Breaches and Bridges

There is nothing new about political divisions, nor attempts to heal them.

Eleanor Parker | Published in History Today Volume 70 Issue 3 March 2020

Battle of Assandun, showing Edmund Ironside (left) and Cnut the Great. (Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS. 26, fol. 80v)

Underneath York Minster, in a dimly lit part of the crypt which has been turned into an atmospheric exhibition space, a small book is displayed in a position of honour. It is a beautifully decorated Anglo-Saxon copy of the Gospels, made in Canterbury and brought north by Wulfstan, Archbishop of York between 1002 and 1023. With a few brief interruptions it has been in York ever since and is still used in the consecration of its archbishops.