Page 12, 25th September 1981

25th September 1981

Page 12

Page 12, 25th September 1981 — Saints who invented Russia's alphabet
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Saints who invented Russia's alphabet

Patrick O'Donovan]
ffiERE ARE many rude words for Italians. In all manner of customers, household objects, vices, manners and (a few) virtues there is a multiplicity of extra curricular names for the British. There are misbegotten and mischievous people who actually dislike the British and purposely misunderstand us.
No-one dislikes the Italians. They can be maddening. No-one praises their politics, police system or efficiency. But there is disapproval of the way they treat their own incomparable treasures. A large part of the Western world has annexed these as global property — in the nicest possible way.
When the Arno overflows and spoils some of the finest things in Florence, (I don't mean all those ghastly tooled leather boxes). when Venice shows a tendency to sink beneath the waves, the world's money pours in even more than for the disaster of Aberfan.
But the money tends to behave oddly. Pictures still peel, churches and palaces still totter, mountain villages shaken almost to death by earthquake still wait in the rain. There seems to be a financial fishing net frequently lowered between the foreign care and the native spending. This is not, of course, a universal law. And there is news of a wise act in Rome. The state, which usually exudes money for such things. as that stone did water for Moses in the desert, has done essential restoration on the
church of San Clemente which is near the Colosseum. (The Romans used to call this vulgar thing the Flavian Amphitheatre; it was our own St Bede, c.700. who gave it its present name).
The Irish Dominicans have a fine church in Lisbon and they are very popular. But they have one of the finest and perhaps the oldest church in Rome. It was given them in 1677. The government has restored the roof for £120,000 and is going to spend the same on the somewhat overbaroque ceiling. Someone else will have to pay for the rest.
The church,of glittering marble is massive and strong. Its sanctuary and altar and President's chair are raised up as in a marble boxing ring. furnished with massive reading desks above the rest of the interior. There are two rows of pillars and since this is not a guide book you'll have to take it from me that it is rich and solemn fun.
One of the priors, James Mullooly, did a bit of excavating and found the Fourth Century basilica lower down — as dark as the grave. Unheard of Popes used it as a meeting place and the unlovable St Jerome mentioned it in 392.
Here is the possible tomb of St Cyril who died in Rome. With his brother St Methodius, he is to the Slays what St Patrick is to the Irish. They invented the Russian alphabet and brought back the body of St Clement, the fourth Pope. He had been exiled to the Crimea where he had been drowned in the Black Sea.
Angels built him a chapel on the sea bed which was high and dry once a year. Some silly mother left her child behind — it now happens all the time outside the Home and Colonial — but the next year she found it there alive. This is not an article of faith.
There are also two houses lower still found by Prior Louis Nolan. They appear to have survived Nero's petulant burning of Rome in AD64.
There is a community of twelve there now. In the past they have produced a lot of bishops, including the first two of New York. They also produced John Troy who was made bishop of Ossory in 1776. He became Archbishop of Dublin. He is reported to have said: "Either we must root out the Bible or the Bible will root out us. The translaters of the English Bible are to be abhorred to the depths of Hell. It would be better to be without God's law than without the Pope's."
This was dated 1816 and it is on a pretty, anti-popery Victorian statue that I treasure. He may have said it because he was sick of a low Church, hypocritical, Bible toting society with all the power. He may have said it because he was old. He may never have said it at all. And anyway it was before Vatican II.
And coffee mournings?
ONCE THE Bishop of Winchester was the richest prelate in the Kingdom. diocese was vast and consisted of fat farms, forests, fish teeming rivers, mills and some prosperous towns like Southampton. He had palaces and hunting lodges. And all this came from the gifts and taxes of the faithful.
One result was that the bishops were often Chancellors of England because they could look after themselves and found colleges and ease the King over financial bumps.
One gets the impression that although they had a fine palace beside the cathedral they did not spend much time in their city. And I am sure the monks and senior clergy preferred it that way.
At the Reformation the revenues of the Cathedrals were His handed over to the Dean and Chapter. The bishops retained huge incomes and everyone seemed to keep the greatest state with carriages and horses and servants and splendid houses, and well appointed cellars. Very few of them died of overwork.
But in 1840, under the Dean and Chapter Act, these old endowments were transferred to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. Some of the clergy were scandalously rich and employed curates to do the work. Some were threadbare.
Winchester's affairs were perhaps particularly dramatic. By 1870 the cathedral was nearly closed down for bankruptcy. The struggle continues.
Cathedrals get no help from governments who have difficulty enough in paying for schools, hospitals and prisons. It is true that the Government gives £1 a year for the maintenance of ancient parish churches. Most of the Church Commissioners who now have the central funds spend most of their money on paying the clergy.
Without these salaries all their bishops and about half their clergy would be on the dole. Their cellars are empty and their. wives tend to have to find a job.
In any healthy parish the Catholic priest in his spikey little presbytery is likely to be better off than his married Anglican colleague. We have a tradition of paying our clergy. as part of our pride which does not yet really exist among the Anglicans.
But back to Winchester. It costs the Dean and Chapter £250,000 a year to keep the Cathedral standing and working.
I won't go into detail as to where the money comes from. They have had two emergency national appeals and real] y cannot have another. The sources are surprising. They get 12 per cent of their profits from the cathedral book stall at the end of one of the aisles — all in impeccable taste.
They get 35 per cent from the offerings of sightseers who are encouraged with just a touch of stately blackmail at the door. They get help on salaries from the Church Commissioners. Some. of the staff are bound to live in the mansions round the close. Some of the Mansions are let. "Friends of the Cathedral" help towards the £30,000 a year needed for the maintenance that never stops.
They have gifts and endowments and investments and entry fees to things like the library. There is a choir and organ of magnificence which cost a bomb.
Their predicament is common and represents the peculiar way the British, who are said no longer to be Christian, do things. The saving of York M inster was a triumph of local love and pride. There is going to have to be spent on Westminster Abbey almost enough to build a small battleship. If you can matte the effort of will and suppress your emotion and historical sense, we are perhaps fortunate in one sense to have been so despoiled by history.
Good egg (timers)
ONCE, and a very long time ago, I was driving down from London with an American priest tvho was to "fill in" for the weekend. He asked me how long it was customary for us to be preached at. Staring out of the side window, I said "three minutes".
He made no comment and preached precisely for three minutes. The People of God coming out remarked what a marvellous sermon it had been. And for just the one reason. It was not always so. Brevity is a new fashion.
Accepting the dread discipline of the Scots Churches which were preaching Churches, everyone else seemed to run on and on.




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