Gabriel Byng | Universtät Wien (original) (raw)

Journal Articles by Gabriel Byng

The Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, 2023

Agnes Blannbekin’s description of her mystical experience on Easter morning, 1293, is a rare medi... more Agnes Blannbekin’s description of her mystical experience on Easter morning, 1293, is a rare medieval account not only of the affective consequences of a spatial transgression in a church building but also of its direct implication in a spiritual revelation. According to her Life and Revelations, she heard a command to conceal herself behind an altar in the church of St. Michael, Vienna, where she would feel the pain of the Crucifixion. Her anguish at being so out of place in the church drove her to pray for her revelation to end and to be given the strength to leave. She provides, thus, a rare first-person account of how the gendered regulation of church space, so often in evidence in sources written by men, was manifested in an embodied, affective experience. The incident develops themes that extend across the Life, especially to other Easter-time revelations, and demonstrates the close attention Blannbekin often gave to architectural organization and ornamentation. This article describes how her account drew together associations that stretched across liturgical time, architectural setting, and literary precedent in order to evoke the profundity, and significance, of her bodily identification with the Passion.

Journal of Medieval History, 2023

In 1408 Vienna’s politics were traversed by violence. Dynastic conflict among the Habsburgs and... more In 1408 Vienna’s politics were traversed by violence. Dynastic conflict among the Habsburgs and internecine differences between residents culminated in executions and overthrows of the city’s government. Concurrently, building work at the city’s largest church–overseen by leading figures in its civic politics, also victims of one of the year’s purges–slackened. It was a moment when high politics, architectural production and the everyday practice of urban life intersected in ways unusually visible to thehistorian. Historians have adopted different historiographical positions for positing medieval architecture as a socio-political phenomenon, based on unilateral acts of princes and churchmen, dynamics of class conflict, administrative techniques of project managers or shared ‘imaginaries’. This article reflects on the events of 1408 using a new approach, taken from practice theory, to describe how the building site, reconceptualised as an open-ended bundle of doings and sayings, constituted and transformed the late medieval Viennese social.

Word & Image, 2022

At the turn of the fifteenth century, architectural ethics acquired renewed prominence in England... more At the turn of the fifteenth century, architectural ethics acquired renewed prominence in England. A long-established discourse that had been developed by major figures in Europe's intellectual history, and that threatened to reject all but the most utilitarian church-building projects, was given new energy, as well as a new English vocabulary and a newly extensive application, in heretical tracts and poems. At the same time, the poet most associated with the Lancastrian court, John Lydgate, was translating a lavish paean to ingenious and luxurious craftsmanship, while his patron's circle was engaged in a wave of lavish building projects in cathedrals, universities, and parish churches-and, indeed, was prosecuting Lollards for their criticism of the same. Most remarkable, however, is that, having been scrupulously suppressed in the 1410s, a concern for restrained architecture would re-emerge twenty years later as a widely shared architectural ideology among England's elite, including the king, Henry VI. For thirty years, it would come to shape a series of significant building projects. This article argues that this change must be understood as representing the reconstitution of a number of ideas and claims, necessitated by the dissolution of the interdependent antagonisms of the 1410s, in the context of newly influential spiritual, ethical, and sensory discourses.

Environment, Space, Place, 2021

Scholars have long been interested in how people experienced places in the past, often relying fo... more Scholars have long been interested in how people experienced places in the past, often relying for their evidence either on modern engagements with surviving landscapes, buildings and objects, or on contemporary descriptions of the ritualised or required activities that took place in and around them. This article argues that both approaches risk eliminating the subjectivity of historical agents and, thus, the ground of experience itself, assuming an unjustifiable uniformity either among historical persons or between historical persons and modern scholars. Historians thus need to find ways to return the specificity and individuality of historical subjects to their accounts of the experience of place. This article proposes that they should turn to recent work in archaeology, literary studies and cognitive science to find methodologies for describing the 'historical phenomenology' of a place, combining knowledge of material conditions, cultural and social environments and particular embodied encounters to produce 'ecological' accounts of specific place experiences in the past. It applies such an approach to an account of a pilgrimage made by a Florentine merchant in 1411 to 'St Patrick's Purgatory', a small but continentally renowned building on an island in northwest Ireland. By reading 'among' a broad range of sources, including a letter he sent describing the phenomena of his experience of the Purgatory, contemporary pilgrimage literature, medieval soteriological doctrines and the physical qualities of the Purgatory itself, this article is able to describe both critical elements of his phenomenological ecology and their dynamics as they combined in an embodied experience of place.

Journal of Material Culture, 2021

The pax was an object intended both to symbolise and to enforce peace among Christian congregatio... more The pax was an object intended both to symbolise and to enforce peace among Christian congregations in pre-modern Europe and so when a man named John Browne smashed one over the head of the parish clerk during one of the holiest services of the year in a church in southeast England something had evidently gone wrong. This article is dedicated to explaining not only why Browne reacted with such fury at precisely the moment when he was expected to do the opposite but also why the pax and the clerk were chosen as his victims. The pax's material and visual qualities are integral, and overlooked, parts of this story but it is only by relating them to its representational and institutional contexts that Browne's actions begin to make sense. By integrating the material and the semiotic in this way, this article posits a conceptual structure for explicating not only an important dimension of the relationship between materiality, representation and affectivity but also how such relationships can, indeed must, be historicised to particular objects, ideologies and institutions.

Journal of Medieval History, 2019

Medieval historians have long emphasised the social significance of the installation of fixed and... more Medieval historians have long emphasised the social significance of
the installation of fixed and owned seats in English parish churches,
but its impact was affective and ideological too. Since the late
thirteenth century, church authorities had decreed that all
worshippers should have equal access to the nave but seating
introduced an object with many of the characteristics of private
property into space theoretically held in common. Judges and
bishops not only rued this as a corruption of Christian
egalitarianism but also feared the opportunities for sensory
enrichment, privacy and conflict that came with purchased pews.
A new proprietary culture developed in churches that stimulated
new practices, affective bonds and ideas about how entitlements
and hierarchies from parochial life should or could be
transplanted into the nave space.

Architectural History, 2016

Art historians usually find little evidence for the nature of communication between patrons and a... more Art historians usually find little evidence for the nature of communication between patrons and architects in the Middle Ages. Scholarly opinion has often placed the burden of new design with masons, but over the course of the later twentieth century this claim has been revised and nuanced. This paper uses the evidence of wills and contracts in order to answer two questions: what techniques did medieval patrons use to describe their wishes to their masons; and how prescriptive were their requirements? Its conclusions suggest that patrons, even of local or parochial projects, could make highly specific and creative demands for new works, based on critical and perceptive judgements of recently constructed buildings in their local area. It recreates the discursive and disputatious design process adopted in several parishes as they planned, contracted and executed new church buildings.

Journal of the British Archaeological Association , 2014

THE Minstrels’ Gallery of Exeter Cathedral has received attention from almost every major account... more THE Minstrels’ Gallery of Exeter Cathedral has received attention from almost every major account of the church’s fabric but has never been taken as a subject in its own right. This paper seeks to review and assess existing interpretations of the gallery’s construction and purpose, along with those of the nave’s north entrance with which the gallery’s history is inextricably linked. In addition to evaluating existing scholarship, this paper will also propose three further theses. Firstly, that the gallery was inserted into a finished nave bay, probably in the 1350s or 1360s, which already contained a north porch built entirely by the mason Thomas of Witney on the foundations of its Romanesque predecessor. Secondly, that its function was to offer an inexpensive alternative to the singing-gallery which was planned but not built in the image screen on the cathedral’s west front. Thirdly, that the role of the gallery and the north entrance to the nave in the Palm Sunday liturgy has influenced the iconography of the nave and gallery. This paper seeks to gather together the wealth of interest which the gallery has attracted over the last two centuries and to contribute to this exceptional history of scholarship.

Essex Society for Archaeology and HistoryTransactions, 2015

is widely recognised as one of the outstanding buildings of Essex but the dating and patronage of... more is widely recognised as one of the outstanding buildings of Essex but the dating and patronage of its late medieval work is still poorly understood. This article lays out the evidence for the chronology of building work from the late 1430s up to the 1520s, encompassing the chancel, tower, porches, aisles, nave and clerestorey, based on an exceptionally long run of churchwardens' accounts and a large amount of testamentary evidence. It also analyses the records of its financing and argues that the town's leadership adopted several different financial models over the fifteenth century, gradually moving from a broad-based to an increasingly exclusive funding programme. Together these allow for the projects patronage to be reconceived as a delicate balance affected by the parish's leadership between changing economic, social and cultural forces, and their shared ambitions for a spectacular parish church. INTRODUCTION The church of St Mary, Saffron Walden, has a double distinction-for being one of the largest and finest Perpendicular churches in the county and for being, in part at least, the work of two of England's greatest late medieval architects, Simon Clerk and John Wastell. The near-complete reconstruction of the church in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is unusually well documented, at least for a medieval parish church. There is an exceptionally long run of churchwardens' accounts, from 1438 to c.1490, a famous contract of 1485 between the churchwardens and Clerk and Wastell, and a useful set of wills from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, picking up where the churchwardens' accounts leave off. The building is undoubtedly one of the grandest churchwarden-run architectural projects of the Middle Ages. Although this would seem to provide historians with both the motive and the means of unpicking the church's chronology, it is still poorly understood. This may be seen, for example with the work's commencement, for which the secondary literature has suggested dates over a fifty-year spectrum. William J. Fancett 1 and Bettley and Pevsner give c.1450, 2 a visitor from the Essex Archaeological Society in the 1930s asserted 1485 (based on testamentary evidence-he does not appear to have known of the contract of that year), 3 the church's guide book by Kenneth Dixon suggests 'by 1437' 4 and the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME) asserted 'about the middle of the 15th century, or somewhat earlier'. 5 Elizabeth Allan argues for three waves of work from 1439 to after 1485. 6 The earliest historian of the church, Lord Braybrooke, plumped for 'the reigns of Henry VI and VII'. 7 The finish date is also variable-ranging from c.1525 (Bettley and Pevsner) and c.1526 (Fancett and the RCHME) to c.1530 (church guidebook). The construction of the fifteenth-century additions is also disputed but most authors have used or adapted the early archaeological analysis of the RCHME (refer to plan in Fig. 1). It argued that the chancel was built first, followed by its clerestorey (in the mid fifteenth century) and, in the third quarter of the fifteenth century, the tower. The new nave was then joined to the tower, and, at the same time, the north and south aisles were rebuilt, and the south porch added. It dates the north porch to c.1500. Lastly, in the early sixteenth century, came the nave clerestorey, the chancel arch (on older responds) and turrets, and alterations made to the north and south chapels c.1526. Fancett largely followed the RCHME in

Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 2015

The contract for the construction of the chapel of the Blessed Virgin in the cemetery of Holy Tri... more The contract for the construction of the chapel of the Blessed Virgin in the cemetery of Holy Trinity, Southchurch, Essex, is probably the earliest surviving building contract in England. It dates from 1293 and recounts the instructions of Sir Peter de Southchurch for the construction of a large, freestanding chapel for his father’s burial. The chapel does not survive, if it was ever built, and the contract has been almost entirely disregarded by scholars, including L F Salzman, with the exception of some local historians of the 1920s-40s. Its significance for our understanding of contracting for building work, gentry culture, and the construction of detached chapels has been wholly overlooked. This paper includes a transcription and translation of the document.

The Antiquaries Journal, Feb 2015

The contract for the building of the north aisle of Biddenham, Bedfordshire, in 1522 is an except... more The contract for the building of the north aisle of Biddenham, Bedfordshire, in 1522 is an exceptional document that escaped the surveys of L. F. Salzman, John Harvey and most later scholars. Unlike other surviving medieval building contracts, it is the rough draft of an indenture, showing the alterations and changes that were made before it was copied into a neat, final version and sealed. By surveying these changes it is possible to delineate, for the first time, the process of negotiation engaged in by its patron, Sir William Butler, and the mason, John Laverok. Unusual too are the details it provides of Butler’s collaboration with the parish in building the well-constructed aisle that would bear his arms. This went further than simply defraying the cost of the work and is of significance for our wider understanding of the organisation and financing of parish church construction in the sixteenth century. Most importantly, it demonstrates the breadth and complexity of forms that cooperation could take between gentry and parish, and shows that projects with the arms of a single family could nevertheless be funded collaboratively.

Sussex Archaeological Collections , Dec 2013

The fabric accounts for the building of Bolney tower provide important insights into the patronag... more The fabric accounts for the building of Bolney tower provide important insights into the patronage of church construction and the organisation of building work in the early sixteenth century. Although they have long been identified as churchwardens’ accounts, this paper argues that they are in fact private building accounts kept by the main patron of the new building work, John Bolney. As a result of this identification his role in its planning and organisation may be studied. Far from being a disconnected member of the gentry, John Bolney led both the fundraising and management of the project, providing patronage for local labourers, and received support from the wider parish, including free labour and donations. By studying the accounts in detail, it is also possible to extend our knowledge of how parochial building campaigns could be organised, with master mason and a few leading craftsmen from an urban workshop contracted for the design, cutting and laying. The bulk of the workforce was made up of local labourers, with some wealthy locals motivated by piety to give their time for free. New light is also shed on the timing of the tower’s construction, its organisation and materials.

Book Chapters by Gabriel Byng

History of Trinity College, Cambridge, 2025

This chapter will review the architectural development of King’s Hall up until the foundation of ... more This chapter will review the architectural development of King’s Hall up until the foundation of Trinity College. Its purpose, however, is less to survey than to historicise, to set college buildings in context in the development of the college ‘type’, influenced by innovations in Oxford, competition between colleges in Cambridge, and domestic and monastic architecture. It will ask about the significance of royal patronage and of cultures of architectural display in fourteenth century Cambridge, the formation of the idea of the form of the Cambridge college, and the influence of non-collegiate buildings: houses, hostels and monasteries.

Tributes to Paul Binski: Medieval Gothic: Art, Architecture & Ideas, 2021

The 'Tabernacles' War' ii, c.1400: New light on the Competition between icons and relics in late ... more The 'Tabernacles' War' ii, c.1400: New light on the Competition between icons and relics in late medieval rome 9. Jean-Marie Guillouët 124

The Urban Church in Late Medieval England. Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 2019

Patrick Collinson's memorably paradoxical description of Elizabethan governance was as 'a republi... more Patrick Collinson's memorably paradoxical description of Elizabethan governance was as 'a republic which happened also to be a monarchy: or vice versa'. 1 Of his two 'sketches' of early modern republican politics, one is the subject of this chapter, namely, the self-government of the parishes of England's towns and would-be towns. 2 Mark Goldie has similarly described a contemporary parochial 'republicanism' manifested in urban office holding, that is, 'the active involvement of the citizen rather than the passive exercise of the franchise'. 3 Since the 1980s, although historians have tended to push the ideas of polis and citizenship further back into the sixteenth century, social historians have described a countervailing trend at the level of communal self-government. They have tended to found a concentration of power in the hands of a wealthy few during, and before, Elizabeth's reign, stimulated by economic polarisation, demographic expansion and a new consciousness of social and cultural division and exclusion. 4 Steve Hindle, for example, argues that the installation of 'vestries', governing bodies that began appearing in parishes in the mid-sixteenth century, 5 represented 'a de facto tendency towards oligarchy … [in which] political participation was relatively circumscribed, and reflected the social and economic ascendency of village elites'. 6 137 1

A Companion to Medieval Pilgrimage, 2024

Ralph Erskine and the Invention of Clare Hall, exhibition catalogue, Oct 15, 2016

Writing the Lives of People and Things AD 500-1700, 2016

Construction History Society Conference Transactions, 2014

Books by Gabriel Byng

Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in Cambridge explores the archaeology, art, and archit... more Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in Cambridge explores the archaeology, art, and architecture of Cambridge in the Middle Ages, a city marked not only by its exceptional medieval university buildings but also by remarkable parish churches, monastic architecture, and surviving glass, books, and timber work.

The chapters in this volume cover a broad array of medieval, and later, buildings and objects in the city and its immediate surrounds, both from archaeological and thematic approaches. In addition, a number of chapters reflect on the legacy and influence medieval art and architecture had on the later city. Along with medieval colleges, chapels, and churches, buildings in villages outside the city are discussed and analysed. The volume also provides detailed studies of some of the most important master masons, glassmakers, and carpenters in the medieval city, as well as of patrons, building types, and institutional development. Both objects and makers, patrons, and users are represented by its contents. The volume sets the archaeological and art historical analysis in its socio-economic context; medieval Cambridge was a city located on major trade routes and with complex social and institutional differences.

In an academic field increasingly shaped by interdisciplinary interest in material culture, Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in Cambridge marks a major new contribution to the field, focussing on the complexity, variety, and specificity of the buildings and objects that define our understanding of Cambridge as a medieval city.

The Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, 2023

Journal of Medieval History, 2023

Word & Image, 2022

Environment, Space, Place, 2021

Journal of Material Culture, 2021

Journal of Medieval History, 2019

Architectural History, 2016

Journal of the British Archaeological Association , 2014

Essex Society for Archaeology and HistoryTransactions, 2015

Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 2015

The Antiquaries Journal, Feb 2015

Sussex Archaeological Collections , Dec 2013

History of Trinity College, Cambridge, 2025

Tributes to Paul Binski: Medieval Gothic: Art, Architecture & Ideas, 2021

The Urban Church in Late Medieval England. Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 2019

A Companion to Medieval Pilgrimage, 2024

Ralph Erskine and the Invention of Clare Hall, exhibition catalogue, Oct 15, 2016

Writing the Lives of People and Things AD 500-1700, 2016

Construction History Society Conference Transactions, 2014

The construction of a church was undoubtedly one of the most demanding events to take place in th... more The construction of a church was undoubtedly one of the most demanding events to take place in the life of a medieval parish. It required a huge outlay of time, money and labour, and often a new organisational structure to oversee design and management. Who took control and who provided the financing was deeply shaped by local patterns in wealth, authority and institutional development - from small villages with little formal government to settlements with highly unequal populations. This all took place during a period of great economic and social change as communities managed the impact of the Black Death, the end of serfdom and the slump of the mid-fifteenth century. This original and authoritative study provides an account of how economic change, local politics and architecture combined in late-medieval England. It will be of interest to researchers of medieval, socio-economic and art history.

Drawing on the database put together for the Digital Pilgrim II project, this paper will suggest ... more Drawing on the database put together for the Digital Pilgrim II project, this paper will suggest how everyday familiarity with the iconography of badges, as well as glass, art and sculpture, aligned with geographic and social units in medieval England and France. Following Brian Stock and Barbara Rosenwein, it will proposing using the term 'iconographic community', and argue that the latter, perhaps surprisingly, traversed social boundaries more easily than national ones. By (re)conceiving of badges as objectified cultural capital, in Bourdieu's schema, this 'community' can be understood as constituting overlapping spheres of cultural competence, thus forming some sense of collective identity and group position.

It is unsurprising, perhaps, that historians have shied away from large-scale quantitative analys... more It is unsurprising, perhaps, that historians have shied away from large-scale quantitative analysis of parish church construction in England - there are, after all, some 9,000 medieval churches to survey as well as a large, but unknown, number of chapels, spread across every county. Churches and chapels are often difficult to date with accuracy, while some have been destroyed and many rebuilt, partly or completely, either in the course of the Middle Ages or in the centuries that followed. National-level analysis, where it exists, has largely been built on received wisdom or extrapolation from regional or local studies. At a European level, the only quantitative study of this type is by John James, concerning churches in the Paris basin, and he has had few followers.

This paper will, therefore, be the first to measure and map parochial church building over both the longue durée and across England, based on a dataset of some 7,500 churches, analysed and visualised using Geographic Information System software. Its results show unexpected trends in the rate of building work before and after the Black Death, make important to revisions to commonly accepted ideas about the domination of particular styles in particular counties, and nuance an apparently strong relationship between economic change and architectural development. Lastly, they allow for reflection on the potential of and difficulties with 'big data' approaches to architectural history - their power in overcoming imprecise or subjective conclusions, their explanatory value as a historiographical tool and their inaccuracies and potential to mislead without contextual and qualitative studies at a smaller scale.

TLS, Jun 17, 2016

Reviews of: Britain's Lost Churches, by Matthew Hyde; and Parish Church Treasures, by John Goodall

The Burlington Magazine, 2009