The Smiling Abbot

The article reports on a newly re-discovered fragment of a recumbent effigial slab commemorating Abbot Hywel (‘Howel’), most likely an abbot of the Cistercian house of Valle Crucis, near Llangollen (Denbighs.). The slab was probably carved very early in the fourteenth century, and could have covered the abbot’s burial place. The stone was dislocated and fragmented at an unknown point in the abbey’s history, and most likely removed from the site during the nineteenth-century clearance of the abbey ruins. It was briefly reported on in 1895 and has been lost to scholarship subsequently.If indeed from Valle Crucis, the stone is the only known effigial slab commemorating a Cistercian abbot from Wales, and a rare example from Britain. Given that few similar Cistercian abbatial monuments have been identified from elsewhere, the ‘Smiling Abbot’, although only a fragment, is a significant addition to the known corpus of later medieval mortuary monuments. The article discusses the provenance, dating, identification and significance of the monument, including the abbot’s distinctive smile. The stone sheds new light on mortuary and commemorative practice at Valle Crucis Abbey in the early fourteenth century

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Scholarship · Byzantine Studies and History · Classics · Historical Studies of British Isles · History · Law · Medieval Literature and History

• The Heads of Religious Houses

  Open Access•David M Smith, Vera C M London•Heads of Religious Houses•2001

  Incluir item

• Remembering and Forgetting the Medieval Dead

  Open Access•Howard Williams•Archaeologies of Remembrance•2003

  Incluir item

• Image and Devotion in Late Medieval England

  Larry Silver•Sixteenth Century Journal•2006

  Incluir item

• Abbeys and Priories of Medieval Wales

  James Bond•Medieval Archaeology•2016

  Incluir item

• Images, ceramic floors and Warden Abbey

  Evelyn Baker•World Archaeology•1987

  Incluir item

• Seeing and believing

  Kate Giles•World Archaeology•2007

  Incluir item

• Sensing and believing

  C Pamela Graves•World Archaeology•2007

  Incluir item