An Architectural History of Peterborough Cathedral
An Architectural History of Peterborough Cathedral

Author: Lisa A. Reilly

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13:

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An Architectural History of Peterborough clarifies the obscure and tangled building history of one of England's most interesting medieval monuments. Lisa Reilly demonstrates how Peterborough offers extensive information concerning both specific buildings such as Canterbury and broader issuesof the period such as the process of cultural assimiliation, patterns of construction and building design as a response to liturgical needs. This study represents an expansion of the traditional use of formal and archaeological analysis to include a discussion of the building's social and politicalcontext. The entire fabric is discussed, from its Anglo-Saxon remains,the Anglo-Norman construction of the nave, choir and transepts, the early Gothic period which produced its well-known west front through to the final construction of its fan-vaulted retrochoir at the very end of the Middle Ages.Peterborough Cathedral is the best-preserved example of Anglo-Norman architecture, and provides an ideal case study for the period.

A Medieval Book of Magical Stones: The Peterborough Lapidary
A Medieval Book of Magical Stones: The Peterborough Lapidary

Author: Francis Young

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 099264044X

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A Medieval Book of Magical Stones is the first translation of the longest and most comprehensive medieval English treatise on the occult powers of stones and gems, the Peterborough Lapidary. Lapidaries (encyclopaedias of the 'virtues' of stones and minerals) were an essential resource for practitioners of natural and ritual magic as well as medicine. This late fifteenth-century manuscript from the library of Peterborough Cathedral describes 145 stones, portraying them as living beings whose properties range from giving the bearer the power to command spirits and foretell the future to healing numerous illnesses and communicating with spirits and the dead, along with instructions on how to release latent occult power from within stones. Many of the proposed uses of stones resemble the concerns of medieval necromancers, such as invisibility, love magic, power over animals and the creation of magical mirrors. pp. xliii+106; 2 column text; introduction; bibliography; analytical index; 8 b/w illustrations