This month’s mystery roundel shows the Old Testament story of the ‘Death of Jezebel’ or ‘Jezebel thrown to the dogs’.
According to the Book of Kings 3 and 4, Jezebel was the daughter of Ethbaal, a king of the Sidonians, and the scheming wife of Achab, a Jewish king who worshipped the false God Baal. When her husband wanted a neighbouring vineyard for a garden and the owner, Naboth, refused to sell his ‘inheritance’ she conspired to have Naboth falsely accused and stoned to death. When the Lord heard what she had done he spoke, saying ‘the dogs shall eat Jezebel in the field of Jezrahel’.
After Achab’s death, the prophet Elisha chose a warrior called Jehu, the son of Josaphat, to overthrow the regime and slay the dead king’s sons. When one of the sons asked if there could be peace between them, Jehu replied, ‘What peace? So long as the fornications of Jezebel thy mother, and her many sorceries are in their vigour’.
Entering the city of Jezreel after killing Jezebel’s sons, the mounted Jehu saw her looking out of a window after she ‘had painted her face with stibic stone, and adorned her head’.
The Fourth Book of Kings, Chapter 9:30, describes what happened next, the scene depicted in our roundel:
And Jehu lifted up his face to the window, and said: Who is this? And two or three eunuchs bowed down to him. And he said to them: Throw her down headlong: and they threw her down, and the wall was sprinkled with her blood, and the hoofs of the horses trod upon her. And when he was come in, to eat, and to drink, he said: Go, and see after that cursed woman, and bury her: because she is a king’s daughter. And when they went to bury her, they found nothing but the skull, and the feet, and the extremities of her hands.
And coming back they told him. And Jehu said: It is the word of the Lord, which he spoke by his servant Elias the Thesbite, saying: In the field of Jezrahel the dogs shall eat the flesh of Jezabel, And the flesh of Jezabel shall be as dung upon the face of the earth in the field of Jezrahel, so that they who pass by shall say: Is this that same Jezabel?
The late Dr William Cole ((1909–1997) attributed the design of the panel to a print by the Flemish engraver Hieronymous Cock (c. 1510–1570) of a drawing by Martin Heemskerck (1498 –1574), no 6 of a series of six on the story of King Achab and Naboth.
Note: the Quotations are from the Latin vulgate Douay Rheims Bible.
For more information about the church of St Mary in Shrewsbury visit the Churches Conservation Trust website.
To see more images of stained glass at the church visit the CVMA Archive.
Further Reading
- W. Cole, A Catalogue of Netherlandish and North European Roundels in Britain, CVMA (GB), Summary Catalogue 1, Oxford, 1993, includes a catalogue of the roundels in the church of St Mary, Shrewsbury