Andrew & Elizabeth Jonis

Date of Brass:

1497

Place:

Hereford Cathedral

County:

Herefordshire

Country:

Number:

Style:

Burton-upon-Trent

Description

November 2023

The crypt below the Lady Chapel in Hereford cathedral church contains a late fifteenth-century alabaster incised slab commemorating Andrew Jonis, a Hereford merchant, and his wife Elizabeth. It was in place, as its inscription tells us, by the feast of All Saints (November 1^st) 1497. It forms the top slab of a low tomb chest, today rather plainer than it seems to have been when Thomas Dingley drew the whole monument during Charles II’s reign to illustrate his manuscript, published a couple of hundred years later in two volumes as History from Marble. Back in 2004 our member Sally Badham published a short article in the society’s Transactions. As she noted, the slab is in fine condition, albeit with some cracks in its lower part. The weaknesses in Dingley’s drawing manifest in his treatment of the double canopy and of the figures of Andrew and Elizabeth. Dingley’s drawing also includes his transcription of the marginal inscription. Sally Badham’s version expands the contractions: Hic jacet Andreas Jonis quo(n)dam m(er)cator hui(us) civitatis et Elizabet uxor eius qui hanc domu(m) carnarie diu desolata(m) de nouo re edificauit et repauit erga festu(m) om(nium) s(an)c(t)or(um) anno d(omi)ni MCCCC xcvij. Eciam ad tu(n)c b(e)n(e) et laudability(er) ordinauit capellanum futuris temporibus in eade(m) celebratur p(ro) a(n)i(mabus) benefactori(bu)s praedictis et om(nium) fidelium defu(n)ctorum quor(um) a(n)i(m)ab(us) propicietur deus amen. (Here lies Andrew Jonis, once merchant of this city, and his wife Elizabeth; he rebuilt and repaved this charnel house which had long been derelict, in time for the feast of All Saints 1497; he also then well and laudably instituted a chaplain to celebrate in ages to come therein for the souls of the aforesaid benefactors and of all the faithful departed, on whose souls may God have mercy. Amen.)

Sally also expanded the contractions in the transcription of the English text of the scrolls:

Reme(m)b(er) thy life may not eu(er) i(n)dure That thow dost þiself therof art þu sewre

But and þu leve þi wil to oth(er) me(n)is cure A(n) þu have it aft(er) it is but a ve(n)tur.

Note the use of the old letter þ (thorn) that persisted through the Middle Ages before being replaced by th or y.

Sally drew attention to similarities between the figures and those of Richard and Matilda Greneway in the church at Stretton Sugwas, not far outside Hereford despite a gap of nearly twenty-five years between Matilda’s death in late March 1473 and the provision of the Jonis slab. She contrasted the simplicity of the incised lines used to depict the figures on both with those on less appealing later slabs in Herefordshire at Turnastone and Aymestrey, both with dates of death in 1522. All are the products of workshops at Burton-upon-Trent in Staffordshire. Early sixteenth-century Burton work is generally more rigid and standardised in its approach than that of the latter part of the previous century. The Jonis slab is more complex than that at Stretton Sugwas with a more complex canopy and scrolls coming from the mouth of Andrew and Elizabeth. Consequently the engraver has wisely dispensed with the cushions that had appeared behind the heads at Stretton Sugwas. Andrew’s hair is as short as that of Richard Greneway and, on a slab in St Mary’s at Shrewsbury, of Nicholas Stafford esquire, died 1473. At a time when men’s hair had been becoming longer, was Andrew Jonis deliberately harking back to the 1470s? The Latin marginal inscription tells us that he rebuilt and repaved the long-derelict charnel house (in which his tomb stands) and that he put a chaplain in place to pray not only for himself and Elizabeth but for all the faithful departed, on whose souls God may have mercy. Thomas Farrow’s research into charnel houses, where the bones of the dead were stored after burial of new bodies in churchyards disturbed old bones, has established that Andrew Jonis’s choice of burial place was by no means unpredented but his monument is one of only two erected by choice in a charnel chapel that survive to this day. All trace of the skulls and long bones that can still be found in charnel houses such as Rothwell has disappeared at Hereford.

Incised alabaster slabs are particularly prone to wear when used as floor slabs, so the survival in excellent condition of a slab on a tomb chest such as that of Andrew and Elizabeth Jonis that has no wear is to be celebrated. Too often, alabaster floor slabs are so worn as to be barely identifiable or unevenly worn where part of the slab has been worn away by the passage of feet but another part survives in relatively good condition. They were also cut up to fit in with reflooring or, in a few cases, to make new alabaster articles such as pulpits.

Copyright: Jon Bayliss

References

T. Dingley, History from Marble compiled in the Reign of Charles II, ed. J.G. Nichols, Part 1, Camden Society, 94 (London, 1867), p. cciii.

TMBS 17 part 2 (2004), 176-7, 179.