1 - Precious Offerings: Dressing Devotional Statues in Medieval England

Summary

Dressing of Christian devotional statues is often considered a sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Baroque development in continental Europe, but it probably dates from much earlier in the period. Scholars, for example, have noted references to such practices from late thirteenth-century Germany and late fourteenth-century Florence onward. However, even earlier textual references exist for the adornment of statues in early medieval England, in some cases with textiles, from the eleventh through the fourteenth century and beyond.

Devotional images themselves are discussed in medieval England as early as Bede (early eighth century), who described images that sound like two-dimensional pictures among the inspirational objects introduced by early Christian leaders, such as Benedict Biscop, returning to England after visits to Rome. Their subject matter and purpose, in many ways, prefigure much of the later devotional art of the period and beyond:

picturas imaginum sanctarum quas ad ornandum ecclesiam … imaginem videlicet beatae Dei genetricis semperque virginis Mariae, simul et duodecim apostolorum, quibus mediam eiusdem ecclesiae testudinem, ducto a pariete ad parietem tabulato praecingeret; imagines evangelicae historiae quibus australem ecclesiae parietem decoraret; imagines visionum apocalypsis beati Iohannis, quibus septentrionalem aeque parietem ornaret, quatenus intrantes ecclesiam omnes etiam literarum ignari, quaquaversum intenderent, vel semper amabilem Christi sanctorumque eius, quamvis in imagine, contemplarentur aspectum; vel Dominicae incarnationis gratiam vigilantiore mente recolerent; vel extremi discrimen examines, quasi coram oculis habentes, districtius se ipsi examinare meminissent.

he brought home sacred pictures to adorn the church … namely, the similitude of the blessed mother of God and ever Virgin Mary, and also of the 12 apostles, with the which he might compass the central vault of the said church by means of a board running along from wall to wall; similitudes of the Gospel story for the adornment of the south wall of the church; similitudes of the visions in the Revelation of the blessed John for the ornament of the north wall in like manner, in order that all men which entered the church, even if they might not read, should either look (whatsoever way they turned) upon the gracious countenance of Christ and His saints, though it were but in a picture; or might call to mind a more lively sense of the blessing of the Lord's incarnation, or having, as it were before their eyes, the peril of the last judgment might remember more closely to examine themselves.