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VII.—The Fourteenth-century Glass at Wells

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2011

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Extract

The earliest painted glass preserved in the cathedral church of Wells— with the exception of the ten small tracery lights on the staircase leading to the chapter-house–belongs to the opening years of the fourteenth century. The reason for this is to be found in the history of the building. Begun under Bishop Reginald about the year 1186, it represents the period of transition between the Norman and the Early English styles. The thick walls with their straight buttresses are of the Norman type: the stout piers of the nave would betray the Norman heaviness, if each were not surrounded by four and twenty slender shafts. But, on the other hand, this is the first great church in England to banish wholly the round arch, which was still being used at Glastonbury for ornament where the structure did not require the new pointed form. In this transitional style Bishop Reginald's church was carried through to the end of the nave under Bishop Jocelin (1205-42), until the western wall was reached; and then, in the latter half of that great builder's time, we get quite suddenly the full perfection of the Early English in the elaborate splendour of the great west front.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1931

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References

page 85 note 1 See the paper in Arch. Journ. lxxxviii, pp. 159-74, ‘On the date of the Lady Chapel at Wells’.

page 86 note 1 I have to acknowledge friendly counsel from Dr. M. R. James, Sir Charles Peers, P.S.A., Mr. Rushforth, Mr. J. A. Knowles, and the Rev. Christopher Woodforde; but above all I am indebted to Dom Ethelbert Home, the Prior of Downside Abbey, to whose camera all the illustrations are due.

page 88 note 1 Boutell (revised by Fox-Davies), 1907, p. 122.

page 88 note 2 Though Edward III had claimed the throne of France, he did not assume the arms until 1340. For further details on Borders see below, pp. 105 f, 112.

page 89 note 1 We may add here that Westlake (Hist, of Design in Painted Glass, i, 79) tells us that beneath a thirteenth-century ‘Jesse’ at Le Mans is the inscription: sic Devs Ex Iesse Cepit Carnaliter Esse.

page 90 note 1 Westlake tells us (ibid., i, 31) that in a medallion window (c. 1150) of Abbot Suger at St. Denys there is what is called the ‘Ark of the Covenant’. M. Emile Male says: ‘The second medallion represents the Ark of the Covenant carried on four wheels like a triumphal car. Inside are shown the Tables of the Law and Aaron's rod. From the bottom of the Ark rises like a standard a great green cross with the Saviour crucified: this is upheld by the Eternal Father. Around are set the four evangelical symbols.

‘There are two inscriptions: (1) across the midde of the picture: Federis ex area cruce Christisistitur ara: Federe maiori vult ibi vita mori; (2) beneath the Ark: Quadrige Aminadab.’

Abbot Suger has the verses, as given above, in his book De rebus in administratione sua gestis. The choir of his church was consecrated in H44- The Latin of the passage in Canticles is: ‘Anima mea conturbavit me propter quadrigas Aminadab’. The A, V. has: ‘Or ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Ammi-nadib’. The commentators on the Canticles, notably Honorius of Autun, a contemporary of Suger, explain that Aminadab who stands up in the chariot is the Saviour crucified, and the four horses are the four evangelists (Migne, P. L., clxxii, col. 462). See Émile Mále, L'art religieux du xiiie siecle en France (ed. 3, 1910) p. 206.

page 91 note 1 ‘As for churches themselves, belles, and times of morning and evening praier remain as in times past, saving that all images, shrines, tabernacles, rood-loftes, and monuments of idolatrie are removed, taken down and defaced; onlie the stories in glasse windowes excepted, which for want of sufficient store of new stuffe, and by reason of extreame charge that should grow by the alteration of the same into white panes throughout the realme, are not altogether abolished in most places at once, but by little and little suffered to decaie, that white glasse may be provided and set up in their roomes’ (quoted by , Winston, Hints on Glass Painting [ed. 2, p. 271] from Harrison's Description of England in the time of Queen Elizabeth, prefixed to Hollingshed's Chronicle, bk. ii, c. 1, p. 233).Google Scholar

page 93 note 1 Hist, of Design, ii, 19. But in the examples he gives from Evreux and Toul the heads are much smaller than those of the Lady Chapel, and might better be compared with the series in the adjoining chapels referred to above. Mr. J. A. Knowles finds a yet closer parallel to these later heads in the church of St. Denys at York: see Journ. of the Society of Master Glass Painters, iii, 195f. Another example is found in a window at Ludlow. Single heads, indeed, are not uncommon. What is notable at Wells is the occurrence in groups—of nine, as twice in the Lady Chapel, and of four in the two adjoining chapels.

page 94 note 1 One of the nine angels in the traceries of E. has a white face and silver-stained hair; but as all the others have pink faces this is probably a restoration, though perhaps an early one.

page 95 note 1 Sarum Breviary, Proctor and Wordsworth, ii, 385. In the Roman Breviary the wording of the Psalm is more closely followed.

page 96 note 1 See Som. Arch. Soc. Proc., lxxi (1925), 81 f.Google Scholar

page 98 note 1 i.e. ‘cost’.

page 100 note 1 See note on p. 85 above.

page 101 note 1 See however below, pp. 114, 116ff.

page 101 note 2 Proc. of Royal Archaeol. Institute (Bristol, 1851), p. 159.Google Scholar

page 101 note 3 Design in Painted Glass, ii, 18.

page 101 note 4 From the ‘Creed’ (c. 1394), formerly attributed to ‘Piers Plowman’: quoted by Winston, , Hints, etc., p. 412.Google Scholar

page 101 note 5 See Muchelney Memoranda, ‘Mediaeval Calendars of Somerset’ (Som. Bee. Soc., vol. xlii), p. 161.

page 103 note 1 Reynolds, , Wells Cathedral, Statutes, p. 51.Google Scholar

page 103 note 2 See ‘Som. Med. Calendars’ ut supra, p. 31; and cf. pp. 10ff.

page 106 note 1 See further on these borders, pp. 88, 112.

page 108 note 1 Illustrated in the Journal of the Society of Master Glass-Painters, iii, 196.

page 109 note 1 See the same Journal, iv, 71 ff.

page 109 note 2 For the description which follows, I am indebted in the main to the Reverend Christopher Woodforde. It will be observed that the account of the colours of the glass is more detailed than I have attempted elsewhere.

page 109 note 3 On this feature see the remarks of Dom Ethelbert Home in the Journal of the Society of Master Glass-Painters, iii, 12, where also a photograph of this panel is reproduced. A like fillet appears in the Crucifixion in the great East window, and in the hands of one of the angels bearing Instruments of the Passion in the traceries of the east window of the Lady Chapel.

page 110 note 1 This delightful variation is to be seen in somewhat later fourteenth-century glass at Eaton Bishop, co. Hereford: it is figured in Herbert Read's English Stained Glass (p. 59): the Child's left hand holds a bird, the Mother's right hand a flower. The same feature is to be seen carved on one of the long cone-shaped corbels in the choir at Exeter, c. 1290 (figured in Prior and Gardner's Medieval Figure-Sculpture, p. 386, and Gardner's Guide to Gothic Architecture, pi. CXLIV).

page 111 note 1 See below, p. 112.

page 111 note 2 See no. 2 on p. 109.

page 111 note 3 This light is figured by Westlake, , Hist, of Design, ii, 19.Google Scholar

page 112 note 1 Cp. Westlake, , Hist, of Design, i, 145.Google Scholar

page 113 note 1 See Legg, L. G. Wickham, Relation of a Short Survey, etc., p. 100.Google Scholar

page 113 note 2 Travels, etc., Chetham Society, i, 176.

page 113 note 3 These coats of arms are described by the Rev. H. W. Pereira in Som.Arch. Soc. Proceedings, xxxiv, ii, 40 ff.

page 113 note 1 It is not unlikely that the small tracery lights on the staircase leading to the chapter-house may be as early as 1280.

page 113 note 2 The Painted Glass of York, by the Rev. F. Harrison (1927), p. 60.