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Stonegrave Minster is a church in Stonegrave, North Yorkshire, England. It has remarkable heraldry.() It was an Old Minster and established before 757 AD when Pope Paul I wrote to Eadberht, King of Northumberland, about the appointment of an abbot. It was staffed by priests following the traditions of Iona and Lindisfarne, and was probably founded by an earlier King of Northumberland. The abbess or abbot ruled Coxwold, Stonegrave and a third house, Donamuthe, near where the Old Don met the Trent and Humber at Adlingfleet. This was destroyed by the Danes in 794 AD and has totally disappeared. ==Original church== The original church was a high and narrow rectangular structure. Today's west wall may be a remaining feature of this; its early date is shown by the proportions of the tall, narrow doorway, still centrally placed, which has a very roughly constructed arch above two irregular jambs. Such a high, narrow door played an important part in the services of the early church. Above this doorway, high in the west wall, is another doorway, now blocked which once gave access from the tower to a chamber above the nave, possibly a dormitory or chapel. Later, the side walls of the original church were pierced by arches of the Norman north and south arcades. Original masonry seems to have survived above and between the arches themselves. The whole of the east end of the church was destroyed in the Norman rebuilding. The church contains fragments from four standing crosses, together with an almost complete cross that now stands beside a rectangular block, once part of its base. All these were found during the church's restoration in 1863. The earliest fragment, with the "figure of 8 design", was carved in the ninth century, the others in the tenth. They all differ clearly from the cross fragments in neighbouring churches: they are abstract and free from animal forms; the interlace is open and arranged in double plait lines on all but the earliest. Those who commissioned them had a strong religious purpose and individual, though conservative, tastes. The great cross itself has no parallel in Ryedale. The shape of the head and the style of the carving both suggest that it was designed and carved by men trained in the traditions of Galloway and Iona and made soon after 920 AD. Three carvings interrupt the interlace on the face of the shaft. The lowest is a figure of a priest missionary of the Celtic Church, feet carved sideways as in Northumbrian manuscripts of the time, head round with the Celtic tonsure. From his neck hangs the bag in which he carried the chalice, paten and Gospels on his journeys. He is ready for his pastoral work. Above him is a plain cross, head and arms splayed like those of the head of the great cross. At the top of the shaft is a seated figure, praying with book held aloft in the fashion of the Celtic Church. The surfaces of these carvings are plain, possibly intended to be painted. One scholar has described the whole design briefly - a work of uncompromising Christianity. The rectangular block beside the great cross and three other fragments once formed its base. Two of the pieces have panels within which are the incised outlines, in the one of an animal with a bird on its back, in the other of an animal. Neither has been satisfactorily explained. In the 19th century, the great cross was placed on a base that has no relation to it and both were put on the only stone with Norse carving, probably a gravestone. Within a border of interlace, there is the figure of an archer shooting an arrow at a stag. This may be a hunting scene, an incident from Viking heroic legend or a Christian symbol. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Stonegrave Minster」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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