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.