At the west end of your cathedral, on the south wall nearest the main entrance, is a large slate stone which records all the names of the Bishops of Salisbury. Mine is the most recent to have been inscribed. I am number 79. Someone else will follow. It serves to make one feel small rather than important.
The first name is that of Herman, whose day falls this month on 20th February. A native of Lorraine (in north-eastern France), Herman was made Bishop of Ramsbury in 1045. He resigned in 1055 when King Edward the Confessor refused to allow the transfer of the see to Malmesbury. He became a monk at Saint-Omer (in northern France), returning to England in 1058 to become Bishop of Sherborne while at the same time being restored to the bishopric of Ramsbury. By 1071, Herman was old and infirm and wished to resign but Archbishop Lanfranc urged him to stay on. There was a plan. Approval of the transfer of the see was given at the Council of London in 1075, thus creating the new diocese of Salisbury, to which you belong. Herman oversaw the initial construction of the Cathedral at Old Sarum but died before its completion, on 20th February in 1078.
Herman would have known where you live and known and cared for your patch of the diocese. A diocese is only the sum total of its parts, and whilst it is the Anglican model of apostolic local leadership, the real strength of mission and ministry is to be found in the local, just as Jesus’ ministry was locally based and exercised. We all follow in the footsteps of those who have carried the flame of faith before us in each place. It is that faithfulness, mirroring the fact that God is faithful, that has sustained our communities down the ages, however much the times and the names change. And God will continue to do so, because He is faithful.
Stephen, Bishop of Salisbury
