By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
We toured Westminster Abbey just a few weeks after notable scientist Stephen M. Hawking was buried under its floor in June 2018. The interment of the physicist and professed atheist in one of Christendom’s greatest edifices is just one example of the fascinating ironies and contradictions that decorate the lovely old London church.
Hawking was laid to rest in the Abbey’s Scientists’ Corner, between the tomb of Isaac Newton and the grave of Charles Darwin. The local Sunday Times pointed out the irony of the burial site. Newton’s and Darwin’s work are often said to undermine and contradict religion, while Hawking said belief in the afterlife was a fairy tale for people afraid to die.
Hawking called the brain a computer that will stop working when its components fail—“There is no Heaven or afterlife for broken down computers.” Yet, the London newspaper reported that the Dean of Westminster officiating at the burial was “unconcerned” about Hawking’s atheism. The cleric said science and religion must work together “to answer the great questions of the mystery of life and of the universe.”
One of the great questions I had moments later on our Westminster tour was what devilish (or sick) sense of humor dictated the placement of the three famous queens buried there. Protestant Queen Elizabeth I rests in the same side chapel with, and just a few steps from, her Catholic predecessor and half-sister, Queen Mary.
Their family relationship was…well, let’s just say complicated. Mary was daughter to the woman their father, Henry VIII, famously divorced so he could marry (and later behead) Elizabeth’s mother Anne Boleyn. Mary and Elizabeth were sometimes friends but eventually were rivals for the throne.
So too was another Catholic Mary, buried just across the church from them. Mary Queen of Scots was a former queen of Scotland and France. She had married a French prince at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. Some said her claim to the English throne was stronger than that of her cousin Elizabeth I. After holding her captive for 18 years, Elizabeth executed Mary in 1587 on charges of treason.
After Elizabeth died in 1603, James I (son of Mary Queen of Scots) succeeded her as king. James, who gave his name to the King James Bible, exhumed his mother’s body and brought it to Westminster Abbey where he built a tomb for her. It is a bit more fancy than that he gave Elizabeth, the woman who had his mother killed. James died in 1625 and also is buried in Westminster. I wonder if, when the Abbey is closed and quiet late at night, the spirits of these four departed monarchs rise up from deathly rest for what would be a pretty lively family reunion.
Westminster Abbey was built as a Benedictine monastery in 604, but significantly rebuilt later by Saint Edward the Confessor. Saint Edward was a Catholic King (1042-1056) canonized by Pope Alexander III in 1161. On our tour, we paid respects to Saint Edward’s tomb at the venerated center of the Abbey church.
We also saw another sacred spot nearby, the tomb of the Catholic King Henry VII (Henry Tudor). Yet, in the 1500s, his son Henry VIII (who is not buried there) made Westminster Abbey part of the new Church of England. The Abbey with so many revered Catholic graves now is a “Royal Peculiar,” a church responsible directly to the British sovereign who is, of course, the head of the Church of England.
I was most excited during our Westminster Abbey tour to see Poets’ corner, where so many of the great makers (writers, composers, actors) of British culture are buried or memorialized. One, of course, is Charles Dickens. His final resting spot in the church is ironic too.
He was a baptized Anglican, but scholars conclude—from his letters, speeches and novels—that he hated dogma and any kind of doctrinal beliefs. He certainly told a compelling story of redemption in A Christmas Carol, but religiously unaffiliated spirits—not the birth of Jesus—facilitated that new life.
Geoffrey Chaucer is buried near Dickens. He was said to be a devout Christian, but he certainly was quite tough on churchmen in The Canterbury Tales. For example, in one story he depicts a despicable friar who impregnates young women and marries them off to others, who neglects to care for the sick, and who easily grants forgiveness to rich women while withholding it from others perhaps more deserving.
During our tour we also saw that the earthy remains of George Frederick Handel lie with Dickens and Chaucer in final rest at Westminster Abbey. Handel is best known, of course, for his oratorio Messiah. Yet, his church leaders severely criticized Handel for the blasphemy of bringing sacred words/music into common and sordid opera houses. The Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin (Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels) threatened to forbid singers from performing the work.
Westminster Abbey is a soaring tribute to church, faith, and God. Yet, it also stands as a remarkable monument to other indisputable aspects of religion—irony and contradiction. Said another way, our June 2018 tour of Westminster Abbey confirmed for me that religion can be—to use a technical theological term—messy.
*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is writing a book about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah.
