Ulf and the Oliphant

In or around 1030 AD Ulf, a Viking noble strode down the nave holding his Oliphant. He placed it carefully on the altar; carefully because it was filled with wine.

An oliphant, as the name suggests, was carved from the tusk of an elephant and quite often used as a war horn, sometimes marking territory, occasionally used as a drinking vessel. 

In this case, the wine-filled oliphant was a symbol of a substantial gift of land—a small but interesting  acorn from which the present York Minster emerged in its present form and glory.

And the  much whiter statue on the front is clearly

the recently deceased Elizabeth II seen close up

Ulf did good.

As you can see, the oliphant is beautifully carved, the animal motifs copied from Syrian and Babylonian art and probably made in Southern Italy, a testament to the sophisticated trade routes of the time.

 

 I think I enjoyed the crypt and undercroft almost as much as what was above. Both are  treasure troves  of the Minster’s past. They offer glimpses of a previous Roman building, its foundations and some walls. The   crypt also houses the  tomb of St William, the patron saint of the Minster. 

There are so many saints, it is hard to keep up with them all. William for example had slipped  through my radar.  He was appointed treasurer of York, and King Stephen’s chaplain in 1130, and is the patron saint of victims of injustice. Clearly an over-worked saint. For those interested in his miracles and his possible murder you can read it here. 

 

And this casket dated to 1148 is believed to be the personal reliquary of St William himself. It probably held the heart of a crusader and pilgrims would hope to draw strength by touching it. 

You'll also find the thousand-year-old York Gospels here,  probably made by Anglo Saxon monks at Canterbury around 1020 and brought to York by Archbishop Wulfstan. It is the only book from before the Norman Conquest to survive at the Minster, and for centuries new canons have sworn their oaths of allegiance on this book – right up to the present time.

And this, a survival from the first Norman Minster,  is a Doom Stone, something that would come horribly alive in gloom and flickering candlelight.  It shows the ‘mouth of Hell’- a gruesome scene of lost souls being relentlessly pushed into a boiling cauldron by demons. At the top left you can see a man carrying two bags of money, a symbol for greed. To his right is a woman showing the sin of lust. The stone is also decorated with toads. Thought to be creatures of magic, they were associated with evil and darkness. It may have formed part of a much larger image on the west front of the C12th Minster

Above the crypt the Minster soars to the sky, the Norman structure that replaced the Saxon replaced in turn by the more graceful perpendicular. Inside, you walk past the sacred and, shall we say, idiosyncratic,

 and you drift slowly by as though in a dream.

The Quire, with comfortable seats for its choristers

Above, the benches and below the stained glass and roof of the circular Chapter house

Peaceful light in the nave

A knight's tomb

 

Another tomb, husband and wife suitably prayerful 

And another tomb, the wife clearly having the last word

But my favourite are the kings of England carved in stone. If you look closely at the exuberant beards and the various expressions, you can see the sculptors were clearly enjoying themselves. All of the monarchs are shown with their right foot forward except for Edward II a king reputedly fond of men. The sculptors, perhaps as sly comment or purely by coincidence carved him with his left foot presenting. 

Kings from William the Conqueror to a very irate King John

And above, the kings from Henry III to Henry VI

I was though struck by the fact that in this Cathedral of York, every one of the Lancastrian kings are shown but not the two Yorkist kings, Edward IV and Richard III.

The answer was reasonably prosaic. When the Yorkist  Edward IV was on the throne, the original statue of the Lancastrian, Henry VI was, as you'd expect, destroyed. Unfortunately Edward didn’t live rule long enough for his statue to replace the unfortunate Lancastrian; Edward's brother Richard III had an impossibly short reign. And if  you look closely at that last statue, a replacement of the original Henry VI, you can see it’s markedly different from the rest.  The reason is,  it's a Victorian copy, weathered by time as Elizabeth II on the outside of the cathedral will also  be in due course.