Headaches, Plagues and Wallpaintings

A visitor to St John's church, Duxford can travel through time. The journey through the many painted spaces of this large and inviting church traces the development of English wallpainting from the 1100s to the eve of the Reformation. It also illuminates the variety of roles wallpaintings performed in a Medieval parish church. Duxford preserves a range of rare subjects, including a scene of Joseph of Arimathea asking for the body of Christ which is unique in English wallpainting.

Prior to the Reformation, English churches had colourful painted interiors, telling stories from the bible and warning the congregation of all the sins and pitfalls that can lead to a prolonged stay in purgatory. In English churches, these paintings mostly took the form of murals, painted in tempera onto dry plaster, as opposed to frescoes, which are painted when the plaster is still moist, but rare examples of frescoes and even wallpaintings made in oil do exist.  These murals were essential to kindling the faithful imagination of medieval parishioners, most of whom were unable to read. The most common colours used in English medieval wallpainting, were burnt red and yellow ochre gained from iron oxides, which could produce a range of reds and purples; green, usually a copper salt; blue which was usually a mineral pigment associated with copper (and therefore likely to fade to green or turquoise over time) called azurite, as opposed to the more rare and expensive ultramarine made by grinding up lapis lazuli; as well as charcoal and lime white. 

The most common scenes depicted in medieval England, were the Doom – a painting of the last judgement – usually placed over the chancel arch, and St. Christopher, usually placed opposite the south door due to a belief that those who saw him in passing were protected from sudden death for the day. 

Stories of the lives of saints were popular in the Middle Ages and illustrations of such stories made a further popular motif for medieval church interiors. While St. Christopher was by far the most popular saint to be depicted in wallpaintings, he was by no means the only saint who played an important role in the daily lives of medieval Christians.

At St. John’s, Duxford you can find depictions of other helpful saints, including St. Erasmus (Elmo), St. Leonard and St. Catharine. Together with St. Christopher, these three belong to a group of fourteen popular medieval saints known as the Fourteen Holy Helpers. The Christian tradition of helper saints originated in the 14th century in Germany, likely born out of the suffering caused by the Black Death, as their specialism lies in intercession against disease and death. St. Giles and St. Christopher could protect against the plague itself, St. Barbara helped with fevers, St. Blaise with throat ache, St. Denis with headaches, and St. Elmo/Erasmus with stomach pains. St. Vitus offered protection from epilepsy and St. Margaret is the patron saint of childbirth. St. Pantaleon is the patron saint of medical professionals, St. Eustace helps with family problems and there are several saints, including Catharine of Alexandria who provide protection from sudden and unexpected death.

Since, the plague could also affect pets, several of these saints can also be invoked for the protection of domestic animals, first and foremost St. George. Most of the fourteen helpers were martyred or are believed to have been martyred in the Roman empire and often the field of expertise of each auxiliary saint is related to their martyrdom. St. Denis, for example, was beheaded, St. Elmo disembowelled and so forth. 

The collective feast day of the holy helpers, August 8th, was officially dropped from the Roman calendar in 1969. However, the veneration of the holy helpers is by no means a practice of the past. Among Catholics and especially in catholic areas of Germany, like Bavaria, these fourteen saints still play a role in people’s daily lives are celebrated on feast days and remembered through nursery rhymes. 

Because the veneration of auxiliary saints is primarily a folk custom, the exact combination of helper saints varies slightly from region to region. In Duxford for example, you can find St. Leonard alongside the more commonly included St. Erasmus (Elmo) and St. Catharine. The cult of St. Leonard possibly arrived in England with the Norman conquerors, and he was a particularly popular saint in the Middle Ages, owing to his ability to aid women in labour and heal farm animals. In France the Virgin Mary was added to the group of helpers and their total number was thus increased to fifteen. 

Their main draw seems to be their approachability. In England saints like the Fourteen Holy Helpers are commonly referred to as popular saints, which can both mean that they are well liked and much invoked, as well as that they are saints of the people or for the people, or indeed that they are well liked and much invoked because they have a particular resonance with common people. In Germany the term for such saints is “Volksheilige” which leaves no room for ambiguity – it simply means saints of the common people. This is because these saints often either originated in folk stories, as opposed to official teachings of the Roman Catholic church, or gained increased popularity through mythical embellishments not initially propagated by the church. In this sense, they form an early example of popular culture. Their popularity can perhaps at least in part be explained by the fact that ordinary people could relate to them and had a certain sense of authorship and ownership over their stories. In some traditionally catholic German areas, like the Saarland, this familiarity has led to a comfortable irreverence for some popular saints, in which for example St. Anthony the Abbot is referred to as “Sau-Toni” which roughly translates to “Swineherd Tony” thanks to a complicated etymological evolution that has little to do with the legend of St. Anthony and a lot to do with the Hospital Brothers of St. Anthony, a holy order of the Middle Ages that gained special dispensations for more affordable pig farming as a result of their dedication to caring for the sick.

Shrines said to hold the relics of these saints were popular pilgrimage destinations during the Middle Ages and the prospect of becoming a pilgrimage site would have presented a great incentive for monasteries and parishes to further popularise the cult of whichever saint was associated with the relic in their custody. According to experts from the North Lincolnshire Museum, medieval pilgrims acted much like modern tourists. Saints were important, because they were thought to be close to God. When visiting a shrine, pilgrims were able to purchase souvenirs that were believed to hold some of the mystical powers of the relic and brought the pilgrim closer to the saint associated with the site, and thus closer to God. Sometimes, such souvenirs were hung up at home for good luck, and holy water from a pilgrimage site could be sprinkled on fields to encourage fertility. Thus, saint worship is commonly thought to have aided the assimilation of local pagan practices into the Christian faith. What many people sought, and still seek, to find in their faith was someone they could turn to for aid with problems outside of their control. Appearing alongside doom paintings in medieval parish churches, depictions of helper saints remind us, that parish churches not only helped cement the powerful position of the church by spreading fear of purgatory, but were also a place where parishioners found comfort and folk customs remained alive.