The History Blog

Two skulls from the 13th and 14th centuries have been unearthed in a cemetery in Soria, north-central Spain. The skulls each have a hole in them from trepanation, the oldest surgical procedure known.

Trepanation involves the removal of a piece of skull by scraping or cutting with a sharp tool and has been practiced at least since the early Neolithic 10,000 years ago. It was common in prehistoric and ancient Europe, but there’s considerably less evidence for it in the Middle Ages, possibly due to a philosophical rejection of surgery in favor of “pure medicine” like leeches sucking the bad humours out of people along with their blood. In some parts of Europe, for example modern Hungary, the practice almost entirely disappears from the historical record after the onset of Christianity.

Thus researchers from the Universities of Oviedo and Leon were surprised when they found two trepanned skulls in the medieval San Miguel hermitage cemetery. They were even more surprised when they found that one of the skulls belonged to a woman. Even when trepanation was widely performed, most of the patients were men.

The two skulls found in the cemetery in Soria belong to a male between 50 and 55 years and a woman between 45 and 50 years. The expert points out that “another interesting aspect of this finding is that trepanation in women is considered rare throughout all periods in history. In Spain, only 10% of those trepanned skulls found belonged to women.”

The trepanation technique differs in each of the skulls. The skull of the male has been grooved with a sharp object and it is unknown whether trepanation occurred before or after his death. López Martínez confirms that “if the procedure took place whilst still alive, there is no sign of regeneration and the subject did not survive.”

In the woman, a scraping technique was used while she was still alive. According to the researchers, she survived for a “relatively long” amount of time afterwards given that the wound scarring is advanced.

Trepanation was performed to repair skull fractures by removing the fragmented section, and has a solid record of effectiveness as emergency surgery on head wounds. (It is still used today, in fact, to clear bone pieces and relieve subdural hematoma.) It was perhaps less effective as a remedy for a variety of other conditions like seizure disorders and mental illness.

Last June 11th, metal detector enthusiast Stan Cooper was exploring a spot by a stream in a farmer’s field near Sandbach, Cheshire when his machine signaled. He dug four or five inches down and discovered a small object that was so encrusted with dirt he couldn’t identify exactly what it was, but it seemed to him it was made of a precious metal. After ten minutes in an ultrasonic cleaner, the artifact revealed itself to be a small, exquisitely detailed gold brooch.

Cooper has been metal detecting for 20 years, but he’s never found anything like this. It’s an annular (or ring style) brooch just a little bit larger than a pound coin. The outer frame is shaped like a heart and has a gold pin bisecting it vertically. The bottom half of the heart has been crafted in the shape of two be-sleeved lower arms that come together at the point with two clasped hands.

The sleeves are decorated with studs along the edges, possibly meant to suggest buttons, that start larger up top and get smaller toward the wrist, but each sleeve is also different from the other. Looking at the brooch from the front, the left hand has a shorter sleeve that stops at the wrist, while the right sleeve covers the upper hand and is trumpet shaped. The length and style of the sleeves suggest that the right hand is female, the left male. The end of the pin fits in the palm of the male hand.

Cooper had two weeks to kill before having to report it to his local archaeological authority, so he did some research. He thought the workmanship identified it as pre-Victorian and discovered that the clasped hands design has been found from Roman-era pieces right through the medieval period.

He then turned it in to Peter Reavill of the Portable Antiquities Scheme who identified it as a high quality gold jewel from the late Middle Ages (1350-1450 A.D.), probably meant to be a betrothal gift. It is unique. Heart shaped brooches have been found dating to the later Middle Ages. The combination of the heart shape with the clasped hands is most unusual, and no other brooches have been found with the three distinctive elements adorning this one: the heart shape, the hands and the detailed sleeves.

He designated it a find of regional importance and it was sent to the British Museum for examination and authentication. They confirmed its medieval dating and treasure status. At this point, the Crown has the opportunity to claim the piece for the national patrimony. A coroner’s inquest ensues to declare it treasure, determine the market value and offer it for purchase to local and national museums who might want to add it to their collections. In this case, however, the Crown disclaimed it as treasure, probably because no museum vied for the small piece, and thus it has been returned to Stan Cooper.

He is putting it up for auction at Adam Partridge Auctioneers & Valuers in Macclesfield, Cheshire. The pre-sale estimate is £25,000 (ca. $40,000). Cooper will share all proceeds from the sale with the farmer who owns the field in which the lovely little treasure was found.

After an unprecedented campaign to raise £9 million ($14.5 million) in 8 months, the British Library has reached its goal and is now the proud owner of the 7th century St. Cuthbert Gospel, the oldest book in Europe that is fully intact from covers to binding to sewing structure to vellum pages. It was the most ambitious and most successful fundraising campaign in the Library’s history, marshaling donations from the likes of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the British Library trusts, the Art Fund, the Garfield Weston Foundation, the Foyle Foundation, major individual donors and members of the public.

Although the former owners, the Society of Jesus, had loaned the book to the Library since 1979, since it wasn’t publicly owned the institution could not spend any money on conservation. It was on display, but with the cover closed to avoid any damage to the pages. Once the money to acquire the Gospel was secured, the British Library brought in leading conservation experts to assess the ancient volume. They found it in unbelievably good condition.

The Gospel has now gone on display in the entrance hall of the Sir John Ritblat Gallery in the British Library building at St. Pancras and for the first time it is open so that visitors can see two of the pages. This exhibit closes on June 17th.

The St. Cuthbert Gospel is a copy of the Gospel of St. John written in Latin around 687 A.D., the year Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne, died. The cover and back are made of crimson goatskin leather over birch boards, with a chalice and vine motif embossed on the front. It’s an incredibly rare surviving example of Anglo-Saxon leather work. Inside, the Latin script on the vellum pages is beautifully preserved and extremely clear.

It was written by monks at Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Abbey, probably with the specific intention of creating a pocket gospel to place in Cuthbert’s coffin when it was moved behind the altar at Lindisfarne Cathedral in 698. When the coffin was opened, Cuthbert’s body was found to be incorrupt for the first, but not the last, time.

The Vikings invaded Lindisfarne in 875, and the monks fled carrying the coffin and its precious cargo with them. They were on the lam for seven years until they settled in Durham. The saint was kept in a church on the site of the present Durham Cathedral (with occasional interludes elsewhere while escaping later invaders), then in Durham Cathedral as we know it today until Henry VIII’s marauders came to pillage the cathedral during the Dissolution of the Monasteries between 1536 and 1541.

The monks hid St. Cuthbert’s body, but the Gospel was taken during this time and passed into private hands. It turned up again in 1769 when a private collector gave it to the English Jesuit College at Liège, later moved to England and renamed Stonyhurst College. The Jesuits kept it in the Stonyhurst Library until they loaned it permanently to the British Library in 1979.

Despite this checkered past, the St. Cuthbert Gospel has been preserved in a virtually incorrupt state of its own. You would never imagine looking at it that it’s 1300 years old. Now that the Library owns it, they are making long-term conservation plans to ensure that it retains its preternatural condition. They’ve also digitized the entire volume and uploaded it to their website.

The British Library is partnering with Durham Cathedral so the Gospel will split its time between London and Durham.

The Very Reverend Michael Sadgrove, Dean of Durham, said: “It is the best possible news to know that the Cuthbert Gospel has been saved for the nation. For the people of Durham and North East England, this is a most treasured book. Buried with Cuthbert and retrieved from his coffin, it held a place of great honour in Durham Cathedral Priory. The place in the Cathedral where it was kept in the Middle Ages is still the home of our unique manuscript collection.

“I want to pay tribute to the heroic efforts of the British Library in achieving this wonderful outcome. It has been a privilege to be associated with this fundraising campaign. I am pleased that the Friends of Durham Cathedral have supported it with a generous gift, and that one of the fund’s donors has chosen to channel a major gift through the Cathedral.

“As part of the plan agreed between the World Heritage Site and the British Library for its display, we look forward from time to time to welcoming this precious book back to the peninsula where Cuthbert’s remains are honoured. It will be always be loved and cherished here. I am sure Cuthbert shares our delight.”

Smailholm Tower is a peel tower, a small, four-story rectangular tower used to warn of and for defense against raids by English and Scottish border reivers. It was built in the first half of the 15th century by the Clan Pringle, whose lairds lived in the tower until it was acquired in the 17th century by the Scott family of Harden.

When the Scotts moved to nearby Sandyknowe Farm in the early 18th century, the tower began to fall into ruin. Its decay only enhanced its appeal to wee Walter Scott, future literary giant, whose father sent him to stay with his grandparents at Sandyknowe in 1773 after polio left him lame in one leg when he was just two years old. The fresh air of rural Scotland wasn’t a miracle cure but it did improve his health.

By the time he left in 1775 he could walk with a cane, and most importantly for history’s sake, he could read. His Aunt Jenny’s stories and the songs and legends of the Scottish Borders he read during long winter visits instilled in him a lifelong love of Scottish folklore. Smailholm Tower, with its dramatic vistas and basalt walls, loomed large in his consciousness. It was the setting for his 1801 poem The Eve of St. John, and makes an appearance in Marmion, his epic poem about the 1513 Battle of Flodden in which several Pringles died. In 1831, ill and just a year from death, Sir Walter Scott would return for one last emotional visit to Smailholm with artist J.M.W. Turner.

Despite its historical and literary significance, Smailholm Tower continued to decay. In 1950 it was given to the state by John Sutherland Egerton, 5th Earl of Ellesmere, and various restoration attempts ensued, including a new whinstone rubble roof added in the 1960s over the elliptical stone vault that was originally built to support the long-gone stone slab roof.

By 2006, cracks in the rubble roof were leaking water, damaging structural timbers and the top story rooms of the tower. Since rebuilding the original slab roof was not an option due to concerns about whether the current structure could support it and because we don’t know exactly how the original was built, Historic Scotland initiated a project to replace the leaky roof with a grass one that would absorb water.

“In 2006, the agency trialled two different specifications of living roof. One was based on traditional puddled clay below turf, and the other a proprietary clay membrane beneath a sedum mat. The tests were checked over a period of two years, with visual inspections and electronic monitoring, and we discovered that both roofs had been successful in preventing rainwater penetration.”

Historic Scotland decided to combine the best features of both specifications to achieve long-term durability. The capping was based on the sedum system but modified to enhance drought resistance, and to encourage the growth of a thicker sward to improve overall rainwater retention.

The Tower’s new roof is fully reversible, and replicates evidence of previous vegetation that once grew on the roof, as documented in historic images.

So far it is working like a charm. The sedum roof has stopped all water penetration into the tower and it looks fantastic to boot. It’s like a Chia Tower now.

Pictures of the roof construction and the lovely new green roof courtesy of and copyrighted by Walter Baxter, who generously allowed me to use the glorious high resolution versions you see above. They are licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

University of St. Andrews art historian Dr. Kathryn Rudy has devised an ingenious new way to unveil the deepest fears, reading and prayer habits of medieval people. Using a machine called a densitometer, she measures how much dirt is on each page of a medieval manuscript. The dirtiest pages are the ones that were open the most, and therefore most read and referred to.

Dr Rudy said: “Although it is often difficult to study the habits, private rituals and emotional states of people, this new technique can let us into the minds of people from the past.

“Religion was inseparable from physical health, time management, and interpersonal relationships in medieval times.

“In the century before printing, people ordered tens of thousands of prayer books – sometimes quite beautifully illuminated ones – even though they might cost as much as a house.

“As a result they were treasured, read several times a day at key prayer times, and through analysing how dirty the pages are we can identify the priorities and beliefs of their owners.”

Dr. Rudy analyzed a number of European prayer books. She found that one of the most read pages was a prayer to St. Sebastian, the saint who was shot full of arrows at the command of Diocletian but didn’t die from it. The iconography of the nearly nude martyr with wounds all over his body that he survived associated Sebastian with surviving the plague. Legend has it that after an altar was built in his honor in 7th century Lombardy he stopped a plague, so praying to St. Sebastian was deemed a protection against it. Given the alarming frequency and mortality of plague in medieval Europe, it makes sense that the prayers to Sebastian would be among the most frequently recited.

In people-are-people news, prayers for the salvation of one’s own soul were more often read than prayers for the salvation of other people’s souls, and the prayers read in the wee hours of the night and morning are dirty mainly on the first couple of pages. After that, readers consistently stopped, no doubt because they were face down in a puddle of their own drool, snoring happily.

The 12th century Furness Abbey in south Cumbria has been in ruins since 1537 when it was disestablished, looted and destroyed by Henry VIII. Large cracks began appearing in the walls of the presbytery in the early 20th century, and English Heritage is currently funding an extensive project of exploration and restoration with the ultimate aim of underpinning the structure to keep it from collapse. They plan to install massive concrete rafts deep into the ground on top of which a steel framework will be built to brace and anchor the walls.

To prepare for the concrete rafts, Oxford Archaeology North was contracted to excavate four deep holes, two north of the presbytery on the site of the abbey cemetery and two inside the presbytery. As expected, a number of graves, all of them disturbed over the centuries, were found during the cemetery excavation. When they moved inside, just 13 feet (four meters) northwest of the high altar they discovered the undisturbed grave of a medieval abbot, still wearing his ecclesiastical ring on his finger and holding his crozier, the staff of office shaped like a shepherd’s crook.

This find was not at all expected. The abbey was looted thoroughly after the Dissolution; it was thoroughly dug up by archaeologists in the late 19th century, and it was even more thoroughly and deeply dug up in the last century during work to shore up the failing foundations. Finding an undisturbed grave would have been shocking in and of itself, never mind one of an ancient monastic leader still wearing his accouterments.

It’s also of major historical significance because this is the first intact abbot’s grave discovered and excavated under modern archaeological conditions.

An initial examination of his skeleton, which is currently in the care of Oxford Archaeology North, indicated that he was probably between 40 and 50 years old when he died. Like many monastic burials of middle-aged and older men, he had a pathological condition of the spine often considered to be associated with obesity and mature-onset (Type II) diabetes. The grave – which could date to as early as the 1150’s – also included the decorated crozier and a gemstone ring. The grave was situated in the presbytery, the most prestigious position in the church and generally reserved for the richest benefactors. Most Cistercian abbots were buried in the chapter house.

Kevin Booth, Senior Curator at English Heritage, said: “This is a very rare find which underlines the Abbey’s status as one of the great power bases of the Middle Ages. While we don’t yet know the identity of the abbot, he was clearly someone important and respected by the monastic community. Given that the crozier and ring have been buried for over 500 years, they are in remarkable condition.”

The crozier is made of gilded copper and on the inside of the loop has a depiction of the Archangel Michael defeating a dragon. The end of the crook is shaped like the head of a serpent (looks like a dog to me). A small piece of the wooden staff which the crozier capped has survived, as have the pointed iron spike that was at its base and some fragments of the linen and silk cloth used to keep the abbot from sweating all over the wood as he held the staff.

The ring is gilded silver with a clear gem or crystal. There’s a hollow behind the stone — perhaps used to store a holy relic — and the inside of the bezel where the ring touched the top of the finger comes to a point. Abbots in the 12th century were supposed to eschew the kind of ornamentation common among the princes of the Church. They even had to get special permission to wear an ecclesiastical ring. The pointed ring, which doubtless caused its wearer some amount of irritation and pain, may thus have served double duty as insignia of authority and as mortifier of the flesh. Certainly the abbot was devout. The arthritis in his knees bears mute witness to many hours spent in prayer.

Radiocarbon dating is ongoing. Until we have the results we can’t know who this man was. Should the results come back within a few decades’ range, it should be possible to pinpoint the abbot based on the information we have from his burial. He might not be an abbot at all. Bishop William Russell from the Isle of Man was buried in Furness Abbey in 1374. He would have had and been buried with a crozier and episcopal ring.

The crozier and ring will go on display at Furness Abbey for just a few days, from Friday, May 4th until Monday, May 7th.

On April 2nd, 2013, a crew of poorly-paid professionals and volunteers will begin construction near Messkirch, southwestern Germany, of a medieval monastery town using only materials and techniques from the 9th century. That means masons carving stone blocks by hand while blacksmiths forge and sharpen their tools, and it also means no raincoats, authentic period foods cooked as they were 1200 years ago to sustain workers and visitors alike, and teams of oxen carting materials to the work site instead of trucks.

The project is the brainchild of 62-year-old building contractor Bert Geurten, and it’s a dream he’s nurtured since he was 15 years old. In 1965, he saw a scale model of the Plan of Saint Gall, a detailed 9th century architectural drawing of a monastic compound, at the Age of Charlemagne exhibition in Bert (and Charlemagne’s) hometown of Aachen, Germany. It was the first scale model of the Plan ever made — but far from the last; it started a trend — and it ignited young Bert’s imagination so thoroughly that 45 years later he’s making it come to life.

The Plan of St. Gall (so named because the designer, Abbot Haito of Reichenau, dedicated it to Gozbert, Abbot of the Abbey of St. Gall in Switzerland from 816 to 836) is a scale map of a complete Benedictine monastic compound. There’s the monastery itself, of course, but also churches, houses, stables, kitchens, an infirmary, workshops, every component necessary for a successful monastic society and its lay satellites. It is the only surviving architectural drawing between the fall of Rome and the 13th century.

The Carolingian monastery project has some initial funding from local and EU sources, but the $1.3 million they have in the bank is expected to last just a few years. Since the estimated end-date of the project is 2050, fund-raising is going to be a constant issue. Bert Geurten hopes it will be at least partially sustained by visitors coming to see the construction. Meanwhile, he’s pinching pennies and people are so excited about the idea that he has an embarrassment of applications to go through.

Given the tight budget, craftsmen salaries will remain low. “The net wage is about €1,200 (per month),” says Geurten. “I can’t pay more.” The working hours are also a long way from what German trade unions recommend these days. They will work from April 2 — Charlemagne’s birthday — almost without break until St. Martin’s Day, on Nov. 11. During those eight months, there will be one single weekend off. “In the Middle Ages, the rent for the year was always paid on St. Martin’s Day,” said Geurten. The winter break lasts until April when the temperatures are warm enough to work again.

Despite the difficult conditions, the project has been swamped with applications. “I’ve had 85 stone masons apply already,” says Geurten. “They all dream of having the chance to work with their hands.” This also applies to the blacksmith. “They won’t be hammering kitschy horseshoes for tourists. The forge must supply the site with tools,” he adds.

Overall, the construction site will have 20 to 30 permanent staff in addition to volunteers. There has already been a lot of interest. “From Lufthansa pilots to a teacher, all kinds of people have applied.” One candidate even sent his application written in medieval German on a real roll of parchment. Meanwhile, schools will likely be allowed to join in with the site’s work for as long as a week. “We are developing a plan that will enable the children to prepare for their experience in the classroom first,” says Geurten.

I hope they hire that guy who wrote his application in medieval German.

The interest from volunteers bodes well that there will be ongoing interest from paying visitors for the 40 years it’ll take to build this sucker. That has certainly been the case for Guédelon, a castle being built today in Burgundy according to the architectural principles of the ideal military fortress laid down by King Philip Augustus of France in the late 12th, early 13th centuries, using solely the techniques and materials available to workers in the 13th century. Construction has been going along merrily since 1997 and each year, hundreds of thousands of people go to Guédelon. Many of them are repeat customers who want to compare the progress of construction from year to year.

It doesn’t always go that well, though. Ozark Medieval Fortress, a castle modeled on the Guédelon project that has far more modest ambitions than the huge monastery project, unfortunately ran into financial difficulties. Work stopped in November and earlier this month the board voted to list the property and its castle stump for sale for $500,000.

Archaeologists working on the undercroft of York Minster, the 13th century Gothic cathedral that is the largest medieval cathedral north of the Alps, have found human remains that in all likelihood predate the current building. The site has had a church on it since at least the 7th century A.D., but fires, Danes and Normans damaged and destroyed the previous structures. The current iteration took 250 years to build starting in 1220. Since this burial was entirely undisturbed, archaeologists think it took place before the Gothic minster was built around it.

The Very Reverend Keith Jones, Dean of York, said: “York Minster’s walls have been witness to centuries of human life and I feel sure that archaeologists are likely to encounter even more human burials during their three-week tenure: we would expect to find, when working at York Minster, evidence of previous life all around the place.

“Having found the remains of our forebears, they will be reverently cared for until such time as they can be reinterred with the walls of York Minster.”

The bones might even date to the 12th century when the Norman cathedral was still standing. The undercroft, the vaulted cellar below ground level, has archaeological remains covering all of York’s history, from the Roman fort to the Norman foundations. There’s an exhibit of artifacts on display in the undercroft normally, including a luscious Norman-era 12th century relief of sinners being tortured by demons in Hell’s cauldron felicitously known as the Doomstone, but the undercroft was closed to the public as of January this year and will remain so until March 2013. Visitors are allowed to view the archaeologists at work, though.

The closure is part of an ambitious £10.5 million renovation program called York Minster Revealed which, among other priorities, will install wheelchair accessible lifts and ramps in front of and inside the church. For the first time in 40 years, archaeologists were allowed to excavate inside the building in order to prepare for the lift installation. The last time archaeologists got to poke around inside was 1972 when severe structural problems threatened the central tower with collapse. That was when they found the Roman and Norman remains in the undercroft.

In addition to the updating of the amenities for visitors to the church, York Minster Revealed also focuses on developing the rare and precious ancient crafts of stonemasonry and stained glass conservation. York Minster’s Great East Window is one of the world’s largest medieval stained glass windows, and both the masonry in which it’s embedded (it’s buckling) and the glass (darkened by dirt and soot) are in dire need of conservation.

York Minster is one of the few remaining churches to have its own in-house stone yard where craftsmen learn to carve stone using the same techniques and materials their 13th century forebears used. Visitors to the cathedral will be able to attend workshops where they will see the stone masons and glaziers at work and have the opportunity to talk to the craftsmen about the restoration.

All of the masonry is in regular need of replacement, so much so that the minster holds an annual stone auction where stonework that has been removed and replaced with a modern copy is sold to the general public and the profits used to fund further restorations. Prices start at about £30 a block which is a steal for moss-covered, carved 800-year-old limestone. The minster keeps archaeologically significant pieces, of course.

The heart of St. Laurence O’Toole, patron saint of Dublin, was stolen from Christ Church Cathedral sometime between midnight and 12:30 PM Saturday. The heart of the 12th century saint was kept in a heart-shaped wooden box which was held inside a container made of iron bars and hung by a chain on display in Saint Lauds Chapel. The thief or thieves used bolt cutters to break off then bend back the bars on the front side of the box, then reached in and took the wooden box.

Gardaí (Irish police officers) are investigating. They’ve checked CCTV footage of everyone who entered the cathedral between the time it opened at 9:30 AM and when the theft was discovered at 12:30 PM. There were about 40 visitors during that period, and none of them are filmed walking out with a heart-shaped box. There are no signs of a break-in, so it’s possible the thief hid in the church before it was closed for the night only to emerge, steal the heart, and sneak away unseen. A staffer saw a lit candle in the church when he arrived to open the cathedral doors in the morning, perhaps lit by the thief for the expiation of at least one major sin.

The dean of Christ Church Cathedral, the Rev Dermot Dunne, said he was “devastated” by the theft. “It is a priceless treasure that links our present foundation with its founding father,” he said. A church spokeswoman added: “It’s completely bizarre. They didn’t touch anything else. They specifically targeted this. They wanted the heart of Saint Laurence O’Toole.”

There were objects of easily convertible monetary value — like gold chalices and candlesticks — in that chapel that the thieves left untouched.

St. Laurence O’Toole was born Lorcán Ua Tuathail, the son of a local chieftain, in Kildare County, Ireland in 1128. As a boy, Laurence had been kept as a hostage by his father’s liege lord and former enemy. By the time his captivity — which included a spell spent in solitary confinement in a herdsman’s hut — was over, he knew he wanted to be a monk. Despite his ascetic hermit inclinations, he was an extremely successful monk, becoming abbot of a monastery in Glendalough at the age of 25. Just seven years later in 1162 he was made archbishop of Dublin, the first native Irishman to wear that cap.

After the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in 1170, St. Laurence helped negotiate peace terms between Henry II of England and Irish king Rory O’Connor. Henry was concerned that the Norman knights would carve themselves out fiefdoms on Ireland that would put them beyond his control. The 1175 Treaty of Windsor confirmed Rory O’Connor as High King of Ireland but as a vassal of King Henry II. The rest of the Irish chieftains and kinglings were to keep their territories and titles as long as they acknowledged Henry as their suzerain and paid him tribute via Rory O’Connor. Laurence O’Toole was one of the treaty’s witnesses.

His relationship with Henry deteriorated, however, after St. Laurence went to Rome for the Third Lateran Council in 1179. Henry made Laurence swear that he would uphold Henry’s rights in Ireland at the council, but Laurence saw to it that the Dublin diocese was put under the direct protection of Pope Alexander III. In the Treaty of Windsor, the Irish Church had been structured as subordinate to Canterbury. Henry II very famously was not fond of clerics asserting their rights at the expense of the crown.

In 1180, Rory O’Connor sent St. Laurence to negotiate tribute with Henry II. Henry was in no mood to parlay with Laurence and kept him waiting in England for weeks, refusing to see him. When Henry left for Normandy, Laurence followed him. Sick and exhausted from the voyage, St. Laurence got as far the Abbey of St. Victor at Eu, Normandy before he could go no further. He died at Eu on November 14, 1180.

It was the monks at Eu who documented his life, preserved his mortal remains and kept a record of all the miracles that happened at his tomb. Thanks to that documentation, Pope Honorius III canonized Laurence in 1225, just 45 years after his death. At some point in the next 55 years, his heart was moved to Christ Church Cathedral. The cathedral has been a major pilgrimage site ever since.

The Ghent Altarpiece, a dramatic and complex painting on multiple hinged oak panels started by Hubert van Eyck and completed by his brother Jan in 1432, is displayed within a bulletproof glass enclosure in Saint Bavo Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium. Painted in the Ars Nova style that rejected the allegorical and idealized forms of the Middle Ages in favor of depicting nature as observed, the polyptych is a watershed in art history and a masterpiece of Early Netherlandish art.

Its historical and artistic significance is matched only by the complexity of keeping a work of such vastness and variety in reasonably good condition. Fully opened, the 18-panel polyptych is 11 feet by 14.5 feet. Over the centuries, the panels were separated from each other and held in all kinds of questionable environments receiving questionable treatments. An elaborate outer frame that encased the entire altarpiece is thought to have been destroyed during the Reformation, and the panels were taken down and hidden twice to keep them safe from marauding iconoclasts and Calvinists. The three middle upper panels depicting Mary, God and John the Baptist had their original frames removed and the top cropped off sometime in the 18th century.

In 1815 the Diocese of Ghent pawned six of the eight original wing panels for a few hundred bucks then failed to redeem them. The King of Prussia ended up buying them, and during their stay in Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie gallery, the panels were split in two lengthwise and then cradled at the back. German troops helped themselves to more panels from the Ghent cathedral during World War I, but returned not just the looted panels but also the legitimately purchased ones to Belgium to defray some of the reparations debt stipulated in the Versailles Treaty.

In 1940, Belgium decided to ship the altarpiece to the Vatican for safekeeping. It was en route in France when Italy declared war as a German ally, so it stopped in its tracks. Military representatives from Germany, France and Belgium actually signed an agreement to leave the altarpiece alone in Pau for the duration of hostilities, but Hitler had other ideas. In 1942 he had the altarpiece seized and sent to Germany. It ended up being stored in a salt mine until the Americans recovered it after the war and returned it to Belgium.

Then there are the fires, vandalism, thefts (at least six separate thefts over six centuries, including the 1934 theft of the Just Judges panel which has never been solved; a copy made shortly after the theft is in its place now) and even its current rig complicating the altarpiece’s conservation needs. The glass enclosure and steel support structure was erected for security reasons. There are extreme fluctuations in temperature and humidity within, great enemies of old paint and wood.

In 2007, heritage organizations in Belgium raised the alarm about the altarpiece’s condition issues. In 2008, the cathedral formed an advisory committee of government representatives and panel painting conservation specialists to study the situation and devise a conservation plan. They concluded that fluctuating climate conditions inside the glass enclosure needed to be immediately stabilized using short-term solutions like raising the heat in the cathedral, replacing the hot spotlights with cooler daylight lamps and deploying portable humidifiers.

The committee also concluded that the altarpiece should be completely dismantled so that all urgent conservation issues could be addressed. That would give experts a chance to do a thorough, in-depth study of the polyptych to provide individual conservation plans tailored to the specific needs of each panel. That in-depth study was performed in the actual cathedral. They just raised a glass barrier around the altarpiece space so experts could work on site moving the delicate paintings as little as possible while providing a fascinating show for visitors.

The advisory committee submitted a grant proposal to the Getty Foundation’s Panel Painting Initiative to fund the assessment of the structural condition of panel supports and its supporting technical documentation. One of the Panel Painting Initiative’s main objectives is aiding in the transfer of knowledge from senior panel conservators to juniors, and since one doesn’t often get a chance to learn from master conservators working on one of the greatest wood panel paintings of all time, the Getty accepted with alacrity.

They added a codicil requiring that the results of the study, including X-rays, extreme high resolution photographs in both visible spectrum and infrared light, and detailed documentation be uploaded to the web. And so they have been: Closer to Van Eyck: Rediscovering the Ghent Altarpiece. The pictures are so huge you can view details from every panel with microscopic magnification. You can split the screen to compare panels, or compare the photo version to the infrared versions. There are extreme closeups of important details, and pictures of the cleaning tests on each panel which show little clean patches after conservators experimented with dry cleaning using microfiber cloths. The website also offers freely downloadable pdf versions of all the conservation and dendrochronology reports.

It’s amazing, really. I’ve been lost in it all day.