The compilation of the Ravenna Cosmography, as we have it, belongs to the late seventh century. It was done by a cleric of Ravenna, for one Odo, whom he describes as ‘dearset brother’ and ‘friend’, and the object of the work is to furnish a list of the countries, towns, and rivers of the known world, compiled from Greek, Roman, and Gothic authors. The author, who nowhere states his name, observes that a list was chosen as the form for the work, for brevity's sake (i, 18), in preference to a map or an itinerary; and its composition was governed by the Judaic version of the division of the world, as prescribed in the tenth chapter of Genesis, in order to harmonize with contemporary Christian belief. The authorities cited are divided (i, 5) into sancti patres and huius mundi philosophi, in an attitude of humane tolerance expressed by the phrase, adiuvante Christo cum munimine philosophorum.

The idea, long since accepted, that the English alabaster-carvers of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries depicted in their reliefs things times has, I believe, not seriously been questioned. As Prior, writing in 1913, put it, ‘since the scenes [as they appeared in the carvings] were those of contemporary representation in passion-plays and mysteries, the pasteboard make-ups of the religious stage, which were on view in every great city, were at hand as models to the shop-carvers. We may take it that in table-sculpture we…find…as it were, stage soldiers and property virgins’; ‘the blackening of the faces of the ruffians and executioners and heretics, as seen in many of the tables, was no doubt a stage trick’; and ‘The feather tights on angels…have the unmistakable appearance of a stage outfit’. Émile Mâle, discussing (in 1904) the effect, on medieval art, of the religious plays, had already observed that, although les érudits had posé mille questions concerning how the mystery-plays had been staged, the answer was clearly to be seen in numberless paintings, stained-glass windows, miniatures, and altar-pieces, which ‘nous offrent sans cesse l'image exact de ce qu'on voyait au théâtre’.

Archdeacon Coxe, who happened to visit the town of Zug in Switzerland on 5th August 1776, expressed his surprise to find a church there dedicated to ‘one of our old British kings’, St. Oswald of Northumbria. ‘I have been endeavouring to discover the connection between a British king under the heptarchy and a small canton of Switzerland, without reflecting how fruitless is the attempt to give any reason for long established custom. In the church of Rome saints are easily transplanted into any soil, and caprice, as well as superstition, may have inclined the inhabitants of Zug to adore a saint, whose name is barely known in his own country’. As the answer to this investigation has never yet been given, it is the purpose of this article to offer some brief remarks on the cult of St. Oswald in Switzerland and in particular at Zug.

The charge which forms the subject of this paper is blazoned in French ombre and in Latin umbra, and one or other of these terms is used in the few cases in which the charge occurs in English blazon outside the text-books. There can be little doubt but that the word ought to be interpreted as ghost or phantom, but the compiler of The Boke of St. Albans translated it by shadow, and he was followed by Gerard Legh and sundry later writers who apparently took that word in its everyday sense. It was certainly so understood by Cornelius Gailliard, for he paraphrased it by umbrage, and I suspect that it was a like misinterpretation which inspired the de Varennes-Vulson heresy mentioned hereinafter. In the following pages I propose first to review the statements of the various English and continental armorists who mention the ombre and thereafter to consider the charge in actual use.

On 14th November 1302 Humpherey de Bohun, early Hereford and Essex and constable of England, married at Westminster the Lady Elizabeth,widow of John, count of Holland and Zealand, and daughter of King Edward I, by his first wife Eleanor, daughter of Ferdinand III, king of Castile. In due course—we do not know the exact date—a daughter was born to them and was called Mary.

The Hunting Baths at Lepcis Magna lie on the western fringes of the town, about 100 yards from the sea-shore and about half-way between the mouth of the Wadi er-Saf, which formed the western boundary of the city at its fullest extent, and the defensive wall which enclosed the more compact late-Imperial city. It was found and cleared in 1932–3, under the direction of the late Professor Giacomo Guidi. He was at the time already engaged on the excavation of a number of other major sites, both at Lepcis and Sabratha, and the only contemporary account of the excavation is that contained in the brief weekly reports compiled by the technical foreman in charge of the work. These reports are preserved in the archives of the Superintendency of Monuments and Excavations at Tripoli, and they consist of little more than a summary working-diary of the problems of clearance and consolidation, tasks which, in view of the condition of the vaults, were of necessity undertaken simultaneously. With the exception of these reports, the only record of these buildings as they were at the time of their discovery is contained in a small, but valuable, collection of photographs in the archives of the Superintendency, some of which were taken while the work of restoration was still in its initial stages (pls. xxxv, a and b; XXVI, b–d).