The narcissistic primarily autobiographical blog of the pseudonymous d.b. echo
The third portrait window from the back of the South wall of St. Mary's church in Nanticoke, PA features portraits of Saint Hedwig and Saint Edward. Both stand against the "cathedral" backdrop, discussed previously.
Saint Hedwig has a long and complicated biography, and it would be tedious to try to relate it here. So I direct you to these online sources of information:
What is that object?
The second portrait seems a little more straightforward: St. Edward the Confessor was a king of England, renowned (if the stories are to be believed) for his healing touch. Unfortunately, he was also uncle to St. Edward the Martyr, who was also king of England. Which one is this? I have no idea. The youthful appearance could mark him as the latter, who was only sixteen or seventeen when he died. The spear could be a clue - Edward the Martyr died, according to one account, due to injuries received in a stabbing by an assassin while he was visiting his wicked stepmother during a hunt. Have a look at this source material and see if you can figure it out:
The lines across St. Edward's body and the dark blotch on his head are not cracks, but are the chain once used for opening and closing the vented window above the portrait.
The upper round window is the one I have dubbed the "Temple." The calligraphy on the scroll at the bottom is not readable in this image.
The person who presented both of these windows has a name immediately familiar to the people of Nanticoke: K.M. Smith, the namesake of the K.M. Smith Elementary School. Unfortunately, almost all references to "K.M. Smith" that I can find online refer to this school, not to the person. I may need to go to the Nanticoke Historical Society for more information.
Speaking of communication, the DTV changeover is still being planned for February 17. After the collapse of the economy, I kinda thought that this transition might be postponed a bit.***************
The Littlest Turkey wanted to run and play with the other turkeys, but they didn't want to play with him. "Go away, Littlest Turkey," they would say. "Come back when you've gotten bigger."
The Laughter House was a wonderful place. The Littlest Turkey had never been in there. He knew that only the big and plump turkeys would get to go inside the Laughter House. He had seen them go in once, and had heard their squawks and gobbles of laughter for a little while. It must be wonderful in there, the Littlest Turkey thought. All those turkeys go in to laugh, and none of them had ever come out again. How much fun they must be having!
"Just before Turkey Day is when they take the big and plump turkeys into the Laughter House," thought the Littlest Turkey. "But this time I'm going to get in there, too!"
The turkey in front of him, whose name was Tom, turned around. "Go away, Littlest Turkey," he said. "Come back when you are bigger."
Finally, the day before Turkey Day came, and the Littlest Turkey found himself all alone in the case.
My mom was putting food out in one of the shelters that we've set up for the neighborhood stray cats when she got a surprise. This shelter is an old wheeled plastic garbage can, cracked and no longer useful for its original purpose, tucked under a Rhododendron with several old plastic tablecloths on top for waterproofing and a bag of leaves for insulation. This one also featured a critter who stuck its pointy nose out of the covered entrance to the shelter when my mom went to set some food inside. She recognized the nose as belonging to an opossum, but asked me to check it out. After three tries I managed to get the photo above.
I didn't just go out with a camera, but with a garden rake as well, to encourage the intruder to leave the area. But I looked at the wet, frightened, and bedraggled creature in my picture and took pity on it. It was, after all, a cold and rainy night, and we knew the cats had other accommodations available. And my laziness one hot Summer day last year put another opossum through a lot more distress than it should have experienced. Yes, I know this is almost certainly not the same opossum, but I still feel bad about the last one, slowly cooking in a cage in the scorching midday heat that it naturally avoids. I decided to leave this one unmolested.
Lily of the Valley
BranchTemple
Dome
City
Immaculate Heart of Mary (distinguished from the Sacred Heart of Jesus by the flowers and piercing sword)
Star
Chalice (or, more likely, a Ciborium)
Host
Closeup of calligraphy under Host image. Even at this distance I can't make it out.
UPDATE: Translation and explanation, again courtesy of dee:
And even more from dee, in a later comment:"Speculum sin macula" Mirror without blemish, or mirror without stain.
In the Litany of Mary, she is referred to as the Mirror of Justice (and the Seat of Wisdom, Ark of the Covenant and my favorite, Mystical Rose, among others) I was trying to match all those incredibly beautiful metaphors with these windows -- the temple could be the Tower of David, for example.
...upon further reflection (no pun intended) I think that's the moon in the Speculum Sin Macula window. The moon reflects the light of the sun; Mary reflects God's love back to us.
I would never have guessed that last word was "Macula." It looks to mee something like "Alarula", which of course doesn't translate. So could this be a depiction of a mirror, rather than a Host?
UPDATE, 12/14/08: While researching this window, I was reminded of something I had once been very familiar with, but have since forgotten:The term pyx is also a standard term used in the Roman Catholic Church to refer to a flat, circular container, sometimes called a lunette, composed of a ring of metal (usually lined with gold) holding two glass or crystal disks, to create a round, flat, glass-enclosed space for the Eucharistic Host. This is used together with a monstrance for exposition and Benediction services. The lunette is often kept in another object, itself sometimes called a pyx, luna, or custodia, which is usually a round box often on a small stand, giving the impression of a faceless, old-fashioned, alarm clock.So this brings us full circle to the possibility that this is an image of a host contained in a lunette. But those markings on the white circular object in the window do look intriguingly like round craters, rayed craters, and maria on the Moon, though...
Finally I went to the photo desk to pick up my photos...only to find that they had never transmitted. So there were no photos to be had. I decided I would try sending them from home.
And try, and try. Uploading large numbers of high-resolution photos takes a long time. And each time I did, a few of them failed to upload. So I had to reload twelve out of seventy, then five out of twelve, then one out of five. Finally they were all uploaded and ready to order...and the program told me I would have to crop my photos. ALL of them. I have no idea what that means in this context. I think it means that I have to change the resolution, or maybe the aspect ratio, to avoid pixellation. I don't know.
I think I may order just two or three to be printed, to see how they come out. If everything looks fine, I'll do the rest. If not, I'll drop them off to be printed - just not from the same machine I used today.
Tomorrow I will be visiting friends, but I will try to post another entry in The Stained Glass Project. My goal is to do one a week, every Sunday. We'll see how that goes.
*It is unwise to assume any child-sized person is a child. I realized that as I walked past the line of people standing in line at the service desk and noticed a person the height of a ten-year-old girl who was quite obviously a full-grown woman.
The second picture window from the rear on the South side of St. Mary's church in Nanticoke, PA features one of two saints named Stainislaus and one of several images of Mary, the mother of Jesus. In this case we have St. Stainislaus Kostka, a Polish Jesuit novice who died at the age of eighteen in 1568, and Mary in what I believe is a depiction of the Assumption.
On the left side of this pair of portraits, St. Stanislaus Kostka wears the cassock and surplice which mark him as a Jesuit novice. The habit, the lily, and the infant Jesus are all noted in his Wikipedia entry as "attributes," symbols associated with a particular saint. He is depicted with the "ocean" backdrop, which is, like the "cathedral" backdrops, partially blocked from view by an obscuring curtain. I like to think of this as being part of the same structure - possibly the "New Jerusalem" - depicted in the images of Saints Leo and George, but perhaps with a view of the outside world. I call this the "ocean" because there seems to be a subtle difference in color - not really visible in these photos - between the two panels behind the saint's head and the one panel above it; the dark structure I interpret as a shoreline, delineating the slightly lighter blue above as sky and the slightly darker blue below as water.
On the right side we have both the first of several depictions of Mary seen among these portraits, and the first example of an irregular background. This is apparently a depiction of the Assumption, which is the Catholic tradition (later to become dogma) that after her death Mary was raised bodily directly into Heaven, leaving behind an array of flowers where her body had once been. These may be the flowers shown at the bottom of the window.
As with all portrayals of Jesus and Mary in these windows, there is no identifying tag at the bottom as there is with portraits of the saints, only the words "ORA PRO NOBIS" - "Pray for us."
I have to say that this is not my favorite of the portraits in the windows of St. Mary's. The set of the infant Jesus' jaw, the dead blank eyes of Stanislaus Kostka (who looks much older than his eighteen years), the disproportionately large hands and small head of Mary - which bears an almost cartoon-like face - all compare poorly to some of the details seen in other portraits. It would be surprising if a single artist were responsible for each portrait image; it would be quite a coup to determining who was responsible for the creation of each, and then look for similarities within the works of a single artist, and differences between different artists.
Both the New Advent and Wikipedia entries make reference to a portrait of Stanislaus Kostka by Scipione Delfine that is supposed to be the most accurate depiction of his face. Unfortunately, neither entry depicts the portrait, and online searches have so far come up empty. On a recent visit to nearby Holy Trinity church in Nanticoke, I observed a large and elaborate stained glass window that contained a head-and-shoulders depiction of St. Stanislaus Kostka and the infant Jesus that appeared almost identical to the one in St. Mary's. Were both images created by the same artists and artisans? Are both drawn from the same source material? Unfortunately, at this time the windows of Holy Trinity are beyond the scope of my investigation. Perhaps someday someone will perform a similar study of those windows.
Note that the dark objects in the background of Mary have clearly rounded edges, rather than the sharp tailings-off we will see in the "ocean" backdrops. This suggests to me that the objects in the sky behind Mary are representations of clouds, while the distinctly different objects such as the one seen in the St. Stanislaus Kostka portrait are not.
Once again I have managed to get a surprisingly sharp image of the round window at the top of the pair of portraits. This time the banner with the accompanying text is clearly visible. But for the life of me, I can't figure out what it says.
In this close-up shot, taken (like the close-up images of the saints' portraits shown above) from the choir loft, we can see that the text is a highly stylized calligraphic script which renders the words pretty darned near unreadable. I think I can make out the top word, which is apparently in Latin; but I cannot find any biblical reference online which pairs the word at the top with anything resembling the word at the bottom. Any help here would be very much appreciated.
The St. Stanislaus Kostka window was presented by George Hill and William Evans, while the portrait of Mary was presented by E.E. Ritter. There is a George Hill listed as a Nanticoke assessor in 1874, though I cannot say for sure that this is the same one referenced here. I can't find any definite information as to who William Evans or E.E. Ritter were, although I do see a reference to an "E.E. Ritter" as an architect in other parts of Pennsylvania.
Here is what this window looks like from the outside. Not as impressive, and not quite the same effect. But someday - weeks, or months, or possibly years from now - someday, this is the only way you will be able to view this window, or any of these windows: from the outside looking in. And not long after that, these windows will probably be gone, relocated to newly-constructed Catholic churches in other parts of the country or sold to the highest bidder on the lucrative architectural antiquities market.
But that day has not come, not yet. For now you still have the opportunity to see these windows for yourself, every Sunday at 11:30 AM Mass. Come and see what this church is like, and how the windows look during a midday Mass with a congregation present. Come and see them now, before it's too late.
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