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11 - Divine Lights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 March 2023

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Summary

Than cam ther a confessour coped as a frere… .

'We have a wyndow in werchynge, wole stonden us ful hye;

Woldestow glaze that gable and grave therinne thy name,

Sykir sholde thi soule b hevene to have … .'

'Have mercy,’ quod Mede, …

'And I shal covere youre kirk, youre cloistre do maken,

Wowes do whiten and wyndowes glazen,

Do peynten and portraye [who paied] for the makynge

That every segge shall see I am suster of youre house.'

from The Vision of Piers Plowman, Passus III

[Then there came a confessor coped as a friar… . ‘We have a window being worked on that will cost us a lot; if you would glaze that gable and engrave your name there, your soul will be certain to have Heaven … .’ ‘Have mercy,’ said Mede, ‘and I will find funds for your church roof, provide you with a cloister, have your walls white-washed and your windows glazed, and have painted and portrayed who paid for the work, so that every soul shall see I am a sister of your house.’]

The very nature of glass makes its survival remarkable. Throughout England, thousands of church windows retain small, friable fragments of late medieval glass which are now preserved in tracery lights or ‘otherwise turned up, their heels into the place where their heads used to be fixed'. Yet it is not only the fragility of glass that has made its survival unlikely. Apart from Acts of God, such as tempests, hailstones and other natural catastrophes, the cause of destruction has been man, and glass has suffered both at the hands of men and small boys. Late medieval glass was attacked in the assault on images in the sixteenth century at the time of the Reformation and in the seventeenth century during the Commonwealth; and neglect in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, when glass disappeared at an alarming rate, did more damage than Protestant vandalism.The space available on walls and windows allowed for grand illustration.

Walls lacked the compartmental nature of mullioned windows, but mural composition was still governed by and adapted to the architectural form of the building. Paintings of The Last Judgement in the spandrels of a chancel arch, such as Bacton in Suffolk, show how wall surfaces could be utilized.

Type
Chapter
Information
Inward Purity and Outward Splendour
Death and Remembrance in the Deanery of Dunwich, Suffolk, 1370-1547
, pp. 234 - 251
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2001

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