"And now you know… the rest of the story."

One of my favorite subjects to research for stained glass has to be the Apocryphal Books of the Bible. A lot of the windows from the life of Mary come out of these apocryphal texts. From the Nativity of Mary, up to her marriage to Joseph and flight in to Egypt, most of her non-biblical life is covered. A few of these “hidden” books cover the early life of Christ. There are stories of a child Christ giving life to clay birds and raising his friend from the dead. Although the Espousal of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph is the only Apocryphal image in Corpus Christi, there are many others in the region. Some of the best windows depicting the life of Mary in Western New York are located in the Alumni Chapel at Niagara University.

            Now that the Espousal of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph is done, three of the main windows and four of the clearstory windows are completed. By the end of the weekend I hope to have the clearstory finished up so I can start on the vestibule windows.      

Lovely Rita

The Saint Rita window is done. This one was hard. How do you cut down a woman who did so much in her life to 300 words? On top of that, her life story is inconsistent from biographer to biographer. To even things out I relied on her "official" bio from her canonization, the book St. Rita of Cascia Saint by Sicardo and, the website of Basilica di Santa Rita da Cascia, the home of her remains. So far, I am up to 39 citations for the booklet. The next main window I am going to work on is the Espousal of Mary and Joseph followed by Saint Hyacinth. Cheers.

Saint Rita Links
The Basilica di Santa Rita da Cascia
Saint Rita at New Advent
Life of Sister St. Rita of Cascia by Rev. Daniel J. Murphy, O.S.A.

Outlining

Seven of the clearstory windows have been outlined and three have been completed. The clearstory windows will be done in about two weeks. The next main window that will be done is St. Rita. Hopefully she'll be done by the end of the week. That's about it for now.

Isolated Elements

I went to the Broadway Market to do some shopping and stopped off at Corpus to take some reference photos of the clearstory windows. Since I had my high powered zoom all set up, I grabed a few extreme close-ups of some of the other windows too. St. Cecilia (above) is beautfully placed in the center of the Rose Window; the downside to this is that she almost gets lost in the very busy scene. There's an orchestra of angels, the Coronation of Mary and a great blue border around St. Cecilia. I thought I would try and isolate the saint and let her shine on her own. What suprised me about the image is how warm it is. There is the aged and blackened gold of the organ, which is complemented by the saint's radiant nimbus. The silver and gray organ pipes offset the blazing red gown the martyr is wearing. With all this hectic heat from the reds and yellows the saint's face and hands are gentle and serene. I'd say St. Cecilia looks pretty good on her own.

Some Great Links.

Corpus Christi in 1912

Here are a few Corpus Christi links,

Offical Site
Facebook

Polish Genealogical Society of New York State

Forgotten Buffalo

Wikipedia

Waymarking

Pbase

Have a good day.

When A + B = Q.

Symbolism in Christianity can be a funny thing. You can take a symbol that has its own distinct meaning, put it with another symbol that has its own meaning and end up with a scene that has a whole new meaning. For example, if you take the key, which represents the Keys to the Kingdom of God and put it with a Chalice, which on its own represents the Eucharist, you end up the the symbol for the Holy Orders. In this instance the key represents the lowest position of the Minor Orders; the porter (which no longer exists due to Vatican II). The Chalice is the representation of the final position of the Sacred Orders, priesthood. It only took me four hours and two cups of coffee to put this all this together, which I would call a "good night".

To see a pic of the window, click HERE.

Citations, Arrrggghhh!

I am a firm believer in citations, but they are just a huge pain on a project like this. The physical size of the book, each page is about 4 1/4 by 5 1/2 inches, as well as the layout, makes it impossible to properly footnote. On top of that, the font size of the footnotes would be somewhere close to 4. The gut reaction is to switch to end notes, but that would add to many pages and the overall cost of printing would skyrocket to three times the current price. The only reasonably solution is to print up a few properly cited copies of the book and place them in local libraries and keep a few in the rectory. Then on the bottom of the bibliography page in the actual book have a little note that states "For a fully cited copy of this book, please visit...". If anyone has any better ideas, please let me know.   

What We Have So Far.

In the few short months this has project has been underway, a lot has already been accomplished. The history of Corpus Christi has been whittled down to about 500 words. The history of Franz Mayer's Stained Glass Studio is done along with two of the clerestory windows and one of the main windows. The bibliography has already reached thirty entries for five pages. I would say that we've moved pretty far for a project still in committee!

Welcome!



This blog is dedicated to the progress of the book Adorned in Light: The Stained Glass of the Corpus Christi Church Complex, Buffalo NY. Here you will find photos, progress reports, stuff we didn't have space for in the book, and ordering information.