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.

Twenty years on

Today, March 31, is the twentieth anniversary of my reception into the Catholic Church, and, as is my wont on this important personal date, I will repost and revise accordingly my account of the reasons that led to my decision.

Originally  I wrote this piece in my early days of blogging about my reasons for being received. As the years go by I republish it with what seem to me appropriate emendations and additions.

It was on Thursday in the Octave of Easter 2005, and chosen because it enabled friends and relatives who would not have been able to attend at the Easter Vigil to be present and, in one case, to be my sponsor.

I took as my confirmation name Philip - not only the name of the founder of the Oratory and of an Apostle, but also my father's first name and one that I had always liked. So John Robert became John Robert Philip. I subsequently went to the not inconsiderable expense of adding the name by deed poll, so I can insist on officialdom recognising my spiritual journey.

As it happened, by being received when I was, I thereby became one of the very last Catholics to be received into the Church in the pontificate of Pope John Paul II - I feel I squeezed through the door of history in that respect. There are those converts who used to describe themselves as "John Paul II Catholics" or similar phrases. I am, by historic fact and by sympathy a "Benedict XVI Catholic", but, and it is a very important "but", I am a Catholic first - Popes inevitably come and go. That said I consider it an enormous good fortune for the Church and, for me as an individual member of it, to have had Pope Benedict in the Chair of Peter. His pontificate was a great blessing for the whole church, and a wonderful time in which to enter into a fully Catholic life.

As I made my decision to seek reception I codified my ideas about the matter into nine categories or groups. St Edmund Campion had his Decem Rationes which he placed so provocatively in St Mary's Church in Oxford in 1581. Mine are more personal perhaps, but, in that they may interest others, here are my Novem Rationes from 2005:

1. I believed all that the Catholic Church believed - so why was I not in full communion with it? I read the Catechism through and found nothing from which to dissent within it.

2. In particular I accepted the claims of the Papacy and its necessity in order to maintain orthodoxy and unity.

3. As a historian I appreciated the Catholic case for the nature of the Church and the Papacy, and the fact of its historical continuity - Walter Ullman's point that the Papacy is the one governing institution in the West that links the Apostolic age to the Atomic age resonates in my mind.

4. The call to Unity - not only the principal of Ut unum sint  but also the specific claims to expressing that unity with all other Catholics through the Holy See as described by the Fathers.

5. The Catholic Church is seen to act on issues contingent upon Christian belief - Life issues might be the most obvious, but there were others, and with an authentic response being made.

6. I realised that my historic sympathies were with Catholicism - which side would I have been on, or at least I believed I would have been on or wanted to be on in say, the Reformation? Well it was clear. My heart lay with the Catholic cause.

7. The state of Anglicanism was not encouraging. For Traditionalist Anglo-Catholics the situation was one of increasing isolation, and the sense that a Third Province would not be granted.

8. Much as I loved my Anglican places of worship - Pusey House and St Thomas the Martyr in Oxford - I felt that I was called to move on. I was at an age when I still could make a change, but that there was not time to delay. If this was the time, then so be it.

9. I thought that many of my Anglican friends were moving or would move into full communion with Rome. Those friendships, based and rooted in a shared spiritual life, were very important to my own spiritual development, and they were pointing all in the same direction.

Looking back from this point, twenty years later, I have never had cause to regret my decision. There is no "twenty year itch."

I still endorse those nine sets of ideas.

The last three invite some additional comments.

The Church of England has continued on its way, and has failed to have the generosity to provide for Traditionalist Anglo-Catholics. “Women bishops” have arrived and even if not quite as divisive as one expected it is because of them that many Anglo-Catholics have left. The argument that such inclusivity of personnel would lead to a national spiritual revival is seemingly as vacuous as one always thought it would be. What is so very sad to see is the decline of the “Vision Glorious” in the Church of England. It is also very sad to see so much of the life of the Anglican Church as part of our national life unravelling under incompetent leadership.

Anglicanorum Coetibus has been issued - I pray it will be successful in extending the unity of the Church to others of like faith and mind outside its formal bounds. Since 2011 we have witnessed the establishment of the Ordinariate first in England and then in the USA and Australasia. I have been able to help to support those joining it here by acting as a pro-sponsor in two cases, or simply by turning up to support their Masses, and, of course, by praying for it.

Summorum Pontificum reasserted the right to have traditional forms of the liturgy and it has been followed by a strong and positive response, and that needs to be continued - as has been said what was sacred once is sacred now. What has been achieved there needs to be maintained and defended. The success of groups such as FSSP and ICKSP shows there is a real and growing demand for traditional liturgy. I have found myself that during “lockdown” I have been increasingly drawn towards EF rather than OF celebrations. That was, ironically, confined with the publication of Traditiones Custodes. That came as a shock, but in this country it appears, so far, to have had little impact in most places, though I do have friends who have been deeply affected by it. 

I am still on excellent terms with friends from Pusey House and St Thomas', and I rejoiced at Fr Hunwicke's appointment to the latter in 2007 before he moved into the Ordinariate. It has been good to see all that is happening at both institutions for the wider Catholic cause. It was very good for my humility that they could manage and survive without me! I retain enormously happy memories of my time at both places and at also the churches I worshipped at in Yorkshire before I came to Oxford.

Nonetheless I increasingly find it difficult to see why more people in the Anglo-Catholic tradition are not availing themselves of all - and it is so much - that is offered by the Ordinariate. It is all they have ever said they wanted or indeed hoped for - bar, possibly, taking their church buildings with them, and, though I can sympathise in that matter to a great extent, but not to the exclusion of what ultimately matters.

As to my friends - well, I was the second of our group to make the move, and three more followed in the next eighteen months. Two of those married and I have had the privilege of being on three separate occasions proxy-godfather to their children. In the following years two other married couples and their families were received. More recently two other friends from those years made the journey. Four of the men have been ordained to the priesthood.

Along the way I have made many other new friends amongst those converting, and I have been made very welcome in my new spiritual home. I was extremely lucky to have the Oratory and also SS Gregory and Augustine and Blackfriars as places in which to worship regularly in Oxford. The last year has made me more familiar with FSSP and ICKSP churches both here in this country and worldwide - including ‘virtually’ attending Mass on occasion in Switzerland, Mexico, the US and Australia - and that helps to remind one that the Catholic Church is truly Universal. In 2021 I was enabled by Zoom to attend the Priestly Ordination in Washington DC and subsequently the First Mass in his home parish in New Orleans of a young Dominican I had taught in Oxford. That is in addition to physically being present at several such Ordinations, Masses and Professions here in Oxford, Bournemouth, Chelmsford and London. The Catholic Church is attracting some truly excellent young men to its priesthood.

It was as a Catholic that I was able to attend the Beatification of John Henry Newman in Birmingham in 2010 which was a great joy. I feel my journey, my Apologia ( were it ever written ), owes not a little to his influence and intercession.

Being a Catholic has opened up so many opportunities for worship, devotion and understanding - not to mention contact with so many people and places - that I could never have imagined possible beforehand. There is a new sense of belonging, of that which is dignum et justum, from that time on. What happens in time and space also happens in Eternity. For all of that I have a profound gratitude. 

Soon after I was received a friend and I likened the process of conversion and reception not to swimming the Tiber, but to paddling across - when we reached the opposite bank we found friends waiting in the deck-chairs to hand one a towel to dry one's feet and then to hand you a missal or breviary to read as you sat down to watch who would be next to come over.

May St Philip Neri, St John Henry Newman and all the saints continue to pray for me, and for those seeking their home in the Church.

For a bit more background see also my post Ten years ago from 2014.

Book review : King Edward IV as a military commander

As today is the anniversary of the battle of Towton it seems a not inappropriate day upon which to share a review I wrote of a book about the victorious King Edward IV and his role as a military commander. Looking at the other reviews on Amazon of the book the reviews are either very positive or rather dismissive. For once I sought a via media…..

Edward IV and the Wars of the Roses

David Saniuste   Pen and Sword Military 2011

A useful study that stimulates thought

This is a useful book for the specialist and the non-specialist alike. It is valuable for its account of both warfare at the time and in its reconstructions of individual battles. These are excellent, informed, and considered descriptions, bearing in mind how limited are the original accounts. For these Santiuste draws extensively upon up to date interpretations. In all that I would agree with the positive views of most of the reviews, but would enter a few reservations about other things.

Like too many books on this period there seems to be an implicit bias that the Yorkists were ipso facto good because they were successful. Edward IV is not just the subject of the book but starts to become the hero. The same material could show that although he was successful he was in many ways reprehensible.

Edward could turn on the charm, he and the Yorkists were good at the fifteenth century version of PR, but, given the opportunity, he was often ruthless and indeed vicious in dealing with opponents. What we do not necessarily know is why he pardoned some, and what his thinking was in these cases. This is where evidence is, alas, lacking.

The idea behind the book is good - but we need more information to make the picture more complete. So not just Edward as being a successful leader because he won battles, but evidence appears to be lacking as to what made him so - not just being 6’3”, firing up his troops with morale boosting speeches and interpretations of the three suns at Mortimers Cross, and fighting in the heat of the fray. As to the battles he won - how much did luck and the weather feature as determinants at Towton and Barnet, let alone treachery at Northampton? Equally he was wrong footed on the military-political front several times in 1469-70. What we lack is more insight into to his training, formation or natural ability - its lack is not the author’s fault but it limits what he can really say.

Did Edward IV improve his military resources in terms of recruitment, organisation or weaponry? There is something on artillery, but was he significantly in advance of contemporaries such as Charles of Burgundy and Louis XI, though in this aspect he avoided the fate of James II of Scots. What was his impact, if at all, on warfare? Did he have time to think about strategy and tactics in the period up to 1471 when he was actually fighting battles? What, if anything, was his input into his brother’s 1482 campaign against the Scots? Questions like this are largely unanswered, and probably unanswerable.

Inevitably this tends at times to become another biography of the King rather than to fulfil its laudable aim of analysing his military competence and achievement. We see how Edward IV won battles but not necessarily why.

Posted 11.12.2022

The Battle of Towton remembered

I usually post something on this day to mark the anniversary of the battle of Towton in 1461. On this 564th anniversary I realised that over the years I have written a considerable amount on this blog about Towton, and think that rather than spending time copying and pasting links to all these pieces I have written it is easier to suggest that if you want to look at them, readers should go to the search facility, at the bottom of the side bar and simply type in “Towton”, and be taken to a varied set of articles.

Next year is  not only the 565th anniversary, which trips off the tongue more easily, but it will actually fall on Palm Sunday. Maybe someone will organise more to commemorate the events of that bloody and terrible day for that reason alone. It will be the fortieth anniversary of the first of the Anglican rite Requiem Masses I organised in Saxton Church, where the churchyard contains the bones of many of the slain. 

In those intervening years, we have learned considerably more about the battle, notably with the excavation of the burial pit at Towton  Hall, and the comprehensive scientific study of the remains of the victims. It now looks as if the profile.of the chapel commissioned by King Richard III in 1484 has been identified, embedded in the later buildings of Towton Hall. A further significant discovery were the remains of handguns used by some of the troops at the battle. Whether these were English, or perhaps Burgundians fighting with the Yorkists or French on the Lancastrian side, is not clear. 

In one of my previous posts, I speculate on how far reaching the significance of the battle is. For those who were there, it was clearly very significant indeed. For many it was their last day of life. For the victorious Yorkists it inaugurated almost a quarter of a century.of often tenuous power, for the Lancastrians the horror of defeat, exile, and, for many, subsequent violent deaths. it certainly did not resolve the political problems of the realm and in many ways could be seen as exacerbating them. Without the battle of Towton, there would not have been the subsequent battles of Tewkesbury and Bosworth, and probably a very different political history for the country right down to the present day. Would there have been the English reformation, the Union of the Crowns, the Civil War? We cannot know but what happened on the field of Towton changed, one way or another, the course of British history. 

I usually end these posts on this day by asking readers to join me in praying for the repose of the souls of all those who fought and those who died at Towton in 1461.

Render unto God …

A simmering row has erupted once again in the Wesleydale village of Askrigg following the revelation of the newly rendered fifteenth century tower of the mediaeval parish church. The result of the work is that the tower now gleams in the sunlight in a shade which projectors refer to as white and the church says is honey toned. The story first broke almost a year ago when the work was proposed as was reported by the Daily Telegraph in All Creatures Great and Small church in renovation row

Now, with the work completed, to the dissatisfaction of many, the story has been covered again by the paper in Unholy row after 15th-century church tower given brilliant white makeover

I have not visited the church as Askrigg, which looks to be a classic example of a Yorkshire Pennine church of the fifteenth or sixteenth century - a style often associated with the area of Craven but actually found both north and south of Craven itself. The rebuilding of so many of these churches in the period points to prosperity from sheep rearing and the cloth trade as well as cattle rearing. The churches are a rather austere equivalent of the wool and cloth churches of East Anglia and Somerset.

Parishioners and visitors are used to the grey stone of these buildings. However, it is not as good a building stone as is found in other parts of Yorkshire and the rather rough masonry probably needs an extra layer of protection through rendering. According to the Vicar the tower at Askrigg was rendered until the Victorian restoration. At that time external rendering was often enthusiastically removed, as so very often, was internal plaster. The results, both internally and externally, continue to leave the churches with a scraped look. It is perhaps very likely that the newly rebuilt church at Askrigg in the fifteenth century gleamed  in the sunlight rather as its tower does once again. 

Medieval buildings using rough stone that did not cut into ashlar blocks often used rendering to make them weatherproof and to enhance their appearance. Thus it was that the White Tower in the Tower of London was limewashed, and its distinctive appearance stands out in the well-known fifteenth century depiction of the Tower in Charles of Orleans’ collected poems. Castles like Totnes in the twelfth century or King Edward I’s Conwy and Harlech at the end of the thirteenth century stood out in the landscape with their limewashed white walls, and still show traces of it today. A later example in Conwy is the relatively recently restored rendering of the great Elizabethan town house of Plas Mawr,

In Oxford a very familiar landmark is the tower of St Michael at the Northgate. Built about.1040 it now stands displaying its rough  Anglo-Saxon masonry and quoins to the viewer. However before the enthusiastic Victorian restorers got to work it was crowned with battlements, and not the plain low parapet they created, and it seems clear from drawings and paintings the tower was rendered. Once I took this on board I never looked at the tower in the same way. It cries out to have its exposed stonework rendered, its quoins and windows emphasised and its battlements restored. Frankly it is a grand old lady left standing half-dressed before the common gaze.

Archaeological work has revealed that the abbey and cathedral built at Hexham by St Wilfrid in the seventh century was rendered with a pink covering - anticipating perhaps the ‘Suffolk Pink’ of later centuries. Such a church would certainly have stood out in the agrarian landscape of the Tyne valley.

So whilst I can appreciate that for the people of Askrigg the change to their church is dramatic it appears that it is in fact a restoration to what it would once have been.

More on the Episcopal ring from Norfolk and other finds

I recently posted about the discovery and forthcoming sale of a fine late twelfth or early thirteenth century episcopal ring found in Norfolk in my article A medieval episcopal ring found in a Norfolk field

The ring reappeared on the Internet earlier this week as it was due to be auctioned, along with other antiquities found by metal detectorists as is reported in Medieval Ring Worn by an English Bishop Leads a Jewelry Auction

The article also discusses another item of jewellery that is due to be auctioned with it. In this instance it is a mourning ring, one of a set commissioned by the seventeenth century Lord Chief Justice Rainsford of the King’s Bench for his sisters in law. My eye lit on this because many years ago I knew one of his descendants and arranged to include a visit to his memorial in a church near Northampton on a study tour I was organising. The lady concerned died a while ago but she would, I am sure, have been fascinated by this discovery,

The auction has now taken place and the episcopal ring sold for a little more than was anticipated. As I wrote beforehand hope it ends up in a museum or similar collection that enables the public, as well as researchers, to see it. The report on the sale can be seen from BBC News at Medieval ring found by Norfolk detectorist fetches £19k

King James I and VI

Today is the four hundredth anniversary of the death of King James I and VI.

In recent years, there seems to have been renewed interest in his life and reign both as King of Scots and as King of England, even if this is sometimes you somewhat sensational nature reflecting contemporary interests and enthusiasms. His reign in England at least is perhaps now  seen as more than an interval between however one views the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and however one views the reign of King Charles I.

Much of the interest of his life and reign is brought out in an article which turned up in my inbox this morning. It is by Ed West of The Wrong Side of History and offers a useful perspective on the King. His quotations are entertaining and insightful, although it is perhaps a pity that he did turn to any other contemporary historian than Peter Ackroyd. 

In his discussion of the monarch’s attempts to create a sense of a greater Britain I was sorry to see no mention of the proposal for him to take the title Emperor of Britain. As I understood it the emphasis on King James’ slovenly appearance derives from the memoir of one disgruntled courtier, but West suggests more sources. A number of his stories were new to me, including Queen Anne ( or Anna ) shooting the royal pet dog and King James’ views on women clergy. 

One event which is not mentioned which must have been profoundly upsetting to the Royal family was the death of Henry Prince of Wales. This occasioned much grief not only within his family but to the wider nation. It must remain one of the great.”what  ifs” of British history, and I sense that King Charles I lived the rest of his life thinking about what his more confident and out-going elder brother would have done. I posted about those ideas in 2012 in Henry Prince of Wales and in 2013 in The Lost Prince

The article on King James, which is well worth perusing, can be read at The First Briton

  

A new theory about the Sutton Hoo Helmet

The BBC News website has a report about the latest theory concerning the origin of the Sutton Hoo helmet. Hitherto this has been associated with eastern Sweden, but the discovery of a die-stamp on the island of Taasinge ( Tåsinge ) which lies just south of Funen in Denmark, may indicate that the helmet originated there. The article discusses the various possibilities based on the currently available evidence, and what it might signify about the political, cultural, and trading links between East Anglia, Denmark and Sweden in the seventh century. 

The illustrated article about the find can be seen at Sutton Hoo helmet may actually come from Denmark, archaeologist suggests

Wikipedia has an account of the island where the find was made at Tåsinge

Cluny

 

A while back I posted Cluny Re-envisioned about the great Burgundian monastic church.

Now I have found a longer and more detailed video account from Easy Documentary about the building of Cluny III that is exceptionally interesting.

It looks in particular at the technology involved and developed by the community at Cluny to create this spectacular, and innovative  monastic church.in the late eleventh and early twelfth century.

The video, which utilises digital imagery interspersed with interviews with academics can be seen at Cluny Abbey: Building the Largest Church of the Middle Age - Full Documentary

My visit in 2014 was one of most memorable of my life, my interest originating in the fact that my home town had a Cluniac priory founded in 1090. Alas there is even less above ground - there than there is at Cluny, but I could recognise a number of distinct similarities at Cluny and at Paray. This is indicative of Cluniac style and shared design - the monks there anticipated group branding. My post about that visit can be seen at Cluny

I have also posted about the great Abbots who established the monastery at The Holy Abbots of Cluny and about the destruction of the church in A crime against Humanity

Unfortunately in these older posts the photographs have not downloaded, but I think the text is still of sufficient interest without the illustrations.

Medieval vegetables we have lost

Whilst doing my online grocery shopping I was distracted by a video from Medieval Times Discovered about fifteen vegetables that have largely or entirely vanished from modern kitchen, but which were widely used in the medieval centuries. Some were valuable as supplements to diets in winter or times of famine. Most were valuable sources of minerals and made for healthy eating. I was aware of quite a few but it added to my knowledge of what was available. The comments do give examples of the continuing use of these vegetables in Europe, and another’s, such as dandelion leaves.

The video, with a slightly irritating jokey commentary which is a bit off-putting, can be seen at 15 Forgotten Vegetables Medieval Farmers Grew That NEED to Come Back

If you want to try them today I think you will have to get out and get gardening, unless you have a very specialised greengrocer, or live deep in the countryside with unmown grass verges. You would certainly be wasting your time enquiring in a supermarket…

Book review: The Paston family and their letters

Blood and Roses: The Paston family and the Wars of the Roses

Helen Castor   Faber and Faber 2005

An everyday story of fifteenth century folk

This is an excellent book which is eminently suitable for the student of the period or for those with a general interest in life in the fifteenth century, or even as an introduction to the uninitiated. I agree with other reviewers about its general readability and that it engages the reader in the story of the rise and tribulations of the Paston family.

The letters themselves, with their immediacy and mix of legal matters and contemporary politics together with affairs of the heart, family bickering and requests for shopping, make their writers come alive. This book integrates that material into a narrative in which the Pastons and those they interacted with really step out from the page as people one can understand and visualise as being as human and complex, as vulnerable and as hopeful as ourselves. The intervening five and a half centuries slip away and we feel ourselves to be observers in the Paston household in Norwich, their manor houses, the contested castle at Caistor or in London, at court or in court, or at Calais. Although not unique the Paston letters are unsurpassed as a collection and they remind us of how theirs was a literate as well as a litigious society, and make us regret more such family papers do not survive.

One slight criticism that could be made is that the account of the historical background at times moves a little too briskly and the fates of some who were involved in the Paston’s property disputes are not recorded. Thus the executions of the Earl of Oxford and Sir Thomas Tuddenham in 1462 and Sir Philip Wentworth in 1464 whilst not recorded in the letters cannot have passed the family by without some degree of interest.

This is a book that is human and humane, and by no means lacking in the humour of daily existence.

Posted on Amazon  28.3.23

A new book in the Bodleian

I spent a considerable part of this morning and afternoon attending an online symposium at the Bodleian Library. It was devoted to a book the Library has recently acquired. Now there is nothing unusual in that - as Bodley’s Librarian pointed out in his opening remarks the Library takes in something like a thousand books every day. This one however is exceptional.

An illuminated manuscript French translation of the New Testament produced to the highest standards of the day in the Parisian ateliers during the last quarter of the thirteenth century it was acquired before 1350 by the future King Jean II, who inscribed his name in it as a sign of ownership. It may have come to England as a result of the King’s captivity after the battle of Poitiers in 1356, or, perhaps more probably, with his granddaughter Queen Joan of Navarre, who married King Henry IV in 1403. The application of ultra-violet light has revealed the erased names of later English owners - Thomas, later Duke of Clarence, his stepson Edmund Beaufort, Count of Mortain and later Duke of Somerset, who then gave it to his stepfather’s youngest brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Duke Humphrey - or Humfrey - was, of course, a seminal figure in the development of what became the Bodleian Library, and a significant patron of learning and literature both established Latin and French texts and the latest Italian Humanist versions. The volume appears to have disappeared after Duke.Humfrey’s death in 1447 before reappearing in the eighteenth century. Thanks to a government ban on its export it has now been acquired and given a permanent home in the library its last royal owner so clearly supported and valued.

The symposium offered a series of fascinating talks about the book, which is on show in the Weston Library, and, as of today,  also available in digitised form online at Bodleian Library MS. Duke Humfrey c. 1

The full Bodleian catalogue entry with the various recovered inscriptions can be seen at MS. Duke Humfrey c. 1 - Medieval Manuscripts

The Bodleian website illustrates two of the miniatures and lists the impressive array of contributors to the symposium at From Jean le Bon to Good Duke Humfrey

The book itself and the symposium provide and provided a fascinating insight into the cultivated literary tastes and patronage of princes either side of the Channel between the last years of St Louis and the mid-fifteenth century.

Wikipedia has an illustrated biography of the Duke at Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester

 

Humphrey Duke of Gloucester

Fifteenth century portrait by an unknown artist Library of St Vaast, Arras

Image: Britannica