ST. DUNSTAN
window has been very cleverly made up by Mr. Caldwell from what he recovered of the old leading and glass.
The roundel on the left at the bottom seems to represent the consecration in the Saxon Cathedral of St. Dunstan as Bishop of Worcester in 957. St. Dunstan had been ordained Deacon by Alphage the Bald, Bishop of Winchester; but here the ceremony is Ordination to the Priesthood and Consecration as Bishop at the same time, as was usual in the case of those who were to be consecrated but had not yet received Priest's Orders. The consecrator is an Archbishop, certainly Odo; he wears the pallium and has a crozier in his hand. The chalice and vestments are to be delivered to the newly ordained priest; the book belongs to the consecration ceremony and was held over the neck of the person to be consecrated bishop.
The roundel on the right at the bottom represents the Archbishop with a group of men on either side of him. Mr. Caldwell thinks those on the left are the married clerks being separated from those on the right, the monks. No such incident is recorded in the life of St. Dunstan, but he sanctioned such a proceeding to Oswald of Worcester and to Ethelwold of Winchester, and it is quite likely that such a policy would be assigned to him by a thirteenth-century glass painter.
The Festival of St. Dunstan was kept at Canterbury on May 19 as a Red Letter Day, and was observed with an Octave. It is mentioned in all the Kalendars—the Commemoration was ordered by King Canute in the eleventh century; the sum of iiis. ivd. was paid by the Sacrist at the Cathedral on his Feast Day for extra music and bell-ringing (pro sonitu) in A.D. 1273, and an extra vd. on the day of the Octave.
The jewels and ornaments pertaining to the Altar of St. Dunstan were kept in the Middle Ages in the great cupboard that stood where Archbishop Bourchier's tomb now is on the north side of the Sanctuary. In the inventory of Prior Eastry (dated February 2, 1315–1316), now in the British Museum,[1] there were two jewelled staves, probably used on St. Dunstan's day by the Rulers of the Choir (one was a small one of silver with gems and head of ivory the other larger, partly silver with gems and ornamented with a tooth of St. Andrew). The relics of the
- ↑ British Museum, Galba, E. IV.
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