monumental brasses

monumental brasses or sepulchral brasses, memorials to the dead, in use in churches on the Continent and in England in the 13th cent. and for several centuries following. They are usually set in the pavement but occasionally are placed upright against a wall or stand free upon a plinth. Some, called palimpsests, are incised on brasses that have been used before on the opposite face. The engraving usually presents a figure of the deceased. Historical interest centers around the contemporary costumes, armor, heraldic designs, genealogy, and paleography revealed. Such brasses still exist in Belgium, especially in Bruges; in the Netherlands; and in Germany, where there are some exceptional 13th-century examples. In England the churches of Ipswich, Norwich, London, Bristol, and elsewhere disclose more than 7,000 examples covering the different periods of their use. Tens of thousands of brasses were destroyed during the Tudor dissolution of the monasteries. The majority of those that remain are of native design and craftsmanship and of the inset type; incised examples usually indicate Flemish origin. A few brasses are in Glasgow and Edinburgh churches. The image of the brass can be transferred to paper by rubbing with a black gum called cobbler's heel-ball or with crayon. Rubbing brasses has been a popular activity in England for many decades.

Bibliography: See J. Mann's Monumental Brasses (1957); A. C. Bouquet, European Brasses (1968); H. W. Macklin, Monumental Brasses, ed. J. P. Phillips (repr. 1969).

monumental brass. Plate of brass or latten incised with a formalized image and inscription, let into a slab of stone as a funerary monument.

brass, monumental. A funerary monument consisting of an engraved sheet of brass, a golden yellow metal, affixed to the floor or wall of a church or sometimes to a tomb chest. Brasses, which were cheaper than sculptured tombs, originated in the Low Countries in the 13th century and flourished chiefly in England, where about 8,000 are extant (the earliest date from about 1300 and the practice of making them continued into the 17th century). About half of them represent figures, and others have heraldic devices, Christian symbols, or (in later examples) religious scenes. The material used was not pure brass (copper and zinc), but an alloy called at the time ‘latten’, composed of approximately 60 per cent copper and 30 per cent zinc, with 10 per cent lead and tin. Latten was produced in the Low Countries and Germany and imported into England, where it was engraved; large-scale English manufacture of the material began only in the 16th century. The main centre of production seems to have been London, and the majority of medieval brasses are in the Home Counties and East Anglia; there are comparatively few in the north, although the Thornton Brass (c.1430) in St Nicholas's Cathedral, Newcastle upon Tyne, is said to be the largest in the country. The best examples are of outstanding artistic merit and collectively brasses are of great importance as a source of detailed information on the evolution of armour and costume in medieval England. See also bronze.