Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Losing the royal mausoleum


Today in the Medieval England class I talked about the major changes that took place in the reign of King John --

King John was not a good man
He had his little ways
And sometimes no one spoke to him
For days and days and days
One thing I wanted to emphasize, but neglected, what with talking about Stephen Langton inventing the verse-numbering of the Bible, was an interesting indicator of how much John lost symbolically when he lost the Angevin counties along the Loire.

His father, Henry II, his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and his brother, Richard Lionheart, were all buried at Fontrevault Abbey in Maine (?); John lost that region and is buried by himself in Worcester Cathedral in England.

All four have surviving effigies. John's is above; the other three can be seen as part of this slide show.

1 comment:

Will McLean said...

John, John, bad King John
Shamed the throne he sat upon