The Basilica is beautiful inside and out; here are a few pictures I took of the sanctuary:
St. Dunstan, as the story goes,
Once pull'd the devil by the nose
With red-hot thongs, which made him roar,
That he was heard three miles or more.
While in Charlottetown last week, we visited St. Dunstan's Basilica. There has been a Catholic church on the site since 1816, but the present basilica was built in 1916 after the previous cathedral burned down in 1913. The Basilica is beautiful inside and out; here are a few pictures I took of the sanctuary: The Basilica also houses an amazing Casavant pipe organ: Outside St. Dunstan's is a statue of Father Angus Bernard MacEachern, who was the church's first priest. I did some reading up on Father MacEachern, and let me tell you, he was no slouch. At one time his parish included all of Prince Edward Island, the Magdalen Islands, Cape Breton Island, and the Northumberland Shore of Nova Scotia. This is a staggeringly large territory. The sanctuary contains the actual little dory which MacEachern used to travel about Prince Edward Island to administer communion. It is shockingly small- probably only about five feet long- and not one I'd wish to be in during rough seas: St. Dunstan's namesake is Dunstan (909- 988), Abbott of Glastonbury, Bishop of London, and Archbishop of Canterbury. He was known as a reformer within the English church and devoted himself to rebuilding many abbeys and reestablishing monasticism. He was canonized in 1029. There are a few amusing stories told about St Dunstan. One is that one day while Dunstan was playing his harp, the devil approached him and attempted to lure him into sin but Dunstan held him off by snatching up the tongs from the fire and grabbing the devil's nose with them. There's a little ditty about the incident: St. Dunstan, as the story goes, Once pull'd the devil by the nose With red-hot thongs, which made him roar, That he was heard three miles or more. Charles Dickens also mentioned this tale about Dunstan in his work A Christmas Carol: "Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose." There's also a story about the devil getting Dunstan to re-shoe his cloven hoof. Dunstan nails a horse shoe onto the hoof, causing the devil a lot of pain. Dunstan eventually takes the shoe off, but only after making the devil promise that he will never enter a house which has a horse shoe over the door. This is supposedly where the legend of the lucky horse shoe got started. Related Posts:
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