Dear All
Apologies! I fell into the trap of pressing the wrong button and
broadcasting a private message. Oops!
Graham
From: medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions
of medieval religious culture [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Madeleine Gray
Sent: 21 June 2010 08:42
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [M-R] veneration of statues of the Virgin Mary
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval
religion and culture
I don't think I replied to this, which was remiss of me. I'm
attaching my notes on the will + (for your reference only) the copy I
downloaded from the NA Documents Online site. You'll see that our brewer was
comfortably off, conventionally devout, clearly based in Bristol but with
connections in the Margam area.
I've
also got the Cadw/NMR notes on the well and chapel. I did a short report for
the Wellsprings AGM and we went and had a look, and I'm doing an update with
reference to the documents in the BL for Jonathan Wooding's conference in
Lampeter on 11-12 Sept.(Mind you, I say Jonathan's conference but one of
today's jobs is to get hold of him, find out what he has done and do something
about it myself !!!! Poor things, they seem to be in even more chaos than we
are and at least we are used to it. There are also dire rumours that the whole
of Bangor's theology department is being moved to Lampeter which seems a bit
desperate.)
Are
you interested - might you have anything to offer, preferably on west Wales
wells / saints' cults?
Best
wishes
Maddy
Dr Madeleine Gray
Reader in History
School of Education/Ysgol Addysg
University of Wales, Newport/Prifysgol Cymru, Casnewydd
Caerleon Campus/Campws Caerllion,
Newport/Casnewydd NP18 3QT Tel: +44
(0)1633.432675
'We are not bound to win but we are bound to be true' (Barack
Obama)
From: medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions
of medieval religious culture on behalf of Graham Jones
Sent: Sun 08/11/2009 1:04 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [M-R] veneration of statues of the Virgin Mary
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of
medieval religion and culture
Dear Maddy, Jim and Everyone
Thanks, Maddy! I've added 'image' to the entry in TASC together with
reference to you and The National Archives and dated the will as circa
1500. Can we be more specific about the date?
You may well be right about 'me-too-ery', but if the monks were 'at it'
they took care to get their devotional landscape complete. As well as
having a chapel on an eminence (for List members not familiar with the
site, see the picture at www.panoramio.com/photos/original/3622287.jpg),
involving a stiff climb to a point where pilgrims could look back over
the abbey and then across the marshes to the sea, they may have been
responsible for the enclosed pool or 'holy well' at the entrance to Cwm
Bach, or Cwm Bath, known as Ffynnon Cyffyr, 'the Remedy Well', in more
modern times. It forms the third point of a triangular 'processional
path' for pilgrims to the abbey.
But then... The devotional topography is so neat that I suppose it is
perfectly possible that it predated the Cistercian abbey, which itself
is thought to have been a refoundation of an earlier house. For fellow
Listers, Margam in South Wales has a notable collection of Early
Inscribed Stones of various periods, some perhaps as early as the sixth
century, and finds include Frankish glass. The abbey stands at the
opening of a steep, narrow funnel giving access to a fan-like
arrangement of valleys. One is Cwm Maelog, 'Maelog', 'lordly', being a
noble name borne by one or more 'Dark Age' saints. On the summit forming
one side of the funnel is the chapel of Creke ('the rock'), on the other
a large defended enclosure of probably Iron Age date.
Jim is absolutely right to draw attention to the density of the medieval
'medico-geographical network' as he aptly puts it. The more one looks,
the more one sees. Earlier in the week some colleagues and I were
discussing St John's Well at Lutterworth in Leicestershire where John
Wycliffe's bones were supposedly burned after exhumation (a clear
reference to the legend of the Baptist's remains). The well was
associated with a hospital so small as almost to be off the radar. Yet
it had very hazy origins and uncertain status (a good sign of
antiquity), including a pension from, not to the parish church, and
while it stands next to a river, the latter occupies the summit of the
overlooking hill. A short distance in the other direction is 'Misterton,
'tun of the minster'. Imaginative our later medieval monks may have
been, but the models they followed - if indeed they were faking it -
were well-established and presumably, in our forebears' view, achieved
some sort of effective outcome.
Best wishes
Graham
******************************************
Dr Graham Jones
St John's College (University of Oxford)
Oxford OX1 3JP
Tel: +(0)1865 280146 (with voice-mail)
e-Mail: [log in to unmask]
Senior Research Associate
School of Geography and the Environment
University of Oxford.
Web: http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/staff/gjones.html
Honorary Visiting Fellow
Centre for English Local History
University of Leicester.
Web: http://www.le.ac.uk/users/grj1
******************************************
-----Original Message-----
From: medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious
culture [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Dr Jim
Bugslag
Sent: 07 November 2009 20:33
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [M-R] veneration of statues of the Virgin Mary
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
culture
Dear Maddy,
This is not a shrine I've come across. Many thanks for pointing it out
to me! It's now in my database, with an acknowledgement of you as the
source of information. There are, in fact, a considerable number of
Marian shrines in the British Isles now known only through such bequests
in wills. And it is not uncommon for people to have "hedged their
bets"
by making donations to more than one Marian shrine. Small Marian
shrines focussed on a miraculous image, usually a statue -- and often,
as you know, a miraculous spring -- were ubiquitous throughout England
and Wales. Not only were they systematically destroyed at the
Reformation, however, but it would appear that even the records of them
were destroyed in an intentional attempt to consign them to oblivion.
This appears to have worked rather well. Rather than thinking of this
one in terms of "me-too-ery", you might think of it in terms of a
shrine
that would have served a fairly local population. By the end of the
Middle Ages -- and well past it in the still Catholic areas of Europe --
a whole medico-geographical network of local shrines became established,
to which people resorted, not simply for their salvation, but for their
health, fecundity, the welfare of their livestock, etc., etc. It is a
daunting task to reconstruct these networks, let alone put them into any
sort of chronological development. Might I ask the date of your will?
Cheers,
Jim
Madeleine Gray wrote:
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
culture
> I think this may be one for Jim Bugslag or Graham Jones -
>
> Trawling through early Glamorgan wills in the National Archive in
> London (and looking for something completely different - as you do - )
> I came across a legacy to an image (I'm presuming it was a statue,
> though the Latin word is ymaginum and could also mean a painting) of
> the Virgin Mary described as being 'at the blessed Mary of Creke
> belonging to the abbey of Margam'. This is presumably Capel Mair on
> the Crugwyllt ridge above the abbey and in roughly the same
> relationship to Ffynnon Fair, Margam, as the Penrhys chapel was to the
> well there.
> Have you (in your work on the cult of the Virgin and the churches of
> the region) ever come across a reference to this statue, or anything
> that could be interpreted as such? David Williams doesn't seem to have
> come across it. My own suspicion is that it's the monks of Margam
> doing a bit of me-too-ery! The testator does seem to have had a
> particular devotion to the BVM - in the preamble he leaves his soul to
> God and to 'Mary the virgin, queen of mercy' and he gives money to
> Penrhys as well.
>
> I've contacted Christine James and Jane Cartwright to see if they have
> come across any poetry that could be interpreted as a reference to
> this statue.
>
> Best wishes - hope all is well with you.
> Maddy
>
>
> Dr Madeleine Gray
> Reader in History
> School of Education/Ysgol Addysg
> University of Wales, Newport/Prifysgol Cymru, Casnewydd
> Caerleon Campus/Campws Caerllion,
> Newport/Casnewydd NP18 3QT Tel: +44 (0)1633.432675
>
> 'You may not be able to change the world but at least you can
> embarrass the guilty'
> (Jessica Mitford)
>
>
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