Major interdisciplnary study of medieval church porches, bringing out their importance and significance.

This book presents a fresh perspective on eleventh- and twelfth-century Irish architecture, and a critical assessment of the value of describing it, and indeed contemporary European architecture in general, as “Romanesque”. Medieval Irish Architecture and the Concept of Romanesque is a new and original study of medieval architectural culture in Ireland. The book’s central premise is that the concept of a “Romanesque” style in eleventh- and twelfth-century architecture across Western Europe, including Ireland, is problematic, and that the analysis of building traditions of that period is not well served by the assumption that there was a common style. Detailed discussion of important buildings in Ireland, a place marginalised within the “Romanesque” model, reveals the Irish evidence to be intrinsically interesting to students of medieval European architecture, for it is evidence which illuminates how architectural traditions of the Middle Ages were shaped by balancing native and imported needs and aesthetics, often without reference to Romanitas. This book is for specialists and students in the fields of Romanesque, medieval archaeology, medieval architectural history, and medieval Irish studies.

This book analyses the positions of external church doorways in England to investigate the significance that positioning had for the function and design of these buildings. The author proposes a link between the design and function of parochial churches and chapels with the number and attributes of their doorways.

The early 16th-century baptismal font canopy of the church of St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich, is one of only three such structures to survive anywhere in the British Isles. This study, inspired by the recent rediscovery of four attributable panels at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, offers a trans-temporal account of the canopy’s initial creation and subsequent use, mutilation, and modification. Written by a team of scholars in art/architectural history, art conservation, heritage documentation, literary studies, and museum curation, it explores the installation’s multiple artistic, ritual, and cultural contexts, from late medieval and early modern Europe to modern-day North America. Contributors are Benjamin Baaske, Sarah Blick, Kate Duffy, Brent R. Fortenberry, Amy Gillette, Jack Hinton, Lesley Milner, Peggy Olley, Ellen K. Rentz, Behrooz Salimnejad, Zachary Stewart, Achim Timmermann, Charles Tracy, Kim Woods, and Lucy Wrapson.

Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in Cambridge explores the archaeology, art, and architecture of Cambridge in the Middle Ages, a city marked not only by its exceptional medieval university buildings but also by remarkable parish churches, monastic architecture, and surviving glass, books, and timber work. The chapters in this volume cover a broad array of medieval, and later, buildings and objects in the city and its immediate surrounds, both from archaeological and thematic approaches. In addition, a number of chapters reflect on the legacy and influence medieval art and architecture had on the later city. Along with medieval colleges, chapels, and churches, buildings in villages outside the city are discussed and analysed. The volume also provides detailed studies of some of the most important master masons, glassmakers, and carpenters in the medieval city, as well as of patrons, building types, and institutional development. Both objects and makers, patrons, and users are represented by its contents. The volume sets the archaeological and art historical analysis in its socio-economic context; medieval Cambridge was a city located on major trade routes and with complex social and institutional differences. In an academic field increasingly shaped by interdisciplinary interest in material culture, Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in Cambridge marks a major new contribution to the field, focussing on the complexity, variety, and specificity of the buildings and objects that define our understanding of Cambridge as a medieval city.

A fascinating guide to decoding the secret language of the churches of England through the medieval carved markings and personal etchings found on our church walls from archaeologist Matthew Champion. 'Rare, lovely glimmers of everyday life in the Middle Ages.' -- The Sunday Times 'A fascinating and enjoyable read' -- ***** Reader review 'Superb' -- ***** Reader review 'Riveting' -- ***** Reader review 'Compelling, moving and fascinating' -- ***** Reader review ***************************************************************************************************** Our churches are full of hidden messages from years gone by and for centuries these carved writings and artworks have lain largely unnoticed. Having launched a nationwide survey to gather the best examples, archaeologist Matthew Champion shines a spotlight on a forgotten world of ships, prayers for good fortune, satirical cartoons, charms, curses, windmills, word puzzles, architectural plans and heraldic designs. Here are strange medieval beasts, knights battling unseen dragons, ships sailing across lime-washed oceans and demons who stalk the walls. Latin prayers for the dead jostle with medieval curses, builders' accounts and slanderous comments concerning a long-dead archdeacon. Strange and complex geometric designs, created to ward off the 'evil eye' and thwart the works of the devil, share church pillars with the heraldic shields of England's medieval nobility. Giving a voice to the secret graffiti artists of Medieval times, this engaging, enthralling and - at times - eye-opening book, with a glossary of key terms and a county-by-county directory of key churches, will put this often overlooked period in a whole new light.

'The Miracles of the Virgin Mary', written c. 1135 by the Benedictine monk and historian William of Malmesbury (d. 1143), is important on several counts. It belongs to the first wave of collected miracles of the Virgin, produced by English Benedictine monks in the 1120s and '30s. These collections were to be influential across Europe because the stories in them were not connected with a particular shrine, but international. Although only two copies of William's collection survive in anything like its complete and original plan, in a dismembered form it too was influential across Europe and through the rest of the medieval period.

In this book, Mark Bailey provides a comprehensive survey of the economy and society of late medieval Suffolk.

Norman Scarfe explores place names, the Sutton Hoo ship burial, the coming of Christianity, and the abbey at Bury St Edmunds, concluding with an evocative study of five Suffolk places - Southwold, Dunwich, Yoxford, and Wingfield and Fressingfield. The modern landscape of Suffolk is still essentially a medieval one, though much of it is even earlier: the five hundred medieval churches and ten thousand 'listed' houses 'of historic or architectural interest', and the 'Hundred'lanes going back at least to the tenth century, are often found to be set in a landscape created before the Roman conquest. Suffolk in the Middle Ages opens with a discussion of the earliest written records, the place-names, as a guide to settlement-patterns, including the setting of Sutton Hoo. Among the grave-goods found in that celebrated ship and discussed here was the whetstone-sceptre; asked to carry it from its showcase in the British Museum to the laboratory, the author acknowledges a closer feeling of involvement even than helping to re-open the ship in its mound in 1966. His explanation of the presence of the whetstone-sceptre, printed here, has never been challenged. The identification of a carved Anglo-Saxon cross at Iken in 1977 prompted the essay here on St Botolph and the coming of East Anglian Christianity. This leads to a consideration of the Danish invasion of East Anglia, and a reexamination of the posthumous victory of King Edmund and Christianity as portrayed in an imaginary Breckland warren on the front of this book. Scarfe's carefully reasoned argument that the Metropolitan Museum's famous walrusivory cross was made for the monks' choir at Bury has never been refuted. Life in Bury abbey is vividly reconstructed: it was the most richly documented flowering of the work of East Anglia's apostles, Felix and Fursa, which alsoled to the phenomenal establishment in Suffolk by 1086 of four hundred of the five hundred medieval churches. In four East Suffolk essays, Southwold, Dunwich, Yoxford and Wingfield are exposed to Norman Scarfe's interpretativeskills. He reveals a past few could have guessed at, often quite as curious as the 'Two Strange Tales' unravelled in his concluding pages.

In the ancient times, it was no secret that Jesus Christ was a Black man from the tribe of Judah. The early Jews knew it because they were also Blacks. The Romans knew it, and the Greeks knew it. In fact, all the people of his time, and long afterwards, knew that the Messiah Christ Jesus was a Black man. This book is an inconvenient truth that you may not be ready to read. Through this book, you get answers to the following: ● What is the mind of God on Idolatry which consists not only in the worship of false gods, but also in the worship of the true God by images? ● Is Jesus really a Black man from the tribe of Judah? ● If Jesus is black then does the bible support it? ● Are Black people the original Hebrew Israelites? ● Is there any forensic and scientific proof that the messiah was black? ● Who is the man in the picture that is displayed in most churches around the world? ● Why is the colour of Jesus very important in revelation of the Anti-Christ? The answers to these all important and many more questions can be found in this book. This book is recommendable to every truth seeker who is uncomfortable with the lies, deception and conspiracy theories orchestrated by the wicked one and his agents to rob Jesus of his deity and true identity. It is not designed to be user friendly and it is an affront to racism living in the walls of churches and in the West. If Jesus is truly a black man according to the scriptures and evidences then it means that the real children of Abraham are also black. This book is a historical story of the most prominent figure ever known to mankind (JESUS) the founder of Christianity, the head of the church of God, the creator of the heaven and the earth. The book provides a detailed description, exposition, analysis (Forensic & Scientific) with huge biblical proofs and references of the true colour of YESHUA (whom the world calls Jesus) as 'BLACK' contrary to the blue eyed, blond haired, images of a WHITE messiah that appears in churches all across the World. Although this book has nothing to do with race or black pride, this is only about getting the truth out to our people so they can wake up from the lies. It also offers a thorough insight of who the people of colour are (Hebrew Israelite) true Jews of the Bible, exposing the attacks on the deity of Jesus Christ, unmasking the barbaric Western culture in their worship of a creature than the Creator. Finally, it answers at length all of the objections that have been leveled against these proofs. 'Jesus Is Black' also provides as ambitious and complete a defense of the GOSPEL OF TRUTH that exposes the falsehood of the man in the church and in the world with the aim of bringing salvation and freedom of the man from bondage through knowledge of the TRUTH in Christ Jesus… SALVATION IS ASSURED! The scriptures warned that false messiahs and false prophets will rise up and perform great signs and wonders so as to deceive, if possible, even God’s chosen ones (Matthew 24:24). I have often wondered how the anti-Christ will look like when he eventually comes to deceive and lure men to hell until I saw a recent video of a white man masquerading as Jesus in Kenya here in Africa, deceiving and exploiting innocent victims, promising them heaven in return for their hard earned money…. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children (Hosea 4:6). This book has 8 Chapters in total. You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free (John 8:32).