Exhibition tells how Lichfield Cathedral and its three spires have survived storms and sieges

The three spires of Lichfield Cathedral rising above Minster Pool (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

I spent some time in Lichfield Cathedral last week, following the daily cycle of prayer, including the mid-day Eucharist with the Thursday Prayers for Peace at the Saint Chad Shrine in the Lady Chapel, and sitting in the chapter stall at Choral Evensong in evening, as well as spending some time in prayer and reflection in the chapel in Saint John’s Hospital.

For many reasons, both Lichfield Cathedral and the chapel in Saint John’s Hospital have been my spiritual homes since my late teens.

The three spires of Lichfield Cathedral symbolise of the city for many people, and it is the only mediaeval cathedral in England with three spires.

I missed my opportunities last to see the ‘Story of a Spire’, an exhibition in the Chapter House in Lichfield Cathedral that originally ran from 16 July to 31 August last year (2024), telling the story of the cathedral’s three spires and the people who built and restored them.

So, it was an added pleasure last week that the exhibition has been extended until this month, although it is now due to close later this month (February 2025).

The exhibition tells the stories about how Lichfield Cathedral and its three spires have withstood the tests of time and how they have survived storms and sieges, cannonballs and collapse to return time and again to being symbols of hope and resilience.

The cathedral bells have called people in Lichfield to worship since the 12th century, and the spires have been landmarks guiding pilgrims and visitors to the cathedral.

There are exhibits exploring the craftsmanship of stonemasons, past and present. Visitors can hear the choral music that is still sung in the cathedral today. And there are displays of manuscripts, books, pamphlets and paintings that tell the enduring stories of the spires.

The central spire, which was completed over 700 years ago in 1315, is built of sandstone, a soft stone that needs constant maintenance. The exhibition tells how it is likely that the spire was restored periodically throughout the mediaeval period.

An engraving by William Dugdale in the 1640s showing Lichfield Cathedral without the central spire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Richard Greville, Lord Brooke, a general who led the Parliamentarian forces against the Royalist troops during the first siege of the Cathedral Close in Lichfield during the English Civil War, was killed by a sniper firing from the central spire of Lichfield Cathedral on 2 March 1643. The deadly shot is said to have been fired by a deaf-mute, John ‘Dumb’ Dyott, who was a godson of the Royalist High Sheriff of Staffordshire, William Comberford of Comberford Hall and the Moat House, Tamworth.

Some time later, the central spire was destroyed by a besieging Parliamentarian force, and as the spire came tumbling down the roof of the cathedral was damaged too.

After the Caroline restoration in 1660, Bishop John Hacket spent nine years restoring the cathedral and rebuilding the central spire, and the cathedral was rededicated on Christmas Day 1669. A stained glass window in the south choir aisle depicts this restoration and rebuilding in progress.

The spire was in need of restoration again in the 1940s. The gold cross on top of the spire was removed and brought into the cathedral. There it was converted into a collection box to collect money as donations.

The cathedral again appealed again in the 1990s and 2020s for donations and grants to cover the cost of repairs to the central spire.

The exhibition, ‘Story of a Spire’, is curated by Clare Townsend, the Cathedral’s Library Manager, and Ishbel Curr, the Exhibition Officer. The exhibition is now expected to close this month (February 2025), but there are still opportunities to see these interesting insights into the cathedral spires in the Chapter House.

Appeals and donations in the 1660s towards Bishop Hacket’s restoration of the cathedral and the central spire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 7, Sunday 9 February 2025, the Fourth Sunday before Lent

‘When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him’ (Luke 5: 11 … fishing boats on a shore at Mount Athos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent are less than four weeks away (5 March 2025) and today is the Fourth Sunday before Lent (9 February 2025).

Later this morning, I intend to be at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford. Once again this is an important weekend for Six Nations rugby fixtures. I watched yesterday’s matches between Italy and Wales (and England and France, and plan to find an appropriate place to see the game between Scotland and Ireland this afternoon (15:00). Before today begins, however, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

The Miraculous Draught of Fish (see Luke 5: 1-11) … a window by Heaton, Butler and Bayne in Saint Mary’s Church, St Neots, Cambridgeshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 5: 1-11 (NRSVA):

1 Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, 2 he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. 3 He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. 4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.’ 5 Simon answered, ‘Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.’ 6 When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. 7 So they signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. 8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’ 9 For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; 10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’ 11 When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

‘He saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets’ (Luke 5: 2) … fishing boats and nets at the harbour in Rethymnon, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

Between now and Ash Wednesday (5 March 2025), we are in what the Church Calendar calls ‘Ordinary Time.’

So often, our celebrations in Church ask us to identify with the great saints and martyrs, in contrast to the ordinary people who are so often the focus of Christ’s ministry in the Gospels: ordinary people who are poor or on the margins in society; ordinary people with everyday jobs like fishermen and tax collectors, or publicans and farmers; ordinary people in the villages and towns; ordinary people with a need for healing or who are hurt and broken by loss and grief.

Ordinary people, living ordinary lives in ordinary time. Not sinless people, but ordinary people, conscious of our weaknesses and our failings, humbled in and all too aware of our own sinfulness and flaws.

In the Gospel reading this morning, we hear the renewed call to some of the disciples, including Peter, James and John. These calls come not to people who feel they are worthy of this call, that the deserve this, that they have inherited a call, or who think they are entitled to speak on God’s behalf. They start off as very ordinary people, like you and me.

The three disciples, Peter, James and John, are called not only to speak on Christ’s behalf, but to do what Christ commands and to follow him.

Saint Peter expressed his feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness, yet accepts God’s call to speak in God’s name unconditionally and in faith.

This Gospel story (Luke 5: 1-11) is a story of commitment to Christ, to his message and to his destiny. Simon is named Peter for the first time in Saint Luke’s Gospel in this reading (verse 8). Christ calls Simon or Simon Peter to be a disciple, promising him he is to be a ‘fisher of men,’ and Peter, James and John leave everything and follow Christ.

Try to imagine the roles or the calls being reversed.

Can you imagine a Roman Governor accepting the call to work with the disciples in an ordinary fishing boat?

Had Pontius Pilate heard Christ’s call, would he have given up privilege, or paid heed to the inevitable obloquy that would follow his extraordinary use of power?

This Gospel reading opens us to the concept that God does extraordinary things with ordinary people, in ordinary places, in ordinary times.

This episode begins beside the ‘lake of Gennesaret,’ on the south-west shore of the Sea of Galilee. The crowd is pressing in to hear Christ, the Word of God, to hear the Christian message.

Jesus gets into the boat with Simon Peter. There are two boats in this episode, and James and John are also fishing in one of the boats.

Simon acknowledges Jesus as ‘Master’ or teacher. The disciples do what Christ tells them to do, and they are amazed at the consequences. Simon Peter responds by falling down before Christ in humility, pointing to himself as a sinful man, and calling Jesus ‘Lord,’ which becomes an expression of faith.

Peter, James and John are ordinary working men who make an extraordinary and total commitment to Christ; they leave everything, and follow him.

In traditional illustrations, the boat is often used as an image of the Church, while the fish is an image of Christ. In the Early Church, the fish came to symbolise Christ because the Greek word Ichthus (ΙΧΘΥΣ), meaning ‘fish’, is an acrostic for ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour’ (Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ Υἱός, Σωτήρ).

The Church is the boat, Christ is the fish, and God calls us as ordinary people, in ordinary places, in ordinary times, to realise that God sees us – you and me, each and every one of us – to work with him, where he finds us. God sees us in our everyday lives as his partners in the boat. And we are all in this boat together.

It is in being the ordinary people we are, in our ordinary lives, in our ordinary times, in ordinary places, that God calls us. And if we chose to respond, then, like Peter, James and John, we may find we are amazed at the catch Christ brings into the Church through us.

Are we brave enough to face this possibility? Or is that ordinary challenge too much for us? If we have any doubts, remember how Christ says to Simon Peter, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’

An icon of the Church as a boat, including Christ, the Apostles and the Church Fathers (Icon: Deacon Matthew Garrett, www.holy-icons.com)

Today’s Prayers (Sunday 9 February 2025, the Fourth Sunday before Lent):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Founders’ Day.’ USPG and SPCK are celebrating ‘Founders’ Day’ in Saint James’s Church, Picadilly, next week (Monday 17 February 2025). This theme is introduced today with a Reflection by Dr Jo Sadgrove, Research & Learning Advisor, USPG:

USPG has a complicated historical legacy which encompasses the most violent aspects, including involvement in chattel slavery. Founders’ Day poses acute ethical challenges to an organisation reckoning with such a past.

I was struck by the challenges of this when I attended Founders’ Day at Codrington College. At this event, held on the lawn outside the college, staff, students and community met to recognise the ‘good intentions’ of Christopher Codrington, who bequeathed the plantations to the fledgling SPG to found a theological training institution. How, I wondered, could the Barbadians present, descendants of enslaved Africans who laboured in the unthinkable death spaces of the plantations, stand and utter this man’s name? What cost did doing so pose to their spiritual and mental wellbeing? What was the personal price of this act of remembrance, which mentioned nothing of the economy of death which defined the Codrington Plantations under the SPG’s oversight for over a hundred years?

For USPG, commemoration must require a different imaginary and praxis: one that prioritises lament for all that has been lost and destroyed, and seeks justice through deep and painful self-examination of all that has followed.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 9 February 2025, the Fourth Sunday before Lent) invites us to pray reflecting on these words:

‘If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin’ (I John 1: 6-7).

The Collect:

O God,
you know us to be set
in the midst of so many and great dangers,
that by reason of the frailty of our nature
we cannot always stand upright:
grant to us such strength and protection
as may support us in all dangers
and carry us through all temptations;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Go before us, Lord, in all we do
with your most gracious favour,
and guide us with your continual help,
that in all our works
begun, continued and ended in you,
we may glorify your holy name,
and finally by your mercy receive everlasting life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:
Lord of the hosts of heaven,
our salvation and our strength,
without you we are lost:
guard us from all that harms or hurts
and raise us when we fall;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch’ (Luke 5: 4) … a fisherman at work at Torcello in the Venetian lagoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Sunset and evening lights in Lichfield before Choral Evensong and a ‘house warmer’

Sunset during my walk along Cross in Hand Lane in Lichfield on Thursday evening (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

I was in Lichfield on Thursday to join my friends in the local history group Lichfield Discovered as they celebrated with a ‘house warmer’ to mark their move into the old Grammar School on Saint John Street, across the street from Saint John’s Hospital.

Ever since my late teens, I have seen Lichfield as my spiritual home, and on each visit take time for quiet reflection and prayer in the chapel in Saint John’s and to follow the cycle of daily prayer in Lichfield Cathedral. This week, this included the mid-day Eucharist with prayers for peace at Saint Chad’s shrine in the Lady Chapel and Choral Evensong later in the day.

These regular visits to Lichfield are part of recharging my spiritual batteries, putting me back in touch with the early experiences that would help to shape my adult faith and eventually lead to ordination.

But this is not as pious or sanctimonious as it might sound or seem. I make sure there is time too n these mini-retreats to meet friends, to reconnect with family roots, to eat lunch or dinner, and to go for long walks that are good for the soul and body, the heart and the stomach.

Walking along Cross in Hand Lane, one of my favourite walks in the English countryside (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

On Thursday, after the mid-day Eucharist, I first went for a walk around Minster Pool, then along Beacon Street and on into Cross in Hand Lane, one of my favourite walks in the English countryside, close to the junction of Beacon Street and Stafford Road on the northern edges of Lichfield.

According to the Victoria History of Staffordshire, Cross in Hand Lane was the main road from Lichfield to Stafford until 1770. Now it is just a quiet country lane, where I regularly stroll through fields and farmland, by country cottages, farmhouses and timber-framed barns and by babbling brooks.

The lane eventually leads to the small and delightfully-named village of Farewell, about 3 km north-west of Lichfield. The name does not mean ‘goodbye’; instead, it means ‘clear spring’, and comes from the Anglo-Saxon name, frager, meaning ‘fair’ or ‘clear’ and wiell, meaning ‘spring.’

But spring has not yet come to Cross in Hand Lane, and there is still a winter look about the fields. The soil is a combination of gravel, clay and sand, particularly suitable for growing turnips, wheat and barley. This had been agricultural land ever since Anglo-Saxon days, and landscape has probably looked the same for centuries.

Walking along Cross in Hand Lane, behind the Hedgehog Vintage Inn (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Many historians believe Cross in Hand Lane is so named because pilgrims or travellers on their way to Lichfield and wanting sanctuary at the Benedictine priory in Farewell would use this route, carrying a cross in their hand. Others say the priory and a cross may have stood out as one of the last stages on the pilgrim route between Chester and Lichfield.

There are records of a mediaeval cross between Beacon Street and Cross in Hand Lane, but there are no traces of this cross today. Others say that the cross with the hand that stood at the fork in the road in the 15th century was simply a post to point directions.

The course of the road was straightened in 1770 to avoid the hollow way in Cross in Hand Lane, and the road was diverted to follow a new line to the east, now the present Stafford Road.

Once again, I decided to have lunch in the Hedgehog Vintage Inn, near the corner of Stafford Road, Beacon Street and Cross in Hand Lane. I have stayed there many times in the past, and it has breath-taking views across miles-upon-miles of open, flat Staffordshire countryside and to the spires of the cathedral.

As I left the Hedgehog after a lingering and late lunch, the bare trees were silhouetted in black against a sky that was turning to a glowing orange thanks to the low and slowly setting sun. It was a suitable reminder on this short one-day retreat of the majesty of God and the beauty of God’s creation.

Walking aorund Stowe Pool before Choral Evensong in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

From there, it took less than half an hour to stroll back into the cathedral. But before going back into the cathedral, I went for a walk around Stowe Pool. The colours of the sky were a dark purple, with shades of orange in the aftermath of the sunset, and the light was still bright enough for me to take in the panoramic view that encircled Stowe Pool, with Lichfield Cathedral at the west end of the pool, the spire of Saint Mary’s slightly to my left, and Saint Chad’s Church behind me.

I then returned to Lichfield Cathedral and sat in the chapter stall for Choral Evensong, sung by the boys and girls of the Cathedral School choir.

After enjoying the ‘house warmer’ with Lichfield Discovered in the old grammar school, I caught a late evening train back to Milton Keynes. On the journey home, my heart was filled with joy as I reflected on the beauty of the world seen on Cross in Hand Lane and reflected in the skies and waters of Stowe Pool. At Choral Evensong, the choir had sung Psalm 34 which reminds us to ‘taste, and see, how gracious the Lord is.’

The West Door of Lichfield Cathedral after Choral Evensong (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

But my heart is also filled with a sadness that is tinged with anger as I think about the events unfolding in the United States these last weeks. Perhaps some verses of Psalm 34 at Evensong were also offering me consolation if not comfort:

Keep thy tongue from evil : and thy lips, that they speak no guile.
Eschew evil, and do good : seek peace, and ensue it.
The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous : and his ears are open unto their prayers.
The countenance of the Lord is against them that do evil : to root out the remembrance of them from the earth.
The righteous cry, and the Lord heareth them: and delivereth them out of all their troubles.

Bore Street at night time, on my way from Lichfield Cathedral to the Lichfield Discoered ‘house warmer’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 6, Saturday 8 February 2025

‘Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts’ … Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde preaching in Washington last month (Photograpg: Washington National Cathedral / Facebook)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent are less than four weeks away (5 March 2025) and tomorrow is the Fourth Sunday before Lent.

My fall on Oxford Street yesterday, with brusing, cuts and swelling on my face, eye, nose, lips and limbs, left me in University College London Hospital for some time. But, thanks to the people who picked me up on the street, to the NHS and to Charlotte, I got home safely early last night. Now I am looking forward to viewing wall-to-wall Six Nations rugby fixtures this week, and I still hope to find appropriate places to see this afternoon’s matches between Italy and Wales (14:15) and England and France (16:30) and tomorrow’s game between Scotland and Ireland (15:00).

Before today begins, however, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘The Gulf of Empathy’ (Watercolour: Jerome Steuart)

Mark 6: 30-34 (NRSVA):

30 The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. 31 He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. 32 And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. 33 Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. 34 As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.

A quotation from Psalm 82 reposted on social media many times after Bishop Mariann Budde’s sermon in Washinton

Today’s Reflection:

In the Gospel reading at the Eucharist today (Mark 6: 30-34), we read what might be described as the ‘curtain-raiser’ to the feeding of the 5,000.

The feeding of the multitude is the only miracle recorded in all four Gospels (see Matthew 14: 13-21; Mark 6: 30-44; Luke 9: 12-17; John 6: 1-15), with only minor variations on the place and the circumstances.

In the verses immediately before, in yesterday’s reading, Saint Mark tells of the beheading of Saint John the Baptist, who was executed after he denounced Herod Antipas for marrying his brother Philip’s wife, while Philip was still alive (see Mark 6: 14-29).

The disciples of Saint John the Baptist took his body and buried it – a foreshadowing of how his disciples are going to desert Christ at his own death and burial – and they then go to Christ to tell him the news (verses 29-30).

When Jesus hears this, he takes a boat and withdraws to a deserted place. But the crowds follow him on foot around the shore and find him, and when he comes ashore there is a great crowd waiting for him. He has ‘compassion for them, and because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things’ (verse 34).

I cannot help but think this morning of the immediate relevance of the sequence of events where the cruel actions of a despotic leader are followed immediately by Jesus showing compassion for the wandering and oppressed people ‘because they were like sheep without a shepherd’ and he teaches them and then feeds them.

Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, in her sermon at the National Cathedral prayer service in Washington last month (21 January 2025), urged Donald Trump to show mercy and compassion toward scared individuals, including ‘gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families’, as well as immigrants and those fleeing war and persecution.

But Trump’s response was to attack Bishop Budde online, and in a lengthy, bullying social media post the next day, labelling her a ‘Radical Left hard line Trump hater’ who had ‘brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way’ and claiming her tone was ‘nasty’.

Bishop Mariann opened her sermon by praying: ‘O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on Earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.’

And she concluded her sermon: ‘Have mercy, Mr President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. Help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were once strangers in this land.

‘May God grant us all the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, speak the truth in love, and walk humbly with one another and our God, for the good of all the people of this nation and the world.’

As Sarah Jones, senior writer for Intelligencer, has written, ‘For MAGA, the Line Between God and Trump Has Blurred.’ She writes, ‘MAGA has chosen its god-king … The god-king is human, fallible, and frail, and his worship distorts the world.’ For some, the choice between Herod and Jesus may have been difficult at the time, with severe consequences. But for many the choice was stark, and the moral options were clear, no matter what the cost was going to be.

‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while’ (Mark 6: 31) … searching in a deserted place for a place of rest (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Saturday 8 February 2025):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), has been ‘Common Humanity and Love for Religious “Other”.’ This theme was introduced last Sunday with a Reflection by the Revd Dr Salli Effungani, Programme Officer for the Programme for Christian-Muslim Relations in Africa (PROCMURA) and Adjunct Lecturer on Interfaith Relations at Saint Paul’s University, Limuru, Kenya.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 8 February 2025) invites us to pray:

Lord God, we need your justice, which rolls like a river (Amos 5: 24), and your peace, which passes all human understanding (Philippians 4: 7).

The Collect:

Almighty God,
by whose grace alone we are accepted
and called to your service:
strengthen us by your Holy Spirit
and make us worthy of our calling;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

God of truth,
we have seen with our eyes and touched with our hands the bread of life:
strengthen our faith
that we may grow in love for you and for each other;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:
God of our salvation,
help us to turn away from those habits which harm our bodies
and poison our minds
and to choose again your gift of life,
revealed to us in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Collect on the Eve of the Fourth Sunday before Lent:

O God,
you know us to be set
in the midst of so many and great dangers,
that by reason of the frailty of our nature
we cannot always stand upright:
grant to us such strength and protection
as may support us in all dangers
and carry us through all temptations;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

‘They went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves’ (Mark 6: 32) … a deserted boat in a deserted place in west Cork (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Tales of the Viennese Jews: 21, Marianne Faithfull and a self-styled baroness who resisted the Nazis in Austria

Marianne Faithfull, who died last week at the age of 78, had a strong Jewish family background in Austria, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine and Germany

Patrick Comerford

Marianne Faithfull, the singer, muse and actor who helped write and inspired some of the Rolling Stones’ greatest songs, died last week at the age of 78. She was 17 and I had just started secondary school when she took every teenage boy’s world by storm with her hit version of ‘As Tears Go By.’

The story of Marianne Faithfull’s disturbing early life, her brave efforts at recovery, and her death last week brought back so many of my teenage and school years. They reminded me too of the amazing story of her mother, Eva von Sacher-Masoch, who styled herself Baroness Erisso, and called me back again to a blog series, ‘Tales of the Viennese Jews,’ which I began in November 2019, although I had not returned to it since the story of Max Perutz almost for four years ago (18 May 2021).

The Tales from the Vienna Woods is a waltz by the composer Johann Strauss II (1825-1899), written just over a century and a half ago, in 1868. Although Strauss was baptised in the Roman Catholic Church, he was born into a prominent Jewish family. Because the Nazis had a particular penchant for Strauss’s music, they tried to conceal and even deny the Jewish identity of the Strauss family.

However, the stories of Vienna’s Jews cannot be hidden, and many of those stories from Vienna are told in the exhibits in the Jewish Museum in its two locations, at the Palais Eskeles on Dorotheergasse and in the Misrachi-Haus in Judenplatz.

Rather than describe both museums in detail in one or two blog postings, I decided after a visit to Vienna in November 2019 to post occasional blog postings that re-tell some of these stories, celebrating a culture and a community whose stories should never be forgotten.

The newspaper obituaries last week focussed on Marianne Faithfull as a singer, actor, her brave battle for recovery from addiction and against cancer, and her short relationship with Mick Jagger, and portrayed her as the archetypal wild child of the 1960s.

She had a convent school education, and was often described as the daughter of an aristocratic baroness who had survived the Nazi occupation of Austria. Both details added to the media attention to her lifestyle in the 1960s and 1970s.

Marianne Faithfull’s mother, Eva von Sacher-Masoch, who called herself Baroness Erisso

In recent years, the singer also explored her Jewish background and her Jewish ancestry featured in the BBC series Who Do You Think You Are?. She once declared she had to thank her Jewish roots for her renditions of the songs of Bertholt Brecht and Kurt Weill and for an innate flair for their music.

Recent genealogical research reveals that, despite her Catholic background and schooling, Marianne Faithfull was Jewish by all rabbinical definitions. Although she never practised Judaism, her mother, her maternal grandmother, and all her ancestors on that side of her family are Jewish, which meets the definition of being Jewish according to halacha or Jewish traditional law.

Her mother, Eva von Sacher-Masoch, who called herself Baroness Erisso, was a dancer in Weimar Berlin and was then living in Vienna when World War II began. Eva’s mother Flora was born into a well-known Jewish family; she converted to Christianity when she married an Austrian aristocrat Artur Wolfgang Ritter von Sacher-Masoch (1875-1953), but she still attended synagogue on High Holy Days.

Marianne Faithfull’s father, Major Robert Glynn Faithfull, was a British intelligence officer during World War II and later Professor of Italian Literature at Bedford College, London University. He met Eva in Vienna after the defeat of the Nazis.

Marianne Faithfull’s mother was known as Eva but was born Hermine von Sacher-Masoch (1912-1991) on 4 December 1912 in Budapest, then the second city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Eva’s father, Artur Wolfgang von Sacher-Masoch, was an Austrian writer who used the pseudonym Michael Zorn. His family was descended from central European minor nobility through Leopold Johann Nepomuk Ritter von Sacher – the title ritter indicates an hereditary knight, and is somewhat equivalent to the title of baronet. Leopold combined his own family name with that of von Masoch, to keep alive the name of the family of his wife, who was the last descendant of a Slovak family of minor aristocrats. He did this when the Habsburg emperor gave him the title of ritter to recognise his work as the imperial police commissioner in Lemberg, present-day Lviv in Ukraine.

Another family member was the writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895), whose last name and scandalous novel Venus in Furs gave rise to the word ‘masochism’.

Eva’s mother, Flora Ziprisz (1881-1955), was born into a central European Jewish family whose members included many prominent medical doctors. She was known in her family as Flora but was born Elisabeth Rosa Ziprisz on 29 September 1881 in Karánsebes, then in Hungary and now Caransebeș in the Banat region in south-west Romania. Flora’s mother, Therese (Deutsch) Ziprisz, was also born in Caransebeş.

Flora’s father, Eva’s grandfather, Dr Wilhelm ‘Vilmos’ Ziprisz (1844-1922), was born in the Banat region on 23 November 1844 in Neusatz or Novi Sad, once known as the ‘Serbian Athens’. It was then an important city on the Danube in the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian. Today it is the second largest city in Serbia.

He was a son of Salamon Ziprisz, a member of a leading Jewish family from Bač, now in Vojvodina in Serbia. He studied medicine in Vienna under Dr Ignaz Semmelweis, and later became a doctor battling the diphtheria and cholera in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He publicly vaccinated his daughter Flora with the smallpox vaccine to show villagers that it would not poison them. He died in Vienna at the age of 78 on 28 April 1922.

Despite strong disapproval from both their families, Flora married Artur Wolfgang Sacher-Masoch in Caransebeș on 9 January 1901 when she was 18. She converted to Christianity – not an uncommon experience at the time – but continued to attended synagogue on High Holy days.

The main building of the Jewish community in Vienna, housing the Stadttempel or City Synagogue at Seitenstettengasse 4 … Eva Sacher-Masoch moved with her family to Vienna in 1918 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

After the collapse of the Hapsburg empire, Austrian abolished and outlawed all aristocratic titles. As a child, Eva was known as Eva Sacher-Masoch. She spent her early childhood living on her family’s estates near Caransebeș, and moved with her family to Vienna in 1918. Her brother was the novelist Alexander Sacher-Masoch (1901-1972), author of Die Parade.

As a young woman, Eva moved to Berlin where she studied ballet at the Max Reinhardt Company. She danced in productions by the German theatrical duo Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, as well as in the cabaret scene of Weimar Berlin, depicted in the film Cabaret. In one anecdote, she recalled how she was befriended by a prostitute on the Kurfurstendamm who would see her home safely at night.

As World War II loomed, Eva returned to her parents’ home in Vienna and lived with them throughout the war. The family opposed Hitler since the Anschluss or forced annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany. Flora thought of herself as a Hungarian patriot, first and foremost, but was as shocked as any other Jew by the Nazi racial laws.

Despite their Jewish ancestry, Flora and Eva were protected to a degree because of Artur’s World War I military record, his standing as the writer Michael Zorn, and perhaps his aristocratic claims. This may have saved Flora from having to wear a yellow star and from being sent to the death camps but did not remove the constant fear, and Eva was officially labelled a mischling or ‘a mongrel’.

At times, the family secretly helped Jews fleeing Austria, and hid socialist pamphlets in their home. Artur joined the anti-Nazi resistance, and ended up being arrested and hung by his hands in torture chambers in his 60s.

Soviet troops liberated Vienna in April 1945, but Eva and Flora were among 100,000 or so women in Vienna who were raped by Red Army troops. A Russian soldier found Eva and Flora hiding in a room. He raped Eva, but she then picked up a gun and shot him before he could do the same to Flora; later Eva had an abortion.

In post-war Vienna, Eva met a British intelligence officer, Major Robert Glynn Faithfull (1912-1998), a lecturer in Italian at Liverpool University. They married in 1946, moved to England and were the parents of a daughter Marianne, born Marian Evelyn Gabrielle Faithfull in Hampstead, London, on 29 December 1946.

The family lived for a time in Ormskirk, Lancashire while the father completed his PhD at Liverpool University. Marianne then spent part of her childhood in Braziers Park, a commune in Oxfordshire formed by John Norman Glaister in which Robert Faithfull played an instrumental role.

The couple divorced in 1952. Despite Austrian law, Eva chose to style herself Eva von Sacher-Masoch, Baroness Erisso, despite Austrian constitutional laws. Research for Who Do You Think You Are? revealed Eva’s claim to a title was exaggerated though rooted in reality.

To help support her daughter, Eva taught dance at Bylands School, a private boarding school near Basingstoke, Hampshire. She later lived in Reading, Berkshire, where she worked as a waitress at a Sally’s Café on Friar Street. Eva’s mother Flora came to live with them and died in Reading at the age of 74 in July 1955.

Eva and Marianne seem to have lived in straitened circumstances, and Marianne’s childhood included bouts of tuberculosis. She went to a primary school in Brixton, London, and had a bursary to attend Saint Joseph’s Convent School, Reading, where she was a weekly boarder and part of the Progress Theatre’s student group.

Eva died on 22 May 1991. Dr Robert Glyn Faithfull died on 5 February 1998, aged 85.

Marianne Fathfull’s mother Eva von Sacher-Masoch, who was half-Jewish, and her mother Flora, who was a Hungarian Jew (Photo courtesy of http://www.cabaret-berlin.com)

Despite Eva’s bohemian past, Marianne Faithfull said she broke her mother’s heart when she embarked on her own wild time. As a singer, she was discovered at 17 by the Rolling Stones manager Andrew Oldham. Her first single, ‘As Tears Go By’, was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and made her a star. She would dismiss any rumours that she had had a hand in writing the song.

Her life quickly became a whirlwind. By 18, she was married to the artist John Dunbar and the mother of a son, Nicholas. Her affair with Mick Jagger ended in 1970, and that same year she lost custody of her son. She survived a suicide attempt and spiralled downwards, spending two years sleeping rough in Soho and addicted to heroin. Later in life, she was seen as the rock ’n’ roll casualty who had survived to tell her tale.

She acted in films including The Girl On A Motorcycle with French actor Alain Delon, as well as theatre productions. She entered a new phase with an understated performance as Maggie in Sam Garbaski’s film comedy-drama Irina Palm that was lauded by critics at the Berlin Film Festival in 2007.

She also fought anorexia, hepatitis and breast cancer, broke her hip in a fall and was in hospital with Covid-19. Her final album was an experimental collaboration in 2021 with the Australian multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis, She Walks In Beauty.

Although Marianne Faithfull was raised a Catholic, she was proud of her Jewish heritage through her mother and grandmother and once said music by Kurt Weill, a cantor’s son, was ‘very much the tonic scale from the temple.’ She had never been to a synagogue nor heard the music there. ‘But I think there must really be some genetic memory of my Jewish background,’ she once told the Jewish Chronicle.

Marianne Faithfull would say she had lived out her dreams and her nightmares. She died on 30 January 2025.

May her memory be a blessing, זיכרונה לברכה‎

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום‎



Tales of the Viennese Jews:

1, the chief rabbi and a French artist’s ‘pogrom’

2, a ‘positively rabbinic’ portrait of an Anglican dean

3, portraits of two imperial court financiers

4, portrait of Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis

5, Lily Renée, from Holocaust Survivor to Escape Artist

6, Sir Moses Montefiore and a decorative Torah Mantle

7, Theodor Herzl and the cycle of contradictions

8, Simon Wiesenthal and the café in Mauthausen

9, Leonard Cohen and ‘The Spice-Box of Earth’

10, Ludwig Wittgenstein and his Jewish grandparents

11, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his Jewish librettist

12, Salomon Mayer von Rothschild and the railways in Vienna

13, Gustav Mahler and the ‘thrice homeless’ Jew

14, Beethoven at 250 and his Jewish connections in Vienna

15, Martin Buber and the idea of the ‘I-Thou’ relationship

16, Three Holocaust survivors who lived in Northern Ireland.

17, Schubert’s setting of Psalm 92 for the synagogue.

18, Bert Linder and his campaign against the Swiss banks.

19, Adele Bloch-Bauer and Gustav Klimt’s ‘Lady in Gold’.

20, Max Perutz, Nobel laureate and ‘the godfather of molecular biology’.

21, Marianne Faithfull (1946-2025) and her mother Eva Hermine von Sacher-Masoch (1912-1991)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 5, Friday 7 February 2025

The Execution of Saint John the Baptist … an early 18th century icon in the Museum of Christian Art in the Church of Saint Catherine of Sinai in Iraklion in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and less than four weeks away from Ash Wednesday (5 March 2025) and the beginning of Lent.

I got back from a busy day in Lichfield late last night, and expect to be in London for much of today. Before today begins, however, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

Herod’s daughter dances for the head of Saint John the Baptist … a fresco in the Church of Analipsi in Georgioupoli, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mark 6: 14-29 (NRSVA):

14 King Herod heard of it, for Jesus’ name had become known. Some were saying, ‘John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and for this reason these powers are at work in him.’ 15 But others said, ‘It is Elijah.’ And others said, ‘It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.’ 16 But when Herod heard of it, he said, ‘John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.’

17 For Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because Herod had married her. 18 For John had been telling Herod, ‘It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.’ 19 And Herodias had a grudge against him, and wanted to kill him. But she could not, 20 for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him. 21 But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee. 22 When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the girl, ‘Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.’ 23 And he solemnly swore to her, ‘Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.’ 24 She went out and said to her mother, ‘What should I ask for?’ She replied, ‘The head of John the baptizer.’ 25 Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, ‘I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.’ 26 The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her. 27 Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, 28 brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother. 29 When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb.

Inside the Chapel of the Hospital of Saint John the Baptist in Lichfield on Thursday afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s Reflection:

During my day in Lichfield yesterday, I spent some time in prayer in the Chapel of Saint John’s Hospital, which has been an important place in my spiritual life for over 50 years. In the Gospel reading at the Eucharist today (Mark 6: 14-29), we hear again the account of the execution of Saint John the Baptist.

This Gospel story is full of stark, cruel, violent reality. To achieve this dramatic effect, it is told with recall, flashback or with the use of the devise modern film-makers call ‘back story.’

Cruel Herod has already executed Saint John the Baptist – long ago. Now he hears about the miracles and signs being worked by Jesus and his disciples.

Some people think that Saint John the Baptist has returned, even though John has been executed by Herod. Others think Jesus is Elijah – and popular belief at the time expected Elijah to return at Judgment Day (Malachi 4: 5).

On the other hand, Herod, the deranged Herod who has already had John beheaded, wonders whether John is back again. And we are presented with a flashback to the story of Saint John the Baptist, how he was executed in a moment of passion, how Herod grieved, and how John was buried.

Did you ever get mistaken for someone else? Or, do you ever wonder whether the people you work with, or who are your neighbours, really know who you are?

I am thinking of two examples. Anthony Hope Hawkins was the son of the Vicar of Saint Bride’s in Fleet Street, the Revd Edwards Comerford Hawkins. He was walking home to his father’s vicarage in London one dusky evening when he came face-to-face with a man who looked like his mirror image.

He wondered what would happen if they swapped places, if this double went back to Saint Bride’s vicarage, while he headed off instead to the suburbs. Would anyone notice?

It inspired him, under the penname of Anthony Hope, to write his best-selling novel, The Prisoner of Zenda.

The other example I think of is the way I often hear people put themselves down with self-deprecating sayings such as: ‘If they only knew what I’m really like … if they only knew what I’m truly like …’

What are you truly like?

And would you honestly want to swap your life for someone else’s?

Would you take on all their woes, and angsts and burdens, along with their way of life?

It is a recurring theme for poets, writers and philosophers over the centuries.

It was the theme in John Boorman’s movie The Tiger’s Tail (2006), in which Brendan Gleeson plays both the main character and his protagonist. Is he his doppelgänger, a forerunner warning of doom, destruction and death? Or is he the lost twin brother who envies his achievements and lifestyle?

The doppelgänger was regarded as a harbinger of doom and death.

There is a way in which Saint John the Baptist is seen as the harbinger of the death of his own cousin, Jesus.

The account of Saint John’s execution anticipates the future facing Christ and some of the disciples, and Christ’s own burial (see Mark 15: 45-47). The idea that John might be raised from the dead anticipates Christ’s resurrection.

As well as attracting similar followers and having similar messages, did these two cousins, in fact, look so like one another physically?

But Herod had known John the Baptist; he knew him as a righteous and a holy man, and he protected him. Why, he even liked to listen to John.

Do you think Herod was confused about the identities of Christ and of Saint John the Baptist?

Is Herod so truly deranged that he can believe someone he has executed, whose severed head he has seen, could come back to life in such a short period?

Or is Herod’s reaction merely one of exasperation and exhaustion: ‘Oh no! Not that John, back again!’

We too are forerunners, sent out to be signs of the Kingdom of God. To be a disciple is to follow a risky calling – or at least it ought to be so.

I once had a poster on a kitchen door with a grumpy looking judge asking, ‘If you were accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?’

We heard yesterday (Mark 6: 7-13) how Christ sent out the disciples, two by two, inviting people into the Kingdom of God. But they are beginning to realise that the authorities are rejecting Christ.

Now with Herod’s maniacal and capricious way of making decisions, discipleship has become an even more risk-filled commitment.

But Herod’s horrid banquet runs right into the story in Saint Mark’s Gospel where Christ feeds the 5,000 (Mark 6: 30-44), a sacramental sign of the invitation to all to the heavenly banquet – more than we can imagine can be fed in any human undertaking.

The invitation to Herod’s banquet, for the privileged and the prejudiced, is laden with the smell of death.

The invitation to Christ’s banquet, for the marginalised and the rejected, is laden with the promise of life.

Herod feeds the prejudices of his own family and a closed group of courtiers. Christ shows that, despite the initial prejudices of the disciples, all are welcome to his banquet.

Herod is in a lavish palace in his city, but is isolated and deserted. Christ withdraws to an open but deserted place to be alone, but a great crowd follows him.

Herod fears the crowd beyond his palace gates. Christ rebukes the disciples for wanting to keep the crowds away.

Herod offers his daughter half his kingdom. Christ offers us all, as God’s children, the fullness of the kingdom of God.

Herod’s daughter asks for John’s head on a platter. On the mountainside, Christ feeds all.

Our lives are filled with choices.

Herod chooses loyalty to his inner circle and their greed. Christ tells his disciples to make a choice in favour of those who need food and shelter.

Herod’s banquet leads to destruction and death. Christ’s banquet is an invitation to building the kingdom and to new life.

Would I rather be at Herod’s Banquet for the few in the palace or with Christ as he feeds the masses in the wilderness?

Who would you invite to the banquet?

And who do you think feels excluded from the banquet?

We may never get the chance to be like Herod when it comes to lavish banqueting and decadent partying. But we have an opportunity to be party to inviting the many to the banquet that really matters.

Who feels turned away from the banquet by the Church today, abandoned and left to fend for themselves?

And, in our response to their needs, when we become signs of the Kingdom of God, we provide evidence enough to convict us when we are accused of being Christians.

Saint John the Baptist depicted in a window in the Chapel of Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s Prayers (Friday 7 February 2025):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Common Humanity and Love for Religious “Other”.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Reflection by the Revd Dr Salli Effungani, Programme Officer for the Programme for Christian-Muslim Relations in Africa (PROCMURA) and Adjunct Lecturer on Interfaith Relations at Saint Paul’s University, Limuru, Kenya.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 7 February 2025) invites us to pray:

We pray for love, respect, and collaboration among people from diverse religions for the good of humanity and the world.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
by whose grace alone we are accepted
and called to your service:
strengthen us by your Holy Spirit
and make us worthy of our calling;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

God of truth,
we have seen with our eyes and touched with our hands the bread of life:
strengthen our faith
that we may grow in love for you and for each other;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:
God of our salvation,
help us to turn away from those habits which harm our bodies
and poison our minds
and to choose again your gift of life,
revealed to us in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

A statue of Saint John the Baptist above the arched entrance at Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

A day of reflections in Lichfield Cathedral in the company of the ‘Ladies of the Vale’

The three spires of Lichfield Cathedral seen through an archway in the Cathedral Close this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

I have spent much of today in Lichfield, visiting the chapel in Saint John’s Hospital, going for walks along Cross in Hand Lane, Beacon Street, and around Minister Pool and Stowe Pool, attending Choral Evensong in Lichfield Cathedral this evening and, earlier in the day, attending the mid-day Eucharist with the Thursday Prayers for Peace at the Saint Chad Shrine in the Lady Chapel, celebrated by Bishop Paul Thomas. He is Bishop of Oswestry, a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Lichfield, and a provincial episcopal visitor in the Province of Canterbury since he was consecrated two years ago (2 February 2023).

For many reasons, both Lichfield Cathedral and the chapel in Saint John’s Hospital have been my spiritual homes since my late teens.

For residents of Lichfield and visitors alike, the three spires of Lichfield Cathedral symbolise of the city. It is the only mediaeval cathedral in England with three spires: Truro Cathedral in Cornwall also has three spires, but it was built in 1880-1910; in Scotland, Saint Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh, also has three spires, and was built in 1874-1879.

The three spires of Edinburgh Cathedral are known as Main, Barbara and Mary. But, while the three spires of Lichfield Cathedral are often known as the ‘Ladies of the Vale’, I do not know of them ever having individual names.

David Adkins of Buton upon Trent, who labels himself an anthropologist and historian, recently claimed to have solved a mystery and that he knows why Lichfield Cathedral is the only mediaeval cathedral in England with three spires.

‘They have always been something of a mystery as no-one has ever discovered why the cathedral has these three enormous spires’, he asserts. ‘A mystery that is until you remember that Lichfield was the seat of the third archbishop of England. The Archbishopric of Lichfield was short-lived and disappeared over 1200 years ago, it only lasted from 787 to 803 AD and meant that Staffordshire was the only other county in England to have ever had an Archbishopric based within it’.

He claims: ‘The three spires can only represent one thing – the three Archbishops of England – and it is almost certain that the medieval stonemasons created the three spires in memory of Lichfield’s past. The two smaller spires symbolised the two original archbishops – York and Canterbury – and the larger central spire represented the Archbishop of Lichfield itself.’

However, Adkins provides no evidence or sources to support his suppositions. And his assertion lacks credibility for a number of other.

Archbishop Hygeberht of Lichfield in a window at the east end of the Chapter House in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

King Offa of Mercia created the position of Archbishop of Lichfield in 787. The dioceses of Winchester, Sherborne, Selsey, Rochester and London remained within the Province of Canterbury, while the dioceses of Worcester, Hereford, Leicester, Lindsey, Dommoc and Elmham became suffragan sees of Lichfield. Pope Adrian I concurred, and it was approved at the Council of Chelsea, sometimes known as the ‘contentious synod’.

Hygeberht, or Higbert, who had been the Bishop of Lichfield since 787, became the first and only Archbishop of Lichfield. In response, King Offa agreed to send an annual shipment of 365 gold coins to the Pope – seen as the origin of Peter’s Pence, an annual levy paid to Rome by the English Church – and to supply the lights in Saint Peter’s in Rome.

However, the position of Archbishop of Lichfield lasted for only 16 years, until Hygeberht resigned in 803. One of his last acts as archbishop, it is said, was to consecrate his successor Ealdwulf as Bishop of Lichfield, and the title of archbishop was laid aside. Hygeberht is listed as an abbot at the Council of Cloveshoo in the year 803 that oversaw the demotion of Lichfield in 803, and he died some time later. His successor, Bishop Aldulf, renounced the metropolitan powers in favour of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and died ca 814-816.

Far from being a protected secret part of the history of Lichfield Cathedral, the story is told publicly in windows by Charles Eamer Kempe in the chapter house.

Adkins in his innovative but unsourced claims says the masons gave the central spire of Lichfield Cathedral ‘extra height to set it above both York and Canterbury, and as a result the whole building is a commemoration of Lichfield’s prestigious past. It clearly depicts Lichfield’s position as the third major player in Anglo-Saxon politics and religion.’

There has been a cathedral in Lichfield from about the year 700, and there may have been a church on the site as early as 659. After the invasion of 1066, the Normans built a new cathedral

Roger de Clinton, Bishop of Lichfield in 1129-1148, built a new cathedral in Lichfield in honour of Saint Mary and Saint Chad, and also laid out the main streets of Lichfield in a grid pattern, still in evidence almost 800 years later. Work on building the cathedral continued in the 13th and 14th centuries. This work probably began with the choir at the east end and progressed west through the transepts, chapter house, nave, and south-west tower. The choir dates from 1200, the transepts from 1220-1240 and the nave was started ca 1260. The octagonal chapter house was completed in 1249. The cathedral was completed when the Lady Chapel was built in the 1330s.

The central tower, the south-east tower and the three spires followed. The central spire of Lichfield Cathedral is 77 metres (253 ft) high and was completed in 1315, and its story is told in the current exhibition in the Chapter House, ‘Story of a Spire’, which was due to close last August but has been extended until this month. The west spires are about 58 metres (190 ft), with the south spire a little taller than the north spire. These towers were added over five years after the death of the one and only Archbishop of Lichfield, and it stretched creduity to imagine that at that stage anyone would go to such lengths and to such expense to structurally comment in such a brief episode in church history that is remembered as a mere political aberration.

The cathedral was besieged three times in the Civil War in the mid-17th century and was severely damage. The central spire was demolished, the roofs ruined and all the stained glass smashed. Bishop John Hacket began restoring Lichfield Cathedral in the 1660s, and had repaired the cathedral within nine years. The restored cathedral was rededicated on Christmas Day 1669.

The interior of the cathedral was rearranged at the end of the 18th century and further restored in the 19th century by Sir George Gilbert Scott, giving us the cathedral we see today.

There is no source to indicate that Hackett saw the restoration of the cathedral spires as an exercise in remembering one single episode in the history of Lichfield almost 900 years earlier, when there was a single Archbishop of Lichfield.

CE Kempe’s window in the South Quire Aisle showing Bishop John Hacket restoring the spires of Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Adkins does not indicate anywhere on his social media profiles what his qualifications are, apart from stating he studied at the University of Leeds. There are no indications that he has ever held an academic post in either discipline, that he has been published in peer-reviewed journals or that he is author of academically acclaimed books.

On the other hand, he has made some extravagant claims, including that he has unravelled the mystery of the Staffordshire knot, and that he alone knows that the Shroud of Turin is a tablecloth that was made in Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire.

He claims that lost treasure that could include the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail may be lying underneath Sinai Park, a manor house near Burton. He says he is convinced the priceless treasures were taken from Jerusalem in 1307, were stored beneath Sina Park, and that this was a secret location of the Knights Templar.

His sensationalist claims about what he describes as ‘one of the greatest religious treasures in the world’ have led to equally sensational newspaper headlines like: ‘Raiders of the Lost Park’.

In other headline-grabbing claims, he has said the so-called Shapira Scroll – said to contain ‘the 11th Commandment’, ‘You shall not hate your brother in your heart: I am God, your god’ – is buried in Stapenhill Cemetery in Burton. The Shapira Scroll was denounced widely by scholars in the 19th century as a forgery.

This evening, I am on my way from the Cathedral to the Old Grammar School on Saint John’s Street, across the street from Saint John’s Hospital. The building dates back to 1577, and is to become home to the local history group Lichfield Discovered.

Over the coming years, Lichfield Discovered plans to transform some of the spaces at the Old Grammar School and to work with local people, groups and the city’s museums and heritage sites to celebrate the history Lichfield.

Lichfield Cathedral in today’s afternoon sunshine … the only mediaeval cathedral in England with three spires (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 4, Thursday 6 February 2025

‘He … began to send them out two by two’ (Mark 6: 7) … two walkers on the beach in Ballybunion, Co Kerry, at the end of the day (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and less than four weeks away from Ash Wednesday (5 March 2025) and the beginning of Lent. The Calendar of the Church of England today (6 February) remembers the Martyrs of Japan (1597).

In 1597, 26 men and women, religious and lay, including Paul Miki, were first mutilated then crucified near Nagasaki. The period of persecution continued for another 35 years, and many new martyrs were added to their number.

After a long and demanding day in Milton Keynes University Hospital yesterday with consultations and hearing the results of a number of tests, I am planning to spend much of today in Lichfield, visiting the chapel in Saint John’s Chapel and attending the mid-day Eucharist and Choral Evensong in Lichfield Cathedral. Later in evening, I hope to be in the Old Grammar School on Saint John’s Street, which dates back to 1577 and is about to become home to the local history group Lichfield Discovered.

Over the coming years, Lichfield Discovered plans to transform some of the spaces at the Old Grammar School and to collaborate with local people, groups and the city’s museums and heritage sites to celebrate the history Lichfield.

Before today begins, however, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

When I set out on journeys, too often I take too much with me … ‘A Case History’ or ‘The Hope Street Suitcases’ by John King in Liverpool (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mark 6: 7-13 (NRSVA):

7 He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. 8 He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; 9 but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. 10 He said to them, ‘Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. 11 If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.’ 12 So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. 13 They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

‘He ordered them … to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics’ (Mark 6: 8-9) … sandals in a shopfront in Rethymnon, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

In the Gospel reading at the Eucharist today (Mark 6: 7-13), Jesus sends out the 12 Disciples in pairs, two-by-two, on a limited commission, but advises them to prepare for rejection and to be ready to move on.

Going out in pairs was a well-known practice at the time. For example, Yose ben Joezer of Zeredah (first half of the second century BCE), is often paired with his colleague, Yose ben Johanan of Jerusalem. They are the first of the zugot(Hebrew זוּגוֹת, ‘pairs’; singular זוּג; zug), the name given to the pairs of sages responsible for maintaining the chain of the Oral Law from Antigonus of Sokho, the pupil of Simeon the Just, to Johanan ben Zakkai. They represent a link between the prophets and the tannaim or rabbinic sages whose views are recorded in the Mishnah.

Yose ben Joezer was the nasi of the Sanhedrin and his colleague was the av bet din. Because of their profound erudition and piety both Yoses were called ‘the grape clusters’. Yose ben Joezer says in the Mishnah (Avot 1: 4), ‘Let thy house be a meeting place for scholars; sit amid the dust of their feet; and drink in their words with thirst.’ The Midrash (Gen. R. 65: 22) says he was sentenced to death by crucifixion.

So, in this passage, Jesus echoes the wise sages of the Mishnah, in teaching and in practice. And, indeed, his death has many similarities with the crucifixion of Yose ben Joezer.

When Jesus tells the 12 they are to fasten their belts, put on their sandals and wrap themselves in their cloak, he is sending them out into the world on a limited mission. But in places that are not welcoming or receptive to their teaching, they are to leave and to shake the dust off their feet.

In this reading, we are challenged to see how being sent by God is always being in service and as being part of the ‘Sent Community.’

What do you take with you on a journey? What are the essential items you pack in your case? Is it a small bag for an overhead cabin on a Ryanair flight and a short overnight stay? Or was it a large suitcase or two for a two-week summer holiday, filled with towels, sun cream and swimwear?

Apart from my passport, the requisite toothbrush, plastic cards, phone chargers, presents for hosts and friends, and changes of clothes and sandals, I always need to take my laptop and more than enough reading: books, magazine, journals and newspapers.

And I always regret that I have packed too much – not because I do not wear all those T-shorts or read each and every one of those books, but because I find there is not enough room for all the books I want to take back with me, and because restrictions on overhead bags often mean I cannot return with a bottle of local wine.

In this Gospel reading, as the disciples prepare for their journey, we might expect them to take with them an extra wineskin, an extra tunic, an extra pair of sandals, some water, some spending money.

But Christ tells the disciples, as he sends them out in mission, two-by-two, to take nothing for their journey except a staff – no bread, no bag, no money, no spare shoes, no change of tunic, no coins for tips in the taverns or inns where they stay and eat.

Perhaps the disciples set out filled with doubts and uncertainty, full of fear and anxiety, rather than with full suitcases.

But what the disciples would soon learn is that for the people they are going to encounter along the way, it is not food or money or clothes that they need most. What those people need most, like the women in Tuesday’s Gospel reading (Mark 5: 21-43), is healing. And so, Christ requires the disciples to give what is the hardest thing in the world for us to give: the hardest thing to give is ourselves.

Sometimes, the moments when we put aside the comforts of home and step into uncertainty and risk are moments when we find we are closest to God.

Perhaps this Gospel reading is challenging me to ask myself: What baggage have I been dragging along with me in life, on my journey of faith?

Have I been carrying this baggage around not because I need it, but because I am comfortable with it?

What unnecessary junk am I still carrying around with me in life that I ought to have left behind long ago?

For the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933), in his poem ‘Ithaka’ (1911), the beginning of the journey is as important as the end itself, the journey as important as the destination.

In this poem, Cavafy transforms Homer’s account of the return of Odysseus from the Trojan War to his home island, and, after a long absence finding Ithaka disappointing. Cavafy tells Odysseus that arriving in Ithaka is what he is destined for, that he must keep that always in mind: one’s destiny, the inevitable end of the journey, is a thing to be faced for what it is, without illusions.

The meaning of Ithaka is in the voyage home that it inspired. It is not reaching home or again escaping its limitations once there that should occupy Odysseus so much as those elevated thoughts and rare excitement that are a product of the return voyage.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

Christ sends his disciples out, as he has been sent, with no real resources, but ready to rely on the hospitality of others for their basic needs, and depending on God for the power to fulfil their mission.

We are challenged to embrace the call of God, and go out as servants of Christ in dependence on God’s resources, God’s strength, to sustain us.

There is no shortage of work to be done in the world today. The issues of justice are many and diverse and require people of passion, commitment and with a sense of being ‘called’ or being ‘sent.’

But, for justice to become a reality in this world, in our country, in our communities, there must be a sense in which all the individual initiatives connect and form part of a larger whole. It is not just as individuals that we are sent out into the world, but we are sent out as groups and communities. As we work together, each with our own particular gifts or focus, we can make a significant difference.

‘He … began to send them out two by two’ (Mark 6: 7) … two walkers set out into the light of day in Porto (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 6 February 2025):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Common Humanity and Love for Religious “Other”.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Reflection by the Revd Dr Salli Effungani, a minister in the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon (PCC), Programme Officer for the Programme for Christian-Muslim Relations in Africa (PROCMURA), and Adjunct Lecturer on Interfaith Relations at Saint Paul’s University, Limuru, Kenya.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 6 February 2025) invites us to pray:

We pray against discrimination, bigotry, and torture meted out by people because of their religious affiliations.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
by whose grace alone we are accepted
and called to your service:
strengthen us by your Holy Spirit
and make us worthy of our calling;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

God of truth,
we have seen with our eyes and touched with our hands the bread of life:
strengthen our faith
that we may grow in love for you and for each other;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:
God of our salvation,
help us to turn away from those habits which harm our bodies
and poison our minds
and to choose again your gift of life,
revealed to us in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

‘He … began to send them out two by two’ (Mark 6: 7) … two walkers in the narrow streets of San Marino (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org