Crusader credentials

Introduction

As I have travelled around the county I have become increasingly aware of the links that might exist between many of the villages and the various crusades of the medieval period.  Several Templar preceptorys directly contributed to the crusades in the Holy Land.  There are connections with Henry IV who went on a crusade to the Baltic territories with the Teutonic Knights.  Less obvious are suggestions that some villages were involved in the crusades to reconquer Spain.  These are some of my thoughts, not backed by any research, that occurred to me while visiting a village along the coastal strip.  Do bear in mind that I might be wrong about everything...

Above:  the village church, dedicated to St Mary, was holding an afternoon "strawberry tea" to raise funds.  This is a view from the main road of the north side of the church, with the principal entrance to the building through the north porch.  Elderly ladies, young children, various no-nonsense matrons at the tea urns.

Above:  the south elevation, much quieter and secluded.  Note the south porch.  It is not unusual for churches to have more than one porch.

Above:  a closer look at the south porch, which seems to have been added at a later date to the rest of the building (the courses of brickwork do not line up, and the bricks are a different colour.  The niche above the arch would formerly have held the image of a saint.  There is a tradition that weapons were left in church porches (they could not be taken into the church itself) and sometimes secure porches became mini-arsenals where weapons were kept permanently.

Above:  medieval inscription which tells us the porch was paid for by the Guild of St Mary (Orate piabs frum et Guild sororum sce Marie Huu ecclesie quoruin expens t suptibs fabricat).  What was the Guild of St Mary?  There is evidence that guilds and fraternities were active in raising funds and recruits for the crusades.

Above:  inside the church looking towards the inner door of the south porch (which was locked).  Notice the two columns, which are the only ones in the church with ornate capitals, indicating that the entrance from the nave into the south aisle was of considerable significance.  Also note above the right hand column a carved head (looks like a white blob).

Above:  a more general view of the south aisle, which was (in my opinion) probably the focus of the Guild of St Mary where the fraternity would hold their religious services and formal meetings.  As you can see, the other capitals are very plain (also the arcade splays outwards, slightly alarmingly).  Also notice the stained glass windows, which I will come to later.

Above:  returning to the carved head above the right-hand column, this is a thirteenth-century carving with bands across the head and chin.  There are twenty or so similar medieval heads in English churches.  Their meaning is obscure but they are supposed to represent a headdress worn by pilgrims who had visited the shrine of Santiago de Compostella in northern Spain.

Above:  all the windows in the south aisle held stained glass, different from the windows in the rest of the church.  Pevsner is very dismissive about this glass saying they are commonplace nineteenth-century designs.  This puzzled me, as I have seen a lot of stained glass windows and I have never seen examples like these.  Undoubtedly they are mid-Victorian, but it is possible they replaced more ancient versions of the same symbols.  It is worth considering them one by one.  The first held a shield with three crescent moons - a familiar enough heraldic device.

Above (screenprint):  except that the crescent moon is also an Islamic symbol.  This medieval manuscript suggests that crusaders fought Muslim forces with the crescent moon on their shield.  Coincidence you might say.

Above:  the next window had a design of arches, together with the symbols of church and state.  A simple colourful design you might think.  But to my imagination there was something Moorish about these arches.

Above (screenprint):  they reminded me of the arches in the Alhambra Palace in the former Moorish caliphate of Al-Andalus in southern Spain (scene of reconquest and auto de fe).

Above:  the last window I looked at in detail was this stella crown.  Possibly meant to be a crown of the Virgin Mary (but hardly likely in a Protestant church in the mid-Victorian period).  A search on Google Images suggests that queens of Navarre (a northern part of Spain that remained Christian after the Arab invasions) wore stella crowns - Blanche of Navarre and Joan of Navarre for example. 

Above:  in front of it was a colour portrait of Queen Elizabeth II - perhaps propped up there in 1953 and not moved since.  Why would a picture of our current Queen be placed in front of a stained glass crown?  As an adherent of Jungian synchronicity I think there is more happening here than meets the eye.

Above (screenprint):  scene from Cecil B deMille's 1935 epic The Crusades showing Queen Beregaria of Navarre wearing what looks like a stella crown, standing beside her husband King Richard the Lionheart (no doubting his crusader credentials).

Above:  directly opposite the church, on the other side of the main road, was the Saracen's Head pub.  Was this where the Guild of St Mary held feasts and social meetings?  Did they bring back an actual head of a Saracen, displayed on a pike?

I freely acknowledge that this is all supposition and imaginative conjecture.  There is no hard evidence I can produce (by which I mean original documents).  But these experiences have happened so many times to me that  I think it must be more than just coincidence.