfalls—points out with justice that the Pilgrimage represents one of our most deeply rooted human instincts ; the tendency to redis- cover in certain places the continuing memory and influence of the past, to find a special inspiration in the spot where great deeds were done, or great souls have lived and died. This
• inclination is not in the technical sense religious. There is no essential difference between the impulse which sends travellers to Stratford-on-Avon or to Assisi. But since the pilgrim spirit is thus still active among us, it is surely well that it be redirected to ihnse half-forgotten holy places which yet Preserve the Memory of heroic episodes in the history of English Christianity ; and of those saints who are, or ,Should be, the Pride of our finally life. Yet there is surely a great distinction, not alWays obseryed by Mr. Boulter, between •those shrines which thus conserve the memory of spiritual greatness—the place where Si. Hilda lived and taught, the spot where St. Thomas of Canterbury died—and those which were once the scene of a fashionable cultus. The historic and religious thrill which all sensitive persons must experience at Glastonbury, Hexham, or_ is of Very different order from that induced by the delierately revived devotion to Our Lady of Waisingham, with its careful
reproduction of the most tawdry aspects of late-mediaeval piety. The modern shrine at Walsingham rouses Mr. Boulter to a special degree of enthusiasm and delight : " The entering pilgrim," he says, " knows it for a place of worship, prayer and service ; what he seeks here he finds, and goes on his way singing." Alas ! the reaction of other temperaments is apt to be less fortunate. These will be more likely to recapture the sense of the past in those places which have still escaped the attentions of the revivalist ; the site of that lonely hermi- tage on the Fames where St: Cuthbert " fought his little battle for the Lord " ; the cave at Knaresborough where St. Robert, that beloved and genial solitary, sheltered the poor and unfortunate, and now lies buried in the solid rock ; the place where Julian of Norwich held communion with her Love ; the forgotten shrine of St. Candida, with its simple epitaph " Hie Jacet Sancta Wite." These are not given by Mr. Bonner ; but he has described for us several holy places still outside the pious tourist's common track. Of these the most interesting are Hayles, once the English Bruges " ; Lastingham, with its memories of the saintly brothers Cedd and Chad ; and Sempringham, where only the church remains as a memorial to the devoted life of St. Gilbert—squire and parson of the village in the twelfth century—who here inaugu- rated the Gilbertine Order by housing seven village girls in an anchor-hold built against the north wall.
In such spots we do truly recapture the real memory of real persons ; persons distinguished by the beautiful simplicity, the courage and self-abandonment, which are the central characteristics of the saint. To visit these shrines is to receive precious lessons in the creative power inherent in a consecrated personality ; its originality and freedom, the immense variety of ways in which its vocation can be fulfilled. Especially those places which are associated with the galaxy of saints who make the seventh century so great a period in the history of British Christianity—Aidan, Cuthbert, Oswald, Paulinus, Chad, Hilda, Werburgh, Etheidreda, and the vigorous if not entirely saintly Wilfred—remind us of the heroic energy, the total self-spending, of which we inherit the fruits. These great and single-minded men and women are surely more worthy of our affectionate remembrance than many of those secular worthies, whose centenaries we are so constantly exhorted to recollect. Wandering in the North and the Midlands, we are perpetually treading in their footsteps ; can hardly avoid the sanctuaries they founded, the tombs where their bodies lie. To know something of their spirit, and learn to reverence and to love it, is to transform the most common- place of motor-tours into a veritable pilgrimage of the mind.
EVELYN UNDFRArt T,
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