A Lenten and Holy Week visit in 1466 to Reading and Salisbury

This is a post I originally planned to publish at Easter or soon after but it has taken time to get it together.

In 1466 an embassy from King George of Bohemia - George of Poděbrady - which was travelling round teh courts of Europe promoting the King's plan for a union of the various kingdoms and territories ( strangely topical n'est pas? ) spent the latter part of Lent and Holy Week in England and met King Edward IV.

The King of Bohemia was Hussite and was anxious to ease his quarrel with the Papacy and between 1465 and 1467 sent this embassy led by his brother-in-law, Jaroslav Lev of Rosental (c1425-1486). In contrast to the King, who was elected to the throne in 1458, Lev was a devout Catholic and they were thus in opposing camps in the complexities of mid-fifteenth century Bohemian politics. However Lev's sister Johana of Rožmitál had married George Poděbrad in 1450, and  Lev was loyal to his royal brother-in-law. Jaroslav was leader of a delegation of 40 nobles and knights with 52 horses.

Two contemporary accounts of the embassy can be read in  Malcolm Letts (ed) The Travels of Leo of Rozmital through Germany, Flanders, England, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy 1465-1467, and published for the Hakluyt Sociey by Cambridge University Press. One is in Czech by Schascko or Schaseck, who was armour bearer or squire to Jaroslav Lev, and the other is is German by Gabriel Tetzel from Nuremberg. I have differentiated the two by an S or a T and added notes in italics in [ ]

After visiting the court at Windsor, where they venerated the heart of St George and other relics, and where the Bohemian men's long tresses excited wonder and comment - almost a century earlier the Emperor Charles IV was depicted with long hair - was it a Bohemian style? - and the party now moved westward to set sail for France:

S p56
" Windsor is twenty miles from London and Reading sixteen miles from Windsor. It is a village with a large and elegant monastery where dwell priests of the rule of the Virgin Mother of God.
In that church is a picture on the altar and an image of the Mother of God most beautifully executed. So much so that I have never seen its equal nor shall I ever see one to compare with it if I progress to the ends of the earth. No image could be more lovely or more beautiful." [ Alas the painting from Reading abbey is entirely lost - was it perhaps brought from the continent or was it a product of an English atelier? ]

 

A modern reconstruction of Reading Abbey

Image: Reading Museum

 Part of the ruins of Reading Abbey today

Image: Alamy/Daily Mail

S p60
" I have never seen more elegant churches or monasteries than in England. All are roofed with lead and tin, and within they are marvellously adorned "

 

 Salisbury Cathedral from the west

The detached bell tower is on the left

Wenceslaus Hollar 1607-77

Image: Salisbury Museum

p61
" Salisbury is an open town but large. There we found another of the King's brothers named George. There is a very large and beautiful monastery [ i.e the cathedral which had a secular and not a monastic chapter ]. When one considers the elegance of the structure both within and without, it is second to none. The tower adjoins it and is built with great skill [ i.e. the detached bell tower destroyed in 1792 - see my post from 2011 Vandalism at Salisbury Cathedral ]  I have nowhere seen more elegant figures. One represents the Mother of God, holding the infant Christ in her arms while the Three Kings offer gifts. The other shows the Angels opening the Sepulchre with Christ rising from the dead, holding a banner in his hand. Both scenes are so represented that they do not appear to be fashioned but alive and actually moving before our eyes. It will not be out of place to mention that they have no lights on the altar at the celebration of the mass, a reminder that the country had three times departed from the Christian faith. [This reference is not clear] The following custom is also observed in this country. On Easter Day and the day preceding, in glorious memory of the Lord's Supper, all take the sacrament in the church and on each altar mirrors are set up." [ ? are these reliquaries]

There follows a description of the Royal Maundy ceremony

Salisbury Cathedral from the north

Wenceslaus Hollar engraving published 1672

Image:TheSaleRoom.com

S p62
"We arrived at Salisbury on the Friday before Palm Sunday. On Palm Sunday my lord with all his company was invited by the Duke [of Clarence] to a banquet which was served most sumptuously as is their custom. Among other courses they served a bird like a duck which is produced in the sea, and which takes no food, but lives only on air."[ Barnacle Goose ]

Salisbury Cathedral from the east, with the bell tower on the right

Wenceslaus Hollar 1607-1677

Image:junglekey.co.uk

T p57
" After this my lord was taken to see several abbeys of the Benedictine Order which are in England. [ CB - Reading pres. ] We saw two churches which are splendid beyond measure, also two splendid pictures and altars, as well as a great golden shrine in which lies St Sigmund [ St Osmund - canonised 1457. The  1536 Treasurer inventory lists ' a great ymage of the holy Seynt Osmund, all of silver and gilt, ornate with stones of divers coloured and weighing 83 ounces ' ] They showed us also a stone which came from Jerusalem wherein is the imprint of Our Lord's foot. It came from the Mount of Olives, from the place where Our Lord used to pray. They showed us also many other famous relics. We saw also some fine carved figures which were so worked with weights that they moved as if to show how the Three Holy Kings brought gifts to our Lady and her Babe, how our Lord reached out to take the gifts, and how our Lady and Joseph bowed and did obeisance to the Three Kings, and how they took their leave. All this was presented with rare and masterly skill as if they were alive. There was also a similar carving showing our Lord rising from the tomb and the Angels ministering to him. This was a splendid and praiseworthy thing to see. [ Malcolm Letts suggest these may have been the work of  Bishop Ralph Erghum before he was translated to Wells in 1388, and where the mechanical clockstill have two jousting knights to mark the hours. If the figures were related to the clock then there is background material on that at Salisbury cathedral clock and Medieval Clock | Salisbury Cathedral] The Abbot [ i.e.Bishop of Salisbury ] showed my lord great honour [p58] and reverence, and gave him a splendid repast in his palace which was hung with tapestries and other priceless things. He conducted my lord also into the choir, where we heard the choir singing which was delightful to hear. [ Bishop Richard Beauchamp 1450-81 ]

King Edward IV and Bishop Richard Beauchamp

Roof Boss at St George's Windsor

Image: St George's Windsor

After this my lord was conducted to the King of England's brother, called Duke of Klaris who was then in England. [ George Duke of Clarence was a member of the cathedral fraternity; at the time he was 17 ]. At this my lord was much pleased and showed the Duke honour and respect. We spent Palm Sunday there and saw a splendid procession showing our Lord's entry into Jerusalem. The Duke himself went in procession and made my lord walk beside him. Afterwards my lord and his attendants had to dine at court, and the Duke and my lord ate together, while my lord's attendants sat with the counts and gentlemen. They provided for us an unbelievably costly banquet lasting three hours, and among other dishes they gave us to eat what should have been a fish, but it was roasted and looked like a duck." [The Barnacle goose again ]

George Duke of Clarence

A late sixteenth century portait, arguably from an older source

Image: Wikipedia

This royal entertainment was presumably at Clarendon Palace, which lay two miles east of the city. There are online accounts of it at Clarendon Palace and at Clarendon Park and Palace

Visitors for Passiontide and Easter at Salisbury in 1466

Easter Day 1466 fell on April 6th and in the days leading up to Palm Sunday and into Holy Week the city and cathedral at Salisbury were host to a Bohemian embassy led by Jaroslav Lev of Rozmital
[ Rosental ], the brother-in-law of George of Prodebrad [Prodebrady] King of Bohemia 1458-70, whose wife Joanna was Jaroslav's sister. The embassy, which comprised some 40 nobles and gentry, with 52 horses, was travelling around the courts of Europe outlining King George's idea of, well, let's be topical, a European Union.

King George was a moderate Hussite, of whom an online biography can be found at George of Poděbrady, whilst his brother-in-law was a Catholic. There is a biography of him online at Jaroslav Lev of Rožmitál 

The embassy is recorded in two accounts which  have survived and are most easily accessible in The Travels of Leo of Rozmital through Germany, Flanders, England, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy 1465-1467, edited by Malcolm Letts for the Hakluyt Society ( CUP 1957).  Leo of Rozmital is the latinate form of Jaroslav's family surname.


One account was originally written in Czech by Schascko or Schaseck, Jaroslav's armour bearer or squire and the second, of which the manuscript still survives is in German and by Gabriel Tetzel from Nuremberg. As visitors they not always understand local conditions and pronunciation, but this is still a fascinating account. At Salisbury they recorded features otherwise unknown - and in some cases, ones that are well-nigh inexplicable. I have added some explanatory notes in [ ].

At Windsor the party was shown heart of St George and other relics and then travelled westwards:
Schascko wrote that:
"Windsor is twenty miles from London and Reading sixteen miles from Windsor. It is a village with a large and elegant monastery where dwell priests of the rule of the Virgin Mother of God.
In that church is a picture on the altar and an image of the Mother of God most beautifully executed. So much so that I have never seen its equal nor shallI ever see one to compare with it if I progress to the ends of the earth. No image could be more lovely or more beautiful." [p56]

 

A reconstruction of Reading Abbey

Image:skyscrapernews.com 

 Reading Abbey was almost entirely destroyed at the dissolution of the monastery in 1539. the fate of the painting which so entraptured Schascko is unknown, as is its origin.

 

The remains of the south transept of Reading Abbey

 Image:dailymail.co.uk

Schascko admired English churches:
" I have never seen more elegant churches or monasteries than in England. All are roofed with lead and tin, and within they are marvellously adorned " [ p60 ]

The party travelled on via Andover to Salisbury

 Salisbury Cathedral from the east by Wenceslas Hollar

The chantry chapels flanking the eastern Trinity Chapel and the detached bell tower were destroyed in the late eighteenth century

Image: Wikimedia

" Salisbury is an open town but large. There we found another of the King's brothers named George
[ Duke of Clarence]. There is a very large and beautiful monastery [Salisbury cathedral which had canons not a monastic chapter. The cloister may have misled teh visitor into thinking it was an abbey]. When one considers the elegance of the structure both within and without, it is second to none. The tower adjoins it and is built with great skill [Presumably the tower and spire at the crossing rather than the detached bell tower]. I have nowhere seen more elegant figures. One represents the Mother ofGod, holding the infant Christ in her arms while the Three Kings offer gifts. The other shows the Angels opening the Sepulchre with Christ rising from the dead, holding a banner in his hand. Both scenes are so represented that they do not appear to be fashioned but alive and actually moving before our eyes. It will not be out of place to mention that they have no lights on the altar at the celebration of the mass, a reminder that the country had three times departed from the Christian faith [This is unexplained - the sarum Use clearly had candles. Was this a Lenten practice?] . The following custom is also observed in this country. On Easter Day and the day preceding, in glorious memory of the Lord's Supper, all take the sacrament in the church and on each altar mirrors are set up." [ This obscure reference might indicate the use of mirrors to amplify the candles on great feast days. My friend Andrew Knowles suggests this may be a confused description of reliquaries]  [p61]

Schascko then describes the Royal Maundy ceremony, although that would have been at the King's Court on Maundy Thursday when the Czechs were elsewhere, heading towards Poole

Schascko adds that: 
"We arrived at Salisbury on the Friday before Palm Sunday. On Palm Sunday my lord with all his company was invited by the Duke to a banquet which was served most sumptuously as is their custom. Among other courses they served a bird like a duck which is produced in the sea, and which takes no food, but lives only on air." [This is barnacle goose, which intrigued both of Rozmital's chroniclers] [p62]

 

Salisbury Cathedral and bell tower from the west by Wenceslas Hollar

Image:salisburymuseum.org.uk

Tetzel's account of the same journey is as follows:

" After this my lord was taken to see several abbeys of the Benedictine Order which are in England.
 [ Reading must be one of these but is not named ] We saw two churches which are splendid beyond measure [ i.e.Reading and Salisbury], also two splendid pictures and altars, as well as a great golden shrine in which lies St Sigmund [ i.e. St Osmund of Salisbury - recently canonised in 1457. In 1536 the cathedral Treasurer's inventory includes ' a great ymage of the holy Seynt Osmund, all of silver and gilt, ornate with stones of divers coloured and weighing 83 ounces ' ] They showed us also a stone which came from Jerusalem wherein is the imprint of our Lord's foot. It came from the Mount of Olives, from the place where our Lord used to pray. They showed us also many other famous relics. We saw also some fine carved figures which were so worked with weights that they moved as if to show how the Three Holy Kings brought gifts to our Lady and her Babe, how our Lord reached out to take the gifts, and how our Lady and Joseph bowed and did obeisance to the Three Kings, and how they took their leave. All this was presented with rare and masterly skill as if they were alive. There was also a similar carving showing our Lord rising from the tomb and the Angels ministering to him. This was a splendid and praiseworthy thing to see. [ the editor suggests this may have been commissioned by Bishop Ralph Erghum before his translation to Wells in 1388, where there still survives a mechanical clock with two knights who joust as the clock strikes] The Abbot [i.e. the Bishop, Richard Beauchamp 1450-81 ]  showed my lord great honour  and reverence, and gave him a splendid repast in his palace which was hung with tapestries and other priceless things. He conducted my lord also into the choir, where we heard the choir singing which was delightful to hear.
After this my lord was conducted to the King of England's brother, called Duke of Klaris who was then in England. [ Clarence who was in his seventeenth year, was a member of cathedral fraternity ]. At this my lord was much pleased and showed the Duke honour and respect. We spent Palm Sunday there and saw a splendid procession showing our Lord's entry into Jerusalem [preseumably at the cathedral]. The Duke himself went in procession and made my lord walk beside him. Afterwards my lord and his attendants had to dine at court, and the Duke and my lord ate together, while my lord's attendants sat with the counts and gentlemen. They provided for us an unbelievably costly banquet lasting three hours, and among other dishes they gave us to eat what should have been a fish, but it was roasted and looked like a duck." [this was presumably at Clarendon Palace, which was two miles east of the city]  [pp 57-8]

The Czechs moved on to Poole, where they spent Easter itself before a stormy crossing to Guernsey and then Brittany.

There is an authoritative detailed online account of the fabric of salisbury cathedral at Tim Tatton-Brown, David Lepine & Nigel Saul (2013) ‘Incomparabilissime Fabrice’: The Architectural History of Salisbury Cathedral c. 1297 to 1548, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 166:1, 51-98, DOI: 10.1179/0068128813Z.00000000016
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/0068128813Z.00000000016

The famous clock of Salisbury cathedral, usually claimed to date from before 1386, though some consider the mechanism somewhat later, when it was housed in the detached bell tower, is discussed in dating_salisbury [Clocknet UK].  

The fate of the bell tower is discussed in my 2011 post Vandalism at Salisbury Cathedral  - I see two of my illustrations there have expired, but one remains and can be supplemented by the following one:

                         

                           Salisbury Cathedral in 1759

                                            Image:clocknet.org.uk

This beautifully carved and brightly coloured roof boss, to be found in the easternmost bay of the South Quire Aisle, depicts one of St George’s Chapel at Windsor’s most famous relics, the Cross Gneth. Kneeling on either side of this Celtic cross are King Edward IV and Richard Beauchamp, Bishop of Salisbury, 1450-1481, Dean of Windsor, 1478-1481, and Chancellor of the Order of the Garter, 1475-1481.

Image: St George's Chapel Windsor

 

George Duke of Clarence  

Image:Wikipedia 

Alas we can no longer marvel at the ingenuity of the mechanical figures at Salisbury, which are long gone - presumably at the reformation - but let us be thankful for Schascko and Tetzel, for without them we would know nothing of their existence at all.

English Iconoclasm revisited

Last year I posted a series of nine pieces under the title English Iconoclasm. these followed on from a lecture I gave to a summer school here in Oxford organised by Second Spring. this year they asked me to give the talk again. This was with a new title, suggested by the organisers, of  " A Shattered Culture: The Impact of the Reformation in England" and, with revisions to the text and a set of illustrations put together online with the technical assistance of a friend, I did so. I am now reposting the links to the posts from last year, which cover some, but not all, of the themes and examples I spoke about. This is inituially for the use of the US students on the course, but may also be, indeed I hope will be, of interest to other readers.


English Iconoclasm I

English Iconoclasm II - the fate of the cult of St George

English Iconoclasm III - An eyewitness account

English Iconoclasm IV

English Iconoclasm V

English Iconoclasm VI

English Iconoclasm VII

English Iconoclasm VIII

English Iconoclasm IX

I am also adding another post from the sme time last year with the same tag

St Modwen and Burton on Trent Abbey

and the following posts from previous years which apply to other places I spoke about:

Disaster at Hereford

Vandalism at Salisbury Cathedral

St Augustine's Abbey Canterbury

 More on St Augustine's Abbey Canterbury

 St John the Baptist Chester

and, from Wikipedia, articles about Reculver at 

St Mary's Church, Reculver  and Reculver

Vandalism at Salisbury Cathedral

Were today not Sunday it would be the feast of St Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, who died in 1099, but was only canonised in 1457 - the last pre-reformation recognition of sanctity for an English saint. There is an online life of him here.

The cathedral he knew at Old Sarum was replaced in the thirteenth century by the present Salisbury cathedral, and it was there that his bones were enshrined, and to that building that my thoughts turn. Or rather to some of its features which were destroyed in the eighteenth century. Regular readers of this blog will be aware of my revulsion at the destruction of historic and beautiful buildings and monuments, and here is another example of what shocks me.

At the end of the 1780s the Chapter of Salisbury called in as their architect James Wyatt. Now as an exponent of Neo-Classicism he was fine - witness the library at Oriel built in 1788. Let loose on a medieval cathedral he was lethal. Durham, Hereford and Salisbury bear witness to his ravages. If at Hereford he had in part the excuse of the collapse of the west tower in 1786, and at Durham his schemes were stopped short of destroying the Galilee Chapel, at Salisbury there seems to be neither excuse nor restraint.

Demolishing two later Hungerford and Beauchamp chantry chapels of 1464 and 1481 which flanked the Trinity Chapel at the east end can, I suppose, be explained, but not excused, as restoring the original configuration of the eastern chapels. There is an interesting, illustrated article about the history and development of this part of the cathedral here.

The same idea of restoring to its primitive simplicity (now where else have I heard that dangerous idea in connection with the Church...?) may have applied to removing the porch to the north transept. Ruthlessly pulling down the choir screen and rearranging the medieval tombs in tidy lines in the nave was bad. His worst action was destroying the detached bell tower.

It had been built in 1265, soon after the completion of the cathedral, and before the central tower and spire were raised. In style it was about the same period as the chapter house and cloisters. The plan was square, although one writer, frequently quoted, calls it multangular. The stone tower comprised two massive stories with lancet windows in the lower, and windows with plate tracery above, with a spire apparently of wood crowning the whole. Leland in the mid sixteenth century speaks of it as "a notable and strong square tower for great belles, and a pyramis on it, in the cemiterie."

When the cathedral was visited in 1553 by the Royal Commission there remained a peal of ten bells, and the re-casting in 1680 of the seventh and eighth by the Purdues, local founders, is recorded among the muniments. The sixth is now the clock bell of the cathedral, but the fate of the others is absolutely unknown.

It was evidently massive enough to have stood for centuries, and the single pillar of Purbeck marble, "lying in its natural bed," which was the central support that carried the bells, the belfry, and the spire, is specially mentioned by the architect Price as perfectly sound, but he owned that the leaden spire, and a wooden upper story, were decayed, and put forward a design of a sham classic dome which he hoped might be erected in its place.

Situated to the north west of the cathedral it appears in early views of the cathedral and close:

Salisbury Cathedral with its bell tower by Wenceslas Hollar 1671

Image: Salisbury and Wiltshire Museum

A larger version of this engraving can be found here.

The Bell Tower, a striking feature of the close, and indeed the city, as it was before 1789, is shown above in the facsimile of an engraving originally published in 1761.This shows the campanile standing at the north-west corner of the enclosure.

Image: www.gutenberg.com

By 1768 the timber upper stage and spire had been removed, leaving the stone base, as here:

The bell tower in 1768 by Francis Grose

Image:Wikigallery.org

Despite its antiquity it was demolished as superfluous in 1790, and the churchyard levelled in 1789-90. Apart from pictures all that survives is the clock, now working in the nave, and which may be as early as 1386. In a dry summer, as in 1972, one can detect a crop mark in the grass where it stood.

Not only was this historic feature lost, but Salisbury also lost the ability to have bells - along with Ely and Norwich amongst Anglican cathedrals it is devoid of a peal.

Now if I were Dean of Salisbury I would start a campaign to rebuild the bell tower - the design could easily be reconstructed from the drawings and excavation of the site - and acquire some bells. But then, I'm not Dean of Salisbury.