Introduction

Welcome to our York Minster history section. You can skip to subsequent pages using the links below or simply continue reading to start at the beginning.

Introduction

"OPEN your gates, ye everlasting Piles!

Types of the spiritual Church which God hath reared;

Not loth we quit the newly-hallowed sward

And humble altar, 'mid your sumptuous aisles

To kneel, or thrid your intricate defiles,

Or down the nave to pace in motion slow;

Watching, with upward eye, the tall tower grow

And mount, at every step, with living wiles

Instinct-to rouse the heart and lead the will

By a bright ladder to the world above.

Open your gates, ye Monuments of love

Divine! thou Lincoln, on thy sovereign hill!

Thou, stately York! and Ye, whose splendours cheer

Isis and Cam, to patient Science dear!"

WORDSWORTH.

The beautiful story of the introduction of Christianity into the dominions of Edwin of Northumbria by Paulinus, the apostle of this part of Britain, and his companions, the messengers sent by Pope Gregory in the early part of the seventh century, is so well known from the admirable narrative of the Venerable Bede, and from the numerous versions founded on that simple but striking record, that it would be superfluous to do more than merely allude to it here.

The strange Christians, dressed in white robes, bearing a silver cross before them, and chanting one of the psalms of the early Church, wound their way upward from the shore and began to commune with the people.

The arguments of Paulinus carried weight with them. The idols of the Saxons were described as merely the stocks and stones which they were, and eventually when the chief image which the heathens worshipped was struck down by an adventurous spearman, and when no convulsion of nature or sign from Heaven followed the prestige of the idols died for ever in Northumbria, and the great god Pan fled away to find refuge in darker regions.

Next page: The Foundation of York Minster

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