The Holy Hunt in King's College Chapel, Cambridge

 

Despite my reservations about King's Chapel I go there quite often, usually when a friend visits who wants to see it (as happened earlier this week) or to study the stained glass. Most people who enter probably hardly notice the side chapels, and although I must have been in all of them at one time or another I've rarely spent much time in them or looked closely at their windows, which contain much ancient glass (most of it is fragmentary, not in situ, and not English). But this time I was struck by this one, in the easternmost south chapel. I looked it up in King's College Chapel, Cambridge, The Side-Chapel Glass by Hilary Wayment (n.d. but 1988) and was intrigued to find that the iconography is that of the Holy Hunt, not a subject familiar to me. The only book I can find (apart from Wayment's catalogue) that mentions it is The Imagery of British Churches by M D Anderson (1955),* and the only substantial contribution from Dr Google can be read here.

Unicorns were held to be so powerful and untameable that they were immune from being hunted, to have magical qualities and to be exemplars of purity and grace. However, if a pure virgin were to sit alone in the forest a unicorn would lay its head in her lap, and become vulnerable to hunters. The most famous medieval depictions of unicorns are the two series of tapestries, both French from c.1500, the Hunt of the Unicorn in the Cloisters, New York, and the Lady and the Unicorn in the Musee de Cluny, Paris. In England for some reason they were quite often depicted on misericords, for example in Nantwich, Chester and Durham Castle. According to Anderson the unicorn fable 'symbolised the Incarnation of Christ who laid aside His divine immunity from pain and death when He entered the Virgin's womb'. In the King's window the unicorn is seen submitting to the Virgin, who holds his horn tenderly in her hand.

The fable of the Holy Hunt is a late medieval elaboration of the story, which blends it with the Annunciation (in which the Angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she is to bear Jesus). 

The scene is a hortus conclusus (an enclosed garden). In the King's version this looks very much like a castle keep, with fortified, battlemented walls and towers. The gateway on the left is labelled porta aurea (Golden Gate) and that on the right porta ezechielis (Gate of Ezekiel). 

Mary's head (which is a 20th century replacement of the original) has on its right a tower labelled eburn[ea] (ivory, ie Ivory Tower). The altar frontal is labelled archa d[omi]ni (the Ark of the Lord). 

The well, labelled pute[us] aq[ua]ru[m] (water well), is next to an elaborate fountain with gold decorations, and on the left of Mary is a pot of gold. Everything is calculated to make her look important (though her humility and ordinariness are essential elements of Christianity).

This strange object which looks like a steamrollered cat is Gideon's fleece (though it's not labelled a such). In chapter 6 of the Book of Judges the story of the Fleece is used to show that God's promises to mankind can be trusted. Presumably the relevance to the Holy Hunt story is that God's promise, or revelation, to Mary can be trusted.

In the left light is the Archangel Gabriel blowing a hunting horn; the inscription above him reads aue gr[ati]a ple[na] (hail, full of grace - from the Ave Maria/Hail Mary). He has four white hunting dogs on leashes, labelled (from top to bottom) Justitia (justice), Pax (peace), misericord (mercy) and [v]eritas (truth); (these four virtues are named in Psalm 85:10). The idea is that he, on God's orders, chases the unicorn (Christ) into the lap of Mary. 

The original window was rather larger than the King's chapel window where it now resides, and to make it fit several details were crammed higgledy-piggledy into the right light and into the small tracery lights at the top. (An inscription recording its 1920 debut in the chapel was inserted.) The two winged putti near the top probably stood on either side of the whole scene.

The tracery lights show 1) a small round object, 2) a smaller round object, 3) a star and the sun, 4) the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, above the Rod of Aaron (labelled uirga Aaron) flowering with a lily, 5) God the Father and the Burning Bush (one of the ways in which God reveals himself to mankind), 6) what looks like ten wilting slices of Mother's Pride bread but is in fact the Tower of David with heraldic shields, 7) another small round object, and 8) possibly the moon.

The Holy Hunt was apparently a fairly common theme in Germany in the 15th and early 16th centuries, but this window seems to be its only representation in stained glass anywhere. Wayment makes what seems to me to be a good case for thinking that this window was originally made in Cologne soon after 1509; The Buildings of England however doesn't commit to being so specific and merely says that it's Rhenish or Flemish, c.1500-1530. 

The only representation of the Holy Hunt easily found on Google (on the website mentioned above) is this late 15th century illumination on vellum from Augsburg, in the Morgan Museum, New York. It includes the main elements from the King's representation, plus a few more, for example Noah's Ark and a lion with its cubs (on the left). Just below the lion's rear paw is what may be a donor figure, an image of the woman who commissioned the illumination (which was probably originally in a prayer book or similar) watching the events of the fable as they unfold. The closest we can get to doing so is to go to King's and go on a little hunt of our own, turning right just before we get to the altar.

* Her History and Imagery in British Churches (1971) does not include the Holy Hunt.

Historic Inflation

I find it frustrating and annoying when books about the past mention a sum of money (how much something cost, or how much someone earned) without any attempt to translate the sum into modern values. If someone was paid 7d a day in 1764, was that generous or starvation wages? If a meal cost £1 6s 3d in 1409, was that a bargain or were the diners being overcharged?

Of course, there are all sorts of pitfalls to beware when we try to find modern equivalent prices. Do we base our calculations on the cost of items, and, if so, which items, or on wages, and, if so, whose wages? There are so many variables to try to take into account. If we use, say, the cost of bread as our baseline, today's prices vary wildly. You can buy a loaf in Lidl or similar for under a pound, but it's also easy to pay a fiver for one in an independent bakery. The same variation was presumably true in the past. Similar caveats apply to wages. So we must accept that any attempts to find what historic costs and earnings were worth in 2024 currency can only be approximations. But surely approximations are better than nothing.

When writing I use the Bank of England Inflation Calculator, because that's what comes up when you search, the fact that it's from the Bank of England makes it sound reassuringly trustworthy, and it goes back as far as 1209. (As far as I can tell, there's no great significance in that date - King John being excommunicated by the Pope is the headline event - it's simply that by chance the surviving records begin then.) Other sources exist, including some linked on the Bank of England's site, for example The Son Also Rises, which gives huge amounts of raw data, useful if you want to look further into this subject. There's also this, which is much better at giving an overview at a glance than the Bank of England's site, but goes back only to 1751. It also, for reasons I don't understand, contradicts some of the Bank of England's data; for example, the Bank says that prices in the UK have doubled since 1995, whereas the other site gives 2005 as the date, a whole decade difference. If we can't be sure about inflation just two or three decades ago, how can we trust figures from centuries ago?

All the information below is derived from the Bank of England. One thing that surprises me (no doubt showing my ignorance) is that I've always assumed that inflation is inevitable and constant, albeit at widely different rates. But it seems that, for example, prices were fairly stable in the 14th and 15th centuries, and in fact prices sometimes went down as well as up. 

I've compiled two lists. The first is my attempt to show when some major inflation milestones were reached (but note that, as just stated, prices have gone up and down, so this can't be in any way definitive). The second shows how much prices have increased at half-century intervals.

Prices x 2 since 1995

x 5 1978

x 10 1973

x 25 1952

x 50 1924

x 100 1884

x 250 1606

x 500 1546

x 750 1521

x 1000 1405

x 1500 1211

x 1721 1209

Prices have multiplied x 1721 since 1209

x 1312 1250

x 938 1300

x 964 1350

x 930 1400

x 1006 1450

x 1028 1500

x 451 1550

x 257 1600

x 153 1650

x 173 1700

x 187 1750

x 70 1800

x 183 1850

x 103 1900

x 29 1950

x 1.6 2000

St Albans: St Peter's church, Hertfordshire

There are three churches of medieval origin in St Albans: St Michael's, St Stephen's and St Peter's. The latter is the most prominently sited one, about half a mile north east of the Abbey/Cathedral, at one end of a major commercial street. It's a pity, then, that St Peter's is the least interesting of the three, and that it's generally locked. I've tried its door many times over the years, and only recently succeeded in gaining entry (there was a sale of Christmas cards at the time). 

Externally the church is mostly Victorian, the work of Edmund Beckett (1816-1905), 1st Baron Grimthorpe, in 1893-5. His restorations (many would place 'restorations' in quotation marks) at the Abbey/Cathedral are well known (he worked at St Michael's too); he wasn't a trained architect and his additions and alterations have remained largely unloved (though in his defence the buildings he worked on were in a poor state of repair, and he spent enormous sums of his own money on them). His contributions to St Peter's are generally rather bland and characterless - for example, the western rose window, in principle an excellent idea, is insubstantial-looking - but certainly not as forceful as those to the Abbey/Cathedral.

There must have been a Saxon church on this site, and it must have been rebuilt and updated over the centuries, but nothing earlier than the 15th century survives (above ground, anyway). The only pre-Victorian works visible externally are the Perpendicular south windows and the brick tower from 1801-3, which replaced the medieval original; the buttresses and pinnacles are Grimthorpe's. 

However, internally the tall, slender 15th century piers of the nave arcades dominate, and help to create a feeling of light and spaciousness. 

There are a few original label stops on the doors, and there's a complete set of angel corbels, now brightly coloured and no longer supporting anything. (It's possible that they were painted when new, but the current colouring must be fairly recent.) One of them isn't an angel at all, but seems to be shouting angrily across the nave. 

The south aisle windows are mostly full of stained glass by the Belgian Jean-Baptiste Capronnier (1814-91), from 1867-72, illustrating parables. I like the canopies, but the scenes themselves are too much like paintings and the colours too acidic. Their overall effect is overwhelming, but not in a good way. 

Much better are the numerous fragments of late medieval glass which have been collected in the north aisle. There's one complete image, of a Pelican in its Piety, different in style to and possibly later than the other collections.  Several of them look at first glance as if they're complete scenes, but closer examination suggests that in fact they're only intelligently assembled jumbles. Nevertheless, it's worth examining them in detail. For example, the fourth from the left shows an intelligent-looking chap with a slightly sardonic smile peering out from underneath an architectural canopy. 

Near them is a window from 1918 made by Powell & Sons, and designed by Louis Davis (1860-1941). Davis was a pupil of Christopher Whall, whose work is found in several Hertfordshire churches, for example Preston and Sarratt. He (Davis) is celebrated for his use of colour, but this particular window is sombre, with dark greens and browns predominating. The subject matter isn't clear (at least to me): on the left a youth with a large sword bows before an altar, in the middle an angel appears to motion to a young man to put up (that is, put down) his sword, and on the right a feminine-looking angel holds a chalice and makes the sign of blessing. Probably the window refers to the end of the First World War.

The west (rose) window is from as late as 1922, but looks as if it could have been made half a century or more earlier. It's surprisingly good, and is by Burlison and Grylls (who had both trained with Clayton and Bell, whose work I highlight whenever I can in these posts). There's an Annunciation in the centre, and various other small scenes around it, for example three scenes of bearded men sacrificing at an altar, including Noah on the bottom right. 

There aren't many notable monuments; the most interesting is to Edward Strong (d.1723) who was the master mason during the rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral (which the inscription calls 'that Stupendous Fabrick'). He worked during the entire 33 years of the construction (1675-1708) (though work continued after that date too).

In recent years there's been a movement to make churches, especially town churches, capable of being used more flexibly by levelling their floors and clearing out all or most of the Victorian pews. Examples in the county include Stevenage and Watford. Some people get very hot under the collar about pews being thrown out; I've explained my thoughts on the subject before, and no doubt no one is interested in them anyway, so I won't repeat myself. There's a brief article on the reordering at St Peter's here, and some photographs of the church before the alterations can be found on Andrew Wood's astoundingly comprehensive site Hertfordshire Churches in Photographs. The old Victorian concrete floor of the church was damp, and threatening the integrity of the fifteenth century piers, so there was a sound rationale behind digging it up and replacing it, and the new floor is attractive and tasteful. Given that the church was subject to so many alterations by Grimthorpe it's hard to see why anyone would object (though no doubt some will).