Christ is Risen Alleluia!

Christ is Risen Alleluia!

He is Risen indeed Alleluia!

The Resurrection 

Piero Della Francesca 1463-65

Sansepolcro 

Image: Wikimedia.org

I make no apologies for using once again Piero della Francesca’s The Resurrection in this greeting to my readers. The “greatest picture in the world” is so compelling an image that it is hard not to use it again.

The figure of Christ tells, wordlessly, the viewer that the World has changed - it will never be the same again.

Two friends shared with me their appreciation of this text from the Divine Office for Holy Saturday, and which has a similar, but, in this case, verbal, approach as Piero della Francesca in this painting. There are significant differences yet the essential truth is there in both. The homilist is, one might suggest, seeking to expressi the Redeemer’s thoughts just as He prepares to emerge from the tomb and step both into and out of time.

An ancient homily on Christ’s Descent into Hell

Something strange is happening—there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all.” Christ answered him: “And with your spirit.” He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”

I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated.

For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.

See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.

I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.

Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.

Text from divineoffice.org

The Wikipedia account of the painting appears to have been updated and can be seen at The Resurrection (Piero della Francesca)

The Khan Academy also has a new article about the painting which can be seen at Khan Academy

Family Rosary has a recent, more devotional, article at Discovering The Resurrection by Piero della Francesca

A blessed, joyful and happy Easter to all my readers 

Washing Molly Grimes on Good Friday

The BBC News website has a genuinely antiquarian feel about it today with the story of the tradition which ended in 1832 of seven maids ritually washing an effigy, popularly known as ‘Molly Grimes’, in the parish church at Glentham in north Lincolnshire on Good Friday.

The article can be read at The curious case of Molly Grimes and Good Friday statue washing and it is well worth looking at the link in it to more of the source material for the story which is at The Northern Antiquarian website

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I hope they can find a way to revive the custom in the church.

I have, I think, read of the Glentham story in books about Lincolnshire. I imagine it originated with the custom of laying out an effigy of the dead Christ at the end of the Good Friday Liturgy which then remained in the church until the Easter Vigil or Easter Day. In an area that was conservative in matters of religion such a custom may have survived, and either consciously been adapted or have evolved through time into the washing of an effigy of a former lady of the manor. That such folk-memories did evolve and survive is attested elsewhere, such as the fresh flowers placed in the hands of a medieval female effigy in the church at Tong in Shropshire. The effigy has apparently substituted for the statue of  Our Lady since the reformers got to work in the sixteenth century.. Another example which is, I think, based on a true story ( but if it isn’t it is still worth sharing ) from the neighbouring county of Nottinghamshire is in Robertson Davies’ wonderful novel The Rebel Angels - and now you will have to go and read it to find the story! 

My Easter gift to you all….

Relic of the Holy Cross Pilgrimage

Earlier this evening I watched the livestream of the opening liturgy of the Latin Mass Society’s Jubilee Year Pilgrimage of the Relic of the Holy Cross. This was at the exquisitely restored shrine church of Corpus Christi Maiden Lane.

Following Stations of the Cross there was a Solemn Procession and Benediction of the Holy Cross, followed by individual veneration. The relic will then travel northwards and visit cities, towns, villages and traditional pilgrimage  sites through the year. This national pilgrimage is taking place as the Latin Mass Society celebrates its sixtieth anniversary. The principal intentions are for the good estate of the Catholic Church and for the conversion of England and Wales.

Details of the route and liturgies can be seen on the official website holycross2025.org

The Royal Maundy at Durham Cathedral

Yesterday the King and Queen went to Durham Cathedral for the Royal Maundy Service. His Majesty is continuing his mother’s custom of taking the ceremony to cathedrals across the country rather than just holding it in London or Windsor.

Unfortunately the service is rarely televised often televised beyond a short clip on the news about a Royal visit rather than as part of a living tradition of the monarchy. I recall watching on occasions when it was televised when the late Queen distributed the Maundy purses in Durham fifty years ago, and her visits to do so at Winchester in 1979 and St David’s in 1982. 

Now, with the development of a much wider range of media transmission, the Service yesterday can be seen in a shortened form on the Royal Family Channel at King Presents Maundy Money at Royal Maundy Service at Durham Cathedral

More about the medieval sealskin bindings at Clairvaux

The Artnet website has a report about the identification of sealskin as the binding of a number of manuscripts from Clairvaux, about which I wrote in Sealskin at Clairvaux

This new article adds further details from the research, partly about the origin of the sealskin, but also about its choice by the Cistercians. The argument is that although the bindings are now brown this is a result of aging, and that originally they would have been white or light grey. This would correspond to the white or off-white monastic habits of the Cistercians.

The article can be seen at These Medieval Texts Were Bound With an Unlikely Animal Hide

Liturgical colours, Folded Chasubles and the Broad Sstole

Now, dear reader, reading that title, don’t get too excited, but I do have some good things to share with you.

Mass this morning according to the 1962 Missal with its change of liturgical colours from red to violet after the Palm Procession made me realise I needed to be sure I was up to speed on what and when, the various changes were wrought in the 1950s and 1960s. Once Mass, Sunday lunch, and the Boat Race were out of the way I betook myself to the Internet in search of the answer.

The excellent Liturgical Arts Journal had three linked articles. The most recent from 2023 outlined the changes in the colours of the vestments for today between 1955 and 1969-70 and can be seen at Palm Sunday: Variations in the Vestments and Their Colours in the Span of Fifteen Years

That led me to two further, and related, articles which I am sure I have shared before with readers, but make no apologies for doing so again. They look at topics beloved of traditionally minded observers of liturgy and vestments, and particularly at this time of year. Both are very well illustrated and clearly well researched.

The more recent, from 2017, is about the History and Designs of the Folded Chasuble

An earlier article from 2009, is on the parent website, that of the New Liturgical Movement. It is rather more detailed and can be seen at Use, History and Development of the "Planeta Plicata" or Folded Chasuble

These days,thanks to the wonder of the Internet, one can sometimes find Masses online where the folded chasuble and broad stole make their traditional appearance. I had the good fortune to tune in to an FSSP Mass in Mexico in 2020 to find these historic vestments in use. If one is really lucky you might, of course, be able to attend such a liturgy celebrated according to the pre-1955 norms.

I am sure you will not need to ask what my views would be on the suitability of these changes to the liturgy.

Book review: Medieval French Nobles

This is another book by the author of the one on peasant life which I republished last week. The two complement each other and draw upon material from the same French regions and era..

"Strong of Body, Brave and Noble": Chivalry and Society in Medieval France

Constance Brittain Bouchard.    

Cornell UP  2017

A valuable and insightful study

This is a book I would thoroughly recommend, and indeed have done to friends.

I have to disagree with another Amazon reviewer Cebes “Useful but flawed study” who criticises it for not offering a simple model of aristocratic life in the period. The point surely that Bouchard is making is that it was a society that was complex and changing, and that generalisations are difficult if not dangerous.

As a work it offers a synthesis of many studies referenced in the footnotes, and is of great value as a bibliographic guide.

 

There is a great deal that is covered and discussed in a relatively short and very readable book. The life of the medieval nobility is opened out and unpacked in a way which is accessible to the modern reader, enhancing and enriching one’s understanding of the past.

I think it has a wider application than just the area the author predominantly concentrates on of Champagne and Burgundy. It is applicable to much of western Europe in the period and indeed for later centuries.

A book that is valuable for the general reader, for students, and for academics looking for pointers with research.

Posted on Amazon  24.3.2023

More good news about Catholic Church restoration

In addition to the announcement about the restoration work in Nottingham Cathedral there is more good news about the great Preston church of St Walburga. 

Now administered as a Eucharistic shrine by ICKSP the church has initiated a programme to undo changes carried out in 1972 and to restore the church to its original 1854 layout as designed by the architect Joseph Aloysius Hansom. 

There is an illustrated article about the project at St. Walburge’s Church set to have original design aspects reinstated

I have never visited Preston but were I to do so visiting St Walburga’s would be my principal aim. From all the pictures I have seen the interior, reminiscent in different ways of medieval gothic churches in both Germany and Italy, is a sight to see, whilst the spectacular tower and spire, added some years after the main building was completed, is the third highest spire, and the tallest on a parish church, in the country. The whole church is testimony to the confidence of mid-nineteenth century Lancashire Catholicism.

Further restoration at Nottingham Cathedral

There is good news this week about the continuing restoration of Augustus Wellby Northmore Pugin’s cathedral of St Barnabas in Nottingham.

I have written before about work there to reinstate the decoration that had been overpainted in the eastern chapels in a post in October 2022 which can be seen at Good news from Nottingham Cathedral

The cathedral has now received a second, and larger, grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to continue the work as is reported by the Catholic Herald at Nottingham Cathedral gets £1.69m National Lottery grant to restore Pugin’s vision

The story is also covered by the Catholic News Agency which has some photographs of the work in progress. This can be seen at Gothic Revival cathedral in Nottingham to shine again with historic grant

Life in the Middle Ages - as it was and as it was n’t

The Catholic Herald has a good article, by Tom Colsy, triggered by his viewing of the new BBC series King and Conqueror on the Norman Conquest, about attitudes to and perceptions about life in the medieval centuries. Last month I linked to a video from the Welsh Viking which did a very good demolition job  on King and Conqueror in How not to represent the Norman Conquest

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Colsy’s article can be read at King and Conqueror is proof that the BBC doesn’t get the Middle Ages

I have written before about how so called ‘historical dramas’ convey a very prejudiced view of life in the medieval period where virtually everything is dank and dirty, with people trudging ankle-deep through mud whilst wearing clothes of the same colour, and where squalor and near starvation is the order of the day.

There is the rather splendid irony that Kingdom Come Deliverance, which is a very popular video game I discovered the other month, is so much more accurate in its depiction of medieval life.  In its particular case it is Bohemia in 1403. The first part of KCD came out several years ago. This has now been followed by KCD II, with much enhanced imaging, and even more possibilities for gamers. Now I am not a gamer myself, but the many links on the Internet give a very good idea of the narrative and feel of the game. I understand the pursuit of historical accuracy included having academics on the set for filming, and even went so far as to recreate the night sky as it was over Bohemia in the time. It does not shy away from the fact that this was a society in which religion was a central factor, and even if it slips occasionally is far better than many costume dramas in this respect. If the Czech creators of a video game can bring to life Bohemia on the eve of the Hussite revolution and wars with accuracy, humour and genuine appeal to the non-specialist audience, why cannot so-called “serious” television and film companies do the same?

And before you ask, I have studied and taught the Hussite period, never mind the Norman Conquest…

Peasants, Customary Law, and Common Law

Yesterday I came across an interesting article summarising recent work by a group of Cambridge University historians and geographers which had looked at the legal rights of medieval English peasants. This argued that they had more rights by customary law within their manors than popular stereotypes might suggest, and indeed that rights and obligations varied across the country. Any study of manorial patterns and management over English regions reveals that, depending very much upon the geography of the area and historic patterns of settlement. The Common Law might be less important to the peasantry but it was not without import in their lives. The image of the oppressed, downtrodden villein has received a further knock from the historical evidence. That is not to deny that agricultural life was hard - it always is - but it was balanced by customary rights, and not without breaks in the routine mandated by the Church.

The article can be read at The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure,

By coincidence last weekend I published here on the blog my review of Constance Brittain Bouchard’s study of French medieval peasant life Negotiation and Resistance which draws similar conclusions about the situation in east central France in the tenth to twelfth century.

Another book I read a few years back which serves as a good introduction to and summary of English medieval rural life is Life in a Medieval Village by Frances and Joseph Gies. This concentrates on the manorial court rolls of Elton in Huntingdonshire, which was a possession of Ramsey Abbey. 

Both Bouchard and Gies are available on Amazon, including Kindle.

Sealskin at Clairvaux

A reader has very kindly forwarded to me the link to an article on The History Blog about recent research into the bindings of a group of manuscripts from the library of the abbey at Clairvaux. Based on the findings the research was then extended to other monastic collections, which showed some similar results.

Modern investigative techniques revealed that these were not deer or boar skin but in fact North Atlantic sealskin. It is suggested that some may have come as tithe  offerings - although I would comment that the Cistercians sought to avoid receiving tithes - or that the seal leather was bought through links to Hanseatic traders. The Champagne trade fairs were not that distant and still an important source of cloth and leather as well as other goods at the time the books were being copied. The history and significance of these fairs is set out by Wikipedia at Champagne fairs

This discovery gives further evidence of the trading links which extended across medieval Europe, When one visits Clairvaux today it seems very far from the sea, and exudes a curious melancholy around the remains of the abbey which is still used by the French state as a prison. In the age of St Bernard and in subsequent centuries it must have been busier and very much a hive of economic activity as well as a commanding centre of prayer and spirituality.

The article about the research into the bindings can be seen at Medieval manuscripts were bound in sealskin

The article makes the point that the monks may not have realised that the leather was sealskin and that seals do not figure very much in medieval sources. I do recall reading - but cannot find the reference at the moment  - of a story, presumably from the Evesham Abbey chronicle, of a discussion in Chapter there of how exactly the abbey was going to feed pilgrims who were expected in coming days. A young monk who had not been paying much attention to the discussion interjected that he had seen a creature swimming in the river Avon that might help. This was a seal, which ended up being used to feed the visitors….. ( sorry about that animal lovers and vegetarians ). There are occasional stories these days of seals coming inland along rivers, though whether one could reach Evesham by the Severn and the Avon I could not say - but then how did the story come about?

The Thornham Parva Retable - and its Frontal

The always excellent series of videos from The Antiquary, Dr Allan Barton, has recently included two about the Thornham Parva Retable. 

This famous, and precious, survival from the early fourteenth century is now housed in the small Suffolk church of Thornham Parva, to which it was given about a century ago. There is good reason to believe that it originated in the Dominican friary church at Thetford and was preserved by a recusant family following the dissolution of the friary in 1538. The Retable has become appreciated and well known as an indicator of what once decorated the friaries, and other churches, of later medieval England.

The video can be seen at How did this painting survive the English Reformation?

This has been followed by a second video which was a complete revelation to me, pointing out that most of the painted altar frontal that originally accompanied it survives in the Musée de Cluny in Paris. The two match for size and style, and their joint survival seems almost miraculous. Like the Retable the history of the frontal until the museum acquired it in the later nineteenth century appears lost.

The video about it can be seen at How are these two medieval paintings connected?

It would be wonderful to see the two items reunited in an exhibition - and, better still, set up with an altar, so that, at least once, the traditional Dominion rite could again be celebrated at it.

Medieval wedding dresses

As we move into Spring, and in a little more than a week move out of Lent. the season for weddings will be here….

Medievalists.net has an article about what is known of medieval wedding dresses. It can be seen at What Did Brides Wear in the Middle Ages? A Guide to Medieval Wedding Dresses

I would add to the article the following few observations. 

The choice of blue for both the Queens Isabella, in the second case in 1396 with fleur de lys, shows how heraldry was very much a factor in designing such very public and ceremonial attire.

We do not know what Elizabeth Woodville wore for her clandestine marriage to King Edward IV. In May 1464. I think the dress so described must be the one she wore for her public recognition as Queen at Reading Abbey several months later on Michaelmas Day.

Although slightly later the article could have included the dress worn by Queen Mary I at her wedding in July 1554 at Winchester. This is described in contemporary accounts and was reconstructed a few years ago. The fabric is a very regal purple brocade, and with a white underskirt. The Queen was keen to follow traditional English custom and wore her hair loose, but this confirms that wedding dresses were fine quality but not white. Interestingly her husband King Philip, wore a largely white outfit but with an embroidered cloth of gold cape given to him by his bride. According to the Wikipedia article cited below he chose not to wear the other one she gave him considering it to be too flashy, as, in his typical fashion, he noted down in an inventory.

There is more about the wedding at The Wedding of the Century Part I: Mary I and Philip of Spain whilst Wikipedia has a very detailed account, which also brings out how descriptions vary, at Wedding of Mary I of England and Philip of Spain

Royal wedding dresses sometimes became church vestments. Thus the dress worn by Joan ‘the Fair Maid of Kent’ when she married Edward Prince of Wales was later given to St George’s Windsor and was used to make a vestment.  A later instance of that is the chasuble at the London Oratory which was made out of the wedding dress of the future Queen Marie Antoinette.

Book review: Medieval French Peasants,

Negotiation and Resistance: Peasant Agency in High Medieval France

Constance Brittain Bouchard   Cornell UP  2022

Insightful and Informative 

This as a book I would recommend very highly to anyone looking both at the history of France in the period and at the life of medieval peasants in general.

This is very much a source based study, and Constance Bouchard, having edited several of them for publication, clearly knows the sources very well.

She makes a strong case for the peasants

hiding in plain sight in the cartularies that survive from the monastic houses, and that if we look at such records we will find them. I am sure that the lessons and insights she offers mutatis mutandis can be applied to other parts of France or Western Europe. Thus England had a different history in regard to serfdom in the same period, but what the book argues could still be used profitably as an insight when looking at English conditions as revealed in manorial court rolls and other records

Yes, peasant life was doubtless often hard, but what Bouchard shows are real peasants, not the archetypes created by historians and social theorists centuries later without reference to the archival evidence. These real peasants showed very considerable vitality in defending and negotiating their best interests. They emerge as lively and resilient, not downtrodden victims.

This readable, humane study which makes medieval people step out of the shadows for at least a few minutes as flesh and blood and not just theories or statistics, is of great value for the general reader, for students and for academics looking for pointers with their research. It is a book which in a relatively short format reveals a lot in an accessible, thoughtful, and informative way.

Posted on Amazon  25.3.2023

Reconstructing an Arthurian romance

Yesterday I wrote about the digital reconstruction of a piece of medieval sculpture from Shaftesbury using computer technology Today it is the turn of a manuscript to get the equivalent treatment.

Cambridge University website reported on work done by the University Library and the University’s Cultural Heritage Imaging Laboratory with a portion of the Suite Vulgate du Merlin, and dated to between 1275 and 1315, which had survived because it had been used to bind some Suffolk estate documents after 1500. The manuscript fragment was only re-discovered in 2019. It is one of a number to survive of the French language text, but each one has differences due to manuscrip copyists individual variations. It has been possible to assign the manuscript to a group within the wider cycle.

Because of the folds and tears, and because the text is in part sewn into the book the Library eschewed the risky process of separating the manuscript out, and turned to the latest digital technology to reach into the recesses and scan the remains. As a result this variant coffee could be retrieved whilst preserving an example of what often happened to discarded texts.

The handsomely illustrated article can be seen at Modern magic unlocks Merlin's medieval secrets

Digital reconstruction of a medieval sculpture from Shaftesbury

The BBC News website reported upon a computer project to digitally reconstruct a shattered late mediaeval sculpture depicting the Mass of Saint Gregory which was found buried in a wall in St Peter’s church in Shaftesbury in the 1970s. 

Digital imaging of all the 170 or so fragments has enabled a beginning to be made on piecing together this once very substantial statue. It is thought to have been six feet or so high when complete.

The report can be read at Smashed medieval statue from Dorset church reformed digitally

There is more about the computer work from the experts involved at Bournemouth University at BU computer animation experts and archaeologists use digital technology to reassemble shattered statue

An idea of the considerable size of the statue can be gleaned from a film clip of the unveiling of the larger portion of the remains of the statue in Shaftesbury Museum by H.M. Deputy Lord Lieutenant. This can be seen at Shaftesbury Abbey on Instagram: "Our restored 15th century St Gregory Mass statue has been unveiled! 

Looking at what survives and the many small fragments of the whole work I am once again appalled by the ferocity of destruction wrought by fanatics in the mid-sixteenth century.

On the positive side to go and see the remains of the sculpture is yet another excellent reason for going to visit the beautiful and historic, and in some ways little known, county of Dorset.

“The work of human hands”

LifeSite News can be a rather curious site, not least for those of us living on the European side of the Atlantic, and for whom a lot of North American concerns seem, well, a bit strange. However it does cover a lot of Canadian stories, being based there, as well as ones from the US. Other stories have a wider appeal and relevance.

One such was a short article by John-Henry Weston, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the website, which was published yesterday.

The point he is making was new to me, and as it was to him, so it is I imagine to many others. His article, which is worth looking at and reflecting upon, can be read at Did you know the Novus Ordo uses a phrase that Scripture associates with idolatry?

Today’s the day…

It not often, alas, these days that one rushes to share articles from the Oxford student newspapers. Neither Cherwell nor the Oxford Student are noted for being much more than a diary of the previous week, or in the case of the Oxford Student rehashing timeworn themes from OUSU. The next generation of Oxford novelists seem to be scribbling away elsewhere. It was therefore a pleasure to come across today the following offering from the Oxford Student - the city of dreaming spires can still deliver ….

Oxford University to abolish Classics degree – The Oxford Student

Mind you, given the destructive urges of some in the Universiry hierarchy, we may be laughing too soon….

Happy April Fool’s Day to you all.