Graham Jones wrote:
>At the same time, we agree that patterns are very often palimpsests, and that
mantras are to be treated with suspicion - e.g. Michael and
hilltops.....
Interesting image, though I'm having a bit of trouble parsing it.
I know what a palimsest is.
And I know what a pattern is.
Do you mean to say that you are seeing the sacred (as it were) landscape as a
palimsest, with one epoch replacing the previous "generations'" vocations with
ones more useful and specific to its own?
>Since another important chunk of medieval mentality appears to have been
concerned with spatial relationships, I'm greatly tempted to associate gateway
hospitals with a perceived contrast between the security of
the walled town and the risks attendant outside it.....
>....Similarly, the preponderance of lazar houses
among the English hospitals of St Leonard provokes images of exclusion.
Another interesting visualisation.
"gateway hospitals"
Was it customary for hospitals (I assume you are speaking here of what in
France are called "ho^tels-dieu" not leprosaria) in English cities to be
located near gateways?
Inside or outside the walls?
Or, perhaps originally outside, but then incorporated within as the city
grew?
All I know of hospitals:
1) The original hotel-dieu of Chartres (a 13th c. building, on an older site,
pulled down in the 1860s) was just across from the Southwest tower of the
cathedral (now replaced by a little police station and certain essential
public facilities);
b) The leprosarium ("Le Grand-Beaulieu"), which has apparently
disappeared without a physical trace (though extensive cartularies survive)
was well beyond even the 13th c. city walls, on a hill to the Southwest;
iii) One of the Brother Cadfael stories takes place in the modest leper house
well outside the walls of Shrewsbury;
Naturally, I take this latter source I take to be definitive, but, in
courtesy, I would be glad to have others' opinions as well.
Best from here,
Christopher
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