Twelfth-Century Sculptural Finds at Canterbury Cathedral and the Cult of Thomas Becket

By Carolyn Marino Malone

This study reconstructs twelfth-century sculptural and architectural finds, found during the restoration of the Perpendicular Great Cloister of Christ Church, Canterbury, as architectural screens constructed around 1173. It proposes that the screens provided monastic privacy and controlled pilgrimage to the Altar of the Sword's Point in the Matrydom, the site of Archbishop Thomas Becket's murder in 1170. Excavations in the 1990s discovered evidence of a twelfth-century tunnel leading to the Matyrdom under the crossing of the western transept. Constuction would have required rebuilding the crossing stairs and the screens flanking the crossing. The roundels, portraying lions, devils, a 'pagan', Jews, and a personification of the synagogue, are reconstucted on the south side of the crossing as a screening wall framing the entrance to this tunnel. The quatrefoils with images of Old Testament prophets are reconstructed as a rood screen on the west side of the crossing. In the Matyrdom, a screen, is proposed with, perhaps, the earliest known sculptural representation of Thomas Becket. The rood screen, located behind the Altar of the Holy Cross, would have provided a visual focus during Mass, monastic processions, and sermons, especially during Christmas and Holy Week. The row of prophets, pointing upwards at the Rood, would have functioned as the visual equivalent of the dialogue of the ‘Ordo prophetarum’ that predicted the Messiah as proof to Jews and other unbelievers of Christian redemption. The roundels, just around the corner on the south screening wall, can be interpreted as representing the unbelieving Other and forces of evil warning pilgrims to seek penance at the altar of the newly canonized St Thomas. In addition to this new interpretation, a catalog raisonné and an account of the discovery of the finds offers material for future research that has been unavailable to previous studies. All the finds were photographed by the author as the restoration progressed and 16 pieces have since been lost, making some of the unpublished photographs essential evidence of the archaeological record

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Release date: Sep 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781789252316

Carolyn Marino Malone

Carolyn Malone is a Professor of Medieval Art and Archaeology and the Department Chair of Art History at University of Southern California.

Book preview

Part I

Screens and the Cult of St Thomas

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Fig. 1. Archbishop, segments A1—A3.

Introduction

Soon after King Henry II’s knights assassinated Archbishop Thomas Becket on 29 December 1170, miracles at his tomb began to attract pilgrims to the site of his murder in the Cathedral Priory of Christ Church, Canterbury. Yet, no attention has been paid to accommodations made in the church to maintain monastic privacy and manage pilgrims during the half century before his body was moved from the crypt to the Trinity Chapel east of the choir. This study proposes that twelfth-century sculpture and architectural fragments, found between 1968 and 1973 during the restoration of the west walk of the Perpendicular Great Cloister (1396–1407), can now provide evidence for the construction around 1173 of architectural screens built to control pilgrimage to the Altar of the Sword’s Point on the site of his murder.

At the end of the fourteenth century, the Perpendicular builders made changes in the crossing of the western transept and in the Martyrdom, the name given to the site of Becket’s murder in the north arm of the western transept.¹ At the same time, they rebuilt the Great Cloister using the twelfth-century reliefs, the carved side inwards, as facing for the exterior of the cloister’s west walk. Twelfth-century segments of statues and fragments of architectural sculpture were also used as filling within the vault of the west walk. Four intact quatrefoils, ten roundels, three segments of statues, and twenty-three architectural fragments are extant. Some of the statue segments depict an archbishop, which, if a portrayal of Thomas Becket, would constitute his earliest sculptural representation. His depiction on a screen would have been appropriate following his canonization on 21 February 1173. Between Easter of 1171 and 1173 frequent miracles were documented in the church indicating extensive pilgrimage; hence, this study proposes that screens in the Martyrdom and around the crossing of the western transept would have become necessary to exclude pilgrims from the crossing stairs, the monks’ daily route between the cloister and the choir.

In 1970 Brian Lemar, the head mason of the restoration of the Perpendicular Great Cloister and later Clerk of the Works, called my attention to the twelfth-century roundels and architectural fragments that were stored in his office and to quatrefoils that Dr. William Urry, former Keeper of MSS. of the Chapter Library, had preserved in the library. These finds had been recovered earlier during the restoration of the west walk of the Great Cloister. Until 1973, after which no new material was discovered, I photographed the finds as the restoration progressed and recorded Lemar’s account of the bay in which each piece had been found. At least fifteen of the finds have since been lost, making some of my unpublished photographs essential evidence of the archaeological record. With this book, I offer a new interpretation and reconstructions of the original use of these limestone sculptural and architectural finds, as well as the only record of the locations of their discovery and a catalog raisonné with extensive documentation of each piece.

The quatrefoil reliefs depict figures of kings and prophets, while the roundels are carved with heads of lions, demons, bearded Jews, a clean-shaven male, and a female figure. Theories about the twelfth-century use of these quatrefoils and roundels have suggested that they originally decorated either the Great Cloister or a choir screen on the east side of the crossing of the western transept. Most scholars have dated both the quatrefoils and roundels to the same period: either to the mid-twelfth-century Great Cloister or to a choir screen of c. 1180. Little attention has been paid to the stylistically similar segments of statues or to the many architectural fragments found at the same time, and reconstructions of these structures have not been attempted.² George Zarnecki considered that it ‘is difficult to guess how these reliefs were used on the [eastern] screen’ of the western transept, and recently, Jeffrey West, suggesting their use on a lavatorium in the Great Cloister, stated that ‘the original composition is a matter of guesswork’.³

Although the sculpture and architectural fragments have been discussed frequently since I first studied them in 1970, my explanation of their original use, arrangement, and historical significance has not been suggested. Exposure on the outside of Prior Wibert’s mid-twelfth-century cloister for two centuries seems impossible because none of the stones have weathered. As Deborah Kahn concluded, the ‘crisp lines and undisturbed detailing of the surfaces suggest a completely protected setting’.⁴ Previous hypotheses about the use of the sculpture on a choir screen c. 1180 on the east side of the crossing of the western transept once seemed possible; however, Frances Woodman’s convincing redating of the extant screen in this area to the mid-fifteenth-century has precluded this possibility.⁵

This book dates the sculptural finds to around 1173 and reconstructs them on a series of architectural screens on the other three sides of the crossing and in the north arm of the western transept surrounding the site of Thomas Becket’s murder; as a result, their historical significance becomes far more important. Their new location corresponds to archaeological evidence of a twelfth-century tunnel constructed beneath the crossing stairs that was excavated in 1993; the most likely function of this tunnel would be for pilgrim access to the Martyrdom from the south arm of the western transept. Within this new architectural and historical context, the sculpture testifies to a period previously ignored not only in constructional histories of the cathedral but also in studies of pilgrimage at Canterbury. In addition to this new interpretation in part I of the book, a catalogue raisonné and an account of the discovery of these finds in Part II offers material for future research that has been unavailable to previous studies.

Each chapter in Part I analyzes different types of evidence for establishing the original location of the finds and for understanding their role in the monastery of Christ Church. The first chapter considers previous studies and investigates which late twelfth-century structures were rebuilt by Prior Chillenden (1391–1411) in order to evaluate what structures were available for reuse in the west walk of the cloister by 1396. The second chapter establishes a date on a stylistic basis by comparing the reliefs, statue segments, and architectural fragments with similar but more securely dated sculpture and manuscripts. Although similar in some respects to the sculpture of Prior Wibert’s monastic buildings and to the new forms of William of Sen’s choir, stylistic differences indicate that the architectural fragments were carved after the death of Prior Wibert in 1167 and before the construction of the new choir in 1175. During the period between 1168 and 1175, Odo was the prior of Christ Church and, hence, was responsible for this intermediate building phase as he was later for hiring William of Sens to rebuild the choir after the fire in 1174. The third chapter analyzes changes in the Martyrdom following the martyrdom of Thomas Becket that are described by a monk, named Gervase, writing at Canterbury in 1187 or in 1199. It also clarifies Prior Odo’s role in the early cult of Becket. Architectural scholars have previously maintained that accommodations for a new shrine were postponed after the canonization of Becket in 1173 because Odo was hostile to the cult, but this chapter documents not only Odo’s role in the canonization but also extensive pilgrimage before the canonization. This documentation suggests that screens were needed in the Martyrdom and around the crossing of the western transept for monastic privacy by 1173.

Having established a date for the sculpture around 1173 and documented extensive pilgrimage at that time, it is possible in the fourth chapter to examine the material relationship of the sculptural and architectural finds and to reconstruct them on screens in the Martyrdom and around the crossing stairs in the western transept. It also pieces together later textual accounts of screens to suggest the position of an earlier screen in the Martyrdom and interprets the results of excavations in 1993 that revealed the twelfth-century tunnel under the crossing stairs of the western transept. This tunnel was replaced by the extant fifteenth-century tunnel under the stairs that, likewise, made it possible for pilgrims to pass from the south arm of the transept to the Martyrdom in the north arm. The twelfth-century construction of a tunnel would have required not only new crossing stairs but also flanking screens which could have been decorated with the reliefs and architectural fragments found during the restoration of the west walk of the Perpendicular Great Cloister.

By relating many disparate elements, the finds are reconstructed in photoshop on screens (Pls I-VI) built to ensure monastic privacy and to channel pilgrims efficiently to the Altar of the Sword’s Point in the Martyrdom on their way to Becket’s tomb in the crypt. This altar, containing a relic of the murder weapon, was erected on the site where Becket’s head was severed. The statue segments and one of the roundels are reconstructed on the west and east faces, respectively, of a north–south screen located in the Martyrdom between the altar and the cloister doorway. On the public east side of this screen, a palm-bearing figure in a roundel, visible to the pilgrims as they exited the tunnel, would have commemorated Becket as a martyr. On the opposite west side of this screen, statue segments, proposed as Thomas Becket, are paired with similar statue segments of a monk, possibly St Benedict; these statues, facing the door to the cloister, would have been visible to the monks each time they entered the church.

On the south side of the crossing of the western transept, the roundels with heads are reconstructed across the top of the wall framing the tunnel entrance that led to the Martyrdom. On the west side of the crossing the quatrefoil reliefs are reconstructed on a rood screen behind the Altar of the Holy Cross. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the routing of pilgrims to the Altar of the Sword’s Point in the Martyrdom on their way to Becket’s tomb in the crypt.

The fifth chapter interprets the meaning of the sculptural program of the quatrefoils reconstructed on the rood screen. The documented use of the Altar of the Holy Cross, for which the rood screen formed a reredos, helps to establish a liturgical context in which the images of prophets in the quatrefoils could have been viewed. Extensive comparisons with similar contemporaneous images and texts are necessary to suggest specific prophets and their messages because the finds are identified by neither inscriptions nor attributes. The quatrefoil images are compared with inscribed images of similar prophets, and the dialogue indicated by their gestures is related to the Sermo contra Judeos, Paganos et Arianos, the Ordo prophetarum, the Ordo representacionis Ade, and the Ysagoge in Theologiam, an English treatise possibly written by Prior Odo. Analysis of this treatise and of sermons that document Odo’s theological interests in Old Testament prophets provides an historical context for the iconographical program of the rood screen and clarifies why a rood screen with prophets could have been conceived at Canterbury as a sculptural equivalent of the Ordo prophetarum. This treatise, the Sermo and the Ordo ostensibly attempt to convince Jews that Christ was the Messiah but primarily confirm for the Christian community’s belief in the Incarnation. The imagery of prophets and kings, lined up across the rood screen, are interpreted as having once visually expounded the same message as they pointed upwards at the Rood and looked down at a viewer standing to the west of the Altar of the Holy Cross.

On the wall screening the tunnel entrance on the south side of the crossing, the roundels with images of Jews, a personification of the synagogue, and probably a pagan are reconstructed above the lions and demons carved in the roundels. In this location the roundel imagery would have addressed the penitent when he was about to enter the tunnel and pass under the crossing stairs on his way to the Altar of the Sword’s Point in the Martyrdom. It is proposed that this imagery, representing the Christian community’s Other, confronted those weak in faith in order to encourage them to leave the company of the Devil and seek penance at Becket’s altar, visible at the other end of the tunnel. Finally, the imagery of this screen is related to the dialogue of the prophets on the rood screen around the corner as part of a larger program of conversion, penance, and Church identity. A somewhat similar program has been identified in the later stained glass of the choir.

The conclusion of the book synthesizes the many layers of evidence and historical context, presented chapter by chapter, in order to underline the significance of the screens within the architectural and monastic history of Christ Church during the initial years of the cult of St Thomas. In so doing, this book, for the first time, presents a material context for pilgrimage at Canterbury around 1173 long before Becket’s body was moved in 1220 to a spectacular shrine in the Trinity Chapel. Later enclosures and routes to the shrine in the Trinity Chapel have often been analyzed in studies of pilgrimage, but earlier routes to the Altar of the Sword’s Point and to Becket’s tomb have been ignored for want of evidence.⁶ Part I of this book, thus, argues that the finds, discovered in the Perpendicular Great Cloister, came from screening walls built to assure monastic privacy by controlling pilgrim access to the Martyrdom. The sculptural programs of the screens on the west and south sides of the crossing are interpreted as offering messages of repentance and salvation to pilgrims as well as to the monastic and lay communities of Canterbury.

Part II catalogues the finds from the restoration of the Great Cloister from which the screens were reconstructed, and it provides an otherwise unavailable account of their discovery, thereby correcting references to inaccurate locations of the finds cited in previous studies about their original use.⁷ In the catalogue raisonné the finds are divided into eight categories (A-H) and are numbered within each category. In the text of Part I they are referenced as such, for example (A3); hence, the catalogue supplements the photographs placed in the text. The photographic documentation of the catalogue includes pieces that have never been published, some of which are now lost, as well as related fragments found earlier at Canterbury. Although not part of my reconstructions, the Purbeck marble architectural fragments found with the limestone pieces are included in the catalogue in order to provide an accurate record of what was found together during the reconstruction of the Perpendicular Great Cloister; this is important because some of these Purbeck pieces have also been lost.

Each catalogue entry gives dimensions in inches and millimeters and includes the bay in which each piece was found. Also provided in Part II are comparative charts of the dimensions of the limestone sculpture and architectural fragments, necessary to any reconstruction. The photoshop reconstructions were based on the current foot system of measurement, which was that used during the Middle Ages. In fact, six inches is a recurring dimension among the finds; thus, calculations in feet and inches offer the best chance of reassembling their original arrangement. In doing so, it was necessary to keep in mind Tim Tatton-Brown’s experience in reconstructing the Purbeck arcading of the Great Cloister, ‘as is usual with Romanesque architecture, much small-scale variation is found when exact measurements are taken’.⁸ The catalogue is essential to any future study because the sculpture and architectural fragments are now located on several sites in the Cathedral Precincts and in the mason’s yard at Broad Oak Farm about three miles to the northwest of Canterbury, a site owned by the Dean and Chapter. They cannot be seen by the public, and only with difficulty by scholars. It is my hope that interest in this book will motivate the construction of an exhibition area for this exceptional sculpture, like that of the Musée du Cloître de Notre-Dame-en-Vaux built in Châlons-sur-Marne for similar Mosan-influenced sculpture excavated around the same time as the restoration of the Perpendicular Great Cloister at Canterbury.

Notes

1 J. W. Legg and W. Hope, Inventories of Christchurch, Canterbury (Westminster: Archibald Cons Col, 1902), p. 125. The term Martyrdom came to be used for the entire north arm of the western transept as well as for the specific site of Becket’s murder on its east side. The north arm was adjacent to the monks’ cloister which is called the Great Cloister at Canterbury in order to differentiate it from the Infirmary Cloister.

2 J. West, ‘The Romanesque screen at Canterbury cathedral reconsidered’, in Medieval art, architecture and archaeology at Canterbury, ed. A. Bovey, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions, XXXV (Leeds: Maney Publishing, 2013), pp. 167–79. Jeffrey West has, however, used one of the architectural fragments as evidence of the original use and location of the quatrefoils and roundels.

3 G. Zarnecki, J. Allen and T. Holland eds, English Romanesque Art, 1066–1200, Exhibition catalogue, Hayward Gallery (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson in association with the Arts Council of Great Britain, 1984) [ERA], p. 197; West, ‘The Romanesque’, p. 173.

4 D. Kahn, Canterbury Cathedral and Its Romanesque Sculpture (London: Harvey Miller, 1991), p. 147.

5 F. Woodman, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral (London; Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 189–92.

6 T. Tatton-Brown, ‘Canterbury and the architecture of pilgrimage shrines in England’, in Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan, eds C. Morris and P. Roberts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 90–107; P. Draper, ‘Enclosures and entrances in medieval cathedrals: access and security’, in The Medieval English Cathedral: Papers in Honour of Pamela Tudor-Craig, ed. J. Backhouse. Harlaxton Medieval Studies 10: Proceedings of the 1998 Harlaxton Symposium (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2003), pp. 76–88.

7 Part II , introduction to catalogue.

8 T. Tatton-Brown, ‘The Two Mid-Twelfth-Century Cloister Arcades at Canterbury Cathedral Priory’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 159 (2006), 91–104 (p. 93); Woodman, The Architectural History, p. xviii also points out that using the foot system maintains the tradition of previous scholars of Canterbury architecture.

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Fig. 2. Quatrefoil, B6.

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Fig. 3. Quatrefoil, B7.

1

Previous studies and the location of the finds

This chapter analyzes previous scholarship on the finds discovered during the restoration of Prior Chillenden’s Great Cloister. It also discusses two related quatrefoils known previously. Earlier studies have suggested that the finds originally decorated either Prior Wibert’s cloister (1152/53–1167) or a screen built c. 1180 on the east side of the crossing of the western transept. Because Prior Chillenden (1391–1411) reused the finds in the west walk of the cloister c. 1396, it is important to evaluate what twelfth-century structures he had already rebuilt and could have reused. Investigation of Chillenden’s constructions questions previous suggestions for the original location of the finds and provides the first step in demonstrating that they once decorated screens in the western transept because he had to demolish previous screens in this area when rebuilding the east piers of the nave and the crossing stairs.

The king reliefs

Two quatrefoils (B6, B7), found before the restoration, have been included in all studies of the finds because they clearly once belonged to the same structure (Figs 2, 3).¹ These related works are catalogued as B6 and B7 in Part II. According to Jeffrey West, quatrefoil B6 was in the library since the late 1940s.² According to Brian Lemar, it was found during the cloister’s restoration between 1938 and 1939, and it is mentioned in a report of a meeting of the Cathedral Chapter on 24 September 1938 at which the ‘Chapter considered Sir Charles Peers’ Report of September 1st 1938’. Sir Charles Peers, who was the Canterbury Cathedral Seneschal in charge of restoration, recommended ‘the repair of the external stonework of one bay of the Cloister. On examination it seemed that the second bay from the South in the West alley would be suitable, as though much decayed it preserves more of the old detail than any other near it. The Chapter agreed to the repair of one bay as suggested, the work to be carried on until the weather breaks.’³ This cloister bay corresponds to bay 26 in which Lemar discovered nothing. It is, thus, likely that quatrefoil B6 was found during this earlier restoration of the west walk of the cloister and, hence, had been reused by Chillenden along with the other quatrefoils found in the adjacent bay 25 during the restorations of the late 1960s and early 70s.

It is more difficult to suggest the circumstances of the reuse of the other king relief (B7). The Reverend Bryan Faussett, a Kentish antiquarian, acquired and named this relief ‘King Canute’ in 1764, and he explained in a letter to Dr. Andrew Ducarel, the Librarian at Lambeth Palace, that the relief was discovered ‘with its face downward and covered with mortar, in the middle of a very thick wall in the building where your office is kept, in the Mint Yard; this building was the Hospitium […] a piece of Norman Architecture’.⁴ Ducarel’s office was in the northern part (destroyed in 1730) of the North Hall in the Mint Yard, the Norman aula nova, which was referred to as the aula hospitium during the eighteenth century.⁵ The aula nova does not appear on Chillenden’s list of repairs.⁶ Nonetheless, he did work nearby in the upper chamber of the Green Court Gate house and on ‘the court gate Le Pentys’ in 1393–94.⁷ Hence, B7 could have been reused in an un-mentioned more minor repair of the adjacent aula nova.

Earlier scholarship

In 1953 George Zarnecki suggested that this quatrefoil (B6) and the so-called ‘King Canute’ relief (B7) had been originally designed for the exterior of the Norman Almonry chapel because the ‘King Canute’ relief had been reused in the middle of a wall in the adjacent aula nova.⁸ It is unlikely to have come, however, from the Norman Almonry chapel rebuilt in 1319, as Zarnecki proposed, because Prior Eastry had repaired the aula nova long before between 1285 and 1290.⁹ Zarnekie dated both reliefs (B6, B7) to around 1190 and proposed that they were originally spandrel decoration between gables.¹⁰ In a letter of 1954 Jean Bony suggested to Zarnecki that they might instead have decorated a choir screen with gables, and he included a drawing correcting Zarnecki’s published sketch of the relationship of the quatrefoil mouldings to the hypothetical gables (Fig. 3).¹¹ Bony believed that the quatrefoils probably came from a screen built at the entrance to the choir on the east side of the crossing of the west transept c. 1180 when the construction of a low wall surrounding the choir is documented. Bony had never examined the quatrefoils, and like Zarnecki, did not realize that both of the quatrefoil blocks with kings still retained their original bottom angles which are slightly curved and not straight as required for a gable design (Figs 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 165).¹² The straight line suggesting a gable on the front bottom corner of the so-called ‘King Canute’ (B7) relief resulted from scraping away the mouldings framing the image when it was inserted into the wall of the eighteenth-century Fausset Pavillion. Moreover, the moulding of the frames of both quatrefoils once projected beyond the bottom angles of the blocks. A small portion of the projecting moulding of B6 remains, which would have once extended in front of the adjacent stone, as will be discussed later (Fig. 8).¹³

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Fig. 4. Quatrefoil, B6, J. Bony

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Fig. 5. Quatrefoils, B6 and B7, C. Malone.

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Fig. 6. Quatrefoil, B6, curved bottom angles.

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Fig. 7. Quatrefoil, B6, curvature of bottom angle.

In 1969, when I first showed Zarnecki my photographs of the roundels, newly discovered in the west walk of the Great Cloister, he thought they were much earlier in date than the quatrefoils. By 1976, however, he had adopted Bony’s hypothesis of a gabled screen and published that both the quatrefoils and the roundels originally decorated a screen on the east side of the crossing of the western transept. He explained that ‘the discovery [of new reliefs in the cloister] has forced me to revise my views […] and I am now convinced that all these sculptures were originally part of the cathedral screen, which separated the monks’ choir from the nave and encircled the choir, separating it from the ambulatory and the aisles […] erected in 1180 […] they were separated by triangular gables. This we know from the shape of the stone on which the reliefs were carved’.¹⁴ He never referenced Bony’s letter that suggested a choir screen as the source for the quatrefoils, although he frequently repeated the choir screen hypothesis.

In fact, the quatrefoil B7 is unlikely to have come from a screen between the eastern piers of the crossing given that Prior Eastry did not build a new screen in this location until 1304–05 and had already repaired the aula nova between 1285 and 1290. Nor could B6 have come from this location if it was reused in the west walk of the Great Cloister around 1396 because Eastry had rebuilt this eastern screen long before.¹⁵

In 1977, Neil Stratford, referring to an unpublished lecture that Zarnecki delivered at the University of East Anglia, repeated that the roundels and quatrefoils probably decorated spandrels between gables on an 1180 choir screen but added that they might also have come from the Great Cloister built by Prior Wibert (1152/53–1167).¹⁶ In 1981, Francis Woodman identified the cloister as the original location of the limestone as well as some Purbeck architectural fragments that were found with them. He considered the roundels to have decorated the spandrels of the cloister arcades, ‘perhaps inside and out’, but he believed it was ‘not possible to date the fragments to any particular part of Wibert’s priorate, for the sculpture is of the highest quality only rarely seen in his other works’.¹⁷ On the other hand, he considered that the quatrefoils and segments of statues possibly had once framed the centre door of William the Englishman’s pulpitum c. 1180.¹⁸ Most importantly, Woodman, in his book on the architecture of the cathedral, convincingly dated to the middle of the fifteenth century the extant choir screen on the east side of the crossing.¹⁹ This precluded that the reliefs could have come from the demolition of an earlier twelfth-century screen or pulpitum in this location because they had already been reused between 1396 and 1407 in Prior Chillenden’s west walk of the cloister long before the current screen was built.²⁰

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Fig. 8. Quatrefoil, B6, back and bottom of block, arrows mark extension offront frame.

Nonetheless, Zarnecki in 1984 continued to repeat the hypothesis of a choir screen with gables on the east side of the crossing, adding to his conclusions of 1976 that a female roundel different in style from the other roundels and the quatrefoils, ‘could well have been on the main face [of the choir screen] towards the nave, but the others are more likely to have been placed on those sections of the screen which separated the choir from the aisles’.²¹ As part of a larger study, Deborah Kahn developed the hypothesis of an eastern screen, replaced by Chillenden, in her 1982 Ph.D. dissertation, supervised by Zarnecki, and in her book of 1991 about Canterbury’s Romanesque sculpture.²² She believed that the quatrefoils formed part of a screen beneath a Rood on the east side of the crossing designed ‘around 1177 and 1178 at the latest’ by the French architect, William of Sens, although later in the book, she referred to them as part of the 1180 screen built at the same time as the low wall around the choir by William the Englishman.²³ She stated that the quatrefoils once filled ‘spandrels between arches, gables or doorways’.²⁴ She indicated that the roundels and architectural fragments also decorated this screen by labeling a roundel as ‘presumably from the choir screen of c. 1180’and by noting that the arcading with head-stops could have been used in a way similar to the string-course with grotesques on the Hildesheim screen.²⁵ In addition, she mentioned that the veiled female roundel, if representing the Synagogue, ‘would also fit with the iconography of the screen’, and in a note added that an ‘arrangement of tiers of alternating figures and quatrefoils might reflect the disposition of the sculpture of the main choir screen’.²⁶ She underlined that hypotheses about the placement of the reliefs below a cloister roof were meaningless because the moulded tops of the quatrefoil blocks indicate a parapet and because the quatrefoil figures point upwards as would not be appropriate if located directly below a roof.²⁷ Of all previous studies she offered the most significant stylistic comparisons with related sculpture, far too many to be summarized here, but which will frequently be referred to below.

Reviewers of Deborah Kahn’s book questioned her attribution of the sculpture to a screen on the east side of the crossing of the west transept and suggested new hypotheses about their use. In her 1991 review of Kahn’s book, Jill Franklin objected to a provenance on the east side of the crossing because Prior Eastry had built a new pulpitum there in 1304 which would have replaced any twelfth-century screen a century before Chillenden’s rebuilding. Franklin favoured the Great Cloister as the original location of the sculpture, mentioning in particular Christopher Wilson’s suggestion that the sculpture decorated the lavatorium, the communal washing structure, depicted within the Great Cloister in a plan of the monastery’s waterworks that was added to the end of the mid-twelfth-century Eadwine Psalter.²⁸ In his 1992 review of Kahn’s book, Ronald Baxter found her attribution of the sculpture to ‘William the Englishman’s choir screen of 1180’ convincing; however, he thought it surprising ‘that the fragments bear no resemblance at all to the architectural sculpture of the choir (and Kahn’s parallels between the two only serve to emphasize this) which must mean that an entirely different workshop was on site at the same time or that Kahn is wrong about their date’.²⁹ In his 1993 review of Kahn’s book, Francis Woodman again assigned the quatrefoils and archbishop segments to ‘William the Englishman’s pulpit c. 1180’ whereas he attributed the roundels, limestone and Purbeck architectural fragments, found with the limestone sculpture, to Wibert’s Great Cloister with the roundels as spandrel decoration in ‘a two-tier, double-column arcade with mid-height shaft rings, heavily carved marble arches, and decorative dripstones’.³⁰

Margaret Sparks in 1994, referring to the roundels, stated that the sculpture reused by Chillenden in the cloister could not have come from the eastern screen but ‘might have been from the rood screen, facing into the nave’ because it had been taken down and its stones could have been reused in the cloister.³¹ In 2006, Tim Tatton-Brown reconstructed previously known Purbeck shaft segments and Purbeck springers, similar to those found in the restoration, as double-columned arcading without shaft rings as part of Wibert’s Great Cloister in a design similar to the extant arcade of the Infirmary Cloister.³² Significantly, he did not include any of the limestone quatrefoils, roundels, or architectural fragments in his reconstruction. In 1210, however, Christopher Wilson attributed the limestone architectural fragments to Wibert’s ‘renewal of Canterbury’s main cloister’; in part, because the sculpture and fragments had been described incorrectly as having been reused in the north-west sector of the cloister, he proposed that a 135 degree angled fragment from a string course (F3) came from an octagonal lavatorium on the north side of the cloister garth and that the roundels were once spandrels in the cloister arcading similar to roundels in the cloister at St Denis c. 1151, a comparison that he pointed out had earlier been ‘recognized independently by Jeffrey West in a lecture at the Society of Antiquaries on 4 December 1997’.³³ In a 2009 lecture at the British Archaeological conference at Canterbury, West discussed the finds as a lavatorium in Wibert’s cloister, and Peter Fergusson elaborated this attribution in 2011 suggesting a two-tiered structure of basins with quatrefoils in the upper zone and roundels in the lower zone. The zones were tied together with the statue segments, and water flowed down between the zones in a typological program ‘with pre-law at the base (the roundels), subjects under the law above (the quatrefoils), and the era of the new law (the linking single figures)’.³⁴

In 2013 Jeffrey West, published that the roundels and quatrefoils decorated spandrels in an octagonal lavatorium, with ‘a side of about 12 ft. (3.6 m) and an overall diameter of almost 32 ft. (9.6 m)’, which he believed was built between 1155 and 1157 on the north side of the cloister garth.³⁵ The octagonal shape of the structure was based on the string-course fragment (F3) that has ‘two decorated faces set at 135o angle’.³⁶ He posited three arches four feet wide on each side of the lavatorium, corresponding to the width of the cloister bays reconstructed by Tatton-Brown. This allowed for two spandrels on each of the seven sides while an eighth side provided access to the cloister walk; he believed that the segments of statues were part of either the lavatorium or its linkage to the cloister walk.³⁷ As with earlier publications, West’s study did not attempt a measured reconstruction because he believed that it was not possible to fit the disparate pieces back together into a coherent arrangement. Although lavatoria were sometimes octagonal, as in the twelfth-century Cluniac priory at Much Wenlock and the Cistercian abbey of Mellifont Abbey in Ireland c. 1200–10, West’s proposed interior and exterior arrangement for the reliefs is far more elaborate than any known example of arcading in a lavatorium.³⁸ As will be discussed later, he related the lavatorium to a metaphor in one of Anselm’s Similitudes.³⁹ Finally, he compared the roundels to those in the cloister at St-Denis, concluding that the sculpture represented evidence of the links between the two houses under Archbishop Theobald.⁴⁰

Between June 2011 and January 2012 the Canterbury Archaeological Trust excavated pits around the border of the Great Cloister garth in order to install new lighting to illuminate the cloister walks. On the north side of the cloister adjacent to Chillenden’s lavatorium, which was built within the cloister arcading, a masonry foundation for a wall, protruding at an angle into the garth, was found; it was interpreted as ‘some form of polygonal structure’ related to the water system and was considered to be earlier than the current Perpendicular cloister although later than the foundations that are believed to be Norman.⁴¹ ‘One length of the foundation, to the south-east, appeared to have a definite face [1073], against which later masonry foundations […] abutted [1074]’; the later foundations were interpreted as buttressing added to the side of a lavatorium after an earthquake in 1382.⁴² Because the angled face of the foundation wall is about 2¼ feet (0.70 m) in length, it could have constituted the lower south-east side of an octagon, but two-thirds of an octagon in this location would have extended into the north walk of the cloister. As a result, the foundation wall could neither have been part of an exterior wall of a large lavatorium nor could it have formed the centre core of a freestanding octagonal lavatorium next to the cloister walk, certainly not one with sides of