Are chapels more catholic than churches?

The story starts with St Martin of Tours, who was a Roman soldier born just before 400. He famously gave part of his cape to a beggar, before leaving the army and eventually becoming Bishop of Tours.

The cape or capella became the chief relic of the Frankish kings. Because they moved around, it was looked after by chaplains and kept in a chapel, which is where the word comes from. So a chapel is a very Catholic sort of place where relics are looked after by chaplains.

The word church, however, derives ultimately from the Greek kyriakos meaning (house) ‘of the Lord’. And Protestants have usually favoured this sort of language – the Lord’s Supper or Table, the Lord’s Day and so on. So a church is not a very Catholic place after all.

Slippery things, words …

PS All this, because I’ve just been reading up on relics ready for the trip to see ‘Treasures of Heaven’. And I should have added – posting on S Ninian’s Day – that Ninian was reputedly a pupil of Martin and Tours an important place for British Christians.

Filed under: Anglo-Saxon

The Isleham Hoard

The Antiquaries Journal has just added two articles on Bronze Age Hoards to its on-line content. David Yates and Richard Bradley present the results of fieldwork at the findspots of 100 metalwork deposits of the Middle and Late Bronze Age in south Hampshire, Sussex and parts of Surrey and Kent in their paper The siting of metalwork hoards in the bronze age of south-east England .

Of especial local interest is one which looks in detail at the hoard from Isleham, Cambridgeshire, using it to discuss the environmental and social context and the distribution of Middle to Late Bronze Age hoards within the Fenland region.

The paper, by Tim Malim, FSA, with contributions by Steve Boreham, David Knight, FSA, George Nash, Richard Preece and Jean-Luc Schwenninger can be read on-line at The environmental and social context of the Isleham hoard.

Filed under: Anglo-Saxon, Cambridgeshire, History