Rosslyn Chapel Revealed [Hardcover]

Michael T.R.B Turnbull (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2008 | ISBN-10: 0750944676 | ISBN-13: 978-0750944670

Rosslyn Chapel Revealed is intended for those who wish to understand the Chapel, now restored and re-dedicated, and the many myths which have attached themselves to its unforgettable splendor. For centuries Rosslyn Chapel has been the subject of ingenious speculation. The Chapel was designed by Sir William Sinclair, in the 1440s. Funds were put in place to support a priest and clergy whose task was to celebrate mass regularly and pray for Sir William and his family in perpetuity. In 1560, however, the Scottish Reformation intervened and the chapel declined. This book shows that the chapel is first and foremost a Christian building, constructed in the traditions of the pre-Reformation Church for the celebration in word, gesture, and music of the Divine Office and of the supreme sacrifice of Jesus Christ offered on his Cross for the salvation of the human race. The stunning beauty of the Chapel, its unexpected delicacy, and the uninhibited humor of its stone carvings, which have drawn visitors in such avid numbers from all over the planet, are a tribute to the honesty and validity of the religious experience to be found within its ancient walls, in a breathtaking setting of valley and river that is older than time.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Michael Turnball lives in Longniddry, near Edinburgh. He has published a number of books on Scottish history, including 'The Edinburgh Graveyard Guide'.'Curious Edinburgh' (Sutton 2005) and an outstanding biography of the Scottish opera singer Mary Garden.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: The History Press (September 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0750944676
• ISBN-13: 978-0750944670
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,468,946 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gerry Carruthers, 'Open House' 8 Dec 2007, April 10, 2010

By 

Richard Hay "aficionado" (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rosslyn Chapel Revealed (Paperback)

Rosslyn Chapel Revealed by Michael T.R.B.Turnbull (The History Press, 2009)

If nothing else the hysteria, both misguided belief and fear, attaching itself to The Da Vinci Code has brought one of Scotland's most special places to wide international prominence. One trusts that the renewed influx of tourists, an annual increase in 2006 from 38,000 previously to 160,000, is helping the expensive upkeep of the architectural cornucopia that is Rosslyn Chapel. One hopes also that for its visitors some appreciation is engendered that marvellous spiritual expression is not the preserve of weird, subterranean, non-mainstream sensibilities, but is more often the hallmark of `conventional' Christianity. Michael Turnbull has produced a fascinating book that reinstates the religious history of Rosslyn, both church and area, through its various inflections, Catholic, Episcopalian and Presbyterian. He very succinctly summarises the credulity of those who insist on seeing Rosslyn as an alternative culture loadstar after previously detailing some 800 years plus of local history, and so that the reader is left wondering why there is any need for conspiracy theory in the face of Rosslyn's orthodox Christian exuberance and its cheek by jowl existence with everyday industrial and agricultural reality that is here charted so well. What is perhaps most generally striking about Turnbull's book is that the aesthetic and spiritual plenitude of Rosslyn, as with the breath-taking natural beauty that surrounds it, is inhabited so easily by ordinary human beings rather than by mystical cognoscenti. The great manoeuvre of The Da Vinci Code (and the `non-fiction' works in the same vein that preceded it) was to pretend to a kind of populism, letting hoi polloi see that organised Christianity was all a massive establishment hoodwink, while the book itself, with its cast of special illuminati, was actually an elitist-flavoured confidence trick. Also, as G.K. Chesterton might almost have said, in a post-modern age where no stories are allowed to represent over-arching truth, you can make up any `great tale' so long as it is iconoclastic enough and there will be a queue (especially formed from the most cynical, which these days are most of us) to buy it.

Michael Turnbull's tale is a nuanced historical one that does much to explain the pre-Reformation function of Rosslyn chapel's design and ornamentation. The building is soaked in the sacramental vision of the old faith and, as elsewhere the work of Eamon Duffy has shown us, pre-Reformation churches at their most decorative provide in their imagery a repository of spiritual wisdom for the pre-literate age. Clearly, Rosslyn functions in this way; among a wealth of very nicely produced photographs, we find attention to the sculpting, for instance, of `The Corporal Works of Mercy' and of The Sins. Angels, dragons and other such iconography speak not so much of a great code to be cracked, but of a universal vision of spiritual good and evil that the modern age so often wants simply to unravel into a story of man's alternating `Jekyll and Hyde' motivations (the Manichean heresy has been surprisingly enduring and now provides the bedrock of much `modern' psychology). Turnbull restores sanity in summing up the connection (or lack of it) between Rosslyn and the Knights Templar. His comments on comparative architecture between Rosslyn and other edifices demonstrate how natural, if still exceptional, the church is in its conception. He re-evaluates, perhaps rehabilitates, the contribution of Fr Augustine Hay (1661-1736/7) to the recording of the history of Rosslyn in a way that will clearly attract subsequent scholarly interest. The inspiration taken by writers such as Burns and Scott from the environs features, as does the remarkable phenomenon that was the Community of the Transfiguration, brainchild of Brother John Halsey (Anglican) and Roland Walls (Anglican chaplain at Rosslyn and latterly Catholic priest). These are only a few features of a visually hugely attractive book, appropriately enough, the narrative of which spins out to connections spanning `ordinary' social and cultural history and the creative and spiritual wellsprings of human beings in a way much more richly layered than anything The Da Vinci Code is capable of envisioning. Like Rosslyn itself, this book is rather delicious and I would urge anyone with an interest in the Scottish religious sensibility to read it.

Gerard Carruthers (University of Glasgow)