Medieval drollery from Pontefract

Online reports about the Portable Antiquities Scheme for last year feature a delightful medieval find from my home town of Pontefract.

A praying knight emerges from a snail on top of a goat.....

Image: The Guardian

Dated to 1200-1350 the ornament is of high quality and finely detailed, and made in silver-gilt.  What the piece is thought to signify is not at all clear. Snails were popular in manuscript marginalia, with knights fighting gigantic snails in some instances. Like the popular illuminator’s use of hares or rabbits as homicidal beasts or as captors of trussed up knights they appear to represent the idea of the world turned upside down and role reversal. Snails as a stone that moves were used as a symbol of the Resurrection, but that seems unlikely in this case, The articles below offer a range of interpretations. Nor is it immediately clear how it how and where the device was worn. I do hope it does go to the Museum in Pontefract.

The articles about it can be seen at  Was This Ornament of a Knight Emerging From a Snail Shell a 'Medieval Meme'? from The Smithsonian Magazine and at ‘Such a funny little thing’: ‘snail-man’ relic may depict ancient joke from The Guardian. The Daily Telegraph has an account at Medieval meme revealed by British Museum after 'snail man' image found and the BBC News website at Yorkshire snail man mount was 'medieval meme'

I can assure, or reassure, readers that such a scene is not one that even on a Friday or Saturday evening one encounters in Pontefract these days - or at least not when I lived there.

Restoration at Versailles

The Times has had three reports in recent months about restoration projects at Versailles. 

Last April there was an account of the plan to recreate the garden created as a private refuge for Queen Marie Antoinette. The background the plan are set out at 227 years on, Marie Antoinette’s garden to be restored

This year there has been the announcement of the latest restoration of the Court Theatre at Versailles, also a creation from the time of Queen Marie Antoinette. This is outlined at Curtain rises on restoration at Marie-Antoinette’s Versailles theatre

Now there has been the further announcement of plans to restore the decoration of the apartment of Madame Du Barry which was created for her in 1759 by King Louis XV. The project is described at Versailles revival for Louis XV’s guillotined mistress

I have only visited Versailles once. What surprised me, having read about its creation and the life of the Ancien Regime Court, was the more intimate scale of even the grandest rooms. The human quality of the building came across - photographs can give the impression of an impersonal monolith, but it is not. For all its splendour the personalities could be envisaged, and, with care, as in the film Ridicule be approached when it was the seat of government and nexus of social life.

The other thing I came away with - and I have written about this before on this blog - was the feeling that it was not dead or moribund. Versailles is slumbering, dreaming of its past no doubt, but still a breathing reality as a place. Which brings me to the obvious point readers will expect me to make, and I will not disappoint them. Restoring the fabric of Versailles is wonderful as well as necessary. Equally wonderful and necessary for France is another Restoration - Vive Le Roi !

                      Image: Wikimedia

Uncovering the Picts

I happened upon two linked articles from The Scotsman about recent archaeological work on  the Picts. As far as I can see the first article from 2019 has been updated recently, but both contain different material from the other. 

Unravelling the fragmented story of the Picts is even more obscure than that of recent disputes in the Scottish Parliament and executive, but these articles may help with the former, if not the latter. They can be seen at The Picts: How their mysterious world is being illuminated like never before and at Archaeologists re-writing the history of the Picts are honoured

More about Caligula’s Horti Lamiani

My algorithm yielded today the link to an article  about the new museum arrangement in Rome that displays remains of Caligula’s Horti Lamiani, as well as items found on the site. The article, from Town and Country, is written in a lively and pacey way, but is informative and also suggests some interesting later parallels with Caligula’s taste in home furnishings and entertainment. The article can be read at How to Do Cocktails at Caligula's, History's Original Hype House

I posted about the opening up of this site in January in Uncovering Caligula’s Horti Lamiani and last week wrote about another of Caligula’s recreational projects, the boats on Lake Nemi, in Where did you get that lovely coffee table?

Emperor Caligula - Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus

Image: Encyclopaedia Britannica/ Metropolitan Museum of Art New York 

As to the Emperor himself there is an online account from Wikipedia at Caligula. There are some good illustrations of him and his family on a fact-sheet type article at Caligula: 16 Little-Known Facts You Probably Don't Know. 

I see that in 2013 I linked to an article which discussed whether he was the victim of posthumous vilification in Reassessing Caligula. This question is discussed in a useful and readable illustrated account of his life from Museum Center at Caligula: Mad or Misunderstood?

As this year saw the 1980th anniversary of Caligula’s assassination on January 24th perphaps the people who have organised the Hortus Lamiani display will, when they can open it, feel like partying like it was 41AD..... or perhaps not.

Finding a manor house under the lawn

Recently there have been reports online about the discovery during building work of the foundations of the episcopal manor house at Wiveliscombe in west Somerset. Despite the reports it should not be described as a palace - a bishop’s palace adjoins his cathedral. Medieval bishops had a number of additional residences across their diocese ( or in some cases in other dioceses ) and would use them in their Visitations or for recreation. There is a history of its use by the Bishops of Bath and Wells in the later medieval period and also of what is documented of the remains at Wiveliscombe Bishops Palace (The Gatehouse Record).  I note that the now rebuilt church in Wiveliscombe is dedicated to St Andrew, the patron of the cathedral in Wells.

The Wiveliscombe manor house finally disappeared in the eighteenth century, leaving only a part of the gatehouse, and the specific location of the residence was lost until the digging of new foundations revealed fourteenth century work. 

There are reports about the discovery from The Times at Retired banker finds ancient palace in his garden and from Life Science Essentials at Medieval bishop's palace unearthed in England

I can appreciate, just about, the reluctance to undertake a full excavation by the archaeologists, and the feelings of the owner with his plans thrown awry. Nonetheless it is a pity the site will not be investigated yet awhile. From my own researches I can think of a sizeable number of largely or entirely uninvestigated episcopal manor house sites across the medieval dioceses of York and Lincoln that one would dearly love to know more about. Some are now grassland, others recognisable but still working farms. Other dioceses must have similar sites.

James Campbell on the man at Sutton Hoo

The Sutton Hoo ship burial has been attracting renewed, indeed possibly new, interest because of the television drama about its discovery and excavation in 1939. History Extra has now published an article written by that very distinguished Anglo-Saxonist the late Professor James Campbell. He wrote the article in 2015, the year before he died. Originally a later medievalist mentored by K.B. Macfarlane as a Fellow of Worcester College here in Oxford James Campbell developed a formidable reputation as an interpreter of the Anglo-Saxon centuries. 

This article, written at the end of a long and very distinguished academic career, is a magisterial  overview of the burial mound and its context. Reading it is a journey through the Anglo-Saxon world, both material and mental. It is probing and provocative in the best academic way. Not a few of recurring themes in James Campbell’s interpretation of the age are displayed, notably the sophistication of Anglo-Saxon society and culture, and overall there is a marvellous mastery of the surviving evidence.  

It is quite a scoop for History Extra and I am linking to it in this post. I consider it an honour to have the late Professor, whom I only met once or twice, as a guest contributor on this blog. His article can be read at The man at Sutton Hoo

Fine Art in Dagenham

Dagenham in East London, but once in Essex, is a place whose name conjures up Ford cars, the Dagenham Girl Pipers and possibly a swing seat indicator in General Elections. It is not somewhere one associates with fine art. It was therefore something of a surprise to chance upon an online article from the Guardian about a very fine painting in the Valence House Museum in the town. Part of a substantial collection of paintings of the Fanshawe family this one is a particular gem.

Sit Richard Fanshawe

William Dobson

Image: Wikipedia 

It is a portrait of Sir Richard Fanshawe (1608-1666 ) painted by William Dobson in Oxford in 1644. Dobson had set up his studio in the High Street and painted members of the Royalist army and entourage in the Civil War.

Dobson (1611-1646) himself was a wonderful portraitist, but little is known of his life, and his work is not, I think, that well known by the general public. There is an account of him at William Dobson which indicates his importance and significance as an artist, and has a selection of his portraits. 

In the portrait Fanshawe at 36 is shown elegantly attired in pale blue silk and surrounded by the attributes of a cultured and accomplished administrator and diplomat. In that same year of 1644 he was married in the church at Wolvercote, just north-west of the city. His biography can be read at Sir Richard Fanshawe, 1st Baronet

The article about the painting, which outlines the significance of the things depicted with the sitter, can be seen at The Great British Art tour: the royalist who spoke the king's language of love

The Valence House Museum looks to have fine collections in an historic building, yet appears not to be that well known.

There is more about the history of the town from Wikipedia at Dagenham

Surveying Medieval English and Welsh Monasteries

Following on from my post yesterday Valor Ecclesiasticus on the ground I have now located the next two posts in the series from Stained Glass Attitudes and I am publishing the links:

MonasteryQuest™ Pt 2: The Tudor cathedrals that almost were looks at those monastic churches which might have survived if more new dioceses had been established in the early 1540s. This is a topic which has not, I think, received the attention it deserves. Why the plan was not carried through was doubtless for crude financial reasons or through government inertia or distraction, but it would be interesting to know more as to the reasons. This post is therefore a useful contribution to that discussion.

It is once again sobering to get some idea of what was lost in terms of art and architecture, of physical and cultural history, not to mention the spiritual impact of such buildings.

MonasteryQuest™ Pt 3: Map of all houses suppressed 1535-40 considers the nature, distribution and dissolution of the medieval monasteries of England and Wales, again with photographs and plans.