Please ignore the robots

It’s just a ruin in a field now, but in 15th-century England, Boxley Abbey was a hotspot for the faithful. Pilgrims would travel from across the land to see a statue of Christ on the cross that was housed in the monastery and was known as the Rood of Grace. On holy days, the Christ would come alive, with a contemporary account describing how the figure hypnotized crowds with its ability to:

“shake and stirre the hands and feete, to nod the head, to rolle the eies, to wag the chaps, to bende the browes […] shewing a most milde, amiable, and smyling cheere and countenance.” ¹

During Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries, when the riches of the Church were being confiscated in the name of religious conformity, the Rood was removed...

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