Page:Midland naturalist (IA midlandnaturalis01lond).pdf/308

 ends of white, with a fringe on each, as on the stole of St. Thomas of Canterbury at Sens. It is worn on the wrist, instead of being held in the hand, as was the more ancient custom, this showing that this painting is not much earlier than the year 1100 A.D., as the change seems to have taken place in the latter half of the eleventh century. In early times the maniple was simply a napkin, and was used for wiping the priest's hands at the celebration of the mass. The mitre is pale red, not white as it generally is, and of the earliest form, exactly resembling these shown in Byzantine MSS, of the eighth to the tenth centuries; it seems to be worn over a sort of veil, which hangs dawn behind. At the feet of the bishop, on his right side, is a sort of cup or vase, probably intended for a chalice. On the left is a yellow roundel enclosing a blue cross, which may be a dedication cross; or again, this object may represent a paten.

The coloured decoration is carried over the chancel arch, which is in two plain square orders. The outer order is ornamented with a pattern of interlacing zig-zags, the inner one has ten yellow roundels rendered with red.

Considerable damage has been done to the side walls by two priest's doors, which have been broken through the wall, and by the insertion of a rude arch-headed recess, which was either an aumbry or an Easter sepulchre.

The only painting in the nave which appears to be contemporaneous with those in the chancel is the large one over the chancel arch, representing Christ in Majesty, and the Last Judgment. It is much damaged, and the upper part of it is still concealed by the modern ceiling. The figure of Christ, however, and of Archangels blowing trumpets, are still to be distinguished.

The other paintings are probably not earlier than the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. On the jamb at the small Norman window, in the north wall, there are figures of St. Michael and a female saint. Between it and the next window there is a curious sort of wheel, enclosing ten circles, the meaning of which is not easy to make out.

On one of the jambs of the southern perpendicular window there is the figure of an Archbishop, and the wall west of it has a number of course paintings, which are of a still later date. Paintings like these later ones are far from rare in English churches; but I believe we might search in vain for another instance of paintings like those in the chancel and ever the chancel arch, of a date so early as the beginning of the twelfth century, and with their unity of motive and completeness of design. The nearest to these in date are, I believe, the paintings on the chancel walls of Chaldon Church, in Surrey, representing the Scala humanæ salvutonis, but they are, at least, half a century later than the examples before us.

It will be worth our while to compare a very interesting passage in Durandus' "Ratio Divinorum Officiorum," I., iii., 7—12, which, omitting the twenty-four elders, might almost be a description of these paintings. The great work of Durandus was perhaps better known and more