Prophets, Apostles, and Saints in the side windows of Winchester College Chapel

David J. Critchley

Introduction

Winchester College was founded in 1382 by William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, following his founding of New College, Oxford, in 1379. The chapel was glazed by the workshop of Thomas of Oxford, and although we have records of the delivery of glass in 1393, frequent visits by glaziers are recorded in 1406, and may indicate the completion of the glazing programme.¹

The chapel (Fig. 1) is divided into six bays. In the north wall the four western bays have glazed windows (nII–nV), each with two tiers of three lights, while the two eastern bays, which abut the Muniment Tower on their north side, have blind windows. The east wall contains a single window (eI), with two tiers of seven lights, containing a Tree of Jesse with a Last Judgement in the tracery lights. In the south wall the four eastern bays have glazed windows (sII–sV), also with two tiers of three lights. The two western bays, which abut the belltower and Thurbern’s Chantry built between 1473 and 1481, have blind windows. Herbert Chitty argued that the original belltower was also physically contiguous with the chapel, which would suggest that at least one of these two windows was blind from the beginning.² In addition, the provision of access to a new rood loft in 1473 or 1474 through the adjacent window (sV) required the two western lights in that window to be blocked up.

All of Wykeham’s glass was replaced with a copy by Messrs Betton and Evans in the period 1821 to 1828. Charles Winston gave a short account of the glass in a paper of 1845; and Nathaniel Westlake published further details and a diagram of the east window in 1886.³ J. D. Le Couteur published a detailed account in 1920, followed by reports on the conservation work of 1922 to 1924. John Harvey and Dennis King published a detailed historical and archaeological account in 1971.⁴ Anna Eavis reviewed the glass, with a particular emphasis on the east window, in 2011; Veronika Decker discussed the windows in her detailed account of Wykeham’s foundations in 2017; and the most recent treatment is that of Sarah Griffin and Eleanor Townsend.⁵

The evidential value of the copy of 1821–28

Winston observed that the copy had preserved the original designs with considerable fidelity and was of great value, ‘as giving the arrangement, and to a considerable extent the drawing, of the original work.’⁶ Le Couteur, while lamenting the loss of the original glass, seconded Winston’s judgement of the copy, observing that it was ‘probably the best piece of post-Reformation craftsmanship executed up till comparatively recent times.’⁷ The reader can compare the copy with some surviving panels preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Figs. 2–3). The present paper proceeds on the basis that the copy accurately represents the original iconography.

The arrangement of the side windows

Each of the forty-six main lights contains a prophet, apostle, or saint, standing in a tabernacle composed of a canopy with supporting pillars and a pedestal. There are eight different tabernacle designs, each of which is always set against the same background colour, either red or blue. Each wall is divided into four quarters—western upper, western lower, eastern upper, and eastern lower—with a different pair of alternating tabernacle designs in each quarter. The south wall mirrors the north wall, though with a two-bay offset caused by the blind windows.

The selection of saints is revealing. St Swithun, StEthelwold, and St Birinus are associated with Winchester Cathedral. St Oswald, St Edward, St Edmund, St Dunstan, St Thomas of Canterbury, and St Wulstan are English saints; St George is particularly associated with England. If St ‘Augustine’ is really St Augustine of Canterbury, he provides a link with Rome. St Anne is doubtless included because of her association with education: indeed, the image of her teaching the infant Virgin Mary to read is the chapel’s only portrayal of the act of education. St Giles, St Martin, St Christopher, St Nicholas, and St Mary Magdalen are popular saints, whom one might encounter in any parish church. English Christianity has a strong presence here, with a particular focus on saints buried in Winchester Cathedral, but the wider context is also represented.

Careful thought was given to the placing of the saints in the windows. The centre light in each group of three is treated as a position of honour: the Virgin Mary, St Mary Magdalen, all three kings, and one of the two archbishops occupy a centre light.¹⁰ The outer two saints usually form a pair contrasting with the centre saint. Thus, the Virgin Mary is flanked by a bishop and an archbishop; St Dunstan, an archbishop, by two bishops; and St Oswald (Fig. 6) by two abbots.

The prophet and apostle windows: ‘wings of a triptych’

Wykeham brought to the planning of the chapel at Winchester the experience that he had gained in rebuilding the west front of Winchester Cathedral, with its great west window, and in planning New College in Oxford. The glazing of the cathedral west window had probably been installed c.1375, and construction at New College had started by March 1380.¹¹

The west window of the cathedral was largely destroyed in 1642, but after analysing the fragments, Le Couteur concluded that it resembled ‘a great triptych with scenes in the life of Christ in the middle, and figures of apostles and prophets at the sides: the six upper main side lights contained the twelve apostles, in two rows, each with … a scroll inscribed with a portion of the Creed: in the six lights below were twelve prophets, each with a scroll bearing some corresponding Old Testament passage.’¹² At New College, the chapel and hall form a single range, as at Winchester, but the chapel occupies the western half. As a result, the chapel has a blind east wall, which provided an opportunity for a full-height reredos. The chapel consists of a choir known as the chapel and an antechapel of two bays with aisles. The largest window in the chapel is the antechapel west window. In the upper tiers of the two antechapel east windows Wykeham placed the twelve apostles, with below them in the lower tiers four images of the Crucifixion, perhaps one for each altar, and in the great west window he placed a Tree of Jesse.

At Winchester, the chapel occupies the eastern half of the range. As a result, the west wall of the chapel is blind, but there is the opportunity for a large east window. Wykeham’s experience will have suggested two obvious options for this window: scenes from the life of Christ, as in the cathedral west window, or a Tree of Jesse, as at New College. In the event, he chose a Tree of Jesse.¹³ It appears, however, that he still wished to include the rows of prophets and apostles as proposed by Le Couteur in the cathedral west window, and that he found room for them by returning to the ‘triptych’ format of the cathedral window, using the adjoining windows in the north and south walls as the two wings of the triptych.

Decker observes that the expenses incurred by the colleges’ clerks of works and wardens on their frequent journeys to meet Wykeham demonstrate his close involvement with his projects, and we can be confident that he was responsible for this arrangement.¹⁴

The Prophets’ and the Apostles’ Creed

The creation of manuscript schemata comprising twelve matched pairs of prophetic texts and credal articles is attested as far back as the thirteenth century. The extant schemata were clearly designed as aide-mémoires for theology students, and must reflect oral discussion in the theology schools. In 1932 Alphonse de Poorter published such a schema from a Bruges manuscript, forming part of a one-page summary of Christian essentials, (Table 1). The manuscript dates from the thirteenth century, but de Poorter considered that the summary itself was older.¹⁵ Other copies of this schema had already been published, by Abbé Migne in 1856 and by M. R. James in 1899.¹⁶ The schema reappears in a set of diagrams illustrating Christian teaching, known as the Speculum Theologiae (The Mirror of Theology), compiled by a Franciscan, John of Metz, probably at the end of the thirteenth century.¹⁷ The Speculum was frequently copied, with Daniel 9:26 often replacing Zechariah 12:10 for article 4, and this selection of prophetic texts became widely disseminated, appearing, for instance, in the Howard and de Lisle Psalters (c.1308 to 1340), the Queen Mary Psalter (1310 to 1320), and the Sherborne Missal (c.1399 to 1407).¹⁸

In 1992 Joseph Goering published another schema, with a slightly different selection of prophetic texts, which formed part of the Tractatus Metricus de Septem Sacramentis Ecclesiae (Versified Account of the Seven Sacraments of the Church) of William de Montibus (c.1140 to 1213), which can be no later than the early thirteenth century (Table 1).¹⁹ Alfred Pollard, in 1902, had already published, from a fourteenth-century or fifteenth-century addition to the Frome Bible, what appears to be a developed form of this schema, with Psalms 2:7 replacing Daniel 7:13 for article 2, Daniel 9:26 replacing Zechariah 12:10 for article 4, and shortened texts for articles 5 and 11.²⁰ This developed form reappears in the Peterborough Psalter and Breviary (1304 to 1321) and the Taymouth Hours (second quarter of the fourteenth century.²¹

Credal article number and topic	Bruges schema	William de Montibus’ schema	Frome Bible schema	Winchester prophet
God the Father	Jer 3:19 & 32:17	Jer 3:19	Jer 3:19	Isaiah
Jesus Christ	Ps 2:7	Dan 7:13	Ps 2:7	David
Virgin Birth	Is 7:14	Is 7:14	Is 7:14	Jeremiah
Crucifixion	Zech 12:10	Zech 12:10	Dan 9:26	Daniel
Resurrection	Hos 13:14	Hos 13:14 & 6:3	Hos 13:14	Hosea
Ascension	Amos 9:6	Amos 9:6	Amos 9:6	Amos
Last Judgement	Mal 3:5	Joel 3:12	Joel 3:12	Joel
Holy Spirit	Joel 2:28	Hag 2:6	Hag 2:6	Haggai
Holy Catholic Church	Zeph 3:9	Zeph 2:15	Zeph 2:15	Zephaniah
Forgiveness of Sins	Mic 7:19	Mal 2:16	Mal 2:16	Ezekiel
Resurrection of the Body	Ezek 37:12	Zech 9:13,12	Zech 9:13	Zechariah
Life Everlasting	Dan 12:2	Obad 1:21	Obad 1:21	Obadiah
Table 1: Comparison of different schemata with the Winchester prophet sequence

In architectural pairings of prophetic texts and the Creed, the earliest cases in which the texts are either extant or recorded appear to be the Lady Chapel clerestory windows in York Minster, perhaps commissioned by Archbishop Arundel between 1388 and 1396, and a set of mural paintings in the choir of Cambrai Cathedral, commissioned by Peter of Ailly, bishop from 1398 to 1411. In York Minster the texts borne by the eight surviving prophets correspond to articles 1 to 2 and 4 to 9.²² At Cambrai Cathedral, which was demolished in 1797, the paintings covered all twelve articles.²³ Both sets of texts, where extant or recorded, match the developed form of de Montibus’ schema. No doubt some artists or patrons followed whatever schema was closest to hand, but it is likely that a patron such as Peter of Ailly, a distinguished theologian and philosopher and a former chancellor of the University of Paris, personally chose the schema providing the best selection of prophetic texts.

The number of the Winchester prophets matches that of the articles of the Creed, and several of the Winchester prophets appear at the same points in the sequence as in the schemata: thus, David is second, Hosea fifth, Amos sixth, and Zephaniah ninth. These features invite a detailed comparison with the schemata, even though the Winchester prophets are not provided with texts. Such a comparison reveals that the Winchester prophets match most closely the developed form of de Montibus’ schema, being identical in nine out of twelve articles (Table 1), and incidentally supports French’s suggestion of a link between Wykeham’s work and the York windows.²⁴

In articles 1 and 3, however, Winchester reverses the usual order of Isaiah and Jeremiah. The usual order is so universal that we may wonder whether the lights have been switched subsequently, perhaps to bring them in line with the biblical order of the prophetical books. In article 10, Winchester’s choice of Ezekiel is also unusual. It should be noted that the Cologne Carthusian Werner Rolevinck (1425–1502) included in his Fasciculus Temporum a credal schema which included two, three, or four supplementary texts alongside each article’s principal prophetic text.²⁵ The supplementary texts for article 1 include Isaiah 45:6–7, for article 3 Jeremiah 31:22, and for article 10 Ezekiel 33:11; so it is not inconceivable that one or more of these credal associations had influenced Wykeham at an earlier date.

The windows of New College chapel, which contain fifteen or more prophets, provide an instructive comparison for the Winchester windows. Their original ordering is unclear, but Decker’s recent reconstruction, which follows William Peckitt’s restoration proposal of 1774, puts a sequence of twelve prophets in the three western windows of the chancel north wall (nIII to nV).²⁶ This sequence, apart from the transposition of Ezekiel and Hosea, matches that of the prophetical books in the Vulgate, rather than of the articles of the Creed, and the prophets are not located alongside or opposite the apostles, but above the patriarchs. Although the texts assigned to the prophets reflect their anticipation of Christian teaching, there is no reference to the Creed.

If the Winchester prophets have been selected to match the apostles and form pairs comprising the prophet who anticipated each article and the apostle who composed it, the question remains, why are the prophets not equipped with texts? Did Wykeham, as Decker suggests, pass up the opportunity to highlight the connection between the prophecies and the Creed?²⁷ Winchester College, unlike York Minster and Cambrai Cathedral, was founded for seventy scholars aged between eight and eighteen.²⁸ We know from Wykeham’s statutes for New College that he was concerned that the boys should be introduced to learning gradually, and he may have felt that they did not yet need the prophetic texts and that it was enough for them to absorb the combined presence of the apostles and the prophets.²⁹  For the adult members of the College, however, the prophets’ names would be sufficient to call to mind the relevant prophetic texts, and to encourage meditation on the concord between the teachings of the Old Law and the New.³⁰ Wykeham may thus have concluded that by leaving out the texts, he could control the effect of the windows on the scholars without affecting the value of the windows to the adult members of the college as illustrating the essential continuity of the teaching of the Old Law and the New Law.

Conclusion

The side windows of Winchester College chapel make an important contribution to this late fourteenth-century ensemble. They are carefully planned; their selection of saints and other figures is carefully adapted to the needs of the college; they incorporate elements from one of Wykeham’s earlier glazing schemes; and they are pioneering architectural representations of the unity of belief of the two Testaments.

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Suzanne Foster and Dr Sarah Griffin at Winchester College for their remarks on an early version of this paper and for much other assistance; to Dr Raymond Davis, Dr Françoise Gay, Dr Otfried Lieberknecht, and the Rev Gordon Plumb; to Jayne Hammond at York Minster; to the staff of Buckinghamshire County Library; and to the editor and anonymous reviewer of Vidimus for their remarks on an earlier version of this paper. The author is grateful to Gordon Plumb and to the Victoria and Albert Museum for permission to reproduce photographs.

David J Critchley has a degree in Classics and a diploma in Theology. He retired from teaching in 2017. His interests include the relationship between churches, their furnishings, and the liturgy. Recent and forthcoming publications include accounts of the life and works architect and designer Sir Robert Lorimer and of the heraldic artist John R Sutherland.

1. Veronika Decker, William of Wykeham als Collegegründer und Bauherr: Architektur und Glasmalerei zur Zeit Richards II., Kiel, 2017, pp. 181–2.[↩]
2. Herbert Chitty, ‘The Winchester College Bells and Belfries’, Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club & Archaeological Society, vol. 9/1, 1920, pp. 37–80.[↩]
3. Charles Winston, ‘A Short Notice of the Painted Glass in Winchester and its Neighbourhood,’ in Memoirs illustrative of the Art of Glass-Painting, London, 1865, pp. 63–70; N. H. J. Westlake, A History of Design in Painted Glass, vol. III, 1886, pp. 65–7.[↩]
4. J. D. Le Couteur, Ancient Glass in Winchester, Winchester, 1920; ‘Notes on the East Window of College Chapel,’ in Supplement to the Wykehamist, no. 626, 21st November 1922, pp. 273–76, and ‘Winchester College Chapel: The Restoration of the Windows,’ The Hampshire Observer, 2nd February 1924; John H. Harvey and Dennis G. King, ‘Winchester College Stained Glass,’ Archaeologia, vol. 103, 1971, pp. 149–77.[↩]
5. Anna Eavis, ‘The Commemorative Foundations of William of Wykeham,’ The Medieval Chantry in England: Journal of the British Archaeological Association, vol. 164, 2011, pp. 169–195; Decker, William of Wykeham, pp. 188–96; Sarah Griffin and Eleanor Townsend, Medieval Glass at Winchester College, Winchester, 2021.[↩]
6. Winston, op. cit., pp. 66–7.[↩]
7. Le Couteur, Ancient Glass, p. 71; Notes on the East Window of College Chapel, p. 273. See also Sarah Brown, ‘Medieval Stained Glass and the Victorian Restorer’, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, 30, 2020, https://19.bbk.ac.uk/article/id/2901/ [accessed 24 March 2022].[↩]
8. See Exodus 28:36 and the letter of Polycrates quoted in Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica, v 24 3.[↩]
9. Le Couteur, Ancient Glass, p. 94. For Augustine’s consecration as a bishop, see Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, i 27.[↩]
10. For similar ordering at York Minster see Sarah Brown, ‘Our Magnificent Fabrick’: York Minster, An Architectural History c.1220–1500, Swindon, 2003, pp. 220–226.[↩]
11. Mary Callé, Winchester Cathedral Stained Glass, Winchester, 2008, p. 4; Gervase Jackson-Stops, ‘The Building of the Medieval College,’ p. 154, in John Buxton and Penry Williams (eds), New College Oxford 1379–1979, Oxford, 1979.[↩]
12. Le Couteur, The Hampshire Observer, 3 September 1921; Proceedings of the Royal Archaeological Institute Summer Meeting at Winchester, July 1924, The Archaeological Journal, vol. 81, 1924, pp. 315–22; Callé, ‘Deciphering the Great West Window,’ Winchester Cathedral Record, no. 69, 2000, pp. 21–29, and Winchester Cathedral Stained Glass, pp. 4–6.[↩]
13. For the possible reasons for Wykeham’s choice, see Eavis, ‘Commemorative Foundations of William of Wykeham’ pp. 178–9; and Decker, William of Wykeham, pp. 244–74, and ‘In the Vineyard of the Lord: Art, Imagination, and the Stained Glass Commissions of William of Wykeham in Fourteenth-Century English Colleges,’ in Jessica Berenbeim and Sandy Heslop, eds, Invention and Imagination in British Art and Architecture, 600–1500 (British Art Studies, 6), Summer 2017.[↩]
14. Decker, William of Wykeham, pp. 38–43.[↩]
15. Alphonse de Poorter, ‘Un Catéchisme du XIIIe siècle,’ in Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 28 (1932), pp. 70–74.[↩]
16. J. P. Migne, Troisième et dernière encyclopédie Théologique … Tome 27, dictionnaire d’orfèvrerie, de gravure et de ciselure chrétiennes, Paris, 1856, col. 154; M. R. James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Peterhouse, Cambridge, 1899, pp. 181–2.[↩]
17. See Lucy Freeman Sandler, The Psalter of Robert de Lisle in the British Library (2nd ed.), London, 1999, pp. 23–7.[↩]
18. London, British Library, MS Add. 74236 (Sherborne Missal), pp. 1–13; MS Arundel 83 I (Howard Psalter), f.12r; 83 II (de Lisle Psalter), f.128r; MS Royal 2 B VII (Queen Mary’s Psalter), ff.69v–70r.[↩]
19. Joseph Goering, William de Montibus (c.1140–1213): The Schools and the Literature of Pastoral Care, Studies and Texts 108, Toronto, 1992, pp. 177–8.[↩]
20. New York, Pierpont Morgan MS M.0138 (Frome Bible), f.408b. See Alfred W Pollard and others, Catalogue of manuscripts and early printed books … Now forming portion of the library of J. Pierpont Morgan, vol. 1, Manuscripts, London, 1906, p. 21.[↩]
21. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 53 (Peterborough Psalter and Breviary), ff.7r–18v; London, British Library, Yates Thompson MS 13 (Taymouth Hours), ff.34v–46r.[↩]
22. T. French, ’The Glazing of the Lady Chapel Clerestory,’ The Friends of York Minster Annual Report, vol. 66, 1995, pp. 40–51. For the texts of their scrolls, see Sarah Brown, ‘Our Magnificent Fabrick’, pp. 284–5.[↩]
23. Jacques Thiébaut, La Cathédrale disparue de Cambrai, Villeneuve d’Ascq, 2015, p. 141. For the prophets’ texts, see François Renon, ‘Les apôtres et le Credo’, Revue de l’art chrétien, Jan. 1864, pp. 261–2, and Arnould de Raisse, Belgica christiana, sive synopsis successionum et gestorum episcoporum Belgicae provinciae, Douai, 1634, pp. 158–60.[↩]
24. French, ‘Glazing of the Lady Chapel Clerestory’., pp. 46–9.[↩]
25. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 177, f.17r.[↩]
26. Decker, William of Wykeham, pp. 165–76.[↩]
27. Decker, William of Wykeham, pp. 188–9. I am grateful to Dr Jim Bugslag for his comments on this issue.[↩]
28. Winchester College Statutes, rubric 1, trans. J P Sabben-Clare, 1983, typescript, Winchester College Archives.[↩]
29. Edward Augustus Bond (ed.), Statutes of the Colleges of Oxford, London and Oxford, 1853, vol. 1, New College Statutes, p. 3, rubric 2.[↩]
30. For the theological importance of this concept, see François Boespflug, ‘Autour de la traduction pictoral du Credo à la fin du Moyen Âge (XIIe–XVe siècle) pp. 77–8,’ in Paul de Clerck and Eric Palazzo (eds.), Rituels: mélanges offerts à Pierre-Marie Gy, o.p., Paris, 1990.[↩]