Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Winchester

The second Hampshire shrine on the itinerary is that of Our Lady of Winchester in the cathedral in the heart of the city.

My article about this from last year links back to the first one I wrote about this shrine, in 2020, about Bishop William of Wykeham’s strong personal devotion to an image in the cathedral, and also about what survives of the statues, including that of the Virgin and Child, from the great High Altar reredos. Last year I also wrote about the surviving Marian imagery in the stained glass from the 1390s in Wykeham’s neighbouring educational foundation Winchester College.

These articles can be seen and accessed from Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Winchester

May Our Lady of Winchester pray for Pope Leo XIV

The Chapel of the Guardian Angels in Winchester Cathedral

Today is the Feast of the Guardian Angels.

In 2020 I posted the Breviary Mattins readings from St Bernard of Clairvaux, together with a picture of the thirteenth century vault painting in the chapel dedicated to the Guardian Angels in the retrochoir of the cathedral at Winchester. This can be seen at St Bernard on the Guardian Angels

 

I had previously posted about the vault paintings in 2012 in a piece which can be seen at Guardian Angels at Winchester

This draws attention to the similar scheme which can be seen extending over the vault of the choir and eastern transepts of Salisbury Cathedral and which must be from the same period. I am not sure how extensively that scheme has been restored. In the south transept of Lincoln Cathedral is a restored vault decoration of foliage which must be in origin also of that period and probably part of a much more extensive scheme. The idea a blue ground with stars, which is part of the Winchester arrangement, became very popular and was a feature of the fourteenth century Lady Chapel at Ely and the nave and choir vaults of York Minster from that same century. Remains of a similar starry vault can be seen in the chapel at Rycote in Oxfordshire. Such schemes survive on the continent.

The vault of the Chapel of the Guardian Angels in Winchester Cathedral

Image: Wikimedia

I have now found a more detailed online account of the paintings, and their relationship to the court painters of King Henry III, with his close connections with the cathedral and city, an article which can be seen here

There is a close-up view of part of the ceiling at Look up in the Guardian Angels Chapel and you will see some #NightofStars #FollowTheStar  and a picture of the complete vault at Photographs of Winchester Cathedral, Hampshire, England: Ceiling of the guardian angels chapel

A further insight into the later medieval appearance of the interior of the chapel - and of the ruthlessness of sixteenth century iconoclast “reformers” - can be obtained from an article in the Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society from 1990 which discusses and identifies figures from the reredos of the chapel. It can be seen online here 

May the Guardian Angels ever defend us

Tombstones - quaint and curious

The BBC News online website today has a post about various unusual or noteworthy gravestones.

Some are famous, such as those at Malmesbury and Winchester, but others are less well known - or indeed were unknown to me - and all have interesting, and at times, macabre, stories.

The article, entitled The headstones with unusual stories to tell, and which is illustrated, can be seen here and there are also links at the end to related articles.

Cardinal Beaufort

Today is the 570th anniversary of the death in 1447 at his episcopal palace at Wolvesey Castle in Winchester of Cardinal Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester.

Previously Bishop of Lincoln , and one of the legitimised children of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swinford for virtually half acentury he had been at the centre of English political, diplomatic and ecclesiastical life. Translated to Winchester in 1405 following the death of William of Wykeham he was first offered a Cardinal's hat in December 1417 by Pope Martin V in recognition of the part he had played in resolving the Great Schism and Papal vacancy. Forced to decline the honour by King Henry V he finally received the red hat in 1426, after the death of the King.

The Oxford DNB life of him by Gerald Harriss, who has written the standard modern biography, can be read here.

The tomb effigy in Winchester Cathedral of the Cardinal is a seventeenth century restoration, and in addition to other carvings, such as that from Bishop's Waltham illustrated in the Oxford DNB article there is the theory, increasingly accepted I think, that this portrait, by Jan van Eyck, and usually said to be of the Carthusian Cardinal Niccolò Albergati, is in fact one of Beaufort and dated to about 1431. It is now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and the original drawing in Dresden.

The probable portrait of Cardinal Beaufort by Jan van Eyck

Image: Wikipedia

The original drawing in Dresden

 Image:bildindex.de

There is more about the portrait here, where it is still described as being of Albergati. It is however very different from the other, more ascetic, images of the Carthusian Cardinal that survive.

In the St Cuthbert Window in York Minster is another depiction of the Cardinal which I have reproduced before. It shows him with the Cardinal's hat for which he had to wait so long:

Cardinal Beaufort of Winchester

York Minster, St Cuthert Window

sVII, 1b-2b

The glass is of the 1440s 

Image: Gordon Plumb on Flickr

The effigy on the Cardinal's tomb
How much of this is original I am not sure, but if it is in essence then it is interesting that he stresses his rank as a Cardinal, and depicts him with his hat on top of his hood

Image: pinterest.se



The Cardinal's tomb and chantry in Winchester Cathedral

Image: andrewcusack.com

Wolvesey Castle is adjacent to the cathedral in Winchester and now in the care of English Heritage. Their website about it can be seen at Wolvesey Castle (Old Bishop's Palace)

A modern representation of the arms of Cardinal Beaufort

Image:europeanheraldry.org

St Swithin

Today, in addition to being the novus ordo feast of St Bonaventure, is the feast of St Swithin, Bishop of Winchester, who died in 862. July 15th is the date of his Translation on the following century into the cathedral there. Because he has asked to be buried outside the building so that the rain could run off the eaves onto his grave he expressed, accruing to legend, his displeasure at being moved inside the cathedral by causing it to rain for the next forty days. Hence the importance pf whether July 15th is wet or dry - whichever it is the folklore asserts it will be for the ensuing forty days. On the continent his feast is July 2nd, the date of his burial.

To mark the feast day Gordon Plumb has posted these stained glass images of St Swithin on the Medieval Religion discussion group:

Oxford, Trinity College, Old Library, East windows, second window, 1a, St Swithin:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/17721299759

Detail:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/17904550902

Winchester Cathedral, Choir Clerestory, East Window, 1a-2a, St Swithin:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/5957620034

Head of figure:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/6391309749

Winchester, Hospital of St Cross and St Faith, East wall, St Swithin (Head modern):

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/5755075479

The wedding of King Philip and Queen Mary

460 years ago, on St James' day 1554 Queen Mary I married King Philip of Naples, who from 1556 was King Philip II of Spain*, in Winchester cathedral. The choice of the feast day of the patron saint of Spain was doubtless seen as auspicious.

For the Queen this must have been a day of triumph. Just over a year earlier from her position as a spinster elder half sister of the deceased King Edward VI, marginalised as a Catholic and with the practise of her faith under threat, and then excluded from the succession altogether,  she staged the only successful uprising in Tudor England against the central government, saw off her opponents, set in motion the restoration of Catholicism and now married the most eligible young man in Europe. Not bad going.

Queen Mary I in 1554

A painting by Hans Eworth now at the Society of Antiquaries

The Queen is wearing the pearl La Peregrina given to her by King Philip
 
Image: Wikipedia

The basis for the wedding was the treaty negotiated earlier on in the year and made into English law by an  Act of Parliament, about which there is an article here. The background can be read in the illustrated online life of the Queen here.

The wedding ceremony itself is worthy of note in that apart from her mother's lavish wedding to Prince Arthur in St Paul's in 1501 Tudor royal weddings were not great public events, and indeed the great public royal wedding we expect today is something from the twentieth century. From 1554 until the 1920s England saw nothing comparable.

There is a detailed account of the wedding in my friend John Edward's recent biography of the Queen, published by Yale UP in their English Monarchs series.

One of the sources for our knowledge of the day is the official Herald's account, transcribed and published in the eighteenth century, and which can be read at The Marriage of Queen Mary and King Philip

King Philip and Queen Mary

Image: Wikipedia 

The blog Mary Tudor - Renaissance Queen has an account of the events of the day and of surviving buildings and other remains today here and from another blog there is also an account of the wedding which can be seen here.

A reconstruction of Queen Mary's wedding dress, created by Tanya Elliott, which was displayed at the Exhibition The Marriage of England and Spain - the 450th Anniversary of the Marriage of Philip and Mary  held from June 20-September 30, 2004 at Winchester Cathedral

(photo courtesy of Winchester Cathedral)

Queen Mary's dress was described as consisting of a mantle of brocaded cloth of gold, bordered with pearls and diamonds of great size, and lined with ermine. The dress was also gold smothered with the same precious stones, and the underskirt of white satin embroidered of silver. The French hood  - that is a headress of rounded shape is worn over a coif, and with a black veil attached to the back, that is very like a modern tiara in shape - in black velvet was surmounted by a double row of large diamonds.

 Image:home.earthlink.com 

The Queen had a noted fondness for jewellery, and one of the King'swedding gifts to her was the pearl La Peregrina, of which there is a history here. In most of her portraits the Queen is depicted wearing it. 

On her death it was returned to the King. 

King Philip

A potrait by Iitian of 1551, now in the Prado

Image: Wikipedia

King Philip, eleven years younger than his wife, may indeed have married her out of Habsburg familial duty to his father, and have been irke dby the restrictions the marriage treaty placed upon his exercise of power, but in both public and private he appears to have been attentive to the Queen who became fdeeply enamoured of him. Contemporaries quoted in Henry Kamen's excellent biography King Philip considerd that if the English populace hasd more access to him he would have won their regard as well. A reserved man, who appears to have disliked much of the outward display called upon for European monarchs at the time, he does not appear to have been a natural linguist and spoke little English, nor, and this was to be a problem for him later in ruling the Netherlands, Flemish or Dutch. He nad his wife communicated in Spanish, French and Latin. His youthful high spirits, clerly described by Kamen were kept under control, and the punctuillious, reserved monarch of the future was being formed.

One formal consequence of the wedding was a change in the Royal Arms. Few instances of these now survive. One can be seen in Trinity College here in Oxford. This was founded in 1554 and teha rms are painted over the fireplac ein the hall, but in their present form appear to be entirely nineteenth century. At Windsor Castle on the outside of the lodgings of the Military Knights of Windsor there is a restored version of the arms carved in stone, as can be seen in the article College of St George - Windsor Castle - Royal Arms of Philip and Mary

 

A modern rendering of the arms of King Philip and Queen Mary

Image:Wikipedia

* Strictly speaking the King's titles were more complex than that simple description. The modern form King of Spain was not used before the 1870s. King Philip would have been styled variously King of Spains and the Indies or King of Castile, Leon, Aragon, Navarre, and all the other subsidiary titles of the Spanish crown. On this see List of titles and honours of the Spanish Crown and  Many titles of King Philip II of Spain 

Guardian Angels at Winchester

To mark today's feast of the Guardian Angels here is a picture of the lovely paintings on the vault of the Chapel of the Guardian Angels in Winchester Cathedral.

They date from circa 1240 and are the work of Master William, the King's painter. Not only do the paintings show the taste of of the monks of Winchester and of that discerning patron of the visual arts King Henry III, but they also indicate how the vault of a thirteenth century cathedral could or indeed should be decorated. 

There are remains of similar schemes in the choir and eastern transepts of Salisbury Cathedral, and there is a restored fragment in the south transept of Lincoln. A somewhat similar fourteenth century scheme survives at St Albans in the presbytery.

Image:photoree.com