‘Westminster Abbey charges £27 per ticket—even God might baulk at that price’

A analysis journey for my ebook (on British artwork, out subsequent yr) took me to Westminster Abbey. £27 for an grownup ticket! £32 for those who go to the museum. The Abbey factors out, not unreasonably, that it receives no funding from the Church of England or authorities. Contemplating the variety of main state occasions held there—the Queen’s funeral, the approaching coronation—you wonder if it’s truthful to position such a monetary burden on the Abbey’s guests.

But when ever a ticket value mirrored British historical past, it’s the Abbey’s. In Paris, you pay for the Louvre, however Notre-Dame is free (at the very least it was, earlier than the fireplace). In London, we insist the British Museum is free, however don’t thoughts paying to enter Westminster Abbey. France had a Revolution, Britain had a Reformation.

And but, Westminster Abbey has by no means actually had a lot to do with God. When Henry III started his nice reconstruction of the Abbey in 1245 he was much less within the non secular well being of the nation than within the projection of his personal royal energy. Twenty-five years earlier, when only a boy, he watched the physique of St Thomas Becket—killed on the behest of his grandfather, Henry II—being moved with nice ceremony to a brand new jewel-encrusted shrine in Canterbury Cathedral. Becket’s cult drew pilgrims from throughout Europe, and the Church profited drastically. It even bought “Thomas Water”, holy water supposedly combined with Becket’s blood and promoted as a cure-all, higher than something a health care provider might do (which in these days was in all probability true).

However no king, even a younger one, might simply tolerate the veneration of a saint who stood for resistance to royal authority. Because the cult of Becket grew, Henry determined to behave. Conveniently, England’s solely royal saint, Edward the Confessor, was buried at Westminster Abbey, in a pre-Conquest constructing he had begun himself. Henry had it demolished and rebuilt at the price of at the very least £40,000, a sum larger than his complete revenue in some years.

Cult of the Confessor

Henry additionally acquired new relics for Westminster, together with a pattern of Christ’s personal blood. Doubts had been instantly raised about its authenticity, however when it carried out its one recorded miracle the king ordered bells within the metropolis to be rung. In 1269 Edward’s physique was positioned in a brand new shrine behind the excessive altar, however the cult of the Confessor by no means took off.

The Abbey we see at this time is basically Henry’s creation. He was so exacting in his inventive calls for—specifying every part from its structure to inside particulars similar to altar cloths—that he can largely be credited with its manufacturing. As of late, he would in all probability even qualify as an artist, chief of a royal ‘collective’. The Abbey’s French design—a lot narrower and taller than English cathedrals—displays Henry’s need to compete with the most recent French buildings. A poem attributed to Henry information his response to seeing Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, constructed by his brother-in-law, Louis IX: “By the 5 wounds of God this identical Paris is nice/There’s a chapel I covet and should alienate.”

Little stays of Henry’s authentic inside scheme. The Reformation swept away all of the shrines, hangings, sculptures and work he diligently oversaw. Over time, the British got here to worship completely different icons, themselves. The Abbey is now a lot like a nationwide pantheon, with greater than 3,000 memorials to the nice and good of British historical past, that it appears like a kind of church buildings God hardly ever visits. Maybe He too disapproves of the worth.