The experience of worship in late medieval cathedral and parish church: investigation, realisation and interpretation

Modern society treasures the heritage of medieval cathedrals and churches. Through them the imprint of medieval religion continues to be made visible. Equally valued are the surviving manuscripts, artefacts and music of medieval worship. However, we are rarely able to connect the buildings with the texts, artefacts and music, or comprehend how they were first used in rituals.

This project makes that connection by investigating the experience of medieval worship in the cathedrals and churches for which it was intended through re-enactments of rituals. With the input and synthesis of knowledge and skills from different disciplines, scholarly and applied, we shall transform medieval texts, spaces and objects into the complicated, gestural and highly sensory experience of medieval worship - engaging sight, sound, smell and touch. Through live encounters, audio-visual recordings, publications, and online resources and interpretation, we will enable specialist and non-specialist, Christian and non-Christian, to engage with the buildings, and to understand their nature, function, ordering and use.

Worship affected and involved every level of medieval society, yet we still know little about how exactly it was conducted and experienced. Only through re-enactment is it possible to analyse and evaluate the experiences of the distinct social groups engaged with that worship: clergy, assistants, musicians and lay people. So far as we can, we have to strip off post-medieval and post-Christian assumptions, and take account of the spirituality of the time. Such practice-led investigation has to be rooted in scholarly research of the texts to establish the content and conduct of the rituals, and of the architectural, social, cultural and religious contexts in which they were used.

The research falls into three phases: (a) investigation of norms of general ritual practice and local adaptation, issues of musical performance practice, ritual analysis of buildings, and religious, social and cultural context; (b) preparation of editions, reconstruction of artefacts, and direction of the historical re-enactments; (c) observation, analysis and interpretation of the experience of the re-enactments, testing the validity of such an applied research process for historical understanding and assessing its transferability to other manifestations of religion and its social context. This involves a research team and supporting research group with expertise in liturgy, musicology, architectural, social, cultural and church history, ethnomusicology, practical theology, and anthropology and sociology of religion - as well as clergy, musicians and craftspeople.

The re-enactments of the rituals will be set in two contrasting medieval buildings: the great cathedral of Salisbury, a building specifically shaped and designed for these rituals; and the modest parish church of St Teilo reconstructed as it was in about 1520 at St Fagans: National History Museum of Wales - one of thousands of churches to which Salisbury rituals were adapted. Salisbury offers the original ritual space (albeit partly changed), clergy and musical resource, an education team and visitor outreach. St Teilo's provides a newly reconstructed medieval interior, museum staff engaged in study and interpretation of earlier buildings and their social context, education and outreach. Both settings enable public access to the re-enactments.

Recent isolated and partial re-enactments of medieval worship have proved revealing, but this project can be far more systematic, comprehensive and of long-lasting value, generating edited texts, audio-visual recordings, and scholarly interpretation and contextualisation of the experience. It will provide a template for future research. The outcomes will be disseminated among scholars, educators and students, to church and charitable bodies who use andcare for medieval catherdals and churches, those who fund their upkeep, and the wider public.

Alongside the academic benefits and research outcomes, this project will have impacts on a range of organisations, official bodies, communities, students and children in education, and the wider public.

The project closely involves two third-sector partners. It also has wider implications for other third-sector church and charitable bodies, professional and practitioner groups, selected public-sector agencies and bodies, the wider public, and all levels of the education sector.

It will achieve these impacts through direct involvement, through online and published outputs, through briefing and report to key organisations and bodies, and through the initiatives and outreach of the partners.

These potential beneficiaries, and the processes of engaging with them, are detailed in the listings of the Impact Plan. This summary is directed principally to the ways in which these constituencies may be affected either directly by engagement with the conduct of the project, or through its outcomes and their dissemination.

To everyone the project offers potential enrichment of understanding and heightening of cultural awareness: if we grasp why medieval cathedrals and churches were configured as they are, how the rituals within them worked, and how contemporary peoples were affected by that ritual experience, we shall understand them, value them, and care for them with greater discernment. Rather than just wandering around sensing the grandeur and wonder of a medieval cathedral or church, we will be able to engage with it for its original purpose, nature and impact. Some of that engagement will be transferred to our own experiences and awareness of the sacred, the numinous, and the creative capacity of humanity.

For those who work in these buildings, care for them or their artefacts, make decisions about how to use, configure, adapt, restore or alter them, this project will offer substantive opportunities to frame their thinking and their decisions with the benefit of how the rituals conducted in these buildings shaped their form, disposition, and layout. That understanding may, in some cases, enable these people to discern how past use may inform present thinking, and even suggest new and imaginative solutions. For those who approve such solutions and plans, who provide funds or professional services, the same enhancement of understanding may be equally significant.

Within individual disciplines, creative and performing arts, there are very specific benefits. Craftspeople will benefit directly from making historically-informed reconstructions of artefacts; musicians may discover new ways of singing or playing sacred music (for instance, how slow or fast a chant was sung to match the length of a ritual action, or why and when the organ played). The questions that may be addressed in this project specifically to one cathedral or church or period or ritual will often be transferable or adaptable to other problems relating to sacred spaces, rituals or objects.

While the research has direct academic relevance, it is worth emphasising the value of the outcomes and resources of the project to the wider world of education, not least to those who teach history in school at Key Stage 3, where Unit 3 requires them to consider how the medieval church affected people's lives: we may also wish to put that question in the present, since those same buildings often dominate our local landscape, have powerful cultural impact, and - in some communities - remain a focus of social interchange. We can do far better than value them as simply 'old' or 'beautiful', and link the architectural and artistic achievement to ritual function, ordering and experience.

For those who attend medieval cathedrals and churches as worshippers, there may be opportunities to reconcile a modern experience of liturgy that may run counter to the culture and sp