23 November 2020
The Polonsky project's two year anniversary
Today is the two year anniversary of our launch of The Polonsky Foundation England and France Project: Manuscripts from the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, 700–1200, in which we collaborated with the Bibliothèque nationale to digitise and make available 800 medieval French and English manuscripts from our two collections.
We have two websites: one, hosted by the Bibliothèque nationale, in which you can view all 800 manuscripts in an International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) viewer, and a curated website hosted by the British Library on which you can read articles, view individual manuscript descriptions and watch videos and animations. Both are bilingual, in English and French.
We recently participated in an online seminar sponsored by the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL) that celebrated five digitisation projects sponsored by the Polonsky Foundation, some completed and others ongoing. The seminar was oversubscribed, so the presentations were recorded and may be watched here:
(Note: videos of the six presentations will automatically play in sequence, one after the other. Alternatively, you can click the 'playlist' button near the top right to select individual videos to play).
The Medieval England and France, 700-1200 website has been very well received, with over 150,000 individual users from all over the world. The majority of those are from the UK and the US, but there are thousands of viewers from France, Canada, Australia, Italy, Brazil, the Philippines, Spain and Italy making up the top ten countries by use.
So far, the most popular article is on how to make a medieval manuscript, in which you can watch seven videos on different aspects of manuscript production, such as parchment preparation, ink, pigments and applying gold leaf. Viewers spend an average of eleven minutes on this article. Other popular articles are featured in the Science and Nature theme, including those on mathematics, medicine, bestiaries and calendars. Articles discussing the use of Latin, Anglo-Norman French and Old English are also popular.
If you haven’t yet checked it out, or if you are amongst the 30% returning users, do explore the website. You may be interested in watching Professor Nick Vincent discussing law-making in early medieval England or Professor Julia Crick discussing manuscript production after the Norman Conquest. Or perhaps you'll enjoy the animated features on the whale and the crane from the bestiary. The project book has just been reprinted, too, if you would like to buy a copy.
You can read about the work of the Polonsky Foundation on their newly launched website, including about the England and France project.
Kathleen Doyle
Follow us on Twitter @BLMedieval
Part of the Polonsky Digitisation Project
17 November 2020
Announcing the Acquisition of the Lucas Psalter
We announce today the British Library’s acquisition of the Lucas Psalter, which was made in Bruges for an English patron in the 1480s, at a time when such luxury Flemish books were sought after by English owners.
The manuscript (now British Library, Add MS 89428) is a deluxe Psalter, including the book of the Psalms and other devotional material, such as a calendar and lists of hymns appropriate to various Sunday services throughout the liturgical year. The book has 183 folios, is of large format (305 x 205mm), and is written in a Gothic textura script, presented in two columns. This type of script was more usual in England than the bȃtarde or rotunda scripts used on the Continent. Taken together, the layout and size of the volume more generally suggest that it was intended as a lectern book rather than one for private devotion. It may originally have been intended to form part of a Breviary, which includes the texts necessary to celebrate the various services of the Divine Office throughout the day.
The manuscript was acquired by Thomas Houchon Lucas (1460-1539) of Suffolk, the secretary to Jasper Tudor and Solicitor General under Henry VII. Lucas is identified by the added arms in the manuscript of Lucas and Morieux quarterly, and of these arms impaling Kemys of Monmouthshire. This identifies the owners of the manuscript for whom these arms were added as Thomas Houchon Lucas and his wife Elizabeth Kemys (d. by August 1528) who married in 1486 (or 1489). The manuscript remained in the family and has the bookplate of Thomas Philip Earl de Grey of Wrest Park (1781-1859) inside the upper cover. Thomas Philip succeeded to the titles 2nd Earl de Grey and 6th Baron Lucas of Crudwell in 1833.
The manuscript has a contemporary 15th-century binding of red velvet over wooden boards, with metal bosses at the four corners and in the centre of both covers, and corner pieces in unusual shapes with bird head terminals. Although worn in places, the bosses have protected the velvet and accordingly much of the red velvet is remarkably well preserved given its age. The binding may have been added in London shortly after the book was produced.
We plan to digitise the manuscript and will publish a further blog with more details about the manuscript and its artist, the Master of Edward IV, when it is available on the Digitised Manuscripts website. You can read more about the manuscript in the British Library’s press release.
The Lucas Psalter was purchased by the British Library with the generous support from Art Fund (with a contribution from the Wolfson Foundation), the Bernard H. Breslauer Fund of the American Trust for the British Library and the British Library Collections Trust.
Kathleen Doyle
Follow us on Twitter @BLMedieval
12 November 2020
Ottonian imperial style in Echternach Gospel-books
After the break-up of Charlemagne’s empire, his heirs continued his policy of patronising and commissioning great works of art. The king of East Francia, Otto I (d. 973), revived Charlemagne’s title of Holy Roman Emperor in 962, and together with his son and grandson (also Ottos) gave his name to a monumental, imperial artistic style now known as Ottonian art. These emperors and their Salian successors (a subgroup of Franks from the Lower Rhine area), Conrad II (r. 1024-39), and Henry III (r. 1039-56) commissioned some of the finest illuminated Gospel-books ever made.
A small but incredibly lavish group of these manuscripts were produced at the wealthy Benedictine Abbey of St Willibrord in Echternach, in modern day Luxembourg, 16 kilometres (10 miles) from Trier. These include two manuscripts now in the British Library, one in the Harley collection (Harley MS 2821) and one in the Egerton collection (Egerton MS 608).
One of the most remarkable aspects of the Harley Echternach Gospels is their use of fictive textiles as decoration, including facing pages painted to resemble silk before the individual Gospels. In many Echternach manuscripts the patterns are monochrome or in varying shades of the same colour, and include animals familiar from Byzantine silks, often in facing or opposing pairs. In the Harley example the patterns are more colourful and centralized, and resemble the patterns of Late Antique weaving or mosaic floors.
These decorative pages may serve to make the opening of the Gospel text a more revelatory event. In this sense they may be similar to the actual silk curtains remaining in some manuscripts which can be lifted to view individual miniatures, such as those in the Arnstein Bible which we blogged about previously.
In addition to their independent use as carpet pages, the textile patterns are used as marginal decoration for the first time in the Echternach Gospel-books (Nordenfalk, Codex (1971), p. 98). This is seen, for example, in the full border around the Evangelist portrait of St Mark and the facing depiction of the Nativity.
The painting of the figures is also highly stylised, using jewel-like vibrant colours. In content they are indebted to earlier models, with some innovations. For example, according to tradition, St Mark established the Church in Alexandria and was the first bishop there; in the Harley Echternach Gospels, he wears a chasuble, or outer vestment of a bishop, and he makes a gesture of blessing. This contrasts with the more typical portraits in which the Evangelists are depicted in the act of writing out their texts.
Opposite each of the Evangelists in the Harley Echternach Gospels is a full-page scene, reflecting four important episodes arranged in chronological order: the Annunciation faces St Matthew; the Nativity, St Mark; the Crucifixion, St Luke; and the Ascension, St John. This selection may result from the contraction of a much longer narrative cycle that appears in three of the surviving Echternach Gospel-books.
The Echternach Gospel-book in the Egerton collection has been digitised recently as part of The Polonsky Foundation Medieval England and France 700-1200 project. The similarities in composition, content and style with the Harley Echternach Gospels are immediately apparent. For example, the Evangelist portrait of St Mark also depicts him seated frontally, holding a book on his lap and making a gesture of blessing. His chair features dog-head and feet terminals, and St Mark is flanked by columns and curtains, with his symbol of the lion above. Opposite, the Nativity scene parallels the two-level composition in an enclosed architectural space, with the Child and animals above St Joseph and the Virgin.
The Egerton Echternach Gospels is a slightly smaller book and doesn’t include the patterned textile margins that are so prominent a feature of the more elaborate Echternach Gospel-books. However, it retains its thick original oak binding, with a hollow in the front cover. Originally it is likely that this space was filled with an ivory or metalwork plaque, and perhaps relics, indicating the importance and status of this still lavish Gospel-book.
Kathleen Doyle
Follow us on Twitter @BLMedieval
Further reading
Carl Nordenfalk, Codex Caesareus Upsaliensis: An Echternach Gospel-Book of the Eleventh Century (Stockholm, 1971).
Henry Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination: A Historical Study, 2nd edition (London, 1999), pp. 186-205.
Part of the Polonsky Digitisation Project
Supported by
03 November 2020
The show must go on! Putting on a play in the 16th century
The 16th century witnessed a huge revival of popular theatre, as playwrights and acting companies experimented with existing dramatic traditions, new literary techniques, and different approaches to performance. This artistic revival included the work of English writers such as William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson, as well as playwrights throughout Europe, particularly in Germany, Italy, and France. Surviving manuscripts from this period can give us a real insight into not just how these plays were written, but also how they were performed.
One such volume, now housed in the Harley Collection of the British Library, contains a rare eye-witness account of the premier performance of a French play that took place in the city of Montbrison on 25 February 1588.
The work was written by Loÿs Papon (b. 1533, d. 1599), the canon of the Church of Notre-Dame-d'Espérance and later abbot of Marcilly, and is entitled Pastorelle sur la victoire obtenue contre les Allemands, Reytres, Lansquenets, Souysses et Francoys rebelles a Dieu et au Roy treschretien l'an 1587 (Pastoral on the victory won against the Germans, the Reiters, the Landsknecht, the Swiss, and the French Rebels by God and our most Christian King in the year 1587).
Written in five acts, the play is a celebration of the victories of Henry I (b. 1550, d. 1588), Duke of Guise, against the combined Huguenot, or Protestant, forces at Vimory on 26 October and Auneau on 24 November 1587, two major battles fought during the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598).
The plot of Papon’s play is simple. Rather than depict the conflict between the Catholic and Huguenot armies on stage, Papon’s narrative focuses on a small group of shepherds, whose lives in the French countryside have been in turmoil since the start of the war. In the first half of the play, the audience hears how the war has affected the shepherds during that time – how their crops have been blighted and their lands and possessions looted by invading armies – as they recount their struggles and voice their fears of new dangers that might affect them in the future.
During the third act, however, the shepherds learn about what has taken place during the battles at Vimory and Auneau, and in the course of Acts IV and V, buoyant at the news of Henry’s victories, they celebrate that their once peaceful lives will now be restored.
The manuscript (now Harley MS 4325) was written and illustrated by Loÿs Papon himself, who probably intended it as a presentation copy of the text. The work begins with a dedication from the author addressed to a certain ‘M[onsieur] le duc de Mayne’, who can be identified as Charles de Lorraine (b. 1544, d. 1611), Duke of Mayenne and brother of Henry, Duke of Guise, who led the victorious French army.
The volume also survives with its original 16th-century binding intact. Its red velvet covers feature a collection of different symbols, delicately embroidered with silver, gold and coloured thread, including two hands grasping a sword, a pair of chalices, a crown of thorns, and a single eye appearing above a cloud.
The account of the play’s first performance appears directly after the main text of the work in the manuscript and was also written by Papon. The ‘discours’ or account states that this took place on 25 February 1588 at the Salle de la Diana, in the city of Montbrison, the historic capital of the French region of Forez (now part of Central France), and the playwright’s birthplace.
Papon’s account provides details about all aspects of the production, from the actors and musicians, to the set and the props, and even the composition of the audience. He tells us, for example, that:
- The windows of the Salle were completely covered over, so that the only light came from a collection of 90 torches, made from white wax, which were positioned around the hall.
- The backdrop was split up by three pieces of tapestry, decorated with 10 large paintings at the top, portraits of the French king and queen, and the princes of Guise, and below them another collection of smaller portraits of other important figures of the time: popes, princes and princesses, and members of the nobility.
- The play’s musicians were placed on a scaffold constructed on the right hand side of the stage, and set above a doorway that the actors used to make their entrances and exits.
- The shepherds were dressed in costumes made of taffeta and satin, wore straw hats, and carried shepherds’ crooks. The manuscript also features a series of painted portraits, showing how the central characters looked, dressed in full costume.
- The audience was supposedly composed of between 1300-1400 people (though from the size of the hall that’s slightly hard to believe): ‘gentishomes, que Dames, demoyzelles, gens de Justice, d’Eglise, magistrats, bourgeois, Capitaines, marchandz, et touts pesonnes de qualité’ (gentlemen, ladies, young ladies, Justices, people of the Church, magistrates, the bourgeois, captains, merchants, and all people of quality).
In addition, the volume includes a paper fold-out inserted at the end of Papon’s account, which opens to reveal a watercolour illustration of Act IV, Scene II of the Pastorelle, showing how this scene was staged in the Salle de la Diana. The image suggests that despite the simplicity of the narrative, the production itself was a real spectacle, ambitious in its scale. In the scene, the assembled shepherds, having learnt of the defeat of the Huguenot forces, decide to construct a pyramid on stage, light a fire at its base, sing songs, and dance around it to express their joy at the news.
One of the most significant features of the watercolour is the Salle’s vaulted and vibrantly coloured ‘plafond’ or ceiling, tall enough to accommodate the pyramid’s spire (standing 18 feet high according to Papon’s account), and which is shown adorned with numerous compartments, each one bearing a small coat of arms.
Fortunately, the Salle de la Diana in Montbrison has survived to the present day and is now home to a library that holds over 30,000 books. Its elaborately decorated heraldic ceiling (featuring a total of 1728 coats of arms) was restored during the 19th century, and appears nearly identical to the design reflected in Papon’s illustration of the Pastorelle’s first performance.
This manuscript’s catalogue record has recently been revised as part of the Harley Cataloguing Project. For more information about the project and other recent discoveries, check out our blogpost on cataloguing the Harley manuscripts.
Calum Cockburn
Follow us on Twitter @BLMedieval
Further Reading
Loys Papon, Pastorelle sur la victoire obtenue contra les Alemands, Reytres, Lansquenets, Souysses et Françoys rebelles à Dieu et au Roy treschr etien l'an 1587, texte établi, présenté et commenté par Claude Longeon (Saint-Etienne: Centre d'Études Foréziennes, 1976).
Frank Dobbins, 'Music in French Theatre of the Late Sixteenth Century', Early Music History, 13 (1994), 85-122 (pp. 115-21 with plates).
Margaret M. McGowan, 'The Arts Conjoined: A Context for the Study of Music', Early Music History, 13 (1994), 171-98 (pp. 179-80, especially n. 26).
29 October 2020
Byland Abbey ghost stories: a guide to medieval ghosts
On an overcast day in October, the ruins of Byland Abbey in North Yorkshire seem just the place to meet a medieval ghost. Nestled beneath the towering crags of Sutton Bank, the crumbled walls are pensive with memories and secrets. The dramatic outline of a rose window gapes into the sky as though crying out from a past long distant but not wholly dead. Fittingly enough, it was here that a monk wrote down one of the most important collections of ghost stories to survive from medieval Europe.
The stories, twelve in total, were written in the early 15th century on the blank pages of a manuscript containing a collection of rhetorical and theological works, now British Library Royal MS 15 A XX (ff. 140v-143 and ff. 163v-164v). Despite being written in Latin, the language of the Church, the stories are mostly set among the rural communities of North Yorkshire. They are full of references to real local places, names of people and everyday details. Their clear local roots and lack of narrative structure gives them the feeling of folktales and hearsay.
A Latin edition of the stories was published by the great manuscript scholar and horror writer M.R. James in 1922, and English translations are available by A.J. Grant (1924), and Saint Anselm College (2014). But for anyone who hasn’t time to read the stories in full (or doesn’t dare), we’ve condensed the key points into this helpful guide to medieval ghosts. Perhaps it will come in handy this Halloween...
What are medieval ghosts?
The ghosts in the Byland stories are not the evil forces which seek to harm humanity in many modern horror tales. They are mostly people from the community who have died without confessing sins, righting wrongs or otherwise preparing for a ‘good death’. The ghosts cannot get to heaven until these issues have been resolved, so they rise from their graves to seek help from the living.
The sins in question tend to be relatively mundane. Story IX tells of a ghost whose crime is ‘a matter of a sixpence’. In Story VI, the ghost of a canon of Newburgh Priory is tormented for stealing silver spoons. In Story VII, a hired hand is punished for overindulging his oxen, feeding them on his master’s corn and letting them plough the land too shallowly.
The ghosts try a variety of tactics for persuading people to help. Story I tells of an enterprising ghost in the area of Rievaulx who helps carry a sack of beans in return for absolution. In Story III, the rather forlorn ghost of Robert of Kilburn wanders around the village at night, standing at windows and doors, waiting to see if anyone would come out and help. Eventually the priest hears his confession and he is able to rest in peace.
What do ghosts look like?
The Byland ghost stories include some wonderfully gruesome descriptions of the ghosts' appearances. They are clearly envisioned as decaying corpses, rather like modern zombies. In Story III, the ghost speaks not with his tongue but from the inside of his bowels, which are hollow and echoing like an empty cask. The shortest tale, Story V, tells of a man who witnesses a woman carrying a ghost on her back, when ‘he saw the hands of the woman sink deeply into the flesh of the ghost as though the flesh were rotten and not solid but phantom flesh’.
The appearance of these ghosts was clearly influenced by the art of the period. In Story II, the ghost appears ‘in the likeness of a man of great stature, horrible and thin, like one of the dead kings in pictures’—a reference to the popular imagery of the Three Living and the Three Dead Kings.
However, the Byland ghosts are also able to shape-shift and they appear in such assorted forms as: a horse, a revolving hay-cock with a light in the middle, a raven with sparks of fire shooting from its sides, a dog, a she-goat, a bullock without a mouth or eyes or ears, and a revolving piece of canvas (perhaps a precursor to the classic white sheet?).
What should you do if you meet a ghost?
The best thing to do in this situation is to talk to the ghost and find out what it wants. Ghosts aren’t able to speak to living people unless someone conjures them, which involves calling them to speak in the name of God. But if you are planning on meeting with ghosts, you may wish to bring protection. In Story II, when Snowball the tailor goes to keep an appointment with a ghost, he draws a magic circle around himself and uses an array of amulets.
The worst thing you can do if you meet a ghost is to try to resist it. Snowball the tailor finds that his attempts to repel the ghost with his sword are completely ineffectual: it just feels like he’s striking a peat-stack. In Story IX, a ghost follows a man for 80 miles, throws him over a hedge and catches him on the other side. When the man finally speaks to the ghost, it tells him ‘If you’d conjured me in the first place, I wouldn’t have hurt you’.
How do you get rid of a ghost?
The best way to get rid of a ghost is to help it out. In most of the stories, the ghosts will quietly rest in peace once their unfinished business has been resolved. However, some ghosts are more troublesome. Story IV tells of the particularly malevolent ghost of James Tankerlay, rector of Cold Kirby, who walks from his grave at night and blows out the eye of his former mistress. The monks of Byland Abbey take action by having his corpse exhumed and cast into the present-day popular wild swimming spot, Lake Gormire.
Several other stories also hint that ghosts are averse to water: in Story I, the ghost will not cross the river, and in Story II, the ghost screams at the suggestion of meeting by Hodge Beck. This trope of supernatural creatures being unable to cross water has persisted into modern literature such as Dracula and Lord of the Rings.
The Byland ghost stories give us a glimpse of the kinds of tales that were probably once widespread but were rarely written down. They reveal medieval people’s very real fear of death and the uncertainties of what lay beyond, but also a surprising compassion for the undead.
So next time you hear something go bump in the night, don’t be afraid. Chances are the ghost won’t try to throw you over a hedge or do anything more sinister—it just needs a willing ear and a helping hand.
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Further reading
For the Latin text, see:
M.R. James, 'Twelve Medieval Ghost-Stories', The English Historical Review, 37 (1922), pp. 413-22.
For English translations, see:
21 October 2020
Angels in Manuscripts
Angels pop up all over the place in medieval manuscripts, from Books of Hours to handbooks on magic. They are key players in Old and New Testament stories and feature in decorative borders. Join us for a tour of some of the wonderful images of angels in British Library manuscripts and the many varied contexts in which they appear.
Angelology
An illustrated treatise by Francesc Eiximenis discusses the properties of angels, for instance ‘How an angelic spirit has no body and yet it can take on corporeal form by entering a body’ and the characteristics of good and bad angels. Each man and woman must choose between the angels’ path of goodness and the evil ways of the devil, as shown in this miniature below.
The Breviari d’Amour, an encyclopaedic work in the Catalan language with the emphasis on theological and courtly traditions, contains a section on the offices or tasks of angels, which include seeing off the devil, interceding with Christ for humanity and carrying souls to Heaven.
Angels in the Old Testament
Angels play a leading role in some of the best-known stories in both the Old and New Testaments. In Genesis, when Adam and Eve are banished from Paradise for eating the forbidden fruit, an angel with a flaming sword bars the gate to the garden and they are forced out into the world where they have to work hard for their livelihood.
In the Old Testament story of Jacob, grandson of Abraham, he has a vision of a ladder reaching to heaven with angels climbing up and down, and he hears God’s voice blessing him from above. In his old age, returning home to the land of Canaan after a long exile, he wrestles with an angel all night, remaining unbeaten, and receives a blessing, being given the name ‘Israel’. These two episodes are illustrated as part of a prefatory set of images from the Bible in the Omne Bonum, an alphabetical encyclopedia of general knowledge written by James le Palmer, Clerk of the Exchequer in c. 1360.
Angels and the Birth of Christ
The Feast of the Annunciation is one of the most important in the medieval church calendar. Pictures of the Angel Gabriel appearing to the Virgin Mary to announce that she will give birth to Christ are found in Books of Hours, Missals, Psalters and Bibles. A search using the term ‘Annunciation’ in the ‘Image description’ field of our Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts produces 166 results, one of the earliest being the Echternach Gospels from the mid-11th century, where a full-page illumination of this scene precedes the Gospel of Matthew.
Angels sometimes appear in scenes of the Nativity, including this charming depiction of a helpful angel preparing a bath for the newborn Christ in the stable, while the baby plays with the donkey, Mary rests, and Joseph looks on with his arms crossed. This is just one example of how useful angels can be to have around.
Angels in Revelation
Angels play a key role as the agents of God’s plan for the end of the world in Revelation, the last book of the New Testament. They guide John in his vision and bring about disasters on earth: seven angels are given seven trumpets to blow, causing a series of cataclysmic events, and later, seven angels use seven censers to pour out plagues on earth.
In Revelation, a war takes place in heaven between the forces of good, led by the archangel Michael and the evil followers of the dragon, or the devil. The Tiberius Psalter from mid-11th century Winchester contains a colour outline drawing of St Michael defeating the dragon, as part of a series of scenes from the Bible.
Angels in saints lives
Two of the leading English saints, Cuthbert and Guthlac, were visited by angels, as shown in their illustrated hagiographies. According to the Venerable Bede’s account of his life, St Cuthbert, who became bishop of Lindisfarne, was visited in his youth by an angel disguised as a weary traveller. In this scene, Cuthbert has seated the traveller at his table and is washing his feet, showing Christ-like humility. Here the artist has cleverly dressed the figure in the hooded cloak of a traveller or pilgrim, but has included angels’ wings to show his true nature.
The life of Guthlac, the Mercian hermit-saint, is told in a series of roundels on a parchment roll produced in Lincolnshire in c. 1200. He builds a cell on the island of Crowland, where he is visited by an angel and St Bartholemew.
Good and Bad Angels
As Revelation shows, not all angels are benign. In the Divine Comedy, when Dante reaches paradise with Beatrice, they see the Archangels Michael and Raphael battling the bad angels (who fell from grace with Lucifer) and casting them into hell.
Beliefs about angels were not always sanctioned by the Church as they could sometimes cross over into the occult. A book of magic from the 16th century known as the Sworn Book of Honorius has a section on how to summon heavenly intermediaries so that they will impart knowledge of all things to the user. Both good and bad angels are pictured and named on this page. The images themselves were believed to have magical properties.
Good and bad, useful and militant, it's clear that angels hold an important place in medieval illumination. Explore more amazing images on our Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts and Digitised Manuscripts sites.
Chantry Westwell
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06 October 2020
Early medieval interlace – a distinctive or ubiquitous feature?
Regular readers of this blog are likely familiar with splendid examples of ‘Insular’ art — the art of the islands of Britain and Ireland from the 7th to 9th centuries. The iconic Lindisfarne Gospels is one of the most well-known, but you can also admire several examples on the webspace for the recent Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibition.
As is clear from this initial from the Tiberius Bede, one of the main decorative elements of Insular art is the incorporation of delicately drawn interlacing knotwork designs. The inside of the letter is decorated with interlacing ribbons on a black ink background. The tongue of the beast’s head at the top of the letter also interweaves with itself. Patterns like this are still closely associated with Irish, Scottish, and Welsh cultural identity, often called ‘Celtic knotwork’.
Intricate interlace designs are also an important element of the style of manuscript art known as ‘Franco-Saxon’. ‘Franco’ refers to Francia (the kingdom of the Franks), where this style originated. The ‘Saxon’ part of the term refers to the incorporation of Insular decorative motifs (when this term was coined in the late 19th century Insular art was often called ‘Hiberno-Saxon’). In general, the Franco-Saxon style is characterised by a fusion of motifs based on Insular models and features of layout, decoration, and script of the Carolingian manuscript tradition. The Carolingian dynasty seized control over the area roughly corresponding to modern-day France from 751, expanded the kingdom, and ruled (intermittently) until 987.
Interlace is usually described as one of the most defining Insular components of the Franco-Saxon style. Interlace decoration has also been seen as evidence of the spread of this style to the scriptorium of Saint-Martin of Tours during the second half of the 9th century. The Benedictine abbey of Saint-Martin of Tours was one of the most influential centres of manuscript production in the Carolingian empire in the early decades of the century. However, in 853 Tours was attacked by one of the Norse war bands who carried out raids along the rivers of France. To help restore the Abbey’s destroyed library, books from other Carolingian centres were sent to the monks of Tours. We know that at least one of those manuscripts was a Franco-Saxon manuscript from Saint-Amand, one of the main centres of the Franco-Saxon style.
Consequently, the decoration in manuscripts made at Tours in the decades after the attack of 853 has been described as incorporating the Franco-Saxon style into the diverse and well-developed Tours style. This Gospel book from Tours, digitised as part of the Polonsky project (Add MS 11849), is one example of this. The golden ribbons that both form the outline of the ligature ‘LI’ (Liber) (book) as well as interlaced designs within the letter and at their terminals, have been compared to decorated initials in well-known Franco-Saxon manuscripts.
But there is a problem with using the presence of interlace as a distinguishing feature of an early medieval style. When you start to look at early medieval manuscripts from across northern Europe, you quickly notice that interlacing knotwork decoration is an omnipresent decorative element.
For example, in the area that is now Belgium and the Southern Netherlands, interlace in a slightly different variant was also common during this period. Here it is incorporated within the stem of the initial ‘D’ as well as in a design within the letter, in red and brown ink.
Similarly, interlace is also present in contemporary manuscripts that were most likely made in Brittany, which was never incorporated fully into the Carolingian empire. Perhaps that is why manuscript art from this area often continued to resemble Frankish manuscripts created before the spread of Carolingian influence (i.e. before c. 750).
Further south, in Northern Italy, early medieval manuscripts also feature interlace in their decorated initials. This is apparent in a late 8th-early 9th manuscript (now Cotton MS Nero A II), which has a large initial ‘D’, with its ascender swooping to the left. The letter incorporates knotwork patterns within its rounded bowl, while another interlace design of thicker ribbons continues and reaches inside the bowl.
Insular artists, responsible for creations like the Lindisfarne Gospels, undeniably mastered the basic principles of interlacing knotwork and created incredibly intricate and imaginative designs. As a type of pattern in itself, however, it was such a ubiquitous feature of early medieval European art that its presence in a manuscript does not necessarily indicate specifically Insular influence.
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Part of the Polonsky Digitisation Project
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03 October 2020
The Bamberg Book of Relics
The Bamberg Book of Relics (Add MS 15689) represents the medieval treasure trove of Bamberg Cathedral. It contains more than 100 illustrations of highly decorated containers with the physical remains of holy men and women, fragments of the sites they visited, and the objects they touched. The relics and their containers (reliquaries) are organised by shape, and include banners, vestments, vessels (monstrances), busts, caskets and crosses. Among the most prized relics are those associated with the life of Christ, such as hair of the Virgin Mary, pieces of the Holy Cross, one of the nails from the Crucifixion, and incense that the Three Magi presented to the infant Christ.
A reliquary containing incense that the Three Magi presented to Christ: Add MS 15689, f. 6r
Prominent in this manuscript are the relics of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry II (973–1024) and his wife Cunigunde of Luxembourg (975–1040). Henry, the last monarch of the Ottonian dynasty, and Cunigunde, a descendant of Charlemagne, were strongly connected to Bamberg. Upon their marriage, Henry gave Cunigunde his land in Bamberg as a wedding gift. In 1002, he founded Bamberg Cathedral, which was consecrated on his birthday in 1012, and in 1007 he established the new bishopric of Bamberg. As founders and patrons, Henry and Cunigunde were buried inside Bamberg Cathedral. Their shared tomb, made by the famous German sculptor Tilman Riemenschnieder (c. 1460–1531), can still be seen today.
Henry and Cunigunde were canonised in 1146 and 1200 respectively, which makes them the only saintly imperial couple in history. Among their relics are Henry’s banner that he took with him in his various wars; according to this manuscript, he was carrying it with him when St Lawrence, St Adrian and St George appeared to aid him in battle.
The banner and Star Mantle of Henry II: Add MS 15689, f. 2r
The manuscript testifies to the veneration of Henry and Cunigunde's garments. A blue mantle may represent Henry's Star Mantle (‘Sternenmantel’), which features astrological signs and images of Christ, saints, and the symbols of the four Evangelists, in gold embroidery. Henry or Cunigunde donated the mantle to Bamberg Cathedral where it is kept today in the Diocesan Museum, making it the oldest surviving European cope. Another blue mantle seems to represent the Cope of Cunigunde, which features gold-embroidered scenes relating to the life of Christ and the martyrdoms of St Peter and St Paul, the patron saints of Bamberg Cathedral. These are also the main subjects of Cunigunde’s Great Mantle, another important garment that is perhaps depicted below the Cope.
The Cope and Great Mantle of Cunigunde: Add MS 15689, f. 3r
Other relics that are associated with Henry and Cunigunde concern contact relics — objects they touched during their lives — and physical remains. An example of the first category is the sword of St Adrian, an early Christian military officer and martyr, and which was used by Henry to fight ‘unbelievers’ (‘unglaubigen’).
St Adrian's sword: Add MS 15689, f. 3v
Another contact relic is Cunigunde’s glove, still featuring her wedding ring. According to medieval legend, she once dropped it while praying in Bamberg Cathedral, but it was miraculously caught and returned to her by a ray of sunlight.
Cunigunde’s glove and marriage ring: Add MS 15689, f. 20r
Several of the reliquaries contained physical remnants of the imperial couple, including monstrances with fragments of Henry’s lower jaw and throat, and a crystal jug with a lock of Cunigunde’s hair.
Reliquaries with the lower jaw and throat of Henry II: Add MS 15689, f. 4r
A reliquary with Cunigunde’s hair: Add MS 15689, f. 20v
Since the 14th century, Bamberg Cathedral has presented its relics in public. The Book of Relics was used for announcing the various objects as they were displayed, sometimes from an elevated location, to Bamberg’s citizens. Like the cathedral’s relics of Christ and the Virgin Mary, those of Henry and Cunigunde were given an important sacred status, with the citizens believing that they could gain absolution of sin by beholding them.
A public presentation of Bamberg Cathedral’s relics: Add MS 15689, f. 36r
You can now follow in this medieval tradition by seeing some of the most splendid relics from the Bamberg Book of Relics on display at Bamberg Cathedral. The Diocesan Museum is currently showing the manuscript in an exhibition on the imperial garments, that runs until 1 November 2020.
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