There are cities in Europe where the Virgin still reigns visibly from stone and glass. The pilgrim notices it immediately: the Madonelle of Rome, Marian shrines tucked into Florentine street corners, statues of the Virgin gazing down from church façades and even civic buildings. England, after the Reformation, often feels different. Marian England became, in many places, an England of absences: smashed statues, whitewashed walls, emptied niches, mutilated rood screens, shattered marbles, destroyed shrines. One frequently encounters not Mary herself, but the trace of where she once stood.
7:05 AM
Oxford and the surviving Marian imagination of medieval England
From New College to Blackfriars, Oxford’s chapels, gatehouses and libraries retain traces of a Marian culture that once shaped the intellectual life of the university
Jan C. Bentz
6 min read
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