MEDIAEVAL PAINTING 



Suthred the last king of the East Angles, the foundress of the monastery of 

 Chich, who was martyred by the Danes in one of their inroads.* Far better 

 known, however, and the saint to whom the greatest devotion was paid in 

 East Anglia, was St. Edmund, who is frequently represented in the screen 

 paintings. He usually appears crowned and in royal robes, and carrying an 

 arrow, the instrument of his martyrdom, but in these paintings no incidents 

 of his legend seem to have been portrayed. 



Of other English saints figured, but not peculiar to Eastern England, 

 may be named St. Oswald, St. Dunstan, St. Edward the King and Martyr, 

 St. Edward the Confessor, St. Thomas of Canterbury, and St. John of 

 Beverley." As to the foreign saints it seems likely that the representation 

 of some of these may have been due to the intercourse between East Anglia 

 and the Low Countries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Amongst 

 those placed in this class may be named St. Gudule,' St. Hubert,* and 

 St. Genevieve of Brabant,^ St. Wandragesilaus,* and St. Willebrod ^ ; but with 

 others the reason for their selection is not so clear, such as, for instance, 

 St. Louis, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Joan of Valois, and St. Wilgefortis. 

 It is possible that the pictures of the patron saints of certain trades might 

 have been the gift of persons practising those trades; for example, St. Blaise,' 

 the patron of wool combers, might have been offered by a member of that 

 trade, an important one in Norfolk in the middle ages. Another reason also 

 may account in part for the great variety in the choice of saints figured on 

 the screens, and that is that many paintings may represent patrons of the 

 donors. Some instances can be cited for this view. On the screen at North 

 Burlingham, where in each panel the name of the donor is given with the 

 usual prayer, one in which occurs the figure of St. Cecilia has the inscription 

 yoannis Blake et Cecilie uxoris sua upon it, a fact sufficient to show 

 that the wife of John Blake had, with her husband, given the painting of her 

 patron saint.' Again, though not so clearly but yet with scarcely less 

 certainty, the same conclusion may be drawn, where, on the screen at 

 Aylsham, the figure of one of the donors of the work, Thomas Wymer, has 

 accompanying it in the very next panel the effigy of St. Thomas, quite out 

 of order with the rest of the company of the Apostles there displayed. It 

 would occupy far too much space in this paper to enumerate the many saints 

 who, reverenced throughout the Christian world, are pictured upon the 

 Norfolk screens, and it must suffice to refer to those works in which a list 

 of such may be found.*" But some exceptional personages represented upon 

 them may receive a passing word of notice. Though they may not be 

 considered saints, considerable devotion was paid to them, and pilgrimages 

 made to spots honoured by their remains. Master John Schorn, a canon 

 in the Augustinian Priory at Dunstable, and Rector of North Marston in 

 Buckinghamshire in 1290, was the chief of these, and his effigy is to be 

 seen on several screens. The waters of a well at Marston were through his 



1 Figured on screens at North Elmham and Barton Turf. 



* The last-named is portrayed on the screen at Hempstead. 



s Screen at Walpole St. Peter's. * Screen at Litcham. 



' Horsford St. Faith's ; the identification is somewhat doubtful however. 



6 Screen at Horsford St. Faith's. ' Oxborough. 



8 Screen formerly in St. James's Church, Norwich, and another at Hempstead. 



9 J^orf. Arch. (1852), iii. 19. 



10 F. C. Husenbeth's Emblems of Saints (Norf. and Norw. Arch. Soc). 

 2 545 69 



