Cloud of Witnesses: Cobblers

Many of the people who make up the ‘great cloud of witnesses’ in the windows of Chester Cathedral are holding objects that denote their status or position in life. 

For the most part, these objects are self-explanatory: a crozier held by a bishop, a book or quill held by a writer, a sword held by a warrior, and so on. But in the south walk of the cloister we meet two pairs of men in adjacent windows who are holding rather more unusual objects: a very large saw, a carpenter’s square, and what appears to be an enormous roll of Sellotape. And a shoe.

What do they signify? The saw is held by Simon the Cananite, an apostle of Jesus who, according to one tradition, was martyred by being sawn in half lengthways - which is why the saw he is holding is very large. In the same window, the carpenter’s square is held by another apostle, Judas the son of James - though has no known connection with carpentry. These two apostles, one standing and one sitting, are depicted in the cloister window against the background of a lake, presumably the Sea of Galilee, with a boat and mountains on the farther shore.

The huge roll of Sellotape that is held by one of the two men in the adjacent window to that of Simon and Judas turns out on closer inspection not to be Sellotape at all but a small millstone. The man who is holding it is St Crispian, a 3^rd century Christian who was martyred during the Diocletian persecutions by being flung into a river with a millstone round his neck. 

The fourth object, the shoe, is held by an older man who is seated next to Crispian. He is St Crispin. Behind them in the window is a view of the Old Dee Bridge in Chester with the tower of St Mary-on-the-Hill and the Bear and Billet in Lower Bridge Street. Of course, Crispian and Crispin had no connections with Chester, and the view is there simply because the window was donated in the 19^th century by the Troutbeck family who lived in the city.

Crispian and Crispin may have been brothers, though in the window Crispin looks old enough to be the other man’s father. Nothing is known for certain about them, but there are legends. They were supposedly born into a noble Roman family in the 3^rd century and moved to Soissons, in Gaul, where they preached the Christian faith while earning their living as shoe-makers – hence the shoe that Crispin is holding. When Diocletian became emperor in 286, the two were tortured and thrown into the River Aisne with millstones around their necks. According to one of the legends, they survived the attempted drowning, only to be executed later on the orders of the vengeful emperor.

In the 6^th century a basilica was erected at Soissons over the graves of Crispin and Crispian. Some of their relics were later said to have been removed from Soissons to the papal basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura in Rome; but in another legend their bodies had been borne by the sea to England and washed up on the coast of the Romney marsh. Whatever the truth or otherwise of these legends, St Crispin’s name will forever be remembered in an entirely different context: the battle of Agincourt that was fought between the English and the French on St Crispin’s Day (25 October) in 1415. Shakespeare ensured the everlasting commemoration of the event in the speech that he gave to King Henry V on the eve of battle: ‘And gentlemen in England now a-bed shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s Day!’

Unsurprisingly, St Crispin and St Crispian have been adopted as the patron saints of shoe-makers and cobblers, reminding us, perhaps, that saintly lives can be lived out just as faithfully in the ordinariness of daily life and labour as in more sanctified circles. John Keble’s oft-sung hymn expresses the same sentiment: ‘The trivial round, the common task, will furnish all we ought to ask.’ Daily labours can be sanctified if they are done with honesty and good humour. This theme is contextualised in the cobblers’ window in the cloister by its view of the Old Dee Bridge and other landmarks of Chester – the place where, for the Troutbeck family (and for most of us too), the trivial rounds and the common tasks of our lives take place.