What's With Medieval Tombs? Part 20: Owning the Church

  My sorting and cleaning up of old photographs finally allowed me to identify two pictures which recalled a tale from when they were originally taken. I was trailing two small boys around medieval sites at the time. Mostly they were happy with castles and didn't mind monasteries if they had good drains, but churches generally had to be rationed. They were observant little lads though and as I was investigating a tomb one queried "Why is the shield in the stained glass window the same as the one on the knight's shield. Did he own the church?" I explained no, he didn't own it, but he may have had something to do with building the part of it where he was buried. Thinking about it for a few decades, there is an element of ownership in these remains, and sometimes contested ownership at that.

  The church was in Ryther, West Yorkshire, where there are tombs to members of the Ryther family. In an earlier post I discussed how stained glass windows could be funerary monuments in themselves, and could contain specific references to praying for the souls of the dead. Another post also discussed the use of heraldry on tombs as an identifier and a status marker. I guess I am trying to pull a few threads together to look at signs of possession within the church.
  There must always have been some competition between the clergy and the wealthy lay folks about ownership of the church real estate. The clergy used the space to go about their business of saying the offices and the mass, conducting weddings, baptisms, confessions and funerals and doing their own work. It was their space. Nonetheless, wealthy donors provided some of the means for them to do it, and laid claim to spaces for their personal and family display.
  Some of the earliest large effigy tombs are in the great churches, the cathedrals and abbeys, commemorating the senior clergy of the church; the founding fathers and those who oversaw the development of ever increasing grandeur of these buildings and communities. These can be seen in some places, despite being moved and messed around during the course of various religious upheavals.

  The Purbeck marble tomb to Bishop Joscelin de Bohun (d.1184) in Salisbury Cathedral is one of several of senior ecclesiastics in this church.

  Abbot Benedict (d.1193) is one of a number of abbots who survived the Reformation and remain commemorated in Peterborough Cathedral after it was changed from a Benedictine abbey. They weren't forgetting their origins in Peterborough.
  Ecclesiastics were not the only people memorialised in the abbeys, even those which did not serve as cathedrals. Although one might think of the more remote Cistercian houses, for example, as places that were largely the preserve of their serving monastic communities, significant lay people were buried there, having paid well for the privilege no doubt.

  This mangled specimen of a knightly effigy lies in the ruins of Jervaulx Abbey. Nobody salvaged him and carted him off to a safer haven at the dissolution of the monasteries. His capacity to own a piece of monastic territory was subverted by the disappearance of the institution itself.

  A hefty but battered tomb of Sir Ralph Bowes stands plonk under the crossing of the church of Egglestone Abbey, a Premonstratensian house. More modest slabs and brass indents are scattered about, of lay and ecclesiastical figures. This was a bit of a battling house and probably had to treat its patrons well.

  At Fountains Abbey some battered relics of the tombs of the abbots lie in the chapter house. This was a space where the monks conducted their own affairs and could perhaps be perceived as their particular space, even more than the body of the church was.
  In the later medieval period, the claiming of space in the major churches, by ecclesiastics as well as mighty lay people, became even more conspicuous with the building of lavish chantries, marking out confined spaces within the general area of the church and splashing heraldry and other symbols of ownership all over them. They were for the wealthy, religious or lay, as they not only required payment for their construction but ongoing expenditure to maintain the priests who said the masses in them.

  Entrance to a chantry in Ely Cathedral. Now imagine it with all its colour and statuary; definitely laying claim to a space.
  In the parish churches, it seems the wealthy local laity had the upper hand. While there are some fancy tombs to parish priests, there are many more modest little affairs and a lot of them are small brasses.

  This tiny brass to a priest in West Tanfield church, North Yorkshire, sits in a church with several large and elaborate effigy tombs to the laity. Who provided these modest memorials - family, parishioners? I don't doubt there may have been some battles, and some rearrangements over time, as the priests tried to ensure they had the space to do their business while the lay patrons tried to impose their memorials in the most conspicuous places.
  Stained glass windows do not occupy floor space and they do serve useful and aesthetic functions within the church. Heraldic windows emblazon the family stamp on the place without getting in anybody's way, which might explain why you find so many of them.

  The above is an assortment of glass fragments in St Martin's church, Stamford, featuring some natty heraldic shields.
  I suspect some competition among the laity themselves for ownership of space as family fortunes waxed and waned. There are plenty of clues that tombs got moved around and re-organised and it is not always clear when. The older, and often a bit forlorn, effigies seem to be usually found in churches that are not crammed with the clunky memorials of post-Refomation upstarts, whether they are in tiny country churches or tucked away rather surprisingly in modern industrial towns (or post-industrial in many cases today). Tomb chests show signs of having been broken up and reassembled. Effigies look to have been dragged outside and left in the rain. In some cases they have been found buried in the churchyard or tucked into strange places inside the church.

  This alabaster couple in Pickering church lie in what looks like a family chapel, but if they haven't spent some time out in the North Yorkshire dreek I would be very surprised.

  Then there is this. Several tombs of the de la Pole family reside in the church at Wingfield, Suffolk, a church which became collegiate under their patronage. Note the location of the tomb up next to the altar and the way that various heraldic devices spread all over the aisle arcades of the chancel. The sedilia are actually built in to the structure of the tomb. Another tomb lies directly opposite on the other side of the chancel. These folks are still owning the church.
  We like to have a romantic notion of medieval churches as havens of peace, love and Christian values, but it is very hard for those competitive, acquisitive, pugnacious creatures we call people to leave those characteristics at the door. The battle for status and influence continues inside, using the vocabulary of the sacred spaces.

Cultural Heritage

    I expect This section to grow as I plough through my photograph collection. Of course tombs are cultural heritage, as are the remains I discuss while touring with Leland, not to mention manuscripts, but these are for the observations that don't fit into those categories.

Manuscripts and Stained Glass What is stained glass for?
Not Just a Big Church An introduction to medieval religious communities and the traces they have left. More to come on this.
Heritage Sites: Trendy and Not Trendy Why we should look for our history in some less glamorous places.
Gotta Love Antiquarians A celebration of antiquarian writers and illustrators and what we can learn from them.
Where Did the Stones Go? A meandering wonderment on the fate of the stones of vanished buildings.
Visual History: Magnifying Glass or Fun Fair Mirror? A bit of a ramble on the art of seeing in a historical context.

Medieval Literacy: Pictures and Texts

  I have recently been plodding through organising, optimising and recataloguing a large number of digitised slides of the stained glass of York Minster. I spent quite a bit of time in York and managed to photograph a fair swag of the city's magnificent medieval glass, but I didn't have a cherry picker or a drone so there is a fair bit of fiddling about with enlarging details and seeing if they come out. Also my identification of the individual windows was not quite as accurate as it might have been. So with the trusty Pevsner and a pile of other reference books on the desk, I am putting Humpty Dumpty together again.
  The process has jogged the brain into mulling over the whole question of the nature of medieval literacy and the old chestnut about church art being the Bible of the illiterate. For starters, literate and illiterate do not need to be polar opposites. Medieval people read what they needed or wanted to read, whether it was their own names, the oft repeated prayers and psalms in their books of hours, their household accounts, the texts of sermons they were about to deliver, or complex philosophical treatises requiring knowledge of several languages. The same applied to writing. Some scribes copied stuff literally, some made notes from the spoken word, some specialised in formulaic legal documents and some authors wandered round dictating their thoughts to hapless secretaries.

  York Minster is a big building, with very tall windows filled, in many cases, with fiddly detail, especially the 14th century windows with multiple small panels full of colour. It's very hard to simply read the windows without any background or prompts. A photograph like the one above of a window in the north side of the nave gives a bit of an idea of what you actually see. Who is doing what up there and why does the window seem to be hung about with little golden bells?

  The window in question was, in fact, donated by the bellfounders. A telephoto lens shows a kneeling donor presenting the window to St William of York himself, and he is bestowing his blessing on the bellfounders. This panel is at the bottom of the window so it is easier to make out than some, but medieval folks did not have telephoto lenses. No doubt people were told the story of the bellfounders and their donation, and all those little bells just reminded them of it.

  Something similar must apply to the windows which tell the stories of morality and martyrdom and the episodes of the Bible. In peering at the images trying to tell which window was which, I found myself searching for those visual clues that permeate every visual retelling of the story, because for all the variations of style and medium, medieval church art used a standard repertoire of symbols to represent each story. The window above tells the story of St Catherine of Alexandria.

  The episodes of the life of St Catherine are played out in a series of pictures which follow the story exactly as it is told in the Golden Legend. The panels are detailed, even after centuries of damage and restoration, but quite far away. These stories would have been known to the lay congregation mainly from oral teaching. Not too many folks would have had a copy of Jacobus de Voragine in their personal library, but they would have heard the stories many times. They would also have seen the stereotyped images of saints in their books of hours or prayer books, if they were so fortunate as to have one. They learned the stories, recognised the imagery and could follow the sequences in the art in the church. Is this literacy or illiteracy? I say it is a form of literacy. Word and image reinforced each other in medieval books, as well as on windows and walls.

  The story of St Catherine is told in exactly the same type of strip cartoon form on the nave wall of Pickering church in Yorkshire. It was an accepted way of narrating and imaging a well known story. The philosophers, the prison, the flogging, the wheels and the grand finale with the beheading with a sword: that tells the story. You read it.

  The nave clerestorey windows are way, way up. The top row of scenes are actually 12th century glass from an older cathedral on the site, but they must have thought it was worth saving. What the hell is it? Ah. That was a clue. On the right there is a great big mouth with chompy teeth with people going into it. Other panels seem to have people being poked into a pot.

  Hell is what it is. At one time pictures of the Last Judgement were all over the chancel arches of many churches, possibly most. There they were large and easy to see, and were no doubt explained in gruesome detail by some of the more charismatic preachers. Literate or illiterate, the basic clues tell the story.

  In the formerly Benedictine church of Blyth the Doom painting is faded and battered, but it was big and conspicuous in its heyday.

  The nasty demons poking people into hell were suitably demonic. The whole image is a story which can be read, not just a picture. Benedictine monks were not illiterate. They could read those little black marks scratched on to pages, but pictures could be read as well. Even if you could just make out the big chompy teeth in the distant window, you were reading the story. 

  Even a single figure is not just an image, but represents a story. St Christopher carrying the baby Jesus across a river is one of the more dubious bits of Christian mythology, but it was a story popularised in the Golden Legend and he is one of the most prolifically illustrated saints. This is a 15th century example from the windows of York Minster, but while the size and boldness of the 15th century glass makes the image easier to see from the ground, the story has to have been learned. 

  In the parish church at Easby the founding myth of the Jewish and Christian religions is depicted on the wall. It is read from left to right, just like writing. It is a story that was codified and solidified by being written down, then copied and recopied. It can be read in the Bible, or in excerpts, or in paraphrase, or in pictures. Or it can be learned by listening. Bible picture books were produced for wealthy aristocratic patrons in which the stories were paraphrased with words and pictures. They were for literate people, but literate people used pictures too. Literate clerics used historiated initials to help them find particular passages in their psalters or lectionaries, because the iconographic code had rules and conventions, just as writing did.

  So trying to identify exactly which window I'm looking at is very analogous to how a medieval person might read that window. What is that panel in the middle? Man looking over left shoulder, somewhat startled, at an angel in the sky, with sheep wandering about.

  Joachim in the wilderness. Back story to the life of the Virgin and the early life of Jesus. Christian mythology known from the Golden Legend, filling out some unsatisfactory gaps in the Gospels. The window tells the story. You just have to know how to read it.

  Upside down saint. Martyrdom of St Peter. Now what else can we recognise to see what story this window is telling?

  Kings in vegetation. Jesse tree. Genealogy of Christ. From the York Minster choir but originally from New College, Oxford, where we can presume the congregation was reasonably literate.
  We may regard many medieval folks as less literate than ourselves, but in many ways they may have been more literate, with minds open to different ways of telling stories.

What's With Medieval Tombs? Part 16 - Memorials in Glass

  So far in this series I have looked at medieval memorials that are essentially grave covers, at least in theory, although some of them depicted people who were buried in other locations, or only certain parts of them were buried at the commemorated spot, or their remains or tombs had been moved. Within churches there were various other ways of commemorating the dead, especially if their good works in life had included donations to the fabric or treasures of the church in question.
  Sally Badham's recent book, Seeking Salvation, gives copious examples of other church works which can be regarded as funerary memorials, indicated by inscriptions on walls and furnishings, church plate and many instructions in wills for donations to the church. Stained glass windows also come in here, and she points out that all of these are visual reminders to the congregation to pray for the souls of the departed to hasten their trip through purgatory.
  Purgatory was a big deal in the 14th and 15th centuries, when church art and commemoration was developing in elaboration, but as I have mentioned before, purgatory was an official church doctrine which allowed expression for concepts of liminality concerning death. Those concepts have been expressed in different ways in other times and in other religions and cultures.
  The 14th and 15th centuries were also a time when traditional social hierarchies were being challenged and social stratification, although well and truly still there, became very competitive. This was evidenced in many aspects of life, including rapidly changing fashion utilising fancy imported fabrics, massively competitive dining habits, more lavish houses for those who could have them, and posh book ownership. In competitive societies, worth is displayed by not only what you have, but what you can afford to give away. In societies with very different religious beliefs, funerary ceremonial could involve large and often complex redistributions of wealth. Funerals and mortuary gifts certainly encouraged others to pray for your soul, but also increased the standing of you and yours in society. Besides, they then made other people obligated to you and yours, should fortunes reverse.

  The simplest easily recognised visual symbol for the folks of the congregation was probably heraldry. The above example comes from St Martin's church in Stamford, Lincolnshire. They shields were often depicted being carried by little angels, which has parallels with the angels carrying the souls of the departed also found in funerary depictions. The heraldic device might indicate that the family concerned had built their own funerary chapel, or had contributed in some other way to the fabric of the church. These are very commonly found, sometimes sprinkled among the more didactic panels of the windows.

  Here is another example from a small northern town, Thirsk in North Yorkshire. I don't suppose the coat of arms actually represents three donkeys but it looks a bit like it. Such panels no doubt encourage prayers for the soul, but they also stamp a certain authority on the congregation.

   The de Mauley window in the south nave aisle of York Minster has eight coats of arms associated with the de Mauley family, sprinkled between the usual scenes of martyrdom and mayhem, and representations of members of the family in the lower panels. It has to be said that this is virtually a copy of the original window after a drastic restoration in 1903, but you get the idea. 
  Occasionally you can find a heraldic shield in a window that matches one on a tomb in the church, indicating that these are not either/or modes of commemoration but part of the whole cornucopia of ways that people could be remembered, respected and hopefully hastened on their way to glory.  
A more personal representation is found in the simple kneeling donor figure, usually found modestly in the bottom corner of the window.

  This somewhat effaced little figure from Thornhill in West Yorkshire is depicted in civilian clothes with his purse slung on his belt, not armour, reflecting the new order of town life when you could have influence with money rather than coats of arms. He is kneeling at his prayer desk with the prayer book open, which is about as clear a reminder of what you are supposed to do as you can get.

  This donor panel in St Michael-le-Belfry church, York has an inscription encouraging you to pray for the donor and his three wifes. The convention of showing successive spouses all kneeling together is not unusual. Time collapses when you're dead. Many donor panels contained these inscriptions, but some have been lost, accidentally or on purpose when the glass was reset in times of religious change. The desire to perpetuate the memories of families outlived the need to believe in purgatory. Similarly the "orate pro anima" part of tomb or brass inscriptions has sometimes been effaced, a symbolic gesture making the memorial correct in religious terms while still commemorating the departed, and reminding folks of the significance of the surviving families.

  This window in All Saints North Street, York has multiple references of this type. The kneeling donor  figures in the lower panels have come from a different window. Stained glass is always mixed up because of the need for regular repairs and renovations. Nevertheless they are two of several representations of this type in this particular church. The six panels above represent the corporal acts of mercy. I have written about this in another blog posting here. The acts of mercy are being administered by a benign looking bearded man who looks much the same in every panel, and it has been assumed that this figure represents the donor of the window; a reminder of how he has redistributed his wealth for the benefit of the parish.

  Furthermore he is rich and he wants you to know it, because he is using his wealth for virtuous purposes. Here he is dipping into his large money purse to bail out some prisoners in the stocks. Acquiring wealth is fine if you give it away in a virtuous manner. Pray for his soul please, and look after his heirs.

  The windows in the wealthy church that wool built in Long Melford, Suffolk display more of the symbols of power and less of virtue in the figures of the donors. Sure, they are kneeling praying so please remember to say a prayer for them, but they are togged out in very conspicuous heraldic rig, wearing their coats of arms all over them. They built this church and they are important.

  The nature of the donation can be made quite explicit. This kneeling donor in St Denys church, York, dressed in civilian clothes, is holding the window he has donated, just so that you know exactly the nature of his benefaction. This is analogous to those tomb figures of bishops and knights holding models of churches they have funded. And no, I don't know whether he was a wealthy beekeeper.

  Donors commemorated in glass did not have to be individuals. The guilds of the towns had the function of caring for the spiritual needs of their members as well as their conditions of work. This window in York Minster was presented by the bellfounders and some panels contain representations of aspects of the bellfounders' art. This panels shows the presentation of the window to the archbishop, with the usual supplicatory imagery and a depiction of the window in the glass itself, so everyone gets the point. It symbolises the social importance of the town trades, who are acting like aristocrats of old in their dealings with the community, as well as encouraging prayers for a group within the commnity. 

 The most famous examples of this type of commemoration are across the Channel in France, in the cathedral of Chartres, where all the various craft guilds which contributed to the building of the cathedral are commemorated in the amazing program of stained glass windows. They are not depicted praying or with symbols which specifically encourage others to pray, rather shown just going about their work, but they are included in the lower panels of the instructive windows. The examples above show the furriers and the drapers. Perhaps they somewhat predate the full expression of the concept of purgatory in church art, but their contribution to the church fabric and life is being appreciated.

  It is reasonable to regard these types of windows as funerary memorials in just the same way that we regard grave slabs or effigy tombs. They serve the same purpose and utilise similar iconography. They perpetuate memory beyond the grave.

Medieval Cartoon Strip and Reader's Digest

  I think my very favourite English church is All Saints, North Street in York. Unusual design, sits down there by the river, sports an angel roof and at one time constantly reeked of incense. The greatest treasure of all is the collection of late medieval stained glass windows. Like most of their kind they have been moved, damaged, restored, jumbled, but they are still an amazing collection, and that in a town which has vitreous wonders dotted around it in many churches great and small.
  Some of the windows have less than common iconographic schemes, of which perhaps the most unique is the Pricke of Conscience window, illustrating an English language medieval poem about the last days of the world. This poem was once attributed to Richard Rolle of Hampole, but has since been re-assigned to that most prolific of English authors, Anon. It is a very, very long poem, and the window illustrates one short segment of it, listing the events of the last fifteen days of the world. It reads from left to right, bottom to top, like a strip cartoon.

    Two panels are in the wrong order for the poem, the second top right and the top left. This may have occurred during restoration of the glass at some time. The bottom row represents the donors of the window, praying for their own salvation. In the tracery lights St Peter leads the blessed to heaven and demons take the damned to hell, so get praying. Sorry, I don't have a good picture of those panels.
  So far we have the standard "lessons for the illiterate" paradigm, but it isn't quite so. Each panel has two lines of the poem written beneath it in chunky Gothic script. Some of these do not survive complete, but they were there. So it is not just a picture book, but a Reader's Digest; a potted summary of the most important lessons from a very long literary work that even the literate among the congregation may have found daunting to read in full. So this is how it goes.
  (Text from version by Richard Morris, 1863 from Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse - starts on p.129. As is apparent it doesn't match on every panel, so there must be variant texts, and the thorns have all been turned into th for easier typing. The spelling checker will now proceed to explode.)

  The first day of thas fiften days

  The se sal ryse, als the bukes says,

  Abowen the heght of ilka mountayne,

  Fully fourty cubyttes certayne,

  And in his stede even upstande,

  Als an heghe hil dus on the lande

  The secunde day, the se sal be swa law

  That unnethes men sal it knaw.

  The thred day, the se sal seme playn

  Ans stand even in his cours agayn

  Als it stode forst at the bygynnyng,

  With-outen mare rysing or fallyng.

  The fierth day, sal swilk a wonder be,

  the mast wondreful fisshes of the se

  Sal com to-geder and mak swilk romyng (roryng in another ms. Much better, roaring fishes.)

  That it sal be hydus til mans hering.

  Bot what that romiyng (roryng) sal signify,

  Na man may whit, bor God almyghty.

  The fift day, the se sal brynne

  And alle watters als thai sal rynne;

  And that sal last fra the son rysyng

  Til the tyme of the son doun gangyng.

  The sext day, sal spryng a blody dewe

  On grisse and tres, als it sal shewe.

  The sevend day byggyns doun sal falle

  And grete  castels, and tours with-alle.

  The eght day, hard roches and stanes

  Sal strik togyder, alle attanes.

  An ilkan of tham sal other doun cast,

  And ilkan agayn other hortel fast,

  Swa that ilka stan,on divers wyse,

  Sal sonder other in thre partyse.

  The neghend day, gret erthedyn sal be,

  Generaly in ilka contre;

  Ans swa gret erthdyn als sal be than

  Was never hard, sythen the world bygan.

  The tend day thar-aftir to neven,

  The erthe sal be made playn and even,

  For hilles and valeis sal turned be

  In-til playn, and made even to se.

  The ellevend day men sal com out

  Of caves, and holes and wend about,

  Als wode men, that na witt can;

  And nane sal spek til other than.

  The twelfte day aftir, the sternes alle

  And the signes fra the heven sal falle.

  The thredend day sal dede men banes

  Be sett to-gyder, and ryse al attanes,

  And aboven on thair graves stand; This sal byfalle in ilka land.

  Sal dighe, childe, man and woman

  For thai shalle with tham rys ogayn

  That byfor war dede, outher til ioy or payn.

  The fiftend day, thos sal betyde,

  Alle the world sal bryn on ilk syde,

  And the erthe whar we now duelle,

  Until the utter end of alle helle.

  So there you have it; the sea rising and falling, fish gathering and roaring, the sea burning, bloody dew, earthquakes with castles and towers falling, rocks breaking each other apart and the earth flattened, people crawling out of holes just in time to see the stars falling, the bones of dead people reassembled and then everyone dies so they can rise again, after the earth has been destroyed by fire. I guess they picked those lines for their marvellous pictorial possibilities. After all, a hundred pages or so on the sayings of the Anti-Christ just wouldn't have the same visual impact. Be very scared. Pray. Be good.

  What does it say about lay literacy? The words are there for the reading in the vernacular. It even has a bit of a northern twist to it. I can hear it in a Yorkshire accent. But the assumption seems to be that the written text must be extremely abbreviated and rendered visually. Narrative, yes, but not too many words.

  The church of All Saints, North Street has applied for a Heritage grant to restore and protect these windows for future generations. Check out all their news on their own website.