The Galilee Bell: from Sanctuary to Asylum and Back – the Role of the Church , livre ebook

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83 pages

English

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The aim is to demonstrate how the church has, for more than 2000 years provided comfort and protection in sanctuary for those in need, and is challenged today to speak out again when our fellowman cries out for help, for fairness and compassion in their distress—-Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Myanmar - but is sacrificed by governments on the altar of some questionable political expediency .Another Guernica but at sea in the Channel or the Aegean as depicted by the Bulgarian painter Jovcho Savov.

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Sanctuary is sometimes used loosely as synonymous with refuge but Geoffrey Care’s book examines the true early meaning of sanctuary as applied by the church which gave respite, albeit for a limited time, from both authority and the mob. His diligent research takes us through a series of delightful cameo sketches of those who sought sanctuary and in so doing gives us an insight into mediaeval life and times…

Keith Best, Barrister, former MP and Chief Executive of both the Immigration Advisory Service and Freedom from Torture and a member of the Foreign Secretary’s Panel on Torture Prevention.

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This is a remarkable book on the subject of sanctuary by Geoffrey Care. This issue is of increasing urgency and international importance. …Geoffrey’s book will appeal to many as a book that covers a serious topic in an appealing form…. His publication is timely and compassionate.

Bernar Moody, Beverley.

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historical

Philosophie et théologie

Christian Church

Religion

History

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Publié par	Balboa Press UK
Date de parution	07 mars 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781982286859
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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THE GALILEE BELL: From Sanctuary to Asylum and Back – The Role of the Church

GEOFFREY CARE

Copyright © 2023 Geoffrey Care.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

In his earlier works Migrants and the Courts: A Century of Trial and Error? and Chapter 12 in the Ashgate Research Companion to Migration Law, Theory and Policy – ‘Disowned in their Own Land: The Courts and Protection of the Internally Displaced Person’ Care considers the role of the law and the courts in the protection of those rendered homeless through no choice of their own, the vulnerable refugee and otherwise displaced person.

In this book he outlines the role of the church in Sanctuary throughout the ages and posits the effects of that role in its relationship to asylum in present times.

Balboa Press
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ISBN: 978-1-9822-8684-2 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-9822-8685-9 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 03/07/2023
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Introduction
1Sanctuary: where it came from, when it went and where?
2Eutropius the Slave and Cyron the Athenian
3The Minstrel and his Lament
4The Carter’s Tale
5The Wheelwright’s Tale
6Sir John Holland, Duke of Exeter
7The Ploughman’s Tale
8The Grithwoman
9Prison Breakout
10Two Women Illustrators and Witchcraft
11The Mute
12Death of a Parson
13Hubert de Burgh Earl of Kent
14A Manuscript to Murder for
15The Two Recruits
16The Chaplain and the Lost Rents
17“Longbeard” and a Breach of Sanctuary
18The Missing Rector of Wycliffe
19The Burgesses of Beverley
20Crime, Abuse of Office, and Robin Hood.
21The Church’s Role: Sanctuary and Asylum
Appendix
Some Memorable Dates and Events
Glossary
Bibliography
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
T he local library is a boon to so many; particularly is it a life raft to many of the lonely and those who live in remote places, often relying on a mobile library service. As the British Library puts it, libraries are there for research inspiration and enjoyment. Some local libraries recognise the inspiration and enjoyment but not the needs of many writers and researchers. I am happy to take this opportunity to say that the Lerwick Library in Shetland do recognize all three. I owe to them a debt of gratitude for their cheerful and industrious assistance in my research for this work over 5 years – and free!
I am also indebted to local historians in Beverley, Berna Moody, Peter Lee, Peter Hicks, Pamela Hopkins and Martyn Kirby, who, despite other pressures on them, gave me necessary guidance and knowledge. I am also grateful to Helen Trogajic for the use of a picture of her pastel of the Minstrels and the Bulgarian Cartoonist Jovcho Savov for the graphic rendering of the plight of some refugees in his painting, appropriately called after Guernica. Helen Clark Archivist at the Beverley Treasure House and the East Riding County Council have been generous with references and maps. I have relied on work done by others such as Andrew Mellas on Eutropius and Andrew Hershey’s erudite work on the trials before Chief Justiciar Bigod.
To Jonathan Bridge, as always, he is an inspiration and not hesitant about warning me of danger areas to avoid.
I am deeply indebted to Ann Lazim for corrections and suggestions, on more than one version of the whole manuscript and Peter King, Keith Best and Berna Moody for their suggestions and corrections.
I am most grateful to the Reverend Lucy Winkett rector of St James’s Church, Piccadilly, London for finding time to look at what I have written and agreeing to write a Foreword, she has done so reflecting so accurately and persuasively what I struggle so hard to say. What she and her church St. James achieve, among the vulnerable and the refugees is an example to us all.
To my wife, my gratitude firstly for her patience when she was a ‘grass widow’ and her invaluable help in pointing out passages which were obscure, inconsistent or just may helpfully be put in another way.
Concluding with the usual author’s confession and avoidance - I am to blame for all errors, especially historical ones. I apologise to the experienced historians, especially those of Beverley upon whose diligent researches I have drawn; insofar as the portraits of the grithmen/women are concerned , none of us were there with them, and can only hope that, if they could read about themselves in these pages, it would neither give offence, nor draw too hearty a laugh.
FOREWORD
The Reverend Lucy Winkett
Rector, St James’s Church Piccadilly
A s urgent as the ringing of the medieval Galilee Bell at Beverley, that gives this book its title, is the call issued by Geoffrey Care to the contemporary church, to rediscover its vocation as a place of sanctuary for all fleeing persecution. Modern day grithmen (men and women seeking asylum) evoke polarised views in British society and in the church. Care’s contention in this context is that it is the exercise of mercy that shapes the church’s response in an asylum system now, of course run by the state. He highlights the historic and widespread self-understanding of the churches as places of safety and sanctuary, and comments that in the UK at least, this understanding is not universally expressed. Full of lively anecdotes that really bring to life the complexities of navigating national borders, political expediencies, and relying on sheer human grit and determination, the focus in this book is really on the lives of the people. And for that alone, this is a timely contribution to a public conversation that quickly polarises when framing the debate about asylum in percentages, statistics and the levers of national policy.
Every person fleeing persecution is an individual with a unique combination of circumstance, personality, good fortune or calamitous hardship. Perhaps as Care suggests, the only real solution to the forced migration of people and the iniquities that this provokes, is the harmonisation of all border policies across the globe, however unlikely or improbable this seems. But St Paul has the last word, urging the fledging church in Galatia as strongly as he might urge the church today, to ‘reach out to those who are oppressed’.
The evolving idea of sanctuary is a story for our time and in this lively and compelling account, the challenge is clear. Learn the lessons of the centuries: find ways to be merciful, compassionate and welcoming, and before pronouncing on policy, listen hard to the people, whose lives speak volumes about what it is to be a refugee.
Lucy Winkett
London February 2023
INTRODUCTION
I n the eighth century, Interawuuda was a small village a few miles north of the Humber River in East Yorkshire; history relates that it was the centre of the Deira people who inhabited the area at the time, some of whom at least, were still Druids. It was to this village that a saintly, former Bishop of York, returned to enjoy his retirement.
The man’s name was John. He was one of the few fortunate enough to be educated - well educated - abroad as well as in England. He started his career as a cleric at Whitby under St Hilda. Even The Venerable Bede was his pupil. After several years, he was made Bishop of Hexham and later, to the second most powerful position in the church in England, the Bishop of York.
John’s retirement was hardly one of inaction; he gathered clerics and established a monastery. He put up buildings to house them; the buildings almost certainly of wood, of which there was a plentiful local supply.
In the four or five years left to him, John’s name spread beyond the confines of East Yorkshire, attracting Pilgrims from afar. After John’s death, they came to his shrine in increasing numbers over the centuries, long after Interawuuda became the town of Beverlac and the Borough of Beverley. Today hundreds still visit the shrine of St John at the Minster every year; some are pilgrims, others are tourists.
What happened to those early wooden buildings, we do not know. Did the Norsemen burn them to the ground? Did they fall down? It was unlikely, as some historians suggest, to have been destroyed by Saxons, since their incursions were several hundred years earlier. But the monastery itself survived, and so did the friðstol (fig 1 and note 1 ), referred to in the tales which follow as the ultimate seat of sanctuary, but probably a bishop’s seat in the seventh century.

fig 1 frið stol
Aelfric (Alfred), then Archbishop of York, found other buildings, of stone, on the same site around 1040. These were burned down in the great fire of 1188, which destroyed much of Beverley as well. The stone had come from quarries at Newbald and Tadcaster, the same stone the masons used when they began to build the new Minister at Beverley at the beginning of the 12 th century: the Minster which stands for all to see today.
Beverley became a wealthy town with rich merchants, expert craftsmen, spinners, weavers, and dyers. The farmers, abbeys, monasteries, and priories, such as Meaux, (or Melsa) kept large flocks of sheep, mainly for their wool. Some of it went into highly prized cloth for home consumption and export. The trade produced a good income for the merchants, and a he