Dear Meg,
Graham has spurred me into action! I had a lot of trouble with this
issue. There are allegedly both images and texts from before 1400 but
I never managed to track them down. Probably the earliest
English example I know is an alabaster found in the nineteenth century
at Buckenham (as I remember) in Norfolk. This looks c.1410-20 to me,
but alabaster people tend to be less gun-ho about dating things than I
am (alabaster carving seems to have been a rather conservative
artform). I will try to track down the references I had to early images
(allegedly in Bari and also Germany?). These were from Kirschbaum and
Braun as I remember. I am so glad that someone is working on this
tricky problem. I gave a paper at Downside about the promises
associated with the Erasmus cult in England, but was able to say very
little definite about how and where this story began. The other person who I
know is interested in the unfortunate saint is Professor Richard Marks of
University of York.
With Best Wishes
Miriam
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