More details about the Galloway Hoard

As so often happens when one writes about an archaeological discovery and link to online report about it a day or two later there appears a more detailed report which one is also keen to share. 

The other day I posted about work on a runic inscription found on one of the pieces in the Galloway Hoard in The latest insight into the Galloway Hoard. I have now found a more detailed account of this latest research on the website of Popular Mechanics. It is well worth looking at and indicates with its various instances of items that were named as the property of individuals that this was a more literate society that one might initially have imagined. Much of this will doubtless remain hypothetical but named personal items of adornment suggests a degree of sophistication.

The article can be seen at Experts Just Decoded a Big Mystery Surrounding a Famous Viking Treasure

A medieval gemstone seal from Norfolk

I recently posted about a medieval seal ring with a Roman gemstone cameo that had been found at Fishlake near Doncaster and had been purchased for the city museum collection. That post can be seen at A thirteenth century ring from Fishlake in Yorkshire

I now see that a seal not dissimilar in appearance has been found near Kings Lynn and has been acquired for the Norfolk Museums service. Like so many such objects It was found by a metal detectorist. Dated to the period 1250-1350 the pendant seal is again a red gemstone  carved with the image of an elephant and castle and set in a gold frame with an inscription.

The report can be seen at King's Lynn elephant and castle seal find joins museum collection

As with the Fishlake ring such seals are a reminder of the striking items that at least some mediaeval people wore, and the need and desire to have a distinctive seal to authenticate letters and documents. Whatever the literacy of the individual owner they required such seals to authenticate items sent or issued in their name.

I have speculated in previous posts about fines from this part of Norfolk about weather they could have been owned by pilgrims to Walsingham or by people engaged in the important trading networks that flow through Kings Lynn and along the roads and waterways of East Anglia in the mediaeval centuries. That we will never know unless a document bearing the seal impression where to be found which might indicate its owner and something of their life. Even so it is one more link to the past and it is good to see that it will be available to public view in the museum. 

Arma Christi roll discovered in York

The BBC News website has a report about the discovery in the collections of Bar Convent in York of a later fifteenth century copy on a roll of the devotional poem about the Instruments of the Passion, the Arma Christi. This particular roll appears to have been intended for group recitation rather than just private meditation. 

Devotion to the Instruments of the Passion, and indeed to the physical sufferings of Christ developed over time and grew particularly in the later medieval period as can be seen from a Wikipedia article at Arma Christi

The poem is available with a commentary as can be seen from this online flier from Routledge at The Arma Christi in Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture: With a Critical Edition of 'O Vernicle'

In York itself in the Minster evidence for the devotion can be seen in one of the carved shields in the spandrels of the arches of the Lady Chapel. 

The illustrated article about the chance discovery at York can be seen at 

Rare medieval rolled manuscript found in York Bar Convent archive

For those who do not know the extraordinary history of Bar Convent there is an introduction on Wikipedia at Bar Convent

Septuagesima

Septuagesima has arrived, the ‘A-word’ is buried until Holy Saturday, the violet vestments and hangings are back in use - and I must say I was most impressed when watching the traditional rite Mass this morning from St Mary’s Shrine in Warrington by the really beautiful violet and gold cope worn by the celebrant for the Asperges. The lead-up to Lent and Easter has begun. 

Last year I wrote an article for the blog drawing together the links to my surprisingly large number of posts about this season of the Church year. These cover both specific liturgical actions and also the case for a time of preparation for our Lenten abstinence. The article with all these links can be seen at Burying the ‘A word’ and Septuagesima

May I wish a spiritually rewarding gesima season to you all.

The latest insight into the Galloway Hoard

The continuing investigation of the Galloway Hoard of silver from the Viking era has now yields a tentative reading of a runic inscription which may help to explain the nature of the hoard as that of a single community rather than just an individual or family’s accumulated loot, or if so, then as loot accumulated by a community, with a shared sense of identity, of some type.

The research can be read in a summary from The Independent at Owner of Viking Age ‘Galloway Hoard’ of silver and gold finally found

Dresden eighty years on

I recently posted a link through an online article about the rebuilding of Potsdam and how moving a story it is. On the eightieth anniversary of the bombing raids on Dresden it seems appropriate to say something, not least about the ongoing resurrection of the historic city centre of the “Florence of the Elbe”

Wikipedia has what is clearly intended to be a balanced account of the raids of February 13th-15th 1945 and the subsequent smaller raids. It looks at the events and the interpretations offered over the subsequent decades and can be read at Bombing of Dresden

The Duke of Kent, patron of the Dresden Trust, and representing The King, was present in the city for the anniversary and spoke of the work of reconciliation, something to which he has long given his support.

The Daily Telegraph has an article to mark the anniversary and which outlines the delights of the rebuilt city and its surroundings such as the royal palace at Moritzburg Castle

The article can be seen at How Germany’s most beautiful city was miraculously rebuilt

I have a slight reservation about one point it makes: just because the Germans did terrible things to other historic and beautiful cities such as Warsaw does not to my mind, excuse us from doing the same to similar cities such as Dresden and the difference in the scale of destruction makes the bombing of Coventry - terrible as that was - a rather shallow and overworked parallel to invoke.

Ed West has two really excellent articles about the Dresden that was lost and indeed the threats to it had it survived, and about the rebuilding of the city in recent years. They are very well worth reading and can be seen at  The beautiful rebirth of Dresden (1)

and at The beautiful rebirth of Dresden (2)

Quite a few years ago now I visited a small exhibition in the historic University Church of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford about the rebuilding of the Frauenkirche and the British gift of the new orb and cross to crown the dome as a sign of reconciliation. Viewing the photographs of the church before and since 1945 I found myself virtually in tears, tears that people could destroy such beauty, and tears that it was being re-born.

The death of King Richard II in 1400

February 14th is often given as the date of the death of the deposed King Richard II iin Pontefract Castle in 1400.  If that is correct then today is the 625th anniversary of that event. However if his body was publically displayed in St Paul’s in London on February 17th that would surely suggest a slightly earlier date for his death to have occurred to allow for the transportation of his body from Pontefract.

King Richard II

From the Westminster Abbey portrait

Image: Wikipedia 

As to what happened in the castle at Pontefract there is little hard evidence. 

The somewhat cryptic references in the Privy Council records to the former monarch in the wake of the failure of the Epiphany Plot to restore him to the throne yield little beyond that there was concern for the security of the prisoner at Pontefract and clearly rumours or reports were circulating. 

Starvation was alleged at the time as the cause of his death. The new government claimed he fell into depression and refused to eat until it was too late. This is not impossible, and might parallel the later instance of the insanity which seemingly gripped the Empress Charlotte of Mexico when in Rome in 1867.

The opponents of King Henry IV, such as Archbishop Scroogein 1405, charged the King with wilfully starving his predecessor to death.. They may, in addition, have had the allegedly similar fate of the Scottish heir, David Duke of Rothesay, in 1402 in mind.

If faced by an emergency one wonders why his keepers would wait a week to a fortnight, or maybe longer assuming that the patron of The Forme of Cury was well nourished, in an age when everyone carried a dagger and a probably a sword, unless they scrupled to spill the blood royal. Smothering as with the Duke of Gloucester in 1397, and quite possibly or probably the Princes in the Tower in 1483 would be quicker and not leave visible wounds.

The tradition of a violent bloody assault on the prisoner is the tradition of the-contemporary French chroniclers. With his marriage to the child Queen Isabel, daughter of King Charles VI there was interest in his fate and hostility to the new King from leading French figures, such as the Duje of Orleans, as well as the m longstanding view of English as regicicdal now reinforced all the more.

Shakespeare used this tradition in his play and by 1634 visitors to Pontefract were shown cuts on a pillar around which his “barbarous murderes” forced their victim to flee as they struck him down. This is the earliest specific reference to such a feature. It may have been in the Round Tower, the keep, clearly visible on the left in the picture below.

A couple of small rooms, one on the ruined entrance level of the Round Tower and the other the base of the adjacent Gascoigne Tower, being still recognisable as rooms have been pointed out on occasion since the early nineteenth century as ‘King Richard’s Cell’ but only I suspect because they were recognisable as rooms of a cell like nature. It is perhaps more likely he was kept in a larger part of the Round Tower, built as recently as 1374-78, and innermost part of the castle, or in part of the main residential apartments on the north east side of the main enclosure.

In 1530 the newly arrested Cardinal Wolsey asked, upon seeing the castle in the distance if he was being taken there to die “like a beast”, which might also refer to the fates of Rivers, Grey and Vaughn in 1483. Shakespeare gives Rivers lines referring to the castle as the scene of the 1409 regicide. Wolsey need not have worried, being lodged overnight at the neighbouring Cluniac priory.

A further weakness in Shakespeare’s version is the absence from the historical record of Sir 

Piers of Exton. The theory to explain him is that  he may be a misreading of Sir Peter Bukton, who is recorded. 

However the dramatic image of a death dealing blow to the royal skull was disproved when the grave at Westminster was opened in 1871. Although possessed of a thin nature the cranium was undamaged.

At the time the Constable of the castle was Sir Thomas Swynford, the new King’s step-brother, and the Steward of the Honour of Pontefract was Robert Waterton, who had been instrumental in meeting Bolingbroke at Spurn.the previous June. I wrote about him in a post last month at Robert Waterton. 

These were two men with everything to win or lose on the detention or final removal of Richard of Bordeaux.

When there were rumours that he had escaped and lived in Scotland as Thomas Ward until he died in 1419 and was buried in the Dominican house in Stirling one is reminded of the Danish False Okuf of 1402, the careers of Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, of the various false Kings Sebastian in Portugal after 1578, the false Ivan VI in eighteenth century Russia and of Anna Anderson in the twentieth century. When asked about such rumours in 1404 Waterton categorically assured Parliament that Richard was definitely dead - and left it at that. Interestingly he was to include King Richard II his intentions for those to be prayed for at his chantry at Methleyin his will of 1425. He must surely have known more than most ast o what happened on his watch in 1400.

Pontefract Castle in the 1630s

Image: Wakefield City Museum s/ Blogging 4 History

Ii have not yet read Helen Castor’s widely acclaimed joint biography of King Richard and King Henry The Eagle and the Hart. I have seen  her give excellent online seminars and interviews about her work on the two monarchs.

Last year I read Marie Louise Bruce’s  Usurper King which, despite its slightly sensational title and somewhat uninspired cover, attempts the same type of biography and was, I thought, well worth reading. 

Whatever his strengths and failings, his virtues and vices, and he was a complex man in so many ways, gifted yet flawed, one can at least pray for the repose of the soul of King Richard II. 

Magna Carta 1225

 

Yesterday was the eighth centenary of the reissue of Magna Carta and its accompanying text the Charter of the Forest in 1225 by King Henry III. It was these texts which became definitive, and they were the first enrolled as statutes of the realm in 1297. These were the texts which were customarily reissued by later medieval monarchs. Those few parts of the Great Charter which are still part of the law of the land, notably clause 29 ( clause 39 in the 1215 version ) derive their legal force from this1225 revised reissue.

 

The National Archives have issued a translation of the 1225 text on their website. This can be seen at Magna Carta, 1225

In Oxford the Bodleian Library is holding an exhibition until April of their copies of the various versions. This is in the Weston Library on Broad Street. This exhibition is described at Magna Carta 1225

Durham Cathedral Library has original copies of several of the versions of the texts of Magna Carta, including the unique copy of the 1216 reissue, and they will be on display in an exhibition this forthcoming summer and autumn. They are described and illustrated at Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest - Durham Cathedral

In recent years there has been considerable debate as to whether the Magna Carta of 1215 should be viewed as a great constitutional document or as a peace settlement that rapidly 

failed. To that I am always inclined to give the answer that it was both, not polarised alternatives. The same argument can be made about the 1216, 1217, and 1225 reissues and redactions as the government of the young King Henry III sought to establish his rule and a new or restored relationship with the baronage.

Reissuing the charters was a pledge of a new way of conducting the business of government, and turned what had been an unwilling concession into a constitutional resource in the royal hand.

At the same time an indication that things could easily go wrong can be seen in the young King’s response to difficulties in Chester as early as June 1225 and as described by the National Archives in Magna Carta exploited, 1225

As King Henry III was to discover as monarch reissuing Magna Carta did not necessarily lead to a tranquil reign.

An early thirteenth century mortuary roll for a Prioress of Castle Hedingham

The current British Library exhibition Medieval Women continues to generate activity on the Internet. The latest examples are two posts about the mortuary roll created for Prioress Lucy of the Benedictine house at Castle Hedingham in Essex in the years following her death in 1225. 

The first is from the BL Medieval manuscripts blog itself and it can be seen at The mortuary roll of Lucy of Hedingham The roll is now part of the Egerton MSS and consequently a part of the permanent collection at the British Library.

I came upon that article having already seen a piece doubtless inspired by it on Faversham Life which is also handsomely illustrated and gives an idea of the roll with its many contributions from Benedictine monasteries across southern England. It can be seen at The Mortuary Roll of Lucy of Hedingham

The VCH Essex account of the priory can be seen at Houses of Benedictine nuns: Priory of Castle Hedingham

There are other short articles about the nunnery at Castle Hedingham Priory and at Monastic Matrix

It would appear that Lucy was a daughter of the founders of the monastery, Aubrey and Lucy de Vere, Earl and Countess of Oxford, and that she thus belonged to one of the greater families of the country. Hedingham, or Castle Hedingham, was the caput of the de Vere estates, and is still dominated by the splendidly preserved keep of the castle, although little else survives above ground. The de Veres were a comital family from the twelfth century and Lords Great Chamberlain until the reign of King Charles II, when the main line failed. Their descendants include the present co-holders of the Lord Great Chamberlainship, as well as the de Vere-Beauclerks, Dukes of St Albans, and others besides - I knew a family of de Veres in Oxford.

The roll itself with its many contributions by other Benedictine houses is a fine example of monastic confraternity extended to a deceased prioress by other monks and nuns that doubtless most never met her or maybe even knew existed, but who was their sister in religion.

A revealing Ferrara fresco

Arkeonews has a very interesting article about new research into a fresco in the Benedictine monastery church of San Antonio in Polesine in Ferrara, which depicts a tent of Islamic origin being used as a liturgical hanging over and around an altar. 

The article can be viewed at A 13th-Century Italian Fresco Reveals the Medieval Church's Use of Islamic Altar Tents

The history of such altar canopies, either as features or temporary arrangements of cloth hangings, and known either as a baldachin or a ciborium, is set out in some detail, and with illustrations, by Wikipedia at Ciborium (architecture)

Whether the Ferrara tent was one of the spoils of war, a gift - if not by Pope Innocent IV then the court or circle of the Emperor Frederick II comes to mind as a possibility, though a fraught one - a purchases or a self-conscious copy is not clear. The painting does show an interest in depicting the unusual and in seeking a visual illusion, a tromp-l’oeil.

The Wikipedia article at Trompe-l'œil clearly indicates that this artistic device began in the region of Italy that includes Ferrara.

The presence of Islamic or Islamic inspired textiles in medieval Europe is well attested, and I have sometimes written about them on this blog. Expensive silk fabrics produced in the eastern Mediterranean, Sicily or Spain were often used to create vestments and related items for churches and courts. One example of an Islamic inspired textile that has survived intact is the Coronation robe of Kings of Sicily. This was probably made by Arabic craftsman for the Christian King Roger II and is dated, by the Hegira system to the Christian year 1134.

The monastery was refounded by the Este family in the mid-thirteenth century and was a community that continued to receive the patronage of the ruling family of Ferrara over the centuries.

Wikipedia has an account of the monastery at Sant'Antonio in Polesine and there is more about it at St. Anthony Polesine - Musei di Ferrara

Discoveries from the Rhenish frontier of the Roman Empire

Three recent archaeological discoveries in Germany, Luxembourg, and Denmark have highlighted a number of aspects of life in the territories along the border of the Roman Empire in its later years.

The first is from Peterhagen, which lies on the Weser in north-eastern Westphalia, and is very much an elite item - a very small gold padlock of a distinctively Roman type. It is dated to the third or fourth century. The discovery was made by a metal detector.

The lock is described and illustrated by The Independent at Metal detectorist discovers unique golden artefact from Roman-era Germany and in more detail by Popular Mechanics at A Man Found a Tiny Gold Lock in the Dirt. It’s an ‘Extraordinary’ Example of Ancient Roman Craftsmanship.

The second discovery is a hoard of 141 gold solidi in near mint condition which was excavated by archaeologists at a Roman site near Holzthum in northern Luxembourg. The couns were initially found by metal detectors and as the number of items increased it was clear a full excavation was required. The coins were minted by a succession of Emperors between 364 and 408.

There is a report about the discovery from the Greek Reporter website at Ancient Roman Gold Treasure Discovered in Luxemburg

Wikipedia has an entry about the coins with appropriate links at Holzthum Hoard.

The third discovery is not gold but less glamorous items, but nevertheless of great interest. They are some fragments of late Roman armour which had been placed, probably as a ritual offering, in a pagan burial in what is now southern Denmark.

Heritage Daily has a report about the discoveries from the site at Roman helmet discovered in Denmark

.Whilst not directly linked these three discoveries do offer a number of insights into life in the north-west of the Roman Empire as, unconsciously, it moved into a state of decline without realising what was actually happening. Not a sudden or dramatic decline and fall but a gradual transformation.

St Bede on Candlemas

Following on from my post yesterday for Candlemas I see that Christopher Howse wrote about the feast on its eve in his regular Saturday column Sacred Mysteries in the Daily Telegraph. 

In it, as he so often does, he links the celebration of the feast to its place in the history of the Church. In particular he highlights the writings of St Bede and the great age of Northumbrian Christianity in the seventh and eighth centuries. Thus he links the universally applicable theology of the only British Doctor of the Church, St Bede, to a surviving codex in the form of a spectacular and expensive copy of the Bible made in that Northumbrian monastic world and sent as a gift to the Pope. That in turn is an indicator of the fact that the Christians of Northumbria were very conscious of, and loyal to, their Catholic heritage.

The article can be seen at Sacred Mysteries: Candlemas as the homecoming of Jesus

Candlemas - Oriel and the English Oratory

Today is the Feast of Candlemas, the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple and the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is also the ceremonial conclusion to Christmastide and its imagery of light in midwinter.

Over the years that I have been writing this blog, I have posted nearly every year about Candlemas, about its traditions and depiction over the centuries and also about two special, personal links to the day based on my life in Oxford.

Candlemas is the annual feast of my college Oriel, as it falls only a few days after the anniversary of the establishment of the college or House of Blessed Mary the Virgin in Oxford by King Edward II in January 1326, and is the first feast of Our Lady to occur after that date. This year marks the 699th anniversary of the foundation and next year will see the celebration of the septuacentenary. 

The other link is that today is the 177th anniversary of the establishment of the Oratorians in England by St John Henry Newman in 1848. Not only did he place his new foundation under the patronage of Our Lady but it is surely a conscious homage to his time as a Fellow of Oriel and that was attracted him to the Oratorian pattern of life was it similarity to the Senior Common Room in the college.

So today is an especially good one upon which to pray for Oriel and for the English Oratorians.

Rather than attempt to re-write previous pieces I will give links to my previous posts for this day.

They can be seen at Candlemas, from 2011, Candlemas, from 2012, Candlemas, from 2013, Candlemas Day and Celebrating Candlemas from 2014, Candlemas, Candlemas at the Oxford Oratory, and Medieval Images of Candlemas from 2015, Candlemas, from 2016, The Ceremonies of Candlemas from 2021, Candlemas from 2022, Candlemas from 2023, and, with continuing originality, Candlemas from last year.

I regret that in some of the older posts the images will no longer display, due, I assume to copyright reasons, but readers should be able to find the images online from the titles. There are still a fine selection of images of the Presentation and Purification which repay careful study.

May I wish a joyful Candlemas to all my readers and fraternal good wishes to my fellow Orielenses and Oratorians.