Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of the Red Ark in York Minster

From Canterbury the Pilgrimage now moves to the other historic metropolitical cathedral church of England and the devotion to Our Lady of the Red Ark in York Minster.

The Red Ark was the coffer for donations to the Minster fabric and was situated in the south transept. Near it was the now long destroyed image of Our Lady. I rather assume it stood in the blank archway close to the central tower. My account of it can be read via Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of the Red Ark in York Minster

On the other side of the entrance to the south choir aisle was the statue of King Henry VI on the choir screen which in the 1470s became a focus of devotion to the murdered Lancastrian monarch - so much so that in 1479 King Edward IV ordered its removal. The present statue of King Henry is a nineteenth century replacement. So as the fifteenth century drew towards its close the cult of a saintly English king was flourishing in the Minster.

Since his accession the present King has visited the Minster twice, firstly to unveil the statue of his late mother on the south west tower and secondly to distribute the Royal Maundy. This venerable custom of Christian kingship - apparently first recorded in England in Yorkshire when King John performed the mandatum at Knaresborough - is one whose public revival in the twentieth century is very much an expression of that sacral concept of monarchy.

Our Lady of the Red Ark pray for The King and The Queen and for us all