Chris Buckley, who is working on the iconography of Prince Arthur's chantry in Worcester Cathedral, has asked me to ask the learned group:

'I'm attempting to identify four particular figures on the interior of
Prince Arthur's chantry chapel in Worcester Cathedral, in upper
positions at the sides. The strongest link between the four I'm
proposing (Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, Gamaliel and Longinus) is
the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus. Longinus is first given his name in
it. Joseph, Nicodemus and Gamaliel, as members of the Sanhedrin, are
involved in taking 'statements' from two individuals who are said to
have been rescued in Christ's Harrowing of Hell. While all these three
are named in the New Testament, they take on an unhistorical life of
their own in later legend, and I believe they're all in the Golden
Legend.

Joseph and Nicodemus would just be visible to lay people through the
windows into the transept, but only members of the Order would have
seen Longinus and Gamaliel.

My problem is how they're represented elsewhere in medieval art. Joseph
and Nicodemus are OK, because they're in Depositions. Nicodemus is
sometimes alone, with three nails, and in at least one MS (Hours of
Elizabeth the Queen?) they're in a composition related to the Man of
Sorrows, the subject of the central tableau of the chantry's reredos.
Longinus is frequently seen in e.g. Hours, but he's normally shown at
the moment of piercing Christ's side, often with the drops of blood
that heal his partial blindness. Of the sources I can get at, only the
Renaissance statue, by Bernini, above the Vatican's relic of the Holy
Lance shows him in old age, as a hermit, at the time of his martyrdom,
which is how he appears (if it is him) on the chantry. Gamaliel is even
worse. There's one Renaissance oil painting of him with Nicodemus,
associating them with the martyrdom of Stephen (as they are in the
Golden Legend), and I suspect it's tied in with veneration of their
claimed remains at Pisa. Gamaliel is mentioned only in passing in the
Beirut icon legend, as one of the previous owners of the icon after
Nicodemus wrote it. This tenuous link to the healing powers of Christ's
holy blood, as seen in the icon's effluvia, might also be a reason for
including him here. I realize that the Beirut icon cult was one of the
'new feasts' of 15 C, but didn't catch on here as a popular devotion.
Two on-line illustrations showing Gamaliel come from Haggadah MSS, so
not in the main Christian tradition. They do show him teaching pupils,
as Jewish history records him as a most distinguished 'rebbi'. On the
chantry, the relevant figure appears as a lawyer or scholar, judging by
his gown and headgear.

No library list survives for Worcester Priory; the cathedral library
has a late 15th C MS of the Gospel of Nicodemus acquired in 18th C. I
need to check whether it has illustrations, and if so what. It seems to
be from minor gentry/middle class level, so may well not come up with
the goods.

Does anyone on Med Rel know of parallels to this grouping?'

Best wishes

Maddy

Dr Madeleine Gray PhD, FRHistS

Reader in History/ Darllenydd mewn Hanes

School of Humanities and Lifelong Learning /Ysgol Ddyniaethau a Dysgu Gydol Oes

University of Wales, Newport/Prifysgol Cymru, Casnewydd

Caerleon Campus/Campws Caerllion,

Newport/Casnewydd NP18 3QT Tel: +44 (0)1633.432675

'Medical science can make us live to 90. If you haven't got the arts and humanities, what's the point of living to 90?' (Leszek Borysiewicz, VC of Cambridge)