Salvation and damnation at stake
Walk down the middle of Broad Street in Oxford, taking care to avoid being hit by a car or, more likely, a bicycle, and you will see a cross of granite setts, exposed like an ulcer in the smooth tarmac of the road.
All posts tagged: Christianity
Frideswide and the treacle well
The Saxon princess-abbess-saint Frideswide was not the founder of Oxford: there was certainly a settlement at the confluence of the Cherwell and the Thames well before her time. But she has a claim to be one of the founders of the idea of Oxford, the notion of the city as a nexus of learning, religion, and occasional miracles.
Norwegian wood
A small wooden church on Cardiff Bay testifies to the most significant influx of Norwegians to Britain since the Viking invasions a thousand years earlier. These nineteenth-century Norwegians were more peaceable than their Viking ancestors, interested in trade rather than pillage. And unlike those earlier visitors they worshipped Christ, not Odin.
Dangerous visions
It was not a morning to be outdoors, with high winds and dense rain lashing Kent as I drove south on my way to a birthday lunch. But the hamlet of Court-at-Street is only a short detour off the M20, and, as with crimes, so with visits to ruined chapels: I had means, motive, and opportunity, despite the weather.