Cambridge (United Kingdom) (AFP) - The Church of England was on Wednesday urged to rule on whether to allow the removal of an ornate marble memorial of a benefactor to Cambridge University, after student and academic protests at his links to the slave trade.
Jesus College wants to relocate the plaque commemorating Tobias Rustat, arguing his philanthropy was now tainted by his associations with the practice.
An ecclesiastical judge, sitting at the 12th century college chapel where the memorial dominates the west wall, has to decide what to do with it, as it is a church fixture.
Britain is currently grappling with the legacy of its colonial past, in the wake of Black Lives Matter and anti-racism protests in recent years.
In December last year, four protesters were cleared of criminal damage after demonstrators toppled a statue of another slave trader, Edward Colston, in Bristol.
Both Colston and Rustat were leading 17th century figures in the Royal African Company, which made a fortune from the trade in human beings from West Africa.
As well as being a major slave-trade investor, Rustat, who was a courtier to king Charles II, was a major donor to Jesus College, which was founded in 1496.
Last year, the college handed back a donated Benin Bronze cockerel sculpture to a Nigerian delegation, after it was looted in a 19th-century British expedition.
The college said Rustat "had financial and administrative involvement in the trading of enslaved human beings over a substantial period of time".
"What we want to do is not to have a chapel that for a number of people is very, very problematic," the college's Master, Sonita Alleyne, argued at the hearing, which is expected to last several days.
Alleyne -- the first black head of a college at Cambridge or Oxford universities -- said of Rustat: "How much sin do you need to have before you come off the wall?"
'Tainted money'
The college has proposed displaying the plaque, featuring a portrait of Rustat, in another building with information on historical context.
This would mean Rustat's "life and his contribution to the college can be more fully understood", the college's lawyer Mark Hill argued.
He stressed the plan was "not in any way to erase the name of Rustat, who was a generous benefactor to the college".
A group of graduate students stood outside the chapel, holding placards backing the college's plan.
"The Rustat memorial is an obstruction to the whole college community enjoying the use of the Chapel," said one student, who declined to give his name.
The college chapel's dean, James Crockford, said that some students were "disturbed and upset by being faced with it".
The memorial's epitaph makes no mention of slavery, which Britain outlawed in 1833.It says Rustat earned a fortune "by God's blessing, the King's Valour and his industry".
Stephen Conway, the Bishop of Ely, speaking for the college, backed shifting the memorial to a "more neutral place".
Rustat "was enabling human beings to be treated as chattals", he said.
"For us the money that he gave to the college is tainted by the 30 years he invested in the slave trade," added Jesus College academic Veronique Mottier.
Culture wars
Some alumni and descendants of Rustat, however, oppose removal of the memorial, arguing his donations did not come from the profits from slavery.
In court, lawyer Justin Gau, representing a group of around 65 unnamed former students, questioned the need for the chapel to be a "safe space".
"Why cannot Rustat's whole life be put into context in this building?" he asked.
Some have queried the planned removal, since the memorial is believed to be the work of Grinling Gibbons, a renowned Anglo-Dutch sculptor and wood carver.
The right-wing tabloid the Daily Mail has criticised the college's proposal as a move to "cancel" a historical donor.
Alleyne rejected that and charges of hypocrisy."In the last two years we've had no substantive money in from Chinese organisations," she told the hearing.
Rustat gave around £3,230 (some £500,000 or $675,000 in current money) to Jesus College, mostly to fund scholarships for children of clergy.
The Cambridge University Library said in a statement that Rustat also gave it an endowment in 1667 and it was now in discussions about the fund and a statue of Rustat at the original site of the facility.
Oxford University has similarly been embroiled in a row over a statue of the colonialist Cecil Rhodes, sparking protests and calls for its removal.
