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.


Thursday 30 December 2021

Putting the Rutland Mosaic into its proper context


The BBC News website has a feature about the Roman mosaic found in Rutland and about which I posted last November in A Roman villa in Rutland and in A video of the Rutland Roman villa

The article is. In effect, a trailer for a forthcoming programme about the mosaic, the insight it gives into the cultural formation, or pretension or aspirations of those who commissioned it. It also looks at how its neglect snd damage indicates the decline anf decay of the villa, presumably in the last years of Imperial rule or in the post-Roman era. This can be used as an indicator of that whole period of transition, or of rupture, as well as the way the whole history of the villa - only 3% has been excavated so far, so there is much more to be revealed both physically and in terms of interpretation - illustrated the lives of villa owners in Britannia.



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