"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.