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.


Friday, 6 December 2024

A thirteenth century Imperial link to Westminster Abbey

  
Westminster Abbey never seems to cease to yield up new treasures from its archives and stores. The Daily Telegraph reports the discovery that a silk seal bag for a 1267 charter in the archives at the Abbey is made of fabric identical with that used in 1225 to wrap the bones of the Emperor Charlemagne in his shrine at Aachen.

The fabric appears to have been woven either in al-Andalus in Spain or possibly in Syria. This is not just an indicator of the range of trading links, interesting as they are, but more immediately of a link between the English royal abbey and the German cult centre of the first Holy Roman Emperor. That it was a very special fabric is indicated by the fact that it was woven in the twelfth century and already old when used in both thirteenth century Germany and England.


That King Henry III might want to associate his promotion of the cult of St Edward the Confessor with that of the canonised Carolingian Emperor is not that surprising. 

What the article does not speculate upon is how the fabric actually arrived in England. Two possibilities occur to me. In 1235 King Henry’s sister Isabella, and with whom he had a close brotherly bond, married the Emperor Frederick II and travelled to Germany. It is possible that the fabric came to England in a gift exchange then or before the Empress’ death in 1241. 

A second possibility is that the fabric came after 1257 when the younger brother of the English King, Richard Earl of Cornwall, was elected as King of the Romans and crowned at Aachen. Although Richard was never able to establish his undisputed rule over all his German territories, he retained the title until his death in 1272.

Wikipedia has biographies of King Henry’s siblings at Isabella of England  and at Richard, King of the Romans



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