{"id":7467,"date":"2011-09-20T17:18:12","date_gmt":"2011-09-20T21:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=7467"},"modified":"2011-09-20T17:34:11","modified_gmt":"2011-09-20T21:34:11","slug":"the-guardian-was-john-wesley-distracted-by-bristol-churchs-topless-statue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/the-guardian-was-john-wesley-distracted-by-bristol-churchs-topless-statue","title":{"rendered":"The Guardian: Was John Wesley distracted by Bristol church&#8217;s topless statue?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The statue of a bare-breasted woman has been uncovered in a Bristol, England, church where John Wesley preached.<\/p>\n<p>Art\u00a0experts removed a piece of 17th century armor consisting of a breastplate and backplate so that &#8220;she now stands \u2013 as they believe the artist intended \u2013 with her green frock pulled down and a red shawl wrapped around her shoulders,&#8221; writes Steven Morris in the British newspaper the <em>Guardian.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Her\u00a0torso was discreetly covered for centuries, prompting speculation that the half-clad figure was considered too much of a distraction for Wesley, the founder of Methodism. The figure is thought to be &#8220;Abundantia,&#8221; a Roman personification of abundance and prosperity. The statue, holding a cornucopia of fruit,\u00a0may have been placed during the 1600s in a building that is part of\u00a0the\u00a012th-century Priory Church of St. James.<\/p>\n<p>Wesley, who lived from 1703 to 1791, held prayer meetings in there before\u00a0his group could build their own\u00a0place of worship.<\/p>\n<p>The statue was found during a restoration of the historic buildings. Conservation experts removed a the armor so that she now stands with nothing between her green skirt and a red shawl wrapped around her shoulders.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;She is pretty super,&#8221; writes Andrew Ziminski in <em>Cornerstone,<\/em> the magazine of\u00a0the United Kingdom&#8217;s\u00a0Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. &#8220;She was covered in a brown sludge and we found her tucked away above the fireplace.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Although he [Wesley] wasn&#8217;t much of a prude himself,&#8221;\u00a0notes Ziminski,\u00a0&#8220;it was perhaps his followers who wanted the figure covered up \u2013 bosoms are bosoms and flesh is flesh.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;She does not feel English to me and could have been taken to Bristol by someone visiting the city on a ship.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/artanddesign\/2011\/sep\/20\/bare-breasted-statue-uncovered-john-wesley\" target=\"_blank\">CLICK HERE to read more<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The statue of a bare-breasted woman has been uncovered in a Bristol, England, church where John Wesley preached. Art\u00a0experts removed a piece of 17th century armor consisting of a breastplate and backplate so that &#8220;she now stands \u2013 as they believe the artist intended \u2013 with her green frock pulled down and a red shawl&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,8],"tags":[1602,2204,266,1601,2201],"class_list":["post-7467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian","category-news","tag-bristol","tag-christian","tag-england","tag-john-wesley","tag-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Guardian: Was John Wesley distracted by Bristol church&#039;s topless statue?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/the-guardian-was-john-wesley-distracted-by-bristol-churchs-topless-statue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Guardian: Was John Wesley distracted by Bristol church&#039;s topless statue?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The statue of a bare-breasted woman has been uncovered in a Bristol, England, church where John Wesley preached. 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Art\u00a0experts removed a piece of 17th century armor consisting of a breastplate and backplate so that &#8220;she now stands \u2013 as they believe the artist intended \u2013 with her green frock pulled down and a red shawl&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/the-guardian-was-john-wesley-distracted-by-bristol-churchs-topless-statue","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-09-20T21:18:12+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-09-20T21:34:11+00:00","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/the-guardian-was-john-wesley-distracted-by-bristol-churchs-topless-statue","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/the-guardian-was-john-wesley-distracted-by-bristol-churchs-topless-statue","name":"The Guardian: Was John Wesley distracted by Bristol church's topless statue?","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-09-20T21:18:12+00:00","dateModified":"2011-09-20T21:34:11+00:00","author":{"@id":""},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/the-guardian-was-john-wesley-distracted-by-bristol-churchs-topless-statue#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/the-guardian-was-john-wesley-distracted-by-bristol-churchs-topless-statue"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/the-guardian-was-john-wesley-distracted-by-bristol-churchs-topless-statue#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Guardian: Was John Wesley distracted by Bristol church&#8217;s topless statue?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7467"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7470,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7467\/revisions\/7470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}