Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury: A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum — John Shaqi
Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury: A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of SarumWhite, Gleeson
History
Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury: A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum
White, Gleeson
Salisbury Cathedral
Notwithstanding that the ceremony of the Boy Bishop was observed at
Salisbury for many centuries, there is no reasonable proof that this
effigy has any connection therewith. Even John Gregory, whose famous
treatise on the Boy Bishop is printed in "Gregorii Posthuma,"
1649-1669, admits there that it might well seem impossible to everyone
that either a bishop should be so small in person or a child so great
in clothes. Thomas Fuller also echoes the same objection when he
writes: "But the curiosity of critics is best entertained with the
tomb in the north of the nave of the church, where lieth a monument in
stone of a little boy, habited all in episcopal robes, a mitre upon
his head, a crozier in his hand, and the rest accordingly. At the
discovery thereof, formerly covered over with pews, many justly
admired that either a bishop could be so small in person or a child so
great in clothes; though since all is unriddled; for it was then
fashionable in that church (a thing rather deserving to be remembered
than fit to be done), in the depth of Popery, that the choristers
chose a boy of their society to be a bishop among them from St.
Nicholas' till Innocents' day." If the effigy represents a boy it is
hard to explain why it is not life-size. Stothard in his "Monumental
Effigies," in common with most later authorities, favours the idea
that it is a miniature representation of a real bishop. Canon Jones
suggests probably Walter Scammel, Henry de Braundeston, or William de
la Corner. Mackenzie Walcott inclined to the belief that it
represented Bishop Wykehampton, who died 1284. A small figure of
Bishop Ethelman, 1260, about the same date, is in Winchester
Cathedral; there is also one 14-1/2 inches long in Abbey Dore Church,
Herefordshire, one at Ayot, St. Lawrence, Herts, 2 feet 3 inches, and
other small effigies of knights and civilians elsewhere. According to
Digby Wyatt the custom of burying different portions of the body in
different places was common in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries;
from which he infers that probably these figures commemorated the
place of sepulture of the heart.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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