Essex Review
Extract from No 186 Volume XLVII (April 1938)
The Picture of St Edmund at
Greensted Church
By Sir Gurney Benham, F.S.A.
In the Essex Review of 1913
there appeared an article on Greensted Church, by Aug. V. Phillips. Many other notices of the church have
appeared in our past volumes from time to time.
But no allusion has hitherto been made in the Essex Review, or in the
Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, to a remarkable painting of
St Edmund, preserved in the church, nor has any reproduction of that picture appeared. We are now able to show it for the first
time. it is a small picture painted in
oil on a round-headed wooden panel.
The story is that in the year
870 King Edmund, the last nominal King of East Anglia – that is of Norfolk and
Suffolk – was defeated by the Danes at a battle near Thetford and was
captured. Refusing to renounce
Christianity he was tied to a tree and shot by Danish archers. They also decapitated him. His body was removed 33 years later to the
town afterwards known as Bury St Edmunds.
A great Abbey was built there and the relics of King Edmund became
famous for working miracles. A century
later, in 1010, the Danes were again on the warpath, devastating Suffolk. They pillaged Bury St Edmunds and its
Abbey. One faithful monk remained in the
Abbey and succeeded in taking away St Edmund’s body to London, finding refuge
for it in St Gregory’s church near St Paul’s.
Three years later, when panic had subsided, the sacred remains were
solemnly taken back to Bury St Edmunds.
The procession passed through Stratford Langthorne to Chigwell,
Lambourne and Stapleford Abbotts, and thence by Stanford Rivers to Greensted
near Ongar. There it rested for the
night in a chapel near the Manor House.
The present parish church of Greensted is believed to be that privileged
sanctuary.
The structure is unique, the
nave being built of split oak trees. ….
As evidence of the antiquity of their workmanship it was pointed out by the
late Dr Henry Laver, F.S.A., that the trunks were not sawn, but cleft by axes.
As to the painting there is no
record of how and when it was given to the church. It is considered by experts to date from the
year 1500. The manor and living of
Greensted belonged to the Bourchiers, Earls of Essex, from 1367 onward till the
family became extinct in the male line. In 1491 the presentation was in the
hands of ‘Thos. Bourchier and other feoffees of the manor’. Sir Wm. Parr married the sole heiress of the
Bourchiers and became the Earl of Essex and Lord of the manor. The picture might have been given by some
member of the Bourchier family or by one of the Parr family.
It will be seen that the
picture shows the King bound to a tree, wearing a crown, but otherwise nude,
except for a loin cloth. Three arrows
are shown piercing him. Two archers are
portrayed in the background, one in Roman armour. At the foot is shown the Saint’s severed
head. This duplication of the head in
the painting is to emphasise the fact that he was decapitated – according to
some accounts before he was dead. A
painted panel in the rood-screen of Stambourne Church (near Yeldham) represents
St Edmund carrying his head, another method of indicating martyrdom by
decapitation. This latter method gives
rise to legends, in the case of St Denys of France and St Osyth of Essex, that
the martyred saints actually carried their heads after decapitation.
We may suppose that the
painting was at one time shown in the church, and that it was removed to the
tower either to save it from the iconoclasts or because it was regarded as
superstitious and unsuitable for display in a Protestant place of worship.
Saint Edmund, King and Martyr,
has two days in the Calendar, namely 20 November, the reputed anniversary of
his martyrdom, at Hoxne, in Norfolk, and 9 June, ‘Translation of Edmund, K. and
M.’ meaning the date of the restoration of the remains from London to Bury St
Edmunds Abbey in 1013. Only the former
(20 November) is retained it the Church of England Calendar. There is some reason for supposing the
correct day for the Feast of the Translation of St Edmund, should be 29 April,
the 9 June being really the Feast of Translation of St Edmund, an Englishman by
birth, Archbishop of Canterbury, who died a natural death in France, at Soissy,
on 16 November, 1242, his remains being translated to Pontigny, where (says
Baring Gould) his relicts attract numerous pilgrims.
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