Feast of St John the Evangelist

As with my previous post I am republishing with some emendations a post from three years ago to mark this feast day.

I have always identified St John the Evangelist as my name-saint - being a bit squeamish it is probably because he was the one Apostle not to be martyred - and perhaps also because the medieval Cluniac priory in my home town was under his patronage. Anyway I do rather like the mystical theological approach to faith. That said and thinking about it as I get older I think I should maybe identify with St John the Baptist and indulge in my urge to tell the brood of vipers what I really think, and go round preaching repentence - but I do want people to like me, so maybe not...

St John the Evangelist has not, to my mind, provided the inspiration for artists that the Baptist has. Too often he is depicted as a long haired, rather effeminate young man, and not really the mystical theologian of the New Testament texts, still less one of the Sons of Thunder with a pushy mother...

This painting by Memling is rather better in conveying something of the meditative quality of St John, and anyway it is late medieval and therefore, ipso facto, good.

St John the Evangelist
Hans Memling c.1430 -1494

Image: artexpertswebsite.com

Here are both St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist in the same artist's Mystic Marriage of St Catherine from the St John Altarpiece of 1474-79 which is in Bruges - the other female saint in the composition is St Barbara:

Here is Memling's panel from the same altarpiece showing St John on Patmos:

 

 

There is great charm and delicacy in Hieronymous Bosch's 1485 painting of St John on Patmos:

Image:stjohnleonia.org

Although there is something in this image of the nice young man from Sotheby's or Christie's holding up an object at an auction, and it is a really rather splendid chalice, there is more of both youthful impetuousness and conviction as well as the intensity of devotion and of mysticism in El Greco's paintings of him, as here:

Image: southbear.com

One of my regular readers commented on the post as follows about St John:

[He was p] erhaps just bar-mitzvah'd or whatever the expression is and thus qualified to make up the quorum in the synagogue.That would mean his walking alongside Christ from the ages of, say, 13-16: a deeply impressionable time in any young man's life. It would mean his having been born about A.D.20, and give him ample years in which to reflect, and would strengthen the claims of the early Fathers for his having lived into the second century.

That view of St John strikes me as very credible - teenage enthusiasm making him and his elder brother the brash Sons of Thunder, and, who knows, were they smug or acutely embarrassed by their mother's pursuit of places of honour for them under the seemingly impending new dispensation? There is also the youthful lack of fear that led him, alone of the Apostles, to stand (did he steal there against the advice of older voices, unable to stop himself ?)  at the foot of the Cross with Our Lady, and to rush off  with and out-run St Peter in going to the empty tomb, yet still with the youthful hesitancy to stand outside peering in. Add to that innate spiritual insight and a profound rapport with Our Lord and the Gospel account of him makes for a very believable portrait.

St John, pray for me

 

 

St Catherine and Marshal Boucicaut

Were yesterday not Sunday, and therefore the Solemnity of Christ the King in the modern rite, it would have been the feast of St Catherine of Alexandria. An immensely popular saint in middle ages and in subsequent centuries she was dropped from the Calendar in 1970, but reinstated by Pope John Paul II  in 2002. This may have been an opening towards the Orthodox who have retained great devotion to her.

This illustration of devotion to her is taken from the Book of Hours of Marshal Boucicaut, dating from 1410-15.

St Catherine and Marshal Boucicaut

Image: Wikipedia

There is an account of the artist, known today as the Master of Boucicaut here  and views of other pages of the manuscrpt can be found online.

The Hours were produced for Jean le Meingre II, known as Marshal Boucicaut following his appointment as Marshal of France in 1391, and who lived from 1366-1421. There is an online life of him here and also an account here.  

Hailed in his lifetime as a paragon of the chivalric code  and life of the military elite he was a crusader and jouster who narrowly survived the disaster of the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396, served as the French Governor of Genoa and was finally defeated and captured at Agincourt on October 25th 1415. He had served as commander of the vanguard in the battle. Taken as a prisoner to England he was to remain one of King Henry V's captives until his death in 1421.

Marshal Boucicaut Image: Findagrave

I am particularly interested in this phase of his life as he was in the custody of Robert Waterton in Yorkshire for part of this time and it was at Waterton's house at Methley that the Marshal died on June 21 1421. His body was sent back to France for burial at Tours. Part of the house Waterton built survived as part of Methley Hall until its demolition in the early 1960s. Waterton, an emiment and long-serving Lancastrian retainer, was the brother-in-law of Bishop Richard Fleming, and the online Oxford DNB life of him can be read here. My innate modesty forbids me from drawing attention to the authorship of the biography.

St John the Evangelist

I have always identified St John the Evangelist as my name-saint - being a bit squeamish it is probably because he was the one Apostle not to be martyred - and perhaps also because the Cluniac priory in my home town was under his patronage. Anyway I do rather like the mystical and theological approach to faith. Thinking about it as I get older I think I should maybe identify with St John the Baptist and indulge in my urge to tell the brood of vipers what I really think, and go round preaching repentence - but I do want people to like me, so maybe not...

St John the Evangelist has not, to my mind, provided the inspiration for artists that the Baptist has. Too often he is depicted as a long haired rather effeminate young man, and not really the mystical theologian of the New Testament texts, still less one of the sons of thunder with a pushy mother...

This painting by Memling is rather better in conveying something of the meditative quality of St John, and anyway it is late medieval and therefore, ipso facto, good.

St John the Evangelist
Hans Memling c.1430 -1494

Image: artexpertswebsite.com

Here are both St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist in the same artist' s Mystic Marriage of St Catherine from the St John Altarpiece of 1474-79 which is in Bruges - the other female saint in the composition is St Barbara:

Here is Memling's panel from the same altarpiece showing St John on Patmos:

There is great charm and delicacy in Hieronymous Bosch's 1485 painting of St John on Patmos:

Image:stjohnleonia.org

Although there is something of the nice young man from Sotheby's or Christie's holding up an object at an auction to the figure, and it is a really rather splendid chalice, there is more of both youthful impetuousness and conviction as well as the intensity of devotion and of mysticism in El Greco's paintings of him, as here:

Image: southbear.com