Faith: The oldest Christian artefacts in Britain

Address: Room 49 in the British Museum, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DG
Access: the museum is open daily 10am-5.30pm.
Website: www.britishmuseum.org

For an unforgettable reminder of Christianity’s timeless appeal, take a trip into central London to meet our earliest ancestors. The British Museum’s collection on Roman Britain contains dozens of wondrous artefacts that bring colour and personality to the first decades of public Christian worship in this country.

Dating from the 4th century onwards, these marks of faith left by our ancestors still retain their power to move and inspire, just as they did at the dawn of the Christian era. The world’s earliest known mosaic of Christ is here, a vivid roundel of the Saviour discovered in the ruins of a Roman villa in Dorset in the 1960s. So too is the oldest known painting of priests engaged in the orantes form of liturgical prayer, still used by ministers today, discovered in another ruined villa in Kent. More precious yet is a remarkable chalice discovered in Cambridgeshire in 1975, which is probably the earliest piece of Roman liturgical silver in existence. We may not have the original Holy Grail, but this is its closest known relative.

These and other artefacts are beautiful objects in their own right, but also a physical connection back through the centuries to our faith of the Roman Empire – the very regime known to Christ himself.

Hope: Our oldest scenes of redemption

Address: Parish Church of St Peter and St Paul, Church Lane, Chaldon CR3 5AL
Access: the church is usually kept open during the daytime.
Website: www.caterhamteamministry.org

For nearly 1,000 years the back wall of this peaceful rural church has been graced by an extraordinary vision of the hopes and fears that have driven so much of the Christian faith. Chaldon’s huge mural depicts a multitude of souls receiving their reward or punishment for their deeds in life, a splendid mixture of angels, demons and people jostling together. It is one of the country’s oldest complete wall paintings, perhaps the oldest of all, a thought-provoking masterpiece of 12th century art in the rural heart of our diocese.

The composition is known as the Ladder of Salvation of the Human Soul. Some of its themes are rather past their sell-by date, but offer a vivid reminder of what once inspired devotion and obedience to the word of God. In the bottom right a procession of dishonest craftsmen are forced to cross a bridge over a flaming pit as punishment for their sins, goaded onwards by a pair of snarling demons. They carry an incomplete set of tools to indicate their trade in life: a blacksmith with a hammer but no anvil, a mason bereft of his chisel. Above them a series of rather more kindly angels guide the naked souls of the faithful towards a ladder, leading up towards heaven. Today this focus of hope and redemption has prevailed in church teaching, yet no-one needs reminding that real life is a mix of compromises and conflicting desires.
Above all these chaotic scenes, it is easy to overlook the serene, simple line sketch that survives at the very top of the composition: the oldest known painting of the Saviour in the country. Though only the outline remains, Christ’s portrait manages to retain an air of serenity, the resolution to the rather more messy world below. It is to him that the souls of the faithful aspire as they climb their ladder, a focus for the hopes of humanity.

Love: the archbishop who laid down his life

Address: St Alfege Church, Church Street, Greenwich, London SE10 9JS
Access: the church is usually open every day, with times given on the website.
Website: www.st-alfege.org

This elegant church in the busy urban heart of Greenwich marks the place where St Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury, made the ultimate sacrifice for his people. He had been kidnapped near Canterbury by a marauding gang of Danish pirates in the year 1011, and executed the following year in Greenwich after telling his people to ignore the raiders’ huge ransom demands. Putting his faith in God to the end, the archbishop told his captors that the only gold they would receive from him was the Gospel.

He was hacked to death on Easter day as his pagan captors indulged in a drunk feast. The church now marks the saintly archbishop’s exemplary act of witness with a plaque on the floor, and a major celebration of his millennium on 19 April 2012. The place of his martyrdom has been treated with great reverence ever since, the current 18th century building by architect Nicholas Hawksmoor standing on the site of much earlier shrine churches.

St Alphege was the first Archbishop of Canterbury to be martyred for his faith, a reminder of the church’s steadfast role in protecting its people during the long centuries of the Viking Age. Countless others died in the course of the attacks, the most barbaric and sustained onslaught in British history.

Many were killed as they negotiated with the attackers or attempted to warn their communities to flee,  and have been recognised as saints for their blood sacrifice. St Alphege is London’s foremost martyr, laying down his life for others in the ultimate show of love.