Semaphore Saints

Semaphore Saints At the west end of the Nave twelve headless saints holding haloes are signalling in semaphore.

Semaphore is a way of sending a message without a mobile phone!!!!

Entrance

Using two flags, or in our case haloes, each letter of the alphabet has its own signal.

Using the semaphore alphabet below, can you decode the message that our Semaphore Saints are sending. Fill in each grey rectangle on the picture with the letter that the Saint is sending.

Saints

A

B

C

N

O

P

D

Q

E

R

F

S

G

H

I

T

U

V

K

J

W

X

L

M

Y

Z

Semaphore Saints – Teachers’ Notes The Semaphore Saints were originally made for a large art exhibition held in York Minster in 2004. They are the work of artist Terry Hammill who since the exhibition has donated them to the Minster.

Why are these modern statues headless?

Statues of saints are easily recognisable by their haloes.

To further identify a saint you must look at what he or she is holding or doing. The picture on the right shows Saint Peter identifiable by his halo and the key to the Kingdom of Heaven. This figure is easily seen between the doors below the Semaphore Saints and dates to the early 1900s.

During the sixteenth century Protestant reformers accused Catholics of praying to statues. In a bid to stop this they attacked statues, either getting rid of them completely or making them unrecognisable by removing the heads and haloes and the objects that identified them. There are many instances of this kind of damage in the Minster.

Terry also made them headless to make the point that without mouths to speak they can communicate in symbols, but symbols can be unintelligible unless you know how to decode them: the same is true of the rest of the building and the symbols within it.

Our Semaphore Saints have been influenced by the surroundings they are in. Although anonymous, they use their haloes to spell out the message which is central to the purpose of the building.

C h

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s t

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