Monuments and Monumentality across Medieval and
Early Modern Europe
Michael Penman, editor
Shaun Tyas £35
(978-1-907730-28-3)
Church Times Bookshop £31.50 (Use code CT853
)
THE 20 essays in this volume represent two-thirds of the papers
delivered at the "Monuments and Monumentality in Later Medieval and
Early Modern England" conference at the University of Stirling in
August 2011. Funerary monuments have long been an object of
academic study, and this volume is dedicated to pre-Restoration
funerary sculpture in Scotland - a much-neglected area of study -
and on mainland Europe.
Large tombs of the pre-Reformation period are rare in Scotland
owing to the 17th-century despoilers of churches and cathedrals,
but survivals tend to be of high quality and considerable
sculptural talent, as outlined in Iain Fraser's excellent essay
"Medieval Funerary Monuments in Scotland". Richard Fawcett's
"Aspects of Scottish Canopied Tomb Design", and Richard Oram's
"Bishops' Tombs in Medieval Scotland" flesh-out the geographical
placement of such memorials in a monastic church, and the
differential between tombs of the episcopacy and the nobility.
Michael Penman's essay, "A Programme for Royal Tombs in Scotland: A
Review of the Evidence, c.1093-c.1542"
interweaves the royal monuments at Dunfermline, Cambuskenneth, and
Holyrood into a fascinating narrative of patronage and hautes
beaux-arts.
It is disappointing that only three of the essays relate to
English funerary arts. Moira and Brian Gittos are represented by a
joint paper, "The Medieval English Churchyard", in which they show,
through research of surviving wills, and visitations to sites up
and down the country, that such places were originally more densely
powdered with monuments than scholars tend to infer. Jude Jones's
article, "Early Modern Tomb Effigies and Mortuary Memorials
1500-1680", draws on comparative material on Tudor and Stuart tombs
in 50 churches on the Hampshire-Sussex borders, while Claire
Bartram's paper, "Commemorative Practices in Late Elizabethan
Kent", takes the matter further in examining the activities of the
antiquary Francis Thynne when he was recording monuments in that
county between 1596 and 1598.
The part played by women both as subjects and originators of
funerary monuments is described by Joana Ramôa Melo in her paper on
the influence of women on the commissioning of funerary monuments
in 14th-century Portugal, while the tombs of the extensive Polish
nobility of the 16th century form the nucleus of a fascinating
article by Jeannie Łabno. Saints as well as sinners have a space in
this book, and Sheila Sweetinburgh is to be congratulated for her
essay on the cult of Simon of Sudbury, in which she discusses his
tomb in Canterbury Cathedral and its effect on diminishing the part
formerly played by St Thomas Becket's shrine in the same
building.
But it is not only monuments that are addressed. Stephen Mark
Holmes has provided a paper on the use of William Durandus of
Mende's mid-13th-century Rationale divinorum officiorum
and its use in 16th-century Scotland as an encyclopaedic source for
the allegorical interpretation of tomb-imagery. The book ends with
a paper by Andrew Spicer on the restoration of royal tombs in
early-17th-century France.
Penman is to be congratulated on the extensive index, an essay
in the craft. The 142 colour plates are beautifully reproduced;
that of the tomb of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy (d.1404), in
the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, is almost sufficient reason in
itself to buy the volume. This is the type of high-production book
that can be read either in one go or chapter by chapter, from here
to eternity.
Dr Litten is Vice-President of the Church Monuments
Society.