Old St. Paul's Cathedral

by William Benham

A BISHOP PLACING RELICS IN AN ALTAR.
From a Pontifical of the Fourteenth Century. British Museum, Lans. 451.

A PAPAL LEGATE.
From the Decretals of Boniface VIII. British Museum, 23923.

In the Bodleian Library there is an inventory of these relics, amongst them part of the wood of the cross, a stone of the Holy Sepulchre, a stone from the spot of the Ascension, and some bones of the eleven thousand virgins of Cologne.

The high altar was renewed in 1309 under an indented covenant between Bishop Baldock and a citizen named Richard Pickerill. "A beautiful tablet was set thereon, variously adorned with many precious stones and enamelled work; as also with divers images of metal; which tablet stood betwixt two columns, within a frame of wood to cover it, richly set out with curious pictures, the charge whereof amounted to two hundred marks."

Dugdale also tells of "a picture of St. Paul, richly painted, and placed in a beautiful tabernacle of wood on the right hand of the high altar in anno 1398, the price of its workmanship amounting to 12l. 16s.."