Showing posts with label piety. Show all posts
Showing posts with label piety. Show all posts

Sunday 8 July 2012

Traditional English Piety




Modern statues -
ancient witness

An anonymous Church - Norfolk
© Godric Godricson




I like the saints and how they are portrayed in English parish Churches. The images of the saints remain within Anglo-Catholic Churches like they truly belonged and sometimes its reassuring to find such traditional statuary that advises and informs faith and belief. The statues are something that our pre-reformation ancestors found and which connected them to their own faith and belief. The statues would have been there as the body was brought in for burials and the statues would have looked down as the bodies were carried out to the graveyard.

I like the continuity of the saints who do not speak or move or help us. They have no apparent function and yet they are comforting as they stand up on high.

The saints in Churches have witnessed everything and they continue to witness the daily comings and goings of parishes.