York Minster

About

York Minster — formally the Cathedral and Metropolitan Church of Saint Peter in York — rises at the heart of the historic city in North Yorkshire. It is the cathedra of the Archbishop of York and serves as mother church to both the diocese and the province of York.

The site's Christian history reaches back to 627, when the first church was raised — a wooden chapel built in haste to baptise Edwin, King of Northumbria. The honorific 'minster' is of Anglo-Saxon date, originally describing a missionary teaching church. The surviving undercroft preserves reused fabric of around 1160, but the bulk of the present building was raised between 1220 and 1472 in successive Gothic campaigns: Early English transepts, a Decorated Gothic nave and chapter house, and a Perpendicular eastern arm and central tower.

The minster is celebrated above all for its medieval glass. The Great East Window, with its image of the Last Judgement, is the largest expanse of medieval stained glass anywhere in the world. The north transept contains the Five Sisters window, five lancets each over fifty-three feet high, filled with grisaille glass.

Its medieval construction followed a Norman cathedral begun in 1080. The English Reformation saw the loss of much treasure; in the Civil War, Thomas Fairfax preserved the building when York fell in 1644. Later centuries brought fires and arson — including Jonathan Martin's attack in 1829 — followed by painstaking restoration.

History

A bishop of York was summoned to the Council of Arles as early as 314, evidence of a Christian community in Roman York. The first recorded church on or near the site, however, was the wooden chapel raised in 627 to baptise King Edwin of Northumbria. A stone church begun by Edwin was completed in 637 by Oswald and dedicated to Saint Peter. Saint Wilfrid renewed the structure on becoming archbishop in 670, and Alcuin later described its splendour.

A Norman cathedral was begun in 1080 under Archbishop Thomas of Bayeux following Norman damage to the earlier building. The present Gothic minster rose between 1220 and 1472, beginning under Archbishop Walter de Gray. The central tower collapsed in 1407 and was rebuilt; the western towers were completed by 1472, when the cathedral was declared complete and consecrated. The cathedral has weathered the Reformation, the English Civil War, an arson attack in 1829, and an accidental fire in 1840, each followed by careful restoration.

Significance

York Minster has served continuously as the chief church of the Province of York for over a millennium, and its dean and chapter remain at the heart of Anglican worship in the north of England. The minster's stained glass — particularly the Great East Window and the Five Sisters — preserves an irreplaceable witness to medieval English religious art.