I’ve begun work, recently, on a video on the life of Saint Paul, as recounted in the windows of our great upper church. As you may know, the windows were commissioned by then Bishop John J. Wright, the founding Bishop of the Diocese of Worcester. Bishop Wright chose an English artist, then residing in Maine, who was a famous fabricator of wood engravings.
Clare Leighton was born in London in 1898 and sketched landscapes, lower-class workers, and rural life in her early years. She emigrated to the United States in 1939, first living in Baltimore, where she became friends with H.L. Mencken and later joined the Department of Art, Aesthetics, and Music at Duke University.
She illustrated numerous books praising the virtues of the countryside and the people who worked the land, including wood engravings for a 1952 edition of the Old Testament books of Psalms, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, several of whose illustrations appear on these pages. Notice their similarities to some of our windows, all of whose renderings were produced at roughly the same time as her wood cuts.
As the summer progresses, you will hear more about Clare Leighton and her magnificent windows, both at the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Worcester, Massachusetts and the Anglican Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Mary the Virgin in Worcester, England. In the meantime, let us be joined in grateful prayers for the beauty with which God had graced us in our Cathedral Church.
In the Lord,
Monsignor Moroney
Rector
