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Detailed photographs are below, and a link at the top left of this page will take you to other paintings on this site of comparably early date, while the table of links at the bottom of the page leads to on site paintings of other saints. At the right is the central portion, showing in the centre the fragmentary figure of Edmund himself standing beside and possibly tied to, the slender tree on the right. There is virtually nothing left of his figure apart from his crown, which has a square, castellated top like a battlemented parapet. But various arrows, piercing the tree as well as Edmund, show fairly clearly , and a figure who is probably the huntsman who found the kings body stands at the far left, possibly pulling out one of the arrows.

Lower down is an allusion to one of the most popular legends about Edmund, that of the wolf (or dog) who found his severed head. The creature stands on its hind legs, front paws braced, presumably against another tree, head turned to look at the saint. The story of the wolf who guarded Edmunds head until it was found was enormously popular, especially in East Anglia, and there is a bench-end carved with the wolf and the head at Hoxne in Suffolk, which has always claimed to be the true place of the martyrdom.

The photograph at the left shows the left hand side of the apse wall. There are three tiers, and there is is very little left of the subject at the top, but the symbolic figure representing the True Church (top left) holds a small red-painted cross (possibly once a processional Cross with a long shaft). There may be a building in the background, and/or the figure may hold a model of a church. Immediately below are the two archers, and below them the unidentified figure who is either a donor or a saint. The photograph below right shows the righthand side, described below.

The most important thing about the figure at the top right, representing Unbelief or Paganism is that she is spilling water from a pitcher (detail, top right). As a general rule, this figure, who is also sometimes described as Synagogue and represents the limitations of the Old Law, is blindfolded and has a broken staff. It is impossible now to know whether the broken staff and blindfold were once visible here. There is no association with an upturned pitcher as far as I know, but spilling water is sometimes an attribute of Intemperance, Excess or Emptiness in its metaphorical meaning of Vanitas. There may simply be confusion about categories of personification here; alternatively, it is possible that the emphasis is on Blind Ignorance, which understands nothing and whose teaching is thus vain. In some ways the figure is close to a minor allegorical character in Spensers sprawling 16th century epic The Faerie Queene, who spills the water from her pitcher and runs away in fear when she encounters personified Truth¹.
Two more archers are below this figure, one of them with legs very elegantly crossed, and below them is a haloed figure with what is possibly a key at the top left. St. Peter is thus a possibility, but if this is a key, the figure is not holding it, and other names, such as St. Felix (of Dunwich) the 7th century Burgundian evangelist and later bishop of the East Angles, or his Irish contemporary St. Fursey, who founded a monastery at nearby Burgh Castle, have been suggested.

Incomplete and faint as these paintings now are, they are important as early survivals in the commemoration history of a very popular saint. The ancient carving around the arch of the apse is visible in the photographs; the two iron rings which once supported the Lenten Veil in front of the Sanctuary are still there, and the fourteenth century painting of St. Christopher in the nave is also on these pages.

¹Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene:Books 1-111; ed. D. Brooks-Davies, Everyman, 1987, Book 1, Cantos X-X1. Spensers character runs home to her equally ignorant mother, called Corceca (blind of heart, as in Ephesians 4:18). Spensers context is a Reformation one of Catholic v. Protestant, but the structural similarity in the allegory remains, I think.

16/12/00

© Anne Marshall 2000