Creative History

  A few weeks before Easter in the year 1512 alarming reports began to reach Pope Julius II in Rome.  Reports of a strange and monstrous creature--a true demon (it was said) brought to life--near the Adriatic coast in the historic and holy city of Ravenna, only about two-hundred miles as the crow flies, north of the Vatican. This creature, what Vatican officials labelled as the spawn of Satan, was said to have been the illicit offspring of a secret sexual liaison between a nun and a monk.  In reality, if that was the case, then the so-called “Monster of Ravenna” never stood a chance of acceptance into Renaissance Italian society no matter what it looked like from the moment that it was born. This “monstrous” being would have been banished to the wilderness from infancy, shunned and pushed away to the margins of Renaissance society, only able to sustain a subsistence life if it were lucky, merely for having been the product of such a sinful sexual encounter. When Pop...

  December 29, 1170 Canterbury Cathedral. Four heavily armed and armored knights dismount their horses outside the large oak and iron reinforced doors that lead into the heart of the church. They burst inside with swords drawn and shout, “Where is Thomas Becket, traitor to King and country?” The man named Thomas Becket who the four knights are so zealously seeking is the Archbishop of Canterbury Cathedral.  He is just over fifty years of age and he is a devout and holy monk whose piety and patriotism, up until that very moment at least, have always been without question.  In the years immediately following his death, Pope Alexander III will canonize Thomas Becket Archbishop of Canterbury Cathedral and make him a Saint and a Martyr.  He will go on to be one of the most widely revered and adored Saints in all of Europe during the High Middle Ages--but all of that remains, for the time being anyway, in the not too distant future. For now, four heavily armed knights are ...

It is the middle of the fifteenth century and Catholic pilgrims from all across Europe are flocking to the County of Kent near the town of Maidstone in the southeast of England. These devout pilgrims journey by the thousands, twice each year on Easter Sunday and on the day of the Ascension, to witness one of the most holy miracles of the Middle Ages in action--the Rood of Grace. The Rood of Grace is located among lush green rolling fields and hills in the center of the church at Boxley Abbey.  Boxley Abbey was founded in the year 1148 by a Flemish mercenary turned scholastic monk named William of Ypres and in the middle of the 15th century it is home to a flourishing order of Cistercian monks. Boxley Abbey as Depicted Before it Fell into Ruins Sometimes referred to as the Rood of Boxley Abbey, the Rood of Grace, is a representation of a crucified Jesus on a wooden cross that is said to move and to even speak to worthy pilgrims as if it is alive. To journey to Boxley Abbey a...