The Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries

My second Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery, Plague of a Green Man, is set in Exeter, Devon, in the year 1380.  Exeter’s fourteenth century cathedral was largely completed before that year and plays an important role in my story because its Cathedral Church of St. Peter is dear to my heart.  In the four different years that I lived in Exeter with my husband, I served as a steward and tour guide at the cathedral.  In the picture on the left, I am shown with four other stewards and two vergers.  My experiences in Exeter served to inspire the Lady Apollonia mystery novels, so when one of these was set in Exeter, the appearance of the cathedral was inevitable.

In an earlier posting, I discussed the carvings of green men throughout Exeter Cathedral and the use of the term, “green men”, in my book title.  The story refers to the cathedral in many other ways.  Several of my fictional characters work in the cathedral precincts.  Eric Aunk is the cathedral pitmaker while Baldwin Chumleigh is a fictional canon of the secular cathedral.  However, the 1380 real-life Bishop of Exeter, Thomas Brantyngham, and Dean of Exeter, Thomas Walkyngton, are also referred to in my story.

The plot of the mystery includes a trial that takes place in the chapter house of the cathedral.  Two villains in the story seek sanctuary in the great church.  Some of the crime in the story occurs within the Cathedral Close when two men leave the church after attending a worship service there.  Even the ancient underground passages of Exeter which extend to the cathedral precincts play a role in the story.

Some highlights of visiting the cathedral are described in the book when Lady Apollonia is given a tour.  The Lady is made aware of the then partially completed image screen on the West Front before she enters the cathedral through the north porch.  Many points of interest in the interior were the same in 1380 as they are today:  the tierceron vaulting, the Becket boss, the Minstrel’s Gallery, the green man boss in the south quire aisle, and the figures in the corbels at the four corners of the crossing.

The Tumbler’s Corbel is discussed in the book when Apollonia’s youngest son, David, comes home from the cathedral school one afternoon and tells his mother all about the carving of a tumbler doing his acrobatic tricks over a fiddler.  This corbel is opposite another across the nave of the church which portrays Mary, the mother of Jesus, holding her baby.  The tumbler and fiddler are performing in their most skilful way as a gift for the Virgin and Child.

For more information on Exeter Cathedral, click on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exeter_Cathedral

Green men or foliate faces are carved in many medieval churches in England as well as on the continent of Europe.  In our travels abroad, my husband and I have found examples of such faces in France, Spain and Germany.  They are particularly prevalent in the English County of Devon where I have set the second of the Lady Apollonia West Country mysteries, Plague of a Green Man.  Someone uses the depiction of a green man as a symbol of threat and intimidation.

Exeter Cathedral, which also plays a role in my story, has many examples of medieval foliate faces, most carved in stone but also some in wood.  A number of the stone carvings are roof bosses where the ribs of the vault come together while others appear at the tops of columns or in corbels which support the ribs of the vault overhead.  The picture shown above is the one I feature on the cover of my 2^nd book.  Several of the medieval misericords, or fold up seats in Exeter Cathedral’s quire, depict green men that are carved in solid oak.

The term, Green Man, was not coined until the 20^th century to describe these ancient foliate faces, but the idea of mixing images of foliage and human faces goes back to at least Roman times.  We don’t know how medieval people interpreted these figures or why they were so popular with medieval carvers.  Neither do we know how the clergy of the period reacted to them.

There are great varieties in the style and mood of these faces.  Some seem to represent anticipation of new life while others appear more threatening.  Some carvings are very realistic while others seem more abstract.  Sometimes foliage grows out of the mouth of the foliate face but occasionally from the nostrils or ears.  The images nearly always focus upon the face.  Only rarely is more of the body included.

The medieval church plays a major role in each of the Lady Apollonia stories because of its wealth and omnipresence in 14^th century life in England. Readers will learn that the parish church in the village of Aust was a Prebend or ecclesiastical living held by John Wycliffe early in his career. Thought to have been built on pagan ground, the church was not dedicated to a saint and had no name in the 14^th century. It survives today as the Chapelry of Saint John. Aust parish church appears in the first book of the series, Effigy of the Cloven Hoof, and will be important in the seventh book.

The Cathedral Church of Saint Peter in Exeter had been built by 1380 and plays an important role in the second book, Plague of a Green Man. There are other remnants of medieval buildings in Exeter such as Saint Nicholas Priory and Polsloe Priory, both of which are referred to in the story.

The church of the Abbey of Saint Mary in Gloucester did not become a cathedral until the time of Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries and is important in the third book, Memento Mori, set in 1392. The picture shown above shows the north side of the church with the chapter house on the right. Another living Gothic church in that story is Saint Mary de Crypt which continues its ministry today.

Cirencester Abbey in book four, Templar’s Prophecy, was destroyed at the time of the Dissolution as was Glastonbury Abbey of book five, Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure. There are no ruins left above ground for two of the Cirencester churches in the story of Templar’s Prophecy, but the parish church, though altered after 1395, still stands. Only ruins remain of Glastonbury Abbey’s great church which is critical to the story set in 1397, but Saint John’s Parish Church, which also plays a role in the story, is still in use today.

Finally, the present cathedral in Worcester is important to the story of book six, King Richard’s Sword. It was a monastic cathedral in the Lady Apollonia’s 14^th century, an important priory church.

Although the Christian church was central to many aspects of medieval religious life, it was not without serious problems calling for reform.  Some of these problems were religious issues and others were temporal.  John Wycliffe, a 14^th century scholar in England, sought to reform both.  Wycliffe had a personal connection to the village of Aust as Prebend of the parish church during those years when my fictitious heroine, the Lady Apollonia, would have been raising her five sons in Aust.  John Wycliffe is well known for his translation of the Bible from Latin into English so that Holy Scripture would be accessible to any in the country who were literate.  He was convinced that the Bible was central to the faith of every Christian.  At the same time, he was convinced that the great wealth of the church was evil.  He believed that the church should be poor, as it had been in the days of Christ’s ministry on earth.  John Wycliffe was eventually declared a heretic by the church and posthumously dug from his grave and burned in the 15^th century, well after my novels are set.

Another example of a doctrinal problem within the ministry of the church was the selling of indulgences which forgave the buyer from some specified time in Purgatory.  There was much abuse of this practice and it later became an issue in Luther’s Reformation.  In my stories, I have introduced a character, Brandon Landow, who is inspired by Geoffrey Chaucer’s pardoner in the Canterbury Tales.  Landow misuses his clerical status to grow rich by selling indulgences and fraudulent relics with forged authentications by the pope.

The papacy, too, created a major quandary in the 14^th century church because there was not one but two bishops who claimed to be pope, each supported by a different nation, enemies during the Hundred Years War.  The pope in Avignon and was supported by the French king.  The other pope was in Rome and enjoyed the support of the king of England.  This temporal dispute was a problem for all faithful Christians.  At one point there was even a third claimant before the matter was resolved in the 15^th century.

The Papal Palace in Avignon is shown at the top.

Medieval cathedrals have been the subject of my last three blog postings, but there were other great churches in England at the time, especially some of the monastic churches. Although some monastic churches survived as cathedrals of the new foundation, many important monastic churches did not survive the Dissolution of the Monasteries by King Henry VIII.

Westminster Abbey is the most famous example of a monastic church that did survive the Dissolution, but it is not a cathedral. It is called a Royal Peculiar. A few monastic churches still survive because they serve as parish churches. I have chosen in my novels to use two of the great monastic churches that were by modern times reduced to ruins.

Templar’s Prophecy, the 4^th novel in the Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries, is set in Cirencester in 1395. In the 14^th century, Cirencester Abbey was the largest of the Augustinian abbeys in England and controlled much of urban life in Cirencester which created considerable tension between the abbey and the town. I have used this tension between town and abbey to be part of the drama of the story. The abbey grounds and fishpond remain in Cirencester, but nothing of the church or other monastic buildings is left standing. Some stones from the abbey can be found in local buildings erected in the 15^th century. Otherwise, only a gate to the abbey grounds and a few buildings away from the centre of town are still standing.

Similarly, Glastonbury Abbey is central to the story of Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure, the 5^th novel in the series. It is set in 1397 and uses the reality that the medieval town was literally built around the monastery. Glastonbury rivalled Westminster Abbey for its wealth and grandeur. The church was almost 600 feet in length, exceeded only by the length of the Gothic version of Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London before the great fire in the 17^th century. Today, only ruins of the church and a few other buildings such as the abbot’s kitchen remain on the abbey grounds. Several other buildings remain outside the abbey grounds, some located as far away as the village of Meare, Somerset.

Westminster Abbey, the most famous of the medieval monastic churches, is pictured below.

In my last two blog postings I have talked about secular and monastic cathedrals in England.  Today, I want to discuss other medieval monastic churches which only became cathedrals after King Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries.  These are called cathedrals of the new foundation which did not happen until centuries after the Lady Apollonia’s time.  One of these medieval monasteries plays a significant role in Memento Mori, the 3^rd of Lady Apollonia’s West Country Mysteries.

I am referring to the Abbey of Saint Peter in Gloucester.  The church, the Abbot’s House, and the infirmary are important in my story, but in the fourteenth century, the city of Gloucester was not in a separate diocese.  It was in the medieval Diocese of Worcester.

The Diocese of Gloucester was carved out of the Diocese of Worcester in the 16^th century.  The church and the Abbot’s House are today part of Gloucester Cathedral while the infirmary is now reduced to some ruined arches.  The surviving cloister is an early example of elegant fanned vaulting and in recent years was used as the setting for some scenes in the early Harry Potter movies.  Other cathedrals of the new foundation are found in Bristol, Chester, Oxford, and Peterborough.

The west front of Gloucester Cathedral is pictured below with the Abbot’s Lodging, which also plays a role in Memento Mori, just to the left of the church.

The cathedral church of a diocese means the church which contains the seat or throne or cathedra of the bishop of the diocese.  There are many important churches in England which are not cathedrals.  The best example is Westminster Abbey which serves royal functions such as coronations and weddings but is not a cathedral.

The Church of England has a mixture of secular and monastic cathedrals as well as cathedrals that are called of the new foundation.  This blog post will talk about monastic cathedrals while my previous blog post discussed secular cathedrals and my next one cathedrals of the new foundation.

In the medieval period before the reign of the Tudor King Henry VIII, the Christian church in England was loyal to the Pope in Rome.  There were fewer dioceses then than one will find in the contemporary Church of England, and many of them used monastic churches to house the thrones or cathedrae of the bishops of those dioceses.  The most important example was Canterbury Cathedral where there was an archbishop, but there were others: Carlisle, Durham, Ely, Norwich, Rochester, Winchester, and Worcester.

The diocese of Bath and Wells as well as that of Lichfield and Coventry were special cases.  The Bishop of Bath and Wells had thrones or cathedrae in both the secular church at Wells and the monastic church at Bath.  Similarly, the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry had thrones at secular Lichfield and monastic Coventry.

All the monastic churches were priories.  Most were Benedictine, but Carlisle was a priory of Augustinians.  The setting for “King Richard’s Sword”, the upcoming novel in the Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries, is Worcester where both the cathedral church and the associated priory play a role in my story.

Pictured below are the west towers of Canterbury Cathedral, the best known of the monastic cathedrals.

The cathedral church of a diocese means the church which contains the seat or throne, a cathedra, of the bishop of the diocese.  The Church of England has a mixture of what are called secular and monastic cathedrals.  This division in terminology began with the Roman Catholic Church in England and was very much present at the time of the Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries in the late 14^th and early 15^th centuries.  After the break with Rome, the dissolution of the monasteries by King Henry VIII, and the beginning of the Church of England, a category of cathedrals of the new foundation was added.  This blog post will talk about secular cathedrals while in later postings I will speak of monastic cathedrals and those of the new foundation.

As many of you know, I was a steward and tour guide in Exeter Cathedral during the four different years that we lived in England.  This marvellous opportunity for me as an American gave me hands-on experience of a living church of the fourteenth century and became my inspiration for creating the Lady Apollonia stories.  Exeter Cathedral is one of England’s medieval secular cathedrals and looks much as it did in 1380 when Plague of a Green Man, the 2^nd of the Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries, was set.

The phrase, secular cathedral, might sound like an oxymoron because the basic meaning of secular is non-religious. We must remember, however, that secular cathedral is the mother church of the diocese having the bishop’s throne but one in which the cathedral clerics are not bound by some monastic rule.

Exeter Cathedral, like other secular cathedrals in medieval times, was governed by a dean and a chapter of clerics called canons.  The canons lived celibate lives as priests but they were not bound by the rules of a monastic order such as the Benedictines.

England has two archbishops, one in Canterbury and one in York.  Interestingly, Canterbury Cathedral was a monastic church while York Minster was secular.  The other famous secular cathedrals in England besides Exeter and York were Chichester, Hereford, Lichfield, Saint Paul’s London, Salisbury, Wells, and Winchester.

Exeter Cathedral, washed by a late afternoon rain, is pictured below.