A very big window

 Here is part of a Protestant account of the spoliation of Canterbury Cathedral in 1642. Incidentally, it indicates how much there still was to despoil there ... and how unwilling those in charge of England's principal Metropolitan Cathedral (the narrator terms them 'the cathedalists') were to endure that spoliation.

" ... a more orderly and thorough reformation in that cathedral ... began on the 13th day of December last [1642] ... in comes a prebend's wife and pleaded for the images there, and jeered the Commissioners viraginously; but when she saw a picture of Christ demolished, she shrieked out and ran to her husband, who came in and asked for their authority to do those things; and being answered that there was an ordinance of the King and the Parliament, he replied, 'Not of the King, but of the Parliament if you will'. ... And then that work of reformation went on. The Commissioners fell presently to work on the great idolatrous window, standing on the left hand as you go up into the quire: [Interjection: I think I am about to describe and discuss possibly the most important piece of late-medieval art then in England]for which window (some affirm) many thousand pounds have been offered by outlandish papists. In that window was now the picture of God the Father, and of Christ, besides a large crucifix, and the picture of the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove, and of the twelve apostles; and in that window were seven large pictures of the Virgin Mary in seven several glorious appearances, as of angels lifting her into heaven, and the sun, moon, and stars under her feet, and every picture had an inscription under it, beginning with Gaude Maria, as Gaude Maria sponsa Dei ... there were in this window many other pictures of popish saints, as of St. George, &c. But their prime cathedral saint, Archbishop Thomas Becket, was most rarely pictured in that window, in full proportion, with cope, rochet, mitre, crosier, and all his pontificalibus. And in the foot of that huge window was a title intimating that window to be dedicated to the Virgin Mary ... that window was the superstitious glory of that cathedral ..."

Lovely vocabulary ... 'to jeer' as a transitive verb; 'outlandish' ; 'rarely'; but, above all, 'viraginously'!

SEVEN.

Gaude ... I have not been able to find the exact words our Puritan chronicler cites, but I think he may be remembering words found also in a hymn in an Hours of the Blessed Virgin ad Usum Sarum, in which every stanza does begin with Gaude. Here is the second stanza: "Gaude sponsa cara Dei/ Nam ut lux clara diei/ Solis datur lumine/ Sic tu facis orbem vere/ Tuae pacis resplendere/ Lucis plenitudine." And the seventh, final stanza is "Gaude Virgo mater pura/ Certa manens et secura/ Quod haec septem gaudia/ Non cessabunt nec decrescent/ Sed durabunt et florescent/ Per aeterna saecula." 

That our Lady should have seven, not merely five, Gaudia goes back at least to the Ordinale of Bishop Grandisson of Exeter, in the arrangements he made for the daily liturgy in the Lady Chapel of his Cathedral Church at Exeter. The Mass on Sunday varied seasonally, but on weekdays it was to be ... Monday of the Annunciation, Tuesday of the Nativity, Wednesday of the Worship of the Magi, Thursday of the Purification, Friday of the Compassion, and Saturday of the Assumption. He added this explanation: "Totum autem tempus saeculi praesentis per septenarium currit. Et ideo voluit idem pater [i.e. Grandisson]de preacipuis gloriosae virginis gaudiis memoriam in eius capella singulis recenseri hebdomadis, ut quicunque eidem virgini devotus fuerit, habeat recententer unde specialiter contempletur".