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A Datable English Alabaster Altar-piece at Santiago de Compostela

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

W. L. Hildburgh
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Extract

In the year 1456 a certain English parish priest, making the pilgrimage to the great shrine of St. James at Santiago de Compostela, took with him an English retable of wood with panels of carved alabaster, and gave it to the cathedral containing the shrine, A document, written in Gallegan Spanish and still in being, sets forth how there appeared before its writer, with witnesses, at the high altar, on the 25th day of May, 1456, ‘a man who said that he was of the nation of the Kingdom of England, by name called Johanes Gudguar, rector of the church of Cheilinvvintour diocese ’, who, for service of God and reverence for the very holy Apostle ‘Sebedeu ’, and for the benefit of his sins, gave to the Compostelan church a retable of wood with figures of alabaster, painted with gold and blue, setting forth the history of the said holy Apostle.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , July 1926 , pp. 304 - 307
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1926

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References

page 304 note 1 Transcribed in full in Ferreiro's, Antonio LópezHistoria de la Santa A. M. Iglesia de Santiago de Compostela, vol. vii (Santiago, 1904), pp. 111Google Scholarseq. of the Appendix.

page 304 note 2 This curious expression refers to his father Zebedee, thus distinguishing him from St. James the Less. He seems often to have been called ‘Santiago Zebedeo’, or by its Latin equivalent, in medieval Santiago.

page 304 note 3 For this explanation I am indebted to our Fellow Mr. William Page. Unfortunately there is no list of the rectors of Chale and the bishop's register for the period is lost.

page 305 note 1 Rodrigo de Luna (1449–60).

page 305 note 2 It was still there in 1885, when the Guía de Santiago of J. M. Fernández Sánchez and F. Freire Barreiro was written. On the special services (none of which seems to have related especially to the donor) celebrated at this altar, see that Guía, p. 94.

page 305 note 1 Cf. P. Nelson, ‘The Woodwork of English Alabaster Retables ’, in Trans. Hist. Soc. Lanes, and Ches., 1920; and ‘The Virgin Triptych at Danzig’ and ‘English Medieval Alabaster Carvings in Iceland and Denmark’, in Archaeol. Journ., lxxvi and lxxvii.

page 305 note 2 Canon Tafall has courteously sent me a transcription (with the abbreviations extended) of these inscriptions. They are ‘I Acobi Apostoli Vocatio ad apostolatum’ ;‘Missio Iacobi ad praedicandam Fidem’ ; ‘Praedicatio Sancti Iacobi’; ‘Martyrivm Sancti Iacobi’; ‘Translatio Sancti Iacobi In Compostelam’. There seem to be no names of other saints, respectively before and after these inscriptions, to indicate that, as in some other English alabaster altarpieces, there was a small image-panel at either end.

page 306 note 3 Measurements as given in the Guia de Santiago, loc. cit.

page 307 note 1 Cf. also Proc. Soc. Ant., xxix, 74 and xxxi, 57Google Scholar; ibid., xxviii, 63 seq. ; ibid., xxxii. 121, 124 seqq., 118 seq. ; Ant. Journ., i (1921), 225Google Scholar; Burlington Mag., xxxvi (1910), 61 seq.Google Scholar

page 307 note 2 I did not find this panel at Segovia in 1925.

page 307 note 3 Proc. Soc. Ant., xxix, 84seqq.Google Scholar

page 307 note 4 This was not on exhibition at the time of my visit; my information is from the curator, M. Luis Keil.