 |
(Logo for St.David's Episcopal Church
Denton, Texas) |
Many
years ago, I happened upon a photocopy of an article from The Living Church. “A Literary Succession,” by Edward
Rutland told about a unique set of four windows at the St. David of Wales
Episcopal Church in Denton, Texas. The windows “honor four saintly persons who
contributed in different ways to English literature.” The saintly persons celebrated are Hilda of Whitby, The Venerable Bede, John Donne, and C.S. Lewis.
Having
majored in English Literature in college, and since I was involved in social
services at an Episcopal Church at the time, the article caught my interest.
One thing that amazed me was in learning about Hilda of Whitby and her encouragement of Caedmon, the first English poet.
In my English Lit studies, I had felt a connection with Caedmon since high
school days. The fact that he was a shy person who loved music and became inspired to write songs of beauty gave me hope. I read in Rutland's article how Hilda had been the encourager of Caedmon. The astounding part, after being drawn in to learn
about Hilda of Whitby, was to discover that her feast day is on my birthday! I
had just found a new patron saint.
Searching for the Windows
Last
year, I began searching for photos of the windows at St. David’s Church. I was
only able to find one of them online, but I wanted to view them all and I didn’t have
any plans to travel to Texas. I sent an email to the church when I found their
website and asked if any photos of the church windows were available. The
rector, Canon H.W. Herrmann, graciously emailed me four beautiful photos of the
windows.
I
am sharing those photos here, along with text from the article* by Edward Rutland
in which he gives a brief sketch of each life depicted in the windows. As the article states, “Four companion
windows in St. David's Church, Denton, Texas, indicate the history and variety
of literature and learning in Anglicanism.”
St. Hilda of Whitby
St. Hilda of Whitby (614-680) is included
because she was both a woman in the decision-making processes of the early
church (important in the city which includes the main campus of Texas Woman's
University) and because she is a person of literary significance not to be
forgotten. She is shown with the pastoral staff of her abbotship and holding a
small church, representing her simple monastic settlement and its successful
school.
She
is noted for her Celtic sympathies but cooperative spirit at the Synod of
Whitby (664). And she is appreciated for the literary and spiritual sensitivity
with which she sponsored a rustic farmhand named Caedmon. Her encouragement
helped him produce for his own Anglo-Saxon people vernacular poetry on
Christian themes. Though his poems, done in bardic manner, were mostly lost in
antiquity, they place him at the head of the long line of English poets.
Honored as a saint according to early Celtic custom, her day in the Christian
calendar is Nov. 18.
The Venerable Bede
The Venerable Bede (c. 673-735) said “study,
teaching, and writing have always been my delight.” Indeed, his writings are
wide ranging in subject matter, and vast in number, including 25 words of
scriptural commentary, translations, treatises on grammar, poetics and calendar
reform, plus biographies and more. He is said to have been the first known writer
of English prose, though his vernacular prose texts have been lost.
A
hint of his piety may be found in two of his poems set to music in the
Episcopal Church's Hymnal 1982. But it is as “the first English historian” that
he is generally known. His Ecclesiastical History of the English People,
written in Latin, often translated, is still valued by scholars for being
authoritative historiography according to 20th century criteria.
His
attire identifies him as a “monk of Jarrow,” as he is often called, for it was
there that he did his life's work. But in the 11th century his remains were
moved to Durham, and in 1370 were relocated to their present location, now a
lovely shrine, in that cathedral. The day of his commemoration has been changed
several times; since 1969 it has been May 25.
John Donne
John Donne (c. 1572-1631) “No man
is an island” - with such nautical analogies Donne spoke to the sea-faring
people of England when he was dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, London. His
writings are daunting if he is not identified at the outset as a multifaceted
personality of genuine Renaissance proportions. (In the window he is shown in
the garb of period, except that the dean's cassock is of a later date.)
Much
is known of him through Izaak Walton's Life, through Ben Johnson's
observations, through the erudite and often poetic correspondence which he
exchanged with others, through their memorializations of him, but most notably
through the autobiographical character of his writings.
To
those who through his writings know him and perhaps love him, he is
fascinating, exasperating and inspiring. He is a mixture of the sensuous,
secular and worldly, and the intellectual, pensive and devotional.
Though
in early adulthood a spendthrift who lived in respectable poverty, he was
widely traveled and a man of immense learning. In both poetry and prose his
language is in the style of the times: figurative, evocative and metaphorical -
often in the extreme. His friend Ben Johnson reckoned that, as a result, his
writings would perish. Happily T.S. Eliot regarded him as being in the direct
current of English poetry. In his polemics he was careful to place himself in
the theological mid-road of Anglicanism.
John
Donne, priest, is one of the "worthies" added in recent years to the
calendar of the prayer book in this country: March 31.
C.S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis - Seven days short of
the 65th birthday, and in failing health, C.S. Lewis died quietly at home Nov.
22, 1963. Since his home parish, Holy Trinity, Huntington Quarry, is on the
outskirts of Oxford, he often went to confession and communion at the Church of
St. Mary Magdalen, a high church parish in the heart of the university city
that was the center of Lewis's life. Now, nearly a third of a century
afterward, the world knows him better, and loves him more, than in 1963.
He
was one of a remarkable group of 20th-century lay people - G.K. Chesterton,
Dorothy Sayers, T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden, to name a few. In an age of
unfaith, cynicism, moral disorder and strange spiritual searchings, Lewis is
read and admired by all sorts and conditions of people - the young, the old,
from sacramentalists to fundamentalists, and beyond!
Born
an Anglican, Lewis lost his faith during his teen years. In his maturity he
knew the other side, the side of unfaith, its viewpoints and arguments. That
perspective adds richness to his writings, and charm saving him from pedantry.
Because
he popularized serious concepts, Time called
him an “amateur theologian.” Chad Walsh, in the New York Times Book Review, said Lewis had “the ability to make
Christian orthodoxy exciting and fit for the brave rebel.” His creed was stated
in Mere Christianity: “the belief
that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times.”
That
he was sharply aware of humankind's sinfulness is seen in such works as The Great Divorce. In The Screwtape Letters, he deployed humor
to disclose the wiles of the Devil. He wrote straightforward apologetics in The Problem of Pain, a luminous book to
be read alongside Letters to Malcolm.
And he did a very readable "word study" of biblical terms in The Four Loves.
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Photos of the windows at St. David's Church were sent by the Reverend Canon H.W. Herrmann, SSC, rector of St. David of Wales Episcopal Church, Denton,TX
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