Tanti Auguri!

Tanti auguri to you all for a merry Christmas, a jolly festive season and a happy new year. Many thanks for subscribing, it’s greatly appreciated! Last weekend we went to the wedding of friends in London which was extremely festive indeed. Snow was on the ground, candles flickered in the gloaming of a rapidly encroaching winter afternoon, and the gilded reredos glowed.

St Margaret’s, Westminster. 17 December, 2022

The service was at St Margaret’s, Westminster, nestling in the shadow of Westminster Abbey. Westminster Abbey was born from a Benedictine monastery founded in the tenth century and a church dedicated to St Peter was established here by Edward the Confessor in the eleventh.

The Sacro Speco at Subiaco, on the site of the cave where St Benedict wrote his Rule in the sixth century. Subiaco makes an excellent day trip from Rome. Photo taken on a tour I took there in September 2022.

St Margaret’s, Westminster.

Far from Subiaco, and six centuries after Benedict wrote his Rule, as the growing lay population of Westminster began to interrupt the monastic calm of the abbey St Margaret’s was founded to minister to parishioners. It was dedicated to Margaret of Antioch, a saint whose fantastical story involves a dragon and has long been considered to be of dubious provenance. She became popular in England during the Crusades (as did St George, another eastern saint who fought a dragon) and her feast was removed from the general calendar of the Roman Catholic Church in 1969.

The adjacent North Door of the Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, also called Westminster Abbey.

After the wedding service, we were ushered through the most glorious “short cut” through the North Door of Westminster Abbey, past the High Altar and its spectacular Cosmati Pavement (of which more here) out into the cloister and through to Westminster School for the extremely jolly party and dinner in the medieval College Hall.

Cloister, Westminster Abbey.

On this occasion our fleeting visit to Westminster Abbey didn’t take in the Lady Chapel, home to the tomb of Henry VII which is the work of a Florentine sculptor, Pietro Torrigiano, who is said to have fled Florence after flying into a temper with Michelangelo and breaking his nose. So the tale of how the characteristically lumpy nose we see in portraits of Michelangelo brought the Renaissance to England will have to be for another time. But it is all a reminder that one is never far from Rome.

Little Dean’s Yard, Westminster School.

All my very best wishes for 2023, I hope to see you in Rome! Agnes