Symposium at Soulton

This February we visited Soulton Hall as guests of the Ashton family for a private symposium about our research and activities, including a photoshoot for our new art work, In Hoc Signo, which is covered in another blog post.

One of the central parts of this visit was presenting an 'art search' commission to Tim Ashton, who has been restoring the Tudor prayer room inside Soulton Hall. This space is connected to the complicated legacy of Old Sir Rowland Hill, Lord Mayor of London, Mercer and Shakespeare hero, who was alive in every Tudor reign and was politically active throughout the Reformation, Counter-Reformation and Elizabethan Settlement. Hill's interests connected to early church history and philosophy, so it was really important that the furnishing of the prayer room facilitate ecumenical use reflecting a deep heritage looking towards the age of the Undivided Church. The arrangement of the space references the service of Tenebrae, in which traditionally a triangular candelabrum known as a 'Tenebrae hearse' carries candles that are extinguished one by one to indicate the death and burial of Jesus Christ as a prelude to Easter. In this liturgy, a candle or lantern is left burning, but hidden overnight to symbolise the Entombment. At Easter itself the revealing of the living flame is a symbol of the triumph over dark (and death) in Christ's Resurrection.

The antique candelabra we sourced are adjustable in a way that they can form a Tenebrae hearse flanking a lantern for this important observance, but can also be reconfigured to other arrangements to allow liturgical flexibility and interfaith use of the space. It was also important to have items that reflected cultural heritage and aesthetically harmonised with the Tudor interior, but did not make a claim upon being Tudor items themselves, which would detract from the genuine relics of that age at Soulton, such as the Sir Rowland Hill Furniture. Byrga Geniht is all about approaching such material-cultural questions with such nuance and sensitivity... and we were delighted by the candelabra's reception!

To enhance the event, James D. Wenn brought an item from his personal collection — Albrecht Dürer's Entombment from Die kleine Passion. This image reminds James of his university days at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, whose dedication is to the mystery of the body of Christ at this moment in the tomb (Jesus College, Trinity Hall, Trinity College and Emmanuel College focus on different parts of the divinity). The connection to Tenebrae — and thus to the commission and the Soulton prayer room restoration — was too strong to miss this opportunity to appreciate powerful art in a very powerful context.