Stained glass windows from Canterbury Cathedral go on display at British Museum pressandjournal.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from pressandjournal.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Depictions of Becket (pictured) in the glass were later vandalised
Experts analysing the glass under a microscope now believe the panels and scenes within the stained glass window were ‘bunged together’ in the wrong order when they were restored in the 1660s.
The pieces being reassembled in the correct order involve a description of a man known as Ralph the Leper being cured below an image of another, Eilward of Westoning, being castrated and blinded as punishment for theft. When Eilward drank Becket’s blood after his death he is said to have regained his sight and organs.
Experts could find no evidence of leprosy in that panel, but when they discovered sores painted on a man in the glass of another, Leonie Seliger, director of stained-glass conservation at the cathedral, said she scared colleagues by shouting: ‘Yes! We have leprosy!’
Last modified on Mon 1 Feb 2021 07.11 EST
One of the most shocking chapters of medieval history, embracing royalty, power, sacrilege and bloodshed, is to be told through the UK’s first major exhibition on the life, death and legacy of Thomas Becket, opening at the British Museum this spring.
Its centrepiece is a stained glass window from Canterbury Cathedral, the scene of the priest’s brutal murder by four knights loyal to King Henry II in 1170. The 6-metre-high window, originally one of 12 ”miracle” windows created in the early 1200s, has never before left the cathedral nor been seen at eye level by the public.