Ruins

Having recently posted my talk for a recent church event, called Ignite, I realized that I had never done so for the same event we held in January. Here it is. The pictures were the powerpoint presentation.

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Good morning everyone. Most of you know that I spent 10 of the last 15 years living in Europe- in Germany and England. I miss many things about our time there, and I’d like to share with you today one aspect in particular: ruins of castles and abbeys. We’ll start with castles.

Castles became increasingly prevalent in Europe from ~1000AD. Castles were popular for obvious reasons. They protected borders, trade routes, strategic spots, people, and goods. They could house armies and be a base for nearby raiding. And they were numerous- at one point, there were ~20,000 castles in Germany- the most in Europe.

Castles reigned supreme for centuries, but it would not last. With gunpowder and advances in technology, artillery could break through stone walls by the 1400s, and the structures gradually became obsolete (though still effective even in Napoleon’s time- some castles were used against him and destroyed by his army as they swept through Europe in the 1800s). Today, what remains are four types of castles: real (never destroyed or seriously altered), restored (rebuilt, often in more modern styles), romantic (built after the age of fortification, in the 1800s), and . . . ruined.

Today 80% of German castles are in a state of ruin (and half of those have only ground-level foundations (if that!)). Some have disappeared entirely; we know about them only through literature. Castles were expensive to upkeep; when they became obsolete, they were abandoned or auctioned off. They decayed naturally, or were used as a quarry- it was a valuable source of dressed stone for local residents.

Abbeys
Hundreds of monastic communities developed in Great Britain starting in the 1100s. Over the centuries, some of these had become impressive estates, with beautiful buildings and ample land for crops or livestock. In fact, monasteries owned over 25% of all cultivated land in England.

In the 1530s, the Reformation swept through England. In 1534, the English parliament broke from the Papacy and established King Henry VIII as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Two years later, Henry started disbanding religious houses in what would be called the Dissolution of the Monasteries. He ultimately shut down about 800. He took their money and removed the roofs of their buildings, stripping the valuable lead and rendering them uninhabitable. Much was lost- libraries, artwork, and livelihoods for ~7,000 people. Historians disagree on the motive- money was one obvious factor (Henry made £500M in today’s money through this act), but reform may have also been on Henry’s mind. Regardless, it created many abandoned religious sites that fell to ruin and can be seen to this day. 

So What? 

Be it castles or abbeys, I love ruins. I like them more than intact structures of antiquity. I am at peace amidst the decay. Why? I think it’s because ruins show us an important truth about our reality- they are powerful examples of the tension between God’s commands to build and flourish, and our finite and seemingly vain existence. The grass withers, the flower fades. Yet our work has meaning and purpose well beyond our own lifespans. We’ll explore this more in the devotional I’ll give shortly [which may be my next post].