Winchester College Publication Winchester College War Inscriptions | Page 7

Rendall would surprise readers back into the
Latinate learning of their early accepting and
obedient childhood by employing innately
persuasive classical resonances in the
inscriptions. Rendall’s composition is
dominated by the classical device of the
tricolon (e.g. the threefold faith of God,
country, school; or the gentleness, valour and
steadfastness of the Wykehamist). There would
have been one tricolon more, a mention of air,
land and sea, but there was not room for it –
One of four small gift-stones
resultingly, it is only the Army, not Navy or Air
from the ruins of Ypres, engraved
Force, which is commemorated. The rhythms
with the double cross of Ypres.
of the inscription are the dactylic rhythms of
Latin and Greek hexameter (e.g. nor their country, the stronghold of freedom
… laid down their lives for mankind). There is a particularly strong echo of
the Aeneid Book VI, one of Rendall’s favourite texts, where Anchises charges
Aeneas to behave now like a Roman: tu regere imperio populos, Romane,
memento; hae tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem, parcere subiectis, et
debellare superbos (Roman! let this be your care, this your art; to rule over the
nations and impose the ways of peace, to spare the underdog, and pull down
the proud).
But this deflective cultural tactic could not totally conceal Rendall’s
theological difficulties, his changing views of war, of Christ, and Mary, and
of resurrection.
“I recaptured warfare, which I love…. I would accept service”, Rendall
explained to Harold Baker – and Service it was indeed finally to be. Likewise
in an early version, Wykehamists “put on their armour with good cheer”,
whereas in the final version they do not have armour at all. Rendall’s view of
Christ also alters. In the first version, the dead are commemorated as
“Christian soldiers” who “followed the example of their Master Jesus Christ
and bear his sword”. “Difficulty is felt about connecting the name of Jesus
Christ with active service”, Rendall told the Warden, “I do not think I feel
it.” Nonetheless, in the final version, the dead are not described in either
of these ways.
religion dwelt constantly upon the imagery of the virgin mother
and her child”, Firth explains. Mary played no part in the original
inscription, but by the end the mention of “home and kindred”
introduced the idea of the mater dolorosa and the suffering of
women as passive grievers in a man’s war.
Roof bosses in War Cloister: Sir Herbert Baker, architect;
and monogram of St Mary.
Rendall’s final theological difficulty concerned the resurrection.
“Rendall preached an essentially man-centred message. Specific
references to the resurrection of Christ are few”, Firth tells us.
Originally the Wykehamical dead laid down their lives for
the redemption of mankind. This concept was soon dropped.
Originally the Wykehamical deaths ensured worldwide peace.
This concept departed also. To end his inscription Rendall initially
talked of peace, and the inscription ended with the word
everlasting. But in the final version the last concept is of peace or
war, and the final word is adversity. Indeed, as though to emphasise
the point, the words adversity and mankind are placed opposite
each other.
Unusually, given his generally moderate churchmanship, Rendall had a
strangely large measure of reverence towards the Virgin Mary. “His personal Rendall ultimately accommodates his difficulties with resurrection
by a total change of approach in the final inscription. Originally
the final inscription was about the dead: it started: “they were
Christian soldiers, gentle in spirit, valiant in action, steadfast in
adversity”. In total contrast, the final version is not about the dead
but about us, the living: “thou, therefore, for whom they died…”,
it starts. And the qualities of gentleness, valour and steadfastness,
which in the original described the dead, in the final version
represent the values required of us, the living. This has
slightly unsurprising similarities with the Platonic concept of
metempsychosis, the supposed transmigration at death of the soul
of a human being or animal into a new body of the same or a
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