St Albans Cathedral: How were the remains of Abbot John reburied?

BBC News ^ | August 4, 2022 | Katy Lewis

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When the remains of a 15th Century abbot were carried to their final resting place in St Albans Cathedral on Saturday, five years after he was found in an unmarked grave, it begged the question, how exactly do you recommit the body of a Benedictine Abbot some 600 years after his death?

It was during the building of the cathedral's new welcome centre in 2017 that an unearthed skeleton was later found to be that of Abbot John of Wheathampstead.

Called to lead the church twice - from 1420 to 1440 and then from 1451 to his death in 1465 - he physically restored the Abbey after the Black Death with a programme of building and, as the English representative of the clergy at international conferences, also gained back its reputation.

In short, he was a mover and shaker in the Norman cathedral's history - but his burial site remained a mystery for centuries until a team of archaeologists from the Canterbury Archaeological Trust found him, and so began the journey to return him to his church...

Five years on, after scientific analysis - and a pandemic - the abbot was once again laid to rest, this time near the Shrine of St Alban during a special evensong.

Organising the reburial involved expert help from historians, a funeral director and even a plumber...

So it was decided to lay him with his friend and colleague, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester - brother of King Henry V, who died in 1447 and the only royal to be buried at the cathedral - in a small memorial chapel beneath another chapel which contains the shrine of St Alban, Britain's first saint, who was buried on the site 1,700 years ago.

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A facial reconstruction of Abbot John was revealed in 2020 based upon his skull, which the cathedral said had been preserved well enough for this work to be carried out.

Abbot John of Wheathampstead

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other selections from the "Ancient Autopsies" keyword:

• Reconstructed Face Shows A Medieval Wanderer Found Buried In A Toilet [04/05/2022]
• 664 B.C. Egyptian Mummy Finally Gets a Face [02/07/2022]
• The return of the mummy! Faces of three ancient Egyptian men who lived up to 2,797 years ago are reconstructed using DNA extracted from their mummified remains [10/01/2021]
• 3-D Reconstructions Reveal the Faces of Two Medieval Dukes [Czech] [03/16/2021]
• Faces of 'Siberian Tutankhamun' and his 'Queen' buried 2,600 years ago reconstructed by science [01/19/2021]
• Face of Tehran's 7 millennia old woman reconstructed [06/17/2015]
• Scientists Reconstruct Faces From DNA Samples [03/21/2014]
• Faces of Civil War sailors from sunken USS Monitor reconstructed in hopes of identifying them [03/04/2012]
• Face-to-face with an ancient human (Norway - 7,500 YO) [10/20/2011]
• Artists Recreate the Face Otzi, a 5,300-Year-Old Iceman Mummy [02/25/2011]
• Face of King Tut unshrouded to public [11/04/2007]
• Tutankhamun's True Face To Be Revealed [10/21/2007]
• Scientists Recreate (Less Ugly) Face Of Dante [01/11/2007]
• Jack The Ripper's Face 'Revealed' [11/20/2006]

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[Red Badger]

It was right after this guy’s time that the Catholic and Protestant forces in England and Scotland started killing each other in earnest..................

[Monkey Face]

Wowser. Amazing what they can do with computers these days.

Thanks, SC!

‘Face

;o]

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

Bookmark

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:^)

[Monkey Face]

👍

[SES1066]

It was right after this guy’s time that the Catholic and Protestant forces in England and Scotland started killing each other in earnest..................

Disagree to the use of a capitalized 'Protestant' in your comment, especially given that Martin Luther was not born until 1483 and his Ninety-five Theses of 1517. While there were numerous protestants against the monolithic established Church (aka Roman Catholic Church) in the British Isles and Europe, none were, at that time, so designated!

The largest, and ongoing resistance to said establishment in Britain, was from the followers of John Wycliffe (1331-84), knowns as Lollards, who were frequently seized, imprisoned and killed as heretics in the years prior to being subsumed into the Protestant Revolts.