There are hundreds of tales recounted about Cambridge, many are probably apocryphal, but they’re still juicy enough to tell people who haven’t heard them yet (or gullible tourists in a punt). While taking the photographs shown below, I noticed the inscription on the Trinity Chapel, which reminded me of one of these tales. I’ve not checked the veracity of the tale, but shall pass it on anyway…
Lying on the John’s Backs in the summer, you’ll often hear the reason why the John’s New Court Wedding cake has no clock. Allegedly, there was a race between St. John’s and Trinity to build a clock on their new courts, as they didn’t want to have clocks interfering with each other’s chimes on the hour. Trinity being Trinity, cheated and finished their clock tower in wood (while John’s built the New Court Wedding Cake with stone). The terms of the deal meant that Trinity now chimes the hour twice – the first time for Trinity, and then again immediately afterwards, for St. John’s. In return, St. John’s was able to choose which inscription should be placed on Trinity’s Chapel entrance, as long as the text came from the Bible. So a verse was chosen from the New Testament Gospels:
“Domus mea domus orationis vocabitur”
which translates as:
“My house will be called a house of prayer”
Sounds innocuous enough, doesn’t it. Except the line following on from this line is:
“Vos autem fecistis eam speluncam latronum”, which translates as:
“You have turned it into a den of thieves”
So, did John’s exact their revenge for not having a clock tower? Perhaps, but the same inscription can be found on the church of Ste. Madeleine at Rennes-le-Château in France, so perhaps Trinity chose the inscription of their own free will…who knows…..