The King and Queen visit the Bayeux Tapestry

This evening the King and Queen, accompanied by the French President and by Mr Burnham, and their wives, visited the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition at the British Museum, which opens to pre-booked visitors next week. 

The BBC News website has a report, including part of His Majesty’s speech, at King Charles, Macron and Burnham arrive to view Bayeux Tapestry at British Museum

King William I 

From the Bayeux Tapestry

Image: Wikimedia Commons

In his speech the King referred to his French ancestry as a descendant of King William the Conqueror. King William I is the 28x great-grandfather of King Charles III, and that bloodline was multiplied by Queen Eleanor of Castile, Queen Elizabeth of York, Lord Darnley, Queen Alexandra, Queen Mary, and Prince Philip (twice over in his case)

King Harold II 

From the Bayeux Tapestry 

Image: History Extra

Furthermore the King is also descended from King Harold II, who is his 30x great-grandfather through his daughter Gytha, Princess of Kviv and the royal lines of Hungary, Aragon, and France through to Queen Philippa of Hainault, the consort of King Edward III. 

From the Valois branch of the French Capetians that bloodline also entered the English, and then the Scottish, royal house through Queen Catherine of Valois, the grandmother of King Henry VII. In that case King Harold is again the present King’s 30x great-grandfather.

In addition all the Kings of Scots since 1437 have also been descended through Queen Joan Beaufort, a great-granddaughter of King Edward III and Queen Philippa, from both King William I and King Harold II.

Those bloodlines are again also repeated through Lord Darnley, Queenr Alexandra, Queen Mary and, again twice over, Prince Philip.

So for the King very much a family occasion.

Feast of St Giles

Today is the feast of St Giles, who has a wide number of patronages, as well as being one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as pilgrims visited his shrine in Provence he became very popular as a patron of churches, chapels and hospitals across much of Europe, and by no means least in England.

I was baptised at the church of St Giles in my home town of Pontefract and for many years the church was a very important part of my life. I have retained a devotion to St Giles, and he is a gentle, kindly, and wise saint to turn to.

The Mass of St Giles

National Gallery, London

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Looking online I found an article about him and his depiction in the now sadly incomplete and scattered altarpiece by the late medieval painter now known to us as The Master of St Giles, and which celebrated his life on the website of The New Liturgical Movement and first published in 2023.

The article can be found at The Life of St Giles

May St Giles pray for us

The face of an eleventh century man from Lincolnshire

I have shared articles in the past about facial reconstructions of human remains discovered in archaeological investigations.

The Standard recently reported on a facial reconstruction of a man who is thought to have died in 1079 or thereabouts, and who was buried in a place of honour in the middle of the Anglo-Saxon church of St Peter at Barton-upon-Humber in Lincolnshire.

There is a detailed description of the church from Great English Churches here

The church is now maintained by English Heritage and their illustrated website description can be seen at History of St Peter’s Church, Barton upon Humber

St Peter, Barton-upon-Humber

Image: greatenglishchurches.co.uk

The report on the study of the remains of the man, who appears to have been aged between fifty and sixty at the time of his death, and was thus born in the 1020s, can be accessed at Researchers reconstruct face of man who lived through Norman Conquest

 

The Beheading of St John the Baptist

Yesterday was the feast, depending on your choice of nomenclature of the Beheading, or of the Decollation, or of the Passion of St John the Baptist.

Over the years I have written quite frequently on his two feast days, of his birth and of his death about St John, devotion to him, depictions of him, and churches dedicated to him.

This time I am returning to a topic I wrote about in 2015, that of carved alabaster devotional images, especially for domestic settings, in An English Alabaster of the Head of St John the Baptist

An article from Substack discusses and illustrates examples of these carvings in Art for the Liturgical Year at Saint John the Baptist and the Forgotten Alabaster of Medieval England

Many examples of these face images of St John are in the V&A, and their website gives access to more photographs.

Other good examples dated to about 1450 and now in Aberdeen and in the Burrell collection can be seen at Simon Knott (@SimoninSuffolk)

Some, though by no means all, still have the decorated wooden housing which set them off, and which could be closed in Lent.

The number which survive out of what must have been a huge number in late medieval England would suggest that this was an image as popular then as the Sacred Heart, Our Lady of Lourdes or of Fatima or the Divine Mercy in modern Catholic homes.

This prompts me to comment, as I have before along with other historians and theologians, about the decline in devotion to St John the Baptist in modern times. In the Substack article linked to above is a citation of an article by Peter Kwasniewski from 2024 on the Liturgical Arts Journal on The Prominence of St John the Baptist in the Old Roman Rite which looks in part at this, although the decline in devotion to the Baptist is, I think, much earlier than the era of Vatican II. Is he perhaps to challenging and uncomfortable for the modern churchgoer?

The martyrdom itself is also depicted in alabaster panels, which were perhaps intended for a reredos.

A good example of this type survives in the V&A and the detailed catalogue entry with illustrations and discussion of the original paintwork can be seen at The Beheading of St John the Baptist | Unknown | V&A Explore The Collections

I have shared this relatively undamaged carving before and am doing so again. It is dated to the 1480s.

 

The martyrdom of St John the Baptist

Image:collections.vam.ac.uk

St John the Baptist pray for us

The Battle of Mohács 1526

 

Today is the 500th anniversary of the battle of Mohács in 1526 when the Ottoman forces overwhelmed the Hungarian army led by King Louis II and broke the ability of the realm to defend itself. In the folk memory of Hungarians it remains an unparalleled disaster.

This was to be followed by the Ottoman occupation of central Hungary in 1541, capturing Buda exactly fifteen years later on August 29th 1541, leaving the Habsburg King Ferdinand I with the west and north of the kingdom and his rival King John I from the Zápolya family holding Transylvania, and the Holy Crown of St Stephen. The Holy Crown was eventually returned to King Ferdinand and the eastern kingdom recognised as the principality of Transylvania under Ottoman suzerainty. 161 years after the battle is 1526 a second battle, almost on the anniversary, saw the Habsburg forces smash the Ottoman army in the second battle of Mohács and free most of the historic Hungarian realm from Turkish rule.
 

 Wikipedia has a detailed account of not just the battle but the historical background, the events leading up to the battle itself and the events afterwards. This can be read at Battle of Mohács

 

There is another detailed and illustrated account of the battle from the website The Past at The end of everything: the Battle of Mohács, 29 August 1526

Recent research into the abnormally wet weather conditions in 1526 in Hungary is set out in an article from  Daily News Hungary.com at Was the weather completely different 500 years ago? This is what was recorded in the days before the Battle of Mohács

Wikipedia also has a biography of the unfortunate King Louis II who drowned in the flight from the battlefield aged only twenty. This can be seen at Louis II of Hungary

King Louis II

A portrait by Titian

Image: Wikipedia 

 His body was subsequently recovered and buried in the royal church at Székesfehévár. His widow was to act initially as Regent of Hungary for her brother King Ferdinand and then for many years as Regent of the Netherlands for her elder brother the Emperor Charles V. She retired with him to Spain and died in 1558, and is buried at El Escorial. There is an online biography of her at Mary of Hungary (governor of the Netherlands)

A jousting Sallet of King Louis II 

Decorated with the intertwined initials L and M for himself and his wife Mary of Austria.

Image : metmuseum.org

It is thought to have been looted by the Ottomans from Buda and was found in what is now Istanbul. 

It is now in the Metropolitan Museum, and there is more about it at Attributed to Kolman Helmschmid - Jousting Sallet (Rennhut) Made for Louis II (1506–1526), King of Hungary and Bohemia - German, Augsburg - The Metropolitan Museum of Art

King Harald V

 

The announcement yesterday, although clearly not unexpected, of the death of King Harald V of Norway has led to widespread national mourning and a genuine sense of loss across the national community. The crowds outside the Royal Palace in Oslo, the carpet of flowers and the comments of Norwegians to interviewers all testify to this.

King Harald V

Image: European Royal History

This is not just respect for the late King as head of state but affection for a man seen as a national grandfather and as someone who cared for his people as a national family. 

King Harald V and Queen Sonja

Image: nine.com.au

His successor King Haakon VIII comes to the throne well prepared both in his age and by having served on several occasions as Regent when his father has been incapacitated. 

King Haakon VIII

Image: nine.com.au

  

  

King Haakon VIII and Queen Mette-Marit

Image: Instagram 

The website of  The Antiquary had in interesting, and very well prepared, video yesterday evening about the historic burial sites of the Kings of Norway before the Union of Kalmar and about the modern royal mausoleum in Oslo. It can be viewed at Allan Barton - The Antiquary

The Battle of Crécy 1346

Yesterday was the 680th anniversary of the battle of Crécy in 1346, the first of the great military victories of the English forces on land in the Hundred Years War. Not only was it a devastating defeat for King Philip VI and his army with a huge number of elite casualties but it was also the battle in which the heir to the English throne, Edward, Prince of Wales ‘won his spurs’. A decade later at Poitiers and eleven years later still at Nájera he was to achieve further great victories.

Edward Prince of Wales

Figure from St Stephen’s Chapel Westminster

Image: world4.eu

Wikipedia has a detailed account of the campaign and the battle at Battle of Crécy

 

King Edward III

Detail from the decoration of St Stephen’s Chapel at Westminster commissioned by the King

Image:royal.uk

On Substack King Edward I has a translation of King Edward III’s letter about the events of the day and of the ensuing events, complete with a little humour at King Edward I (@edwardlongshanks1979) 

  

 A donor statue thought to be King Philip VI

and now in the Metropolitan Museum 

Image: metmuseum.org

Surveying early Christian Sculptures in southern Scotland

The BBC News website reported recently about a survey sponsored by the Sociery of Antiquaries of Scotland to record and catalogue surviving sculptural work in the churches of southern Scotland. As those involved in the study explain in the article this is the type of research done a century and more ago, but which has rather gone out of academic fashion.

 

There is a degree or urgency involved as the Church of Scotland pursues its crass policy of closing so many of its places of worship and selling them off irrespective of their age and history. Say what one may about the Church of England closing churches, but it is nothing in comparison to the cultural and spiritual disaster north of the border.

The illustrated article can be accessed at Sculpted stone study could shed new light on lost kingdoms

A fragment of a ninth century Anglian shrine or tomb found in the south aisle of Jedburgh Abbey 

Image: Reddit

One of the ideas behind the study this to look for any evidence for regional differences arising from political affiliation between those works produced in Anglian Northumbrian Bernicia in the east and those in the west from Strathclyde with its links to Ireland and artistic influences from there. 

   

My own hunch would be that the political divisions would not be such as to impede a recognised sculptor travelling across Lanarkshire or the Cheviots and finding commissions from ecclesiastical patrons. The sculptor’s own original base may well have shaped his style much more than the local allegiances of those he worked for. 

When looking at these sculptures in the report it is importantly to remember that originally these works, usually standing crosses or remains of tombs or shrines, 

would have been painted and the details highlighted. 

 

Remembering St Louis

Today is the feast of St Louis. He reigned as King Louis IX of France from his accession to the throne at the age to twelve in 1226 until his death in 1270. He was canonised in 1297.

St Louis

Image: Wikipedia 

As this year is the eight hundredth anniversary of his accession it seems appropriate to mark his feast day.

Over the years I have written several times about St Louis and to avoid repetition I will give the link to my article from three years ago. This has links to other articles about the saint-king from here on the blog and can be accessed at St Louis

There is a splendid collection of depictions and images of StLouis from across the centuries on the blog  Ad Imaginem Dei at Saint Louis of France – Saint, King and Patron of the Arts

   

Statue of St Louis dated to 1275-1325 from the Grand Reliquary of the Sainte Chapelle. It is suggested this may be the best near contemporary likeness

Image: Ad Imaginem Dei

The latest, well illustrated and detailed biography of him on Wikipedia is at Louis IX of France

One thing that is not mentioned in that, but which I gleaned from another website, and did not know, or had forgotten, is that St Louis was not the first born to his parents, but their fourth son. Medieval infant mortality was no respecter of royal blood. He is the ancestor not only of every reigning European monarch but of virtually all the other non-reigning dynasties on the continent.

Seal of King Louis IX, legend: lvdovicvs di gra(tia) francorvm rex

Image: Wikipedia 

May St Louis pray for France, his descendants 

and for us all

 

Bosworth remembered

Yesterday, August 22nd, was the 541st anniversary of the battle of Bosworth. 

As a battle it is often seen as a turning point in English history that has left a continuing legacy. That is a perfectly reasonable interpretation. 

 

However, it is still often said that Bosworth marked end of the Wars of the Roses. It was not - the last battle was fought at Stoke in Nottinghamshire nearly two years later, and until 1499 there were localised disturbances associated with the pretender Perkin Warbeck.

It is often said that King Richard III was the last Plantagenet monarch - but King Henry VII was also a Plantagenet, but of another branch of the family. 1603 would be a better date for such a change, but even then King James VI of Scots became King James I of England because he had Plantagenet blood.

It is still scaliness the the Middle Ages ended that morning in a Leicestershire field, which is also ridiculous. A better date would be 1529 with the assembly of the Reformation Parliament - and even then the mid-sixteenth century English polity had more in common with the mid-fifteenth century than the mid-seventeenth century.

 

Bosworth is important, but not for providing a useful date for teaching courses and editors.

The last few days have seen a number of stimulating articles turning up online, which may be of interest to readers.

Nathan Amin has written several good books about the Beauforts and the Welsh ancestry of King Henry VII and he has had a number of posts on his Substack site Hireath

One of these is the text written about 1500 by King Henry VII’s court poet and chronicler Bernard Andre which purports to give the speech made by the Earl of Richmond, as he still was, when he landed at Milford Haven at the beginning of August, or, perhaps, before Bosworth itself. The text as given doubtless was improved with classical references by Andre, but the substance is, presumably, what the future king said, as the article discusses. The later rhetorical skills of his granddaughters Queen Mary I and Queen Elizabeth I can be seen in this address.

 

The speech can be read at Henry Tudor's Speech Before Bosworth

Nathan Amin also had a post about two surviving finds from the battlefield and about his own involvement in the annual commemoration at Bosworth - One Day, Two Kings

  

Andrea Povey has an Substack article about an object I was unaware of - a carving which may depict the crucial event of the battle with the death of King Richard III. The carved wooden panel is part of a much altered bed belonging to Rhys ap Thomas who may have struck the fatal blow to the last Yorkist monarch.

The illustrated article can be seen at Boasting of Killing a King 

Such has been the growth of Ricardian sentiment that it is King Richard who receives most of the attention in coverage of Bosworth. The young exile who risked all and won gets less attention as the hero of the day and as an individual.

One of the best sites doing historical facial

reconstructions of figures from the past, despite a rather overly earnest and loaded voiced introduction, a good study of what King Henry VII actually looked like. It uses the death mask, the works of Pietro Torrigiano and the Michael Sitow’s portrait from 1505. That painting always gives the impression of catching the King on a bad day, and the video’s facial recreation does redress that.

The video can be seen at Royalty Now Studios

 

King Henry VII

Bust by Pietro Torrigiano

Image: V&A Images 

Chester Castle Chapel re-envisioned

Chester Castle has seen many changes and many rebuildings over the centuries whilst still retaining significant historic features. One such is the thirteenth century chapel of St Mary de Castro in the Agricola Tower. Built about 1210 as part of the gatehouse to the inner ward it contained the chapel, which was painted in the latest style in the 1240s. This was presumably part of a series of alterations to extend the residential accommodation in the inner ward and involved blocking the gateway in the Agricola Tower.

The Earldom of Chester, which included the castle, escheated to the Crown in 1237, and in 1241 King Henry III compensated surviving claimants from the late Earl’s family with land elsewhere. Finally in 1246 the Earldom was annexed to the Crown, subsequently being bestowed on the reigning monarch’s eldest son, as it still is.

The decorative scheme of the chapel would appear to reflect the court culture of King Henry III, so well documented in his surviving archives, but of which tragically little survives in situ. The chapel at Chester does at least give us a building and traces of paintwork to begin to imagine what it once looked like.

Work in recent years has exposed the fragmentary remains of the decorative scheme and this has now been studied and a reconstruction created. I first came upon this on the Substack site of The Fake History Hunter which stresses the importance of colour in medieval life, and it can be accessed at The Fake History Hunter (@fakehistoryhunter)

The English Heritage website to which it links, and which discusses the remaining artwork and seeks to reconstruct it, can be found at The Chester Castle Chapel Wall Paintings

The reconstruction of the original scheme in the chapel 

Image: English Heritage 

The effect created in the reconstruction is not dissimilar to that made by the Arena or Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, painted by Giotto in 1303-05. Wikipedia has a detailed account of that masterwork at Scrovegni Chapel

Wikipedia has an illustrated history of Chester Castle and its buildings which can be viewed at Chester Castle

Medieval Gardening

Recently I came upon a video from Medieval Way  based upon Jon Gardener’s 1440s The Feate of Gardening, the earliest surviving guide written in English to the practicalities of gardening.

Beyobd his text nothing else is known about Gardener. What can be gleaned from his poem can be seen summarised in Jon Gardener | Encyclopedia.com

JSTOR has a link, if you subscribe or have access, to an article from Garden History vol 13, pt 2, 1985 by the distinguished architectural historian John H. Harvey entitled ‘The First English Garden Book: Mayster Jon  Gardener’s Treatise and its Background’

  

Creating a medieval garden

1470-75

Bibliotèque de l’Arsenal

Image : Medieval Histories

 

The fatal impact of a trebuchet?

A shote while ago I shared a link to the analysis and apparent identification of an English soldier from the 1340s Anglo-Scottish conflict, whose skeleton had been found in the remains of the medieval chapel of Stirling Castle. That article can be accessed at Reconstruction of a medieval male skeleton from Stirling Castle.

 Now there is news on Live Science of another study of a skeleton from the same chapel but from the time of King Edward I’s siege of the castle at Stirling in 1304 during the earlier war. In this case the skeleton was that of, presumably, a Scottish soldier who had died in his twenties from traumatic injuries. The theory advanced is that he was struck from behind by a stone lobbed by one of the English trebuchets and that his, mercifully, instantaneous death resembled a modern car accident.

The article about the study can be seen at Skeleton with 167 fractures discovered at Scottish castle may have been first victim of Edward I's 'War Wolf' trebuchet

 

Historic Environment Scotland has a good account of the siege engines and the actual siege of Stirling at The War Wolf at Stirling Castle  

  

A trebuchet in action from the Maciejowski Bible of circa 1240

Pierpont Morgan Library

Image: World History Encyclopaedia 

 Wikipedia has a quite detailed account of these mighty siege engines at Trebuchet

Medievalists.net has another, short, article at The Engineering Beauty of the Trebuchet

  

 

A modern reconstruction of the Stirling ‘War Wolf’

Image: Wikimedia 

Devotion to King Henry VI

Readers will, hopefully, recall that I have shared in the past the link to articles I have had published in Mass of Ages, the magazine of the Latin Mass Society. The latest issue has another of my articles, and that will,I hope, be of interest to readers of this blog

“A prayerful, humble life” looks at the development ofdevrion to King Henry VI following his murder in 1471 and the subsequent development of a cultus, and serious attempts to get him canonised. 

 

The article is on page 8 and the autumn edition can be accessed here 

    

It is clear that King Henry was encouraged into a life of prayer and piety from his earliest years:

    

  

King Henry VI is presented by St Katherine, his mother’s patron saint, to the Virgin and Child

From the Psalter of King Henry VI, in the Royal MSS circa 1428-30 in the British Library  

The image clearly recalls the iconography of the Wilton Diptych commissioned by King Richard II a generation earlier

Image:Print Collector  

 

The Assumption of Our Lady

The Dormition and Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Bl. Fra. Angelico  

Dated to 1424-34 and originally an altarpiece in the Basilica of San Marco in Florence, now in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston

Image:anastpaul.com

To mark this weekend’s great feast, and to remind readers of the traditional observances around the celebration of Our Lady’s entry into Heaven, the website OnePeterFive has a linked set of articles about the customs of past generations and centuries, and indeed encourages, their revival, which can be accessed at The Forgotten Customs of Assumption Day

A joyful and splendid celebration of the Assumption of Our Lady to all my readers

Eclipses - past, present, and future

Yesterday’s almost total eclipse here in the UK, and the total eclipse in Iceland, parts of Ireland and in Spain caught the imagination of very many of us. In my case it sent me on a quick internet search for recorded eclipses in the past.

Wikipedia and NASA both have articles which indicate the not only when they occurred but also which places were more likely to experience them.The articles can be accessed at List of solar eclipses visible from the British Isles and at Solar Eclipses Visible from London, England

The coverage on television from Iceland made the point that the last total eclipse was visible from Reykjavik had been in 1433.

Here in Britain there were no total eclipses between  1485 and 1598, with one annular eclipse in 1547.

More remarkable is the fact that there were no total eclipses visible in Great Britain between 1724 and 1925 ( only visible off shore of the outer Hebrides) and 1927 on the mainland. Putting it another way King George III and his sons, Queen Victoria, King Edward VII, the Duke of Wellington, Palmerston, Disraeli, Gladstone and Newman, and many others besides, had no chance to see a total eclipse whilst at home.

 Mind you next year’s eclipse visible from Sydney in Australia will be the last one visible there for more than the on next eight centuries.

Historically Scotland, especially the far north, is more likely to offer opportunities for eclipse sightings.

  

Live Science has reproduced the first written account of a total eclipse. It was written by Archilochus in the seventh century BC. He lived in the island of Paros and witnessed a total eclipse there on April 6th 648 BC. The account of the author, and his reaction, seen at 'No longer will anything seem impossible or marvellous': How an 'immoral, foul-mouthed and violent man' wrote the first eyewitness account of a total solar eclipse​​

I watched the last near total eclipse in Oxford in 1999. I recall the strange, eerie greyish light as the maximum point approached, the strange quiet that accompanied it. Watching the coverage yesterday evening on the television coverage and looking out from my window it was again, not surprisingly, very much the same, a uniquely distinctive phenomenon. 

 

IMAGE SOURCE,m

An excellent architectural website

Recently whilst searching online for an image to illustrate an article I had written for a magazine I came upon the work of David Bridgwater and his meticulous work on historic buildings at his blog Bath, Art and Architecture

This appears to have begun with studies of the architecture of the city of Bath, but on occasion extends to cover other cities and buildings. I sensed a kindred spirit in his concern to record not only what survives, but also what has been lost, and his sense of place and belonging.

 

Three examples of his work can be seen. Firstly there is his account of the Oxford Arms in the west side of Warwick Lane. Farringdon Within. I had seen photographs of this galleried inn before, but it was good to have more information about the buildings and their history. It is tragic to think that such a remarkable, albeit very decayed, building survived until 1876 - into the childhood of my grandparents - and that no-one saved it. Indeed it is remarkable how many buildings of this era, pre-dating the Great Fire, survived into the late nineteenth century only to be destroyed at the time when there were moves to not just record but to preserve such buildings.

The Oxford Arms

Demolished 1876

Image: Bath, Art and Architecture 

The article can be seen at Oxford Arms, Warwick Lane, Faringdon Within, City of London

The second study concentrates on a fine plaster ceiling rescued in 1961 from the former Feathers Inn in Nottingham city centre. This was a time when city and town centres were being bulldozed with little or no concern for the losses to the local and national heritage. I do not recall seeing the building on my visits as a child to Nottingham in those years, but I may have. I have checked with David and the ceiling is still in store awaiting a new home. 

The article can be seen at Introduction the Wheelergate Nottingham Ceiling.

The third article looks at Cumberland shipbuilding in the eighteenth century and at a series of carved wooden portrait busts.

The article can be accessed at Five Carved Wooden Busts with Cumberland Shipbuilding Connections, Part 1.

This is definitely a blog to keep an eye on and I have added it to the side bar.

David happily agreed m to my original request and to allow reproduction of his photograph, but more of that in another post.

The Stone of Scone

On this day in 1296, 730 years ago, soldiers from the army of King Edward I of England removed the ‘Stone of Destiny’, the Stone of Scone, from inside the abbey church of the Holy Trinity and St Michael at Scone and began the process of taking the traditional seat for Scottish coronations to Westminster, and its eventual inclusion in St Edward’s Chair.

Despite the agreement of the English government to its return in the Treaty of Northampton in 1328, the Stone remained at Westminster. Not until the coronation of King James VI as King James I in 1603 did a King of Scots, in effect, sit on it again. In 1996 the British government returned the Stone to Scotland and it was displayed with the Honours of Scotland in the Crown Room in Edinburgh Castle.

In 2023 it returned to Westminster with appropriate ceremony for a temporary return to St Edward’s Chair for the Corination of the present King. It was then returned to the new Museum in Perth, very close to the site of its ancient home at Scone Abbey.

A replica of the Stone of Destiny outside the seventeenth century chapel where King Charles II was crowned in 1651 on the Moot Hill at Scone

Image: Facebook/ Soul of Alba Photography

 

Wikipedia has a detailed account of the Stone, its legends and history at Stone of Scone

The World History Encyclopaedia has more about the legends associated with it at Stone of Scone

The Stone at Edinburgh Castle in 2023 before it was taken to Westminster for the Coronation.

The Duke of Buccleuch KT, Captain General of the Royal Company of Archers, stands behind it flanked by two members of the Court of the Lord Lyon

Image: NBC News

I have long been of the opinion, and said so on this blog  that I would favour the restoration of the Scottish Coronation within the constitution of the United Kingdom. There is however the problem that both the original Sword of State and the Sceptre are now said to be too fragile to be handled. That is very unfortunate but it is good to see the Crown in use at the Lying-in-State of the late Queen and the ceremonial opening of the Scottish Parliament.

  

The Seal of Scone Abbey dating from about 1250 depicting the coronation of a King of Scots

Image: Wikipedia 

End of Empire

220 years ago today the Holy Roman Emperor Francis II sent his herald into central Vienna to announce the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. 

  

The Holy Roman Emperor Francis II  

Imperator Romanorum Semper Augustus

He is wearing the crown made for the Emperor Rudolf II 1576-1612, which became the Austrian Imperial Crown

Image: Wikimedia 

 

The proclamation did not cause much stir as for the last two years the Emperor had also borne the title Emperor of Austria and he retained his authority over the Austrian crown lands as well as the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia, and the lands taken in the Partitions of Poland plus what was accessible of the Habsburg dominions in Italy. It was the threat posed by the French under their self-proclaimed Emperor, and soon to be son-in-law of Emperor Francis, that appears to have decided the Habsburgs to dissolve the Empire rather than have it broken apart by the French.

As Emperor Francis I he was to join the coalitions that eventually wore the “Corsican ogre” down and he was to host the Congress that sought to re-establish order to Europe in 1814-15.  

 

So ended the formal existence of the Empire officially established by the coronation by Pope Leo III in St Peter’s Rome of Charlemagne on Christmas Day 800. Territorially the Empire was the Frankish kingdom already ruled by the new Emperor Charles.

As the Carolingian domains fractured there had been a time without an Emperor until Otto the Great revived it in 962. From 1250 to 1273 there was no Emperor, but several claimants, until in the latter year the Electors, fearing a Papal imposition of the King of France, as a compromise, offered the crown to a relatively unknown man in the person of the ruler of Austria, Rudolf of Habsburg. He was the last Habsburg Emperor until Albert II in 1437-39, but from then onwards the Imperial title and crown was theirs - with the exception of a Wittlesbach with a Habsburg mother who felt he had missed out with the Pragmatic Sanction and held the title as Emperor Charles VII in opposition to his cousin Maria Theresa’s husband Francis Stephen of Lorraine, who thenbsucceeded as Emperor Francis I, grandfather of the last Holy Roman Emperor. The Imperial House took a poor view of other rulers, be they Peter the Great or Napoleon, assuming the title of Emperor. 

As we are in the later eighteenth century let us dispose of that pretentious windbag Voltaire’s description of the Holt Roman Empire as being neither Holy, Roman nor an Empire. All it shows is his ignorance of medieval political and religious thought on the nature of government and of the concept of Empire, and its complementary position to that of the Church in the good ordering of a large part of Europe.

  

Wikipedia appears to have a good overall history of the Holy Roman Empire and its institutions based on Peter H Wilson’s important 2016 book on the subject at Holy Roman Empire 

After 1815 the Emperor presided over the German Confederation - which had replaced the Westphalian definition of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation - and, after a few local difficulties in 1848-9, retained that status until 1866. Nevertheless the Austrian Empire was the custodian of its traditions, including the Imperial insignia, in Vienna until 1918. 

When Emperor Francis lay dying in 1835 his five year old grandson the Archduke Francis was much distressed. When he in turn died in 1916 as Emperor Francis Joseph his coffin was followed by his successor and his consort and their four year old son, Archduke Otto, who died in 2011 - and whom I heard speak in Oxford in 1994 - so in a very few handfasts the centuries slip away.

 

Blessing of Grapes on The Transfiguration

Fr William Rock of the FSSP often writes insightful articles online on their website about liturgical and other matters. 

Today he has a very interesting account of the origins and development of the tradition of blessing grapes on the feast of the Transfiguration. He shows how it was interpreted in spiritual terms by William Durandus at the end of the thirteenth century, but that its origin actually was over a thousand years earlier in the pontificate of St Sixtus II in the early third century. That rite has, it seems to me, similarities to the four seasonal ember days as a thanksgiving for the harvest of seasonal crops. From Rome it appears to have spread east into what became the world of Orthodox Christianity and merged with local traditions there.

The article brings out the antiquity of the custom, and the stability of the liturgical texts.

It is also worth noting that it was not until after 1456 that the Transfiguration came to be universally observed on August 6th. That was the day on which news of the Ottoman retreat from the siege of Belgrade on July 22nd reached Rome, and Pope Calixtus III ordered that henceforth August 6th would be the universal celebration of the Transfiguration in thanksgiving.

    

Pope Callixtus III

Image: Wikipedia 

Fr Rock’s erudite article can be read at Blessing of Grapes

 

There is also a detailed article on the Othodox understanding of the Transfiguration and the tradition of blessing grapes on The Catholic World Report website at Blessed grapes and hymns of glory: The Feast of the Transfiguration in the East

Life’s little luxuries at Eilean Donan castle in the medieval period

Recent archaeological discoveries in excavations at Eilean Donan castle on the north-western coast of Scotland have revealed fascinating insights into life there in the medieval centuries.

Eilean Donan has become famous as a symbol of Highland Scotland in the past century since the restoration, indeed the reconstruction of the castle, which the Royal Navy bombarded to ruins in 1719 after it had been occupied by Spanish troops to support a prospective Jacobite rising.

Eilean Donan Castle

Image: visitinvernesslochness.org 

Wikipedia has a history of the castle and its architectural development at Eilean Donan

Medievalists.net has a report on the discoveries from the excavations which can be seen at Rare Medieval Hair-Styling Tool Found at Eilean Donan Castle

The outstanding discover was a gravoir for styling a woman’s hair. This is only the third to be found in the whole UK and immediately suggests that at very least the wife of the Lord of Eilean Donan aspired to present herself in the latest international fashion. The fact that it was apparently made locally reinforces the image of a cultured society.

Other finds included gaming counters, toys for children made from bone, and small pottery crucibles for metal working in copper, silver and gold. These may have been for making personal adornments, or, maybe, for alchemy.

Eilean Donan is remote by land but by sea could connects to other parts of the Highland coastline and the Isles, and beyond that to the culture of western and Scandinavian Europe and to their markets.

Life could no doubt be harsh and demanding in the Gaelic world but these discoveries indicate that it was bound into a wider set of relationships and that fashion and recreation were part of Highland life.

Bl. Salvio Huix Mirelpeix

On this day ninety years ago, in 1936, Bl. Salvio Huix Mirelpéix C.O. Bishop of Lerida (Lieida) in Spain, together with twenty of his clergy, many of whom he had recently ordained, were murdered by the Republicans in the early days of the Spanish Civil War. 

By the end of the war in 1939 6,832 priests and religious, including 12 bishops and 283 religious sisters, had been murdered. These atrocities were particularly common in Catalonia where Lerida lies. 

Bl. Salvio Huix Mirelpéix 

A modern painting in the Oxford Oratory created to mark his beatification

Image: Oxford Oratory

 

 Image:Washington Oratory 

The Oxford Oratory has two posts about him at Blessed Salvio Huix — The Oxford Oratory

and at Blessed Salvio Huix — The Oxford Oratory

The Bournemouth Oratory also has a post at Blessed Salvio Huix-Miralpeix - The Bournemouth Oratory

The Birmingham Oratory has a post on their website 

at Blessed Salvio Huix 

Wikipedia has a biography of him at Salvi Huix Miralpéix

He was beatified as one of 522 martyrs of the Spanish Civil War in 2013. More have been beatified since. He is the first Oratorian martyr to be declared a beatus. 

    

Bl. Salvio Huix Mirelpéix

Oratorian Protomartyr

Image: Birmingham Oratory

May Bl. Salvio Huix Mirelpeix and his companions pray for Spain and for us all