King John and his jewellery

Medievalists.net has an extremely interesting article about King John and his love of both ceremonial and personal jewellery, including pieces that were talismans.

The article can be read at The Magical Gemstones of King John of England

There is more about the King, his appearance, his possessions, his clothes, his court, and the cultural milieu he inhabited in an online article from 2015 which can be read at KING JOHN'S BLING

On the basis of this evidence the loss of his baggage train in The Wash in 1216 must have been all the more destabilising for an already sick man.

His love of jewellery is indicated clearly in the effigy created a few years after his death in his beloved Worcester Cathedral where he had requested burial. If one mentally fills the depressions in his crown and collar with paste stones one can begin to envisage how the effigy once looked and, by extension, what the King looked like in life.

King John 

A detail from his funerary effigy in Worcester Cathedral. Image: copyright the Dean and Chapter of Worcester Cathedral 

More Medieval Maps

Earlier this month I posted The earliest surviving maps of Great Britain linking to an online article about early maps of Britain.

I have now found another online article from Rare Historical Photos about maps of the world from late antiquity through to the seventeenth century. A number are schematic like the Hereford Mappa Mundi from the early fourteenth century. Others however are concerned to give as accurate a cartographic representation of the world as the mapmakers could. Looking at the various maps serves as a reminder of how much was known long before we might think, and that for centuries people understood the earth far better than more modern writers have assumed and claimed.

The online article can be seen at Ancient Maps That Reveal How Our Ancestors Imagined the World

Conserving the twelfth century wall paintings at Ickleton church

The BBC News website has a report about the restoration of the impressive remains of a cycle of wall paintings in the church at Ickleton in south Cambridgeshire. They were only rediscovered during cleaning following a fire in 1979, which means they and the church are not necessarily included in many established books on medieval churches and their decoration. 

The Wikipedia entry for the church indeed quotes Pevsner as lamenting that this important church is not better known for its Norman work. That article can be seen at St_Mary_Magdalene_Church,_Ickleton

The illustrated report on the current conservation work can be seen at Ickleton's rare Norman church frescoes secure conservation funds

The fate of Queen Mary I’s episcopate

I have no wish to be vainglorious, but readers may be interested to see an article that I have written, which has been published in the latest edition of the Latin Mass Society magazine Mass of Ages. Entitled ‘Deprived and Imprisoned’ it looks the fate of the surviving Marian bishops after 1559, And seeks to correct the impression that one often sees in history books that the deprived bishops simply faded away in discreet retirement on their family estates. This was not the case, as they were imprisoned and indeed some faced the possibility of execution. Two managed to escape abroad, but one of them died soon afterwards. The long and tedious years of imprisonment gradually took its toll. They are not men who are particularly held in remembrance, and I hope that the article might help rectify that omission.

Mass of Ages can be found in all good Catholic churches, and is free. The magazine can be accessed directly online and can be downloaded as a PDF.

The article is on page 31, following a reprint of the Daily Telegraph obituary of Fr Ray Blake, whom I had the privilege of meeting on several occasions.

Sagrada Familia nears completion

The new rival to Cologne Cathedral and Ulm Minster, and to the former claim of Lincoln Cathedral, to be the tallest churches in the world is, of course, Antonio Gaudi’s astonishing Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. 

In recent days the basilica’s central tower and spire were completed when the cross was placed on top of the Jesus tower. There remains another decade to work to finish the decoration and details of a building whose foundation stone was laid in 1882. At 566 feet the spire is the tallest in the world - but even then just possibly lower than that which once crowned Lincoln Cathedral.

There is a good video about Sagrada Familia, its architect Gaudi, and the travails faced by the builders during the horrors of the Spanish Civil Wat - building so great a statement of faith in anarchist Catalonia was likely to attract hostility and violence.

As a boy I remember having books in which one pasted pictures of other countries, and a recurring image was of the one completed facade of this extraordinary looking building. I am grateful for having lived to see the verge of its completion, and to do so as a Catholic.

The video about it can be viewed at Sagrada Familia Finally Nears Completion After 144 Years

Surveying the graffiti of Lincoln Cathedral

Just before Christmas the BBC News website reported on an ongoing project at Lincoln Cathedral to find and record the medieval and later graffiti in the building. These date from the fourteenth century onwards and are both sacred and secular in their intention. More than eight thousand have been identified and the survey is by no means complete.

The report can be seen at Extent of  Lincoln Cathedral graffiti revealed

This online visit to Lincoln leads rather neatly into my next post. When some of these graffiti were made Lincoln Cathedral was, whether people who saw it knew or not, the tallest building hitherto built in the world. From 1311 until a storm blew it down in 1548 the central tower - itself the tallest in the country - supported a timber and lead spire which overtopped all others. Often claimed to have been 584 feet high, but almost certainly somewhat less because of physical limitations, maybe 560 feet, it was not exceeded in height until the completion of the Washington monument in Washington DC in 1884, the same decade in which it was rivalled by the completion of Cologne Cathedral and Ulm Minster. Now it has a new rival …

Symbolism and preparation for the Westminster installation

Following on from my recent post about the inauguration Mass for Archbishop Moth’s ministry at Westminster Cathedral I have now found an online video about the preparations for the day, and in particular about many of the items used. These include more images and more information about the amethyst cope morse, the crosier and the chalice used for the celebration of the Mass, and the symbolism of the altar and the Archiepiscopal throne, the cathedra which gives the name of cathedral to every episcopal church. 

As I said in my previous post, and as this video stresses much more emphatically, they all stress the inherent unity of the Catholic Church from the Apostolic Age onwards, and its inherent unity, despite so much upheaval and suffering from just after the chalice was made to the calmer times of the restoration of the Hierarchy and the building of Westminster Cathedral, in England.

The video can be viewed at From Crozier to Cathedra: The Installation of Westminster’s 12th Archbishop

The evolution of Ash Wednesday

The New Liturgical Movement has an excellent article today about the evolution and development of the historic liturgy of Ash Wednesday from the time of St Gregory the Great. It also has a useful note about the development of processions on certain other feast days, although Ash Wednesday lost this particular element in the later medieval period.

The article can be accessed at Liturgical Notes on Ash Wednesday