The modern pilgrimages to Canterbury Cathedral

Press, 18 April 1980, Page 10

The modern pilgrimages to Canterbury Cathedral

By

DAVID GUNSTON

For most of its long and varied history, the ancient city of Canterbury, centre of Christianity in England, has attracted pilgrims from afar. Once they came for purely religious reasons, to worship in the great new cathedral, to pay homage at the famous shrine of Thomas A’Becket. Now they come perhaps more out of curiosity, to see the still luminously wonderful place, to savour its history and its serenity. Yet whatever the reason that draws ever-increas-ing numbers of people from all over the globe, the magic of Canterbury remains, and has its effect on today’s pilgrims as it did of old.

I know, because recently I was one one of them. All visitors to Canterbury today are regarded and welcomed as pilgrims in a way I cannot recall anywhere else. The very word “canter,” describing an easy ambling pace for horses, derives from Canterbury, and originally meant the unhurried speed at which the pilgrims approached their destination. This sense of unhurriedness remains: few other busy modern towns retain the calm, leisurely, peaceful mood of .bygone cen-

turies — and somenow manage to instil it into each . day’s influx of world-wide visitors.

Yet as a noted local historian, Canon Herbert Waddams, says, “Canterbury tries to exhibit its history as a living part of a living community.” It does so very well. Sitting, as I did, on the smooth lawns in front of th cathedral, itself a warm paean of golden stone, in the brilliant summer sunshine amid dozens of other modem pilgrims of probably every colour and every creed (or none) it was very easy to become aware of the serene charm of this unique place. I think most if not all, of my fellow-pilgrims

that day felt it too. Everyone was relaxed, quiet, peaceful, perhaps even respectful. Certainly no-one could wander round that magnificent building .without a sense of mingled wonder and awe. Nor could anyone with two eyes and a heart stroll through the narrow old streets and fine modern piazzas of the city, with the centuries merging on every hand, without an allied sense of humanity reaching down through the ages. To Canterbury’s first inhabitants, the Iron Age folk of 300 8.C., this was a handy fording-place for the River Stour, meandering through lazy marshes all around and full of fish for food. To the later Gauls, this ford was an ideal spot for a strongpoint. To the Romans, this became the great settlement of Durovemum, sitting astride Watling Street, their great highway between London and Dover, a military base, and a centre of culture and leisure. To the Saxons who came after, it was Cantwarabyng, “the town of the men of Kent” and the capital of that even then highly fruitful kingdom. To that most human of saints, Augustine, who

came here in 597 A.D. to found a church, urged on by Pope Gregory when he wanted to turn back, it was the ideal centre for his mission, and he founded the church building that still draws its daily thousands. To the subsequent Norman invaders, this already old settlement _ was a ready-made capital, they replaced earlier wattle-and-plaster with stone and founded the handsome modern city we see today. To growing numbers of religious refugees from the Continent, it was a haven of peace and opportunity. To medieval pilgrims it represented the earthly striving toward higher things that their religion instilled into them. in the eighteenth centurv the place enjoyed a modest commercial prosperity it had not known before, and many fine gardens and houses were laid out Then, in World War 11. it was chosen by Nazi airmen as a prime target for one of their senseless

Baedeker raids. More than a quarter of the old city was destroyed or badly damaged, and many irreplaceable things disapppeared for ever. As if to reinforce the direct, human, cosmopolitan appeal of the place, we had as our guide for the tour of the cathedral a most unusual man whom it was surprising to meet under such circumstances.

He clearly loved his (unpaid) work, and his transparent sincerity made our visit all the more enjoyable. A short, foxy, Monty-like man of military bearing, he was in fact a retired Army colonel belonging to an aristocratic Scottish family (he was too modest to wear his name-badge), 80 years old and proud of it (though looking no more than 60). With enviable skill he extolled to us the message of that lofty and memorable shrine through the varied fortunes of his own life — an unlikely method that succeeded brilliantly. To see this wiry, gleaming figure, to know how for him the simple inspiring grandeur of Canterbury Cathedral meant everything, and to see him darting along with our motband of pilgrims from Texas, Laos, Canada. Japan and Italy in expectant tow, was to see a modem parable in action and to be most movingly a part of it Then, when at 1 p.m.

precisely one of the deans of that ancient chapter called us all to order over the loud-speaker system, asking us quietly to observe a couple of minutes of silent prayer standing motionless wherever we were, remembering in this hallowed place the needs of people today, we returned vividly to the prese n t. Surprisingly, perhaps, for this day and age, everyone in the vast church obeyed — modern pilgrims to a man, woman and child. Afterwards, to climb the cathedral’s circular Corona Tower, with its superb views all over the city, to wander quietly among the ruined cloisters of St Augustine’s Abbey, visit the Meister Omer Priory and the Franciscan Greyfriars and ponder the origins of the mysterious Dane John mound by the old city walls, seemed merely to augment what had gone before.

Lastly. I had been told on no account to miss the river journey from the old Flemish Weavers’ House on King’s Bridge. Gliding silently in a large punt, visitors see the ola parts of the city from the still meandering and still fish-filled River Stour. Past the crumbling old Blackfriars Monastery (now oddly enough a Christian Science meetingplace) under the low monks' bridge, even, beneath the dark and eerie millrace — this indeed was to savour the City of Pilgrims to the fulL For here, by the very same little river, was where it j ail began.