This year Winchester Cathedral hosted the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature (subtitled as a three-day literary festival with a theological slant). Some of our parish went along to see what was on offer.
One of us volunteered as a steward at the West Downs campus for the Saturday. She says, “I had a very interesting day. As a steward I had the opportunity to attend a number of seminars. My day began with hearing from Brian Draper on the subject of Soulfulness, followed by Rowan Williams speaking on Christian Ethics and Solidarity. I then listened to Catherine Fox and Francis Spufford as authors in conversation together on faith in fiction, and rounded it all off with a discussion between Rachel Mann and Jay Hulme as poets, on (un)holy desire with a trans perspective – a fascinating and eclectic day by anyone's standards, with much to reflect on! (And so much more I didn’t get to hear!)”
On the Sunday two of us spent a large part of the day at the cathedral, not only for some of the talks but also for two of the cathedral’s wonderful sung services. We turned up for the 11am Sung Eucharist where we sampled not only the familiar liturgy, but also the procession, and sublime singing and organ in the beautiful setting of the cathedral’s nave. The Dean was present but the service was conducted by two of the cathedral canons, with the sermon by Rev Rachel Mann, a well-known theologian. The large congregation queued to take communion of bread and wine (from the shared chalice). After the service we hurried to the back of the nave to join a small group being taken on a literary tour of the cathedral where were shown monuments to the likes of Jane Austen,
Charlotte Yonge and Isaac Newton, amongst others.
The next item on our busy agenda was an excellent talk by Professor Suzannah Lipscombe on the spiritual inheritance of Mary Tudor, the only English monarch to be married in our cathedral. Her inheritance came from her mother Catherine of Aragon and her grandparents the fiercely Catholic monarchs, Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, now known for their use of the Spanish Inquisition to ‘persuade’ heretics to return to the ‘true faith’. Mary l, of course, was also known for her persecution of Protestants.
Sung Evensong in the quire followed and was again uplifting in the beauty of the music, this time offered by the girls’ choir. Canon Gary Philbrick sang the responses and the sermon was by the Vice Dean. We stayed in the quire for the final part of our day, a talk in the form of a two-way conversation between the internationally-known tenor James Gilchrist (who had also sung at Evensong) and the author James Runcie. The latter is the author of the popular Grantchester detective novels and TV series and, more recently, the author of a new book, The Great Passion, a story of grief and music told through J. S. Bach’s writing of the St Matthew Passion. This is not only the story of the central character, a young boy taken into Bach’s household, but also an observation of the daily life of the composer – who is required to write a new cantata every week for Sunday (apart from in Lent when he wrote his Passions). At last we glimpse the human face of the man behind his wonderful music.
For further information, visit faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk
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