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The Baptism of St. Christopher

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

G. McN. Rushforth
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Extract

When Birtsmorton Church, Worcestershire, was rebuilt in the fourteenth century, a number of its windows were filled with painted glass of the period. The only portions now in situ are the arms of the Ruyhales, the lords of the manor, in the tracery lights of some of the windows in the nave, and of one in the north transept. What remained of the contents of the main lights, together with various fragments in the style of the fifteenth century, had been collected, perhaps early in the last century, in the east window of the chancel, where facsimile drawings, partly coloured, were made of them for Dr. Prattinton, whose Worcestershire collections are in our library. When the church was restored in 1877, the east window was rebuilt on a new pattern, but the glass was not replaced in it, and ultimately found its way into the adjoining ‘Birtsmorton Court’, where the present owner Mr. F. B. Bradley-Birt discovered it lying loose, and had the fragments releaded so as to form two panels. When I first saw the latter, I recognized that they contained the principal elements of the drawings in the Prattinton collection with which I had recently made acquaintance.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , April 1926 , pp. 152 - 158
Copyright
Copyright   The Society of Antiquaries of London 1926

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References

page 151 note 1 The watermark on the paper bears the date 1812.

page 151 note 2 A pencil drawing of the exterior of the church in the Prattinton collection shows the original east window of ordinary Perpendicular type. The new window has reticulated tracery.

page 153 note 1 Habington, Survey of Worcestershire (Worc. Hist. Soc., 1895), i, p. 119.

page 153 note 2 The Prattinton drawing, here reproduced, shows rather more of the lower part of the figure than exists in the glass. But the essential part, the head and shoulders, is perfectly preserved.

page 154 note 1 See the important monograph on the legend of St. George by Krumbacher, K. in Abhandlungen der K. Bayerischen Akademie, xxv (Munich, 1911), esp. pp. 296 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 154 note 2 Acta Sanctorum, July, vol. vi, p. 146. Other versions of the ‘Passio’ are printed in Analecta Bollandiana, vols. i and x.

page 154 note 3 Printed in Pezius, B., Thesaurus Anecdotorum Novissimus, vol. ii, part 3 (Augsburg, 1721), pp. 27 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 154 note 4 Richter, Konrad, ‘Der deutsche S. Christoph’, in Acta Germanica, vol. v, part 1 (Berlin, 1896Google Scholar). The poem in its oldest form is known from two South German MSS., one of the fourteenth century at Linz, the other of the fifteenth at Vienna (edited by Schönbach, A. in the Zeitschrift für Deutsches Alterthum, xvii (1874), pp. 85 ff.Google Scholar); but internal evidence (especially philological) shows that behind them lies a late twelfth-century original. A second German version, in a fifteenth-century MS. at Prague, edited by Schönbach (Z.f.D.A. xxvi, 20–81), is the work of some cleric, who has given the story a more religious and ecclesiastical character. See K. Richter, pp. 61 ff., 105 ff.

page 155 note 1 The German poet had forgotten or did not understand the original name, Reprobus. The latter appears again in the Golden Legend.

page 155 note 2 In Schönbach's text (Z.f.D.A. xvii, p. 119), 1. 1089:

‘Do Offorus auf daz wazzer enmitten cham

Got leit im sein hand auf sein haupt

Und macht Offorum betaubt.’

page 155 note 3 Op. cit., p. 61.

page 155 note 4 Acta Sanctorum, July. vol. vi, p. 146: ‘Ostensum est ei a Domino ut baptizaretur baptismo sancto … ecce nebula de caelo descendit et inluxit super eum, et venit ei vox de caelo dicens: Serve electe Dei, ecce accepisti baptismum in nomine Domini et sanctae Trinitatis.’ In a few versions of the legend he is baptized in the ordinary way by a bishop or a priest.

page 156 note 1 Richter, K., op. clt., p. 152Google Scholar.

page 156 note 2 A good example is a relief inserted in the facade of St. Mark's, Venice. A wall painting at Maulbronn showing him as beardless, with the Child on his left arm, is reproduced in Bergner's, Handbuch der kirchlichen Kunstaltertümer, etc. (Leipzig, 1905), coloured plate facing p. 184Google Scholar. See p. 186 where it is dated 1394.

page 156 note 3 Reproduced in Ottley's History of Engraving, and other books.

page 156 note 4 Stahl, E. K., Die legende vom heil, riesen Christophorus in der graphih des 15 und 16 Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1920Google Scholar). See also Gazette des Beaux Arts, 1921, p. 23 ff. G. Servières, ‘La Légende de Saint Christophe dans l'Art.’.

page 156 note 5 Horstmann, C., Altenglische Legenden. Neue Folge (Heilbronn, 1881), p. 459Google Scholar. There is no mention of the baptism in the Life of Christopher in Dr. Horstmann's South-English Legendary, pt. 1 (E.E.T.S., 1887).

page 157 note 1 The direction of the Rituale Romanum (Turin, 1891, p. 8Google Scholar) is to provide ‘vasculum seu cochlear ex argento vel alio metallo, nitidum, ad aquam Baptismi fundendam super caput baptizandi, quod nulli praeterea alii usui deserviat’.

page 157 note 2 Quoted by Ciampini, , Vetera Monumenta, ii, p. 20Google Scholar, from Walafrid Strabo, De Rebus Ecclesiasticis (Migne, Patr. Lat., cxiv, 959.

page 157 note 3 The soldier Romanus was converted by a miracle during the torture of St. Laurence, and following him back to prison brought a vessel of water, and asked to be baptized. Wilpert, J., Römischen Mosaiken und Malereien (Frieburg, 1916), vol. ii, p. 957Google Scholar.

page 157 note 4 Michel, A., Histoire de l'Art, vol. ii, pt. 2, fig. 428, p. 688Google Scholar.

page 157 note 5 Reinach, S., Répertoire de Petntures, iii, p. 128Google Scholar.

page 158 note 1 Often shown in Mass scenes.

page 158 note 2 In Berjeau's facsimiles: Biblia Pauperum, ix; Speculum Humanae Salvationis, fig. 45.

page 158 note 3 Burlington Magazine, xxiv (1913–1914), p. 253 and pl. i.Google Scholar

page 158 note 4 Archaeological Journal, lix (1902), p. 34Google Scholar and pl. xvii. So on six other English fonts (ibid., lx, p. 7). For Gresham see also F. Bond's Fonts, p. 260. On English Seven Sacraments fonts baptism is usually by immersion (A. J., lix, p. 23).

page 158 note 5 E. aus'm Weerth, Kunstdenkmäler in den Rheinlanden, vol. i, taf. vi, 4.