What's With Medieval Tombs? Part 21: Brass Rubbings - Perfect Facsimiles?

  In 1973, on my first visit to England, I did over 80 brass rubbings from medieval tombs. A major reason for doing them was that my husband had recently begun teaching medieval history in Australia and realised that students there did not have the familiarity with medieval heritage remains or an awareness of how they fitted into the ordinary landscape of folks in England. It was part of an ongoing project that included increasing amounts of photography over the years, and eventually some multimedia shenanigans. It meant much of our luggage was guide books, OS maps, Pevsners, cameras, paper and wax. We did take the odd change of undies. We were there for eight months on that occasion and I was towing a two year old child around at the time. Most of the rubbings were done around Yorkshire, Derbyshire and East Anglia, which were not so heavily populated with tourist brass rubbers as the more popular areas such as Kent. It was possible to fit each project into a two year old's timetable. The bulk of my luggage coming home comprised four large plastic cylinders solidly packed with rolled up paper. Don't quite know how we got away with that.
  I didn't do any more brass rubbings on our various extended trips after that. The tide had turned somewhat against it among the clergy and besides, how many cylinders full of rolls of paper that can only be got out for occasional special occasions does a girl need?

  This is one of the first rubbings I did, one of several in a strange little isolated church in the village of Harpham on the East Yorkshire wolds, of a knightly member of the St Quentin family. Yes, it's a scruffy phone pic, done under guerilla circumstances. One day I guess I must hire a small hall for a day and photograph them all properly.

  Here is a photograph of the same tomb. The proportions look different because I didn't have a hovercraft to get directly above him, so the rubbing is a more accurate depiction in that regard. A piece of his dagger has been broken off at some stage, which is apparent in the photograph but not the rubbing. He clearly had a livery collar in the past, inlaid in a different material to the brass. The slab he was set in also had four separate heraldic shields in the corners, only three of which have survived. These were most probably originally inlaid with coloured material, but that is gone. The colour of the brass itself is a dingy brown, weathered with age, and the whole arrangement is monochrome, a characteristic only emphasised by the stark black and white of the rubbing.

  The slab into which the brass is set lies in the floor of the St Quentin family chapel, amid a miscellany of tombs including other brasses, an incised alabaster slab on a table tomb under a canopy, a beat up old limestone effigy and some later wall monuments, not to mention bits of woodwork and old heating pipes. Whether it is in its original place or setting is impossible to know. These things got moved around and reorganised a lot.
  There were once many more medieval monumental brasses around than there are today, and despite the favourite villains of history often getting all the blame, there have been steady losses over the centuries from natural circumstances, religious change, pillage, church refurbishment and gradual wear and tear. The most vilified despoilers include Henry VIII and his henchmen, Puritans, Civil War soldiers who melted them down for cannons and corrupt churchwardens of later days. Those that survive tend to be battered, worn and often relocated, but they still provide a fascinating visual projection from that romanticised past.
  16th and 17th century antiquarians took a great interest in tombs, including brasses. Their particular focus was on recording epitaphs and heraldry. Detailed and accurate depictions of the figures on tombs and brasses are rare, although their records do indicate the existence of many tombs since lost or damaged. The first direct prints from brasses were taken in the 18th century, by flooding the incised lines in the brass with ink and pressing paper over them. I can't quite see this being approved of by church authorities today. Nevertheless, it produced very accurate monochrome, linear prints of the designs, but reversed of course. Easy to pick if there are inscriptions because these are written back to front. These were used to produce monochrome engravings for publication, and some are the only evidence for brasses which are no longer extant.

  This figure from a brass to Robert Attelath in the church of King's Lynn is known only from such a print by Craven Ord, later published as an engraving in J.S. Cotman and D. Turner 1838 Engravings of Sepulchral Brasses in Norfolk and Suffolk, Vol. 1. The image here is taken from Wikimedia Commons. King's Lynn has other surviving amazing Flemish brasses, and this is only part of the one that was lost, but it gives us some beautiful visual information.
  The use of black wax to take impressions of brasses became very popular during the mid 19th century. It produced sharp durable impressions which were the right way round. They were black, because the wax used was black heelball wax, used by cobblers to blacken the heels of shoes. Brass rubbing wax is still often referred to as heelball wax to this day, although folks have generally forgotten why.
  Collections of these historic rubbings survive in such places as the British Library, Bodleian Library, Ashmolean Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and in some cases they document brasses which have since disappeared or been mutilated or damaged. They are historical records, and at the level of reproducing linear design, they are accurate.

    This is my rubbing from 1973 of a brass in Cowthorpe, Yorkshire, showing one Brian Roucliff precariously balancing a church on one hand. Various other disordered bits and pieces of the design are scattered around. From memory, he was mounted on the wall at the time.

  The Victoria and Albert Museum catalogue of 1915 has this picture of a rubbing of the same brass, done before somebody ran off with his wife, not to mention the church tower, and the whole ensemble got disarranged. So we know a lot more about the monument than the surviving fragments can tell us.
  The stark blackness made these simple to reproduce at a time when books were largely printed in monochrome, and provided a much more detailed and crisp image than photographic images of three dimensional tombs could provide. The stereotype of the flat, black, negative, monochrome design patterns the mind into thinking that was what brasses were like.

  Flat, black and battered, this knight from Gorleston in Suffolk would have been a handsome fellow in his day, back when he had legs, and a canopy, and some colour in his heraldic shield. As for the brass itself, it may have been polished, or gilded or made shiny and interesting in some way. This rubbing was done on red paper, but as I recall that was a practical decision because the red paper was softer than the white and he was placed vertically on the wall, so it was easier to get a clean print.

  With the fancy brass rubbing waxes that were being produced in the 70s it was possible to get a shiny, metallic finish, as in this rubbing of Sir Robert de Bures from Acton in Suffolk. The colour is entirely false though. It is an artifact of production and still provides only a monochrome outline of what was probably a much more colourful affair. Interestingly, the purveyors of brass rubbing supplies back then said that some rubbers preferred the metallic waxes because they looked more brassy, and others preferred the "authentic" black and white look. In other words, the visual characteristics of the old rubbings were determining authenticity, not those of the original brasses. The little Shire Library book S. Badham with M. Stuchfield 2009 Monumental Brasses has lovely colour photographs that illustrate a number of brasses with spectacular survivals of colour.

 Something else that can be lost is texture. This little figure of a priest from West Tanfield in Yorkshire, here shown without his inscription, shows blank spaces where the brass was clearly scraped out and roughened for some sort of inlay, probably representing fur, on the garment below his cope. Similar things are seen on the collars and cuffs of ladies in elaborate gowns.

  This knight from Aldborough in Yorkshire looks to me like one that would once have had some colourful adornment, with both his jupon and shield covered in heraldic designs. Both this example and that from Gorleston were mounted on the church wall, which brings up another issue. The engraved sheet of brass and its base stone, even with shields, inscriptions, canopies and other adornments, were not necessarily the totality of the monument. Brasses could be on tomb chests, under canopies, part of larger compositions. The brass rubbing isolates the design of the engraved brass from its setting, once again creating a stereotype that does not reflect the complexity of the original.

  This canopied tomb chest in Higham Ferrers church supports a very famous brass to a priest, Laurence de St Maur, which cannot be seen from this angle. It appears that somebody has put a vase of flowers on him. (Ulp.) The whole arrangement may have served as an Easter Sepulchre as well as a tomb, which is something that cannot be deduced from looking at the many black and white illustrations of the rubbing of the brass.
  Back in 1973 some facsimiles taken from moulds of monumental brasses were being sold. These were taken up by brass rubbing centres as a way of taking the heat off churches while letting people have the brass rubbing experience. The actual sellers of these appear to have changed several times over the years, but it does seem that the core repertoire of brasses treated in this way has remained fairly constant. Some brasses have become more famous than others.

  This picture, taken in 1988 in the Norwich Brassrubbing Centre shows people getting up close and personal with some medieval heritage using these facsimiles. We also bought a bunch of them over the years so that Australian students thousands of miles from the place they were studying could have a bit of the experience. They were very popular at end of year parties as cash strapped students used their rubbings for Christmas presents. 
  Now these were claimed to be absolutely accurate, producing a rubbing that was unable to be differentiated from one produced from the original. Certainly they look pretty good. One indignant lady at a university open day accused us noisily of pillaging churches. However, for practical reasons many are miniature versions, and some extract details rather than show complete compositions. Our crosslegged knight from a full sized effigy is only about half a metre high. There are even some that are based on historical figures who never had brasses made. This is fine if they are accepted for what they are, homage to brass memorials not reproductions of them.

  This little facsimile is of a small group of daughters of the main figures on a brass from Dinton, Buckinghamshire. There is a brief description on the back, but no image of the complete composition. It's a little memento, not a recording, but that is also what you find out in the field.

  Sometimes all that is left is the ghosts, as in this indent of a lost brass in Chichester cathedral. You just have to use your imagination, and not just think in black and white.

  A couple of times we have pulled them all out to display some of the best ones for university open days. I still get a thrill when I open up one of the tubes to look at the shiny precision of them, but then it takes about an hour to roll them back up again for storage. They are precise copies of original art works at one level, but at another they are mere shadows.

What's With Medieval Tombs? Part 15 - Children on Tombs.

  The 18th and 19th centuries produced numbers of commemorative monuments to children who had died young, ranging from exquisitely carved monuments to beautiful youngsters depicted as if asleep to sad lists of names, ages and dates on churchyard headstones. These remind us that bringing offspring to adulthood was a perilous exercise in the days when nutrition and medicine were very imperfect and natural hazards were plenty. When you go back to the heyday of medieval effigial monuments, in the 14th and 15th centuries, monuments to dead children are exceedingly rare.

  This depiction of a slender young man or boy is even less of a portrait than most funerary monuments. It is dedicated to William de Hatfield, the second son of King Edward III and Queen Philippa of Hainault. He died in 1337 in his first year of life. The alabaster effigy, which lies on a tall table tomb under a vaulted canopy, is very much in the style of a knightly effigy, although he bears no arms. It is as if the depiction of an actual child is something the sculptors just didn't get. It has all the significata of liminality; praying hands, angels and lion foot supporter looking up, but it is hard to imagine an infant having earned too much time in purgatory. Like the far more numerous adult effigies, it is an idealised image of a fine human specimen.

 This undersized alabaster tomb in Sheriff Hutton church, Yorkshire, has been identified in the past with Edward, son of King Richard III, who died young in 1484. The tomb is rather the worse for wear and it has been suggested that it may have been moved from the chapel of Sheriff Hutton Castle. It has also been suggested that it is too early in style to be said Edward, but is more likely to be a member of the Neville family (on the basis of heraldry) of the earlier part of the 15th century. It is assumed to represent a young person, as the figure is not in armour or bearing arms, as you might expect of an adult of this social standing.
  Effigies which are less than life sized do not necessarily represent children. Smaller depictions have been known to indicate heart burials, that rather odd (to us) medieval ritual whereby a person's heart, or occasionally other innards, was buried in a different place to the rest of the body. This sometimes happened when a person died away from their home or from some place especially dear to them.

  This little half effigy of a bishop in Winchester Cathedral is actually holding his heart, which is a clue. He has been identified as Aymer de Valance (d.1261). So size doesn't really matter in this case.

  The Roger de Felbrigg of Felbrigg, Norfolk, commemorated on this approximately half sized brass effigy of the late 14th century is not buried here at all as he died in Prussia, as it says on the tomb inscription. This is part of a brass composition to four individuals, only two of whom were buried on the site. Brasses particularly tended to get smaller over time, particularly over the course of the 15th century. Size did matter, but as a signifier of wealth and influence, not of the age of the deceased.

  Given this, there is no real reason to assume that small three dimensional effigies, especially quaintly unique little figures, out of context, in out of the way rural places, such as this miniature effigy stuck up on a wall in the parish church of Filey, East Yorkshire, represent children. They may be heart burials, commemorative depictions of somebody buried somewhere else or just modest little efforts produced for folks of less lavish means.

  There are occasional depictions on brasses of the late 15th and early 16th centuries of infants who died in childbirth, frequently along with the mother. This tiny brass from Blickling in Norfolk shows a mother with twins, an eventuality which must have increased the perils of childbirth. The newborn state of the babies is signified in these monuments by the fact that they are firmly wrapped in swaddling clothes. The inscription begins with a standard expression "Orate pro anima" (Pray for the soul of ...), which relates to the necessity for prayer to get the soul of the deceased out of purgatory. This is a theme which permeates so much of medieval tomb iconography, even without the specific wording. But, the inscription only asks us to pray for the soul of the mother, not the departed infants who are identified simply as a boy and a girl.
  As I keep saying, the concept of purgatory is simply a late medieval Christian formulation for the more general concept of liminality in death. It is necessary to create a space and a time frame for the living to accommodate themselves to a sudden and drastic change of state in their personal lives. Death is just too abrupt. It happens in many and diverse cultures of different religious persuasions. The same applies to birth. There is a pervasive idea that infants who die at birth have not actually made it into the land of the living. In some cultures it was believed that they actually went to a separate place to return when the next pregnancy occurred. The corpses of infants were sometimes treated differently to those of others to indicate that they were not gone forever.
  There is a temptation to see something of this in the depiction of newborn infants in swaddling clothes. Perhaps it is a sort of reminder to God (who as we know is a forgetful old duffer who has to be constantly reminded of his obligations in the affairs of humankind) that these little souls didn't quite make it to earth.

  Children were often enough depicted on the tombs of their parents, but they weren't depicted as children and they weren't necessarily dead at the time. This 15th century tomb in Burton Agnes church, East Yorkshire, shows a miniature knight in plate armour lying beside the effigy of his mother. This was not a bizarre fashion in infant clothing. The suit of armour was an indicator of his social status. The tiny size does not mean this this is a representation of a dead baby, even one in a symbolic suit of armour. Children depicted on tombs were simply drawn that way; smaller. The weeper figures arranged around the tomb chest are figures of saints, but sometimes representations of the children were used for this purpose.

  Photograph from Pratt, Helen Marshall (1914) Westminster Abbey: Its Architecture, History and Monuments: New York via the fabulous Internet Archive.

  Children were deployed in this way on the tomb of Edward III in Westminster Abbey, which brings us back to where we started. Originally the tomb had all his multitudinous children arrayed around the chest, but time was no kinder to royal tombs than to others and only six remain, of which the one on the far right is William de Hatfield. The living and the departed children are depicted no differently. They are symbols, but of what? Fertility? Succession? Family obligation to the soul of the deceased? All of the above?

  This tiny little brass from Blickling, Norfolk, shows firstly, the prolific reproduction and by inference, sturdy physical robustness of many late medieval women, and secondly, the way that children on brasses were rendered as identical symbols without any form of individuality. They are shown as small, but they are dressed as adults. They do not represent mass family extinction. Just because they were depicted on a tomb does not indicate that they were dead. Perhaps, harking back to the liminality theme, they represent a transition from the family united and alive to the family parted by death, readjusting to a new reality.
  The question has to be asked as to how children were commemorated in death. In the absence of physical evidence that is rather hard to answer. Perhaps the deaths of children were regarded as a matter for private grief, not for public display either for religious or social reasons.

  Post medieval tombs could depict women who had died in childbirth with their dead babies in their arms, but apart from the little chrysom brasses, this is not found in pre-Reformation tombs, which is one of the reasons the sculpture above, of a woman named as Constantia de Frecheville in the church of Scarcliffe, Derbyshire, is most likely a fake, or at least a mashup of a tomb effigy and an image of the Virgin Mary. Different ages present their sentiments and emotions in different ways.

What's With Medieval Tombs? - Part 12 Low Relief and Half Sunk Effigies

  The fully three dimensional funerary effigies which proliferated during the 14th and 15th centuries are conspicuous and highly recognisable. Many were created in workshops which basically worked out individualising details on very stereotyped models. They were good models and they look very splendid, but it is interesting that as competition in social stratification ramped up and more people from the upper orders were commemorated in this way, these high status goods became standardised. They were Rolex watches or Mercedes cars, not old master art works.
  Some other styles of depiction appeared quite early in the era of effigial tombs and continued. They can be found dotted around the place. The are often described as oddities, but they have some of their own traditions, and the symbolism of liminality and prayer and purgatory is built in, just as in the standard workshop effigies.

  The earliest tombs in the full sized effigy tradition were of senior churchmen, such as this one of Bishop Nigel (d.1174) in Ely Cathedral. They tended to have an effigy lying under an architectural canopy, set into a solid slab. The above has the added gorgeous detail of the bishop's soul being carried in a napkin; the ultimate symbol of liminality and one that recurs here and there. Many of these tombs were made from local British marble; Purbeck, Frosterley, Alwalton and other local names which indicate their origin.

  This 13th century abbot from Peterborough is in a similar tradition. The British marbles are not true marble. Marble is metamorphosed limestone which has been subjected to heat and pressure so that its internal mineral structure is completely changed, becoming very internally uniform and hard. British marbles are incompletely metamorphosed, so they are softer and can still contain recognisable structures from the original sedimentary rock. Seashell fossils are common, for example, in Purbeck marble and so are interesting to geologists and palaeontologists as well as medieval tomb enthusiasts.
  So while they polish up to a beautiful, marbly, shiny surface, they are a bit fragile for fully three dimensional effigies, and the slabs themselves come in thinnish layers. So these early effigies are designed to fit the materials and still look impressive. The bodies are not fully cut out in the round and hands may be depicted flat rather than as flimsy projections. The half rounded effigies lying flat within their arched canopies can almost be seen as bodies within their coffins, not yet fully dead, not yet fully resurrected, but the coffin lids are open. Liminality again.

  These earlier low relief or sunken effigies could be high status. This battered and awkwardly reset slab in Beaumaris church, Wales represents Princess Joan, daughter of King John. Her praying hands are rendered flat.

  This 13th century tomb to a Lady Margery at Wistow in Yorkshire is in similar tradition. She lies under an architectural canopy that looks like it ought to be vertical, but being horizontal could serve enigmatically as an open coffin. She holds rosary beads to remind you to pray (not visible in the above picture). Above the gable of the canopy are two heads in quatrefoils, one of a bishop, another a man's head. It's not quite clear who they are supposed to be. They could be gazing down protectively from above or represent family left behind, looking up.

  The tomb of Archbishop Hubert Walter (d.1205) in Canterbury Cathedral, which has no effigy, displays heads in quatrefoils around the coped lid of the tomb. It was a thing, if not a very common thing.

  The lying in an open coffin depiction occasionally occurs in later  tombs, and is not necessarily a cheap and easy alternative to the fancy but stereotyped workshop tombs. This exceedingly maltreated Decorated canopy of the early/mid 14th century covers an effigy of a priest set into a very fiddly openwork container. It is in a little known parish church of Welwick in the Holderness area of East Yorkshire and the resemblance of the fruit salady cornucopia of the superstructure to that of the Percy tomb in Beverley Minster is probably not coincidental. It would have been quite a grand thing in its day. The hand holding angels are rather sweet.
  The openwork coffin was also used in cadaver or transi tombs, as discussed in an earlier post, to allow the pious a peek at the gruesome lower layer decomposing nicely there.

  A simplified variant on this mode of depiction may just show a bust or head of the effigy and sometimes the feet, the middle part just being a plain slab. The above example is from Wadworth in Yorkshire. The architectural canopy doubling as a coffin is there, with the visible face, hands and feet suggesting that liminal time before the process of death is complete. This may be a cheaper form of commemoration than getting a full sized effigy shipped up from an expensive fancy workshop, but it contains all the necessary symbolic elements.

  This rather strange, lumpy example is from Bakewell church in Derbyshire, where dozens of old grave slabs have been re-erected in the church porch, suggesting that not only cost but church expediency may have played a part in developing this style of tomb. After all, how many crosslegged knights and ladies in flowing gowns can you accomodate in one church before they become a health hazard? At least you can walk on these, as with brasses.

  This slightly odd effigy of a priest from Moor Monkton in Yorkshire displays the head and hands in a quatrefoil, vaguely reminiscent of those details on tombs shown above.

  Some seriously bizarre renovating, retooling and relocating has occurred with these effigies in Skerne church, East Yorkshire, but the lady definitely has her head sunk in a quatrefoil. No, I don't know why the knight has a round shield or a barrister's wig. Best not to ask probably.

  These tombs can be in pretty worn and battered condition, probably because they get walked on as much as anything else. Also one does wonder how many got turfed out of the church when more recent burials were placed there, only reappearing as historic relics during church restorations. The example above from Sleaford in Lincolnshire was always simple, with a head in a round hollow and a marginal inscription.

  This weatherbeaten example from the tower of the ruined Templar church of Temple Bruer in Lincolnshire is so worn as to be barely recognisable as a tomb effigy.

  Before effigy tombs were common, a much utilised depiction on a grave slab was the crucifix, sometimes very simply depicted just by itself; sometimes with a symbol of the deceased's occupation or status such as a chalice, keys or shears; sometimes with an inscription. The more elaborate examples sprouted foliage and are taken to be a hybrid of Christian symbolism and a tree of life motif, generally referred to as a floriated cross, or foliated by the pedantic. This is not closet paganism. It occurs in perfectly regulation Christian symbolism such as the Tree of Jesse. Christians practised agriculture as well. The particularly fine dark marble one above comes from Hedon church in East Yorkshire.

  This example from Howden church in Yorkshire has a very rainwashed and effaced effigy bust under a canopy at the base of the cross. This combination also occurs in brasses, where a little figure might be kneeling at the base of a floriated cross or reside within the cross head. Cheaper, smaller, neater, not tripping up the parishioners, but quite charming.

  This slab in Sleaford church, Lincolnshire combines the face and hands sunk in the stone with the floriated cross, creating a somewhat unsettling green man type image. The habit of propping these up against the wall somewhat disturbs the liminality concept, as they are no longer looking upwards, pleading for a fast trip out of purgatory.

  This example from Gilling East in Yorkshire has various appurtenances of a knightly tomb, sword, heraldic shield and crest, flattened and set into a composition with a floriated cross. It looks a little strange but is not just an aberration from the wilds of the rural north. It embodies all the standard symbolism and tradition.

  This funny little number from Bakewell, Derbyshire looks strangely anachronistic, but probably just because of its renovated setting and inscription. The knight and lady are standard mid 14th century in presentation, but in this case only the busts of the figures exist; no little toes in a trefoil. It is a wall monument, and presumably was meant to be, but the heads are nevertheless resting on pillows. The inconsistency between vertical and horizontal, as seen in larger tombs, is still present. The hands are praying. They are anticipating.

  Some tombs really do seem to be unique. This pair of very worn and effaced effigies lie with their heads under a canopy, but their legs disappear under tracery or a vine motif. It seems an eccentric hybrid. It is in the church at Nafferton in East Yorkshire and I lived across the road from it at various times. The locals didn't reckon much to it. It does have a stylistic cousin in a nearby village.

  The church at Lowthorpe a couple of miles away has this example which is positively creepy. The two effigies lie under what may be meant to be a shroud with the tree of life motif spread all over the top of them, with very worn heads displayed at the ends of the branches. It has been suggested that they may represent their children, or that it has analogies with the Jesse tree, or both. Or do they represent their ancestors? Are the main figures at the top or the bottom of the tree? It very much personalises the usually abstracted floriated cross concept and suggests in a literal way the concept of the tree growing from the remains of the departed. So conceptually it is in the tradition, but in the specifics of execution, it has got to be unique. Nice Anglo-Saxon cross leaning casually against the wall at the head beside the historic heating pipes.

  Low relief or part sunk effigies seem to appear in random places. This supposedly 16th century priest in mass vestments appears in the 19th century church of Scorborough, East Yorkshire, presumably salvaged from its predecessor. He holds a chalice, presumably to remind the faithful not only to pray for him, but that he holds the key to the salvation of others. I am still pondering the idea that ecclesiastical accessories, and most particularly the chalice, in priestly graves, are the only real grave goods found in medieval Christian burials. Were they the only things you really could take with you?

  The tomb of Lady Furnival (d.1395) in Barlborough, Derbyshire, is carved from alabaster, but in the rather oldfashioned low relief mode rather than the standard midlands workshop mode. Don't know whether the metal cage is to keep her in, or to stop people walking on her.
  So these effigies which diverge from the standard workshop models still conform to the traditions of symbolism and essentially use the same vocabulary. They grew out of the same developing effigial tomb tradition and form a web of traditional representation with other forms, such as the floriated cross slab. They are not ignorant local productions of rural yokels too poor to buy a proper shop tomb, but more individual expressions of the same religious and social sentiments.

Angels Ain't Angels

  Having pottered my way through cleaning up and organising my photographs of stained glass windows in parish churches in England, a subset of my huge project to continue the process of turning a load of old decomposing Kodachrome and Ektachrome into an orderly digital archive on Flickr (why, oh why, did I think this was such a good idea?), I discover that two churches in York have windows that depict the Nine Orders of Angels. This concept, also referred to as the Celestial Hierarchy, was expounded by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite somewhere around the 5th century AD or beyond. He has been dubbed Pseudo, not because he didn't exist or was some kind of fraudster, but because he wasn't the Dionysius the Areopagite mentioned in Acts 17 who was converted by St Paul. It was just his nom de plume. I have always thought this was a good name to drop unexpectedly into a dinner table conversation.
  The churches containing windows with this program are the fabulous All Saints, North Street, where the heavily restored window was reassembled from fragments after the discovery of an antiquarian drawing that showed how it was supposed to go, and St Michael Spurriergate.

  From St Michael Spurriergate, on the left the most senior order, the Seraphim, with multiple wings and bathed in fire; on the right Cherubim, also with multiple wings and bathed with light. In fact, many depictions of angels generally show them covered in feathers, which may relate to the costumes worn in the Mystery Plays.

                   

  From All Saints North Street, a Seraphim in scarlet leads a procession of senior ecclesiastics while a Cherubim leads a group of cleric and scholars. The plain coloured glass represents where modern glass has been inserted to fill out the general design. The grid pattern is from the mesh screen behind the window, inserted to prevent kamikaze birds or rocks thrown by idiots from damaging the windows.

  Working down the hierarchy, from St Michael Spurriergate, Thrones or angels of humility and Dominations, dressed as armed knights to display their qualities of leadership.

  From All Saints North Street, a Throne leads a group of members of the legal profession, while a Domination leads a group containing a pope, a king and an emperor. This panel has rather a lot of the lovely and intricate original glass in it. The angels are being matched with the mortal folks in their hierarchy.

   Back in St Michael Spurriergate, the next panels should be Virtues, allied with nature, and Powers, depicted as armed warriors. Well that is the theory. I think these may have got a bit out of order over the centuries. The ones on the left are wearing armour, and crowns. It seems our Dominations, Powers and Virtues may have got a bit mixed up. Story of the history of nations really.

                 

  Back in All Saints North Street, a Virtue leads the city burgesses while a Power leads a procession of priests. Ponder on that association.

   The final panels in St Michael Spurriergate show Archangels and Principalities. I had always thought that Archangels were at the top of the heap, but it's a bit more complicated. Archangels can be the leading or senior angels of each group, but as a whole they are in the lower orders. They are also the messengers from God to humanity. Think Archangel Gabriel, Annunciation. Principalities seem to be a somewhat subversive group and I don't quite understand them.

      

  In all Saints North Street an Archangel leads a group of ordinary city folks, including a worker with a shovel, while a Principality leads a group of noblemen.
  The sequence at St Michael Spurriergate ends here, as there are in fact only eight panels in that window.

  In All Saints North Street the final panel shows an assortment of townspeople being led by ..... an Angel. Yes, the lowest order of angels are called Angels. The people who hang out with Angels include a child and, if you look very carefully in the middle of the panel, next to the men in red, a person wearing spectacles.
  The whole thing is so appealing because of its ever so medieval tangled threads of iconography, text, tradition and social reinterpretation. An earnest early Christian scholar writes a dense and complex treatise under the pseudonym of a New Testament figure, which is translated in that literalising medieval way into pictures of angels in feathery tights or suits of armour or flapping their wings amid sheets of flame, then overlaid with some kind of commentary on the nature of the earthly hierarchy.
  Lessons for the illiterate?  Maybe just a reminder that God orders the estates in both heaven and earth.

These pictures appear in larger format on my Flickr site, but they are not properly organised yet. They will be. One day.