Finding angels on Christmas trees, bookshelves, and the Christmas story

Angels above a Christmas scene in a window in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Long before Advent arrived, many of us had probably started our Christmas shopping, checking out the tree, and planning the carol singing. Angels are going to appear everywhere: on the wrapping paper and the cards, topping the trees, hovering above the cribs, and featuring in the words of traditional carols:

Hark! the herald angels sing,
glory to the new-born King … [Hymn 160]

O come, all you faithful…
come and behold him,
born, the King of angels … [172]

while mortals sleep the angels keep
their watch of wandering love [‘O little town of Bethlehem,’ [174]

On Christmas night, all Christians sing,
to hear the news the angels bring … [176]

Silent night, holy night …
Heavenly hosts sing allelulia [182]

While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
… the angel of the Lord came down [188]

The Incarnation by Eleftheria Syrianoglou ... a ‘table icon’ on olive wood in an exhibition in Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

And the angels appear in many other popular carols and hymns, including: In the bleak mid-winter [162], Ding dong! Merrily on high [155], God rest you, merry gentlemen [158], Infant holy, infant lowly [163], It came upon the midnight clear [164], and so on.

Saint Luke begins his nativity narration with the story of an Angel of the Lord appearing to Zechariah in the Temple to tell him of the future birth of Saint John the Baptist (Luke 1: 8-20). Soon afterwards, the Angel Gabriel visits the Virgin Mary at the annunciation in Nazareth (Luke 1: 26-38). An angel of the Lord advises Joseph not to be afraid to marry the pregnant Mary (Matthew 1: 20).

When Christ is born in Bethlehem, an angel brings the good news at night to shepherds on the hillside, and is then joined by more angels, a “multitude of the heavenly host,” singing:

Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those
whom he favours [Luke 2: 8-18]

An angel of the Lord tells Joseph to take Mary and the Christ Child to Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath (Matthew 2: 13), and later tells him to return with his family (Matthew 2: 19-20).

The Visitation of Abraham ... a fresco on a wall in the Monastery of Saint John the Baptist in Tolleshunt Knights, Essex (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Angels also feature in the Resurrection story. An angel of the Lord descends from heaven and rolls back the stone on Easter morning. He tells the women at the tomb not to be afraid but to go and tell the disciples that Christ is risen (Matthew 28: 1-7; Mark 16: 1-7). Saint Luke’s Gospel tells us there were two angels at the empty grave that Easter morning (Luke 24: 1-7). After the Ascension, two “men in white” – usually presumed to be angels – tell the lingering disciples to return to Jerusalem (Acts 1: 10-11).

So, angels play central roles in the Christmas story, and provide a narrative link between Christmas and Easter, between the incarnation and the resurrection and ascension.

Finding Biblical angels

Books about angels usually sit alongside ‘New Age’ books rather than serious theology in bookshops (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Although angels appear throughout the Bible, many people either regard any talk of angels as superstitious nonsense, not rooted in earthly experience, or they remove angels from the Christian narrative and make them part of ‘New Age’ nonsense.

You only have to look at shelves labelled “Spirituality” in book shops to realise that angels are seldom written about by sensible and respected theologians, and most books about angels might as well be placed on shelves alongside books about ‘Celtic Spirituality,’ crystal stones and Feng Shui.

So, as we plan our carol services and prepare to place that angel on top of the Christmas tree, how are we to recover the story of angels that makes sense for Christians yet keeps our feet firmly planted on the ground?

The Congregation of All Angels, by a nun from the Monastery of Agia Irini, in an exhibition in Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

The angels who appear throughout the New Testament must have been fearsome in appearance, for they constantly have to advise people: “Fear not” or be not afraid” – from the Virgin Mary and Joseph to the shepherds on the hillside and the women at the tomb.

Yet we have reduced angels from being strong and awe-inspiring beings to chubby-faced putti from Italian baroque churches. We even talk about pretty children being “cherubs” and “little angels” – hardly the type of beings to make us tremble with fear.

Bede, in his History of the English Church, tells that when Pope Gregory the Great saw a group of fair-skinned, fair-haired English children on sale in the slave market in Rome and was told they were Angles, he declared: Non Angli, sed Angeli, “Not Angles, but Angels ... “for they have angelic faces, and it is right that they should become joint-heirs with the angels in heaven.” The encounter led Pope Gregory to send Saint Augustine of Canterbury on his mission to England.

Sir Jacob Epstein’s statue of the Archangel Michael on the wall of Coventry Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

It is a clever pun that was used playfully by the church historian Henry Chadwick when he was editing his book Not Angels but Anglicans (2000). However, it helps to confirm the images of angels as fresh-faced and child-like, rather than the fearful and terrifying beings like the Archangel Michael in Jacob Epstein’s sculpture on Coventry Cathedral.

Father Ian Graham of Holy Trinity Church, Oxford, asked recently: “Who is the opposite of the Devil? A large number of Christians answer God. No. The answer is the Archangel Michael, and that should put him in perspective.”

The Lichfield Angel ... a carved limestone panel, from ca 800 AD, may have formed the corner of the shrine of Saint Chad, who died in 672 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

But there is a difficulty in talking about angels in today’s culture, for any talk of angels often ranks with “being away with the fairies.” That cultural difficulty is compounded by the Biblical accounts where angels appear in martial, hierarchical and monarchical contexts. The word angel means messenger or envoy, both inside and outside Scripture. If we translated angel as messenger or envoy, would it bring a new immediacy ad meaning to Biblical passages?

Genesis 1 does not mention the creation of angels. Professor Sebastian Brock of Oxford points out that many Syriac writings in the Patristic era say the angels were created on the first day, along with heaven and earth. But the first appearance of angels is in Genesis 3, when two cherubim or winged beasts – rather than putti – are placed to block Adam and Eve returning to Eden.

‘Praise him all ye angels of his’ ... a window in Saint Lachtain’s Church, Freshford, Co Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

The Bible tells us the names of some of the archangels, including Gabriel, Michael and Raphael. The Biblical passages that speak of angels range from Abraham’s visitors at Mamre and the angels in the books of Daniel and Ezekiel, to the heralds of the Incarnation and the Resurrection, and the angels in Acts, including those in the stories of Philip and Cornelius.

‘Angels Heavenly and Fallen’

An angel carved on a prayer desk in the chapel in Sidney Sussex College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Earlier this year, I took part in a summer school in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies (IOCS), with the title “Angels, Heavenly and Fallen.”

Professor Marcus Plested introduced the thinking about Angels and Demons – not in the writings of Dan Brown but in the writings of some of Early Church writers, including Macarius, Evagrius Ponticus and Dionysius the Areopagite.

Putti at the base of a monument at the west end of Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Dionysius says we should be more interested in what they do than what they look like, and more interested in how they lead us to God, for angel is a title that indicates a messenger, who announces God’s message and good news and who points to God.

In his Celestial Hierarchy, he orders the ranks of the angels into three groups of three, with nine titles, all of which are scriptural:

1, Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones – the angels closest to God;

2, Dominions, Powers and Authority;

3, Principalities, Archangels and Angels – the angels closest to us.

‘I go to prepare a place for you’ ... an angel in a window in Saint Bene’t’s Church, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

At the summer school, Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia warned us not to expect angels to appear as they are shown on icons: “Do not expect to see a winged figure in Byzantine court dress. An angel might well appear in a mackintosh and a trilby hat.”

The icon writer Aidan Hart spoke about the development of angels in Eastern and Western iconography. The earliest image from ca 180 shows the Annunciation in a catacomb in Rome, with the angel clothed in a toga like a Roman citizen, and until the late fourth century, angels look like humans, without wings.

An angel in stained glass in a church in Rethymnon, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

From about the fourth century, angels are seen as winged mythological figures, appropriating depictions of Nike, the goddess of victory, for angels fight battles against demons. Wings also became a way of showing that angels are created beings, with limited abilities as they move between the heavenly realm and the human world.

From the fifth century, angels look like Byzantine courtiers, who acted as counsellors, were masters of ceremonies, controlled access to the throne, and were intermediaries, diplomats and messengers –roles similar to those of angels. But because many courtiers were eunuchs, angels came to be depicted without beards.

By the sixth century, angels were wearing garbs first confined to the emperor but then also worn by their delegates and closest bodyguards. The Archangel Michael and other angels are depicted in Byzantine military garb with swords, with staffs representing authority, and with peacock wings as a symbol of everlasting life.

From the eleventh century, the Archangel Gabriel is shown not in a military uniform but in a courtly toga-style robe, while the Archangel Michael has a staff for authority and an orb for wisdom.

The seraphim are six-winged creatures above the throne (see Isaiah 6), two wings covering their faces, two covering their feet, and two for flying as they cry out: “Holy, Holy, Holy ...” They are often depicted supporting the dome in a church or above the doors of the icon screen, for they guard the gates of Paradise.

Angels and evangelists on columns at the porch in University Church, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Cherubim often look like seraphim, but they are many-eyed, guard the entrance to Paradise with flaming swords, and guard the Ark of the Covenant and the veil of the Holy of Holies. They are identified by Ezekiel with the “four living creatures” (Ezekiel 1: 1-14), although these four are also identified with the four evangelists: Saint Matthew (man), Saint Mark (lion), Saint Luke (ox) and Saint John (eagle).

The heavenly hosts may also be depicted as stars. But the depiction of angels reminds us that worship on earth is also participation in the worship in heaven.

Christmas makes a difference

A sacramental-looking angel in Saint Matthew’s Church, Great Peter Street, Westminster (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In the Monastery of Saint John the Baptist in Tolleshunt Knights, Sister Magdalen expressed her worries about ‘New Age’ and occult interests in angels. Angels and humans are both creatures of God. But, she said, the Incarnation makes a radical difference, for Christ came not as an angel but became human – a child born in flesh into a poor family.

She says angels are in awe that humans can take part in the Body and Blood of their Lord sacramentally. Angels love and serve human beings, and rejoice at our repentance. But humans can live and develop, and learn by love to embrace all humanity so that we sanctify the whole of creation in ourselves.

And that is at the very heart of the Christmas message.

An angel marking a Maxwell family grave in Kilmore, Co Cavan ... their ancestors were once the landlords of Newtownbarry, now Bunclody, Co Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor, Trinity College Dublin. This essay was and these photographs were first published in December 2013 in the Church Review (Dublin and Glendalough and the Diocesan Magazine (Cashel, Ferns and Ossory).

Putti on the Venetian-era Morosini fountain in the centre of Iraklion, capital of the Greek island of Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

New video promotes the work of IOCS in Cambridge

Patrick Comerford

I have been a regular student at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge since 2008, taking part in the annual summer schools in Sidney Sussex College, visiting the IOCS premises, which were first housed in Wesley House on Jesus Lane, joining in IOCS pilgrimages and making friends each year among the faculty, visiting lecturers and students.

Part of the life of any institute like this is the friendships that are created among the large variety of people who come together providentially and from across the continents. We should never under-estimate the amount of theological inquiry and ecumenical bridge-building that can be pursued in the cafés, bars and pubs in Cambridge during the weeks of the summer school, or the new insights that can be gained on buses travelling through the countryside of East Anglia.

Earlier this week, the IOCS released an extended version of a new presentational video, with faculty, students and supporters explaining how we have benefitted from the work of the institute in recent years.

The institute says: “To our friends, old and new, but also to anyone who wants to learn more about the Institute, our mission, about opportunities for research and study with us, here is a short video presentation of IOCS.”

And they add: “Thank you for your long-standing support and friendship!”

Others who speak on this new video include the President of IOCS, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, the Director of IOCS, Professor David Frost, Dr Sebastian Brock, formerly Reader in Syriac Studies in the University of Oxford and Professorial Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, IOCS staff members the Revd Dr Alexander Tefft, Dr Christoph Schneider, Razvan Porumb and Revd Deacon Dragos Herescu, along with Dr Marcus Plested and Dr Christine Mangala Frost, as well as fellow students Revd David Patrick Cassidy from Austin, Texas, and Alice Belcher from Brighton.

There are clips from the new IOCS premises at Palamas House in High Street Chesterton, Cambridge, from last year’s summer school in Sidney Sussex College, from our visit to Saint John’s Monastery in Tolleshunt Knights, Essex, from a celebration of the Divine Liturgy in Cambridge, and from other locations, as well as some beautiful camera work throughout Cambridge.

It is a delight to see so many of my friends at Cambridge on this new presentational video, and it has been a privilege to take part in its production.

Reading The Masters, ‘the best academic novel in English,’ in Cambridge

Christ’s College, Cambridge ... provides the setting for CP Snow’s nameless college in ‘The Masters’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Over the past few weeks, I have completed a leisurely reading of The Masters, perhaps the best known of CP Snow's series of novels Strangers and Brothers.

I picked a well-thumbed, dog-eared copy of the book on a book barrow in Temple Bar one Sunday afternoon earlier this summer, and it has been stuck in my bag on trips to London, Hertfordshire, Essex, Sorrento and Cambridge.

Because it was bed-time reading, it took a little longer to read than most other books. But, although it was written in 1951 and set in 1937, the book came to life on the last of those visits, with its setting in Cambridge, while I was in Cambridge for this year’s summer school in Sidney Sussex College, organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies.

As the dons walk around the streets of Cambridge and the courts of their college, I could see those streets and courts come to life three-quarters of a century after the original storyline.

The plot involves the election of a new Master in 1957 at Lewis Eliot’s Cambridge college. Although the college is unnamed, it became obvious as I read on that the college in many ways resembles Christ’s College, where I have been a guest at the High Table in Hall, preached, lectured and stayed at different times over the past few years. The statutes of Christ’s College insist that every fellow undertakes to uphold it as a place of education, religion, learning, and research.

The chemist and novelist CP Snow (1905-1980), later Lord Snow, gave us the familiar idiom “the corridors of power.” He was elected a Fellow and tutor of Christ’s College in 1930. His first rooms were those once occupied by the poet John Milton (1608-1674), and later he moved to rooms that had been those of Charles Darwin (1809-1882).

So, from his very beginning at Christ’s, Snow was aware of the tension and balance between the humanities and the sciences.

Lining up in Christ’s College, Cambridge, for the degree conferring ceremony (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

At Christ’s, Snow tutored HS Hoff, the novelist William Cooper. Snow was the model for the college dean, Robert, in Cooper’s Scenes from Provincial Life. Later, Snow held several senior Civil Service positions and briefly served in Harold Wilson’s government as Minister of Technology.

Snow dedicated The Masters to the memory of GH Hardy, the Cambridge mathematician. Hardy was a Fellow of Trinity College Cambridge, the two first met at a dinner in Christ’s in 1931, and the two shared a lifelong passion for cricket.
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The story is set in 1937, against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War and the irreversible drift towards World War II. The book begins with the Master of a Cambridge college, Vernon Royce, on his deathbed. His imminent death stirs intense rivalry and jealousy among the 12 fellows who have to elect his successor.

The Chapel of Christ’s College, Cambridge … in 2010, the college celebrated the 500th anniversary of the consecration of the chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The real contest starts before the master dies. Soon former friends become true enemies as two fellows, Paul Jago and Thomas Crawford emerge as the two candidates.

Paul Jago is an Irish-born graduate of Trinity College Dublin. His is an imaginative, magnanimous and sensitive person, but he has never distinguished himself as an English scholar. Lewis Eliot, the semi-biographical narrator, believes Jago would make a good master, but his wife is seen by some of the dons as a liability.

Thomas Crawford is politically radical and is prepared to make sure his college makes a stand against appeasing Hitler. However, Eliot believes Crawford is not going to be good at dealing with people. He is a confident, first-rate biologist, but he lacks many human qualities.

Crawford’s character is based on Sir Charles Galton Darwin (1887-1962), the grandson of Charles Darwin. Darwin was elected the Master of Christ’s College in 1936 – an election in which Snow switched his support from candidate to the other late in the day.

Jago’s character is based on Canon Charles Raven (1885-1964), Regius Professor Divinity at Cambridge 1932-1950. Raven was the unsuccessful candidate in 1936, but became Master of Christ’s in 1939 when Darwin left to become Director of the National Physics Laboratory, and remained Master until 1950, a year before Snow published The Masters.

In a letter to The Spectator in 1962, Raven denounced Snow for depicting academics as mere careerists. Is that how they are depicted in The Masters?

The Master’s Lodge and the Chapel in Christ’s College are side-by-side in First Court (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Much of the interest of the novel lies in its analysis of the motives and political manoeuvres of the fellows campaigning for their chosen candidates. Mixed motives are at work throughout the campaign. For some dons, personal politics is all that matters, for others it is down to personal charisma. Others ask whether they should choose a man of the arts or a man of science. Throughout it all, the conflict between loyalty and ambition is a constant theme.

The contest becomes more complex when a rich industrialist offers a large donation that would change the nature of college to the benefit of the scientists and for ever.

There is no final twist to the The Masters – the final result was almost predictable and inevitable. In the meantime, we have insights into the fellows’ attitudes to providing clergy for the parishes that are college “livings,” their living conditions, and their social and political values. It is a hardly a surprise that they get on better with the porters than they do with each other.

As he was writing, Snow could see the inevitable way in which Cambridge colleges would change. But, despite those changes, the Cambridge he evokes is still recognisable, and the appendix could be an account of the changes in any Cambridge college over the centuries.

The book still address many of the present conflicts between the humanities and the sciences: Can science determine human values? Or should science operate within moral and ethical humane parameters?

Snow knew these questions can never be answered conclusively in favour of one side or the other. In “The Two Cultures,” a lecture in 1959, he lamented the gulf between scientists and “literary intellectuals.” At one point in The Masters, the oldest college fellow, Maurice Gay, expresses this when he says: “We ought to have outgrown these arts and science controversies before we leave the school debating society.”

Although the college remains anonymous throughout The Masters and many of the historical details are changed, it is obvious from the setting is obvious from the geographical setting and the architectural details that this is Christ’s College.

The Masters is considered “the best academic novel in English.” The story was broadcast by BBC Radio in August 1958, and the novel was first dramatised for the London theatre 50 years ago when Ronald Millar’s adaptation was staged at the Savoy Theatre in London in 1963.

The Masters is preceded in reading order by The Light and the Dark and followed by The New Men. Which should I read next.

Snow in Christ’s College ... First Court covered in snow when I was staying there in February 2009 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

An afternoon by the boathouses and the river, watching life go by

The Rosie makes its way between rowers, scullers and houseboats, with Fort St George (left) on the south bank of the Cam and Peterhouse boathouse on the north bank (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Patrick Comerford

My week in Cambridge ended as it began: walking by the river, enjoying the sunshine, and enjoying the sight of people in boats on the water.

Having left my bags at the Porters’ Lodge in Sidney Sussex College on Friday afternoon [19 July 2013], I walked around the corner into Jesus Lane, and on to the junction with Maid’s Causeway and Victoria Avenue to Midsummer Common, on the north-east of the inner city.

Midsummer Common in the middle of summer (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

This vast stretch of common land stretches for over 33 acres (13.4 hectares) along the banks of the River Cam, from Victoria Bridge to Elizabeth Way. Until Victoria Avenue was cut through the common in 1890, there was an even larger expanse of open land that included Jesus Green.

Although Midsummer Common is open common land, it looks more like a vast city park, with street lighting, tarmac paths and cycle lanes, and all the human problems that city parks attract.

I crossed Midsummer Common to the south side of the river, where houseboats are moored along the bank, while most of the boathouses of Cambridge colleges and town clubs on the north side.

In between the swans and young people learning to row and to scull, a small narrowboat, the Rosie, was chugging up and down the river, taking small groups of people on river tours.

I crossed the river at Clare Footbridge, and walked back and forth along the north bank of the Cam, in and out between the boathouses.

There are about 30 colleges in Cambridge, each with its own boat club on the Cam, interspersed with a the boathouses of a number of town clubs and the premises of the Cambridge University Combined Boat Clubs, which manages college rowing on the Cam and running university races, such as the Lent and May bumps but not the Fairbairn Cup. There are clubs too for medical students at Addenbrooke’s and students at the Veterinary School.

Sidney Sussex shares a boathouse with Girton, Corpus Christi and Wolfson (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Close to Clare Footbridge, Sidney Sussex shares a boathouse with Girton College, Corpus Christi and Wolfson. The Sidney Sussex club’s blades are dark blue with red stripes. Sidney alumni race as the Lord Protector Club – well, Oliver Cromwell was a Sidney alumnus.

The other clubs on the river include the Cambridge ’99 Boat Club, the Cantabrigian Rowing Club, the City of Cambridge Rowing Club, the Rob Roy Boat Club, the X-Press Boat Club and the Champion of the Thames Boat Club, some of them based in the boathouse of the Cambridgeshire Rowing Association.

The Goldie Boathouse, home of the Cambridge University Boat Club, is named after JHD Goldie (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Some of the boathouses have names that have become part of Cambridge lore. The Goldie boathouse is the home of the Cambridge University Boat Club. The boathouse is named after JHD Goldie, of Saint John’s and CUBC.

The Boat Club of Saint John’s College is known as Lady Margaret. According to Cambridge myth, the name Lady Margaret was adopted after the Saint John’s Boat Club was banned from using that name. However, the club was probably named after its boat, as was custom in the formative years of college rowing. The alumni race as Lady Somerset Boat Club.

The names of some town clubs are associated with well-known pubs in Cambridge.

The X-Press Boat Club was once the boat club of the Free Press Public House, but is now it is associated with The Cambridge Blue after the landlord switched pubs. The name of the club was supposed to change to the Cambridge Blue Boat Club, but this was blocked after objections were raised by the university.

The Champion of the Thames Boat Club has boasted its unusual name since 1995, and is sponsored by The Champion of the Thames, a pub on King Street, near Sidney Sussex College. The pub, in turn, is named after an oarsman who won a race on the Thames on 1860, moved to Cambridge and ever after had all correspondence addressed to “The Champion of the Thames, King Street, Cambridge.”

A glass of wine at the Fort St George on a summer afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

I crossed the river again at Peterhouse Footbridge, and close to the houseboats, across from the Peterhouse boat club, I stopped for a cool glass of wine in the Fort St George, an old sprawling pub on the south bank of the river.

To give the pub its full name, this is The Fort St George In England, and is the oldest public house on the Cam. It is a Grade II listed timber-framed building and dates from the 16th century. The pub got is unusual name because it is said to look like the East India Company’s Fort St George in Madras (Chennai).

I could have lost all sense of time in the afternoon sunshine on the river bank, until a friend from the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies joined me at the table, and conversation turned to reality.

I strolled back along the south side of the river, where the people who live on the houseboats have their own sense of community and call themselves the Camboaters.

Christ’s College Boat Club has the oldest wooden-framed boathouse on the river (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Christ’s College Boat Club is housed in the oldest wooden-framed boathouse on the river, and this is the nearest to Jesus Lock.

As I continued on to Jesus Lock, people were sunbathing on the banks of the river, enjoying this unusually warm and bright summer weather. There were lengthy queues too at the Lido to get into the Jesus Green Swimming Pool.

The corner of Chesterton Lane, Northampton Street and Magdalene Street, seen from the grounds of Saint Giles Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

I crossed the river once again at the Jesus Lock Footbridge, at Chesterton Road, and walked on back along Chesterton Lane, and Magdalene Street and Bridge Street to Sidney Sussex College. My week in Cambridge was coming to an end.

Magdalene Street, walking back into Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Some other boathouses on the River Cam:

Lady Margaret Boat Club (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

The Boat Club of St John’s College is known as Lady Margaret, after the founder of the college, Lady Margaret Beaufort.

Jesus College Boat Club (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Jesus College Boat Club is responsible for Fairbairns, the favourite event in Michaelmas term. Jesus alumni race as the Disciples.

Trinity Hall Boat Club (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Pembroke College Boat Club (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Emmanuel Boat Club (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

The Rosie passes Downing College boathouse (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Downing College boathouse has been close to the water in more ways than its member may care to remember ... the boathouse flooded while it was still being built.

The Cambridge ’99 boathouse and the Cambridgeshire Rowing Association boathouse (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

The Champion of the Thames Boat Club is not a London club, but a Cambridge club. It takes its name from a pub in King Street and uses the the Cambridgeshire Rowing Association boathouse.

A curious question leads to the story of the Jews of Cambridge

The Cambridge Synagogue and Jewish Student Centre (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Patrick Comerford

During these warm summer evenings, some of us have walked from Sidney Sussex College up Sidney Street and Bridge Street in Cambridge to the Mitre to enjoy each other’s companies and to discuss and debate the day’s proceedings at the summer school organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies.

The Mitre is an anomalous name for a pub in Cambridge. After all, there is no Bishop of Cambridge, and the university and the city lie within the Diocese of Ely.

A quiet corner in Portugal Place … place names can lead to curious searches (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Some evenings, I have wondered whether Portugal Place and Portugal Street, which are beside the Mitre, were so named because Sephardic Jews from the Iberian Peninsula found a welcome in Cromwell’s England. This conundrum had added interest for us this week, given that Oliver Cromwell was an alumnus of Sidney Sussex College.

Indeed, in my rambles this week, I soon found out that the Cambridge Synagogue is in Thompson’s Lane, close to the Mitre and to Portugal Place and Portugal Street.

The first Jews arrived in England in the wake of the Battle of Hastings and William I’s conquest of England. The majority of these Jews initially settled in London, but Cambridge may have soon become the centre of one of the earliest provincial Jewish communities. Fuller, in his History of Cambridge puts the date of the first Jewish settlement at 1073.

The Round Church on Bridge Street … did the site ever belong to the Jews of Cambridge? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

There is a tradition that the Round Church on Bridge Street, opposite Saint John’s College, was a synagogue, and the parishes of All Saints’ and Saint Sepulchre were once known as “in the Jewry.”

Although 13th century Cambridge Jewry is better documented, it appears Jews were more active in 12th century Cambridge, and the first recorded medieval Cambridge Jew. Theobold of Cambridge (Theoboldus Kantebrugie). He is mentioned in 1144 as an alleged convert to Christianity and a monk. He played a crucial role in establishing the case for Saint William’s martyrdom at the hands of the Jews of Norwich, and so he became a key figure in disseminating the first-known propaganda alleging ritual murder.

Another early episode mentioned in the life of the Cambridge Jewry is of a fine inflicted upon Comitissa, a Jewish woman in Cambridge, for allowing her son to marry a Jewish woman from Lincoln without the king’s permission. It is probable that this Comitissa was the mother of Moses ben Isaac Hanassiah, the author of the Sefer ha-Shoham.

The Jews of Cambridge do not seem to have suffered much during the riots of 1189-1190.

The Guildhall on Market Hill … part of the site once belonged to Magister Binjamin and the old synagogue stood nearby (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

A grammarian known as Benjamin of Canterbury may have been from Cambridge, since the Latin records make mention of a Magister Binjamin in Cambridge. In 1224, King Henry III granted the house of Benjamin the Jew to the town as a jail. This was on the site of the present Guildhall.

The Jews of Cambridge were victims during the revolt of the barons in 1266, and the official records of Jewish life in Cambridge were removed that year to Ely. Within a decade the Jews were banished from Cambridge in 1275.

King Edward I issued an edict in 1290, expelling all 5,000 Jews from England and confiscating their property, and the Jews who were expelled crossed to France and Flanders.

The old synagogue was near the prison – later the site of the Guildhall on Market Hill. It was given to the Franciscans, who had their main house in Cambridge on the site of Sidney Sussex College.

Oliver Cromwell’s portrait in the Hall in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

However, Jews started returning to England in the 1650s under Oliver Cromwell, an alumnus of Sidney College. Jewish scholars began visiting Cambridge to teach Hebrew as part of the Cambridge BA, and by the early 1700s stable Jewish communities were emerging in Cambridge.

Well-known Jewish teachers at the university include Israel Lyons (1739-1775), Solomon Marcus Schiller-Szinnessy, and Solomon Schechter. By 1847, a tiny resident congregation was worshipping in the Union Society’s premises in 1847.

Although Professor JJ Sylvester took high honours in mathematics in 1839, he was debarred from taking his degree by the university statutes. Arthur Cohen entered Magdalene College in 1849. An Act of Parliament in 1856 opened up Cambridge BA degrees to Jews, Muslims, and others, “without violence to the conscience,” and in 1858 Arthur Cohen became the first Jew to take his BA at Cambridge.

In 1869, Numa Hartog gained the position of senior wrangler, the highest mathematical triumph a Cambridge student can obtain, and so he helped to secure the passage of the University Tests Act allowing Jews to take their degrees.

Petty Cury today … in 1873, a small Jewish congregation was meeting here (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

By 1873, the Jewish congregation in Cambridge was meeting in Regent Street. There was a brief move in 1888 to Petty Cury, a narrow street that links Sidney Street and Saint Andrew’s Street to the east, Market Hill and Guildhall Street to the west, and Hobson Street on the corner of Christ’s College.

After the death of Solomon Marcus Schiller-Szinessy, the Romanian rabbi Solomon Schechter (1847-1915) was appointed to the faculty at Cambridge University in 1890, serving as a lecturer in Talmudics and reader in Rabbinics.

His greatest academic fame came from his excavation in 1896 of the papers of the Cairo Geniza, a collection of over 100,000 pages of rare Hebrew religious manuscripts and mediaeval Jewish texts that were preserved in an Egyptian synagogue. The find revolutionised our understandings of Mediaeval Judaism. The story is told in Janet Soskice’s book Sisters of Sinai (London: Vintage, 2010).
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Saint Mary’s Passage near King’s College, Cambridge, today … in 1900, the Jewish congregation was meeting here over a china shop (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Professor Alfred Philipp Bender (1863-1937), who was born in Dublin and educated at Saint John’s College, Cambridge, was instrumental in founding the Cambridge Hebrew Congregation and conducted its services for many years. His father, the Revd Philipp Bender, was the minister of Mary’s Abbey Synagogue, Dublin.

In 1899, the university students took over from the residents of Cambridge in running the synagogue. A year later (1900), residents and students were managing a minyan in a room over Barrett’s china shop in Saint Mary’s Passage, on the corner of Market Place. They then moved to a studio in a garden in Camden Terrace (Park Terrace).

A bicycle outside the entrance to Sidney Sussex College … in 1912, the Jewish community was worshipping in premises behind a bicycle shop on the site where this photograph was taken (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

By late 1912, the Jewish community on Cambridge had moved into premises behind a bicycle shop opposite the entrance to Sidney Sussex College, possibly in premises on the site that is now part of Sainsbury’s.

A purpose-built synagogue in Ellis Court (as it was called then) in Thomson’s Lane, off Bridge Street was consecrated on 21 October 1937 by the Chief Rabbi, Dr Joseph Herman Hertz. There were some 50 active Jewish students at the time.

Today, the resident Jewish population of Cambridge has a high percentage of members from the university, ensuring there is a good intellectual and social atmosphere in the shul.

During university term, the services are run by the students, with a touch more boisterousness than out of term. Outside university term, the shul reverts to the residents, who also run the High Holy Day services.

The Jewish community in Cambridge says it is unique, and it provides its own self-description by saying: “It is serious without being pompous, friendly without being happy-clappy, open without losing sense of the necessary boundaries – and, above all, a true community, where people look out for each other, and enjoy each other’s company.”

The Mitre, Bridge Street … the pub with an anomalous name which set me in search of the story of the Jews of Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Revised 1 October 2019

Bringing out treasures old and new from the ‘third lung’ of Christianity

In the chapel in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Patrick Comerford

On the closing day of the IOCS summer school in Cambridge this morning [Friday 19 July 2013], Dr Sebastian Brock “brought out treasures old and new,” as Professor David Ford acknowledged.

In a morning filled with poetry, Dr Brock was speaking at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies summer school in Sidney Sussex College on ‘The Syriac Tradition I: Angels and Their Roles.’

Dr Brock, who was known to many us for his work on translating the Psalms, is a former Reader in Syriac Studies at the Faculty of Oriental Studies in Oxford and a Professorial Fellow of Wolfson College.

His current projects include editing unpublished Syriac texts, Greek words in Syriac, diachronic aspects of Syriac word formation, and Syriac dialogue poems. His recent publications include From Ephrem to Romanos: Interactions between Syriac and Greek in Late Antiquity (Aldershot, 1999), and Treasure-house of Mysteries (Crestwood, 2012).

The cloisters in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Dr Brock said we often think of Christianity as Latin West and Greek East, and that one Pope had recently referred to these as the “two lungs” of Christianity. However, he offered the Syriac tradition of the East as the “third lung” of Christianity.

This is a unique but oft-neglected tradition in the Church, whose insights include a tradition of doing theology in poetry.

In the Old Testament, it is not always clear who is an angel and who is a messenger, he said, and just as this is a problem for translators of the Septuagint it is a problem too for translators into Syriac.

Angels became revealers in the Book of Daniel; in the apocryphal Book of Jubilees, an angel who mediates the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai; and angels interpret visions and apocalyptic messages. The Dead Sea Scrolls show too that they became associated with the Heavenly Liturgy.

The Syriac canon does not include II Peter, Jude and Revelation, so there is less speculation about angels in the Syriac tradition.

In Hebrew, the word for angel is the same as the word for a messenger (mal’ak), and the same way there is double usage in Greek (Ἄγγελος, angelos). However, Syriac differentiates between mal’aka (angelos) and ‘ira (waker or watcher, Greek εγρηγορός, egregoros).

Genesis 1 does not mention the creation of angels. When are they created? Why is it not mentioned in the creation accounts?

In his lecture, Dr Brock drew on a wide range of works and writers, including Aphrahat, writing in the early fourth century outside the Roman Empire, in the Persian empire in what is now Iraq; Ephrem, who died in 373, a poet; the Book of Steps (Liber Graduum), in the second half of fourth century; John the Solitary, a monastic writer in the early fifth century and a great spiritual writer who has recently been rediscovered; Jacob of Serugh (died 521), a wonderful exegete of Biblical texts who preached his sermons in poetry – of his 763 homilies, half have been translated; the Cave of Treasures from the sixth century; Martyrius, who wrote The Book of Affection in the early seventh century; Dadisho‘ and Isaac of Nineveh (Isaac the Syrian), in the late seventh century; and Joseph the Seer in the eighth century.

These all worked in what was the Persian Empire, including present-day Syria, Iraq and Iran.

He also drew on Isho’dad of Merv, ninth century; Barhebraeus (died 1286); and Solomon of Bosra’s Book of the Bee from the 13th century.

Many of these writers said the angels were created on the first day, along with heaven and earth.

They offered Hierarchies of Angels, which were similar those listed by Dionysius the Areopagite (ca 500), who gives nine hierarchies of angels, in three groups of three, but which can be traced in Saint Paul’s Letters.

For example, Isaac of Nineveh gives slightly different orders, but again he lists them in three groups of three.

Human beings, unlike angels, are created in the image of God. Ephrem points this out in his Hymns of Faith:

The Seraph could not touch fiery Coal with his fingers,
the coal only just touched Isaiah’s mouth;
the Seraph did not hold it, Isaiah did not consume it,
but us our Lord has allowed to do both!

Or, as Joseph the Seer wrote in his pre-Communion Prayer:

It is a matter of great awe, Lord, that Your Body and Your Blood, O Christ our Saviour should be consumed and drunk with that same mouth which receives ordinary food and drink. Lord, you did not give to the Spiritual Beings what I am receiving now!

In the Syriac tradition, Satan’s fall is due to his envy of humans being created in the image of God. In the Book of Job, Satan is simply the accuser, not the devil. But later in the Syriac tradition, he turns aside, and so rebelled against God.

Syriac writers have a unique literary genre, the disputation dialogue in poetic form, adapted to a Biblical context. He drew our attention to some of these including the Dialogue of the Angel and Zechariah, the Angel and Mary, Satan and the Sinful Woman, the Cherub and the Repentant Thief, and Death and Satan in Saint Ephrem. There are more examples in his recent book, Treasure-house of Mysteries (Crestwood, 2012).

Angels above the choir stalls in the chapel in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

In his second lecture this morning, Dr Brock spoke on ‘The Syriac Tradition II: Imitating the Angels.’

A “watcher” in Syria means someone who is awake, in a state of wakefulness. The Syrian Orthodox Liturgy includes in the Sunday Lilyo (Night Office) the prayer:

Awaken our drowsiness out of submersion in sin so that we may give thanks to Your wakefulness, O Waker who does not sleep; revive our dead state out of the sleep of death and corruption so that we may worship Your compassion; O Living One who does not die, make us worthy to praise you and bless you together with the glorious assembles of the angels in heaven who give you praise, for You are glorious and blessed in heaven and on earth, O Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Angels are a model of how to live the ascetic life, and a model of how to give praise to God.

John the Solitary (John of Apamea) wrote:

Holy people, even though their nature is inferior to that of angels in this world, nevertheless in the spiritual world their nature is increased, so that they become like angels of God; then they will see the angels in the course of associating with them.

The heavenly liturgy was seen as a model for the earthly liturgy in the Dead Sea Scrolls:

The Cherubim prostrate themselves before God and bless [cf Ezekiel 1]. As they arise a whispered voice is heard, and there is a roar of praise. When they drop their wings, there is a whispered divine voice. The Cherubim bless the image of the throne-chariot above the firmament, and they praise the majesty of the luminous firmament beneath His seat of glory.

In the Qedushah at the Morning Synagogue Service:

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts (Isaiah 6: 3): the whole earth is full of His glory. And the Ophanim and holy Hayot with a noise of great rushing lift themselves up towards the Seraphim and offer praise saying, ‘Blessed be the glory of the Lord from His place’ (Ezekiel 3: 12).

This idea is taken over from Judaism into Early Christianity.

He spoke too of the three Churches – the Heavenly Church, the Church on Earth and the Church of the Heart.

The Syriac writers say the same liturgy should be taking place in the altar of the heart as is taking place in heaven and at the altar in the Church. But the same idea can also be found in Isaiah 6: 3 in the Aramaic Targum:

‘Holy’ in the heavens on high, in the home of His Shekinna; ‘holy’ on earth, the handiwork of His might, ‘holy’ in the age of ages, Lord of hosts; all the earth is full of the radiance of His glory.

This year’s summer school concludes this afternoon with a Service of Thanksgiving in the Chapel of Sidney Sussex College.

Leaving the chapel in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)