Britain's vast spiritual heritage will enchant anyone with a sense of the sacred. Celtic healing pools, ancient shrines, exotic saints, spectacular artworks, soaring cathedrals, mystical islands and humble rustic churches bring 2,000 years of belief vividly to life.
Britain’s Pilgrim Places captures the spirit of 2,000 years of history, heritage and wonder. It is the complete guide to every spiritual treasure, including 500 enchanting holy places throughout England, Wales and Scotland and covers all major pilgrimage routes.
Combining current trends, academic theories, and historical insights, this travel guide brings both lesser-known and famous European spiritual locales into perspective by explaining the significance of each sacred site. The cultural relevance, history, and spirituality of each site—including Stonehenge, the Acropolis, Mont Saint Michel, Pompeii, and Saint Peter’s Basilica—are explained, creating a moving and artistic travel experience. Each destination—with selections spanning more than 15 countries throughout Europe—is accompanied by easy-to-follow maps and directions.
Descending into the darkness of a long-abandoned hermit's cave, wading naked into an icy sea to pray, spending the night on a sacred mountain, Nick Mayhew-Smith recounts an extraordinary one-man mission to revive the ancient devotions of Britain's most enigmatic holy places. Based on ground-breaking research into the transition from Paganism to Christianity, this book invites the reader on a journey into the heart of the Celtic wilderness, exploring the deep-seated impulse to mark natural places as holy. It ends with a vision of how we can recover our harmony with the rest of creation: with the landscape, the weather and the wildlife, and ultimately with the body itself. Follow the footsteps of holy men and women such as Columba, Patrick, Cuthbert, Gildas, Aidan, Bede, Ninian, Etheldreda, Samson and others into enchanting Celtic landscapes, and learn the unvarnished truth behind the stories that shape our spiritual and natural heritage.
Descending into the darkness of a long-abandoned hermit's cave, wading naked into an icy sea to pray, spending the night on a sacred mountain, Nick Mayhew-Smith recounts an extraordinary one-man mission to revive the ancient devotions of Britain's most enigmatic holy places. Based on ground-breaking research into the transition from Paganism to Christianity, this book invites the reader on a journey into the heart of the Celtic wilderness, exploring the deep-seated impulse to mark natural places as holy. It ends with a vision of how we can recover our harmony with the rest of creation: with the landscape, the weather and the wildlife, and ultimately with the body itself. Follow the footsteps of holy men and women such as Columba, Patrick, Cuthbert, Gildas, Aidan, Bede, Ninian, Etheldreda, Samson and others into enchanting Celtic landscapes, and learn the unvarnished truth behind the stories that shape our spiritual and natural heritage.
SACRED LAND will enable you to discover the hidden secrets and meaning of the landscape around you, town or country, modern or old, wherever you live in Britain. There has been a dramatic growth in interest in our own history, buildings, landscape, sacred places, beliefs and culture over the last few years and this book will equip you with the tools to unlock the meaning, stories and history that are literally embedded in our landscape. It takes us from street names to churches; from hill forts to burial mounds; from the way a road bends to the shapes of fields in order to understand better the land that lies beneath our feet. In the literal shape of our countryside can be detected the eddies of time, politics, belief, warfare, passion and the durability of the human existence. SACRED LAND is a fascinating, accessible read and the perfect reference guide to have in your home or in your car. It will be of interest to everyone who loves history, sacred places and sacred history, and those who like to explore their ancestry and roots.
Landscape Liturgies offers outdoor worship material drawn from 2,000 years of outdoor Christian practice. It contains prayers, rituals, blessings and liturgies compiled from Anglican, Roman Catholic, Methodist and Orthodox sources, as well as early church material, the desert tradition and monastic spirituality. It includes resources for the blessing of water courses, tree planting, garden blessings, a wide range of churchyard ceremonies, Rogation and other processionary ideas, field and animal blessings, pilgrim and walking prayers, ceremonies at holy wells and sacred grottoes, at hilltops and landmark monuments, and for the ringing of bells which traditionally demarcated sacred space in the landscape. This fascinating and versatile resource will enable urban and rural churches and church schools, retreat houses and pilgrimage centres to conduct a wide variety of services and meditations in the landscape around them.
One of the first studies to consider how church rituals were performed in Anglo-Saxon England. Brings together evidence from written, archaeological, and architectural sources. It will be of particular interest to architectural specialists keen to know more about liturgy, and church historians who would like to learn more about architecture.
During the thousand years and more that separated the final collapse of the Romano-British civilization from the Reformation of the 16"th" century, the British landscape filled with sites that still remind us that this was once a land of saints and martyrs, shrines and pilgrimages. This evocative guide reveals the meaning of this landscape, so rich in holiness, by exploring the lives and legends of the saints who made it. In the process, it transports us back in time to a place where evil spirits, visions, and miracles were commonplace. In words and photographs, The Way and the Light enables the reader to experience the sense of sacred that still permeates Britain's holiest places.