Canterbury Cathedral Priory in the Age of Becket. By Peter Fergusson. 190 pp. incl. 69 col. + 101 b. & w. ills. (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2011), £50. ISBN 978–0–300–17569–1.

Reviewed by JULIAN LUXFORD

JUST WAS WESTERN philosophy is sometimes characterised as a series of footnotes to Plato, so modern writing on the architecture of Canterbury’s cathedral priory often seems to represent footnotes to Robert Willis’s foundational studies of the church (1845) and conventual buildings (1868). The base text for Peter Fergusson’s new book is the second of these, in which Willis published a detailed engraving of the so-called ‘waterworks’ drawing which is bound into the back of the Eadwine Psalter (now in Trinity College, Cambridge), and used it as a guide to the mid-twelfth-century fabric of the precinct. This drawing, the documentary mainstay of Fergusson’s study, shows the cathedral and ancillary buildings in a sort of idealised, God’s-eye perspective. It is a map onto which a study can be plotted, and this is how it is used here. Where Fergusson differs fundamentally from Willis is in his range: Willis looked at everything down to the Dissolution, while the current book focuses on the precinct in the time of Prior Wibert (1152/53–67). In a series of chapters, the water system, great cloister, cellarer’s court, Green Court, infirmary buildings, treasury, and water tower are analysed to show how they fit into a sequence of works carried out in the decade after 1154. Here and there, this involves disagreement with both Willis and more recent authors (e.g. pp.17, 73, 74, 115 and 135): some of the suggested revisions will probably prove contentious, but most of the supporting arguments are clear enough and contribute to the book’s scholarly value. Room is also found in the final chapter to discuss works on the cathedral church that can be attributed to the same period, including the decorated extensions of the east transept towers and renovations of the chapels of St Andrew and St Anselm. Chapter 6, which discusses the buildings of the Green Court and argues persuasively for the influence on some of them of continental architecture and manuscript decoration, represents the book’s best qualities, combining close, informed reading of the architecture with a well-balanced grasp of the wider artistic and cultural context. As in his other publications, Fergusson explores the symbolism of architecture, making a solid case for reading buildings like the treasury and entry complex to the Green Court in the light of biblical prototypes and the medieval architecture of Jerusalem. The waterworks drawing, whose metaphysical function, if it had one, is very obscure, is also paralleled with the maps of Jerusalem found in a handful of continental psalter manuscripts, the suggestion being that the cathedral priory itself was understood symbolically as a Jerusalem of both earthly and heavenly character.

While the idea that ‘the Bible was consciously spread across the Priory’s buildings, filling them with associations’ (p.150) is a leitmotif, the overarching concept that binds the architectural description together and effectively governs what is included is that of patronage. From the outset, all the works discussed are ascribed to Prior Wibert, who is thereby established as an important agent in the development of twelfth-century English architecture. The possibility of patronage on the part of Archbishop Theobald (1139–61) or anyone else is set aside in favour of a ‘great patron’ theory which has parallels in contemporary chronicles. This makes a certain amount of sense, because renovation of conventual buildings normally seems to have been the responsibility of those who inhabited them. Moreover, there was a fashion in which all building done by medieval monks was ascribable to the meta-patronage of their superior, regardless of how it was actually organised and paid for. On the other hand, the hard evidence for Wibert’s involvement is confined to his obituary in the monastery’s martyrology, which attributes only the water system to him. While one would not expect such an account to set out the gamut of a very active patron’s achievements, it would be reasonable, if the works were understood in the Middle Ages as a prioral initiative, to anticipate reference to such magnificent buildings as the cloister, treasury and infirmary and Green Court complexes. The same martyrology’s entry for Archbishop Lanfranc (1070–89) is not at all coy about the extent of his architectural patronage: in addition to constructing the cathedral church from its foundations, it says, he rebuilt the cloisters, cellarer’s buildings, refectory, dormitory etc., along with ‘all necessary offices’ and ‘all buildings within the ambit of the court’.1 As the central relevant written document, Wibert’s obituary is duly printed in an appendix, with a translation by Mary Pedley. But what is presented is not taken from the earliest available transcript,2 and contains a number of mistakes. For example, Wibert was not buried under something called a ‘capulus’; he was buried ‘in capitulo’ (in the chapter house), where candles were lit at the head and foot of his tomb. The first collect at his anniversary was ‘Inclina domine’ (‘Incline thy ear, O Lord’), not the otherwise unattested ‘In eleemosyna domine’. And ‘cappa[m]’, with a double ‘p’ and mark of suspension over the final ‘a’, cannot be translated as ‘chapel’: it means ‘cope’.3 Fortunately, despite the obit­uary’s importance as a tangible link to Wibert’s patronage, its content is not brought to bear on the careful and intelligent blend of architectural and intellectual history that is the study’s main strength. Canterbury Cathedral Priory in the Age of Becket is ambitious in what it attempts and convincing in its presentation of an organic,­ centrally controlled programme of works (however this was managed). It is beautifully produced, and constitutes an important addition to the literature on one of England’s major monastic complexes.

1    London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 20, fol.189v.
2    London, British Library, MS Arundel 68, fol.43 (fifteenth century); a late twelfth-century copy, not mentioning Wibert’s burial in the chapter house, is London, British Library, MS Cotton Claudius C VI, fol.171v.
3    This is how W.H. St John Hope read it: see J. Wickham Legg and W.H. St John Hope: Inventories of Christchurch Canterbury, London 1902, p.44.