Britains Great Cathedrals_1of6_York Minster
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Britain's cathedrals. Majestic, magnificent, monumental.
00:07For more than 1400 years, they've dominated Britain's landscape.
00:12Never out of sight, never out of mind.
00:15Epic structures, they represent our history and the changing fortunes of a nation.
00:22I'm Tony Robinson, and in this series I'll be exploring six of Britain's greatest cathedrals.
00:29What a privilege.
00:35Their stories of rivalry and royalty.
00:39Henry was determined to strip the church of its power, of struggles and sacrifice.
00:45Who will rid me of this troublesome priest of martyrs and murder?
00:53And then they just hacked him down right on the spot.
00:57Containing more than a thousand years of history, I'll discover how these buildings were constructed.
01:04Isn't that extraordinary?
01:06How they've evolved, and what secrets they hold.
01:20York Minster Cathedral.
01:23Started in 1220, it took thousands of men over 200 years to build this masterpiece of design.
01:3122 storeys high, over 500 feet long,
01:35its high towers and long nave are home to a staggering 60% of all England's medieval glass.
01:43When it was completed in 1472, more than 2 million individual pieces made up its 128 windows.
01:53York's a city that puts its past on show.
01:56Evidence of 2,000 years of history is all around you.
02:00The long straight Roman roads, the defensive wall that still runs through the city,
02:06and of course at its heart, this magnificent building, York Minster.
02:14First things first, why is it called a minster and not a cathedral?
02:19Actually, it isn't. Its real name is the Metropolitan Cathedral and Church of St. Peter in York.
02:27A minster was simply the name given to anywhere in Anglo-Saxon times that had started off as a missionary teaching church.
02:35A lot of other cathedrals started off as minsters, it's just that in York, the name stuck.
02:41And I don't think they're going to change it any time soon.
02:45York Minster might have a distinctive name, but its structure follows a familiar cathedral pattern.
02:52Shaped like a cross, it runs east to west, has a main tower above its nave and small chapels built around it.
03:05It was the vision of one bishop who wanted a cathedral to rival the splendour of Canterbury.
03:13His name was Walter de Grey, and he became archbishop here in the year 1215.
03:21It was under him that construction of the current minster got underway,
03:26building on the site of a previous Anglo-Saxon cathedral.
03:30Work began in the year 1220 with this bit here, the south transept.
03:36It was Grey's energy and vision that made York the second biggest Gothic cathedral in the whole of Europe.
03:45As construction of the cathedral gathered pace, it was necessary to create a boundary round it.
03:52The land inside this boundary was given a special name, the Liberty of York.
03:59In medieval times, this land was ruled by the Archbishop of York and governed by church law and not the king's law.
04:08It was almost like the archbishop's own private kingdom.
04:11The king's men weren't even allowed into the Liberty unless the archbishop gave them permission.
04:17I bet you know the phrase, taking the Liberty, but you probably didn't know that it originated right here in York.
04:24In the 13th century, the Lord Mayor of York used to enter the Liberty of the cathedral,
04:30which is marked right here nowadays by this gate post, and he did so, so often,
04:37and it was so unpopular that it eventually spawned the phrase that we all know today.
04:45The laws within the Liberty were known for being very lenient on the clergymen who lived within its boundaries,
04:52and some of the vicars and monks took advantage of this.
04:58In the 13th century, the local vicars used to hang out in the taverns near the monastery,
05:04and they would drink too much, and they'd kick off, and this became a big issue with the townspeople.
05:11But the vicars didn't care. They knew they couldn't get caught,
05:14because they could scoot across the street straight into the monastery.
05:19There are even reports of drunk vicars lying flat on their backs on this very grass,
05:26laughing hysterically at all the mischief and mayhem they'd caused.
05:35Misbehaving monks and trespassing Lord Mayors might explain why, in 1285,
05:41Yorkminster established the world's very first police force to maintain order within its grounds.
05:49Today, this police force still exists, with eight constables responsible for the minster
05:54and the safety of the 600,000 tourists that visit here every year.
05:59Are you guys actually real coppers?
06:01We are, yes, Tony. We're real coppers.
06:03We're the full powers of arrest within the precinct in the minster.
06:06So what sort of things do you have to deal with?
06:08All sorts. The minster's in the heart of York.
06:11We have a lot of the problems that any inner-city police force would deal with.
06:16We've had someone rescued off the tower top by helicopter, which a police officer was involved in.
06:21What about things like terrorism? Do you come across that?
06:24Well, thankfully, we haven't had any incidents in York yet,
06:27but if we have a look down here, you can see our newly installed anti-vehicle stones.
06:32Stupidly, I'd thought, oh, well, these must be some representation of something medieval.
06:38Today's police mainly look after the minster's thousands of tourists,
06:43but for the first 200 years, the cathedral's police force
06:46was responsible for the country's biggest building site
06:50and the thousands of workers it employed who lived within the grounds.
06:54They deal with everything from murder to the medieval crime of fornication.
07:00In 1472, when the minster was finally complete,
07:04this hive of activity that had surrounded it for two decades
07:08slowly expanded and sowed the seeds for the city we know today.
07:14The cathedral became the focal point of the town and has remained so ever since.
07:19For anyone who lives here, it's impossible to imagine the place without it.
07:26Which is why, in the 1960s, the locals got such a shock
07:31when they discovered their beloved cathedral was about to collapse.
07:39MUSIC
07:42The Cathedral of York is one of the finest examples of Gothic architecture in the world.
07:48But it's not the first cathedral to occupy this spot.
07:52An Anglo-Saxon one had been built on the same site in 627 AD.
07:58When the minster we see today was built,
08:01the foundations of this earlier cathedral were never removed.
08:05And in the 1960s, this oversight nearly proved disastrous.
08:13In 1967, a story hit the headlines.
08:16York Minster, the biggest Gothic building in the country, is on the move.
08:21Experts had surveyed the massive 60-metre central tower
08:26and were predicting that in 15 years it would collapse.
08:30York Minster in danger of collapse.
08:33Gothic magnificence could become a shambles of tumbled stone.
08:40The tower of the cathedral, weighing over 25,000 tonnes,
08:45was slowly sinking into the ground.
08:48The engineers employed by the cathedral to save the building
08:52had to think of a way to stop it from sinking further.
08:55So imagine, this is the tower, right, and this is the adjacent wall.
08:59So if the tower continues to sink,
09:03then this wall will begin to crack and then it'll collapse in on itself.
09:08So in order to prevent that happening,
09:11they dug deep down into the base of the tower
09:15and inserted these.
09:18Lots and lots of massive stones.
09:21And these.
09:23Lots and lots of massive steel rods
09:27in order to prevent the tower from sinking any further.
09:32With the engineers digging down into the foundations of the cathedral,
09:37it presented a chance for the country's top archaeologists
09:40to have a look at the history they knew from medieval transcripts
09:44existed under it.
09:47The archaeologists reckoned they'd got a golden opportunity.
09:51They thought that underneath the cathedral
09:53there would be layer upon layer upon layer of history
09:57which the engineering work would reveal.
10:00But from the engineers' point of view,
10:02they'd got a potentially collapsing cathedral.
10:05The last thing they wanted was to stop their work
10:08while the archaeologists poked about.
10:10The solution was simple.
10:13The engineers would work as normal during the day
10:16and once they left in the evening,
10:18the archaeologists would move in,
10:21working through the night to preserve as many artefacts as possible.
10:28The archaeologists began to find a treasure trove of pieces,
10:32but they just didn't have time to examine every single bit.
10:36Anything that looked remotely interesting was boxed up and sealed
10:41with just a short note from the archaeologists
10:44guessing at what they thought they'd found.
10:52Believe it or not, these boxes have remained sealed for over 50 years.
10:57It's quite remarkable,
10:59and I've been granted special access to the cathedral's archives
11:02to take a look at some of them.
11:05So this has not been examined since the 60s?
11:08No.
11:09Exciting, look, it says Roman and medieval YM bronzes.
11:14What's YM?
11:15York Minster.
11:16York Minster? Oh, duh, yes.
11:18So let's see what we've got.
11:20Oh, look at these wonderful little packets.
11:24Yeah, so the archaeologists really were under pressure
11:27and they were trying to get as many boxes and different things,
11:30so we find some really interesting packaging as we're unlocking as well,
11:33a little time capsule.
11:34Oh, look at this one.
11:36Oh, I remember those.
11:38They might be worth having a look through.
11:40OK.
11:48I've been very scrupulously looking at that
11:50and I can't find anything in there.
11:52See if you can.
11:53I think this one might just be Kitchen's Owl.
11:57What a brilliant anticlimax.
11:59In here, there is nothing.
12:02Absence of evidence only proves that there's nothing in here.
12:07Underwhelmed but undeterred, we keep on looking.
12:11Get the label out to see what this says.
12:13It just says it was found in the nave in the central area.
12:18It's hard to know whether it's something from a costume
12:21or something from an industrial-type process.
12:25That's so intriguing.
12:27Oh, this is interesting.
12:29On soil with small rubble down to level of bottom of Saxon graves.
12:36Oh, gorgeous.
12:38Big Saxon pin.
12:41This is proper archaeology, isn't it?
12:43Yeah, absolutely.
12:44And no-one has looked at this... No-one's looked at them.
12:46..for 50 years or so.
12:48I feel so lucky to be the first person to look at these.
12:52The Saxon pin and chain found beneath the cathedral
12:55tell us that the people that lived there before it was built
12:58must have been skilled at making bronze materials.
13:02How many artefacts do you reckon you might have
13:05that you still need to look at closely?
13:08We talk about archaeology in terms of boxes,
13:10and I know that I have 650 boxes.
13:13650 boxes? Yes.
13:18The artefacts found underneath the cathedral
13:21must have sat in the same spot for over 800 years
13:25and the work began on the Minster in 1220.
13:31When that work began,
13:33it was an important period of change in English architecture.
13:37Masons had begun to experiment
13:39and carve elaborate pieces of stonework
13:42in a style we now refer to as Gothic architecture.
13:46This cathedral has got some of the finest masonry work in the world,
13:50including two architectural styles, Gothic...
13:54..and Norman.
13:56It's also got some of the finest examples of these.
14:04Now, you might think these are gargoyles
14:07and they do look very similar, but they're not.
14:10Gargoyles are the ones with water spouts,
14:13which are used as drains.
14:15Those are grotesques.
14:18Just like gargoyles, grotesques are decorative carvings
14:22designed to ward off evil.
14:24And to take a closer look at them,
14:26I need to travel 12 stories to the top.
14:29Luckily, I'm taking the lift.
14:31Given how dizzyingly high we are up here,
14:34it surprises me that the medieval masons bothered
14:38to do such an elaborate amount of detail.
14:41Well, God can see it, and the medieval philosophy was
14:44it was done for the glory of God.
14:46What were these all supposed to be?
14:48Mythical beasts and scary objects,
14:51and sometimes they were taking the mick out of people
14:55in authority in the church.
14:57There's not much of them left, is there?
14:59We're seeing hundreds of years of erosion and corrosion here,
15:02so there's an echo of what was originally there.
15:05And it's for the carvers to join the dots together
15:08and to interpret that.
15:09What causes this erosion?
15:11Well, centuries of corrosion during the Industrial Revolution
15:15and, of course, the sheer battering we get up here,
15:18so the wind literally carving the stone out.
15:20As you can see here, the magnesium limestone
15:23is turning back to sand.
15:25Oh, yeah, look, it really...
15:27It just comes right away in your hand, doesn't it?
15:30Look at that.
15:32That is scary.
15:34But that one is brand new, isn't it?
15:36Yeah, so this is the same magnesium limestone
15:38that we've just crumbled from the same quarry.
15:41A team of stonemasons working at the cathedral
15:44have identified a grotesque in the worst state of repair
15:47and set about making a brand-new replacement
15:50based on their interpretation of the original.
15:54I love this person here.
15:56She's even got a baby.
15:58Who would that have been?
16:00Well, these are the wives of King Solomon.
16:02These grotesques are based on the story, so you have the two wives.
16:05So that's one wife. Yep.
16:07And round here... The second wife.
16:09We've got the second wife, yeah.
16:11She's good, isn't she?
16:13And, presumably, that's the man himself.
16:16The detail is fantastic.
16:18That mouth.
16:20And, of course, once the scaffold is down,
16:22no-one will see that again.
16:24Hundreds of years.
16:26The grotesques at Yorkminster were renowned throughout the country
16:30and would draw people from all over England to see them.
16:36But in 1328, the cathedral found itself attracting visitors
16:40from all over Europe for a different reason.
16:43A royal wedding of the English King Edward III
16:47to a French lady-in-waiting, Philippa of Hainaut.
16:53Normally, the service would have been conducted in Westminster,
16:56but the post of Archbishop of Canterbury was vacant,
16:59so they asked the Archbishop of York to do it instead.
17:03Trouble was, the church still hadn't been built,
17:07there was no roof on the nave,
17:09and during the course of the ceremony, there was a snowstorm.
17:19Still, the wedding went ahead.
17:22Like royal relationships today,
17:24theirs was described as the love affair of the decade.
17:30The couple were together for 41 years,...
17:34..producing 13 children, eight of them sons.
17:40Edward and Philippa had enough sons to start a war, literally.
17:45From them descended all the main players
17:48in one of England's most influential conflicts,
17:51one that would shape Britain and the church forever,
17:55the War of the Roses.
17:58The descendants broke off into the Yorkist and Lancastrian lines,
18:03with Lancaster represented by a red rose and York a white.
18:11The ultimate winner, Henry VII, came from the Lancastrian line
18:16and united the two warring houses by marrying Elizabeth of York,
18:20and went on to produce perhaps England's most notorious
18:24king, Henry VIII.
18:30This stunning rose window, high in the gable of the south transept,
18:35commemorates the unification of the houses of York and Lancaster.
18:40It was commissioned by the couple's son, Henry VIII, in the year 1515,
18:46and it's a really confident piece of work, isn't it?
18:50It seems to be saying,
18:52the fighting of the Wars of the Roses is now completely over.
18:56Welcome to the new, unified world of the Tudors.
19:01One of the most famous stained-glass windows in Britain,
19:05it remained in place for more than 400 years.
19:12But then, in 1984, came a ferocious storm.
19:17In 1984, came a ferocious blaze, causing cracks in 40,000 pieces
19:24and threatening to destroy the entire cathedral.
19:35Looking at York Minster Cathedral today,
19:38it's hard to imagine that just over 30 years ago,
19:41the whole building was almost destroyed,
19:44when one of its greatest achievements became a weakness.
19:51The masons building the cathedral in the 13th century
19:55pushed the boundaries in what could be achieved in stonework to the very limit,
20:00allowing them to create this magnificent nave.
20:06At 99 feet, this is the widest nave of any cathedral in England.
20:12In fact, it's wider than it's tall.
20:18And its fabulous roof alone took 60 years to complete.
20:23But not all is as it seems.
20:27Look at that beautiful ceiling.
20:30Now, look down here.
20:32This is really good because you can see it much closer.
20:35And the thing is, that ceiling isn't really stone.
20:42The masons knew the walls of the nave could never support such a heavy roof,
20:47so instead they made it of wood and painted it to look like stone,
20:52allowing it to soar higher and stretch wider than any other nave in England.
21:00But the wooden roof would cost them dearly over 700 years later.
21:05One hot summer night in 1984,
21:08lightning struck the roof just up there.
21:11It caused a massive fire,
21:13which posed the biggest threat to the cathedral's history in 800 years.
21:19The flames tore through the building and spread towards the main tower.
21:24If they reached it, they'd funnel upwards,
21:27then, mixing with the oxygen inside,
21:30they'd create the biggest chimney fire Britain had ever seen
21:34and bring down the entire structure.
21:38The fire needed to be stopped.
21:41But that required a quick and radical decision.
21:46The firefighters realised that the roof couldn't be saved,
21:50so they used its weight to bring the blaze under control.
21:54They aimed their hoses at the burnt and weakened roof supports,
21:59forcing them to collapse like a row of dominoes.
22:02Then, like a massive fire blanket,
22:05the roof suffocated the fire below.
22:16The fire caused 2.25 million pounds worth of damage.
22:20The south transept was under six feet of muddy water
22:24which seeped into the foundations.
22:28The vaulted ceiling and the roof of the south transept were destroyed
22:32and there was bad damage to the rose window.
22:36And by the time the fire had been put out,
22:39that stained-glass window had broken into 40,000 pieces.
22:46Amazingly, the lead running through the window
22:49held the cracked glass together, meaning it could be fully repaired.
22:54As impressive as the rose window is,
22:57it's by no means the cathedral's most famous window.
23:03York Minster contains the finest collection
23:06of medieval stained glass in the world
23:09and its most stunning example is this, the Great East Window.
23:18It's the largest expanse of medieval glass in the country
23:22and one of the most spectacular artistic achievements of the Middle Ages,
23:27depicting scenes from the Bible's Old Testament.
23:32This masterpiece of glazing can all be attributed
23:35to the workshop of one master glazier.
23:38His name was John Thornton.
23:40It is quite incredible, isn't it?
23:4323 metres high by 9 metres wide.
23:46That's bigger than a tennis court.
23:52Originally from Coventry,
23:54Thornton was commissioned to build the window in 1405,
23:58185 years after the cathedral's construction started.
24:02In his contract, it says that Thornton will glaze the window
24:06over a three-year period and in return will receive £46.
24:11And then there's another clause below which says
24:14that if he completes the window before the deadline,
24:18he'll get an additional £10 bonus.
24:21So there's an incentive.
24:23Thornton's original contract
24:25is still part of the cathedral's archive to this day,
24:29and he more than fulfilled its obligations.
24:32Despite the window's intricacy, Thornton did deliver it early
24:37and so was able to collect his £56 in full.
24:41That's almost £375,000 in today's money.
24:46These windows would have had a massive impact on the congregation.
24:51They were storytelling devices
24:53and given that virtually nobody could read, let alone afford a book,
24:58that meant that these windows were virtually the only way
25:02that people could get to know the stories from the Old Testament.
25:06Each window told stories about the creation of the world
25:10and the predicted apocalypse at its end.
25:16In 2008, the hundreds of stained-glass panels
25:20were removed from the 15th-century window
25:23so the York glaziers could begin restoring the fragile masterpiece
25:28and, just as importantly, give them a good clean.
25:32How many bits of glass do you reckon are up there in that window?
25:36Many thousands. We haven't counted them.
25:38We've been too busy cleaning them, but a lot, certainly.
25:41And what is that process? How do you start?
25:44We take the advantage of having the glass in the studio
25:47to do a very thorough clean,
25:49not just because the window will look, you know, more attractive clean,
25:53but because the dirt itself can be a threat to the stability of the glass.
25:58The dirt can be very moisture-retentive
26:00and moisture is the great enemy of medieval stained glass.
26:04You called it dirt just then. Yes.
26:08What exactly is it?
26:10It's a horrible mixture, really.
26:12There's soot and then, of course, there's unpleasant accretions,
26:17including human skin, from the many hundreds of thousands of people
26:21who come into the building
26:23and generate their own little sort of fog of dirt as they go.
26:29To restore and clean each window will take an estimated 50 years...
26:35..at which point the first pieces will need cleaning all over again.
26:40So the task is never-ending.
26:45But York's lucky that any of its windows have remained intact.
26:50A century ago, it came under attack from a form of warfare
26:55its people had never before witnessed.
26:59German Zeppelins had been bombing British ports
27:02since the start of World War I.
27:05Now these flying fortresses were coming inland.
27:09They were more than 500 feet in length, longer than a football pitch,
27:13and carried 1,600 kilograms of explosives,
27:17multiple machine guns and had a top speed of 10 miles per hour.
27:26On the night of May 2nd, 1915, the city's watchmen looked upwards.
27:33Silhouetted against the burning skyline was a distinctive cigar shape,
27:38slowly moving towards the Minster.
27:42As one hovered over York, it dropped 18 bombs.
27:51Nine people were killed, another 40 injured,
27:54and countless homes were destroyed, all in the space of ten minutes.
28:01The next day's papers reported the tragedy.
28:04This is just one of the accounts.
28:06Trappolo and his wife Sarah had been to the cinema.
28:10They were in St Saviour's Place when he was hit by a bomb.
28:15The lower parts of both his legs were blown off and his skull was fractured.
28:23Incredibly, the cathedral survived this attack unscathed,
28:27and although the Germans tried again, the Minster was spared the ravages of war.
28:32Its congregation, however, was not.
28:36MUSIC
28:39Thousands of men from the city signed up to join the fighting.
28:47But one in ten of them never came home.
28:55The city wanted a permanent tribute to the fallen,
28:58and so an ambitious project began.
29:01The King's Book of Heroes.
29:06It's thought to be one of the largest and heaviest books in the world,
29:10weighing in at over nine stone.
29:13It's still kept here at York, and I've been allowed to take a look.
29:17So how did it come to be created?
29:19It was a community effort.
29:21The people of York felt that the memorials in the city
29:24were not being created quick enough.
29:27This poignant memorial book contains photographs
29:30of all the young men who were killed in battle.
29:33Each is accompanied with their age and rank,
29:36details provided by their families
29:39and compiled with help from a local newspaper.
29:43One page is dedicated to George Edwin Ellison.
29:49Ellison left the army in 1912,
29:52but rejoined at the start of the war two years later.
29:57George had a wife, Hannah, and a one-year-old son named James
30:01when he was sent to France.
30:07On the 11th day of the 11th month, 1918,
30:10the German and British High Command were nearing a peace deal.
30:15George and his squadron were sent on patrol,
30:18and just minutes before the armistice was announced...
30:24..George was shot.
30:27He was the last person to be killed in action in World War I.
30:33His grave in France faces that of John Parr,
30:37the first British soldier to fall.
30:47Are they all men?
30:48No, we have Betty Stevenson, who was killed in one of the raids.
30:52Betty worked as a driver for the YMCA,
30:55transporting injured soldiers to and from hospital
30:58and taking their families to visit them.
31:01She was killed on the 30th of May, 1918,
31:04during an aerial bombardment of Etappes in France.
31:10She was just 21.
31:15When peace came, York looked for a way to deal with it.
31:19When peace came, York looked for a way to commemorate women like Betty.
31:24The result was this.
31:29The Five Sisters' stained-glass window.
31:32It's the country's only memorial to the women of the British Empire
31:36who sacrificed their lives in the First World War.
31:44More than 1,400 such women,
31:47honoured on a medieval window, fully restored and re-leaded in 1924.
31:53They've even got all their names written down here.
31:56Stewardesses, munitions, transport, nursing.
32:02Some names are famous, like Edith Cavell,
32:05the British nurse shot by a German firing squad in 1915
32:10for helping 200 Allied soldiers escape from occupied Belgium.
32:18There are still services held at York to commemorate the war dead.
32:23These important services are the responsibility of Peter Moga,
32:27a clergyman with the grand title of Canon Precenta.
32:31So what does Precenta mean?
32:33Precenta means the one who sings first.
32:36You're the one who goes...
32:38I know, when it goes,
32:40and then the choir responds, so the first singer,
32:43and then the choir is the second singer back.
32:45There is a great deal of theatricality in what you do, isn't there?
32:48There is indeed. You can't work in a space the size of York Minster
32:52without wanting to milk it, really, for its dramatic potential.
32:55I'm glad you said that, not me!
32:58And like every theatrical performance, costume is all-important.
33:03When preparing for special services like that of Remembrance Sunday
33:07to honour those lost in war,
33:09the Canons wear robes known as vestments.
33:14As you put it on, then, you just went like that?
33:16I did. There's a tradition there.
33:18This is the stole, and there's a tradition,
33:20a lot of stoles that are made with the mark of the cross here.
33:23This one actually hasn't, but traditions die hard.
33:26So you gave us a little kiss anyway.
33:28The priest kissed the cross when they put the stole on,
33:31so it's hard-wired, I think, really.
33:33So the stole goes on here and is fixed into place,
33:37and then over this goes the chasuble,
33:40which is really a sort of poncho-shaped garment.
33:44Cathedrals tend to be quite cold,
33:47and you're actually adding a few layers.
33:49Yes, I mean, you can see how it developed,
33:51vestments not just having a ceremonial use
33:54but actually keeping people warm as well.
33:57The vestments worn by Peter today
33:59replace a set that was used in the cathedral for over 90 years,
34:04worn away in a rather unusual way.
34:07I've noticed that virtually all clergy who work in cathedrals
34:13hold their hands like this, as you are now.
34:15When you train, you see, you're taught to keep your hands like that
34:18so that they don't fiddle with anything,
34:20but, of course, then they do get against the fabric and they wear.
34:23And that's what happens to your clothes!
34:25That's exactly what's happened there.
34:28Some of the robes kept at York have been used for hundreds of years
34:32and at some historic events.
34:37MUSIC
34:43One of the most important events in the cathedral's history
34:46came in 2015,
34:49when the cathedral was packed
34:51for the first consecration of a female bishop.
34:54A dramatic moment for the Church of England,
34:58but too much for some.
35:00Is it now your will that she should be ordained?
35:03It is.
35:06MUSIC
35:12York Minster has always stood apart from other English cathedrals.
35:17Only York and Canterbury Cathedral have archbishops
35:21who together lead the Church of England.
35:24This independence goes back to William the Conqueror,
35:27who chose two of his friends as archbishops of York and Canterbury,
35:31and didn't refuse to say which one was in charge of the other.
35:35This semi-detached status might help explain
35:38why the bishops here have often had a reputation
35:41for being quite outspoken.
35:45Like York's Bishop Cyril Garbert,
35:48who became one of the first to expose the full extent
35:51of the Nazis' atrocities against the Jews.
35:55Writing in the York Evening Press in 1942,
35:58he accused them of pursuing a policy of deliberate extermination,
36:03calling it the greatest crime in history.
36:08His article would open the world's eyes
36:11and catapult him onto the international stage.
36:16In 1943, he went to Russia to try to bridge the emerging gulf
36:21between the two wartime allies, Russia and America.
36:24Then he went on to New York to talk to the New York Times
36:27about Russia's religious freedoms.
36:31His role as a statesman was widely applauded.
36:34In April 1944, it even earned him a place
36:37on the front cover of Time magazine.
36:41More outspoken bishops have followed.
36:44In 2005 came the appointment of John Sentamu.
36:51Born in Uganda, Sentamu had been imprisoned
36:54for speaking out against 1970s dictator Idi Amin.
37:00He later fled to Britain, joined the clergy
37:03and became the first black bishop in the UK.
37:09In 2015, a decade after his own appointment,
37:13he helped strike another blow for equality.
37:18In January that year, the Church of England was ready
37:21to celebrate its first-ever woman bishop, Libby Lane.
37:25This was an historic moment that finally elevated women
37:29to the same standing as men within the Church of England.
37:33It came at the end of a long and hard-fought battle.
37:40A battle that many senior women in the Church
37:43once feared would never be won.
37:47There were moments when I despaired,
37:50because I thought if this change doesn't happen,
37:53whether for me or for others,
37:55then the Church of England will have lost such a gift
38:00in terms of being a place that welcomed all sorts of folk.
38:07Yeah.
38:08The first woman bishop, Libby Lane,
38:10was actually consecrated right here.
38:12Yes, and it was a glorious moment.
38:14I was so excited.
38:15And, you know, the thing that amazed me most
38:18is I prepared for this moment for a very long time.
38:22And then it was to see Libby with stiletto heels walking up.
38:26And I would never dare, because I'd been bred in a generation
38:29where women didn't wear stilettos in church.
38:32And also, I didn't dare on this floor,
38:34because the floor is not even.
38:37And I thought it was the sheer courage to do that.
38:40The chutzpah, yeah.
38:41The chutzpah, exactly.
38:42She was taking this role on.
38:44She was going to do what she was going to do.
38:47She was going to be who she is.
38:49And I thought, that's what I've been looking for,
38:52to free women to be who they are.
39:02But not everyone was happy with such progress.
39:05As the service got under way, there was a dramatic intervention.
39:10Is it now your will that she should be ordained?
39:13It is.
39:15No!
39:21Not in the Bible.
39:23With respect, Your Grace,
39:25I ask to speak on this absolute impediment, please.
39:33Bishop Sentamu chose to ignore the protest
39:36by Church of England vicar Paul Williamson,
39:39who believed that the Bible gave no authority
39:42for there to be women bishops,
39:44and Sentamu proceeded with the ceremony.
39:54Although the consecration of female bishops
39:57excites strong emotions among followers,
40:00the Church's supreme governor is also a woman.
40:05Queen Elizabeth II.
40:09One of her earliest visits to the Minster came in 1961,
40:14as a guest at the wedding of her cousin, the Duke of Kent.
40:18She was accompanied by the Queen Mother, the Duke of Edinburgh,
40:22and a 12-year-old Prince Charles.
40:31In 2012, she returned to continue a ritual
40:35practised by her predecessors for centuries.
40:39The Queen visited the city to hand out the so-called Maundy money,
40:44a tradition set by King John in 1213.
40:49Before then, the bishops, inspired by the Bible,
40:53would wash the feet of the poor every Maundy Thursday,
40:56which is the day before Good Friday.
41:00However, King John preferred to present the poor with silver coins instead.
41:06Today, the Queen sees it as an important part of her Church duties.
41:11On the day in question, people are given two purses,
41:15a red one and a white one.
41:17In the red one, there's money in lieu of food and clothing,
41:21and in the white one are...
41:24..the Maundy coins.
41:26And you're given as many coins as the number of years
41:30that the sovereign's been alive.
41:32So you'd need a few more than that, wouldn't you?
41:38In 2012, the Queen handed out money
41:41to members of York Minster's congregation
41:44in recognition of their services to the Church and their communities,
41:48once again confirming the ties between the people of York
41:52and its beloved Minster.
42:03It's funny, you know, but this town, unlike any other that I know in England,
42:08feels like an extension of its cathedral.
42:12There's nowhere that the Minster ends and the town begins.
42:17And because you've got these big Roman roads up here,
42:22you can see the cathedral from the horizon,
42:25and then, as you get towards the city,
42:28it's revealed to you. Bang!
42:31Never out of sight, never out of mind.
42:36And that, for me, is symbolic of the cathedral.
42:39It's always been an important institution,
42:42constantly bubbling away in the background of English life
42:46and occasionally boiling over,
42:48forcing its way onto the world stage
42:52and into the history books.
42:54HE PLAYS ORCHESTRAL MUSIC
43:24HE PLAYS ORCHESTRAL MUSIC