Beauty and the Revival of Faith will take place on the 8-10 May, at the former Palace of the Archbishop of York, in the U.K. We will convene in the Palace’s State Chamber for talks by our four confirmed keynotes and a variety of other speakers, a music recital, a small tour, an art display, and a conference dinner. The significance of the site stretches back centuries and is inextricably bound with the story of England and the Church of England. Enclosed by hills, Southwell’s basin and plentiful freshwater springs have made it a prime location for communities from the Romans onwards. Up until the nineteenth century, the site was part of the vast archdiocese of York, and the bishops considered it a useful resting place between York and London. In 956 A.D., King Eadwig of Wessex granted the Archbishop of York a manor house and lands, whereupon the formal construction of the Archbishop’s Palace was undertaken.
The Palace’s most famous occupant is Cardinal Wolsey who, in 1503, held frantic meetings in the State Chamber to try and extricate himself from his failure to secure Henry VIII a divorce from Catherine of Aragon. In this historic and religious chaos that followed, the Minster was relatively unscathed by the Reformation period but damaged during the English Civil War. It is thought that the Minster was used as stables by Roundhead forces before King Charles I was captured nearby. The king’s arrest was formalised here, and the Palace was his first place of final imprisonment.
The surviving part of the Palace – the Great Hall – was not restored until the Edwardian era, when much was preserved; the beams of the magnificent vaulted ceiling of the State Chamber are mostly medieval originals. Next to the Palace, the archbishops founded a Minster Church, staffed by a community of secular, rather than monastic, clergy. The present Southwell Minster dates from the twelfth century, with the famous Chapter House being completed in 1300 A.D. It is now considered one of the most beautiful buildings in England, and the great architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner devoted a complete book to its glories. The carvings are near perfection, and their accuracy of form is a celebration of all things English: the oak, the hawthorn, the field maple, ivy, hop, and ranunculus. The celebrated Victorian architect, Ewan Christian, began a sympathetic restoration of the building in 1851, and it is thanks to the nineteenth century’s growing emphasis on caring for England’s cultural heritage that the Minster is now in its fine state. It is in this venue that we will discuss how to revive matters of faith through aesthetics and the pursuit of beauty in all its forms.
