The Melun Diptych

Recently I have come across two online articles about research into a detail in the Melun Diptych which dates from the early 1450s. The painting was commissioned by Étienne Chevallier, secretary and subsequently Treasurer to King Charles VII, in memory of his wife who died in 1452, and painted by Jean Fouquet. There  is a biographical note on Wikipedia about the former at Étienne Chevalier and a much longer illustrated article about the artist and his work at Jean Fouquet

The two panels were sold in 1775 to fund renovations to the church in Melun to which it had belonged and the two panels are now in galleries in Berlin and Antwerp.

The diptych is described in a Wikipedia article at Melun Diptych

The model for the figure of the Virgin Mary is usually identified as having been King Charles VII’s mistress Agnès Sorel, who had died in 1450. She had been the first maîtresse-en-titre of a French king, and there is a Wikipedia account of her life at Agnès Sorel

Surroging the Virgin and Child are Seraphim and Cherubim, the two highest orders of Angels.The Seraphim are shown in red as the are burning with the love of God. The next rank of Angels are the Cherubim who contemplate Him with ice-cold logic.

The new research concentrates on the stone which St Stephen has as his emblem of martyrdom on the book in his left hand. The argument is that this is not just any rock but a prehistoric stone axe head. The articles can be seen at What's That Oddly Shaped Stone in a 15th-Century Painting? from Hyperallegenic, and at This 15th-Century Painting Might Actually Depict a Prehistoric Tool, New Research Suggests

from Artnet

The church for which the diptych was originally commissioned is discussed briefly at Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame, Melun

Forts on the Eastern Frontier of the Roman Empire

Declassified aerial spy photographs from the 1970s and 1980s have been used by researchers to pinpoint lost - and often remote - Roman forts on what was once the eastern frontier zone of the Roman Empire in the borderlands of Syria, Iraq and Turkey according to an article in Antiquity as reported by the Daily Telegraph.

The forts are from the mid-second century up to 305 and the abdication of Diocletian, and are just short of 400 in number. Their distribution suggests not a limes like Hadrian’s Wall or the Rhine frontier but defence in depth, and, presumably, over time. As the article points out this was an important area for trade routes and contact as well as border conflict, so not one single pattern but a network over time and territory. 

Many are remote and isolated, and sadly vulnerable to modern development. The politics and turmoil of the region does not help their protection, still less their study by archaeologists. It is a tragic irony that such sites come to the notice of scholars and now together with modern pressures upon them.

The Daily Telegraph article, which has a selection of striking examples of the photographs, can be seen at Declassified images from Cold War satellites reveal hundreds of lost Roman forts

Live Science has a similar account of the evidence from these photographs and of what can be deduced from them at all Cold War satellite images reveal nearly 400 Roman forts in the Middle East

The Independent also reports on the project with different photographs and maps and additional commentary at Nearly 400 hidden Roman forts uncovered from Cold War-era images

Thomas Wolsey’s galero

Cardinals appear to be invading this blog and colonising a corner of it for themselves. In recent weeks there have been the five contemporary members of the Sacred College who submitted their Dubia to the Pope and following in their wake have been Cardinal Newman, Cardinal Pole and Cardinal Allen. They have now been joined by probably their most famous English colleague, Cardinal Wolsey.

He slipped in as I was preparing last Friday to record a podcast video with Dr Sarah Morris, the excellent Tudor Travel Guide. In it we talked about sixteenth century Oxford and what can still be seen both in terms of buildings and artifacts from that era. One thing I wanted to mention was what is held to be Cardinal Wolsey’s red hat - his galero - which is now the property of Christ Church. I am tempted to say that is not as well known as it deserves to be and, kept as it normally is in the College Library, is not on the route for visitors to see. When I looked it up on the internet I found the hat has been in Wolsey’s home town of Ipswich as part of the Wolsey 550 exhibition to mark what is believed to be the anniversary of his birth in 1473. The exhibition website from Suffolk Archives can be seen at wolseysipswich

The Christ Church website features the hat and its loan to Ipswich at Cardinal Wolsey's Hat in Ipswich

The BBC News website reports on the hat at Trumpets blare for the arrival of... a red hat as does the East Anglian Daily Times at 

Wolsey's hat comes to Ipswich for the first time after more than 500 years

I have posted previously about Wolsey and his  hat. From 2011 there is Cardinal Wolsey's red hat and from 2015 Wolsey receives the Red Hat

Cardinal William Allen

Today is the 429th anniversary of the death in Rome of Cardinal William Allen, the founder of the English Missionary college at Douai, and a key figure in the survival of Catholicism in England after the Elizabethan Settlement of 1559. A student, and then a Fellow, of Oriel he was to spend most of his life, and all his priestly ministry, in exile.

Cardinal William Allen 

Image: great nephew of cardinal william allen. blogspot.com

Stephanie A. Mann had a post about him on her Supremacy and Survival  blog the other day which can be read at Preview: Another Confessor: William Cardinal Allen, RIP

Previously, in 2013, she had one about him and his career which can be seen at Cardinal William Allen, Vatican Librarian

The New Advent Catholic Dictionary account of him - which assigns him a date of birth a decade earlier than it actually was - can be accessed at CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: William Allen

I have written about him in Cardinal William Allen

Although there are early twentieth century biographies of him by Martin Hailes and Dom. Bede Camm he does not appear to have attracted a contemporary biographer. This seems a gap that needs filling by someone with insight into the source material and an understanding of current thought about the position of Catholics in Elizabethan England.

The diet on medieval Lindisfarne

A report in the online version of the Northumberland Gazette covers recent excavations on Lindisfarne and the analysis of animal, bird and fish bones from medieval levels.

In addition to the Priory - a dependency of the Cathedral Priory in Durham - Holy Island supported a fishing community whose catch went principally to feed the monks at Durham with their pescatarian diet. 

The English Heritage website account of the Priory and its rich and varied history can be seen at History of Lindisfarne Priory

Reconstruction showing how the priory buildings may have looked in about 1500

© Historic England (illustration by David Simon)

The recent excavations have shown a surprisingly varied selection of bones from not just the usual four legged animals but from birds and fish which suggests a more varied diet than one might expect.

The article can be read at Archaeological dig unearths fascinating new insight into medieval life on the Northumberland coast

Whether the diet was as extreme as that on the much more remote St Kilda in later centuries is not clear. On St Kilda it is thought people ate 36 eggs and 18 seabirds a day according to the Daily Telegraph article at The island where you’d eat 36 eggs and 18 seabirds per day

I have stayed on Lindisfarne over thirty years ago with a religious community. As far as I recall we ate well, but we did not eat turtle, puffin, guillemot or gull, still less Great Auk….,

The crucifix of Bl. Edward Oldcorne

The Catholic Herald has an article about a current exhibition at Bar Convent in York which includes a crucifix that belonged to Bl.Edward Oldcorne SJ, and which appears to be the sole surviving secondary relic from those Catholics rounded up in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. The exhibition closes on November 16th.

Although mainly associated with his ministry and death in Worcestershire Oldcorne was born in York, so the loan of the crucifix to the museum in the city is especially appropriate.

The article can be read at Crucifix of priest executed after Gunpowder Plot now on display in UK convent

 

The Wikipedia account of the life of Bl. Edward can be viewed at Edward Oldcorne

There is another biography, with additional information, together with a painted portrait of Bl. Edward, on the website of the Society of Jesus at Blessed Edward Oldcorne

There is also more about him and of his base at the Habington family home Hindlip Hall in the latter part of the posts in Church Tramp : Wanderings Through Old Churches and Beyond

 

Wikipedia has a history of Hindlip Hall - the old house was famed for its priest holes created by St Nicholas Owen - and which can be read at Hindlip Hall

The former house at Hindlip Hall in 1776 but unfortunately destroyed by fire in the early nineteenth century

Image: B B Williams - antique-prints-maps.co.uk 

After the executions of Fr Garnet and Fr Oldcorne there appeared what was perceived as a miraculous pattern resembling an imperial crown in the grass at the Hall, presumably indicating their crown as martyrs.

St Edward the Confessor and his cult

Yesterday was the feast day of St Edward the Confessor. He died on January 5th 1065-6, and thereby set in motion the Norman Conquest. His feast, however, falls on October 13th because it was on that day that his newly canonised body was translated to a new shrine in 1163 and then again to its present shrine on the same date in 1269 as part of King Henry III’s rebuilding of Westminster Abbey as the cult centre for not only St Edward but also for the monarchy as an institution.

St Edward the Confessor from

the Bayeux Tapestry 

Image: Wikipedia

Wikipedia has a biography of the King which includes some discussion of the ways in which his cult developed in succeeding centuries. This can be accessed at Edward the Confessor

St Edward the Confessor from the Wilton Diptych of 1397. He holds as his attribute the ring which he had given to a beggar who was, in fact, St John the Evangelist in disguise. St John returned the ring through English pilgrims in the Holy Land together with the promise of a heavenly reward for the King.

Image: historylearningsite.co.uk

The Westminster Abbey website has an excellent section on the cult and shrine of St Edward together with some fine illustrations and it can be accessed at Edward the Confessor and Edith

That section of the Abbey website shows very well the story of the creation of the shrine and its adornment, despoliation, restoration, neglect and more recent restoration and further augmentation in the past century. St Edward is still at the heart of his abbey, and still an object of pilgrimage - something I had the great privilege of doing for a Mass with the Oxford Oratory in 2016. His shrine, being also a royal tomb, is the only English one to manage to survive destruction during the sixteenth century.

St Edward and his cult is moreover still at the heart of the realm as we saw on May 6th with the Coronation. On that day St Edward’s forty second successor as the English monarch entered St Edward’ shrine church, preceded by  St Edward’s Staff, to sit in St Edward’s Chair and receive St Edward’s Crown. The King departed the ceremony wearing in the Imperial State Crown St Edward’s sapphire, believed to be the jewel from the ring found in the saint’s coffin in the thirteenth century. This all as part of a rite used at least for the coronation of St Edward’s grandfather in 973, and probably fifty or so years older than that. The monarch swore until the sixteenth or seventeenth century to uphold the laws of St Edward and received what were believed to be his ceremonial robes. Out of sight, but not by any means out of mind, St Edward lay in his shrine, surrounded no doubt by the technology of broadcasting worldwide a tenth century liturgy to a twenty-first century world, but still at the very centre of transferring and sanctifying legitimate and lawful authority to rule and reign.

 

King Charles III at his Coronation wearing St Edward’s Crown as re-made for King Charles II

Image: WPA Pool/Getty/ Tatler

Colour and the Elgin Marbles

The latest research on the Elgin - or Parthenon - Marbles has been to look at the fragmentary remains of the paintwork which once covered the marble and made the sculpture vibrant to the beholder on the Acropolis.

The Parthenon as originally built and painted in 433-2 BC

Image. mygreece.tv  

Analysis of the colour scheme suggests a significant use of blue and purple pigments in the original scheme. That any of it has survived at all is, given its antiquity and the exposure and handling the sculpture has endured over twenty four or so centuries, a tribute to the quality of the materials used.

The research is set out by an article by the Daily Telegraph which can be seen at Elgin Marbles were painted in vivid hues of ‘Egyptian blue’ and purple

King’s College London also discusses the project on its website at Scientific analysis reveals the true colours of the Parthenon Sculptures

The Parthenon as originally conceived and built

Image: mygreece.tv