An Epithalamium in Stone: The West Façade of Wells Cathedral

Abstract

Although the west façade of Wells Cathedral has been carefully studied, a series of problems concerning its date, original form and meaning remain. This paper focuses on the archaeology of its central portal, featuring the Coronation of the Virgin. Working from the archaeological evidence, it offers a reconstruction of the portal which leads to a broader consideration of the place of the imagery in British and European medieval art. This informs an exploration of the meanings of the façade as a whole within the context of then current commentaries on the Song of Songs in France and England.

Keywords:

• Wells Cathedral
• Gothic sculpture
• Song of Songs
• The Coronation of the Virgin
• Marian devotion
• theology
• William of Newburgh

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper is part of a larger study of sculptural production at Wells Cathedral c. 1170–1270 now underway. At Wells, I am indebted to Dr Jerry Sampson for years of correspondence and collaboration on various aspects of the cathedral (including but not limited to the façade), and to Mr Jez Fry (Clerk of Works). Versions of this paper were presented to the Canadian Conference of Medieval Art Historians in Toronto, Ontario, and at the Kalamazoo sessions sponsored by the Index for Medieval Art at Princeton. I am also grateful to Caroline Bruzelius, James Bugslag, Lloyd de Beer, Lindsay Shepherd Cook, Helen Deeming, Jonathan Foyle, Matilde Grimaldi, Sandy Heslop, James Hillson, Julian Luxford, Michael Michael, Stephen Murray, Marion Roberts, Neil Rushton, Malcolm Thurlby, Laura Whatley, Beth Williamson and Paul Williamson and for various kindnesses along the way. Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own. Biblical citations in English are to the NRSV.

Notes

1 For the relationship between the Wells façade and the Lady Chapel at Ely, see P. Binski, Gothic Wonder: Art, Artifice and the Decorated Style 1290–1350 (New Haven and London 2014), 200–01.

2 W. H. St John Hope and W. R. Lethaby, ‘The Imagery and Sculptures on the West Front of Wells Cathedral Church with some Suggestions as to the Identifications of the Wells Sculpture and Imagery’, Archaeologia, 59 (1904), 1–41, at 39. The most recent commentary is Jerry Sampson’s unpublished survey, Wells Cathedral: The West Front Polychromy. Part I: The Architectural Decoration (Wells, Somerset 2018).

3 J. Flaxman, Lectures on Sculpture (London 1829), 13–16; C. R. Cockerell, The Iconography of the West Front of Wells Cathedral (Oxford and London 1851). The earliest representation of the façade is William Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum (London 1655), I, 186, which shows the bottom tier of statues complete.

4 J. Sampson, Wells Cathedral West Front: Construction, Sculpture, and Conservation (Stroud, Glos. 1998), and subsequently, ‘Wells et Salisbury: le décor figuré de la façade occidentale’, in Mise en oeuvres des portails gothiques, ed. I. Kasarska (Paris 2011), 129–55.

5 G. Harris, ‘Antony Gormley lends sculpture to fill an empty spot on the medieval façade of Wells Cathedral in England’, Art Newspaper (4 March 2021): https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/03/04/antony-gormley-lends-sculpture-to-fill-an-empty-spot-on-the-medieval-facade-of-wells-cathedral-in-england (accessed 4 March 2022).

6 On these issues in Gothic sculpture, see most recently J. Jung, Eloquent Bodies: Movement, Expression, and the Human Figure in Gothic Sculpture (New Haven and London 2020).

7 P. Binski, Becket’s Crown: Art and Imagination in Gothic England 1170–1300 (New Haven and London 2004), 106–21; C. M. Malone, Façade as Spectacle: Ritual and Ideology at Wells Cathedral (Leiden and Boston 2004); P. Tudor-Craig, ‘Wells Cathedral West Front and the City of God’, in Prophecy, Apocalypse and the Day of Doom: Proceedings of the 2000 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. N. Morgan (Donnington 2004), 356–76.

8 For a full description of the sculpture, see Sampson, Wells Cathedral, 182–270.

9 For example, Malone, Façade as Spectacle, esp. 30–41. For Jocelyn’s career, see recently R. Dunning ed., Jocelin of Wells: Bishop, Builder, Courtier (Woodbridge 2010). It is significant that Wells held a number of scholars during Jocelyn’s episcopate, including William of Bardenay, who was magister at Paris and likely came to his post as archdeacon of Wells (before 1215–31) via the familia of Stephen Langton. Marian devotion was common among the Parisian masters for whom the Virgin Mary was the embodiment of wisdom and the patron of scholars and scholarship: W. J. Courtenay, ‘Magisterial Authority, Philosophical Identity, and the Growth of Marian Devotion: the seals of Parisian Masters, 1190–1308’, Speculum, 91 (2016), 63–114, at 73–77.

10 Sampson, Wells Cathedral, 136–42.

11 C. R. Cavadini, ‘The commercium of the kiss who saves: a study of Thomas the Cistercian’s Commentary on the Song of Songs’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Notre Dame, 2010).

12 Sampson, Wells Cathedral, 189.

13 Tudor-Craig, ‘Wells Cathedral West Front’, 369. Cf. Sampson, Wells Cathedral, 189.

14 For the possibility that the central figure of Christ in the gable is in fact from the 13th century, see Tudor-Craig, ‘Wells Cathedral West Front’, 364.

15 Hope and Lethaby, ‘The Imagery and Sculptures’, 10.

16 M. M. Reeve, Thirteenth-Century Wall Painting at Salisbury Cathedral: Art, Liturgy, Reform (Woodbridge 2008); M. Fassler, ‘Liturgy and Sacred History in the Twelfth-Century Tympana at Chartres’, Art Bulletin, 75 (1993), 499–520; and subsequently, Eadem, The Virgin of Chartres: Making History through Liturgy and the Arts (New Haven and London 2010).

17 N. Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts 1250–85 (London 1988), no. 118.

18 In the historiography of the façade, the focus has been on the Palm Sunday procession as described in the Sarum rite, but the liturgical dimensions must have extended to various festivals of the liturgical year. For a liturgical reading of the façade, see Malone, Façade as Spectacle, 131–56. For a contrary argument, see M. Spurrell, ‘The Procession of Palms and West-Front Galleries’, Downside Review, 119 (2001), 125–44. This argument is problematic because it does not allow for the inherent malleability of the Sarum rite to adapt to various buildings and their topographies.

19 J. Luxford, ‘The figure sculpture of the west front of Peterborough Cathedral and its setting’, in Peterborough and the Soke: Art, Architecture and Archaeology, ed. R. Baxter, J. Hall and C. Marx., BAA Trans. xli (London 2020), 213–42, at 221.

20 For a recent interpretation of this figure as St Matthew, see Sampson, Wells Cathedral, 246. Malone, Façade as Spectacle, 55 and 56 n.36 hesitantly identifies this figure as ‘[St] John?’. The quatrefoils are perhaps the least studied sculptures on the west façade. See, for instance, M. Roberts, ‘Noah’s Ark’, The Friends of Wells Cathedral Report (1973), 10–14. The style and iconography of the sculptures is closely related to contemporary biblical genealogies in Peter of Poitiers’ Compendium, such as Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade fund, 1954. 388, which has the Sacrifice of Isaac framed by a deeply set quatrefoil. Other parallels with the Peter of Poitiers manuscript tradition are suggested by Liverpool, Walker Art Museum, M12017, which has the closest parallels I am aware of with the idiosyncratic architecture of the west façade. The author is now preparing an extended discussion of the quatrefoils and their sources.

21 G. Zarnecki, Romanesque Lincoln: The Sculpture of the Cathedral (Lincoln 1988); D. Kahn ed., The Romanesque Frieze and its Spectator: the Lincoln Symposium Papers (London 1992).

22 J. Hamburger, St John the Divine: The Deified Evangelist in Medieval Art and Theology (Berkeley 2002).

23 O. Von Simpson, The Gothic Cathedral (New York 1956), 35–36.

24 Tudor-Craig, ‘Wells Cathedral West Front’, 367–68. For William Worcestre’s account, see William Worcestre, Itineraries, ed. J. H. Harvey (Oxford 1969), 228–29.

25 The foliage sculpture on the west façade has recently been discussed in I. S. Cataldo, ‘Living Stones: Sculpted Foliage in Gothic Architecture c. 1140–1300’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, 2021), 168–70.

26 Hope and Lethaby, ‘The Imagery and Sculptures’; Malone, Façade as Spectacle, 62; Binski, Becket’s Crown, 116–18.

27 Hope and Lethaby, ‘The Imagery and Sculptures’, 158, 171–72. Notably, the hagiography of St Edward King and Martyr is to be found on the capital sculpture of the Wells north porch. For the capital sculpture, see M. M. Reeve, ‘The Capital Sculpture of Wells Cathedral: Masons, Patrons, and the Margins of English Gothic Architecture’, JBAA, 163 (2010), 72–109.

28 Tudor-Craig, ‘Wells Cathedral West Front’, 358–63.

29 Binski, Becket’s Crown, 118. On Ine, see most recently T. Davenport, ‘Chronicle and Romance: The Story of Ine and Aethelburgh’, in Cultural Encounters in the Romance of Medieval England, ed. C. Saunders (Cambridge 2005), 27–40.

30 The most useful account remains J. Hennig, ‘Die Chöre der Heiligen’, Archiv fur Liturgiewissenschaft, 8 (1963), 436–56; and idem, ‘Studies in Early Western Devotion to the Choirs of the Saints’, Studia Patristica, 8 (1963), 239–47.

31 R. Deshman, ‘The Galba Psalter: pictures, text and context in and early medieval prayerbook’, Anglo-Saxon England, 26 (1997), 109–38; K. Openshaw, ‘The Symbolic Illustration of the Psalter: An Insular Tradition’, Arte Medievale, 2/6 (1992), 41–60.

32 Binski, Becket’s Crown, 117–18; R. Deshman, The Benedictional of Aethelwold (Princeton NJ, 1995), 121–24, 146–57, 181–83, col. pls 1–7.

33 Sampson, West Front Polychromy, 12, 13; Sampson, Wells Cathedral, 123–24.

34 L. S. Colchester, The West Front of Wells Cathedral, 5th edn (Wells 1976), 4. For the Glastonbury tabula, see J. Krochalis, ‘Magna tabula: the Glastonbury tablets’, in Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian tradition, ed. J. Carley (Cambridge, UK, and Rochester, NY 2001), 435–567.

35 C. Rudolph, ‘The Tour Guide in the Middle Ages: Guide Culture and the Mediation of Public Art’, Art Bulletin, 100 (2018), 37–67.

36 On the Gothic façade as ‘public art’, see C. Rudolph, ‘Inventing the Gothic Portal: Suger, Hugh of St Victor, and the Construction of a New Public Art at St Denis’, Art History, 33 (2010), 568–95.

37 C. W. Bynum, ‘Wonder’, in eadem, Metamorphosis and Identity (New York 2001), 37–75, and see the critique by P. Binski, ‘Reflections on the “Wonderful Height and Size” of Gothic Great Churches and the Medieval Sublime’, in Magnificence and the Sublime in Medieval Aesthetics: Art, Architecture, Literature, Music, ed. C. S Jaeger (New York 2010), 129–56, and M. Carruthers, ‘Becoming Like an Angel: The Concept of Sublimis in Monastic Contemplation and in Alchemy’, in Tributes to Paul Binski: Medieval Gothic, Art, Architecture and Ideas, ed. J. Luxford (New York 2021), 324–31.

38 The Coronation of the Virgin in fact constitutes two individual Dundry stone blocks joined in the middle of the bench. For a 1973 clay maquette reconstruction of the heads and hands of the figures, see Sampson, Wells Cathedral West Front, 5.

39 Hope and Lethaby, ‘The Imagery and Sculptures’, 11, and Sampson, Wells Cathedral, 252–53, do not offer a reconstruction of the Virgin’s hand position. Malone, Façade as Spectacle, 48, considers that the Virgin once held a book and a sceptre and compares her to Senlis, although no justification is given. The Eynsham seal is Westminster Abbey Muniment 2403, a charter from Abbot Adam dated 1213–14, illustrated in The Cartulary of Eynsham Abbey, ed. H. E. Salter, 2 vols (Oxford 1907), I, unpaginated. For the Shaftesbury seal, see Victoria County History of Dorset, ed. W. Page (London 1908), 2, and Laura Whatley’s commentary on its representation in Vetusta Monumenta (London 1747), I, pl. 1.60 at https://scalar.missouri.edu/vm/vol1plates58-60-lancaster-duchy-office-seals-b (accessed 4 March 2022). For the Lyngsjö font, see L. de Beer and N. Speakman, Thomas Becket: the murder and making of a saint (London 2021), 105–07 and C. S. Drake, The Romanesque Fonts of North Europe and Scandinavia (Woodbridge 2002), 145–47.

40 The attributes of the Virgin have been studied in T. A. Heslop, ‘The Virgin Mary’s Regalia and Twelfth-Century English Seals’, in The Vanishing Past: Studies of Medieval Art, Liturgy and Metrology presented to Christopher Hohler, ed. A. Borg and A. Martindale (Oxford 1981), 53–62.

41 N. Morgan, ‘Texts and Images of Marian Devotion in Thirteenth-Century England’, in England in the Thirteenth Century, ed. M. Ormrod (Stamford 1993), 69–103, at 91–93. Bernard of Clairvaux considered Mary the ‘conqueror of dragons’, and she was often shown crushing a snake underfoot, also a reference to her title as the ‘New Eve’: G. Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, 2 vols (New York 1971–72), I, 108.

42 Morgan, ‘Texts and Images’, 91.

43 Cockerell’s reconstruction indicates that he came to the same conclusion: Cockerell, The Iconography, unpaginated plate.

44 See C. H. Mayo, ‘Ancient Carving, Thornford’, Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries, 4 (1895), 240–41.

45 N. Morgan, ‘Some iconographic aspects of Opus Anglicanum’, in The Age of Opus Anglicanum, ed. M. Michael (Turnhout 2016), 91–115, at 106. For a contemporary comparison, see the De Brailes Hours (London, British Library, MS Add. 49999, fol. 61r) of c. 1240. Later examples such as painted nave pier at St Albans and the Ramsay Psalter, both c. 1300, show Christ raising his hand in benediction: M. Michael, St Albans Cathedral Wall Paintings (London 2019), 34–35.

46 Sampson, Wells Cathedral, 252–53. Hope and Lethaby, ‘The Imagery and Sculptures’, 11: ‘The right arm [of Christ] was outstretched toward the Blessed Virgin, but the part below the elbow, which was carved out of the same block as Our Lady’s figure, has broken away’. It would appear that the authors are in error — they surely mean above the elbow. I am grateful to Jerry Sampson for confirming that none of Christ’s body was in fact carved from the stone block of the Virgin Mary.

47 For Reading, see T. A. Heslop, ‘The English origins of the Coronation of the Virgin’, Burlington Magazine, 147 (2005), 790–97.

48 Tudor-Craig, ‘Wells Cathedral West Front’, 363. This view was advanced in the author’s previous publications, in eadem, One Half of our Noblest Art: a study of the sculptures of Wells West Front (Wells 1976), 11, and eadem, ‘Wells Sculpture’, Wells Cathedral: a celebration, ed. L. Colchester (Shepton Mallet 1982), 115.

49 Reeve, Thirteenth-Century Wall Painting, 70. Cf. Sampson, Wells Cathedral, 58–59, 84–85 for a refutation of this theory with which I am in agreement.

50 Sampson, West Front Polychromy, 13; idem, Wells Cathedral, 253; Hope and Lethaby, ‘The Imagery and Sculptures’, 8, 11.

51 Sampson, ‘Wells et Salisbury’, 148, following idem, Wells Cathedral, 253. For St Denis, see J. Moulin, ‘Notes sur le massif occidental de Saint-Denis’, Bulletin Monumental, 178/3 (2020), 323–84, at 338, fig. 20.

52 The possibility of stars in the background of the Coronation of the Virgin was first suggested by Hope and Lethaby, ‘The Imagery and Sculptures’, 39. See also Malone, Façade as Spectacle, 86.

53 For example, Hope and Lethaby, ‘The Imagery and Sculptures’, 14. R. Lightbown, Mediaeval European Jewellery (London 1992), 12, noted that the jewellery on the sculptures antedates the earliest known examples of table-cut gems.

54 R. Gilchrist and C. Green, Glastonbury Abbey, archaeological investigations 1904–79, (London 2015), 301–02. T. Borenius, ‘The Cycle of Images in the Palaces and Castles of Henry III’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 6 (1943), 40–50, at 45, fig. 13b. Although we have no evidence of where these stars were manufactured, it is notable that Wells had artists capable of working in metal: a well-known 1257 document requests that Simon of Wells go to Westminster Abbey to execute a gilt-bronze effigy for Princess Katherine: Sampson, Wells Cathedral, 46.

55 Morgan, ‘Texts and Images’, 88–89.

56 Sampson, Wells Cathedral, 253.

57 Sampson, West Front Polychromy, 13. Cockerell, The Iconography, 52: ‘traces of painting and gilding’ were still visible on the background of the Coronation in 1825.

58 See most recently D. Kinney, ‘Communication in a Visual Mode: Papal Apse mosaics’, Journal of Medieval History, 44 (2018), 311–32, at 331–32.

59 Hope and Lethaby, ‘The Imagery and Sculptures’, 11.

60 Sampson, West Front Polychromy, 14; Sampson, Wells Cathedral, 124, col. pl. 3; Tudor-Craig, ‘Wells Cathedral West Front’, 363.

61 C. Ryskamp, Art in The Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts (New York 1996), 14–15; Kinney, ‘Communication in a Visual Mode’. Allegorizing the moon as the Church triumphant which is subordinate to the Virgin herself, Richard of St Victor places it decisively below the Virgin’s feet: M. H. Infusino, ‘The Virgin Mary and the Song of Songs in Medieval English Literature’ (unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California Los Angeles, 1988), 153.

62 Also noted by Cockerell, Iconography, 29.

63 T. Ayers and M. Jurkowski, The Fabric Accounts of St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster (Woodbridge 2020), 1198–99.

64 Sampson, Wells Cathedral, 77; Reeve, ‘The Capital Sculpture’, 93–94.

65 C. Oakes, ‘What is the subject carved on the socle on the west doorway of Peterborough Abbey?’, in Peterborough and the Soke, 243–60; M. Thurlby, ‘The Romanesque Fabric of Llandaff Cathedral’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 170 (2021), 159–91, at 185, fig. 42.

66 For Reading and Quenington, see Heslop, ‘The English origins’, 790–97, and R. Baxter, The Royal Abbey of Reading (Woodbridge 2016), 276–80. For Worth Maltravers, see D. Givens, ‘English Romanesque Tympana: A Study of Architectural Sculpture in Church Portals’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Warwick, 2001), 181–84, and S. Alford, ‘Romanesque Architectural Sculpture in Dorset’, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 106 (1984), 1–22, at 5–7 and 19.

67 G. Zarnecki, Romanesque Lincoln: The Sculpture of the Cathedral (Lincoln 1988), 77.

68 Calendar of Liberate Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office, 6 vols (London 1916–64), I (1226–40), 261; Binski, Becket’s Crown, 163.

69 See especially P. Verdier, Le Couronnement de la Vierge. Les origines et les premiers developpements d'un thème iconographique (Montreal and Paris 1980); W. H. Forsyth, ‘A Gothic Doorway from Moutiers-Saint-Jean’, Metropolitan Museum Journal, 13 (1978), 33–74.

70 C. D. Brouillette, ‘The Early Gothic Sculpture of Senlis Cathedral’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1981).

71 J. Tripps, ‘From Singing Saints to Descending Angels: Medieval Ceremonies and Cathedral Façades as Representations of the Heavenly Jerusalem’, Arte Christiana, 93 (2005), 1–13, at 4–5.

72 J. Gardner, ‘Painters, Inquisitors, and Novices: Giotto, Taddeo Gaffi, and Filippo Lippi at Santa Croce’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 60 (2018), 223–54; J. M. Salvador-González, ‘The Iconography of the Coronation of the Virgin in Late Medieval Italian Painting. A Case Study’, Eikon/Imago, 1 (2013), 1–48; P. Rubin, ‘Hierarchies of Vision: Fra Angelico’s Coronation of the Virgin from San Domenico, Fiesole’, Oxford Art Journal, 27 (2004), 137–51, at 147.

73 See in general R. Fulton-Brown, Mary and the Art of Prayer: The Hours of the Virgin in Medieval Christian Life and Thought (New York 2017); eadem, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200 (New York 2002); M. Rubin, Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary (London 2009); M. Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge 2003); K. Ihnat, Mother of Mercy, Bane of the Jews: Devotion to the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Norman England (Princeton and Oxford 2016).

74 E. F. Wilson, The Stella Maris of John of Garland: Edited Together with a Study of Certain Collections of Mary Legends Made in Northern France in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Cambridge, MA, 1947).

75 M. M. Reeve, ‘Fragments from Wisdom’s House: The Lady chapel Juxta Claustrum at Wells Cathedral’, in Tributes to Paul Binski, 186–97.

76 C. M. Church, Chapters in the Early History of Wells AD 1136–1333 (Taunton 1894), 123, 173, 230–31; see also 193, 220, for the Marian service at Wells’ diocesan churches.

77 Binski, Becket’s Crown, 113, fig. 93.

78 Sigillum beatae mariae, ed. J. P. Migne, Patrologia Latina, 172 (Paris 1895), 495–518. For a translation, see A. Carr, The Seal of Blessed Mary (Toronto 1991).

79 C. J. Holdsworth, ‘Two Commentators on the “Song of Songs”: John of Forde and Alexander Nequam’, in A Gathering of Friends: The Learning and Spirituality of John of Forde, ed. H. Costello and C. J. Holdsworth (Kalamazoo, MI 1996), 153–87.

80 D. Turner, Eros and Allegory: Medieval Exegesis of the Song of Songs (Collegeville, MN 1995), 84. See, in general, E. F. Wilson, ‘Pastoral and Epithalamium in Latin Literature’, Speculum, 23 (1948), 35–57; eadem, ‘A Study of the Epithalamium in the Middle Ages: an Introduction to the Epithalamium beate Mariae virginis of John of Garland’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1930); V. J. Tufte, The Poetry of Marriage: the Epithalamium in Europe and its Development in England (Los Angeles 1970).

81 L. Gauthier and D. S. Wrangham, The Liturgical Poetry of Adam of St Victor (London 1881), 207.

82 R. Fulton, ‘Mimetic Devotion, Marian Exegesis, and the Historical Sense of the Song of Songs’, Viator, 27 (1996), 85–116.

83 M. Curschmann, ‘Imagined Exegesis: Text and Picture in the Exegetical Works of Rupert of Deutz, Honorius Augustodunensis, and Gerhoch of Reichersberg’, Traditio, 44 (1988), 145–69; D. Reilly, ‘Picturing the Monastic Drama: Romanesque Bible Illustrations of the Song of Songs’, Word and Image, 17 (2001), 389–400; E. Kitzinger, ‘A Virgin’s Face: Antiquarianism in Twelfth-Century Art’, Art Bulletin, 62 (1980), 6–19; Ihnat, Mother of Mercy, 88; A. Matter, The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity (Philadelphia 1990), 65–69.

84 A. W. Astell, The Song of Song in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY 1990), 46.

85 E. James, Landscapes of the Song of Songs: Poetry and Place (Oxford 2017); C. Myers, ‘Gender Imagery in the Song of Songs’, Hebrew Annual Review, 10 (1986), 209–23.

86 For example, Luke 10:38, ‘ipse intravit in quoddam castellum’, describes Jesus’s entry into the castellum of Bethany which was understood figuratively as Christ’s entry into the body of the Virgin at the Incarnation. This was logically developed in a range of contexts by scholars such as Aelred of Rievaulx who identified the Virgin or her womb as a fortified castle. See A. Wheatley, The Idea of the Castle in Medieval England (Woodbridge 2004), 28–29, 37, 42, 78–83, 100–04. On Marian symbolism in medieval art and architecture generally, see H. Kessler, ‘Faithful Attraction’, Codex Aquilarensis, 35 (2019), 59–84.

87 Carr, Seal of Blessed Mary, 17, 20.

88 See, for example, C. B. Kendall, The Allegory of the Church: Romanesque Portals and their Verse Inscriptions (Toronto 1998), 80–91.

89 E. A. Mackie, ‘Robert Grosseteste’s Chasteu d’amur: A Text in Context’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Toronto, 2002); eadem, ‘Robert Grosseteste’s Anglo-Norman treatise On the Loss and Restoration of Creation commonly known as Le Château d’amour: An English Prose Translation’, in Robert Grosseteste and the Beginnings of a British Theological Tradition, ed. M. O’Carroll (Rome 2003), 152–79.

90 C. Walker Bynum, Dissimilar Similitudes: Devotional Objects in Late Medieval Europe (New York 2020), 21, 27, citing Fulton Brown, Mary and the Art of Prayer, 76.

91 Malone, Façade as Spectacle, 45.

92 Binski, Becket’s Crown, 120. See subsequently idem, Gothic Sculpture (New Haven and London 2019), 33, 35. The translation is from K. Walsh and I. M. Edmonds, Bernard of Clairvaux on the Song of Songs, 4 vols (Kalamazoo, MI, 1979), III, 140–48.

93 On Song of Songs 2.14 in particular, see B. Trînca, ‘The Bride and the Wounds — “columba mea in foraminibus petrae”, (Ct. 2.14)’, Interfaces, 5 (2018), 16–30.

94 J. Bony, The English Decorated Style: Gothic Architecture Transformed 1250–1350 (Oxford 1979), 43.

95 Walsh, Bernard of Clairvaux, 140.

96 Ibid., 143.

97 T. M. Thibodeau, The Rationale divinorum officiorum of William Durand of Mende: a new translation of the prologue and book one (New York 2010), 1. For discussion, see Reeve, Thirteenth-Century Wall Painting, 106.

98 Walsh, Bernard of Clairvaux, 145.

99 Ibid., 151–52.

100 In this, it can be compared to the play of art and nature in the fabric of Lincoln Cathedral described contemporaneously by the poet Henry of Avranches: T. A. Heslop, ‘Art, Nature and St Hugh’s Choir at Lincoln’, in England and the Continent in the Middle Ages: Studies in Memory of Andrew Martindale, ed. J. Mitchell (Stamford 2000), 60–74.

101 For the full Latin text, see J. Gorman, Explanatio Sacri Epithalamii in Matrem Sponsi: A commentary on the Canticle of Canticles (Muenster 1960).

102 Gorman, Explanatio Sacri Epithalamii, 133–38.

103 ‘Adundat enim foraminibus, quibus omnes in se intrare volentes suscipit, continent et continendo implet. Porro ipsa non impletur, quia, si omne terrigene et filii hominum simul in unum dives et pauper vellent intrare, non deessent foramina, quibus reciperentur, immo etiam superabundarent […] Plena est petra huiusmodi foraminibus atque omnes ad se venientes recipiet in misericordia et miserationibus […] Angusta quidem videntur esse foramina petre, cum intraturn per ea; unde ipse petra ad se venientibus dicit: “Contendite intrate per angustam portam”. At, cum intratum fuerit in petram, eadem foramina magnam intus amplitudinem habent, et non tamtum secure, sed etiam suavitur quasi in thalamis habitatur in eis […] Credendo et amando intraturn in petram, et quanto magis in fide et diletione quis proficit, tanto altius intrat in petram, tantoque secures atque suavius habitat in ea. Nam et ipsa in Adam, cum ceteris mortua ibi procul dubio salute invenit, ubi et ceteri, hoc est in foraminabus petre. Verum, cum gignerat petram, datum est si credendo et amando altius ceteris intrare in petram.’

104 Sampson, Wells Cathedral, 56–57.

105 ‘Sane inter omnes columbas habitants in foraminibus petre eminet columba illa, que vere columba columbarum, mater scilicet eiusdem petre. Ipsa inquam, que genuit petram, specialii quadam fide et dilectione sublimius profundiusque habitavit in petra.’

106 ‘His nimirum ex vivis lapidibus celestis edificii fecit maceriam, id est angelicam circa eas ordinavit custodiam’: Gorman, Explanatio Sacri Epithalamii, 136. L, 28–29.

107 Gorman, Explanatio Sacri Epithalamii, 137–38: ‘Ipsa proinde suarum prerogativa virtutum atque ubertate meritorum specialiter implevit cavernas macerie et propensius se opposuit hostibus vinee, nec desinit se pro vinea opponere per singulos dies. Bene ergo, cum ei dictum esset, “Columba mea in foraminibus petre”, additum est “in caverna macerie”. Plane habitabat in foraminibus petre propter se, in caverna macerie propter alios vivens utique pia mater non tantum sibi sed etiam aliis, et providens bona, non tantum coram deo, sed etiam coram hominibus’.

108 C. Holdsworth, ‘The Reception of St Bernard in England’, in Bernhard von Clairvaux: Rezeption und Wirkung im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit, ed. K. Elm (Wiesbaden 1994), 161–77.

109 R. Birley, ‘The Cathedral Library’, in Colchester, Wells Cathedral, 204–11, and J. P. Carley, ‘John Leland at Somerset Libraries’, Somerset Archaeology and Natural History, 129 (1985), 141–54.

110 Tudor-Craig, ‘Wells Cathedral West Front’.

111 Malone, Façade as Spectacle, 67–69, citing the translation in G. G. Couton, Life in the Middle Ages, 2 vols (Cambridge 1967), I, 47–51 of Salter, The Cartulary of Eynsham Abbey, II, 366.

112 My translation follows Laura Whatley’s commentary at https://scalar.missouri.edu/vm/vol1plates58-60-lancaster-duchy-office-seals-b (accessed 4 March 2022).

113 Cavadini, ‘The commercium of the kiss who saves’, 182. Bernard of Clairvaux devotes a chapter to the Stella maris in his Homilies in Praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary, trans. M.-B. Said (Kalamazoo, MI, 1993), Homily 2:17. See also A. G. Remensnyder, ‘Mary, Star of the Multi-Confessional Mediterranean: Ships, Shrines and Sailors’, in Ein Meer und seine Heiligen: Hagiographie im mittelalterlichen Mediterraneum, ed. N. Jaspert and M. di Branco (Paderborn 2018), 299–326.

114 G. L. Gower, ‘The Iconography of Queenship: Sacred Music and Female Exemplarity in Late Medieval Britain’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of California Los Angeles, 2016), 95–97. For the Latin text and translation, see H. Deeming, Songs in British Sources c. 1150–1300 (London 2013), 81–83.

115 M. Späth, ‘Architectural Representation and Monastic Identity: The Medieval Seal Images of Christchurch, Canterbury’, in Image, Memory and Devotion: Liber Amicorum Paul Crossley, ed. Z. Opacic and A. Timmermann (Turnhout 2011), 257–66; idem, ‘Memorializing the Glorious Past. Thirteenth-century seals from English cathedral priories and their artistic contexts’, in Seals and their Context in the Middle Ages, ed. P. R. Schofield (Oxford and Philadelphia 2015), 161–71.

116 E. M. Maschke, ‘“Porta Saluatis Ave”: Manuscript Culture, Material Culture, and Music’, Musica Disciplina, 58 (2013), 167–229, esp. 169–72.

117 Kessler, ‘Faithful attraction’, 75–76.

118 L. C. Engh, Gendered Identities in Bernard of Clairvaux’s ‘Sermons on the Song of Songs’ (Turnhout 2014).

119 Turner, Eros and Allegory, 85–86.

120 Reeve, Thirteenth-Century Wall Painting.