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'


1 comment:

Matthew F Kluk said...

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.