Reinterpreting the battles of Stamford Bridge and Hastings

 

There are reports online today stemming from the work of Professor Tim Licence from UEA which proposes a radical reappraisal of the military events of October 1066.

I have heard Prof. Licence lecture online about the battle of Hastings and his detailed knowledge both of the sources and of the archaeology and topography of the battlefield was extremely impressive, and presented with elegance and moderation. He is currently working on the Yale biography of King Harold II.

The new interpretation is set out with maps on the website of the Daily Telegraph at We’ve got the Battle of Hastings all wrong, academics find

The argument can also be found on the website of BBC News at Victorians got Battle of Hastings wrong, professor says

Traditional Austrian Passiontide veils in Carinthia

Today, being the eve of Passion Sunday, is the day for veiling statues and images in churches as we move into Passiontide and draw closer to Holy Week and the Triduum.

Since the 1960s veiling is less universal than it once was in both Catholic and Anglo-Catholic parishes. A friend once opined that it tended to follow diocesan liturgical cultures in the Catholic Church in England. When I was churchwarden at St Thomas’ in Oxford I pushed a little at the envelope of Anglican Canon Law

( there’s a joke in there somewhere I think) by reintroducing the practice during the vacancy in the living. This meant a morning of clambering around the church and fixing the purple cloths. My vertigo meant I was unable to veil the reredos, which had to wait for the assistant priest on the Sunday morning. We carried on with the restored practice and I even went back to help the new acting priest, the late, great Fr John Hunwicke, after I had left the C of E, to keep the tradition going.

This came back to my mind when I saw an article yesterday on the Liturgical Arts Journal about the nineteenth century decorated veils which have been rediscovered and brought back into use at the church at Kaning in Carinthia. These are not plain cloth but painted boards that depict the Passion against a sombre background.

The illustrated article can be viewed at Rediscovered and Revived Lenten Veils in Austria

There is a short discussion of the history of such veiling on the Zenit website which can be found at Questions about liturgy: Should the cross be veiled during Lent

I would add to What the author of the article says that practice does very from one country to another and that veiling the altar and processional crosses and their crucifixes appears quite common in England.

I heard the point this week that such veiling was a northern European tradition deriving apparently from the German hungertuch. Such a veil for the whole altar as certainly known in medieval England, and images were veiled for all of Lent. Some statues, of which original examples survive as well as modern versions, occupied wooden housings with doors gat could be closed in Lent. In 1471 one such pair of doors sprang open during Mass to reveal St Anne to King Edward IV on his journey to reclaim the crown, and was seen as an augury.

Medieval Roman practice was different, and it was the publication of the 1570 Missal, officially only for that diocese, which only veiled from Passion Sunday came to be copied across the wider Church. This seems also to have been the way in which rose coloured vestments spread from the specific rite of blessing the Golden Rose to the city and diocese of Rome, and thence though St Pius’ Missal to the Universal Church.

Sumer is icumen in

The British Library has lent for exhibition until May to the Reading Museum the manuscript produced at the great Benedictine abbey which once dominated the town, and which contains the mid-thirteenth century musical round - or canon - Sumer is icumen in.

This appears to be the earliest English song with music to survive. It is also interesting in that the words are in English from a time when it is often claimed that French was the dominant language of culture and music.

RdgToday has a report in the loan at Centuries-old manuscript returning to Reading after half a millennium away

Wikipedia has a lengthy and informative article about the piece at Sumer_is_icumen_in. It also includes some modern parodies which make for a little light relief.

Reinterpreting Chess in the Middle Ages

Medievalist.net has an online article drawing upon recent research into how we should understand the role and function of chess as a means of contact between different racial groups during the medieval centuries.   

The article makes some excellent points using evidence from medieval texts on chess, but maybe one feels the emphasis on “diversity” as an end in itself is becoming too overplayed in this and similar academic studies…

The handsomely illustrated article may be seen at Medieval Chess Reveals a More Diverse Middle Ages, Study Finds

The Cardinal of Utrecht celebrates a Traditional High Mass

Life Site News has a report about the High Mass according to the 1962 edition celebrated by Cardinal Eijk of Utrecht this past weekend. This was the first time His Eminence had publicly celebrated the Traditional Rite. 

It was also the first time such a celebration was performed by a Cardinal Archbishop in the Netherlands since 1969. This seems to be a further indication from senior figures in the Sacred College and elsewhere in the Church of support for the Traditional Rite which we have seen in recent months.

The illustrated article can be seen at Dutch Cardinal Eijk celebrates first public Traditional Latin Mass 

Re-ordering the Catholic Cathedral in Aberdeen

The New Liturgical Movement has a very enthusiastic article about the plan commissioned by the Bishop of Aberdeen to re-order his cathedral in a way that blends a  contemporary layout with a traditional, mystical, aesthetic and theology. 

On the basis of the illustrations in the report this does look to be a scheme using quality materials and designed to lighten what appears to be a rather dull interior at present. This looks to be a re-ordering to watch, and hopefully see.

The article is available at A Model Schema for Liturgical Art for All Catholic Churches

The Dungeness Wreck

Popular Mechanics has an article about the quite substantial remains of a ship dating from the 1530s to 1540s, the era of the ‘Mary Rose’, which was repaired after 1561, but then wrecked ir abandoned alongside the coastal gravel bank which gradually expanded, and preserved its remains until they were uncovered in 2022. 

As the article argues it was constructed at a time of significant development in English shipbuilding. 

 

The ship is discussed in some detail in Archaeologists Unearthed a 500-Year-Old Ship That Helped Make England a World Power

Even given the concern about the state of readiness of the present Royal Navy I do not think this particular vessel is quite in a state to be despatched to the Mediterranean…

Prosopography of the Peasants Revolt

The academic website The Conversation has an article which introduces the prosopography that has been created of everyone named in the records of the 1381 uprising, and seeing how their previous, and subsequent ( if they had one) lives reveal them as individuals, and not just “the peasants”, revolting or otherwise.

The article can be read at Who were the ‘peasants’ of the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt? New database has answers