Reading the past? Passionflowers

Posted on January 12, 2024 by JuliaH

One of the things I really enjoyed about last year was finding out more about the flowers on the #unstitched coif and, in the process, learning a bit more about the woman who intended to sew it. I also enjoyed the topic I covered during lockdown on the history of plants – et voila – another new ‘spot’ for the blog – reading the past – I’m no good with the emoticons and emoji’s of modern technology. This is much more my thing.

The image of a carved passionflower, or passiflora, is taken from a Victorian headstone in a local churchyard and just happens to be the firth thing I found when I started scrolling through my photos.

Welcome to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It’s the age of exploration and some Jesuits are wandering around modern Paraguay and Peru. The conquistador, Pedro Cieza de Leon mentions the plant in writing for the first time in 1553 in the context of its fruit. The Christian symbolism associated with the five wounds of Christ that could be identified within the flower was described soon after: 10 petals for the number of disciples who were still loyal at the time of the crucifixion; filaments representing the crown of throne; five anthers for the wounds of Christ; the stamen looking a bit like the hammer that drove the nails; even the tendrils were described as being like the whips with which Christ was beaten. And bingo! A valuable teaching aid and a flowery justification for invading and Christianising the Americas. The plant was there, so obviously God wanted a bunch of conquistadors terrorising the locals in his or her name.

The story spread and in 1609, Giacomo Bosia, one of the knights of Malta, included the passionflower in a book about legends and miracles associated with the cross. Three years later passionflowers were being cultivated in Paris and England. It was originally called the Virginian Climber in Britain as no one wanted to mention the Catholic connection. However, after Charles I had his head removed in 1649, the late monarch was sometimes described by his supporters as ‘the passionflower’ because they believed he had been martyred. The Tradescants who were royal gardeners and plant collectors made it very popular -for a price- after the Restoration.

By the Victorian period it was a popular adornment for gravestones representing as it did Christ’s crucifixion, redemption and mankind’s salvation. The jesuit element of the equation and even Charles I had been discarded, or never even had the chance to get going. To be honest I don’t recall seeing it on Stuart or later embroideries, no point looking at the Elizabethans – and of course the expansion of trade changed English attitudes to embroidery and ornament as indeed did the Commonwealth. England had a rich embroidered tradition prior to the English Civil War. By 1661 the royalists who’d spent their exiles in the Low Countries and France thought that European art was much more sophisticated than anything home grown. And, by the eighteenth century beautiful fabrics were arriving from China and the Indias – no more sitting around embroidering your bed curtains and night hats!

I think I’ve seen a passionflower on an alta-frontal but that was Victorian as well. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a seventeenth century version in embroidered form. Stumpwork and crewel work were popular during that century. Please let me know if you spot any old needlework productions of the passionflower on your travels! A photograph (assuming its permitted would be even nicer).

Bleichmar, Daniela, Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature from Columbus to Darwin (Yale: Yale University Press, 2017) pp.82-89

Prince Arthur’s tomb

Posted on August 31, 2016 by JuliaH

Prince Arthur, born 1486 in Winchester- the heir uniting the white rose with the red, died on April 2, 1502 after a few short months of marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

Three weeks later he was buried in Worcester Cathedral parallel with the altar with much pomp and pageantry. We know about Arthur’s funeral because a royal herald, one William Colbarne or Colbourne (the York Herald) wrote a first hand account. Being Henry VII’s son there is also a detailed account of the cost of the funeral.

A chantry where prayers could be said for Arthur’s soul was built two years after the prince’s death. It’s a two-storey affair that rather overshadows the fourteenth century tombs beneath it. His tomb chest is made from Purbeck marble and decorated with the arms of England, although he is buried beneath the cathedral’s floor several feet away from the tomb that visitors can see. Archeologists discovered the actual grave in 2002 with the use of ground penetrating radar that gave rise to speculation as to whether it might be possible to find out what Arthur died from. At the time it was announced that he’d died from sweating sickness. Historians tend to think it is more likely that he had tuberculosis, the disease that ultimately, probably, carried off his father (Henry VII) and his nephew (Edward VI).

The inscription round the tomb’s edge reads that Prince Arthur was the first begotten son of the ‘right reknowned’ King Henry VII and that he popped his clogs in Ludlow in the seventeenth year of his father’s reign. Having lost his heir, Henry appears to have been keen to remind everyone how successful his reign had been, that he had more sons and that he was perfectly entitled to the throne, thank you very much, and hadn’t he done well arranging a marriage with a European royal house such as Ferdinand and Isabella’s. The symbolism on the chantry is typical of Tudor iconography. There’s the white rose of York and red rose of Lancaster for instance as well as the Tudor rose; the Beaufort portcullis; a pomegranate for Catherine of Aragon whose home was Grenada and a sheath of arrows which belong to her mother Isabella of Castille; a Welsh dragon and the white greyhound of Richmond – a reminder that Edmund Tudor, Henry VI’s half brother was the earl of Richmond. The prince of Wales feathers are also on display.

Medieval mermaids

Posted on August 17, 2014 by JuliaH

Medieval mermaids are a long way from Ariel in the Hans Christian Anderson’s tale of the Little Mermaid. There’s quite a sting in the tail (oh dear – sorry).

Mermaids feature in medieval church decoration, often on capitals and misericords. Sometimes they have one tail but often they are depicted with two . They always seem to be wild haired despite the fact they are often depicted with comb and mirror which, if you were a medieval cleric, represented pride and luxury. I particularly like this misericord depicting a mermaid in Cartmel Priory Church. Her carver has left her with her hair half done. If you look to the right of the carving, you can see that one side is carefully plaited.

As for the mermaid herself she represented one of the seven deadly sins – lust. The mermaid and the siren (and perhaps its no surprise that the french for mermaid is sirene) both tempt men to risk not only their lives but also their souls.

Mermaids even made their way into the royal family during the reign of King Edward IV when he married Elizabeth Woodville. Her family claimed descent from Melusine, a two-tailed mermaid, who married Raymond of Poitou. Consequently, and somewhat bizarrely given a northern european tradition of mermaids being representative of sinful women, the french heraldic tradition includes double tailed mermaids and mermen being used on the field of the shield to symbolise eloquence.

As the centuries progressed the image of the mermaid continued to be used as an insult and euphemism for a prostitute. The people of Edinburgh depicted Mary Queen of Scots as a mermaid when she married Bothwell in May 1567, a few short weeks after Lord Darnley was murdered.

Gary Varner’s book entitled Strangely Wrought Creatures of Life and Death explores the folklore and traditions of mermaid. He speculates on their origins in prehistory as well as some of the symbolism attached to them.