Temple Church is one of the most beautiful and inspiring buildings in London. Its Round Church, in use by 1163, is probably the first Gothic building built in England. It recreated the shape and so the sanctity of the round Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, where Jesus and Mary Magdalene met on Easter Day. To be in the Round was to be ‘in’ the Easter Garden, at the centre of the world.
In 1214-15, the Temple and its Church were the site of vital negotiations for Magna Carta. The Charter’s hero William Marshal was buried in the Round Church where his effigy still lies.
The Church’s Chancel, consecrated in 1240 for the future burial of Henry III, is a masterpiece of Early English Gothic.
In 1608, the Crown entrusted the Church’s care to the two Inns of Court, the Honourable Societies of Inner and Middle Temple [‘the Inns’]. The Inns have gladly discharged this duty ever since. The Church, at the heart of legal London, is still the cradle of the Common Law.
The Temple Church is already the one building in the Temple where the community of the Inns meets the communities of London, of visitors, and of jurists from all over the world. The Inns are now equipping the Church, true to its origins in Jerusalem, to extend and deepen this role of intersection: as a place of genuine encounter for our atomized and conflicted world, under the aegis of the Inns and the Common Law, in mercy and truth, righteousness and peace.
