Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Sunday, 24 May 2020

A medieval priest from Lincoln cathedral


By coincidence as I was planning to write about Lincoln cathedral my eye lit on a news feed story on the Internet from the Daily Express about a facial reconstruction of the skeletal remains of a priest found during recent excavations in the area outside the west front.

I do think it a bit tantalising that a closer date for the burial is not given - I am sure that such dating will have been done rather than just saying the chalice and paten is of a twelfth and thirteenth century type. I also wish they would not give people’s height in centimetres. We do not speak of the living that way, so why should we of the dead like that? I had to find a conversion table to work out that the priest stood about 5’6” high. 

The report with photographs and a link to a previous article about the discovery can be seen at Archaeology breakthrough: Facial reconstruction brings 900-year-old priest back to life

The BBC News website had a report about the discovery of the remains, and also covering evidence about life in Roman and Anglo-Saxon Lincoln from the excavations in January and that can be seen at Lincoln Cathedral: Medieval priest's items 'rare find'


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1 comment:

  1. Matthew F Kluk25 May 2020 at 15:55

    It's always amazing to see these reconstruction images. Mostly people just like us. Maybe shorter or in less perdect health. But just as we are now, they once were.

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