In
an essay by John Sanidopoulos, the following is written about the resemblances
between the Boston of Old England and the Boston of New England:
Saint
Botolph's Church began its construction in 1309 and completed in 1390. The
church tower, famously known as Boston's Stump or The Stump, was erected in
1425 and took another 90 years to complete. It is the highest tower of any
parish church in England at 272 feet built to navigate ships six miles away. It
is of this tower with its beacon and its bells that we hear in Jean Ingelow's
touching poem, "High Tide On the Coast of Lincoln shire." . . .
The people
of Lincolnshire modeled many things in new Boston based on old Boston. On March
4, 1634 the Court of Assistants in new Boston, remembering the Stump of Saint Botolph's
Church, passed the following resolution: "It is ordered that there shall
be forth with a beacon set on the Centry hill at Boston to give notice to the
Country of any danger, and that there shall be a ward of one person kept there
from the first of April to the last of September; and that upon the discovery
of any danger the beacon shall be fired, an alarm given, as also messengers
presently sent by that town where the danger is discovered to all other towns
within this jurisdiction." This also helps us to understand the
significance of the light at Boston's Old North Church in today's North End
that sparked the Revolutionary War and signaled the famous ride of Paul Revere.
Nathaniel
Hawthorne traveled to old Boston in Lincolnshire. He hints that the winding streets
of new Boston can be attributed to old St. Botolph's town: "Its crooked
streets and narrow lanes reminded me much of Hanover Street, Ann Street, and
other portions of our American Boston. It is not unreasonable to suppose that
the local habits and recollections of the first settlers may have had some
influence on the physical character of the streets and houses in the New
England metropolis; at any rate here is a similar intricacy of bewildering lanes
and a number of old peaked and projecting storied dwellings, such as I used to
see there in my boyish days. It is singular what a home feeling and sense of
kindred I derived from this hereditary connection and fancied physiognomical
resemblance between the old town and its well-grown daughter."
The
relationship between old Boston and new Boston is beautifully expressed by New England
poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, “Boston”:
St.
Botolph’s Town! Hither across the plains
And fens of
Lincolnshire, in garb austere,
There came a
Saxon monk, and founded here
A Priory,
pillaged by marauding Danes,
So that
thereof no vestige now remains;
Only a name,
that, spoken loud and clear,
And echoed
in another hemisphere,
Survives the
sculptured walls and painted panes.
St.
Botolph’s Town! Far over leagues of land
And leagues
of sea looks forth its noble tower,
And far
around the chiming bells are heard;
So may that
sacred name forever stand
A landmark,
and a symbol of the power,
That
lies concentred in a single word.
What
is most remarkable about both Bostons, as one may be suspecting at this point,
is that they are named for a saint of the Orthodox Church, St Botolph of
Ikanhoe in Suffolk. The details of his
life are given here:
Our Holy Father
Botolph, Abbot of the Monastery of Ikanhoe (680)
'Saint Botolph was
born in Britain about the year 610 and in his youth became a monk in Gaul. The
sisters of Ethelmund, King of East Anglia, who were also sent to Gaul to learn
the monastic discipline, met Saint Botolph, and learning of his intention to
return to Britain, bade their brother the King grant him land on which to found
a monastery. Hearing the King's offer, Saint Botolph asked for land not already
in any man's possession, not wishing that his gain should come through
another's loss, and chose a certain desolate place called Ikanhoe. At his
coming, the demons inhabiting Ikanhoe rose up against him with tumult, threats,
and horrible apparitions, but the Saint drove them away with the sign of the
Cross and his prayer. Through his monastery he established in England the rule
of monastic life that he had learned in Gaul. He worked signs and wonders, had
the gift of prophecy, and "was distinguished for his sweetness of
disposition and affability." In the last years of his life he bore a
certain painful sickness with great patience, giving thanks like Job and
continuing to instruct his spiritual children in the rules of the monastic life.
He fell asleep in peace about the year 680. His relics were later found
incorrupt, and giving off a sweet fragrance. The place where he founded his
monastery came to be called "Botolphson" (from either "Botolph's
stone" or "Botolph's town") which was later contracted to
"Boston."' (Great Horologion)
--John Brady, http://www.abbamoses.com/months/june.html, entry for 17 June. For more on St Botolph: http://orthochristian.com/71898.html
Though
New England has gone far astray from the Orthodox Faith of the Holy Apostles,
which was practiced for hundreds of years in their homeland of eastern England
before the Norman Invasion of the Roman Catholics and then the Protestant
Reformation, there remains nevertheless an Orthodox root on the Yankee tree;
the name of the Queen City of New England, Boston, is proof of this, as well as
the following:
.
. . while driving through Boston along Massachusetts Avenue, I noticed that the
street running parallel to Huntington Avenue was named St. Botolph Street.
Though there is no church dedicated to Saint Botolph on this street, I did
discover later on, besides the fact there is an apartment complex named after
Saint Botolph, that on Huntington Avenue itself there is a YMCA with an
Anglican chapel inside dedicated to Saint Botolph. Besides this there are few
other mentions of Saint Botolph in the city of Boston (there is a club named
after him, and the house of the president of the Jesuit-founded Boston College
is also named after the Saint). Noteworthy is the fact that pieces of the
Gothic window tracery of Lincolnshire’s Church of St. Botolph are incorporated
into the structure of Trinity Church in Boston’s Copley Square.
--Sanidopoulos article
That
root is nearly lifeless now, crowded and smothered, slashed and beaten and
burned, by various philosophies, ideologies, and heresies that New Englanders
have embraced over the years. But it is
still there, and there is still vibrant, unquenchable life in it - the True
Life of the Holy Trinity. When they
discover this, and assimilate that Life into their own, real life will begin
for them. What has come before will seem
like bitter ashes in comparison:
Puritanism, industrialism and commerce, the Rights of Man, and so on.
And
that new life in the Orthodox Church has already begun to grow in New England,
though quietly and unnoticed for now:
. . . the Orthodox are slowly laying claim to
their Saint in the hopes of sanctifying their city in the New World, as is
traditionally done in the more Orthodox countries of the East. Besides the
awareness Holy Transfiguration Monastery is promoting through their icon of
Saint Botolph, there is also a Russian Orthodox Church Abroad parish in
Roslindale named after Holy Epiphany that depicts an icon of Saint Botolph
(painted by parishioner Zoya Shcheglov) on its south wall facing towards the
city in full stature and giving blessing to the city that bears his name. Unfortunately
there is no Orthodox church or chapel dedicated to Saint Botolph in Boston as
of yet, but there is an Antiochian Orthodox Church dedicated to Saint Botolph
in London.
--Sanidopoulos article
May
it grow into the splendid likeness of the tree that grew up in the east of
England in her Orthodox days, which was full of holy saints:
We
look forward with eagerness to the fruits the Lord will bring forth from the
New England folk when the names of Sts Botolph, Audrey, Edmund, Felix, and
others like them are honored, rather than those of Mather, Winthrop, Adams,
Emerson, or Dickinson.
The
end of Fr Andrew’s post just above on the 112 Saints of the fens in the east of
England is as fitting for overly rationalistic/scientistic New England just as
much it is for Old England, so we will use it in closing this post as well:
Conclusion: Academia
or Holiness
The Fens, the
majority of which lie in Cambridgeshire, were once notable for the port of
Cambridge, by the bridge over the River Cam. Situated at their southern limit,
this location on the river by a bridge was the very reason for Cambridge’s
existence. However, as we know, Cambridge has for centuries no longer been a
port and rather became famed as a University, as a centre of rationalistic
thinking and brainpower. In this way it opposed itself to the ascetic life of
the Saints of the Fen Thebaid to the north. What a witness it would be if there
were once more an Orthodox church in the Fens, expressing our veneration not of
rationalism, but of asceticism, not of scientists, but of ascetic fendwellers,
not of brainpower but of spiritpower. May God’s Will be done.
The
Yankees are not just a nemesis or a foil for the South; they are our cousins,
and we want the best for them just as we do for any people. We hope, then, that they will find their way
back to the Orthodox Church, the Church of their first and oldest Christian
forefathers, and to all the blessings that come from loving her, Christ’s One True
Body.
Holy
icon of St Botolph from http://orthochristian.com/71898.html .
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England,
South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð,
unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
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