East Anglia does not make many traveler's itinerary. Not to knock it, but it doesn't exude excitement or romance like, say, London or Wales. It's flat, frankly. Good for growing taters and neeps, or maybe to site an old RAF airfield, but not much more. How untrue!
Driving north along the A10 from Cambridge, in an area all green and flat, one sees rising from the sunken fields like the prow of a stone super tanker the walls of Ely Cathedral. For centuries the locals have lovingly called it 'The Ship of the Fens'.
The effect has diminished over time, seeing such a large structure in the middle of the fields. Ely was once an island, and all the land around it marsh until some Florida-esque land speculation in the 17th and 18th centuries. You can imagine how it looked to a medieval peasant, this bulwark of stone rising from the fen reeds.
Ely Cathedral began in AD 673 when St. Etheldreda, a Saxon princess called to the religious life, founded a double monastery on the Island of Ely for monks and nuns. The monastery flourished for 200 years until it was destroyed by the Danes. In 970 it was refounded as a Benedictine community, and her shrine became a place of pilgrimage during the Middle Ages.
The Cathedral building began in the 11th century and became the seat of the new Diocese of Ely in 1109. The monastery at Ely was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1539 and St. Etheldreda's Shrine was destroyed during the Reformation, along with a number of stained glass windows and statues. Only a slate in the Cathedral floor marks the spot where her shrine once stood.
Careful restoration over the past three centuries has kept Ely Cathedral in exceptional condition. Many compare it to York's famous Minster, one of Europe's most inspiring reminders of the Middle Ages. I think it's better, but I'm from East Anglia!
Set in the cathedral's barren main chapel (vandalized by Reformist)
is David Wynne's controversial statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The psychologist
Carl Jung believed veneration of Mary added a vital archetype - the Fertile
Mother - into Catholic liturgy. Rarely, though, has an artist examined this
Mystery in such a vibrant and respectfully unapologetic way. The effect of
the statue in the otherwise stone-gray chapel is provocative. Rather than
a serene Madonna, Wynne presents a teenage woman at the moment of her, um,
motherhood. Few religious works have left me thinking about this Mystery of
Faith. I found the experience powerful but unsteadying. Perhaps Mary felt
the same way, too.
