THE Consistory Court of the diocese of Sodor & Man has granted a retrospective faculty giving permission for the installation of a series of sculptures within the grounds of St German’s Cathedral, Peel, on the Isle of Man, including some that depicted an identifiable living individual.
St German’s Cathedral is each the diocesan cathedral and the parish church of the cathedral parish. The petitioners applying for the retrospective faculty were the Dean, the Very Revd Nigel Godfrey, and two wardens of the parish.
In 2012, a college had been granted for the landscaping of the cathedral grounds, including 14 gardens depicting developments within the island’s history from the time of St German (fifth century) to the twentieth century. Although the 2012 faculty authorised the landscaping of all of the gardens, it didn’t permit the erection of sculptures.
The sculptures were introduced throughout the last decade and were visited by the Princess Royal in 2019 in her capability as patron of the event of the cathedral. The installation of the sculptures got here to the notice of the Registrar, who was based in York, only when a post appeared on Facebook in July 2022.
That Facebook post was by a young man who had been the model for sculptures commemorating the event of education within the Isle of Man. He posted photographs of him with two sculptures of his head. The Registrar then invited Dean Godfrey to use for a retrospective faculty.
The Worshipful W. Howard Connell, Vicar-General and Chancellor of the diocese of Sodor & Man, asked the Dean, because the lead applicant for the retrospective faculty, to clarify why the appliance was being made retrospectively, and why the sculptures included a representation of a living person.
Dean Godfrey made several points about religious art generally. He identified that within the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo had used real people as models, and had included some who had been still alive. He also referred to Stanley Spencer’s Last Supper, which was commissioned for a personal chapel in Bourne End, but a duplicate of it had hung for a few years within the church of Holy Trinity, Cookham, in Berkshire. The graveyard of Holy Trinity, Cookham featured in Spencer’s The Cookham Resurrection.
The first query for determination by the Consistory Court was whether the introduction of the sculptures would cause harm to the cathedral as a listed constructing. On that issue, the Vicar-General decided that the inclusion of the sculptures and other structures within the cathedral grounds didn’t adversely affect the setting of the cathedral. The Department of Food and Agriculture had already approved the installation of the statues and other structures before their installation, and the “ecclesiastical exemption” didn’t apply within the Isle of Man.
The Vicar-General said that he, too, was satisfied that the introduction of the sculptures enhanced the setting of the cathedral. He said that “in an increasingly secular society”, the sculptures helped “visitors to know the evolution of Christianity within the Island and the role of the church each in proclaiming the excellent news and in addressing the atrocities of the twentieth century, including the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide”.
On the query of the depiction of living individuals, the Vicar-General accepted that there have been instances of their depiction in Anglican buildings. The display of Spencer’s Last Supper in Holy Trinity, Cookham was one in every of them.
On the opposite hand, there have been instances of congregations and their officers objecting to depictions of living individuals. For example, within the 18th century, the wardens of St Stephen Walbrook objected to the placing within the church by the Rector, Dr Thomas Wilson, of a statue of his friend the celebrated historian, Catherine Macauley; one in every of the grounds of objection was that she was still alive.
It was evident, the Vicar-General said, “that there was a major body of opinion that depicting a living individual in a consecrated place in an effort to commemorate them was inappropriate.”
In considering whether to refuse to permit the sculptures of the boy’s head as a living individual, nonetheless, the Vicar-General was “satisfied that they weren’t intended to commemorate him as a person but reasonably use his head as representative of a typical Manx schoolchild”.
On the query of retrospection, the Vicar-General found it “particularly regrettable that the Dean, who was involved in the appliance for the 2012 faculty, didn’t see fit to hunt approval for the . . . statuary before undertaking” them. But the Vicar-General said that that shouldn’t influence his decision.
There was a transparent case for the approval of the installation of the sculptures throughout the consecrated a part of the cathedral grounds, he said, and a college was issued to authorise them.
It was ordered that the petitioners, reasonably than the Diocesan Board of Finance, must bear the prices of the appliance for the retrospective faculty. The Registry’s cost of £256.76 including VAT was to be paid by the petitioners inside 28 days.
