Dating Nathan: The Oldest Stained Glass Window in England?

Abstract

Relatively little is known about stained glass windows in England predating c. 1170; however, art-historical evaluation by Caviness (1987) argued that four figures from the “Ancestors series” of Canterbury Cathedral, usually dated to the late 12th and early 13th century, in fact date earlier (c. 1130–1160). This would place them amongst the earliest stained glass in England, and the world. Building on our previous work, we address Caviness’s hypothesis using a methodology based upon analysis of a few, well-measured heavy trace elements and a 3D-printed attachment for a pXRF spectrometer that facilitates in situ analysis. The results confirm two major periods of “recycling” or re-using medieval glass. The first is consistent with Caviness’s argument that figures predating the 1174 fire were reused in the early 13th century. The results suggest that in addition to figures, ornamental borders were reused, indicating the presence of more early glass than previously thought. In the second period of recycling (1790s), surviving figures from the Ancestors series were removed and adapted into rectangular panels for insertion into large Perpendicular-style windows elsewhere in the cathedral. The results show that the glasses used to adapt the panels to a rectangular shape were broadly contemporary with the glasses used to glaze the original Ancestors windows, again representing a more extensive presence of medieval glass in the windows.

Beyond Heritage Science: A Review

“…Similarly, recent 'windowlyser' reassessment of the west end entrance 'Ancestors of Christ' narrative windows of Canterbury's Benedictine Cathedral Priory (Kent) has confirmed earlier researchers' suspicions that these should be re-dated earlier to c. 1130-60, challenging accepted notions of the iconographic and liturgical development of this great church into the 13th century (following a fire) and the impact there of the cult shrine of Thomas Becket (d. 1170); this in turn informed a recent digital recreation of the shrine integrating the new scientific findings with the extant written and material record [14,15]. Scientific analysis of recovered glass from the ruins of the Benedictine abbey of Dunfermline (Fife, Scotland, UK) might also suggest a late 13th-century-early 14th-century focus for a major redevelopment of this great royal mausoleum and cult church where the historical record is highly fragmentary, even silent.…”