medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Sunday, November 26, 2006, at 6:45 am, Jon Cannon wrote:
> The Berkeleys were able to transform St Augustine's Bristol in their own
> image; the Despencers did something comparable at Tewkesbury. No single
> lay family could ever have done that in a cathedral.
A proposition supported by the two quasi-exceptions that come to mind right away from the kingdom of Sicily (or its predecessor polities), both having to do with the Hautevilles.
Starting in 1059, Robert Guiscard undertook the transformation of what had been the cathedral of the Trinity at Venosa into a burial church for his family. But at that point the building ceased to function as a cathedral, becoming instead the church of a newly founded Benedictine house (whose abbot lacked episcopal jurisdiction) and soon ceasing to function at all, as it was replaced by a mammoth new structure that was never completed.
In the 1170s and 1180s William II of Sicily erected the cathedral of Monreale outside of Palermo as a burial church for his family, in a sense forming it in their own image. But he didn't do this in a previously existing cathedral and thus can't be said to have achieved a work of transformation.
Best,
John Dillon
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