This is Book 11 of my series of books on the history of the Newport Tower, the 28-foot tall stone-and-mortar structure that still stands today in Touro Park, Newport, Rhode Island. Book 1 through Book 8 (over 2000 pages) are a detailed explanation of my discovery that the Tower was designed by the English polymath John Dee. It was intended to be the city-center of the first Elizabethan colony in the New World, the first building of the British Empire (a term coined by John Dee). The Elizabethan State Papers reveal that in 1583, Narragansett Bay was named (by John Dee) the "Dee River and port." This colony was to be governed by Anglicans, but because it was funded by English Catholics, the Crown was allowing all the Catholics who settled here the freedom to worship as they pleased. This freedom was not allowed in England. Unfortunately, the colony never took root, and the Tower was abandoned. Book 9, Elizabethan America: The John Dee Tower of 1583, condenses Books 1 through 8 into 360 pages. It explains how the Tower worked as a horologium, a building that keeps track of time. At the same time the Tower was being built, John Dee was writing his famous Calendar Reform Proposal, at the request of Queen Elizabeth I. Dee's Proposal was similar to the Gregorian Calendar Reform of 1582, instituted by Pope Gregory XIII. Book 10 contains excerpts from the primary and secondary sources, which provide background information about John Dee and the Elizabethan colonization effort of 1583. This work, Book 11, explains my latest discovery. The John Dee Tower is a church that celebrates the Easter ritual: the Crucifixion, Burial, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus. Like dozens of other Medieval and Renaissance churches and baptisteries across Europe, the Tower is a "replica" of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The various windows and niches of the Tower, in conjunction with the movement of the sun, tell the story of the Passion of Christ. Clock, Calendar, and Church Combined John Dee was "Queen Elizabeth's philosopher," but he had been a Catholic priest during the reign of her Catholic sister, Mary I. Dee was quite familiar with the Easter rites that had been performed in English Catholic Churches for over 400 years. The Tower is a "giant sundial clock" that still functions today and will always work, perfectly and unerringly, in the future. In his clever design of the various windows and niches of the Tower, Dee has "concretized" timekeeping, astronomy, and Christian ritual. As Philip Ainsworth Means wrote in the conclusion of his 1942 book, Newport Tower: "The circular arcaded tower at Newport continues to be the most enigmatic and puzzling single building in the United States, a building which may hold the buried key to the early Christian history of the Western Hemisphere." The Tower was Elizabethan England's 1583 effort to plant Christianity in America, and thus I call it the "New World Church of the Holy Sepulcher."
About the Author: Jim Egan, curator of the Newport Tower Museum, in Newport, Rhode Island, has studied the history of the Tower for 25 years.