By the 'Right Bev. the Bishop of Salisbury. 229 



| and Child between two Churches with spires, suggesting, in my 

 | opinion, how he intended to complete Salisbury and Durham. 



(15) William de la Corner's, which is the first to represent the 

 [ " coronation of the Virgin/'' is one of the more important for the 

 I history of art. Unfortunately the upper part of the figures is broken 

 I in my example, but I believe that it represents the Blessed Virgin 

 I Mary seated at our Lord's right hand, while He is in the act of 

 placing a crown upon her head. The feet of both figures rest upon 

 the roof of a Church, below which is the Bishop praying under a 

 canopy. The feet of the Blessed Virgin are in pointed shoes, as 

 j usual ; those of our Lord are sandalled. The date of this seal is 

 12S9. It is therefore not so early an example as we might have 

 expected in a Cathedral dedicated to the honour of the Blessed 

 Virgin, of what was clearly a popular form of devotion — however 

 j theologically indefensible — in the thirteenth as well as in the 

 \ fourteenth century. It seems first to occur in England, on the seal 

 of Walter de Cantilupe, Bishop of Worcester in 1237, a cast of 

 ' which lies before me, with the legend, 



Quern tenet hie tronus mihi sit cum matre patronus. 

 To what influence we are to assign the spread of this form of 

 I devotion in this country I do not exactly know, but I think 

 we cannot go far wrong in ascribing it mainly to the Franciscans, 

 [ who entered England about 1220, that is a few years before 

 . Cantilupe's seal. The oldest known representation of the kind 

 is about a century earlier, and is found in the mosaics on the 

 tribune of S. Maria in Trastevere at Rome, generally attributed 

 to the years 1130 — 1143. It does not represent the moment of 

 | coronation which Fra Angel ico's pictures have made so familiar to 

 ' us. Our Saviour, with a cruciform nimbus, holds an open book, 

 ' with the text, Veni electa mea et ponam in te thronum meum (no 

 i doubt for ponam te in). His right arm is round his mother's neck, 

 I and the hand rests lovingly on her right shoulder. She is crowned, 

 ! and holds in her left hand (with the thumb and first and second 

 il fingers raised), a scroll with the text from the Canticles (viii. 3), 

 \ somewhat barbarously transcribed — leva eius sub capite meo et dextra 

 illius amplesabit (for amplexabitur) me. The Worcester seal would 



9 2 



