North Norfolk Miracles

NORTH NORFOLK MIRACLES

The great philosopher David Hume wrote this of miracles in general: “that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish”.

What would Hume have made of  Walsingham (during his lifetime its shrine and pilgrimages were in their long period of post-Reformation slumber)?

Last year  (blog North Norfolk Pilgrims) I contrasted the religious pilgrims with the devoted groups of walkers just a short distance away on the coast. This year, as a prologue to our own walking party, some of us spent a few hours in Walsingham itself, chugging there and back on the charming steam-powered light railway from Wells.

Hume’s test is not much troubled by the Walsingham legend. The 11^th century visionary claimed to have been transported (in a vision) by the Virgin Mary to her (Mary’s) house in Palestine where she received the Annunciation of her impending motherhood of the Son of God. It was Mary’s wish, or command, that the Norfolk visionary build a replica in Norfolk (Palestine then being under Saracen rule).

The Mary House was miraculously erected overnight, but from locally-sourced materials. Then arrived various religious orders, and the pilgrims, and no doubt many charlatans out to profit from the credulity, and needs, of the latter.

The monks profited as well, and a vast priory was built, annexing the Mary House into a chapel built on the side of the priory.

Replication, or derivativeness, is a theme, therefore, from the beginning of Walsingham’s history as a holy place. No piece of the True Cross, or saint’s bones, ever rested here; merely a Mary statue in an unoriginal building. Nevertheless, and as noted in North Norfolk Pilgrims the shrine became one of European Christendom’s foremost pilgrimage destinations, until Henry VIII, once a pilgrim himself, put a longish temporary end to it all.

The priory and chapel, and Mary House, and statue, were destroyed and the priory lands privatised. So when the Anglican Church started things up again in the early C20 (in the village at least – the Roman Catholics had already established a presence a short distance away – see below), further replication was necessary – a new shrine containing a new statue, built outside the walls of the now privately-owned priory land.

I suppose this doesn’t matter too much, as doubtless some degree of Humean scepticism is lodged in the minds of most modern Christians. The new shrine is presented as a place, not of miracles, but as a centre for the celebration of Mary. The shrine is now part of a complex of buildings necessary for today’s pilgrims, and school trips, all set round pleasant lawns, trees and flower beds.

Our little group ate our picnic on one of the lawns. We were treated to the sight of a large party of secondary school children being led in procession by a burly-looking priest. The children clutched candles, the flames of which were barely visible in the sunlight. The priest chanted the verses of a Marian song, with the children giving the chorus of “Ave, Ave Maria”. Round the grounds they snaked and then disappeared, still singing, either into the shrine church or village streets.

For an entrance fee, one may wander in the old priory grounds. They are lovely in June. Dominating the now flat grassy area where the priory once stood is the vast skeleton of its East Window. Its size and isolation calls to mind the ruined statue in the desert of Ozymandias, in Shelley’s poem (My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains..).

The theme of derivativeness at Walsingham is not done. Whereas the Anglicans are snug up against the old priory’s site, a mile or so away across the fields are the Roman Catholics, in a small hamlet. This evokes a sense of exile: a community displaced but still skulking in the neighbourhood.

But the Catholics also have a modern and open green site (spoilt only by the ghastly statuary on display in the window of the religious shop). And in the matter of replicas they are one up on the Anglicans. They may be in Outer Walsingham, so to speak, but the site does have an original building from the former pilgrim days.  This is the Slipper Chapel, rescued from farmyard use at the end of the nineteenth century. It was the building where pilgrims left their footwear before walking the last mile to the old shrine on bare feet (or, if you were the pre-reformation Henry VIII, on bare knees).

The Catholics have built a biggish modern wooden church. On its side is a video screen which scrolls information about Walsingham. I noted that particular mention is made of the part played by Thomas Cromwell in the destruction of the old shrine and priory. I wondered whether this barb was sharpened by the popularity of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell, and her unflattering portrait of the sainted Thomas More, Catholic martyr. (Mantel was brought up a Catholic.)

Finally, on our secular walking pilgrimage there occurred an event which would have confounded Hume.  One of our number lost a pair of binoculars during the Friday’s walking. He spent Saturday morning driving to the various locations of possible loss in frantic search, instead of walking with rest of us.

Luckily the man’s wife had been in the little party which had explored Walsingham, and had even joined the schoolchidren’s chorus of “Ave, Ave Maria”, singing from our picnic position on the sidelines.

Clearly Mary wished to reward her visit and singing. For, Lo, at the end of her husband’s fruitless search up and down the coast, the binoculars miraculously re-appeared – in his rucksack. Refute that, David H.

July 2015