Saints in earth
“HAND me the head torch,” the 10th Prince of Cerveteri instructs as we peer into the gloom. Don Francesco, the parish priest at Vignanello — where the Castle Ruspoli, the Prince’s family home, is located — had given us a mystery to solve. Beneath the altar of the Church of the Presentation is a saint, about whom nobody knows anything. The torch reveals that the skeleton was richly decorated and seems to have been put in when the church was rebuilt in 1723.
A quick piece of advice — garnered via Twitter — from Canon Ward, late of St Stephen’s House, Oxford, confirms that it is one of the “catacomb saints”, sent by mail order from Rome to churches in need of a saint when the papacy sought to clear the catacombs of early Christian dead. Whether it will ever be possible to work out who this early Christian was is difficult to say. Perhaps it is enough to know that he believed.
Out of kilter
OUR party includes journalists, doctors, creatives, and members of the Prince’s extended family. The trip coincides with the celebrations in Rome for the Jubilee Year. Regardless of professional or religious background, we all become transfixed by the Holy Doors, the outdoor masses, and the million young people, which all dominate the television, press, and conversation in the little town.
“I cannot overstate the power of a million people singing at one time,” Dulcinée, one of the party, says. She is right — though what strikes me is how the town still looks to Rome and to the Pope as a sort of centre of the universe. The Papal States still exist here as a cultural reality, if not as a political one.
In the midst of it all, Don Francesco and I chat about the reality of being a parish priest. Many of the pressures and strangenesses remain the same, regardless of our ecclesial identity. He expresses admiration for the Church of England’s ability to find room for family life for its clergy. It’s not always easy, I tell him. “Nothing important is,” he says, wisely.
I tease Tao, the Prince’s younger brother and our friend, that, had he been around when the Papal States were a political rather than a cultural reality, he would have made a deliciously artistic cardinal, perhaps in charge of the saintly mail-order operation. Instead, he makes movies: exquisitely shot, thought-provoking moments of beauty caught on film. I am glad he does so.
He takes us to the amazing Renaissance sculpture park at Bomarzo, a few miles away. Here, an ancestor of his by marriage carved a fantastical set of monsters and temples as grief for his wife racked his soul. Round every corner is a stony monster, while the entire construction of the site — all sloping floors and bending walls — is designed to distort the visitor’s sense of reality. I suspect that it is the closest I will get to the General Synod.
People’s peers
FROM Bomarzo to Buxton, a very different kind of madness. The 32nd International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival attracted all sorts. Notably, the student societies appear to be in rude health; Durham won a closely fought universities competition.
The younger generation is discovering the Savoy Operas anew. There is, it seems, no better way to interest younger people in something than to have a group of well- meaning elderly modernisers tell them that they won’t like it, and that it’s stuffy and boring. Of course, such things would never happen in the Church.
The highlight was Princess Ida, perhaps the most cynical of all Gilbert’s libretti and one of the richest of Sullivan’s scores. Phoebe Smith as the Princess herself was magnificent: expect hers to be a name of which you hear more. “The World is But a Broken Toy” is a particular highlight of the piece, with words that might have been written by St Augustine. I think I would like it at my funeral.
I also made sure to see Iolanthe, and paid particular attention to the composition of the chorus of peers: lots of excellent coronets, but not a lawn sleeve in sight. I suppose a modern version, after this Parliament’s character-draining reforms, would no longer be dukes, earls, and marquesses, but, instead, a gaggle of grey lanyardistas, donors, and union leaders, with a bishop included — but only under sufferance.
Ringing the changes
IN FACT, the most illuminating part of the festival was nothing to do with Gilbert and Sullivan, but an excellent lecture on bell-ringing. Like many of the clergy, I have looked on those great masses of metal with an awe and wonder that has occasionally spilled over into fear. I once, as a curate, made the mistake of blithely wandering into the ringing chamber while the ringers were about their business. It is not a mistake a cleric makes twice.
I have often allowed the bells to run themselves, more or less; so to learn about how change-ringing works, and the specific heritage of English ringing as opposed to the chimes of the Continent, was well overdue. I enjoyed Dorothy L. Sayers’s explanation of the divergence between the carillon style of European bells and the change-ringing that is favoured in England: “When it comes to bells, the playing of tunes is a childish game only fit for foreigners.”
Such nuggets aside, the talk, by Lindsay Whitham, was not only supremely interesting, but genuinely professionally helpful. It ought to be included in Initial Ministerial Education — or whatever the quondam “potty training” is called these days.
Jungle VIPs
AS MUCH as it might sound like a season of gallivanting, the parish has been in rude health. I returned from the Continent and launched straight into our annual Holiday Club. Each morning, between 50 and 60 children descended on St Mary’s, Charlbury, to learn Bible stories, songs, and prayers, as well as make crafts and play sports. The club was billed as being “The Rumble in the Jungle”.
There were, fortunately, no attempts among our under-tens to repeat the 1974 bout between George Foreman and Muhammed Ali, although, as I said matins on the first day of the club, the cry of a macaw interrupted the end of the 31st Psalm. “All ye fowls of the air” and all that.
In heav’nly love abiding
THE other highlight — or, rather, the greatest moment — of the summer has been getting married. My wife and I had only two desires for the wedding: that nobody should have to pay for a drink, and that the service should be taken from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer: no cringe-making “tender joy of sexual union”, or weird questions to the congregation; just that soaring beauty of the Church of England’s liturgy at its best. The drinks were pretty good, too.
My curacy parish had something like 40 weddings a year; so I have easily conducted close to triple figures’ worth of marriage services. Marriage really does change everything. But it does so even more when that exhortation to consider it “signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church” is taken seriously. To show the people of God that our relationship to Christ is not some box-ticking exercise but a lifelong love affair is all that any parson can hope to do.
It is that love affair that links our mystery saint in Vignanello, Dr Cranmer, Dorothy L. Sayers, and me. I can only pray that now knowing what it feels like in human terms might help me to speak more convincingly of how it feels to be in love with — and loved by — the Divine himself.
The Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie is Vicar of Charlbury with Shorthampton, in the diocese of Oxford.
