Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #hre2020
Most recents (4)
The Crown and the Cross: Speyer Cathedral, built as a symbol of Imperial power in the run-up to and during the Investiture Crisis. Poor old Emperor Henry IV, who sought to put the brakes on Gregory VII avaricious accrual of political power, is buried here. I paid homage.#HRE2020 
Where Gregory the Great is my favourite Pope, Gregory VII must be the worst. Yes there were those whose sins were more scarlet - like most revolutionaries he was pretty ascetic - but the consequences of his vision is one we are still living with.
Of course, I’m also generally inclined to back kings over clerics (see also Becket, Thomas à; Ambrose, of Milan; More, Sir Thomas).
Mass at Mainz Cathedral. The website was completely wrong, with some masses canceled and others replaced advertised Morning Prayer: to get in you needed to phone in advance to get a ticket, but no mention of this on the website. V distressed tourists at the door.
It was lucky I was with an RC priest, who had booked ahead to concelebrate, so they were able to slot my in as supernumerary (and were very friendly in the process), but it was a proper reminder of how websites & social media aren’t an optional extra but missionally vital.
Also, I’m quite glad I couldn’t understand the Bishop’s sermon as the only words I did get were “America First” & “Trump”. Whether pro or anti, I cannot imagine that the ethics of an American, no matter now might, was of immediate relevance to an elderly congregation on the Rhine
So farewell Cologne. It would be a travesty not to feast on the glory that is the cathedral. A stop-start affair: started in 1248, stopped mid-Reformation, restarted under the Kaisers, bombed, restored. It’s a reverse tardis, feeling GINORMOUS outside but humanising inside.
Although he was writing about Chartres, and although Chartres is much more of-a-piece than Cologne, Kenneth Clark’s words on the Gothic are well-worth reading as we continue the #HRE2020 progress.
The thoughts of Abbé Suger are somewhat held in relief by the surroundings of the Cathedral. The modern architectural mind seems to revolt at the idea that “man may rise to the contemplation of the divine through the senses” - and so, alas, does the Church.
Sitting under the shadow of Cologne Cathedral and preparing to begin my progress around the elector cities of the Holy Roman Empire, I’ve decided to use Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation as a lodestar. Turn to the index for Aachen and read the last words.
😳
That was 50 years ago.
😳
That was 50 years ago.
He were are at Aix-la-Chapelle, the first station of #HRE2020 - where else to begin? Where Charlemagne sought to rival the extant Roman Empire of the East. Where the Church’s strategy since Gregory the Great of restoring Romanitas through Christianity reached its apogee.
Aachen really is very like Ravenna. 🤩
