CHAPTER 23
At this point I had no answer to the Rosicrucian question, so I took a few pictures of the tombs and slabs, and then, leaving the Herberts to their eternal slumbers, I crossed over to the north side of the church. Here, there were one or two more tombs, but there was also something else that I later discovered is unique to this church. For lying on one side, his hand around the stump of a tree, was an enormous, wood-carved statue of Jesse, the Father of the biblical King David. The stump was a reference to the way that the family tree of Jesse had been hacked down at the time of the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BC . The Bible tells us how the Babylonians beheaded the sons of Zedekiah, the last King of Judah, who was then blinded and taken in chains to Babylon. This was, or so it was assumed at the time, the end of the Royal House of David, the ‘stump’ of Jesse representing his felled family tree. *
The statue itself was about eight feet long and it was carved out of one large log. From the church guidebook, I learned that it would originally have had a tree-like stem rising from the side of the stump, and that this would have had other, smaller statues in its branches. These statues would have represented the ancestors of Jesus Christ, the reason for this being a prophecy contained in the Book of Isaiah:
‘There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord …
In that day the root of Jesse shall stand as an ensign to the peoples; him shall the nations seek and his dwellings shall be glorious …
He will raise an ensign for the nations and will assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.
The jealousy of Ephraim shall depart, and those who harass Judah shall be cut off …
Ephraim shall not be jealous of Judah and Judah shall not harass Ephraim.’
(Isa 11:1-2,10,12-13)
In this context, ‘Ephraim’ is a reference to the Northern Kingdom of Israel which separated from Judah, the Southern Kingdom, shortly after the death of David’s son Solomon in about 931 BC. The biblical reference concerns an expected messiah, a descendant of Jesse, who will reunite the two parts of David’s kingdom, Ephraim and Judah. Therefore, it refers to some future king: one who will bring together the dispersed people of Israel as a whole.
I found the presence of this curious sculpture in a Welsh church puzzling. When complete, with its ‘shoot’ growing from the stump and bearing ancillary statues of Jesus’ ancestors, it would have been a very large construction, perhaps even reaching as high as the roof. This statue would also have been expensive to commission and someone would have had to pay for it. The question is: who? Since the sculpture has been dated to the 15th century, it seems certain that it was commissioned by one of the Herberts: perhaps either Sir William ap Thomas or Sir William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke, both of whom were buried in the church. However, this still left the question of why had it been commissioned at all unanswered.
On returning home, I looked into the matter further. I discovered that, although this sculpture of Jesse was unique, the ‘Jesse Tree’ was a relatively common theme for church windows. A Jesse window would normally portray the lineage of Jesus Christ, whose descent from Jesse is given in the New Testament. However, during the Middle Ages, before the advent of English translations, the most common version of the Bible used by the church was the Latin Vulgate. This contains the following words for the Isaiah quote: ‘et egredietur virga de radice Iesse et flos de radice eius ascendet.’ This translates as ‘… a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up …’
There are several interesting things to say about this quotation. Firstly, the word virga (rod) is almost the same as virgo, meaning the Virgin (Mary). Secondly, the idea of a flower growing on the rod of Jesse can be understood as a hidden reference to the primary symbol of the Rosicrucians, the crucified rose, and also the many tombstones I had seen with floriated patterns of flowering rods. The implication was clear: the flowering rod was a reference to the family of Jesse and therefore of King David.
Just why this symbol should have so excited the Herberts of Abergavenny I could not tell for the moment. At first I could think of no better explanation than that the statue, with its messianic rod, had been commissioned as an act of piety. But then two things occurred to me. First of all, the rod or ‘sucker’ that grew out of the side of the stump could be the hidden meaning of the floriated cross symbols that I had seen in this church and in several others. These were not traditional calvary crosses, but always had arms that terminated in either buds or leaves. In other words, they symbolized a tree: the messianic, regrown tree of Jesse.
The second idea that occurred was a possible reason for the Jesse statue’s placement in this particular church. As we know, Sir William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke and son of Sir William ap Thomas by Gwladys, the daughter of Davy Gam, was beheaded. It is true that he had a son and heir, but he didn’t amount to much and lost the Earldom of Pembroke. Thus, the beheading of the 1st Earl was effectively the cutting down of the hopes and expectations of his family. Yet despite this disaster, all was not lost. He also had an illegitimate son, Sir Richard Herbert of Ewyas, whose family tree grew like a sucker from the root stock of the felled tree. Through him, the Herberts found their way back into power, eventually regaining their lost title of Earl of Pembroke. In other words, the destiny of the Herbert family was, in a sense, analogous to that of the biblical Jesse. Of course, this couldn’t be said openly and in so many words, but the symbolism of the Jesse tree spoke for itself: Jesse was a surrogate for the 1st Earl of Pembroke whose line seemed finished until it was restored by its offshoot: the rod of his illegitimate son Richard.
This much was clear, but already I could see that this was only a small part of what was a much bigger story concerning the old Welsh aristocracy. Also, Sir William Herbert was not the only Yorkist in Wales. I had to move my attention from Abergavenny to Llandaff Cathedral in Cardiff.
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* See Chart 10: The Tree of Jesse to Jesus, page 233