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A Wall-painting at Idsworth, Hants, and a Liturgical Graffito

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

F. Wormald
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Extract

On the north wall of the chancel of the small chapel at Idsworth, on the borders of Hampshire and Sussex, is a fine fourteenth-century wall-painting executed in distemper in red and yellow on a white ground. The composition is divided into two broad horizontal bands by a narrow zigzag band. In the top half is a scene with huntsmen, dogs, and a wild man, and what appears to be the arrest of St. John Baptist. In the lower part is St. John Baptist put in prison and a long scene showing Salome dancing a sword-dance before Herod and Herodias (pl. I). The scene of the huntsmen and the wild man requires rather closer examination, because it is commonly and wrongly described as showing a scene from the life of St. Hubert.

On the extreme left of the picture are the remains of horsemen and dogs, then there is a figure of a crowned man winding a horn with his left hand and holding in his right hand a long bow which he rests on the ground. Behind him are two men. At his feet are dogs, and in front of him to his left are three men who bend down towards an old man covered with long hair who is emerging from some bushes on all fours. The attribution of this scene to the legend of St. Hubert requires full consideration, because an examination of the lives of that saint printed in the Acta Sanctorum yields no indication of any legend bearing the remotest resemblance to this scene. There seems, moreover, to be every indication that the whole painting represents something quite different.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 25 , Issue 1-2 , April 1945 , pp. 43 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1945

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References

page 43 note 1 Arch. Journ. xxi (1864), 184.

page 44 note 1 V.C.H. Hants, iii, 109.

page 44 note 2 The whole question of the legend of the hairy anchorite has been examined in considerable detail by Charles Allyn Williams in Oriental Affinities of the Legend of the Hairy Anchorite in University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, x, no. 2, xi, no. 4, and in the German Legends of the Hairy Anchorite in op. cit. xviii, nos. 1–2.

J. A. Herbert, Catalogue of Romances in the Dept. of MSS. in the British Museum, iii, 465, item no. 23, describes a tale of a hermit who, wishing to know what sin is, commits adultery and murder; for penance he goes on all fours until he knows that he is pardoned; and on p. 571, item no 175, where the same story is told with the addition that ‘after many years a newly baptized infant tells him that he is forgiven’. This latter detail resembles the German prose version of the story in Der Heiligen Leben, see Williams in German Legends, 36. Owing to the MSS. being unavailable in war-time I have been unable to examine these two tales more fully, nor have I seen for this purpose the pictorial version of the story in B.M. Royal MS. 10 E. iv, ff. 113 b–118 b.

page 44 note 3 Migne, Patrologia Latina, lxxiii, 894.

page 44 note 4 Printed by Williams, German Legends, 75–9.

page 45 note 1 Amongst these graffiti are the names Hubertus and Walterus. The former may well be the reason for the misinterpretation of the hairy anchorite scene. There are also some Roman numerals. The name ‘dalyngrynge’ with the words ‘cest du bien (?)’ in same hand are also found. In connexion with the name ‘dalyngrynge’ it should be remembered that in 1447 Edmund Mille granted to Richard Dalyngrygge and Sibyl his wife and their heirs quitclaim of the manor of Lymbourne and all lands, rents, reversions, and services in Warblyngton, Wade, Nytymbre, Blendeworth, ‘Eststoke Westheye’ and Haylynge, see Calendar of Close Rolls, Henry VI (1441–1447), p. 462. Blendworth is very close to Idsworth, being just a little to the west. The name Kelbrok also occurs.

page 45 note 2 Breviarium ad Usum Sarum, ed. Procter and Wordsworth, fasc. iii, 396–403.

page 46 note 1 Printed by W. H. Frere, The Use of Sarum, i, 238, 239. Virtually the same set is found in the Sarum Consuetudinary, except for a few variants in the seventh and ninth lessons; lesson 7 has ‘Per marie suffragia’ and 9 ‘Ad consorcia angelorum perducat nos regina celorum’.

page 46 note 2 For the directions for saying the blessings over the lessons, see The Sarum Ordinale, ed. W. H. Frere, op. cit., ii, 216, 217.

page 46 note 3 These blessings over the lessons do not occur in the liturgical book known as the Benedictional which contains the solemn blessings said by the bishop at Mass.

page 46 note 4 See Wilkins, Concilia, iii, 613.

page 47 note 1 Our Fellow, Mr. Herbert Chitty, has drawn my attention to the passage in William of Wykeham's Statutes of Winchester College, where it is laid down that the Divine Office and the Mass are to be celebrated ‘secundum usum et consuetudinem ecclesie Cathedralis Sarum’, see T. F. Kirby, Annals of Winchester College, 1892, p. 501. Norwich, which had a Benedictine Cathedral Church, also employ the Sarum use in the diocese, and in some of the diocesan calendars certain feasts are noted as being ‘non Sarum’. These are usually known as ‘festa synodalia’, see B.M. Cotton MS., Julius B. vii, f. 58.