More about the Raphael Cartoons

In addition to the link I posted yesterday I see that The Smithsonian Magazine has an article about the Raphael Cartoons project which has additional information and can be seen at New Online Tool Reveals Raphael's Sistine Chapel Cartoons in Stunning Detail

The Cartoons are clearly something to go and see in person as well as online - I have not managed to see them yet myself on various visits to the V&A - once we can travel again and visit museums and galleries.

Life and Death in Medieval Cambridge

Thanks to a post on the Medieval Religion discussion group I was directed to two articles in The Guardian about both life and death in Cambridge in the medieval period.

The first deals with an analysis of burials in three locations Friar crushed by cart: bone analysis hints at causes of medieval deaths

As the original poster of the link points out Coroners records for medieval England are a rich documentary source for stories of both life and death.

The second article, from last year, is superficially influenced by the paper’s contemporary stance, but once you get past that to the Hundred Rolls of 1279 - and who wouldn’t want to do that - it offers a view of the urban patriarchate of the town and their attitudes to property and their neighbours in the first seventy years of the existence. It can be read at How compassionate capitalism flourished in medieval Cambridge

Photographing the Raphael Cartoons

The Art Newspaper has an article about a major project that has seen the comprehensive photographing of the magnificent Raphael Cartoons in the Royal Collection and which are on long term loan to the V&A. Acquired by King Charles I they were loaned by Queen Victoria to the Museum as part of her commemoration of the Prince Consort who was a devotee of Raphael’s work. It was the Prince who first had the series photographed in the late 1850s when they were still at Hampton Court.

The article, with information about the latest use of contemporary technology, can be viewed at Raphael Cartoons are ready for their close-up on V&A website

The death of Bishop Fleming at Sleaford Castle

Today is the 590th anniversary of the death of “my” Bishop Richard Fleming of Lincoln. 

He died, as his Register records, at about two hours after noon on this day in 1430-31, having apparently suffered a stroke which deprived him of the power of speech. This last fact was of some wry amusement to the Lollards. In his career he had been a noted preacher and as Bishop of Lincoln a strong opponent of their heresies.

Sleaford Castle was one of the widely distributed possessions of the see of Lincoln and dated from the episcopate of Bishop Alexander ‘the Magnificent’ in the earlier twelfth century. Situated on level ground on the edge of the Fens it utilised the waters of the River Slea to fill a complex of defensive moats. It was still habitable in the mid-sixteenth century but then appears to have rapidly disappeared. The history of the castle is described in Sleaford Castle from Wikipedia.

A reconstruction of Sleaford Castle

View from the south west

Image: Sleaford Museum

Sleaford Castle today

Aerial view from the south west

Image: Wikipedia 

In recent years there has been renewed interest in the town in making more of the surviving remains of the castle, including possible archaeological work - the site is apparently still uninvestigated. It is to be hoped that something tangible will result from these initiatives when more normal conditions return.

Anglo-Saxon burial customs

The Mail online has had two reports recently on Anglo-Saxon burial practices and on what contemporaries were doing in such matters on the continent.

The first report is about a major discovery at Overstone in Northamptonshire of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery, together with an associated settlement, which is close to a group of much older, Bronze Age burials. The Anglo-Saxon graves yielded a rich selection of brooches, wrist clasps, rings and other personal items as well as weapons. The discovery is described at Thousands of beads and brooches unearthed from Anglo-Saxon cemetery

The second is about a comparative study of 6th to 8th century burials in western Europe - lowland Britain, France, the Low Countries and Germany - which suggests a rapid change across the area surveyed as people stopped burying their dead with grave goods such as the Northamptonshire finds. This points to a the Christianisation of the whole region in this period. So beginning with St Augustine's arrival in Kent in 597 and the labours of that great English missionary St Boniface and his companions in mid-eighth century Germany a whole culture was significantly refashioned and this was a feature common to virtually the whole region. The article on this study can be read at Early Medieval Europe was surprisingly well connected, study reveals

The BBC History website has a post about Sutton Hoo - linked to the new film The Dig about the discovery in 1939 - and this ties in quite neatly with this latest study. In this account they have Professor Martin Carver talking about the context of the Sutton Hoo burials and how the spread of Christianity from the continent was the backdrop to this 7th-century great burst of activity. “I imagine these mounds must have been very demonstrative. The burials are very extravagant and very richly furnished. They are strong statements about the wish to continue this particular regime, this dynasty, and in some ways there are signs of anxiety of what’s coming from over the Channel,” Carver says. “In other words, a more obvious Christian union, a kind of re-enactment of the Roman empire, which they really don’t want to be part of. So I think that’s why the investment is so big. People are calling to their gods, if you like, for protection.”

A Black trumpeter at the Court of King Henry VII and King Henry VIII

My eye chanced the other day upon a note by Richard Littlejohn in his column in the Mail Online about a man I had heard of before, John Blanke, and his possible link to a public house in Peterborough called the Black Boy and Trumpet. 

John Blanke is thought to have arrived in England in the retinue of Katherine of Aragon in 1501 and as a royal trumpeter in 1507 successfully petitioned for a promotion and a very substantial pay rise from 8d to 16d a day. He is believed to have played at the coronation of King Henry VIII in 1509 and is shown at the tournament celebrating the birth of the King and Queen’s short-lived son Henry in 1511. 

Extract from the Westminster Tournament Roll almost certainly showing John Blanke, the only figure wearing an green and gold turban. It is interesting to note that the artist having carefully depicted Blanke’s face and distinctive turban forgot and gave him a white right hand.

Image:Wikipedia 

He is known to have married at Greenwich in 1512 but then disappears from the historic record. There is more about him in a handsomely illustrated piece on the Historic Royal Palaces website at John Blanke and on Wikipedia at John Blanke This has a useful bibliography for background on his life and times. 

I wonder if the trumpeter’s original surname was the Spanish one of Blanco. Several families of those who served Queen Katherine  seem to have established themselves in England.

This led me to another MailOnline article from 2018 about the lives of people who were African born or of African descent in sixteenth century England which can be read at Black Tudors of England: How early immigrants were treated as equals. The stories revealed offer remarkable insights into their lives and those of those around them. Indeed they are seemingly stranger than fiction - and historical fiction at that. 

The reference in it to the Mary Rose salvage operation reminds me of a report in, I think, The Times, a while back about an analysis of the bones of some of the crew members of the Mary Rose from 1545 which showed that this was a varied group. By no means were all English, and one appeared to be partly of  North African origin. Sailors for the King’s ships, and doubtless those of his subjects,   appear to have been recruited from a much wider area than the English port towns and their hinterland. Henrician and Elizabethan England was, to use the fashionable term, perhaps more diverse in its population than we might expect.

Queen Victoria speaks

Yesterday was the 120th anniversary of the death of Queen Victoria. By chance today I came across on YouTube a restoration of the voice recording she made in 1888. The short film shows the stages in removing scratches, clicks and other blemishes from the wax cylinder recording in which the Queen refers to her Jubilee celebrations the preceding year. It can be seen and she can be heard ( just ) at Restoring the Queen Victoria recording of 1888

In addition I came upon online film of the enthusiastic welcome the Queen received in Dublin on her visit in the summer of 1900 which can be seen at Queen Victoria In Dublin (Rare Footage From 1900) | British Pathé

There is a longer video showing Queen Victoria at Balmoral in 1896 with members of her family, including the Emperor and Empress of Russia, as well as Scottish and Indian servants, of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations in London in June 1897 and of the Queen’s funeral at Windsor in 1901. This can be seen at     

Queen Victoria On Film (1896 To 1901) & Queen Victoria's Voice.

St John the Evangelist at Cana

A little while ago I was told about a sermon in which the preacher spoke about the idea that the bridegroom at the Wedding at Cana, and that his reaction to the miraculous changing of water into wine was to abandon his bride, embrace virginity and follow Our Lord.

Now I must admit that this idea was new to me. I should add that it is one that I would rather doubt on the Scriptural evidence, or rather its lack. I am inclined to see John as a young teenager, too young to marry and support a wife, but who followed his Divine cousin. He displays the impetuousness of youth both as a Son of Thunder and also as the one Apostle to venture to Calvary. This idea I owe to a comment made in answer to my post St John the Evangelist from 2011. 

I have no problems with the ancient traditions of  an extended family group from whom Our Lord drew some of the Apostles as well as other disciples.

However to mark last Sunday, the day on which the Miracle at Cana is celebrated liturgically, the excellent website Canticum Salomonis has posted a translation of a sermon by Honorius Augustodunensis 

 ( c.1080-1154 ). Wikipedia has an account of what little is known of his life other than his writings at Honorius Augustodunensis. The sermon is a model for the use of those called to preach at a patronal celebration on the feast of St John the Evangelist on December 27th and draws together a wide range of homiletic material.

The translation of the sermon can be read at https://sicutincensum.wordpress.com/2021/01/17/virginis-filio-ipse-virgo-adhesit-honorius-on-st-john-the-beloved/

By the by I wonder if a version of Honorius’ sermon was ever preached in the Cluniac priory of St John the Evangelist in my home town of Pontefract. There is no way of knowing, but it is I suppose possible.