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Word puzzle headstone may have guaranteed entry to Heaven
From [url]www.ananova.com[/URL]
Story filed: 07:57 Tuesday 23rd July 2002
Anything featuring Rev Lionel Fanthorpe deserves a mention in here but even more-so when cryptography and the afterlife meet in one article!
From [url]www.ananova.com[/URL]
Story filed: 07:57 Tuesday 23rd July 2002
Word puzzle headstone may have guaranteed entry to Heaven
Researchers believe a gravestone designed like a word puzzle was an attempt to baffle the Devil.
It was erected in 1832 in the churchyard of St Mary's in Monmouth after the death of Welsh house painter John Renie.
The headstone is an acrostic, a form of riddle known since Roman times. It contains 285 individual letters and the epitaph can be read in 45,760 different ways.
The Rev Lionel Fanthorpe, a Church of Wales priest and qualified mathematics teacher, helped research the stone.
He told The Times: "The idea was for the Devil to be so confused by the jumble of letters on the headstone that he would move on to the next one, allowing the occupant of the grave to slip through the gates of Heaven. This was a time when the Day of Judgment was regarded as literal fact."
But the Rev James Coutts, the Vicar of St Mary's, said: "It's a point of considerable local interest and I have never seen anything like it before, but I think it's nonsense to suggest he was trying to cheat the Devil. I think it was probably intended to be something unusual and a bit of fun."
The paper reports Mr Renie was a radical, and a founding member of the Oddfellows, one of a number of friendly societies that started in the early nineteenth century.
Mr Fanthorpe added: "He would have had plenty of time to prepare for his own funeral, as we know he suffered a lengthy illness which may well have been caused by the toxic materials he would have used in his trade as a house painter. There was arsenic in wallpaper and lead in the paints, and there was a condition known as painter's colic from which he may well have suffered."
The gravestone also records the deaths of Mr Renie's sons John, who died aged one year and nine months, and James, who died aged 83 in 1903, and Mr Renie's widow, Sarah, in 1879.
The 33-year-old's obituary in the local Monmouthshire newspaper described him as an educated man of extraordinary natural abilities.
Anything featuring Rev Lionel Fanthorpe deserves a mention in here but even more-so when cryptography and the afterlife meet in one article!