The so-called Henry of Blois enamels in the British Museum have received much attention over the years, but there is still no consensus as to their original function. This article reassesses the evidence, first in order to outline some fundamental doubts about the argument that has been championed most recently in the scholarship: that they were the terminals of a great cross; secondly, to offer new

This article uses plans and other documentary evidence to examine two London houses of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s (in)famous first minster. In the 1520s Cromwell lived in a townhouse in Austin Friars that had recently been built in a revenue-raising project by the prior of the friary. In the 1530s Cromwell developed a much grander urban mansion next to the friary, spending over £500 on land and

(2020). Annual Report Of The Council For The Year Ended 31 December 2019. Journal of the British Archaeological Association: Vol. 173, No. 1, pp. 242-250.

(2020). Art and Political Thought in Medieval England, 1150–1350.. Journal of the British Archaeological Association: Vol. 173, No. 1, pp. 228-230.

(2020). Cut in Alabaster. A Material of Sculpture and its European Traditions 1330–1530. Journal of the British Archaeological Association: Vol. 173, No. 1, pp. 233-237.

(2020). Die Kirchen im Landesteil Schleswig. Journal of the British Archaeological Association: Vol. 173, No. 1, pp. 237-240.

(2020). The Mystic Cave. A History of the Nativity Church in Bethlehem. Journal of the British Archaeological Association: Vol. 173, No. 1, pp. 221-224.

(2020). The Fabric Accounts of St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster, 1292–1396. Journal of the British Archaeological Association: Vol. 173, No. 1, pp. 230-232.

(2020). Archaeological Investigations at Missenden Abbey, 1983–88. Journal of the British Archaeological Association: Vol. 173, No. 1, pp. 224-228.

(2020). Great Cloister: A History of the Canterbury Cloister, Constructed 1408–14, with Some Account of the Donors and their Coats of Arms. Journal of the British Archaeological Association: Vol. 173, No. 1, pp. 240-241.

(2020). The Cult of Saint Thomas Becket: Art, Relics and Liturgy in Britain and Europe. Journal of the British Archaeological Association: Vol. 173, No. 1, pp. 1-2.

In some of the earliest images of Becket’s martyrdom, Reginald FitzUrse is shown breaking his sword on the saint's head; a detail at odds with the literal description of the martyrdom by the first hagiographers, who describe Richard le Bret’s sword breaking not on the head, but on the Cathedral pavement. This article contends that the iconography reflects the hagiographers’ allegorical, rather than

‘Blessed place, blessed church/In which the memory of Thomas flourishes!’ Thus begins the antiphon Felix locus from the passion office of Thomas Becket (d. 1170), written around 1173. Performed annually on the anniversary of his martyrdom, the chant exemplifies the ways in which the Christ Church monks sought to keep Becket’s memory alive at the place of his death through the institution of a liturgy

Light imagery is prominent in the lives, miracles, liturgy and cult of St Thomas of Canterbury. The Customary of the Shrine of St Thomas, composed in 1428, also shows that light was carefully regulated in Canterbury Cathedral, with the most spectacular display of artificial light (i.e., candlelight) reserved for Thomas’s December Passion feast. This article considers the symbolic significance of light

After the dismantling of Becket’s shrine during the Protestant Reformation, the holiness associated with the saint has been diffused in and through material and aural culture. Drawing on the vernacular devotional use of Becket’s relics from the Middle Ages onwards, including ‘Canterbury water’, I argue that songs associated with the saint have similarly been perceived to have healing, protective and

Thomas of Canterbury has very particular significance for the Venerable English College in Rome, the Roman Catholic Seminary originally founded in the 16th century in the properties of the medieval pilgrim hospice. The archbishop came to have physical, spiritual and political associations with the institution as a result of his exile from England and royally sanctioned murder, so much so that the English

A remarkable painted altarpiece in the Hamburger Kunsthalle serves as a valuable visual source for the character of devotion to St Thomas Becket in a 15th-century Hanseatic city. Commissioned from the artist Meister Francke by a guild of merchants known as the Englandfahrer, the altarpiece includes four panels depicting a narrative of St Thomas, of which two survive and two are known from an 18th-century

(2020). Professor Paul Crossley (19 July 1945–12 December 2019) Journal of the British Archaeological Association: Vol. 173, No. 1, pp. 218-220.

This article examines the ways in which Thomas Becket was commemorated in books of hours (horae) of different Uses, and explores the nature and implications of the texts and images associated with such commemorations.

Jacques de Vitry’s embroidered English mitre is one of only three surviving episcopal mitres which portray the martyrdom of St Thomas of Canterbury, and which, moreover, are characterised by the inclusion of unexpected details in the depiction of the murder in the cathedral: Becket’s close-fitting cap, both segments of Richard Brito’s broken sword and Becket’s ‘crown’, the piece of bone severed in

While Becket’s relics are likely to have been owned by institutions and individuals throughout much of later medieval England, the reliable surviving evidence for them is limited. Without pretending to anything like completeness, the present essay assesses a range of sources in order to determine (or at least suggest) their usefulness for constructing a historically rooted understanding of the definition

A close study of the gifts of Thomas Becket’s clothing made by the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury in the late 12th century elucidates the major role played by clothing relics in Becket’s early cult. Immediately after the martyrdom, the monks distributed some of Becket’s clothing to the poor, and it is argued here that this event is the subject of a stained glass panel in Canterbury Cathedral. Dommartin

As part of an AHRC project, a team at the University of York created digital models of the major spaces of St Thomas Becket’s cult in Canterbury Cathedral in the early 15th century. This article explains the reasoning behind the choices made in planning and constructing the models, and details much of the underpinning research. The models offer as much, if not more, an argument about the use and experience

This massive volume serves as a textbook for those British universities that teach “later medieval” archaeology, from 1066 to c.1550. It is skillfully edited by Prof Chris Gerrard, assisted by his partner Alejandra Guti errez, and it has some sixty contributors writing sixty chapters. As can be imagined, the subjects are wideranging, and even extend to brief chapters on Britain’s neighbours: Ireland

In 1503, the canons of Ripon Minster initiated a building campaign to replace the church’s nave. Through a careful study of the documentary evidence, including sources that have not previously been considered, this article investigates how Ripon’s clergy organised and funded the project. It offers a more precise chronology of the works and an assessment of their impact on the use of the church by its

Cross (Cat. no. 88), which preserves a section of text from The Dream of the Rood, datable linguistically to at least a century before its codification in the Vercelli Book (Cat. no. 87). The object-led narrative speaking of contemporary monastic reforms, musical Latin liturgies, and itinerant manuscripts reaches a dramatic climax in the great artistic triumvirate, the evocative Reims-produced Utrecht

The paper offers a reassessment of the patrons involved in the construction of Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand in Poitiers during the 11th century. Three stages are identified. The first, to which Queen Emma of England may have contributed, fell perhaps in the 1020s. The second is that associated with Countess Agnes of Poitou-Aquitaine around 1049. The third followed on and saw the involvement around the 1070s

A round-headed window in the cathedral close at Winchester, drawn by John Aubrey on or before March 1669 for his Chronologia architectonica, may belong to a hitherto unidentified structure shown by John Speed on his Map of Winchester of 1611. The location suggests that this structure and hence the window may have been part of the royal palace built in the centre of Winchester by William the Conqueror

This article assesses connections between the Valasse reliquary cross and the Plantagenets, and considers whether the smaller, older set into the Valasse reliquary cross may have been the Empress Matilda’s own jewel. I explore the evidence for the agency of this 12th-century English princess, whose eventful travels through England, Germany, northern Italy, Rome, Maine and Normandy are well documented

The church at West Mersea, on Mersea Island, was an Anglo-Saxon minster first documented in the later 10th century, but there are signs of earlier origins. The island was accessed by a causeway dated by dendrochronology to the end of the 7th century, while investigation of the fabric of the church indicates that the constructional technique of the lower nave north wall is similar to that of the neighbouring

John Baret of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, died in 1467. A wealthy and well-connected merchant, he left what may well be the longest and most personally revealing will of 15th-century England. His cadaver tomb (erected by 1463) and chantry ceiling survive in his parish church of St Mary’s, Bury St Edmunds. The design of John Baret’s tomb is unusual. In most surviving English sculpted cadaver monuments

Plans to redisplay the Bayeux Tapestry raise anew the questions as to where and how it was originally intended to be displayed. Analysis of the linen fabric provides new insights into the tapestry’s design and manufacture, and enables its original length to be calculated. Re-examination of the (largely destroyed) 11th-century cathedral at Bayeux and of its liturgical layout demonstrates that the tapestry

Peter Kidson was certainly among the most influential medieval architectural historians of his generation in the English-speaking world, as is vividly demonstrated by the impressive array of leading medieval scholars who contributed to the book of essays offered to him on his retirement. He was a brilliant schoolboy, gaining the top marks in geography for the whole country. He was, however, prevented

a fire in 1823; the basilica to which the great majority of this book is dedicated has disappeared. The author overcame this issue by constructing a digital model of the building (the genesis and rationale of which are clearly explained in the Appendix A), based on a rich corpus of visual and written sources. Most importantly, this includes the surveys produced by Andrea Alippi for Nicolai’s monograph

Despite criticisms, the classification of the choir of Auxerre Cathedral as Burgundian persists in recent literature. Yet the cathedral’s choir, begun c. 1215, demonstrates the problematic nature of the existing regional categories for French medieval architecture. Based on the 19th-century idea of progress, the conceptual model that conceives Gothic France as consisting of ‘centre and periphery’ and

This paper deals with the Roman discoveries made in 1836–37 when the railway cutting was excavated on the west side of Winchester. These were studied by Charles Roach Smith and reported in The Gentleman’s Magazine and in the 1846 Winchester Transactions of the BAA. Several of the finds were of particular importance, including a copper-alloy head of Jupiter, a unique statuette of Omphale, likewise of

Temple in 1 Kings 6), and the historical interactions between East and West as critical in the proliferation of foliate friezes in France (p. 186). An afterword cogently describes the use of real plants within churches, during Holy Week, and throughout the year. This brief outline attests to the breadth of Doquang’s project: she has taken a singular element present in some buildings and attempted to

This study investigates in what way and why a knotted scarf called torque was depicted with certain text passages of the Willehalm manuscript in the Austrian National Library, the oldest and yet — due to its inaccessibility — rather neglected manuscript illuminated for one of the greatest late medieval bibliophiles, the king of Bohemia, Wenceslas IV of Luxembourg. It discusses the nature and possible

This article focuses on the art and architecture of the Cistercian abbey of Hailes, home of a famous relic of the Holy Blood, in the two centuries before the Suppression. It is intended to be a contribution to evolving literature on late medieval monasticism, showing the enduring spiritual vitality and relevance of Hailes between the 14th and early 16th centuries. The article discusses the planning

Seals and Status belongs to an informal series of miscellany volumes on seals recently published in English. Others are Good Impressions: Image and Authority in Medieval Seals, ed. No€el Adams, John Cherry and James Robinson (London, 2008), and Seals and their Context in the Middle Ages, ed. P. Schofield (Oxford, 2015). Its context also includes the major research projects ‘Imprint. A Forensic and

This paper examines the Angel Choir of Lincoln Cathedral (c. 1256–80) from the perspective of two interrelated concepts: the heavenly Jerusalem and joy. Building on previous scholarly discussions of the choir’s unusual creativity and profusion of organic and iconographic decoration, it traces connections between the choir and the rich corpus of writing on the joys of the heavenly Jerusalem. In juxtaposition

Illuminated in the British Isles, 5 (London 1986), I, 24, 27; II, no. 1. 6. The veracity of the list of dates found in the Douai Psalter was first questioned in the Catalogue g en eral des manuscrits des biblioth eques publiques des d epartements, VI, Douai (Paris 1878), 79–80. 7. J. J. G. Alexander, ‘Painting and Manuscript Illumination at the English Court in the Later Middle Ages’, in English Court

Although the coats of arms in the great east window of Gloucester Cathedral are often associated with Edward III’s 1346–47 military campaign in France, the window’s function as a commemorative monument has never been thoroughly studied. The aim of this paper is to provide a political and social contextualisation to the heraldry of the east window, while considering its symbolic meaning (and possible

This is a visually scintillating exploration of medieval visual culture through the lens (and layers) of the Shrine Madonna, an extraordinary type of sculpture of the Virgin and Child (c. 1270–1500) that opens to reveal other sacred devotional imagery. Following on from the success of Gertsman’s last book on ‘The Dance of Death’, Worlds Within is an equally significant monographic study of an extraordinary

210 Romanesque Architecture should be praised for its thorough and thoughtful approach to important issues in the study of Romanesque architecture. It is an ambitious study that will attract the interest of scholars and students alike, even beyond the field of medieval architecture. Moreover, the implications of the methodological aspects emphasised by Fernie, such as the definition of style, periodisation

219 1860, the Corporation had acquired most of the site, and so began the long struggle of conservation which continues. Making sense of the surviving ruins is not easy and the standing ruins are almost all core-work stripped of their facings and architectural detail. Historic plans and topographical drawings help, particularly the survey by J. C. Buckler of 1823–24. There is also a fair amount of

1. J. Bialostocki, ‘Late Gothic: Disagreements about the Concept’, JBAA, 29 (1966), 76–105. 2. E. M. Kavaler, ‘The Jubé of Mons and the Renaissance in the Netherlands’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 45 (1994), 349–81. For a full listing of his articles on the subject, see Renaissance Gothic, 307. 3. The quote comes from an interview in G. Charbonnier ed., Entretiens avec Claude Lévi-Strauss

The middle of the 10th century was a high point for manuscript illumination in northern Spain when named scribes and illuminators created cycles of dynamic images for exegetical texts and bibles. Evidence gathered over recent decades through building archaeology has proposed a re-dating of buildings and sculpture previously considered Visigothic to the 9th or 10th centuries, thereby enlarging the corpus

The article discusses the important semi-effigial tomb slab at Bredon (Worcs.), assessing its iconography, stylistic affinities and the possible identity of the couple commemorated. The slab is distinctive for a number of features, notably its use of a raguly cross; the figure of Our Lord crucified at the intersection of the arms; the well-carved busts of the persons commemorated immediately above

A comparison of the architectural models applied, on the one hand, at the papal residence in Avignon (Benedict XII) and the royal and imperial residences in Bohemia (Charles IV) and, on the other, at the first forms of baronial apartment consisting of public (sala regia) and private rooms (studiolo; thalamus, locus) offers a new way of approaching this aspect of architectural history. The baronial

Seventy years after entering the collections of the British Museum, the Mildenhall Treasure has finally received the scholarly attention it so richly deserves. During the intervening period the Treasure, and especially the great Bacchic platter, has been much published and discussed in many excellent handbooks, not least that by the late Kenneth Painter, a leading authority on Roman silver, to whose

The term opus anglicanum, as a designator of English national identity associated with embroidery and textiles, is unknown in any document written in England during the Middle Ages, but is used in papal and other European archives. The term has been questioned by a number of scholars who have suggested it may be a generic name used to describe a particular technique of attaching gold thread to an embroidered

The construction date of the medieval manor house at Clevedon Court has long been said to be ‘c. 1320’, but no explanation or justification has ever been published. Stylistic, documentary and archaeological evidence is assembled to show that, following three distinct building phases, the house was completed during the decade ending in 1320. Analysis of the development of reticulated tracery helps to

On 31 July 1849, John Collingwood Bruce gave a lecture on Hadrian’s Wall at the British Archaeological Association’s annual Congress in Chester. This was his first lecture outside his native North-East on the subject on which he was soon to become the leading authority. Two primary accounts of the occasion survive, but are contradictory in several details. These contradictions are explored, the accuracy

212 (mistakenly restored in the last century), a possible source for several experiments with ribbed domes in the churches of 11th-century northern Spain. In her final chapter, ‘The Making of Romanesque’, Walker interprets the movement of people and motifs in relation to the social and political networks of reforming papal legates, drawing attention to the renewal of interest in antique sarcophagi

The 14th-century rebuilding of the collegiate church of St Mary’s by the earls of Warwick has received surprisingly little scholarly consideration, despite the status of its patrons and the distinctiveness of its architecture. This article uses drawings of the building before the fire of 1694, which destroyed its west end, together with the college’s extensive cartulary and other records, to reconstruct

A Romanesque double-springer and five voussoirs, decorated with foliate carving and pellet, have been reused as a door-head in the ground floor of Church House, Gloucester Cathedral. The carved stones are illustrated, together with a reconstruction of the original double arch, which may have come from an early 12th- century pulpitum screen or the arcade of the first Norman cloister.

220 uphill part of the city, starting with those which were attached to the remains of the former Roman south gate. The fact that houses in this book were outside the privileged world of the cathedral canons did not result in any diminution in the quality of their architecture. Indeed, the two 12th-century stone houses, the Magna Aula of Joan of Legbourne (46–47 Steep Hill and 1 Christ’s Hospital Terrace)

The parish church of St Andrew at Irnham in Lincolnshire possesses a richly carved stone monument dating to around 1340 which bears the arms of Sir Geoffrey and Agnes Luttrell, associated with the celebrated Luttrell Psalter. The form, imagery and function of this monument are problematical and are discussed first in order to create a context for an unusual aspect of its architecture, namely that its

132 thanks to Hall’s very fine excavations on the Coppergate site, still partly enshrined in the much-visited and recently flooded Jorvic Viking centre. The next two magisterial chapters, by Sarah Rees Jones and David Palliser, cover the periods 1066–1272 and 1272–1536. Here we find brilliant summaries of all that is currently known about the buildings and topography of medieval York. Apart from the