Martyrs and Mystics. Ed Glinert. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Ed Glinert
Издательство: HarperCollins
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Жанр произведения: Историческая литература
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isbn: 9780007544295
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Bible, p. 59

      Sacred City

      As with many ancient cities, London’s early town planners were guided by the ‘sacred’ measurements of the Bible, which supposedly give cities divine protection. They are based on the Old Testament unit of the cubit, the length from the tip of the fingers to the elbow, set, inevitably, by the individual in charge of the measuring and thus differing from person to person.

      The key ‘sacred’ lengths are 1,600 cubits, as used in building Solomon’s Temple, and 2,000 cubits. The latter distance features prominently in the Old Testament Book of Numbers, chapter 35 which instructs builders: ‘Ye shall measure from without the city on the east side two thousand cubits, and on the south side two thousand cubits, and on the west side two thousand cubits, and on the north side two thousand cubits, and the city shall be in the midst.’

      This measurement has special significance. In Hebrew 1,000 is denoted by the letter aleph (

). Two thousand is therefore two alephs, and these letters spliced together form the Star of David, the great icon of Jewish lore. Two thousand cubits is the distance from Jerusalem to the Mount of Olives. In the City of London the distance from Temple Bar, the historic boundary between the cities of London and Westminster to St Paul’s is 2,000 cubits. Similarly, the ancient church of St Dunstan-in-the-East stands 2,000 cubits from St Paul’s as the City’s eastern boundary.

      Those in charge of rebuilding London after the 1666 Fire – Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, Nicholas Hawksmoor and his team – were in thrall to the idea of sacred geometry. Although they were scientists and men of reason, their agenda was rich with religious arcana. They were influenced by the notion that Christianity had arrived in England as early as the first century AD, long before it had reached Rome. They were inspired by the story in the Book of Zechariah of how the Israelite prophet of the same name meets the Lord Himself, who is disguised as an architect:

       I lifted up mine eyes again, and looked, and behold there was a man with a measuring line in his hand. Then said I, ‘Whither goest thou?’ And he said unto me, ‘To measure Jerusalem, to see what is the breadth thereof, and what is the length thereof.’

      Consequently they wanted to reshape London as the New Jerusalem – the leading city of Christendom in a world free of papist rule. The idea of London as the New Jerusalem had long been envisaged by the enlightened. Even Charles I had promised it in a 1620 sermon: ‘For Here hath the Lord ordained the thrones of David, for judgement: and the charre of Moyses, for instruction, this Church, your Son indeed, others are but Synagogues, this your Jerusalem, the mother to them all.’ It was a theme later adopted by William Blake, among others, whose epic poem Jerusalem casts London as the holy city: ‘We builded Jerusalem as a City & a Temple’.

      Wren, Hawksmoor and the other architects created a chain of buildings and features set apart by ‘sacred’ measurements. Two thousand cubits east of Wren’s favourite church, St Dunstan-in-the-East, they created a haven for intellectuals and free-thinkers on the site of an ancient well. This became Wellclose Square (→ p. 55), for centuries the most prosperous location in east London but now almost derelict. In the centre of the square was a Hawksmoor church which stood 2,000 cubits from his better-known (and still standing) Christ Church Spitalfields. And Christ Church is itself 2,000 cubits north-east of Hawksmoor’s St Mary Woolnoth by what is now Bank station.

      The pattern continues with other well-known buildings from that period. Hawksmoor’s church of St George-in-the-East stands 2,000 cubits from the Roman wall. The site of the now partly demolished St Luke’s on Old Street is 2,000 cubits north of St Paul’s, and the site of another now demolished Hawksmoor church, St John Horselydown, just south of Tower Bridge, lies 2,000 cubits from the Monument, whose own setting is a masterpiece of maths and astronomy (→ p. 22).

       ALL HALLOWS THE GREAT, 90 Upper Thames Street

      One of England’s most extreme millennial sects, the Fifth Monarchy Men, was founded at this now demolished church in 1651. Exploiting the political and religious turmoil in the aftermath of the Civil War and the execution of Charles I, the Fifth Monarchy Men believed the days of earthly kings were over and sought to prepare the country for the imminent appearance of Jesus Christ himself as king.

      Christ would rule the fifth kingdom outlined in the Old Testament Book of Daniel. (The first four, so they claimed, were those of the Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman empires.) But before he could do so a godly kingdom on earth – the Rule of the Saints – would violently replace the old order. The Fifth Monarchists consequently lauded the execution of King Charles and urged similar attacks on the rich as they stood in the way of the saintly kingdom.

      In 1653 the Fifth Monarchists attained some influence in Oliver Cromwell’s new parliamentary assembly, so when he dissolved it that December and appointed himself Lord Protector – de facto king – the group felt betrayed. Three Fifth Monarchy Men were imprisoned for denouncing Cromwell, and their leader Thomas Harrison was expelled from the army. A Fifth Monarchist plot to overthrow the Lord Protector was uncovered in 1657 when its instigator, Thomas Venner, previously a minister at a church on Coleman Street in the City, was briefly imprisoned for planning to blow up the Tower of London.

      On the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 Thomas Harrison was arrested and put to death for participating in Charles I’s execution. Now Venner took over. He led the Fifth Monarchy Men along a distinctly militant path. Infuriated by the torture and execution of Harrison and the popish leanings of the Church reformed around the new king, Charles II, Venner planned insurrection before Charles could be crowned. On New Year’s Day 1661 he and around fifty Fifth Monarchy rebels staged a violent but unsuccessful uprising in London. Shouting their war cry of ‘King Jesus and the heads upon the gates’, they attacked the major buildings of the City, as Samuel Pepys noted in his diary:

       A great rising in the city of the Fifth-monarchy men, which did very much disturb the peace and liberty of the people, so that all the train-bands arose in arms, both in London and Westminster, as likewise all the king’s guards; and most of the noblemen mounted, and put all their servants on coach horses, for the defence of His Majesty, and the peace of his kingdom.

      Around forty soldiers and civilians were killed. Venner was captured and executed outside his Coleman Street church. The Fifth Monarchy movement carried on briefly but then declined.

      All Hallows the Great was demolished in the late nineteenth century for road widening.

       Cromwell in Ireland, p. 297

       BLACKFRIARS MONASTERY, Ireland Yard

      It was in Blackfriars that the Archbishop of Canterbury’s council met in May 1382 to denounce John Wycliffe’s religious doctrines and his pioneering translation of the Bible into English.

      As the hearing began, an earthquake, rare for London, rocked the City. Wycliffe, understandably, claimed the event as a sign of God’s discontent with the council’s hostile attitude to his reformist teachings. The council, with equal confidence, took the quake as proof of the Lord’s displeasure with Wycliffe.

      As William Courtenay, the Archbishop of Canterbury, explained:

       This earthquake foretells the purging of this kingdom from heresies, for as there are shut up in the bowels of the earth many noxious spirits which are expelled in an earthquake, and so the earth is cleansed but not without great violence, so there are many heresies shut up in the hearts of reprobate men, but by the condemnation of them, the kingdom is to be cleansed; but not without trouble and great commotion.

      The synod then found against Wycliffe on twenty-four counts of heresy.

      A 1529 court held at Blackfriars heard the divorce proceedings between Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII. The king had become increasingly frustrated at his wife’s inability to provide him with a male heir, despite seven pregnancies, so he sought permission from the Pope, Clement VII, to annul the marriage. Henry made a number