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ESSAY ON THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH 
 
 ARCHITECTURE 
 
PLATE 1. 
 
 THE ABBEY-CHURCH OF DORE. 
 INTERIOR VIEW OK THE PRESBYTERY. 
 
AN ESSAY 
 
 ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 PRIOR TO THE SEPARATION OF ENGLAND FROM THE ROMAN OBEDIENCE. 
 
 By GEORGE GILBERT SCOTT, F.S.A., 
 
 SOMETIME FELLOW OF JESUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 SIMPKIN, MARSHALL AND CO. 
 
 -^*M:DCCC:LXXXLi-^ 
 
HA.ELL, WATSON. AND VINEV, PKINTEKS, LONUQN AND AV.ESBUKV. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface i 
 
 Chap. I. — Review of the general history of Ecclesiastical architecture previous to the 
 
 conversion of the English ... i 
 
 Discursuson the Orientation of the Early Christian Churches 14 
 
 Discursus on the ^Esthetic and Artistic element in Primitive Christianity ... 24 
 Chap. II. — From the Mission of St. Augustine to the Norman Conquest • • • 35 
 Discursus on Early Churches in Eastern and Western Christendom . . . . 52 
 Description of the Basilica of St. Felix at Nola. (From the xiith Epistle of St. Paulinus 
 
 to Severus.) Translated, with a few brief notes and observations, by R. C. J. 78 
 M. Vitruvius Pollio upon the Secular Roman Basilica ...... 88 
 
 Chap. III. — The Norman period .......... 92 
 
 Discursus on the history of the Casula . . . . . . . . .113 
 
 Discursus on the painted ceilings of St. Alban's Abbey Church . . . . .119 
 
 Chap. IV. — From the first appearance of the Pointed style to the commencement of the 
 
 fourteenth century . . . . . . 124 
 
 Discursus on certain medieval innovations in the distribution of churches . . . 152 
 Chap. V. — From the fourteenth century to the close of the Medieval period . . 172 
 Notes and remarks upon the illustrations 187 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This is but an essay upon a subject to do justice to which a treatise of many volumes would 
 be required. It has, however, a distinct and definite aim, which should give a unity to what 
 would otherwise appear heterogeneous in its composition. By the greater or less success with 
 which this aim is attained this little work must be judged. 
 
 My object throughout has been to exhibit the history with which it attempts to deal as one 
 continuous fact, having an origin, which can be quite accurately ascertained, and an orderly 
 evolution determined by the conditions, internal and external. 
 
 It is no matter of accident that churches were built in a certain form and in a certain style 
 at a certain date. It is possible to give a reason for this, in every case, and to trace back the 
 cause of any particular fashion of church building, step by step, to the origin of christian art, 
 which is one with the origin of the christian Church. 
 
 It has been my aim to exhibit the architectural art of Christendom as a part of the great 
 fact of Christianity; to deal with the church architecture of our own country as but a portion 
 of a great whole, and to display the essential solidarity of the history of christian art in 
 England with that of christian art in general, and of Christianity itself. This being under- 
 stood, the reader will not be surprised to find that a good deal of space is here devoted to 
 the consideration of the progress made by church architecture before english churches, or 
 english christians, were. Ecclesiology in England did not start into being — an Athene sprung 
 adult from the brain of Zeus — at the bidding of St, Augustine. Our ancestors, upon their 
 conversion, but took up the threads of — but fell with the stream of — a tradition already 
 venerable from its years. Or rather — and this is of the essence of the matter — they came, 
 by that event, under the influence of two traditions, so distinct in their history, that as we follow 
 back their parted streams we find no common channel, till we reach the common fountain- 
 head. 
 
 It should, however, be clearly understood, at the outset, that this distinction in the ecclesio- 
 logical and ritual tradition, existed side by sidewith identity of faith, complete inter-communion, 
 hierarchical subordination, and organic unity. Men are parted at the present day into religious 
 sects and churches by differences of opinion, almost microscopic, by an incompatibility of 
 mere sentiment, or by the inequalities of social standing, and they are, therefore, prone to 
 assume that there can have been no unity where there was no uniformity. Wide as was the 
 distinction between the ecclesiological traditions of Britain, Gaul, Italy, and Asia Minor, there 
 existed between these, and other countries still more remote, a complete unity of ecclesiastical 
 organisation under an acknowledged head. British bishops were summoned in common with 
 all other catholic prelates, to the early councils, and the mission of St. Germanus, for the 
 correction of british Pelagianism, offers as conspicuous an example of the action of the central 
 authority, as the mission of St. Augustine, to correct the culpable negligence of the native 
 
ii 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 hierarchy in the matter of the conversion of the saxon invaders of Britain. That the church 
 architecture of England owes a great deal of its peculiar character to the traditions of the 
 british church, which it was the task of St. Augustine, not so much to reform as to revivify, 
 is sufficiently insisted on in the following pages. 
 
 Nevertheless, of an investigation into the antecedents of english church architecture, the 
 larger portion will necessarily relate to the history of that tradition which was imported into 
 these isles by the roman missionaries of the sixth century. This results, partly from the 
 circumstance that at present so much more is known upon this head than upon the subject 
 of british ecclesiology, but principally from the fact itself, that the Christianity of the English is 
 the result of the work of these roman missioners. Of the main stream from which is derived 
 our english ecclesiological traditions, the head-waters are in Rome, but its springs are not to be 
 sought exclusively in Italy, nor even in western Christendom. Hence our preliminary survey 
 will cover of necessity a very wide area. Moreover the roman tradition did not make its first 
 appearance in our island, as a consequence of the mission of St. Augustine. It had, upon the 
 establishment of the peace of the Church (if not before the time of Constantine), been followed 
 by the christianized roman colonists, and the officials of the empire, side by side with the very 
 different tradition of the native british christians. The divergence of the two serves, indeed, 
 to bring out the more clearly the essential unity to which they both witness. 
 
 It is very usual to commence the history of the church architecture of our country at the 
 period of the norman conquest. It any retrospect of the preceding history is attempted, it 
 is, too frequently, done in a somewhat perfunctory manner, and is disposed of as briefly as 
 may be. 
 
 If it should be thought that too great a space is here devoted to these necessary prolegomena, 
 my excuse must be, that they are very commonly omitted altogether. 
 
 Some apology is needed for the form which this little work has come to assume, which 
 may appear to the reader somewhat unmethodical, and even desultory — a collection of papers, 
 rather than an essay. 
 
 It will be observed, however, that the text itself pursues a pretty regular and consecutive 
 course, and gives, so far as the ability of the writer permits, a continuous history of the 
 subject from the point of view taken. The intervening discursus are intended to illustrate 
 points in the history, which could not be dealt with at length in the text itself, without a 
 sacrifice of that effect of unity which it has been my main object to bring out. Some 
 of these may seem to cohere but loosely with the principal theme, but they have, as a matter of 
 fact, been suggested by it. To write, so as to interest others, a man must write what comes 
 to him. Serpit hiimi tutus nimium. The consideration of various details, bearing all, more 
 or less directly, upon the main thesis, has brought about a result which, if unmethodical, is at 
 least natural and spontaneous. It may, perhaps, be not the less interesting to the reader on 
 that account. 
 
 There is one point in connection with our medieval architecture, upon which I should have 
 been glad to have been able to remark, as it is one which has long interested me, but the 
 little study which I have given to the subject has not enabled me to arrive at any conclusions 
 of value. I refer to the systems of proportionment adopted by the architects of the middle 
 ages. 
 
 That there were such rules, traditional in the various schools of medieval art, the outcome 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 iii 
 
 of ancient science, and of accumulating experience, I have no doubt. I feel convinced, too, 
 that dififerent schools had different methods, to which is due the very different effect of the 
 buildings erected by each. It is with systems of proportioning as with the keys of the 
 musical scale, one is fitted to the expression of one kind of sentiment, one to another. But 
 what these rules were, it is now, perhaps — the tradition having been broken — impossible to 
 ascertain. 
 
 Apart from the antecedent probability of the existence of such rules, which results from 
 what we know of the practice of the architects of antiquity, the conditions of the building 
 craft during the middle ages, would lead us to expect that such traditions, as were undoubtedly 
 in existence from very early times, would be carefully preserved and elaborated. Such a 
 result was indeed insured by the fact, that like all the other crafts, the building trade was 
 organised upon a very systematic principle. This ruling idea of the medieval guilds was the 
 solidarity of each craft, from the highest member of it, down to the humblest artificer. 
 
 Human society only too naturally falls into strata. " Les couches sociales " are obvious 
 enough to every observer, in every age. What is demanded by the higher instincts is a force 
 which shall cut athwart this grim mechanical " stratification," which separates man from man, 
 and effect a " cleavage" in a more or less vertical direction. 
 
 The only power which has, as a matter of fact, produced such a re -arrangement of the 
 ultimate social particles is the catholic church. What electricity is in the physical order, 
 Christianity is in the social. 
 
 As a consequence of the gradual abandonment of christian social principles, which has 
 followed upon the Reformation, the organization of society has reverted to the natural 
 law. In place, therefore, of a guild in which architect, mason, joiner, carpenter, bricklayer, 
 and labourer were banded together in a common work, under the invocation of a common 
 patron-saint (a man like any one of them) and under the eye of an almighty Master, "cuncta 
 stricte discussuri," we have now institutes of architects, contractors' associations, societies of 
 foremen, masons', joiners', and labourers' trade-unions. The divine idea, the electricity of 
 the social order, having been lost, there is no longer any vertical " cleavage," in society. 
 Brute nature asserts itself once again, and the old battle of classes recommences, as if 
 Christianity had not been." 
 
 But in the middle ages the state of the building art was wholly different from that to 
 which it has been reduced by the reaction of the sixteenth century. Up to that time it 
 was possessed of a living tradition, of which the conditions imposed upon the craft by the 
 circumstances of its practice, ensured the systematic inculcation. 
 
 The special peculiarity of the building trade is that it is necessarily migratory. Hence the 
 
 Of the result of this unhappy reaction upon the character of the work produced under the modern system, 
 Mr. Thomas Carlyle, in an unpublished letter to Sir Joseph Whitworth, writes thus : — " A sadder object than 
 even that of the coal strike, or any other conceivable strike, is the fact that — loosely speaking — we may say all 
 England has decided that the profitablest way is to do its work ill, slurily, swiftly, and mendaciously. What a 
 contrast between now and say only a hundred years ago ! At the latter date, or still more conspicuously for 
 ages before that, all England awoke to its work — to an invocation to the Eternal Maker to bless them in their 
 day's labour, and help them to do it well. Now all England — shopkeepers, workmen, all manner of competing 
 labourers — awaken, as if with an unspoken but heartfelt prayer to Beelzebub : — ' Oh, help us, thou great Lord of 
 shoddy, adulteration, and malfeasance, to do our work with the maximum of sluriness, swiftness, profit, and 
 mendacity, for the devil's sake. Amen.' " With the state of things thus powerfully described, the modern 
 decay of architecture, as a living popular art, is intimately connected. Good art can only exist where there is 
 good workmanship. 
 
 A 
 
iv 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 need of secret signs by which the travelling artificer might be known to his brothers in 
 the guild all over the country, or even beyond it. This feature of the mason's guild, which 
 the conditions of its practice originated, has survived the overthrow of the guild itself. As 
 there is now a cloth-workers' and a drapers' company, having little or nothing to do with the 
 manufacture of clothing stuffs, so there is a freemasonry which is not concerned with the art 
 of working stone. But as the city cloth company was once an organised trade, so was once 
 the company of free and accepted masons. And there can be little doubt that the various 
 branches of the society, when it was a reality, were in possession of certain rules of proportion, 
 the outcome at once of theory and of practical experience. Now, however, that the traditions 
 of the building guilds have been lost, it is, of course, impossible to ascertain with certainty 
 the principles of design which were followed in the middle ages. Some hints may, no doubt, 
 be obtained from a careful study of measured examples, but the results hitherto obtained 
 appear to me very much a matter of conjecture. 
 
 In connection with this subject of the mode of organisation of the building trade, there is 
 another, upon which it would have been interesting to have touched had the materials avail- 
 able been sufficient for the construction of a fairly complete theory. 
 
 While the unity of the craft was so complete that a new idea, no matter where it originated) 
 became known, and was adopted at once all over western Europe, it is also clear that this 
 great body of artists and artizans was sub-divided into separate schools. Of these some were 
 purely local, while others, though exhibiting the influences of local tradition, were connected 
 with the varied families of the great religious orders. 
 
 In regard to the first it is curious to observe the mannerisms, so to speak, of different 
 districts. No one could mistake a Somerset church for an East Anglian, or a Yorkshire 
 building for one in the Midlands. Each county has its own peculiar architectural character, 
 known to every student of our ancient architecture,'' while of certain buildings one says, 
 almost instinctively, this and that were designed by the same men. 
 
 The same is the case with the monastic churches. Each order appears to have originated a 
 school of building of its own. There is, for example, about the works of the cistercian family 
 a peculiar and undefinable tenderness, which cannot be mistaken.*' So, too, with the other 
 religious societies, the buildings which they erected differ not more in the distribution of 
 their plan than in the impression, more easily felt than described, which their architecture is 
 calculated to produce. 
 
 How the unity of each school was preserved, how the traditions peculiar to each originated 
 and were developed, and how, at the same time, an inter-communication was maintained 
 between all these separate bodies, extending more or less over the whole of Europe, it is 
 difificult now to conjecture. The loss of so powerful an instrument for the furtherance of art 
 and of civilization, due to religious dis-union and the consequent enfeeblement of the social 
 principles of Christianity, must ever be a matter of profound regret. 
 
 ^ Thus in Northamptonshire almost every steeple has a stone spire ; in the adjacent county of Buckingham 
 there are, I believe, but three ancient spires, and of these two are on the border of Northants. It is quite 
 striking in driving from the one county into the other to observe the abrupt change in the general design of the 
 village churches, which is determined by the crossing of some nameless brooklet. 
 
 ' Rievaulx, Netley, and Tintern exhibit this, the especial character of the work of the most austere of all the 
 monastic orders, in its noblest form, and it is important thus to observe the instinctive sympathy which unites 
 what is most tender in the expression of human nature with the most severe asceticism. 
 
PLATE II. 
 
 TINTERN ABBEY. 
 
 EXTERIOR VIEW OF THE EAST iiND. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 V 
 
 I have referred to this matter here, because, while it is a subject upon which I confess 
 myself unable to throw much light, I should be unwilling to appear to ignore its importance 
 to a proper understanding of medieval architecture. 
 
 There only remains the pleasant task of acknowledging the assistance which I have received 
 from so many quarters. My thanks are particularly due to M. le Comte de Vogiie, the author 
 of the work entitled "Syrie Centrale : Architecture Civile et Religieuse du Premier au Septieme 
 Si^cle," and to M. Baudry, its publisher, for permission to reproduce from it several plans and 
 illustrations. This is a work of great accuracy, which deserves to be more widely known. I 
 have to thank Mr. R. Popplewell Pullan for a similar permission, very courteously given, in 
 regard to the work upon Byzantine Architecture, illustrated by Examples of Edifices erected 
 in the East during the Earliest Ages of Christianity," which was published by him, in conjunction 
 with M. Texier, in 1864. 
 
 To the Misses O'Brien my best thanks are due for the loan of the sketches of their brother, 
 Edward O'Brien, which have been fac-simileed for this work by Messrs. Akerman. 
 
 To the Rev. Canon Jenkins, rector of Lyminge, I am indebted not only for an entire 
 chapter, upon the basilica of Nola, contributed by him to this work, but also for many 
 communications upon the subject of the basilical church of Lyminge, and upon other matters 
 connected with the ecclesiology of early times, and for a kindly readiness to impart information 
 which is never wearied. 
 
 For accurate observations upon the orientation of the roman basilicas I have to thank 
 Mr. Henry Lainson, of CoUey Manor, Reigate, and my old friend, the Rev. J. Wilson Pickance, 
 whose friendship led them to spare no pains in pursuing an investigation for which their 
 frequent residence in Rome afforded special opportunity. I owe not a little gratitude to the 
 Rev. W. E. Addis, of the London Oratory, for valuable criticisms and suggestions in regard 
 to subjects upon which his special knowledge constitutes him an authority. 
 
 I have mentioned but a few among the many to whom my acknowledgements are due. I 
 must not, however, omit to express the obligation I am under to Mr. C. B. King, and to Mr. 
 John Medland, whose painstaking researches at the British Museum and elsewhere have been 
 of the greatest service to me in obtaining and correcting the many references, which are 
 indispensable to a work of this character. 
 
" This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, 
 This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, 
 This other Eden, demi-paradise, 
 This fortress built by Nature for herself 
 Against infection and the hand of war, 
 This happy breed of men, this little world, 
 This precious stone set in the silver sea. 
 Which serves it in the office of a wall 
 Or as a moat defensive to a house. 
 Against the envy of less happier lands, 
 This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, 
 This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, 
 Feared by their breed and famous by their birth, 
 Renowned for their deeds as far from home, 
 For christian service and true chivalry, 
 As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry 
 Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son, 
 This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land, 
 Dear for her reputation through the world — 
 Hath made a shameful conquest of itself : 
 O, would the scandal vanish with my life, 
 How happy then were my ensuing death ! " 
 
ENGLISH 
 
 AN ESSAY ON 
 
 CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The majority of educated Englishmen have a 
 general acquaintance with the several styles of 
 architecture which have prevailed in this country 
 since the period of the norman invasion. Such a 
 knowledge has almost become an element in cul- 
 ture, and the ability to distinguish between " early 
 english" and "perpendicular," "norman" and 
 " late decorated" a necessity of polite conversation. 
 
 But a broad and rational view of the progress 
 of medieval architecture, as a whole, is not so 
 easily attained, while a clear notion of the relation 
 which english church architecture bears, first to 
 that of the early ages of Christianity, and secondly, 
 to the contemporary art of western Europe, is 
 still more rarely met with. There are numerous 
 text-books from which the facts of the history may 
 be obtained with little difficulty, and I do not pro- 
 pose to add another to the list. My object is to 
 help those to whom the detiils are familiar to 
 understand better the position of these details, not 
 as isolated facts, but as parts of a whole. I may 
 be able to lay before my readers little or nothing 
 which may not be found in the standard works 
 upon the subject. My aim will have been attained 
 if I succeed in placing facts, most of them trite 
 enough, in an intelligible aspect and a rational 
 order. 
 
 It is only in the present day that such an inves- 
 tigation has become possible. Those who erected 
 the great works which are still our admiration, 
 knew little of, and cared even less for, the works 
 of their predecessors. The artist is essentially the 
 man of the present, and an extended knowledge of 
 the history of art and a sympathy with its various 
 manifestations is not, as a rule, found in conjunction 
 with real artistic power. Certainly those ages 
 which have been the most fruitful in great works 
 of architecture have been, as a rule, singularly 
 ignorant of architectural history. 
 
 As an instance of the knowledge of architectural 
 
 antiquity which an artist of the middle ages 
 possessed, we will notice the following. There 
 is preserved in the National Library at Paris, 
 the sketch-book of a thirteenth century french 
 architect, Wilars de Honicourt. Among other 
 most interesting drawings is a sketch of an ancient 
 roman monument, so carefully drawn that its 
 character is unmistakable. Upon this sketch Wilars 
 has written — "This is the tomb of a Saracen whicii 
 I once saw." It was evident to him that the tomb 
 was a pagan one, and to him a Pagan and a 
 Saracen meant the same thing. 
 
 The great period of the classic Renaissance 
 may seem in some sort an exception to this rule. 
 There was undoubtedly then some antiquarian 
 knowledge, but the ruthless manner in which 
 the remains of classic antiquity were destroyed 
 by the very men who were engaged in reviving 
 the classic style, shows how lightly they valued 
 these priceless treasures. The ruins of the Coli- 
 seum served as a quarry from which Michael 
 Angelo obtained the materials for the Farnese 
 Palace, and the dome of the Pantheon was stripped 
 of the bronze which ornamented its coffers to supply 
 Bernini with metal for the construction of the bal- 
 dachin of St. Peter's. 
 
 In the successive periods of the history of art, 
 as in the character of the individual artist, the 
 critical faculty and the creative are distinct, and 
 even opposed. But seldom are the two combined 
 in the same person or in the same age, and never 
 in an equal proportion. 
 
 Nothing is more striking at the present day than 
 the absence of true creative power in architectural 
 art. I am not speaking of individual artists. A\'e 
 have many men who, under more favourable con- 
 ditions, would have produced great and even 
 original works. It is even remarkable how much 
 is accomplished under existing circumstances by 
 individual men of genius. But we have produced 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 no national style, nor do we seem likely at present 
 to do so. We have broken the tradition which 
 maintained the continuity of art history, and made 
 each successive style the natural outcome of its 
 predecessor. Everywhere we meet with reproduc- 
 tions of ancient styles, attempted revivals of lost 
 traditions, nowhere with any genuine power of 
 creating new forms of beauty united to new re- 
 quirements. Indeed, it is difficult to see how, when 
 tradition is broken up, or has exhausted itself, a 
 new and genuine architecture is to be originated. 
 We must look for this among the unknown possi- 
 bilities of the future. But for the present we may 
 well console ourselves for the deadness of the 
 creative power in the vigour of the critical faculty. 
 Our age is, in matters of art, eminently antiquarian, 
 and in the minute acquaintance with the history of 
 past styles which we possess, we may find some 
 amends for the want of one of our own. 
 
 The history of church architecture is, in fact, the 
 history of architecture in general ever since the 
 establishment of the peace of the Church under 
 Constantine the Great. " Among all nations," says 
 M. Viollet le Due, " religious architecture is the 
 first to develop itself In the earlier stages of 
 civilisation, the temple or the church not only 
 meets the most imperious needs of man's moral 
 nature ; it is also a refuge, an asylum, a protection 
 against high-handed violence. It is here that the 
 archives of the nation are laid up and its most 
 valued title deeds placed under the guardianship of 
 the Divinity. It is here that all great assemblies, 
 whether civil or religious, are convened ; for societies 
 have ever felt, in trying times, the necessity of draw- 
 ing near to a superhuman power, which may sanction 
 while it directs their deliberations. This sentiment, 
 which is found among all nations, is exhibited in a 
 very marked manner in the christian society." 
 
 Such considerations as these will, of themselves, 
 suggest the great part in the history of architecture 
 which is occupied by the progress of ecclesias- 
 tical constructions. Churches, ever since christian 
 churches first arose, have determined more or less 
 the style of all other buildings. The church was 
 much more in early times than it is in our own. It 
 was not merely the place of public worship, still 
 less the mere assembly-room for Sunday sermons. 
 It was the centre of the common-life of the chris- 
 tian society. At once the house, the dwelling- 
 place of God, and the meeting-place of the citizens 
 of His kingdom — the Civitas Dei. This is well 
 brought out in the fact, on which we shall have to 
 dwell more fully as we proceed, that the earliest 
 type of the christian church is founded, not upon 
 the temple, whether Jewish or pagan, but upon the 
 Basilica, which was in fact a smaller Forum. The 
 church was not only public, but it was essentially 
 the public place. We need not wonder, then, that 
 upon its construction has been devoted at all 
 periods that architectural zeal which has deter- 
 mined the history and progress of the art in all its 
 various departments. 
 
 The subject, then, of church architecture, em- 
 
 bracing, as it does, more or less that ot all the 
 other branches of the art, is much too wide for the 
 limits of an essay. We therefore propose to con- 
 fine ourselves mainly to the history of E?iglish 
 church architecture. 
 
 It is, however, impossible to isolate this history 
 altogether from that of the progress of the art in 
 other parts of Christendom. The unity of the 
 Church has its outward and material expression in 
 the parallelism which exists in the development of 
 christian architecture in different countries, and in 
 the influence which the art of one christian nation 
 has exercised upon that of others often locally 
 remote. 
 
 In the commencement of our inquiry, more 
 especially, it will be necessary to take an extended 
 view. It is to Rome, to Constantinople, and to 
 the East that we must look for the earliest existing 
 examples of church architecture. From the same 
 local centres from which we derive our religion 
 itself is derived also the art which is its material 
 embodiment. In the same manner, all through the 
 history we shall have to refer from time to time to 
 influences which have affected its progress in our 
 own country, but which came to us from without. 
 Such influences cannot properly be called foreign. 
 To a christian no portion of Christendom is foreign 
 soil ; and until the schism of East and West, and 
 the troubles of the reformation-period had divided 
 the one society, its unity was reahsed in a practical 
 intercommunion of all the churches, which affected 
 in the most direct manner the history of christian 
 art. We shall see from the fourth to the seventh 
 century the same type of church building prevailing 
 in central Syria, in Byzantium, in Greece, and at 
 Rome, which we find to prevail in France, in Ger- 
 many, in saxon England, and with slight modifica- 
 tions in Celtic Ireland. For the prototype of the 
 architecture employed by St. Augustine at Canter- 
 bury, we shall seek naturally at Rome and at 
 Ravenna. The future of english art after the 
 norman conquest was determined by that great 
 impulse which stirred the whole of the western 
 church at the preaching of Peter the hermit, of 
 Amiens. Its subsequent progress until the four- 
 teenth century cannot be studied apart from the 
 history of the art in France, while the movement 
 which ultimately overthrew the gothic style in this 
 country, as elsewhere, was distinctly italian in its 
 origin. Anxious as the english reformers were to 
 cut us off completely from the unreformed churches 
 of the continent, they still could not prevent their 
 influence upon our church architecture. We had 
 rejected Roman doctrine, but we could not escape 
 the influence of Roman art. Our religion might be 
 national, but our church architecture became 
 italian. Canterbury had broken, absolutely, with 
 the Vatican, but St. Paul's cathedral would have 
 been impossible but for the erection of St. Peter's. 
 
 Hence, while confining our review of the history 
 of ecclesiastical architecture mainly to that of 
 England, it will be necessary to commence with 
 that earlier art, out of which our own toojc its 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 3 
 
 origin, and it will be needful from time to time to 
 digress from our own main course in order to ex- 
 plain the influence upon our own architecture, 
 which was exercised by the contemporary art of 
 other christian countries. Our subject is therefore, 
 to some extent, the history of church architecture 
 in general, but with an especial reference to the 
 course which that history has taken in our own 
 country. 
 
 The first question which meets us upon the 
 threshold of our inquiry is one to which we have 
 unfortunately very few materials for a reply. AVhat 
 was the character and what were the arrangements 
 of christian churches previous to the reign of 
 Constantine ? With the possible exception of some 
 few of the ruined churches of central Syria, there 
 are no remains of christian buildings erected prior 
 to the peace of the church, and it is from the roman 
 catacombs chiefly that we obtain hints as to the 
 arrangements which prevailed in the churches above 
 ground. The absence of any earlier monuments of 
 christian art is to be attributed at once to the se- 
 verity of the Diocletian persecution, and to the 
 completeness of the triumph which followed so im- 
 mediately upon it. The one had left almost every 
 christian church a ruin, and the other rendered 
 possible their re-erection upon such grander models 
 that it was seldom considered worth while to restore 
 the simpler buildings previously in use. 
 
 That there were churches, and these of consider- 
 able dimensions, at an earlier date, we know from 
 written evidence. Eusebius tells us that the great 
 basilica erected by Constantine at Tyre was a re- 
 storation of the earlier one destroyed in the recent 
 persecution, and that great cost was incurred in 
 continuing the new work so as to preserve as much 
 as possible of the original building. The history of 
 the Diocletian persecution shows us the immense 
 number of christian churches which then existed, 
 in the accounts given of their destruction in every 
 part of the empire. It is impossible to examine, 
 as in some cases we still may, the great churches 
 erected by Constantine, or to read the description 
 of others which have perished, without seeing that 
 a definite type of church arrangement had been 
 already adopted, and was, so to speak, ready to 
 hand. The similarity of plan which we trace in all 
 the churches erected by the first christian emperor 
 is a great argument that the type employed was 
 already a traditional one. That it was not invented 
 at that time, is shown by the statement of Eusebius 
 to which we have just referred. Still, in early times 
 the position of the church rendered the erection of 
 any but the humblest buildings exceptional. These 
 are generally spoken of as oratories, and were fre- 
 quently, no doubt, merely rooms in the houses of 
 persons of position who had embraced the faith. 
 The expression so common in the Epistles, " the 
 church which is in the house" of such an one, 
 points clearly to the meeting of the little community 
 in the residence of one of its principal members, 
 and the rooms set apart for this purpose formed the 
 first oratories or chaoels in which were celebrated 
 
 the august rites of the new law. We have a tra- 
 dition of a somewhat similar state of things in the 
 position of so many of our own country churches, 
 placed close to the house of the great family 
 to whose piety it owed its foundation, and by whose 
 liberality it was in early times maintained. St. 
 Jerome speaking of the basilica at Rome, which is 
 dedicated to St. Clement, its third bishop and the 
 fellow-labourer of St. Paul, alludes to the oratory 
 of the saint still existing in that church. It was 
 supposed, until the present day, that the church to 
 which St. Jerome referred was the existing building, 
 and as nothing corresponding to his description is 
 there to be found, it was assumed that his words 
 referred to the tomb or shrine of the saint. Quite 
 recently, however, there has been discovered below 
 the present church, the lower portion of the 
 original building. It was to this church that St. 
 Jerome's remarks had reference, and here beyond 
 the apse there exists, just as he describes, the room 
 which formed the oratory of St. Clement. It is 
 simply an apartment in what has evidently been a 
 large residence of the period of the early empire. 
 The character of the house is such as we might 
 expect from the social position of the saint, who 
 was a member of the Flavian family, and the 
 nephew, probably, of Flavius Clemens. This inte- 
 resting building has been discovered, and together 
 with the adjoining church has been cleared out 
 and exposed to view by the energy of Father 
 Mullooly, the prior of the irishdominicans, to whom 
 the church now belongs ; and though there is 
 nothing to give us any hint of its internal arrange- 
 ments, it is impossible to view this simple oratory 
 without emotion. Here in this simple hall we 
 may see the earliest existing home of those newer 
 rites which were destined to overspread the world, 
 and to enshrine themselves hereafter in the noblest 
 buildings which man has ever erected — the proto- 
 type, in fact, of St. Sophia and of St. Peter's, of 
 Strasburg and of Westminster. 
 
 From rooms thus set apart for christian worship, 
 and from similar small buildings erected when 
 more favourable circumstances permitted, arose the 
 simplest type of church architecture — a type 
 which may be considered as distinct from 
 that larger type of building which was 
 developed afterwards, and which became al- 
 most universal after the establishment of the 
 Church, and which is known as the Basilican. To 
 this earlier class may be referred the chapels of the 
 catacombs ; and these simple places of worship are 
 generally distinguished by the name of oratories 
 from these larger buildings termed churches or 
 basilicas. A simple aisleless chapel divided by a 
 cross arch into two divisions (sometimes in later 
 times into three) and terminating either in a square 
 end or in an apse, such appears to have been the 
 primitive model of what was afterwards the parish 
 church, as distinguished from the cathedral and 
 monastic structures, and this simple plan dates, we 
 conceive, from the commencement of Christianity 
 itself. This type continued to run on in this 
 
4 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 country side by side with the basiHcan model, 
 until the two merged into one in the larger parish 
 churches of the middle ages. 
 
 To this class must be referred the small early 
 churches of Britain and Ireland. These buildings 
 possess one great peculiarity, to which we shall have 
 again to allude. They are always square-ended, 
 and not apsidal. This difference is by no means 
 insignificant. In all the schools of church archi- 
 tecture which trace their origin to Rome or to 
 Byzantium, we find invariably the apsidal termina- 
 tion. There are no ancient churches in Rome 
 without an apse. St. Lorenzo is only an apparent 
 exception, as the original apse was removed by 
 Honorius III., and the arrangements of the church 
 reversed. Throughout the East, at all periods, the 
 same rule prevails, as it does also in Russia. 
 Throughout the continent of western europe 
 square-ended churches are almost unknown. 
 Wherever roman or byzantine influence has de- 
 termined the course of architectural development, 
 there we find the apsidal type universal. When we 
 consider the flourishing state of Christianity in 
 Britain until the period of the saxon incursions, 
 and its close political connection with Rome 
 during four centuries, it is very remarkable that the 
 type of church prevailing in these isles was not 
 conformed to the roman model, as adopted by 
 Constantine. In these british and irish churches 
 we have evidence of the existence of a tradition 
 earlier than his date, and which we cannot but 
 refer to the very commencement of brilish Chris- 
 tianity. We may remark that in these square-ended 
 churches the altar did not stand in contact with the 
 east wall, but was placed a short distance in 
 advance ; and that behind it, along the wall, ran 
 a bench for the bishop and clergy. This we may 
 imagine to have been the arrangement of such 
 oratories as that of St. Clement ; and there is, 
 therefore, no liturgical distinction between this and 
 the basilican arrangement. The rite was clearly 
 the same in both; but the architectural arrange- 
 ments which the rite necessitated are differently 
 provided for. The difference of the two plans is 
 of the highest value in witnessing to the ritual 
 uniformity which underlies it ; and as the two 
 types represent traditions which were distinct and 
 independent even in the fourth century, we can 
 only refer their essential unity of principle to a 
 common origin in the commencement of Christianity 
 itself. Both types carry us back to the first insti- 
 tution of the new rite in the upper chamber at 
 Jerusalem. In the bishop or celebrant in the centre 
 we see the representative of our Lord; in the clergy, 
 seated on either side of him, the apostles. In front 
 and facing these, the general crowd of the faithful, 
 who, though none were present at the first institu- 
 tion of the mysteries, were not forgotten in the 
 Saviour's prayer. 
 
 The other and grander type of a christian church 
 which prevailed throughout the west, is that termed 
 the basilican. The origin of the name basilica is 
 somewhat doubtful. As the buildings to wliich the 
 
 name was applied by the pagan Romans were used, 
 among other purposes, as law-courts, some have 
 supposed that the name was borrowed from Athens, 
 and was applied originally to the place in which the 
 Basileus Archon held his court. The word is 
 evidently an adjective — the substantive, stoe, a 
 colonnade, being understood. It has its latin 
 equivalent in 7'egia, where the substantive porticus 
 is similarly implied. Both basilica and regia seem 
 to have become recognised expressions for a 
 colonnade, or a building containing colonnades. 
 The roman basilica was originally a sort of smaller 
 forum, open to the air, but surrounded by colon- 
 nades, in which merchants and men of business 
 might meet to transact their affairs in greater 
 privacy and comfort than was possible in the forum 
 itself. The earlier pagan basilicas were open to 
 the sky, answering somewhat to the modern ex- 
 change. This was probably the case with the great 
 Basilica Julia in the roman Forum. On the other 
 hand, the one which Vitruvius describes as erected 
 by himself at Fano was roofed in, for he s])eaks of 
 the columns as supporting a testudo, and of the 
 necessary provision for the admission of light ; but 
 it is evident, from the very awkward manner in 
 which this necessity is met, that a covered basilica 
 was then a novelty, and that the architect had 
 scarcely mastered the problem. The Basilica Jovis 
 upon the palatine, erected by the Flavian emperors, 
 though of great width, was covered by a vaulted 
 roof, and the same was the case with the basilica 
 of Constantine and others. These buildings have 
 sometimes galleries formed under the side colon- 
 nades approached by external staircases, and 
 Vitruvius is careful to mention that the balustrades 
 of these galleries must be made sufficiently high, so 
 that persons in the gallery shall not be visible from 
 the floor of the building. The pagan basilicas are 
 frequently described as law-courts. This was not, 
 however, their most important or principal use. 
 They served for the transaction of general 
 business ; but, as law-courts were commonly 
 situated in the forum, so, too, they were very 
 common adjuncts to the basilica. To give room 
 for the law-court, and to remove it somewhat from 
 the noise and bustle going on in the body of the 
 building, without abandoning that publicity which 
 was essential, semi-circular recesses were formed at 
 the sides — or more commonly at the ends of the 
 hall — and these were fenced off in some cases from 
 the rest of the building by marble screens, which 
 remain in situ in the Basilica Jovis. 
 
 Of the great pagan basilicas of Rome we may 
 select four for illustration, as characteristic of 
 different types. First of all comes the great 
 Basilica Julia in the Forum Romanum, of which 
 enough has been excavated to show its immense 
 extent. A splendid double colonnade surrounds a 
 central area about no feet wide by 230 feet long. 
 The whole of this vast floor is laid with precious 
 marbles. It is not known whether this forum 
 was covered in or not, though the question 
 might be determined by observing whether there 
 
PLATE III. 
 
 THE BASILICA JOVIS ON THE 
 
 FIG. I. INTERIOR VIEW. FIG. II. 
 
 PALATINE HILL. 
 
 GROUND-PLAN. 
 
THE HISTORY OF EXGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 5 
 
 was provision for removing the rain which would 
 fall upon the floor of the central area if unroofed. 
 I have little doubt, from its immense area, and from 
 the fact of its being unenclosed by any external 
 wall, that it was open to the air. 
 
 The next type is afforded us in the Basilica Jovis, 
 erected by Domitian, upon the palatine hill. This 
 was in all probability roofed in, and planned with 
 galleries as shown in the conjectural restoration. 
 This type is the one which most resembles the 
 christian model, and it serves to show to what a 
 small extent the indebtedness extends.'* 
 
 The next great model is the Ulpian Basilica. 
 This vast building is enclosed by a wall enriched 
 towards the forum with a portico. It consists, like 
 the Julian Basilica, of a double colonnade sur- 
 rounding a great central area, but it has at each 
 extremity an immense apse, which no doubt served 
 as a law-court. Between it and the Temple of 
 Trajan, in a small oblong area surrounded by 
 colonnades, stood, and still stands, the column of 
 that emperor : on each side of this court was a 
 library, the one latin, the other greek. That the 
 central area of this vast basilica was roofed in, we 
 may well doubt, when we consider its size, and 
 also the position, relatively to it, of the triumphal 
 column. It must, I think, have been intended 
 that a view of the column should be obtained from 
 the interior of the basilica. 
 
 Lastly, we have the Basilica of Constantine. This 
 is particularly interesting to us on account of its 
 date and its builder, and it is certainly very re- 
 markable that of all the secular roofed basilicas, 
 this, the erection of the first christian emperor, is 
 the most unlike a christian church. It resembles 
 much more nearly one of the halls of the baths. 
 In the first place, it consists of three immense bays, 
 carried by piers, instead of the numerous narrow 
 bays and closely spaced pillars of the christian 
 basilicas. Then it was vaulted throughout, while 
 they have invariably timber roofs. Again, it has no 
 aisles, properly speaking. There are on each side 
 of it three great apartments which open upon the 
 nave by the three lofty arches already mentioned ; 
 and these separate halls, for so they may be con- 
 sidered, are vaulted with barrel vaults at right 
 angles to that of the nave. They are, in fact, a 
 series of vast transepts, and they communicate with 
 each other by arches of quite subordinate impor- 
 tance. There is, moreover, beside the usual apse, 
 another which terminates the central transept of the 
 northern side. 
 
 I have dwelt upon these four great examples of 
 the pagan basilica in order to show to what extent 
 the christian basilica owes its origin to that of pagan 
 Rome. It will be seen that among many existing 
 types they selected one alone, and that in that 
 
 ' Observe, among other points, the absence of any marked 
 diflerence in level between the floor of the apse and that of 
 the body of the building. Nothing is more characteristic of 
 the Christian basilica than the great elevation of the pavement 
 of the sanctuary above that of the nave and the crypt thus 
 obtained under the apse, in which " ipsam sub aram " the 
 bodies of the martyrs might repose. 
 
 they made characteristic changes in adapting it to 
 their own requirements. The apse, which is placed 
 sometimes at the end, sometimes at both ends, and 
 sometimes at the side, in the secular basilicas, they 
 placed invariably at the west end, and opposite to 
 the great entrance. The floor of the apse, which 
 in the pagan basilicas is level or nearly so with that 
 of the body of the building, they raised many feet 
 above the nave floor, and placed below it a crypt 
 in which might be deposited the bodies of the 
 martyrs of the faith. The object of the apse in a 
 pagan basilica was principally retirement. It 
 originated in a wish to place the courts of law some- 
 what withdrawn from the main area of the building. 
 The object of the christian apse was just the 
 reverse — namely, to place the clergy and the altar 
 in full view of the congregation, and to raise the 
 bishop's throne so that it may command the whole 
 assembly over which he presides. The intention of 
 the two plans seems to me so very distinct, and 
 even opposite, that the resemblance which un- 
 doubtedly exists must be attributed entirely to 
 architectural, and not to ritual considerations. 
 
 When the peace of the Church was established 
 it was to the basilicas, of the type of that upon the 
 palatine, that the architects very naturally turned 
 as the models most suitable for those large churches, 
 which now for the first time, they were required 
 all over the empire to erect. It is probable, as we 
 have already shown, that this plan had been adopted 
 at an earlier date in the rare case of the erection 
 of a large christian church. Indeed, it is only to 
 such that the basilican plan can apply, since aisles 
 are unnecessary where the building is but of small 
 area. 
 
 An important consideration, too, is the fact that 
 this plan had been already adopted very generally 
 by the Jews in the erection of their synagogues, 
 which were planned commonly as basilicas, but 
 without apses. They were, in fact, naves with aisles; 
 and I cannot but suspect that the term basilica, as 
 applied to christian churches, was intended simply 
 to indicate a building constructed with a central 
 nave and colonnades opening into lateral aisles. 
 This is, indeed, the simplest plan by which an area 
 large enough to accommodate a large congregation 
 can be covered in ; and it had the additional ad- 
 vantage of facilitating that separation of the sexes, 
 and of the different classes of penitents, which the 
 discipline of the early Church required. The 
 christian architects had, no doubt, in view not 
 only the jewish synagogues, but also the pagan 
 basilicas ; but they did not, as is often assumed, 
 borrow their plan from these, and arrange the 
 churches in accordance with a plan which they 
 had copied. 
 
 We may, I think, infer from the british and irish 
 churches that the system of arrangement of an early 
 christian church was in existence before the aduption 
 of the basilican plan. 
 
 Let us assume as the simplest and earliest form a 
 square-ended chapel, divided by an arch placed 
 very near its eastern end, separating the presbytery 
 
6 
 
 Tim HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 from the nave ; under this an altar ; and behind 
 this, against the end wall, a bench for the bishop 
 and clergy, such as we find in Ireland. When, as 
 the numbers of the faithful increased, it became 
 necessary to enlarge the nave, what more natural 
 than to add aisles ; in imitation, if you please, of 
 the basilicas, or more probably of the synagogue. 
 We have tlien a plan which is, in fact, a basilica, 
 with a rectangular presbytery, a form actually found 
 among the very early churches of central Syria. 
 The apse was a form peculiarly in vogue in the 
 time immediately preceding and following the 
 reign of Constantine, and a roman architect would 
 be sure, having the pagan basilicas before his eyes, 
 to suggest the conversion of this square recess into 
 the more favoured form of an apse or tribune. 
 
 The extent to which the fashion, we may almost 
 say the rage, for apses was carried, may be seen in 
 the early churches of Byzantium, where not the 
 eastern limb only, but all the four arms are finished 
 in the favourite form, and even these again " sprout 
 out," as Mr. Thomas Hope expresses it, " into 
 lesser apsides." The apse is in fact the form which 
 the architects of the fourth century gave to the 
 presbytery, which as taking its origin from a room- 
 like oratory, was probably originally square ; and 
 the resemblance to the pagan basilica is the result 
 not of a deliberate imitation of an existing model by 
 men who had no traditional type to work by, but 
 rather of a constant approximation towards a plan, 
 every day before the eyes of the architects, which 
 agreed so nearly with that towards which the 
 natural developement of christian tradition was 
 tending. 
 
 It is very doubtful whether any pagan basilicas 
 were actually coriverted into christian churches. 
 
 The two generally mentioned as such are the 
 Lateran and the Scssorian, now Santa Croce. Of 
 the former, the Lateran basilica, we are informed 
 that Constantine assisted with his own hands in 
 digging out the foundations. Of Santa Croce we 
 are told that earth was brought from Jerusalem to 
 be mixed with the soil on which it was to be built, 
 from which its title, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, 
 is derived. These facts if true, refute the notion 
 that they were merely converted pagan buildings : 
 while Eusebius' account of the church at Tyre 
 seems to show that the so-called basilican plan 
 had at any rate been adopted by the Church at an 
 earlier date. 
 
 It was natural enough that christian architects 
 should look to these buildings as in some degree 
 models, because of their essentially public charac- 
 ter. They were places as public as the forum, and 
 yet many of them covered in : they provided for 
 the tribunal of a magistrate, just as the church re- 
 quired the throne for its cpiscopos ; and for the ad- 
 ministration of public justice, just as the church 
 was the place for the enforcement of penance and 
 discipline. What they needed they found provided 
 here in the basilica, as they did not find it in the 
 halls of the Therma:, still less in the narrow adyta 
 of the temples; and it is natural that to these build- 
 
 ings they should have looked, when it became ne- 
 cessary to enlarge upon the simple early model, in 
 accordance with the growing needs of a larger com- 
 munity. The type thus adopted spread over the 
 whole of the empire, and survived with various 
 modifications until the early middle ages. 
 
 It is, however, worth noting that Constantine did 
 not, invariably, adopt the basilican model at By- 
 zantium. It would appear that many of the churches 
 erected by him and his successors in the East were 
 built upon the plan of a greek cross v/ith surmount- 
 ing domes. Examples of the basilican model are, 
 of course, to be found in the East ; but it was not, 
 as in the West, the prevailing type. 
 
 This Byzantine plan has its examples in the 
 ^Vest, in the churches of Perigueux and, above all, 
 in St. Mark's, at Venice : but the course of our in- 
 quiry will follow rather the developement of the 
 essentially western and latin original. 
 
 The vigour and freedom of the new religion soon 
 produced its effect upon the style and arrangements 
 which had been adopted in some degree from the 
 pagans. As regards style, Mr. Hope says, "The 
 architecture of the heathen Romans, in its deterio- 
 ration, followed so regular a course that that which 
 most nearly preceded the conversion of its rulers 
 to Christianity is also the worst : " while the early 
 christian buildings, " from their simplicity, the dis- 
 tinctness, the magnificence, the harmony of their 
 component parts, have a grandeur which we seek in 
 vain in the complicated architecture of modern 
 churches." 
 
 The simplest type of the christian basilica is ex- 
 hibited in such churches as St. Sabina upon the 
 Aventine, St. Nereus and Achilles, St. Clement, 
 and others. A simple nave with aisles, terminating 
 in an apse, the floor of which is raised above the 
 level of the pavement of the nave : in advance of 
 the apse is the altar : in advance of which, again, 
 raised but little above the nave floor, is the enclosed 
 area for the inferior clergy. The aisles are separated 
 from the nave by rows of columns. These, in most 
 of the existing basilicas, have been borrowed from 
 the remains of earlier buildings, possibly from de- 
 stroyed temples, often " offering in their size, ma- 
 terials, and workmanship every possible difference ; 
 here raised to the requisite height by the addition 
 of some spurious part, there reduced to it by the 
 abstraction of an essential one." The columns 
 are connected either by arches, as is generally the 
 case, or by a continuous entablature in the classic 
 manner, as at St. Lorenzo and Santa Maria 
 Maggiore. Above this rises the clerestory wall, 
 pierced with simple round-headed windows. In 
 other cases, as at St. Laurence and St. Agnes, there 
 is placed above the main arches a second and sub- 
 ordinate tier, forming a gallery. This was not a 
 mere triforium under the roof, as in a gothic 
 church, but an upper aisle of equal dimensions with 
 that below it, and with its own range of windows. 
 Both in St. Agnes and St. Laurence the aisle with 
 its gallery is returned across the eastern or entrance 
 end of the church. 
 
PLATE IV. 
 
 BASILICA ULPIA. 
 GROUND-PLAN. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 7 
 
 The roofs are of timber, and of rather low pitch. 
 Their construction is simply practical, and there is 
 little or no attempt to give to them an ornamental 
 character. I am of opinion that the addition of 
 a flat wooden ceiling, coffered or otherwise enriched, 
 was always contemplated. An open timber roof 
 of so plain and homely a character does not seem 
 to me at all roman in feeling ; and I cannot but 
 think that the magnificent carved wooden ceilings 
 with which many of the ancient basilicas have been 
 ornamented since the Renaissance, are more in 
 keeping with the sort of effect aimed at by the 
 original builders, and represent more nearly their 
 intention than do the naked timbers of the un- 
 touched churches. 
 
 That the earliest christian basilicas had such 
 ceilings, in some cases at least, we know as a fact 
 from the description which Eusebius gives of the 
 church erected by Constantine over the Holy 
 Sepulchre, where the coffered and gilded ceiling 
 is expressly dwelt upon. In connection with this, 
 the following passage in Constantine's letter to 
 Macarius, Bishop of Jerusalem, is interesting and 
 pertinent : " With respect," says the Emperor, " to 
 the roof of the church, I wish to know from you 
 whether, in your judgment, it should be ceiled or 
 finished with any other kind of work." (The 
 alternalive was no doubt the byzantine domical 
 construction.) " If the ceiling be adopted, it may 
 also be ornamented with gold. You will be care- 
 ful to send us a report without delay, not only 
 respecting the marbles and columns, but the ceil- 
 ing also, should this appear to you to be the most 
 beautiful form.'"" 
 
 We must remember that such ceilings, where 
 they did form part of the original design^ would 
 often be postponed, and where they were actually 
 put up, that they would be the first part of the 
 structure to sufter from decay. Where from fire 
 or from lapse of time it became necessary to renew 
 or to repair the roofs during the dark ages, it is 
 probable enough that both the skill and the wish 
 to restore the decorated ceilings might alike be 
 wanting. Most probably all of the timber roofs 
 now remaining must be of much later date than 
 the structures which they cover ; and though they 
 no doubt represent fairly the original construction 
 and arrangement of the timbers, we may probably 
 refer to the later date those few ornamental 
 features, which seem inconsistent with the intention 
 of placing a ceiling below them. 
 
 We have a strong confirmation of the view I 
 have expressed in those churches of the romanesque 
 and early pointed period in this country and in 
 Germany, in which the nave was not vaulted. In 
 these we find that the timber roof was not exposed 
 to view, but was under-drawn by a flat boarded 
 ceiling enriched by painting. As examples of this 
 treatment, which was quite the rule in the eleventh 
 and twelfth centuries, I may instance the naves of 
 Peterborough Cathedral, and of St. Michael's at 
 Hildesheim, in Hanover. 
 
 * Eusebiub' "Life of Constantine," iii., 32. 
 
 This simple plan of the basilica was elaborated 
 in the larger churches in two ways. The first is 
 the introduction of a transept between the nave 
 and the apse. This is a plan not found, as far as 
 I am aware, in the pagan basilicas, where, indeed, 
 there was no motive of convenience to prompt its 
 adoption. In the christian basilica it had the 
 obvious advantage of giving increased space for 
 the assisting faithful, immediately about the altar 
 and the apse. This transept differed in one respect 
 from the transepts of medieval times — it was not 
 spanned by cross arches, continuing the line of the 
 nave arches. It was, in fact, a great cross-nave 
 placed at right angles to the nave proper and its 
 aisles, which opened into it by arches. This 
 arrangement is retained in the church of Santa 
 Croce at Florence, erected in the thirteenth cen- 
 tury. It is found in St. John Lateran, Santa 
 Maria Maggiore, and in St. Paul's without the 
 walls. 
 
 The other mode of enlargement is the addition 
 on each side of the church of a second aisle. This 
 was the arrangement of St. John Lateran before it 
 was, I think we may say, disfigured by Borromini : 
 it was that of St. Peter's before it was rebuilt ; and 
 that of St. Paul's without the walls, which before 
 the disastrous fire of 1823, could boast of an 
 assemblage of columns amounting to no less than 
 138, most of them ancient, and forming by far the 
 finest collection in the world. This church has, 
 happily, been rebuilt upon the original plan, and in 
 the most magnificent manner ; and the effect of the 
 four ranges of granite monolith columns, twenty in 
 each row, is something quite unparalleled. 
 
 In all the basilicas one great feature of the inte- 
 rior was the arch which formed the entrance to the 
 apse and divided it from the nave, or in the larger 
 churches from the transept. This was known as 
 the triumphal arch. Upon its face, and upon the 
 semi-dome behind it, by which the apse is covered 
 in, we find expended the utmost elaboration of 
 enrichment which the architects could command. 
 
 The arrangements of churches of the basilican 
 type differ from those of later times, both of 
 eastern and western Christendom, in several im- 
 portant particulars ; in some of which, and indeed 
 in the general principle of their distribution, the 
 british and early irish churches, as we have already 
 seen, agree with them. 
 
 In the first place, one very characteristic feature 
 is the narthex, a colonnade or cloister abutting 
 upon the principal fa9ade, from which opened the 
 great entrances to the church. Where this narthex 
 took the form of a colonnade, curtains were sus- 
 pended between its columns, as we see represented 
 in a mosaic in San ApoUinare at Ravenna. In 
 other cases, as at St. Clement's, we find it as a 
 cloister or quadriporticus. The same was its plan 
 at St. Cecilia, in the church of Santi Quattro Co- 
 ronati, and in other early basilicas. A tradition 
 of it is preserved in the magnificent vestibule 
 through which one approaches the nave of the 
 Vatican Basilica, and the church of St. Ambrose at 
 
s 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Milan retains one of later date. We may view this 
 feature as bearing to the christian basilica some- 
 what the same relation in which the Forum stood 
 to the pagan basilica. Whilst it served to give 
 greater seclusion to the church itself, it was open to 
 the public and to penitents of the lower degrees, 
 who, thus exposed to the inclemency of the weather, 
 received the name of Hyema?ites. Burials, too, 
 were permitted here, before they came to be 
 tolerated within the sacred edifice. The entrance 
 to the church itself was permitted only to those 
 in full communion, or to penitents suffering under 
 lighter censures. 
 
 The effect of the interior of these buildings is 
 always one of great grandeur and solemnity. There 
 is a noble feeling of space and openness which is 
 full of character, and is in marked contrast with the 
 effect of a gothic, or even a romanesque interior. 
 With a remarkable expression of gravity and repose, 
 there is yet something cheerful and happy in the 
 tone of the whole, which is very different from the 
 austere and somewhat ascetic severity of a roman- 
 esque building, or the mysterious and poetical effect 
 of a gothic minster. This is due in part, no doubt, 
 to the character of the classic style ; but I think 
 that it must be attributed, in a considerable de- 
 gree, to the bright and hopeful tone of Christianity 
 exulting in the freedom of its first great triumph. 
 
 The basilica was to the early christian much 
 more than our churches are to us. It was the home 
 of the great christian family, the assembly-hall of 
 the society, the forum of the city of God — civitas 
 del. The expression of this purpose is the great 
 glory of the basilica, though it inspires to some 
 extent all the great works of christian art. From 
 it alone has come, and can come, a truly dignified 
 type of church architecture. The true idea of the 
 basilica, as of every other form of the christian 
 church, is not that of a mere place of worship, but 
 that of an ecclcsia, the meeting-place of the christian 
 society as such, and for all the purposes of its cor- 
 porate life. It has been reserved for modern times to 
 part entirely with this grand notion of the christian 
 public-place, and to substitute for it that of a building 
 in which, for a population of so many thousand 
 souls, there may be provided so many hundred 
 sittings. 
 
 On an elevated platform, occupying the apse and 
 advancing more or less into the nave, were ranged 
 against the curved wall the seats of the clergy ; in 
 the centre of which the throne of the bishop was 
 erected. Here, raised high above the crowd of the 
 faithful, sat the father and the rulers of the Church, 
 in solemn dignity, presiding over the christian 
 assembly. 
 
 This arrangement seems to be very expressive 
 of the high position wliich the clergy occupied in 
 the system of the early church. Almost all the 
 alterations in church arrangement, which were 
 gradually effected during the middle ages, are in 
 the direction of reducing the position assigned to 
 the clergy to one of less dignity and importance. 
 The seats of the presbyters were gradually removed 
 
 from the apse to a choir formed in the body of the 
 church, into what was, in the basilicas, the place 
 of the inferior clergy only ; and the bishop was left 
 alone in the centre of the apse. As time went on 
 the bishops too began to leave their position of 
 pre-eminent dignity, and descended to humbler 
 thrones at one side of the choir. Many of the rites 
 of the Roman Pontifical belong evidently to this 
 early position of the bishop's throne, and become 
 somewhat laboured and less natural now that the 
 throne has shifted its site. 
 
 At Canterbury the archiepiscopal seat remained 
 in its primitive dignity, in rear of the altar, almost to 
 our own day. It was only some forty years ago 
 that Archbishop Howley abandoned this last relic 
 of primitive custom, and modestly withdrew his 
 throne from a position of dignity, felt perhaps to be 
 unreal, to a more humble situation in the choir. 
 
 In advance of the apse, and immediately in 
 front of the bishop, stood the altar, in full view of 
 all the assistance, the centre and otiiphalos of the 
 whole design. The celebrant stood with his back 
 to the bishop (when he was not the bishop himself) 
 and his face towards the great assembly. 
 
 It is a peculiarity of the basilican plan that its 
 orientation is almost always the reverse of that 
 adopted generally in the middle ages, and which 
 is usual in our modern churches. The narthex 
 and the principal entrances were at the east end, 
 the apse and the altar toward the west. The cele- 
 brant, therefore, while he faced the people, faced 
 also towards the east. This is, as is well known, 
 the arrangement of the great Vatican Basilica, but it 
 was also the arrangement of the ancient St. Peter's 
 and of most of the primitive churches. In some, 
 indeed, from necessities of site or other causes, 
 orientation is more or less disregarded, but it may 
 be laid down as the rule that where orientated at all 
 the churches of primitive times are placed with their 
 altars at the west end, and their entrance towards the 
 east. 
 
 How this plan came in later times to be reversed 
 is not quite clear; but we may see possibly the mode 
 of the transition in those churches of the sixth and 
 later centuries, which are built with an apse and 
 an altar at each extremity. This plan is not at all 
 uncommon in the Rhenish provinces. It was the 
 plan of the original church at Clermont, to which 
 Gregory of Tours alludes ; and it was also, as we 
 shall see, the plan of the church erected by St. 
 Augustine at Canterbury. 
 
 In this early position of the officiant facing the 
 congregation, we seem to see, as in the arrange- 
 ment of the throne of the bishop and the seats of 
 the presbyters, an expression of the unique dignity 
 of the clergy, which is rather diminished by the 
 changes brought about during the middle ages. 
 The celebrant in the basilican arrangement stands 
 before the people, performing an act to which he is 
 competent and they are not. As time went on, 
 the position was reversed. The celebrant retained 
 all along his primitive position, standing upon the 
 western side of the altar, and facinr east, but the 
 
plate' v. 
 
 BASILICA OF MAXENTIUS AND CONSTANTINE. 
 GROUND-PLAN. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 9 
 
 position of the congregation was gradually reversed. 
 In the medieval arrangement, the people are in the 
 rear of the priest, and the change gives to the rite 
 itself a somewhat different expression. The cele- 
 brant no longer stands fronting the congregation, 
 who are virtually spectators of his action : he has 
 become rather one of them — their leader, their 
 mouthpiece, their representative. It is not that he 
 has come to turn his back to the people : that is 
 quite a false way of regarding the change. He now 
 faces the same icay that they do : he has come 
 down from a position of i)erhaps too exalted iso- 
 lation to one more modest and more paternal. In 
 the basilican plan, the idea which seems to be 
 brought out most prominently is the peculiar prero- 
 gative of the christian ministry. In the medieval 
 arrangement it is rather the concurrence, of priest 
 and people together, in an act in which each have 
 their proper part, and each their appropriate func- 
 tion. 
 
 1 cannot but remark, in passing, that in the 
 change in the position of the holy table intro- 
 duced by the english Reformers, and still ordered 
 by the rubrics of the Prayer Book, the traditional 
 position of the celebrant in relation to the holy 
 altar was not departed from. The table is directed 
 to be placed with its ends east and west, a sort of 
 compromise between the basilican and the medie- 
 val systems, but the priest still stood as ever in the 
 middle of the long side of the table, but facing now 
 to the south instead of, as hitherto, toward the east. 
 Down to the middle of the seventeenth century, 
 the relative position of the celebrant and the altar 
 had never been varied. The position at one end 
 of the table, which became common during the 
 eighteenth century, and still prevails among us, 
 was unknown alike to the Reformers, to the Medie- 
 val, and to the Primitive Church. 
 
 In the basilica the holy table was provided with 
 curtains, which were drawn during the recital of the 
 prayer of consecration (the canon), and drawn back 
 at its completion. This custom seems to be of a 
 venerable antiquity, and some have even seen a 
 reference to it, or a quotation in allusion to it, from 
 one of the early liturgies, in a passage in St. Paul's 
 first epistle to the Corinthians (ii. 9)."" However 
 this may be, the custom gave rise to a very cha- 
 racteristic feature of the basilica — I mean the 
 baldachino. 
 
 It was a very natural change to substitute for the 
 four supports, which carried this veil or curtain at 
 the corners of the holy table, four pillars of marble 
 surmounted by arches bearing a domed roof. The 
 name baldachino itself shows what was the original 
 intention of the erection to which it is applied. 
 Baldacco is the italian of Bagdad, and baldachino 
 appears to have been the name used to designate a 
 rich silken fabric manufactured at that place, and 
 imported into Europe as an article of luxury. We 
 have a parallel to this in our own use of the word 
 " damask," derived from the silken fabrics of Da- 
 
 See on this question Neale's " Essays on Liturginlogy," 
 p. 414 ; and Hammond's " Antient Liturgies," p. 9. 
 
 mascus. The curtains of Bagdad manufacture gave 
 their name to the erection which was designed to 
 support them. In early wall-paintings and mosaics 
 these curtains are frequently shown knotted round 
 the pillars of the baldachino. 
 
 The same custom prevailed, as we know from 
 illuminations in this country, in Anglo-Saxon times. 
 \Wq may, perhaps, attribute to it the curious fact 
 that there was no elevation of the Host, as now 
 understood, in the Anglo-Saxon ritual. When the 
 whole action of consecration was concealed by 
 curtains there was no opportunity for this custom. 
 The elements were raised in token of their oblation 
 to God, but they were not raised on high to be 
 seen by the people, from whom the whole act was 
 hidden by a veil, as it is in the Eastern Church by 
 a solid iconostasis. 
 
 Although the original use of the baldachino has 
 long been obsolete in the Western Church, a tradi- 
 tion of it still survives in those imitations of silken 
 valances cast in bronze, in questionable taste, 
 which we see in the altar-canopies of Santa Maria 
 Maggiore and of St. Peter's. Another relic of 
 them may be found in the side curtains with which 
 medieval altars were invariably provided, the 
 pillars to support which remain affixed to the shrine 
 of St. Edward in AVestminster Abbey. We may 
 see another trace of the custom in what is termed 
 the Lenten Veil. In our medieval churches a cur- 
 tain was drawn across the chancel in front of the 
 altar during the whole of the mass in Lent, with 
 the exception only of the Gospel ; hooks to sus- 
 pend this curtain may still sometimes be observed 
 in our old churches. 
 
 As the early churches were almost always erected 
 over the tomb of a martyr, or contained at least 
 some relic of one, a sort of crypt was formed for 
 the reception of the tomb or reliquary immediately 
 under the altar. This was termed the confessionary. 
 Examples of this very common arrangement may 
 be found at Rome, in the basilicas of St. Laurence, 
 St. Cecilia, and St. Cajsarius, and in a more 
 modernized form in St. Peter's and St. Martin's. 
 Other instances are to be found at Ancona, at 
 Ravenna, at Torcello, at Verona, Vicenza, Parma, 
 Florence, Milan, and elsewhere. Some have 
 judged this custom to be so early as to see an allu- 
 sion to it in those souls of the martyrs whom St. 
 John, in the Apocalypse, "saw under the altar" 
 (vi. 9). The tradition is maintained under a 
 changed form in the crypts which so many of our 
 medieval catliedrals contain. 
 
 In front of the altar and the confessionary was 
 the choir of the inferior clergy and singers. This 
 was raised but little above the floor of the nave, 
 and was enclosed by low marble screens, so that it 
 did not in any way obstruct the view of the altar 
 and the apse. The best preserved example of this 
 arrangement is that of St. Clement's. There is no 
 doubt that the screens and ambos are earlier than 
 the existing church. They bear the monogram — as 
 is supposed— of Pope John II., and are, therefore, 
 of the early part of the sixth century : they stood, no 
 
 c 
 
lO 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 doubt, originally in the lower church recently dis- 
 covered, and to which I have already referred. The 
 interesting cathedral of Torcello, in the Venetian 
 Lagunes, retains this enclosure or cancellum, and at 
 St. Laurence, without the walls of Rome, and at 
 St. Mary, in Cosmedin, the platforms and ambos 
 remain, though the enclosure has, unfortunately, 
 been removed. 
 
 The most characteristic ornaments of tlie ba- 
 silicas were the mosaic work which adorned the 
 apse and the triumphal arch, and the richly inlaid 
 pavements which formed their floors. The earliest 
 christian use of mosaic work is to be seen in the 
 baptistery erected by Constantine near the church 
 of St. Agnes. The vaults of this octagonal build- 
 ing are ornamented with work of this kind, repre- 
 senting, upon a white ground, the processes of the 
 viatage, symbolical, as it is thought, of christian 
 good works. But every basilica which has re- 
 tained its old decorations shows us the conch, or 
 seniidome of the apse thus ornamented, and almost 
 always upon a ground of gold. The excessive use 
 of this mode of decoration was due in part no 
 doubt to that decay of the art of sculpture, which we 
 trace only too clearly in the arch of Constantine, 
 and in the pedestal of the obelisk erected by 
 Theodosius in the hippodrome at Constantinople, 
 which is, as Mr. Hope expresses it, "a wretched 
 performance ; " but we must attribute it also to 
 that dislike to sculptured representations which 
 the early Church undoubtedly felt, and which the 
 eastern Church has never overcome. The finest 
 example of this system of decoration, combined 
 with the use of marble veneers, is undoubtedly the 
 interior of St. Mark's at Venice, but the great 
 church of Justinian, St. Sophia at Constanti- 
 nople, must have been even a more magnificent 
 specimen, " before the Turks, extending their 
 hatred of images, even to those produced by mere 
 colour, had concealed the whole under an indis- 
 criminating coat of whitewash." I need not, 
 however, dwell upon this fine mode of enrichment, 
 nor upon the modifications which its use gradually 
 introduced into the architectural treatment of 
 churches, because it was never naturalized in this 
 country nor influenced those foreign styles which 
 have affected our own. 
 
 Another decoration of the basilicas to which 
 I would alkide is the " opus grajcum," itself a kind 
 of marble mosaic, with which their pavements were 
 so generally adorned. This differs in character 
 from the tesselated pavement of more classic times 
 in the large use made of white marble. The pat- 
 terns formed with small pieces of porphyry, verd 
 antique, and other rich marbles, were inlaid into 
 slabs of white : the whole producing a snowy 
 delicacy which is quite unequalled. No one who 
 has not seen these most charming works can have 
 any idea of the beauty and refinement of the effect 
 which they produce. The large amount of white 
 marble which they contain has much to do widi 
 their peculiar charm. This may be seen by con- 
 Opus musivum. 
 
 trast with the pavement of similar work which exists 
 before the high altar in Westminster Abbey. This 
 was executed under the incumbency of Abbot 
 Ware in the 13th century, by a certain Odericus. 
 An inscription upon it mentions, as concerned in 
 its construction — " Urbs (Rome, that is) Odericus 
 et Abbas," and the slab under which Abbot 
 Ware lies buried states, quaintly enough, that here 
 in his stone coffin he continues to bear up the pave- 
 ment which he had brought himself from Rome, 
 " Hie portat lapides quos hue portavit ab urbe." 
 The abbot did not, of course, import the marble 
 blocks into which the patterns were to be inlaid, 
 but only the smaller pieces of more precious 
 marbles which form the design. Odericus, here in 
 England, found himself without the beautiful white 
 marble of the Apennines, and he had to content 
 himself with its english equivalent, the grey fossil 
 marble of Purbeck. This floor has therefore an 
 entirely diff"erent effect from those of which I have 
 spoken in the roman basilicas, and though in every 
 way admirable, it lacks, of course, their peculiar 
 charm. Work of similar character may be found in 
 the floor of St. Edward's chapel, behind the high 
 altar, in St. Thomas' chapel, at Canterbury, and in 
 the chapel of the almshouses at Ripon : this latter 
 example, however, more resembles the tesselated 
 roman work than the " opus grrecum " of the 
 basilicas. 
 
 There was yet another use of mosaic, and this of 
 the most delicate description, in the adornment of 
 the altars and marble fittings of these early churches. 
 Upon these was employed the most refined variety 
 of this mode of decoration. " The altar," says Mr. 
 Hope, " the bishop's throne, the ambos, and the 
 screens and balustrades of the sanctuary glittered 
 with this magnificent coating : for in those members 
 which, like the slender shafts of pillars and the 
 small fasci?e of friezes and cornices, left not room 
 for the larger compartments of solid porphyry and 
 serpentine, the narrower ribands of purple and gold 
 were still inserted." We find the same use of 
 mosaic in the graceful cloisters of St. John Lateran 
 and of St. Paul without the walls, and we are not 
 without english examples of the same method. In 
 the tomb of Henry IH., at Westminster, and the 
 substructure which still bears aloft the shrine of the 
 Confessor, we find the same employment of glass 
 mosaics, but inlaid into Purbeck marble. 
 
 It will be interesting, after this account of the ba- 
 silica, as we know it from existing remains, to advert 
 to the descriptions which Eusebius has given us of 
 two out of the numerous churches erected by Con- 
 stantine, both of which were on the basilican model. 
 
 The first is the great church erected by that 
 emperor at Tyre. The account is contained in a 
 sermon preached by Eusebius himself on the occa- 
 sion of the dedication of this magnificent building. 
 
 In this interesting description of the very church 
 in which the Bishop of Cresarea was preaching'^ we 
 
 e A translation of it will be found in a subsequent dis- 
 cursus, as also of the same prelate's description of the church 
 of the Holy Sepulchre. 
 
BASILICA OF Sts. NEREUS AND ACHILLES. 
 
 INTERIOR VIEW. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 find all the features of the typical basilica. We 
 cannot but regret that the preacher should, very 
 naturally, have thought it unnecessary, as he says, 
 " to detail minutely its skilful architectural arrange- 
 ments, and the exceeding beauty of each of its 
 parts, when " to his audience, but not, alas, to us, 
 " the testimony of the eyes renders unnecessary 
 instruction by the ear." Still the account he has 
 given is sufficient to enable us to realize with con- 
 siderable accuracy the distribution of the whole. 
 
 We find in the first place a vestibule or portico 
 facing toward the east, opening by wide gates upon 
 the narthex. This is described as a sort of cloister, 
 open in the centre to the air, and having in its 
 midst a fountain. The original Vatican basilica had 
 a similar portico to the eastward of its narthex or 
 atrium. Three great portals open from this cloister 
 into the nave, which is described as having double 
 aisles, so that it resembled in its amplitude the 
 ancient St. Peter's and the restored basilica of St. 
 Paul without the walls. 
 
 The nave had, as was usual, a clerestory. Its win- 
 dows were protected from the weather, not by 
 glass, which was then too valuable to be used com- 
 monly for glazing,^ but by pierced wooden panels, 
 as is customary at the present day, in the east, and 
 examples of which, of saxon and early norman date, 
 may occasionally be found in this country.'-' In 
 the apse was the throne of the bishop to whom 
 the preacher, turning himself no doubt toward tlie 
 prelate, addresses a graceful compliment — "In 
 him, the chief of all, Christ himself resides, per- 
 haps, in his fulness." On either side of the cathedra 
 were the subordinate thrones of the clergy, " seats 
 for angels," as Eusebius, with an evident allusion 
 to the Apocalypse, terms them. In its centre 
 stood the altar, " noble, grand, and unique," at 
 which is offered "sweet incense," and the "un- 
 bloody and immaterial sacrifice." The arrange- 
 ment is clearly that which may still be seen at St. 
 Clement's, or at Torcello, while the beauty of the 
 pavement of the church is also alluded to, covered, 
 as it no doubt was, with that opus grLSCiun of which 
 I have already spoken. 
 
 An account of the church of the Holy Sepulchre 
 at Jerusalem, also erected by Constantine, is given 
 us by Eusebius in his life of that emperor. This 
 great basilica had also, feeing toward the east, a 
 stately entrance or vestibule, which opened upon 
 an atrium, surrounded as usual by colonnades. 
 From this three doorways " placed exactly east " 
 gave entrance to the church itself. The nave, as 
 in the case of the basilica at Tyre, had double 
 aisles, " corresponding in length with the church 
 itself." 
 
 The body of the church was of great height, 
 and had no doubt a clerestory, although this is 
 not in so many words mentioned. It is described 
 as paved with marbles, no doubt of the beautiful 
 
 ^ The ancient windows of San Miniato, at Florence, are to 
 this day closed by slabs of translucent alabaster. 
 
 This early system of excluding the weather is still re- 
 tained ill many of our old belfries. 
 
 Opus grtuuni, and what is particularly interesting, 
 the ceiling of both nave and aisles was of wood, 
 coffered, and enriched with carving and gilding. 
 This church at least had not that naked, open, 
 roof which contrasts so crudely with the stateliness 
 of proportion of many of the existing basilicas, and 
 which, I believe, no ancient church was ever de- 
 signed to exhibit. At the western end of the 
 building was the apse, the " crowning feature of the 
 whole work," containing the thrones of the clergy 
 and the altar. 
 
 In front of the sanctuary and the altar were 
 twelve columns having silver bowls upon them. This 
 arrangement, which in itself is somewhat obscure, 
 is explained by what we know of the similar dis- 
 tribution in the old St. Peter's. Here, as at Jeru- 
 salem, were twelve columns of Parian marble of a 
 special form and sculptured with vine leaves. Their 
 bases were connected by walls of marble, breast-high, 
 so as to shut in the s|)ace immediately in front of 
 the confessionary, and the ascent to the altar. The 
 entrance to this was through the centre pair of 
 columns, where were doors of lattice work in metal. 
 On the capitals of these columns were laid entab- 
 latures of wood, on which were placed images, can- 
 delabra, and other costly gifts. Eight of these 
 venerable colunms are preserved in the existing 
 church, having been employed by Bernini in the 
 decoration of the four upper niches of the great 
 piers of the dome. This account explains perfectly 
 the arrangement which is described by Eusebius 
 as adopted by Constantine in the cluirch of the 
 Holy Sepulchre. We have here the first form of 
 the rood screen : a screen not unlike this, but of 
 later date, still exists in St. Mark's at Venice. 
 
 Behind the apse, extended a great cloister, 
 which reached to, and in fact enclosed the Sepulchre 
 itself. 
 
 It will be observed that in both of these basilicas 
 the entrance is expressly stated to have faced 
 towards the east. 
 
 There exists in central Syria a very interesting 
 series of early christian churches, many of them 
 of great magnificence, which have only lately been 
 brought to light. As examples of the character of 
 the edifices dedicated to religion in the earlier 
 ages of Christianity, they are of unique value, and 
 I am glad to have this opportunity of calling atten- 
 tion to them, because they have been till recently 
 comparatively unknown. 
 
 What may be the date of the earliest of them 
 we do not know, but we do know that the latest 
 of them was erected before the end of the sixth 
 century, when the Mohammedan invasion swept 
 away, not only the Christianity and the culture of 
 the whole district in which they are situated, but 
 the population itself Since that dire catastrophe, 
 the country, once among the most prosperous por- 
 tions of the eastern Empire, has reuiained almost 
 without inhabitants, and beyond the pale of civili- 
 zation. It has recently been explored by the Count 
 de Vogue, who has ]iublished measured drawings 
 of its most interesting monuments. 
 
12 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 This district extends from the frontiers of Asia 
 Minor northwards, to the Dead Sea southwards, 
 and is bounded, on the one side by Palestine, and 
 on the other by the desert. The southern portion 
 of this district was reduced to a roman province 
 A.D. 105, and although there are perhaps few, if 
 any, churches there which can be attributed to 
 dates earlier than that of Constantine, yet the 
 great number and perfect condition of the remains of 
 churches, all constructed previously to the Moham- 
 medan invasion, makes the series one of remarkable 
 interest. " One almost refuses," says the Count de 
 Vogue, to give the name of ruins to towns well 
 nigh untouched, or of which the elements, though 
 tlirown down sometimes by earthquakes, are never 
 dispersed. Here one finds the monuments of a 
 christian community, working under the most 
 favourable conditions of security and of wealth. 
 One finds oneself transported into the midst of a 
 christian society, one catches a glimpse of its life 
 — not here the hidden life of the catacombs, but a 
 life large, opulent, and artistic." 
 
 The earliest dated examples are of the fourth 
 century. The latest bears the date of 565. Then 
 all stops. The Mohammedan invasion swept 
 across the country, and ever since it has been 
 abandoned to the desert and the Bedouin. " Is- 
 lamism here," says the Count, "as elsewhere, shows 
 itself as a terrible scourge — drying up the springs of 
 all intellectual and moral life, and casting an entire 
 society out of its natural course." 
 
 From this terrible calamity we may glean so 
 much of consolation^ that the churches and buildings 
 remain to us just as the affrighted inhabitants left 
 them, uninjured by the hand of violence or restora- 
 tion, and in a climate so fine, but little worn by 
 weather. 
 
 These churches are scarcely less valuable from 
 the point of view of architectural history than as 
 monuments of early ecclesiology. They exhibit, 
 in a very striking manner, the new life which 
 Christianity breathed into the dying art of the 
 pagan world. We have seen something of this 
 revivifying vigour in the striking contrast presented 
 to us in Rome itself, between the last efforts of 
 the effete pagan tradition and the fresh life which 
 animates the earliest christian monuments. 
 
 There is a rudeness and barbarism of decaying 
 civilization, and there is a rudeness and barbarism 
 of a civilization too fresh and young to have got 
 its materials into shape. There is childhood, for 
 ever charming, and there is its sad caricature, the 
 second childhood of impotence and decay. But 
 only once in the evolution of our race has the 
 latter been, through some divine invvorking, trans- 
 mitted, as by a miracle of history, into the former. 
 
 Had the Mohammedan invasion not occurred, 
 the progress of the architectural art would have 
 been accelerated by some six centuries, as a com- 
 parison between these works, inspired by the new 
 christian sentiment, in the fifth and sixth centuries, 
 and the western romanesque of the middle ages, 
 abundantly proves. 
 
 Rome, though its Christianity was assured by 
 the labours and the martyrdom of the two chiefs 
 of the Apostolic College, " lovely and pleasant in 
 their lives, and in their death not divided," was 
 yet essentially the pagan city. It was in Rome 
 that the old religion died hardest, and a new Rome 
 on the Bosphorus was founded by the first christian 
 emperor, to be the metropolis of the newly 
 christianised empire. In Rome, therefore, we 
 find evidence of a persistence of the classical 
 traditions — not so much anti-christian, as some- 
 what stolidly conservative in sentiment — which ob- 
 structed the free action of that new artistic element 
 which the new religion brought with it. The 
 essential life and vigour of Christianity it could not 
 repress. " Recedant vetera, nova sint omnia," is 
 the very law of its being. But the venerable 
 monuments of classical antiquity, by which, in 
 Rome, it was surrounded, and the atmosphere of 
 old conservatism which it breathed, deprived it of 
 the power of initiating a new style, though it could 
 not prevent it from giving a new life to the old 
 one, which it was forced to adopt. It thus came 
 about that, until almost the end of the fifteenth 
 century of our era, the artistic progress of western 
 Christendom was carried on, not only apart from 
 but even counter to, the traditions of its eccle- 
 siastical centre. 
 
 In other parts of the empire however the artistic 
 elements of the new religion had a more free scope, 
 and this was the case conspicuously in central 
 Syria. 
 
 This province was a comparatively new one. 
 Its population had not long received the impress 
 of roman civilization before it began to feel within 
 its veins the circulation of the new blood of Chris- 
 tianity. At Rome the " new wine " of the Gospel 
 was put into the "old bottles" of an expiring 
 civilization. In the country with which we are 
 now concerned the " new wine " was put into 
 " new bottles," and has preserved something of its 
 aroma to our own day. 
 
 The new religion appears to have produced in 
 this, then new, province, its full and natural effect. 
 Its task was not, as in Rome and in Italy, to give 
 a fresh lease of life to a still existing, but mori- 
 bund, tradition. It had here the opportunity of 
 creating out of elements, themselves new, under 
 the new and vigorous conditions of its new life, 
 a new style. The result is most remarkable. We 
 find anticipated, in a series of buildings, many of 
 great merit, the latest of which we know to have 
 been completed before 565, architectural develope- 
 ments and even ecclesiastical arrangements, which 
 in western Europe and in our own country were 
 not reached before the twelfth century. 
 
 The style of these edifices is romanesque rather 
 than byzantine, but it is the romanesque without 
 its rudeness. The execution is finished, the design 
 is of very refined character, and the style is a sort 
 of free classic, the form of which is derived from 
 pagan antiquity, but whose spirit is christian and 
 modern. It is certainly most striking to find in the 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 13 
 
 centre of Syria, in what is now a desert, almost as 
 waste as that which surrounds the ruins of Palmyra 
 (situated but a little further eastward''), and scarcely 
 known but to the wandering Bedouin, buildings, 
 secular and religious, of a new and noble style of 
 architecture, for the parallels to which, in western 
 Christendom, we must turn to the romanesque of 
 six centuries later. How sad that so early and 
 hopeful a developement of christian art should 
 have been arrested so soon by an overwhelming 
 catastrophe ! 
 
 Its ruin is but another instance of what the 
 world has lost at the hands of Islamism, and of 
 the retrogression which everywhere accompanied 
 its triumph. While the latin church has known 
 how to convert its barbarian invaders, and 
 its architecture has received at their hands that 
 new life, which bore such rich fruit in the middle 
 ages, the eastern church, on the contrary, was beaten 
 down, and its ancient art, just budding out afresh, 
 was hopelessly withered, by the blighting storm of 
 the Mohammedan incursion. 
 
 Baalbek is in the centre of the district, and nearer to 
 seaboard than most of the christian remains. 
 
 Whatever art has been produced under the rule 
 of Islam, apart from those branches of it— em- 
 broidery and weaving and such-like, which are 
 common to all the eastern nations — has been either 
 actually the work of byzantine christians employed 
 by Mohammedan masters, or a poor corruption of 
 byzantine forms.' 
 
 An account of some of these churches will be 
 found in a subsequent discursus. With this notice 
 of a very remarkable group of buildings, but little 
 known to antiquaries, our review of the architec- 
 ture of the primitive church, as constituting the 
 basis of an investigation into the history of that of 
 our own church and own country may conclude. 
 In the next chapter I shall address myself more 
 directly to the history of british and english eccle- 
 siology. 
 
 ' Even the pointed and the horse-shoe form of arch, with 
 the invention of which the Saracens have sometimes been 
 credited, wrere employed long before by christian architects, 
 and are to be found in churches of the sixth and seventh 
 centuries in Syria, Armenia, and upon the Euphrates. See 
 " Texicr and Pullan's Byzantine Architecture," p. 147, and 
 also the drawings of the Church of Ezra in De Vogue, 
 *' Syrie Centrale," pi. 3i. 
 
14 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 DISCURSUS 
 
 ON THE ORIENTATION OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. 
 
 In churches of the medieval period the sanctuary, as is notorious, is placed at the eastern end 
 of the building, and the officiant priest, facing eastward, has his back toward the congregation, 
 or, speaking more exactly,* faces in the same direction as they. 
 
 In the early christian basilicas the sanctuary was, as a rule, placed at the western end of 
 the church. The priest at the altar, then as in the middle ages facing eastward, had his face 
 towards the people. 
 
 In other words, the celebrant has, at all periods, faced eastward, while the people, who in 
 early times were before the priest and facing westward, are in later times placed behind the 
 priest, and face therefore, as he does, eastward. Thus the eastward position of the priest has 
 never varied, but the position of the people in relation to the celebrant has been in the course 
 of ages reversed. The probable history of this change in the relative situation of the assistant 
 congregation is discussed elsewhere, and does not here concern us. It is only necessary, 
 in passing, to remark that the act of consecration was not less hidden from the view of the laity 
 by the primitive arrangement of churches than by the later. In the early Church, indeed, the 
 ceremonies connected with the consecration were even more effectually veiled from view than 
 in the medieval, for the altar was surrounded by curtains which were drawn close at the 
 commencement of the canon, and only withdrawn at the communion, a relic of which was 
 preserved in our english churches, down to the reign of Edward VI., in the veil which was 
 drawn across the sanctuary, a little in advance of the altar, during Lent.'' The change in the 
 relative position of the congregation has therefore nothing to do with any notion of exhibiting 
 or of concealing the act of consecration, which was equally withdrawn from view in either 
 case. In the primitive arrangement the concealment was absolute. In medieval times this 
 reserve gradually lessened. It was retained for many ages during Lent, after it had been 
 abandoned during the greater part of the Christian year. A tradition of it is preserved still 
 in the side-curtains with which many western altars are still furnished, but it is now practically 
 extinct. 
 
 The early position of the celebrant facing toward the congregation was therefore of no 
 moment to them, as his action was completely veiled from their view.'' It was also, though 
 
 a We do not speak of a commander, advancing into action at the head of his regiment, as " turning his back " 
 upon his men. 
 
 " See the Cistercian Ordinary in Dr. Rock's " Church of our Fathers,"4,app. 81, and the Sarum Consuetudinary, 
 cap. 102. 
 
 " There is preserved in the ritual of the Roman hturgy a curious monument ofthis primitive rule of concealing 
 from the view of the faithful the acts of consecration and of sacrifice. Whenever the priest addresses the 
 congregation in the familiar Dominus vobiscum, he turns, naturally, towards the people. But there is an 
 exception. From the Orate fratres, after the offertory, until the post-communion, he does not so turn himself. 
 The Sursiim corda commences with the accustomed Dominus vobiscum, but the celebrant does not turn towards 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 15 
 
 the normal primitive arrangement, by no means a matter of principle even in the earliest ages. 
 The proof of this is afforded us in the chapels of the Catacombs. Here the altar is the marble 
 slab covering the tomb of some witness to the faith. These tombs, termed arcisolia, arc formed 
 in arched recesses of the tufa. At such altars of the earliest christian age, the priest must 
 necessarily have stood with his back toward the people, or rather must have faced in the same 
 direction as they, though here, as in the basilica, concealed from view, during the rite of 
 consecration, by a veil. It was, therefore, no principle of the early Church that the celebrant 
 should face toward the people. It appears to have been a principle that he should face east- 
 ward, and to have been the normal arrangement that, where practicable, the nave should be 
 placed eastward of the altar ; but in those early basilicas, in which the less usual plan of an 
 eastern sanctuary was, from whatever causes, adopted, the celebrant did not front towards the 
 people, but facing, as usual, eastward, he had, in these cases, his back towards them. 
 
 As attempts have been made to evade this purely archreological conclusion, in the interest 
 perhaps of certain religious theories with which we arc not concerned, it may be well to give 
 a list of some of the principal basilicas of the primitive age, which are known to us by history, 
 or are still existing, with their orientation indicated. 
 
 Let us take, in the first place, the basilica erected by Constantine in contiguity to the Holy 
 Sepulchre at Jerusalem. The sacred cave, originally formed in the face of a small rocky cliff, 
 the emperor isolated by cutting away the rock about it, as had been done at a much earlier 
 age in the case of the tombs called of Absalom and of Zachariah, in the valley of Jehoshaphat. 
 He was thus enabled to surround it on three sides by a semi-circular cloister in the centre of 
 which, open to the sky, remained the portion of rock in which the sepulchre itself was hewn, 
 " standing out erect and alone on a level plot," as Eusebius, an eye-witness, describes it. The 
 entrance to the cave is in the eastern face of the rock, and the locuhcs, in which the sacred 
 Body had lain, is on the right hand of one entering within, as indicated by St. Mark (cap. xvi. 5) 
 in his description of the position of the "young man sitting on the right side."** To the east- 
 ward of the cloister thus formed around the sepulchre, stood the church itself, " for on that 
 side of the court," says Eusebius," " which was situated opposite to the cave, and towards the 
 rising sun, was placed the basilica." This had double aisles, entrances towards the east, 
 " three doors facing towards the rising sun admitted the entering crowd," and an apse towards 
 the west ; "opposite to these doors was the apse, the head of the whole work, reaching to 
 
 those to whom the salutation is addressed. Tlicre is a similar address to the people in the Pax DoJiiini si/ semper 
 vobisctini after the Pater noster, but the priest does not turn himself to the people. As the rite is now performed 
 in full view of the congregation throughout, there seems no reason in this exceptional departure from the general 
 rule. But turn to the primitive ritual, and the difficulty is explained at once. After the offertory, and until the 
 post-communion, the curtains of the baldaquin were close drawn, and the faithful could hear indeed the 
 salutation of the celebrant, but could not see him. He, therefore, did not turn to them then, as he was 
 accustomed to do at other times, when, the veils being drawn aside, he was coram popiilo. 
 
 d I may observe, in passing, that a study of the question of the authenticity of the existing sepulchre, which 
 had spread over many years, convinced my father, who was keenly interested in the subject, i. That 
 the sepulchre now to be seen is a rock-hewn Jewish grave. 2. That it is the same cave which was 
 recovered in A.D. 326 upon the removal^ by Constantine's orders, of the temple of Venus, erected above it for 
 the express purpose of its desecration by Hadrian, about A.D. 130, at a time when the events of the Passion 
 were almost in the memory of man, and the veneration of the sepulchre so notorious as to determine the 
 emperor to take action in the matter. 3. That, as follows from the above, the present cave is the one which 
 was, in A.D. 130, venerated by Christians as the scene of the entombment and of the resurrection, in ?hort, 
 beyond any rational doubt, the true sepulchre of the Lord. This conclusion the collapse of the countcr-theoiy 
 of Mr. Fergusson, which recent discoveries have brought about, tends to confirm. 
 
 * Eusebius, " Life of Constantine," Lib. iii. cap. 36, 37, 38, 39. 
 
i6 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 the very roof of the basilica." The sanctuary was fenced off from the body of the church, as 
 in the Vatican basih'ca, erected by the same emperor, by a screen of twelve columns with 
 capitals of silver. Eastward of the three principal doorways was the atrium, opening upon 
 the great market-place, now represented by the modern bazaars, "in the next place he 
 enclosed a space open to the air between the basilica and the outer portals. This compre- 
 hended first the open court, then the cloisters on each side and, lastly, the portals of the 
 atrium itself These, the entrance gates of the whole work, standing in the midst of the open 
 market-place, which were of exquisite workmanship, afforded to the passers-by a promise of 
 the wonders within." 
 
 I have given a somewhat full account of this church, both because it is a typical example, 
 and because -the orientation characteristic of primitive times, the reverse of that which has 
 become general in later ages, is in the description of the bishop of Caesarea, defined with great 
 precision. 
 
 The next church to which I will refer is the great basilica at Tyre, burned during the 
 Dioclesian persecution in sos,*" and restored by Constantine. Eusebius preaching in the new 
 building upon the occasion of its dedication, after referring to the prophecy here, as so often 
 in the history of the Church, again fulfilled, " The glory of this latter house shall far exceed 
 that of the former," speaks of the emperor's work as follows : " Embracing then a much wider 
 space than before, he strengthened the outer enclosure with a wall to compass the edifice that 
 it might be a most secure protection to the whole building. He then erected a large and 
 lofty entrance-vestibule, extended towards the rays of the rising sun, presenting even to 
 those standing without the sacred edifice a full view of those within it, compelling as it were 
 the eyes even of those who are strangers to the faith to contemplate its entrance. On 
 entering within these gates, he has not permitted you to pass immediately, with impure and 
 unwashed feet, within the temple, but leaving an extensive space between the nave and the 
 vestibule, he has adorned and enclosed this with four colonnades, presenting thus a 
 quadrangular atrium with pillars rising on every side. Between the pillars he has carried 
 round a latticed balustrade rising to a suitable height, leaving however, the central area open 
 so that the heavens can be seen, presenting to view the glorious sky irradiated by the 
 beams of the sun. Here he has placed as it were symbols of spiritual purifications by providing 
 a fountain, built before the front of the nave, which, by the abundant effusion of its waters 
 affords the means of cleansing to those who are proceeding to the inner parts of the church.^ 
 This is the first place that receives those who would enter the building, and it offers at the 
 same time to those not yet initiated both a splendid and a convenient station. Passing on 
 from this he has formed entrances to the church itself, with several inner vestibules, placing 
 upon one side of the atrium three portals facing towards the rising sun. Of these he has con- 
 structed the central doorway so as to far exceed those on each side in height and breadth, 
 embellishing the door itself with exceedingly splendid brazen plates bound with iron, and 
 decorated with various sculptures, superadding these as guards and attendants to a queen. In 
 the same way he has arranged the several inner vestibules, he has constructed aisles with 
 colonnades on each side of the whole length of the nave, and above these pillars he has 
 formed numerous openings for the purpose of admitting more light to the interior of the 
 
 Eusebius, "Eccles. History," Lib. viii. cap. 2. 
 
 ^ The holy water stoup, placed near the door in the western churches preserves, even to our own day, this 
 tradition of primitive times. 
 
THE HISTORY OF EXGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 17 
 
 building, and these lights or windows he has further decorated with various kinds of ornamental 
 sculpture. The basilica itself he has furnished with the most rich and sumptuous materials, 
 using in all his expenditure a generous liberality. And here, it appears to me to be superfluous 
 to dwell upon the dimensions, the length and the breadth of the edifice, its splendid elegance, 
 its grandeur which surpasses description, and the dazzling aspect of the work which stands 
 in all its glory before me as I speak, the lofty walls rising heavenwards, and the costly roof 
 of cedar-wood which rests upon them, which has not been overlooked by the divine oracles 
 themselves, when they say ' The forests of the Lord shall rejoice, and the cedars of Lebanon 
 which he has planted.' Why should I now detail minutely the skilful architectural arrange- 
 ment and the exceeding beauty of each part of the building, when the testimony of your own 
 eyes renders needless instruction through the ear.!* 
 
 " The church itself being thus completed, he has further adorned the apse with elevated 
 thrones to give due honour to those who there preside over the assembly, and also with fitting 
 seats for the rest of the clergy, arranged in order around the whole, and at last has placed in 
 the centre of all the holy altar, and in order that this might be inaccessible to the multitude 
 he has further enclosed it with framed lattice-work, accurately wrought with ingenious 
 sculpture, presenting to the spectator a truly admirable sight. And not even the pavement 
 was neglected by him, for this too, he has splendidly adorned with marble. 
 
 " Proceeding thence to the parts exterior to the church itself, he has provided on each side 
 of this palace of the great King, and contiguous to it, spacious sacristies and halls which are 
 designed by this our most peaceful Solomon, the founder of our temple, for those who need 
 as yet the purification, and the effusion of water and of the Holy Ghost. These buildings 
 communicate with entrances placed midway in the length of the church. 
 
 " Thus that prophecy, which I have already quoted seems to consist no longer in word 
 only, but in fact and in deed, for the glory of this latter house is truly far beyond that of the 
 former."'' 
 
 Here again the vividness of the description, the interesting circumstances of its delivery, in 
 the presence of the emperor, in the very church so eloquently portrayed, no less than the 
 clear indication of the orientation of the basilica, the point with which we are now more 
 immediately concerned, will, I trust, justify to the judicious reader a somewhat lengthy 
 quotation. 
 
 These conspicuous examples of the primitive, as distinguished from the medieval, orientation 
 are, as I think, sufficient to create a presumption that the normal arrangement of the first 
 christian churches was the exact reverse of that which has in later times prevailed. Let us 
 enquire next how far this presumption is borne out by the evidence aftbrded by the very 
 numerous early basilicas still standing in Rome itself. 
 
 There is notoriously no city which contains so many monuments of the primitive age of 
 Christianity as Rome. This fact is remarkable when we remember that the imperial city was 
 for centuries the headquarters of sturdy conservative paganism, and that the new and christian 
 Rome upon the Bosphorus, was founded by the first christian emperor, with the deliberate 
 intention to substitute for the ancient and, as was thought, hopelessly pagan capital a new and 
 distinctly christian metropolis. This new Rome has now for four centuries been in the hands 
 of the infidel, but within the walls of old Rome, we have ourselves seen assembled the largest 
 gathering of christian prelates which has ever yet been collected ; while in its monuments, as 
 
 Eusebius, " Eccles, History," Lib. x. cap. 4. 
 
 D 
 
i8 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 in the details of its ritual, the customs of the primitive ages of our religion are, more con- 
 spicuously than on any other stage, displayed. 
 
 It will be most convenient to give, in the first place, a list of those early roman churches 
 which are an exception to the primitive rule of the westward sanctuary. 
 
 St. Paul's, without the walls. Basilica Ostiensis. Its sanctuary is E. 
 
 This church was erected by Valentinian II. and Theodosius on the site of one of 
 Constantine's basilicas, and was completed by Honorius. It was, until the Reformation, 
 under the protection of the sovereigns of England, a traditional patronage which, tends to 
 confirm the story that the missionary work of St. Paul extended to Britain, and with which 
 the dedication of the cathedral church of London accords. 
 St. Agnes without the walls. Enlarged by Pope Symmachus to its present form (498-514). 
 
 Its sanctuary lies S.E. 
 
 In this church are blessed the lambs of whose wool the pallia of archbishops are 
 woven. 
 
 St. Mary in Cosmedin. Rebuilt by Pope Adrian I. in 782 S.E.E. 
 
 St. Peter ad Vincula, near the baths of Titus, the Basilica Ettdoxiana, rebuilt by Adrian I. . E. 
 St. Sabina, on the Aventine hill, erected in a.d. 425, but reduced to its present form by 
 
 Sixtus V. in 1587 N.E. 
 
 Sts. Cosmo and Damian, near the Forum, erected in a.d. 530 N.E.E. 
 
 St. Mary in Ara Cccli has its sanctuary E. 
 
 It was dedicated by St. Gregory in the sixth century. Its beautiful choir ambones are 
 medieval in character, and its western fagade is of the fourteenth century. It is thus, like 
 St. George i)i Velabro, of doubtful value as evidence of early usage, while its position on the 
 western edge of the Capitoline hill makes it somewhat more than possible that its original 
 orientation has been reversed. 
 St. Cross in Gerusalemme. The Sessorian basilica was founded by Constantine in 331, and 
 in it was deposited a portion of the cross of Calvary recovered by St. Helena. Its sanctuary 
 
 faces S.E. 
 
 It was however restored by Gregory II. in the eighth century, and brought into its present 
 form by Benedict XIV. in 1774. It preserves scafcely a trace of its original form, and its 
 evidential value is therefore small. On the other hand its exceptional position, close to the 
 Aurelian wall, may have determined from the first a departure from the usual plan. 
 
 St. Laurence, without the walls, has its present sanctuary E. 
 
 This apparent exception is, however, of those which prove the rule, for its original apse 
 was at the west end of the basilica. This was removed by Honorius III. in 1216, who 
 erected the existing nave, and thus reversed the primitive arrangement. This reversal, 
 which, is obvious upon examining the building, and is indeed a matter of histor>% is valu- 
 able as an authentic instance of a process which we have seen reason to suspect to have 
 been applied, during the middle ages, to other primitive churches. 
 
 St. Bibiana, on the Esquiline hill S.E. 
 
 This church was founded in the fifth century, and remodelled by Bernini in the 
 seventeenth. 
 
 St. Prisca, on the Aventine . E. 
 
 This church has been wholly modernised, but from the arrangement of its confessionary 
 crypt the present orientation appears to be the ancient. 
 
 There are thus seven churches of the early centuries in Rome which appear to have retained 
 their original form, which have an eastward sanctuary. There are, besides these, three founded 
 in primitive times, which have now eastward sanctuaries, but in which a reversal of the original 
 distribution is possible, or probable, and one, St. Laurence, in which it is certain. 
 
 Let us now see how many of the more ancient churches of Rome conform to the normal 
 primitive plan. 
 
 St. Peter's. Basilica Vaticana. Its sanctuary is W. 
 
 Though the present church is of course comparatively modern, it agrees in this respect 
 exactly with the church erected by Constantine which it has replaced.' 
 
 ' Fontana's plan shows to the westward of the ancient church another small but complete basilica with 
 transepts, dedicated to St. Stephen. This also had the westward sanctuary. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 19 
 
 St. John Lateran. Basilica Laterana W. 
 
 St. Mary Major. Basilica Liberiana N.W. 
 
 St. Laurence, without the walls, (before its reversal in 1216) W. 
 
 Thus of the five great patriarchal basilicas, St. Paul's, without the walls, is the only 
 exception to the rule. 
 
 St. Balbina, on the Aventine W. 
 
 St. Saba, on the eastern slope of the same hill N.W. 
 
 St. Cecilia, in the Trastevere N.W. 
 
 This church is built upon the site of the house of Cecilia. It was founded by Urban I., 
 in 230. 
 
 St. George in Velabro N.W.N. 
 
 Founded in the fourth century. It is the only church in Rome dedicated in honour of the patron 
 of England. 
 
 St. Clement N.W.W. 
 
 The orientation of the earlier church, recently discovered below the present building, 
 
 is the same as that of the latter. 
 
 St. Crisogonus, in the Trastevere W. 
 
 St. Martin di Monti, on the Esquiline hill N.W. 
 
 Sts. Nereus and Achilles, on the Appian street S.W.W. 
 
 St. Prassede N.W.N. 
 
 St. Pudentiana, on the Aventine N.W. 
 
 The church of the Qiiattro Coronati, on the Coelian hill N.W.W. 
 
 This church is interesting to christian artists, as dedicated in honour of four brothers, 
 
 architects and architectural sculptors, who refusing to prostitute their skill to the service 
 
 of idolatry, were beheaded by order of Diocletian.^ 
 
 St. Mary in Do)ninica W. 
 
 St. Nicholas in Carcere W. 
 
 St. Vitalis, between the Quirinal and Viminal hills N.W. 
 
 St. Agnes, in the Piazza Navona W. 
 
 The original church was erected upon the spot where St. Agnes was publicly exposed 
 after her torture. The present building dates from 1642, but the position of the church 
 in relation to the piazza seems to prove that the present orientation is the same as that 
 
 of the primitive basilica. 
 
 St. Alessius, on the Aventine N.W. 
 
 St. Cassareus in Palatio, on the Via Latina S.W.W. 
 
 Sts. John and Paul, on the Ccelian, erected by Pammachus, the friend of St. Jerome . . N.W.W. 
 
 St. Mark, in the palace of Venice, founded in 337 N.W.N. 
 
 St. Mary in via lata W. 
 
 This church is believed to occupy the site of " the hired house," in which St. Paul was 
 
 lodged for " two whole years " in the custody of a centurion. Acts xxviii. 30. 
 
 Sts. Laurence and Damian N.W.W. 
 
 Erected in 1495 on the site of the Prasinian basilica, and presumably on the ancient 
 
 lines. 
 
 St. Lucia del Gonjalone W. 
 
 St. Pancras, near the Villa Pamphili N.W. 
 
 St. Mary, in the Trastevere W. 
 
 Said to have been the first church in Rome dedicated in honour of the Blessed Virgin. 
 It was founded by St. Calixtus in 224. 
 
 St. Peter iti Montorio W. 
 
 Founded by Constantine upon the site of St. Peter's crucifixion, and rebuilt at the 
 expense of Ferdinand and Isabella at the close of the fifteenth century. 
 
 St. Sixtus, on the Appian way ■ . . . N.W.N. 
 
 It was here that St. Dominic founded the devotion of the rosary. 
 
 St. Stephen, in Cacco W. 
 
 St> Stephen, on the road to Albano W. 
 
 St. Egidius, in the Trastevere W. 
 
 ' There was a church with this dedication in Canterbury as early as 620, cf. Bede, " Eccl. Hist.," ii. 7. 
 
26 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 St. Chrysogonus, in the Trastevere N.W.W. 
 
 Founded by Constantine. Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, was titular 
 cardinal of this church. 
 
 St. Mary ddP orto, in the Trastevere ,■ . . N.W. 
 
 A late example of the early tradition. 
 
 St. James, in the Trastevere W. 
 
 Sts. Peter and Marcellina, near the Lateran basilica, rebuilt in the eighteenth century . . W. 
 
 St. Biagius, in the Via Giulia W. 
 
 St. Mary di Monsermto, in the same street W. 
 
 St. Sebastian, on the Appian way, founded by Constantine W. 
 
 The Sixtine chapel, in the Vatican palace W. 
 
 Erected in 1473, this is a late instance of the survival of the ancient tradition of the 
 roman church, at its headquarters. 
 
 This list is by no means exhaustive. It gives only those churches as to which, from my own 
 observation and from that of two friends, whose frequent sojourns in Rome have given them 
 opportunities which are exceptional, and which they have allowed me to profit by, I have been 
 able to obtain accurate information. In this very imperfect list we find, however, about forty 
 churches of early date, or giving evidence of the preservation of early arrangements, in which, 
 contrary to the medieval or modern rule, the sanctuary is placed at the western end of the 
 building, as against seven of distinctly early date arranged upon the more modern plan : while 
 of these six, three, viz., St. Mary in Cosviedin and St. Peter ad Vincula, rebuilt in the eighth 
 century, and St. Sabina remodelled in the sixteenth, are of very doubtful value as evidence of 
 early usage. 
 
 We might add to these instances others from all parts of primitive Christendom. The 
 metropolitan church of Canterbury, restored by St. Augustine, but originally erected as Eadmer 
 tells us " by the labour of roman believers," had a westward sanctuary. The early church of 
 Lyminge near Folkestone, to which I shall have occasion to revert, is a very similar instance. 
 The foundations of this edifice, now exposed to view, show distinctly that the church restored 
 by Ethelburga, the daughter of Ethelbert, was a roman basilica, and it had a westward 
 apse. The description of the church erected, about the year 400, by St. Paulinus at Nola, 
 which is given in a subsequent discursus, appears to show that this basilica also had its facade 
 of entrance toward the east, which the account describes as the then more usual plan, usitatior 
 mos. In all those churches of Germany and of France which have apses at both their 
 extremities it may, I believe, be proved that the western apse represents the early and primitive 
 arrangement. One example occurs to me in illustration, that of the cathedral of Naumburg 
 in Hesse. 
 
 In this very remarkable church there is an apse and also a rood-loft at each end of the building. 
 The eastern rood-loft and sanctuary is romanesque, and the conventual choir was situated in 
 this part of the church. The celebrant at the high altar faced eastward. The western rood- 
 loft and apse are of the thirteenth century, and at the second high altar in this western sanctuary 
 the celebrant, as is evident from the arrangement of the foot-paces, faced also eastward and 
 so towards the congregation. Such a distribution is so entirely exceptional in the churches 
 of the thirteenth century, that it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the existing western 
 sanctuary, though of thirteenth century date, is merely a reconstruction of the primitive Benia. 
 This western portion of the building being, on this theory, the most ancient, had become 
 dilapidated in the thirteenth century, long after the erection of the romanesque choir, and was 
 then rebuilt, in the style, indeed, of the day, but upon the old lines as to ritual arrangement. 
 
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THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 the east, but we may add to the written evidence of Eusebius' description, that afforded by a 
 church still existing at Thessalonica. Its christian dedication is now lost, and it is known as 
 Eski Djouma, the ancient mosque. It is a complete early basilica, and has the westward 
 sanctuary. I believe it to be of the end of the 4th century.'' 
 
 There is also a very remarkable church upon the Nile, that of the white Monastery near 
 Thebes, erected by St. Helena. It is described as basilican in plan, as the buildings of this 
 empress usually were, and having its altar toward the west.' 
 
 These facts are to my own mind sufficient to establish the conclusion that the normal 
 arrangement of the earliest christian churches was that of a western sanctuary, in opposition 
 to that which became prevalent in the middle ages, and which we are ourselves accustomed to 
 follow. 
 
 It has sometimes been asserted that the orientation of the early churches of Rome is so 
 various that it is probable that no rule existed upon the subject, and that in ancient days, as in 
 modern, orientation was disregarded there. On the face of it, and to one whose attention has 
 not been specially directed to the subject, such a view is plausible enough, though a certain 
 suspicion will, in the mind of an archaeologist, attach itself to any theory, as to what is, after all, 
 purely a question of fact, which appears to be valued less for its truth than for its polemical 
 convenience in the controversies of the day. The danger of allowing cold, dispassionate, 
 discussion as to matters of history to grow warm by the relation which the story of the 
 past may bear to burning questions of the present, is one against which we have all to be on 
 our guard. No antiquarian who has a heart as well as a head, or who is anything beyond a 
 mere Dryasdust, can escape the temptation to allow his judgment of what has been, to be 
 coloured by his opinion of what ought to have been, or of what ought now to be. This con- 
 sideration applies all round, and I have always felt that any antiquarian theory which com- 
 mends itself very strongly to one's wishes or tastes (matters lying wholly outside of scientific 
 archaeology) demands a special rigour of proof beyond what is necessary in those questions 
 in the investigation of which sentiment can play no hidden part. The view now before us is 
 therefore open to some suspicion, for it is followed by a rider to the effect that, as in the primi- 
 tive churches the celebrating priest faced toward the nave, it follows that the position of the 
 celebrant was then a matter of indifference, a conclusion whose bearing upon recent controversy 
 is obvious enough. 
 
 As it appears to me, the express statement of Eusebius that, in the case of the only two 
 basilicas to whose orientation he refers, the tribune and altar were toward the west, and the 
 narthex toward the east, creates a certain presumption that the question of orientation was 
 not a matter of indifference. In modern London, in spite of the strong feeling for correct 
 medieval orientation, we find it necessary, from the obvious exigences of site in a crowded city, 
 to be satisfied very frequently with a rough approximation to an eastward axis. Similar con- 
 ditions imposed a similar restriction upon the builders of the roman basilicas, and we should 
 be unreasonable if we were to expect, however strong the sentiment indicated in Eusebius' 
 account of the church of the Holy Sepulchre and of that at Tyre may have been, that it would 
 have been found possible to act upon it, with exactitude, in the densely populated metropolis 
 of the ancient world. In spite of this the number of churches in Rome whose sanctuaries lie 
 almost precisely due west is remarkable. This is the case with more than half of those which 
 
 ^ See Texier and Pullan's " Byzantine Architecture," p. 145. 
 ' Curzon's " Monasteries in the Levant," chap. xi. 
 
22 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 I have been able to catalogue," and the significance of this fact, in contrast with the exactly 
 opposite result of an examination of any equal number of medieval churches, in any other 
 part of western Europe, cannot I think, be mistaken. It is undoubtedly true that in Rome 
 itself since the middle ages " the principle of orientation has been completely abandoned, and a 
 comparison of any like number of the churches of more recent foundation with those of the 
 earlier age which have retained their ancient lines, will serve to bring out with greater clear- 
 ness the primitive rule." 
 
 With respect to the position of the celebrant in early times the following may be stated of 
 the churches in Rome whose orientation I have given above. 
 
 The priest faces eastward and away from the people in all those cases in which the 
 sanctuary lies in that direction with two exceptions, St. Peter ad Vincula and St. Sabina, in 
 both of which churches the altar-arrangements have clearly been modernised. He faces east- 
 ward and towards the people in no less than seventeen of those churches, which have a west- 
 Avard sanctuary, including the most important of them, St. Peter's, St. John Lateran, St. 
 Mary Major, and generally in those churches which have best retained their early arrange- 
 ments, such as St. Cecilia, St. Mary in the Trastevere, St. George in Velabro, and Sts. Nereus 
 and Achilles. In the church of St. Sebastian, which has lost its ancient apse altogether, a 
 tradition of the ancient disposition appears to be preserved in the chapel in which the body of 
 the Saint is deposited, where the celebrant faces towards the congregation in the nave. 
 
 When we consider how singular, from the point of view of medieval or of modern ecclesiology, 
 is this position of the priest fronting towards the people, we may well be surprised, not that 
 in many of the Roman Churches, having westward sanctuaries, the primitive orientation of the 
 celebrant has been lost, but that it has been preserved in so many instances, in defiance of the 
 fashion of medieval and modern times. The eastward position of the priest thus prevails in all 
 of the five great, or patriarchal Basilicas, although three of these, the Vatican, the Lateran, 
 and the Liberian, have their sanctuaries in the westward direction, and moreover 
 in some fourteen other Roman churches of early foundation, whose orientation is the 
 reverse of that which obtained in later times." The presumption thus created is further 
 supposed by Eadmer's account of the cathedral church of Canterbury, in which, as he tells us, 
 the celebrant at the western, and presumably the most ancient, altar, had his face toward the 
 
 ™ The figures are as follows. Of the forty-one churches I have enumerated as having westward tribunes 
 twenty-one have their axes almost exactly due west. It is worthy of notice in passing that of the twenty which 
 deflect from the true westward inclination only two lie to the south of west, the eighteen others tend more or less 
 to the north-west. 
 
 ° I say, since the middle ages, because the two great medieval churches, St. Mary del Popiilo, and St. Mary 
 sopni Minerva, rebuilt in 1227 and 1370 respectively, have their sanctuaries as exactly eastward as is the 
 case with contemporary churches north of the Alps. 
 
 ° Let any one who has any doubt upon the matter try for himself the result of applying to the roman churches 
 of ancient foundation j-r/ZiVi/r^i^wrt/z't?;/ instead oi orientation. In contrast with some twenty lying about due 
 west, he will find not one lying north or south, and only two or three lying nearer to the north than about N.W. 
 or N.E. 
 
 P To prevent misconception it may be well to repeat that although the orientation of the early churches was 
 usually the reverse of that which afterwards became the rule, it was no principle of the primitive church that 
 the celebrant should face towards the people. Not only did the fact of the altar being concealed by veils render 
 the position of the priest a matter, so to speak, of indifference to the congregation, from whose sight he was 
 completely concealed ; but further it must be remembered that in the chapels of the Catacombs, where the 
 recessed tomb of a martyred saint (arcisolium) formed the altar, the priest necessarily stood facing in the same 
 direction as the people {i.e.., with his back to them) ; though no doubt concealed from their view here, just as 
 in the churches above ground, by veils. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 23 
 
 east, and so toward the congregation in the nave ; ad hoc altare cunt sacerdos ageret divuia 
 misteria, faciem ad populum, qui deorsinn stabat, at orientem versam hahebat. 
 
 The same would appear to be the position of the priest, at the altar in the Avestern apse, 
 as contemplated by the plan of St. Gall's, and the same is, to this day, the arrangement of the 
 western sanctuary at Naumburg, which I have already described. 
 
 It would thus appear that in early times great importance was attached to the eastward 
 position of the celebrant ; in the middle ages, to the eastward position of both celebrant and 
 people J in modern times, to neither. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 DISCURSUS 
 
 ON THE ESTHETIC AND ARTISTIC ELEMENT IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 It Is a very common opinion that the christian church possessed no material temples until 
 the time of Constantine, and that when the peace of the church was proclaimed, certain law- 
 courts, then termed basilicas, were made over to the christians, and that from these, pagan and 
 purely secular, edifices, the normal type of a church has been derived. There is usually com- 
 bined with this theory a general impression that the christians of the earlier ages were strongly 
 iconoclastic in their sentiments; that they were too spiritually-minded to care to erect temples 
 made "with hands," and that the desire, which was notoriously displayed in the fourth century, 
 to embody in material building the civitas Dei, was the first symptom of the advent of the 
 "great apostacy." 
 
 Submitted to the test of strict historical investigation, these theories fall to pieces. Pro- 
 pounded originally by sceptics, and timidly acquiesced in by faint-hearted believers, they will 
 not stand the criticism of modern archaeology. 
 
 It is known, in the first place, that the pagan basilicas were not law-courts. They often 
 contained law-courts it is true, but they were no more law-courts than were the Fora them- 
 selves, in which, as being essentially public places, the law-courts were more usually placed. 
 In the next place, there is no well-authenticated instance of the conversion of any pagan basilica 
 into a christian church ; and while there are existing in eastern Christendom numbers of churches 
 of, what we term, the basilican type, the word Basilica " was never used by either the writers or 
 the architects of Byzantine times."'* Indeed, it is on the face of it improbable, if we reflect that 
 the conversion of the government to Christianity had no tendency to render the existing 
 basilicas less necessary than they had been in pagan times. Even the law-courts, which they 
 usually included, were not less necessary for legal business after the peace of the church than 
 they had been before that event. Christianity, unfortunately, could not abolish the litigious 
 instincts of our nature, and after fifteen centuries of the gospel, the legal profession still 
 flourishes. During the last few years in our own country, ecclesiastical matters have even 
 made an extensive and lucrative addition to its business. 
 
 The buildings which were rendered useless by the official recognition of the new faith were 
 not the basilicas, but the temples; and while there is, so far as I can ascertain, no proof of the 
 conversion of any secular basilica into a christian church, there are abundant examples of 
 pagan temples converted into christian sanctuaries.'^ 
 
 This fact is itself an illustration of the aesthetic character of the new religion, at all events 
 in the fourth century. It would indeed be strange if a faith which gave a new life and a new 
 career of indefinite dcvelopement to the expiring art of the ancient world, and which has in its 
 
 3 Texier and Pullan, p. 128. 
 
 ^ For a very interesting series of such conversions of temples into churches in all parts of the roman empire 
 see Texier.and PuUan's "Byzantine Architecture," pp. 75-105. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 25 
 
 course produced, of all the religions of the world, the noblest temples,''' should have been, in 
 its original, wholly without sympathy with art, and even iconoclastic. Such a supposition is 
 upon the face of it improbable, and it derives no support from the results of antiquarian 
 research. 
 
 Gibbon, with that odium atheologicum which he often betrays when he has occasion to refer 
 to the religion of which he was found unworthy, has stated that in the primitive ages, " every 
 art and every trade that was in the least concerned in the gracing or adorning of idols, was, 
 in the opinion of the christians, polluted by the stain of idolatry — a severe sentence, since it 
 devoted to eternal misery the far greater part of the community employed in the liberal or 
 mechanical professions." How far from true is this statement of the sceptical bigot is clear 
 from the circumstance of the wholesale conversion of pagan temples into churches in the 
 fourth and fifth centuries, a conversion which ensured their preservation. " It is owing," 
 say the learned authors of the work on Byzantine architecture already referred to, " to the 
 fact that Christianity protected them that so many temples have come down to us. It is 
 calumnious to the christian religion to assume that it was the enemy of the fine arts. The 
 civil life of the Romans was accepted in every respect by the first christians. There is not in 
 the writings of the apostles a single word against the literature, the arts, or the poetry of the 
 pagans, and the fathers of the church, who crowned by their immortal labours the foundation 
 laid by the apostles, condemned those works only which tended to corrupt public and private 
 morality. The chef a'oeuvres of antiquity were as much admired by christians as by pagans, and 
 the statues of the gods, deprived, it is true, of their religious character, were sought for by 
 emperors and patricians for the purpose of adorning their palaces. The amphitheatres in 
 which christians had been thrown to the wild beasts were allowed to exist after the combats 
 had been abolished. The theatres in which pagans had ridiculed the christian religion still 
 continued to serve as places of popular assembly." 
 
 That a certain rigorist spirit, under the circumstances very natural and very excusable, was 
 prevalent in the early church is undeniable. There are very strong and exaggerated expres- 
 sions of this sentiment to be found, not only in Tertullian, but in Clement of Alexandria, in 
 the writings of the Apologists and elsewhere. This rigorism, where it shows itself, was not 
 confined of course to art. It manifested itself also in opposition to philosophy, and even to 
 the amenities of life. Nor could it well be otherwise. The early christians were men, and 
 prone, like the rest of us, to push principles, in themselves sound, to an extreme ; and in the 
 prevalent opinion, as distinct from the formal teaching of the Church, there has ever been a 
 certain amount of exaggeration. Such opposition to art as did exist among the early chris- 
 tians was to some extent no doubt justified by circumstances. Art was so mixed up with an 
 idolatry, which was still a living power, that the church authorities were often tempted to 
 adopt measures which should keep the faithful at a distance from it. 
 
 In China quite recently, I believe, images were prohibited in the churches of the catholic 
 missionaries because of the imminent danger of their abuse ; but we have ample proof that the 
 01 one of the latest of these — the Vatican basilicas — Byron has written — 
 " To this Diana's marvel was a cell — 
 
 Christ's mighty shrine above his martyrs' tomb. — 
 
 But thou, of temples old, or altars new, 
 
 Standest alone, with nothing like to thee 
 
 Worthiest of God. 
 
 Majesty, 
 
 Power, glory, strength, and beauty — all are aisled 
 
 In this eternal ark of worship undefiled." — Childn Harold, iv. 153, 154. 
 
 E 
 
36 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 early church did not find it necessary to go as far as this. The paintings of the catacombs are 
 sufficient to show this, and the knowledge derived from them has modified the interpretation 
 of the famous canon of Elvira, which might appear at first sight to forbid altogether the use of 
 images.^ 
 
 It must be remembered too that figure-painting and statuary, although in some sense the 
 highest, are not the only arts. Religious poetry, music, and ceremonial, no less than archi- 
 tecture, are forms of art against which the church has certainly never protested, and which are 
 even essential, in some degree, to its ritual. More than this, in spite of a certain rigorism, 
 the existence of which cannot be denied, the genius of the new religion appears to me to have 
 been the very opposite of iconoclastic. 
 
 The severity of the early church was in fact very similar with that medieval form of the 
 same sentiment of which the Cistercian Rule is the expression. This severely ascetic code 
 forbade the use of images or of any representation of the human figure even in stained glass, 
 with the single exception of the crucifix. Yet the buildings erected by this order are, in their 
 noble simplicity, among the most lovely works of the middle ages,® and its ceremonial is 
 perhaps the noblest of all the medieval rites.^ 
 
 In the same way in forming a judgment as to the rigorism of the early Fathers, we must 
 take account of the eloquence, with which these very views are expressed, and of the noble 
 poetry which breathes in every text, which they quote in support of them. Eloquence and 
 poetry are themselves forms of art ; and the majesty of the language of the Gospels, of the 
 Epistles, and of the early liturgies, of itself suffices to refute the notion that Christianity was 
 ever, even in its early days of trial, the enemy of that of which it has made so large and 
 generous a use. 
 
 Nor is evidence wanting of the existence of art, in its most material shape, that of archi- 
 tecture, in the ages preceding the conversion of Constantine. " We gather from historical 
 documents," say Texier and Pullan,^ " that from the second century of the christian era 
 numerous churches were erected in Asia, since prescriptions were issued from Rome for their 
 demolition."'^ This took place in the reign of Decius (a.D. 249-251). During the reign of 
 Alexander Severus (a.d. 283, 284) numerous churches were erected, and that emperor 
 expressly forbade their destruction. An edict ordering the demolition of the churches was 
 issued by Diocletian on February 24th, A.D. 303, and the extant accounts of the carrying out 
 of this enactment show at once how numerous they were, and how magnificent were many 
 of them. 
 
 Leo Allatius* mentions the Church of Sion which, according to the tradition prevalent in 
 his day, was erected in the time of the Apostles, the nave of which had a semi-cylindrical 
 roof 
 
 * The 36th canon of the council of Illiberis (Elvira) runs thus: Placidt piduras ht ecclesia esse non debere, ne 
 quod coliticr et adoratiir in parietibiis depitigalur. Bishop Hefele gives the date of the council as 306. He 
 further states that De Rossi alone has given the right interpretation of the decree. The Spanish churches were 
 not, like the catacombs, secure from the intrusion of heathens, and pictures would therefore have exposed the 
 worship of christians to the derision of the pagan public. For this reason the Spanish council forbade paintings, 
 either of the saints ( quod colttiir) or of our Lord ( quod adoratur). 
 
 ® Tintern abbey, for example. 
 
 ' Ordinarius totius anni cisterciensis. Dr. Rock's "Church of our Fathers," iv. app., p. 77. 
 8 Texier and Pullan, "Byzantine Architecture," pp. 104, 105 : "We find, from the writings of Eusebius, that 
 neither the temples nor the territory annexed to them were regarded by the Christians as defiled." lb., p. 30. 
 " lb., p. 49- 
 ' Ep. xi., p. 39. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ILXGLISH CHURCH ARCHU ECTURM. 
 
 2; 
 
 In the course of the second century a church, which was considered one of the most impor- 
 tant of its time, was erected at Edessa. It was destroyed by an inundation of the river Scirtus, 
 in A.D. 202. Most of the existing churches were ruined by Decius or by Diocletian, and their 
 restoration under Constantine, and tlie successive rebuildings and enlargements which the 
 exuberance of christian art has in later times determined, has left to us little material evidence 
 of the architecture of these early ages. There is, however, some ; and as eastern Christendom 
 becomes more open to western archaeological research, we may hope that its amount may be 
 increased. 
 
 I need not here refer to the roman catacombs, because although these monuments of the 
 primitive age are simply invaluable, as illustrating the ecclesiology of the primitive church, the 
 circumstances which compelled the formation of subterranean sanctuaries rendered also im- 
 possible any great developement of christian a;stheticism. We cannot reasonably draw from 
 the necessary simplicity of these underground chapels, formed during the comparatively short 
 periods of active persecution, any inference against the essentially artistic character of the 
 churches erected above-ground during the much longer intervals of practical toleration. 
 
 There was undoubtedly in existence at the time when Constantine was led, by a political neces- 
 sity, to establish officially the religion which had practically already established itself, a definite 
 type of a christian church. " Contemporary writers state that all the larger churches built by 
 Constantine were in the form of a stadium," that is to say, they were oblong buildings, of which 
 one extremity was semicircular. We have in this fact an evidence of a tradition, which is 
 illustrated further by the curious rock-cut church Surp Garabed in Cappadocia, of which I 
 give an illustration. There are comprised in this valuable monument of the early age, two 
 churches, each formed like a stadium {^po/iiKii <7X'//t«T(), and each of them furnished with a stone 
 altar cut in the body of the living rock. The principal altar of the singular early church of 
 Dara, in Mygdonia, is similarly rock-hewn.'^ 
 
 We possess, however, a source of evidence as to the aesthetic character of Christianity which 
 authenticates, and completes, the proof to be derived from the monuments and the literature 
 of the primitive church. I refer to that afforded by the Apocalypse of John the Divine, to 
 the examination of which, as an illustration of the sentiments, and of the ecclesiology, of the 
 first age, we will now turn our attention. 
 
 This venerable monument of christian antiquity furnishes in itself a complete refutation 
 of the calumnies of Gibbon, and of the far too sweeping conclusions often drawn from the 
 expressions which are made use of by many of the early fathers. It is, as a mere matter of 
 fact, patent to every reader, essentially aesthetic. It would be difficult to find even a medieval 
 treatise in which the artistic character of Christianity is so conspicuously displayed. 
 Its whole imagery is derived from the material world, and is cast in a ceremonial mould. 
 Architectural and ritual notions form the groundwork of the whole so unmistakably, that 
 the apologies of the Protestant commentators may dispense us from any necessity of 
 enlarging upon this obvious characteristic of the vision. That a religion which produced 
 in its first age a work so imaginative and so aesthetic, was in its essence iconoclastic, is a 
 proposition which requires to its acceptance a larger credulity than belongs, perhaps, to 
 any but a professed sceptic. 
 
 Nor is it admissible to regard this noble poem as an exceptional work — the product of the 
 over-heated brain of some oriental mystic. A careful examination of the book will show that 
 the ceremonial and the ritual arrangements which it assumes are simply those of the first 
 J Texier and Pullan, p. 12, ^ Te.xier and Pullan, p. 52. 
 
 ( 
 
28 
 
 THE HISTORY OF EXGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 ages of our religion, and that its imagery is neither Jewish nor pagan, but is derived directly 
 from contemporary christian sources. 
 
 That it owes its origin to jevvish ideas, or that it borrowed its ccclesiology from that of the 
 Jewish temple, will be sufficiently disproved in the sequel. We have then to consider from 
 what source the material elements of the vision are, presumably, derived. 
 
 With this view let us place side by side with the Apocalypse of John the obviously parallel 
 visions of Ezekiel and Zechariah ; the framework of which is supplied, as is everywhere 
 admitted, by the contemporary temple-worship. What these seers had before their mind's eye 
 was, in short, an idealized Mosaic ritual, celebrated in an idealized Solomonic temple. From 
 this it is obvious to presume that the distinctly parallel and distinctly Christian vision of St. 
 John Theologus is similarly based upon the Christian ritual of the age in which the writer 
 lived, and that as our knowledge of the Jewish rite helps us to understand the utterances of 
 Ezekiel and Zechariah, so from the Apocalypse we may, by the inverse process, obtain 
 evidence of the ceremonial of early christian times. This prima facie presumption is con- 
 firmed by a critical study of the book. 
 
 - With the vision described in chap. i. lo, and continued to the end of chap, iii., our argument 
 is not directly concerned ; but with the opening of chap. iv. commences a sublime religious 
 drama, which comprehends the whole history of the christian Church, and which consummates 
 in the final restitution of all things, as imaged in chaps, x.xi. and xxii. 
 
 With the prophetical and spiritual interpretation of the vision we are not here 
 concerned. What I wish to insist on is that a distinct and consistent image of an actual 
 existent temple was present to the consciousness of the seer from the first opening of the 
 heavenly door (chap, iv.) to the final transition to a new and better order of things, still, alas ! 
 future (chap. xxi.). It requires some study to enable one to realize this essential consistency 
 of the vision, in consequence of the numerous episodes which interrupt the continuity of the 
 inspired drama; but when the notion is once clearly grasped, that a definite visible sanctuary, 
 and ritual, was present to the mind of the seer, a flood of light is thrown upon this otherwise 
 obscure book, and what seemed at first sight a mass of grotesque imaginations, appears as an 
 orderly and systematic whole. Just as the visions of Ezekiel and of Zechariah are based 
 upon the temple and its ritual, and would be unintelligible to one who knew nothing of these, 
 so is the vision of the Apocalypse shaped upon the model of christian ccclesiology.' The 
 heavenly temple seen by St. John is simply an idealized christian basilica. The ritual, which 
 his vision throughout presumes, is simply an idealization of early christian rites. Protestant 
 commentators, compelled to ignore this obvious fact, have made of the Apocalypse, not a 
 revelatory vision, but a fantastic dream, in which the same word bears, now a classical pagan, 
 now a Jewish, and now a christian sense, as suits the convenience of the interpreter.™ 
 
 Let us then, accepting the presumption which the parallel visions of Ezekial and Zech- 
 ariah, with their obvious relation to the ceremonial of the Old Law, creates, examine in the 
 light of this presumption the christian Apocalypse. 
 
 ' P. lo. This fact is well illustrated by a comparison of the obviously parallel visions in Zechariah (chap, iv.), 
 and in the Apocalypse (chap, xi.), of the "two witnesses," the "two anointed ones" (cf. Zech. iv. ii, 14 with 
 Rev. xi. 4). In the Jewish vision these " anointed ones " are compared to the seven-branched lamp, fed with 
 oil (Zech. iv. 2, 11, 12), which burned in the holy place of the Jewish temple. In the Christian vision the "two 
 witnesses" are similarly compared (Rev. xi. 4) to " the two candlesticks" (not XaMTdSes, but Xi'Xf^ai, candelabra 
 in the Vulgate), to the " two lights " or lighted tapers, which have ever accompanied the Christian eucharistic 
 rite. 
 
 This is virtually admitted by Alford, iv., pt. 2, p. 631. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 29 
 
 " A throne is set in heaven " (iv. 2), the centre and commanding feature of the whole 
 heavenly edifice ; as was, in every basilica, the cathedra of the bishop in the centre of the apse, 
 who there presided over the whole assembly. 
 
 " And round about the throne four-and-twenty thrones, and upon the thrones four-and- 
 twenty presbyters sitting " " (iv. 4). These presbyters, as we learn later on, are also priests. 
 They are described (v. 8-10) as praising God, who has "made us unto our God, kings and 
 priests" [liaaCKeiuv Kui tepLh). That is to say, they, together with the four living creatures 
 (fd'a), constitute the governing body of the church, the hierarchy {ftaaiXtui), and, further, are, 
 individually, priests [lepw). 
 
 Before the central throne burn (iv. 5) "seven lamps,"" a common feature in the early 
 basilicas. In front of it is extended a pavement "of glass like unto crystal" (iv. 6), as 
 distinguished from the pavement of the choir, which, as we shall see later on, was "as it 
 were of glass mingled with fire " (xv. 2). 
 
 Within the semicircle, formed by the central throne and the thrones^ of the presbytery, 
 stand four living creatures (iv. 6), the representatives, possibly, of the four primitive patriarch- 
 ates.i In its centre is placed the altar {Ouaia<jjt]piov, vi. 9 ; viii. 3 ; ix. 13 ; xvi. 7), described as 
 being of gold, and quadrangular in form, with the customary two lights, " two candlesticks " 
 (Xvxvt'ai ; candelabra, Vulg. xi. 4)."^ 
 
 At the altar stands the celebrant, and upon it is the victim of the sacrifice, "a lamb 
 (iipviov) as it had been slain " {agmis tanqiiam occisus, Vulg. v. 6), standing, i.e., in the living 
 posture, not lying dead ; alive, but with all the marks upon it of its death-wounds.' 
 
 The sacrificing priest is shrouded from view by the curtains of the baldachino. During 
 the progress of the heavenly rite his voice, a human voice, is heard,* but he is not seen until 
 
 " The same word {9p6vo%) is used for the cathedra of the heavenly bishop, and for the seats of the four- 
 and-twenty presbyters (Trpecr/Surepoi, V. 4). The Vulgate translates the latter by the word sedilia, which is, as is 
 well known, the traditional name for those seats provided, upon the epistle side of the altar, for the celebrant 
 and his assistants, the only remnant in a medieval church of the semicircular range of seats for the presbyters, 
 so characteristic a feature of the early basilicas. 
 
 " \aixTrddes, not 'Kvxvlai {candelabra, Vulg.), as in xi. 4. 
 
 P It is striking to find the expression ki^kXos roO SpAwu (iv. 6), suggesting as it does the apsidal form of the 
 early churches. Strictly speaking, the apse is of course a semicircle, but this slight inaccuracy seems character- 
 istic of early times, since the semidome, by which the apse is ceiled in, is constantly termed the hemisphere 
 (as in Euseb., " Vit. Const.," iii. 38), although speaking exactly it forms but the quarter of a sphere. 
 
 9 Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome. I only throw this out as a mere suggestion. The right of 
 Jerusalem to rank as a Patriarchate was long denied, and was only gradually established in the teeth of 
 opposition. 
 
 Alford, ignoring christian archseology, says on this passage, " It is somewhat difficult to say whence the 
 d( liia \vxv'ia.i has come." 
 
 s It may be noted in passing, although we are not here concerned with the interpretation of the vision, but 
 only with the elements of its visible presentation, that the victim, the priest at the altar, and He who from the 
 central throne presides over the whole ecclesia, would appear to be all three personifications of the God-man, 
 under the several aspects of the one victim, the one priest, the one head of the church : thus thevictim (in xvii. 14) 
 and the priest (in xix. 16) are each and both " King of kings and Lord of lords." There is nothing anthro- 
 pomorphic in the vision. God become man alone is presented in a visible form. God in His unapproachable 
 essence is never seen. His presence is indicated, if at all, by awful thunderings and, to us, inarticulate 
 voices (iv. 5 ; viii. 5 ; xi. 19). I may add that the diminutive form kpv'iov (not b.pvb%) is, in this application, peculiar 
 (as Alford observes) to the Apocalypse. It may suggest, perhaps, the material aspect— as the ws i<T<payixii'oi>, 
 the mystical conception — of the ablatio nmnda of the New Law (Mai. i. 11). 
 
 t " Loose the four angels " (ix. 13), " Pour out the vials of the wrath of God " (xvi. i) ; and, again, "It is done " 
 (xvi. 1 7), recalling the consutninatum est of Calvary. 
 
30 
 
 THE niSTORV OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHEfECJ URE. 
 
 after the communion, " the marriage supper of the Lamb " (xix. 9), when he for the first time 
 comes forth from the altar-sanctuary, and is seen by St. John. 
 
 The altar is concealed from view by curtains. The space so enclosed is termed oi^h^'^], 
 {tabcrnaculimi, Vulg." xiii. 6 ; xv. 5), with an allusion to its surrounding veils. It is also 
 frequently termed simply vao^ rod eeoo." These curtains are partially withdrawn on certain 
 rare occasions during the progress of the vision (viii. 2 ; xi. 19, and xv. 5). When this occurs 
 the altar itself is seen (viii. 3), and in conjunction with it, or possibly synonymous with it, 
 " the ark of the testament of God " (xi. ig).^ 
 
 There is engaged in the service of the altar a vast body of «77eXo(, indefinite in number, 
 though not innumerable (v. 11). These are not angels, in the sense of " ministering spirits," 
 but, as throughout the first portion of the vision, ecclesiastical dignitaries, " angels of the 
 churches " (i. 20), prelates. Of these there are two bodies of seven each, the deacons and 
 subdeacons of the heavenly liturgy.'' To the former, the deacons, are given, in one of the 
 episodes of the vision, trumpets (viii. 2, 6) ; to the latter, the subdeacons in the same way are 
 committed later on the vials of the divine wrath (xv. 7). These are not the normal imple- 
 ments of their respective ministries, but are received by them at a particular time for a par- 
 ticular purpose, the execution of which forms an episode, interrupting for a while, the progress 
 of the liturgy itself 
 
 It is the function of another of the o^-yeXot to offer the incense (viii. 3 ; xiv. 18). He 
 stands, as thurifer, by the altar, and bears a golden censer i^i^avwioi), the glowing embers of 
 which, after the incense is spent, are cast by him upon the earth (viii. 5). 
 
 These altar-ministers are represented as in function, either about the altar, within the veils 
 (viii. 3 ; xiv. 18), or otherwise, according as the progress of the heavenly ritual requires. 
 
 In addition to the deacons, the subdeacons, and the thurifer, there is, as I have said, a vast 
 body of attendant 0776X04, whose station is also in the apse, " round about (kvkkw) the 
 throne, and the beasts, and the elders" (v. 11)/ 
 
 " Tabernaculum is used by ancient authors for the military tent of troops in camp. Mr. Spurgeon's 
 Tabernacle near the well-known " Elephant and Castle " {tabcrna), is so named, because St. Jerome adopted 
 the word tabernaculum to describe the sacred tent of the Mosaic worship, and was followed in this, as in other 
 details, by the compilers of our Authorised Version. 
 
 " The word vab% is used on two occasions (vii. 15 ; xi. i) in a wide sense, as including the whole basilica, with 
 the exception of the narthex (xi. 2). As a rule it appears to signify the space about the altar (cf. xi. 19; 
 xiv. 1 5, followed, as it is in the next verse, by the mention of an angel " from the altar " ; xv. S, 6, 8; xvi. i, where 
 the voice from the vab^ is described; ib. 17, as "out of the altar"; ib. 7 ; xvi. 17 ; xxi. 22). 
 
 St. Chrysostom alludes to the custom of surrounding the altar by veils and to their withdrawal after the 
 consecration in the following passage : "The sacrifice is brought forth, and when Christ, the Lamb of God is 
 offered, when you hear this signal given,— let us all join in common prayer, — when you see the veils withdrawn, 
 then think you see heaven opened, and angels descending from above." Homil. iii. in Ephes., quoted by 
 Bingham, viii. 6, 8. 
 
 ^ Seven deacons and seven subdeacons may to this day be seen, in functions of unusual solemnity, in the 
 churches of France and elsewhere. It was also a custom of the english church. (See " Sarum Consuet.," 
 cap. 93.) 
 
 y Thus in the heavenly ceremonial even the lower offices of the altar-ministry are discharged by those who, 
 in order and rank, are presidents, or angels of churches : as on some great occasions in the Vatican basilica, 
 when the pope is celebrant, bishops serve as deacons, and even, I believe, as acolytes. The special powers of, 
 the higher orders of the hierarchy, are accumulated upon, and include the lower. A bishop is a priest and 
 something more, a priest is a deacon ami something more. Thus the Apostle Paul repeatedly terms himself a 
 deacon (Eph. iii. 7 ; Col. i. 23, 25), and Peter, though the first in order of the apostolic college, speaks of himself 
 as a presbyter (l Peter v. i), as does also St. John (2 John i. ; 3 John i.). Timothy, too, who was certainly a 
 presbyter, if not also a bishop, is termed a deacon (i Tim. iv. 6). 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 31 
 
 Below the altar are seen the souls of the martyrs, "of them that were slain for the Word of 
 God, and for the testimony (jiapivpUi) which they held" (vi. 9), just as their mortal remains 
 rested in the confessionary crypts beneath the altars of the basilicas.'^ The parallelism here 
 between the earthly and the heavenly sanctuaries is well brought out. This primitive custom of 
 depositing the bodies of the martyrs of the faith within the church, and under the sanctuary 
 itself, is the more remarkable, as the old roman law forbade interments within sacred precincts, 
 and even in their vicinity. 
 
 The floor of the apse (*:i^*.Xo9), the "sea of glass like unto crystal," is therefore elevated, as 
 in a basilica, above the general level of the pavement of the church, so that the souls in the 
 heavenly confessio beneath the altar, are visible to the seer in the nave. 
 
 In advance of this, and on a level, or nearly so, with the body of the church, is a second 
 pavement " of glass mingled with fire " (xv. 2). Upon this lower platform stand the elect 
 saints, "an hundred, forty and four thousand " (xiv. i). These form the choir of the heavenly 
 temple : they sing, " as it were; a new song," which none but they can learn (xiv. 3).** Their 
 number is definite and precise.^*^ They are marked off in a very distinct manner from the 
 rest of the assistance; just as in the basilica, the choir is enclosed from the nave, within 
 which it is placed, by a low wall of marble. 
 
 Beyond and about this elect choir of the saints stand the great unnumbered body of the 
 saved; the congregation of this ideal temple, "a great multitude which no man could number, 
 of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues " (vii. 9)."° 
 
 Further still and beyond the nave extends, as in the basilicas, the narthex, " the court 
 (atrium, Vulg.) which is without the temple " (xi. 2). This, following the primitive use, is 
 open, as the nave itself was not, to those who were not christians. " It is," says one of the 
 a77e\ot to St. John (xi. 2), " given up to the Gentiles." 
 
 There is thus indicated very clearly, in this mystical monument of primitive antiquity, the 
 general distribution of the contemporary material churches, or at least the existence of that 
 type, or idea, of the christian house of God, which we know to have been realised, in monu- 
 ments still extant, less than two centuries later. 
 
 Beside the ecclesiological or, as I may almost venture to say, the architectural details'^'^ of 
 the vision, there are many which illustrate, in other departments of religious art, the aesthetic 
 character of the Christianity of this early age. There is a distinction of ceremonial vestments 
 indicated. The character of these, whether close fitting, and with sleeves, or loose, ample and 
 
 There is a very touching allusion at once to this characteristic feature of the early basilica, and to its 
 parallel in the heavenly sanctuary, in the vesper-hymn of the roman breviary for Holy Innocents' day — 
 
 " Vos prima christi victima, I Aram sub ipsam simplices 
 
 Grex immolatorum tener, | Palma et coronis luditis." 
 
 Described in xv. 3, as " the Song of Moses, the Servant of God, and the Song of the Lamb." 
 
 As those of the post-resurrection draught of fish (John xxi. 11), "Great fishes, an hundred and fifty and 
 three," in contrast with the vaguely "great multitude of fishes" (Luke v. 6), which broke the nets of the apostles 
 on an earlier occasion. 
 
 «<= These are described as placed "before the throne and before the Lamb" (vii. 9), while the 144,000 stand 
 " before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the presbyters " (xiv. 3). That is, the great unnumbered body 
 of the faithful are generally in view of the episcopal sedes and of the altar, while the elect choir are close to the 
 throne and to the presiding body of the clergy, though not within the apse itself (ki^kXos toO Qpivov, v. 11). 
 
 The seer is bidden to "measure the temple of God " (xi. i), and it is stated (xxi. 17) that the standard of 
 measurement was not ideal or spiritual, but material and human. However profound the inner signification of 
 the vision, it was presented to the seer as a sensible visual experience, capable of accurate mensuration, as any 
 other extended visible object, in human feet and inches, "according to the measure of a man" {t^irpov ixvdpiinrov). 
 
32 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 sleeveless, is well marked by the use respectively of the verb ivhvt.iv of the former, and trtpi. 
 ftdWetv of the latter. 
 
 The innumerable body of the laity are represented as clothed in " white robes " of linen, 
 ample and sleeveless (vii. 9), and the same is the vesture of the bride of the Lamb (xix. 8). 
 These are probably the white sleeveless chrisom-robes of the newly baptised.^" Similar white 
 robes are given to the martyr-souls under the altar, baptised as they had been in their own 
 blood. 
 
 The choir of the 144,000 is vested in white linen, close fitting and sleeved, but ungirded. This 
 is the vestment proper to the clergy in the Quire, of which the surplice [super-pdlicemn) is a 
 later amplification, designed to allow the wearing beneath it of the furred clothing common 
 among the northern nations.- 
 
 The vestment of the altar-ministers generally is indicated by that attributed to the seven 
 subdeacons (xv. 6). A close-fitting sleeved white linen robe "girded with a golden girdle."* 
 This is no doubt the girded alb, to this day the peculiar vestiture of the altar-ministers, as dis- 
 tinguished from the clergy assisting in quire. It may be asked why the deacons and sub- 
 deacons of the vision do not wear the dalmatic and tunicle, now the distinguishing decoration 
 of these orders. It must, however, be remembered that the dalmatic was not worn by the 
 deacons, even of the diocese of Rome, until the beginning of the fourth century.^^ 
 
 The four-and-twenty presbyters are described (iv. 4) as vested in ample white (>aT(a {vesti- 
 vicnta, Vulg.). This is probably the casiila or planeta, the phelonion of the oriental churches 
 and the " vestment " of our old english inventories. On their heads they wear golden mitres 
 {are(pdvoi, not EtaBi'jfiara)}^ Of the vestiture of Him who presides over the whole heavenly ecc/csia 
 the seer, with characteristic reticence, gives no indication. 
 
 The celebrating priest is only toward the conclusion of the vision (after the communion, 
 " the marriage supper of the Lamb ") revealed to sight, though his voice has several times 
 been heard from within the altar-veils. He is then described as vested, like the four-£»id- 
 twenty elders, in the ample Ifia-n'ov^ or planeta, but while those of the presbyters are white, his is 
 blood-red (xix. 13). He has further a head-dress of many crowns {BiaByfiaray^ in distinction 
 from the a7e(pavoi, or mitres, of the twenty-four presbyters. 
 
 Sufficient has, I think, been said to bring out clearly the value of the vision as an evidence 
 of the aestheticism of early Christianity. 
 
 That the Apocalypse assumes the christian and not the Jewish ceremonial, is clear upon a 
 careful examination of the book, and from a comparison of its ritual with that of the Mosaic law. 
 
 ®^ They are described (vii. 14) as "made white in the blood of the Lamb." Those who were baptised, in the 
 early church, on Easter Eve (a custom to which our collect for that day, as also the prayer in the corresponding 
 Sarum use, "ut quos aqua baptismatis abluis, etc.," and the blessing of the fonts on that day has reference) 
 retained their white chrisom-robes until Low-Sunday, when they were laid aside. Hence this day is termed in 
 the breviaries, dominica in albis depositis. 
 
 " The same sleeved and girded robe is described in i. 13 as the vesture of the " one like unto the Son of man." 
 Its length is here indicated, it is " a garment down to the foot." 
 
 This privilege was conceded to them by Pope Sylvester (a.d. 314-336). See the Instittttiones liUtrgicce of 
 Fornici, p. 47. 
 
 The early form of the episcopal mitre was, as is well known, very different from that elevated shape into 
 which it has gradually grown. It was a cap, surrounded by a fillet, or ar^(\>6.vo%, somewhat broader in front than 
 at the sides. The inftdce I take to represent the ends of this circlet, pendent from the knot at the back of the 
 head. 
 
 " 5ia55?/ici, say Liddell and Scott, is used especially for the band which encircled the turban (ndpa) of the 
 Persian king. On a raised head-dress of this character we must conceive the " many crowns" to be arranged, 
 circlet above circlet. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 33 
 
 I have already referred to the contrast of the seven-branched oil-lamp of the Jewish Temple, 
 and the two candlesticks of the christian vision. Similarly as regards the ceremonial use of 
 incense, although in both rites censers are used, there is no " altar of incense " in the heavenly 
 basilica. 
 
 That distribution of the Jewish temple was as follows : — 
 
 1. The court of the Gentiles. 
 
 2. The court of the Israehtes, in the centre of which was the altar of sacrifice. 
 
 3. The Holy Place {ayia.) in which stood the seven-branched oil-lamp, the table of the shew-bread 
 
 (TtTpiire^a. Kali) Tpddecns tuv dpruf Heb. ix. 2), and the altar of incense {dv/jiMTT^ptoy). 
 
 4. The Holy of Holies (Hyia ayluy), within which was the Ark ( Ki^iords). 
 The christian rite, as indicated by the Apocalypse, has — 
 
 1. The atrium, or narthex, "given unto the Gentiles " (xi. 2). 
 
 2. The nave, including — 
 
 a. The place of the " great multitude which no man could number " (vii. 9), the laity. 
 
 d. That of the choir of the 144,000, which, as in the basilicas, forms an enclosure within the nave. 
 
 3. The sanctuary (va6i in the narrower sense), comprising — 
 
 a. The place of the martyr-souls beneath the altar. 
 
 6. The apse above, with the throne of the presiding Head of the Church and those of the four- 
 
 and-twenty presbyters. 
 c. The altar of sacrifice {6v<na<TTripiov) and the space included within its veils. 
 
 The contrast between the two rituals, the Jewish and the Christian, is thus very marked. 
 The sacrificial altar which, in the old rite, stood exposed to the view of the laity, in the midst 
 of the court of the Israelites, is in the christian ceremonial withdrawn from their view, shrouded 
 by veils, and placed in the centre of the innermost sanctuary. It is at this altar of sacrifice 
 that incense is offered in the Christian rite and there is no separate " altar of incense." 
 
 The central feature of the Jewish ritual is the "ark of the covenant ;" the centre of the 
 newer rite is the altar, which, in the earlier ceremonial, occupied a more public and less sacred 
 position. 
 
 Similarly, " the two candlesticks " of the new law are described as standing before the 
 presiding God-man (xi. 4), that is, in the apse and about or upon the altar ; whereas the seven- 
 branched lamp stood in " the holy place " and not in the " holy of holies." 
 
 Again, the " table of the shew-bread " in the holy place is a characteristic feature of the 
 Jewish rite, which is wholly wanting in the apocalyptic basilica, because the christian vision 
 assumes, from its commencement, the presence upon the altar of the sacrificial victim, so that 
 no table of prothesis is required. 
 
 The ritual of the Apocalypse is conceived upon other lines than that of the Mosaic ceremonial. 
 The antiqtnn docnmentiim gives place 7wvo ritni. There are, without doubt, expressions 
 made use of which are borrowed directly from the older dispensation, which the newer rite was 
 destined "not to destroy, but to fulfil " (Matt. v. 17), but the distinctively new and christian 
 character of the vision is unmistakeable. -"j 
 
 The value of the book, as an evidence of the a^stheticism of early Christianity, is not affected 
 by the questions which have been raised as to the precise date of its composition. It presents, 
 however, indications of a very early origin. I have already referred to one, the fact that while 
 the celebrant wears the //jot/oc, or vestment {casula), the two bodies of seven a^/rjeXot wear the 
 girdled alb, and not the dalmatic and tunicle, which only began to come into use in the fourth 
 century. Another similar piece of evidence is afforded by the fact that no mention or allusion 
 
 ti Certain features of the vision seem derived from neither source. Such are the " harps {Ki0dpai) and golden 
 vials " of v. 8, unless indeed, as Alford suggests, the latter are simply censers {\ipauwTol). 
 
 F 
 
34 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 is made to the existence of aisles in this ideal basihca. The colonnades which opened into the 
 side-aisles were so striking a feature of the basilicas that they appear even to have determined 
 the name, but there is no allusion to them in the Apocalypse. Obvious as is the symbolical 
 significance of pillars (cf. Gal. ii. 9 ; i Tim. iii. 15 ; Rev. iii. 12), there is no mention of them 
 in the vision. Had it occurred after the aisled basilica had come into existence, one can 
 hardly conceive but that this higher type of a christian church would have supplied the frame- 
 work of its ecclesiology ; as at a later date it would not have been the humble village church, 
 but the grander cathedral, which would have furnished the model of an ideal sanctuary. But 
 it is not so. The idea is clearly that of an aisleless nave, with an enclosed area for the choir 
 and an elevated apse for the presiding clergy and the altar : the vision contemplates, in short, 
 the simplest type of the earliest christian churches. 
 
 The ceremonial is latin rather than byzantine. The confessionary crypt, to which one can 
 hardly fail to see an allusion in the position assigned to the martyr-souls " under the altar " 
 (vi. 9), is not a common feature of the oriental churches. There is no iconostasis, otherwise 
 the President and the four-and-twenty presbyters would have been concealed from view, as 
 well as the altar and its Kijiwrh^ ; whereas the former are seen from the commencement of the 
 vision (iv. 2, 4), while the latter are not exposed to view until the baldaquin curtains are, 
 at a later stage of the liturgy, drawn aside (xi. 19). The iconostasis is, in fact, not a primitive, 
 but a medieval invention, corresponding to the solid rood-screens of the monastic quires, and 
 the more open ones of the parochial churches. 
 
 We have thus indicated to us in the vision a temple of highly artistic character, arranged 
 upon definite ecclesiological principles : we see in progress an august ritual, with all the 
 pomp of sacred vestures and utensils, of lights, of incense, and of music. 
 
 The "Apocalypse of John the Divine," admitted to be a monument of the earliest age of 
 the Church, thus furnishes of itself a sufficient refutation of the theory that Christianity was, 
 in its origin, iconoclastic, or was even indifferent to those arts which have, at every period of 
 the world's history, ministered to the religious sense of mankind. This is a point which it is 
 of the first importance to establish, or the history of church architecture in any country would 
 be but an account of the decline of its Christianity. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 35 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 In the foregoing chapter I attempted a survey of 
 the progress of Church Architecture during the 
 earher ages of Christianity. We may now turn 
 our attention nearer home, and enter upon the con- 
 sideration of the history of the art in our own 
 country. 
 
 It must not, however, be forgotten that in the 
 review which we have just completed, our attention 
 has been for the most part confined to those types 
 of architecture alone, with which the history of our 
 own English art is connected. 
 
 There is one great branch of the subject which 
 I have not touched upon, because its examination 
 would throw little light upon the history of archi- 
 tecture at home. 
 
 It must, however, be remembered that, to a 
 complete view of the whole subject, an acquaint- 
 ance with the architectural history of Eastern 
 Christendom is absolutely essential. 
 
 I have dwelt almost entirely upon the origin 
 and history of the basilican type, because from it, 
 mainly, is derived the developement of English 
 church architecture; but it is not the only type nor 
 necessarily the earliest. We have seen how Con- 
 stantine in his letter to Macarius, bishop of Jeru- 
 salem, leaves to his judgment, the decision whether 
 the church to be built should be ceiled with wood or 
 roofed in another manner. I have no doubt that 
 the meaning of the alternative was this — Shall the 
 church be basilican in plan, or shall it be byzan- 
 tine — shall it be designed in the manner of old 
 Rome or in that of New Rome ? The characteristics 
 of the byzantine model are the cruciform plan, 
 instead of the long nave and aisles of the basilica : 
 few bays of great size, and forming squares on plan, 
 in lieu of many narrow ones : and above all the dome, 
 in place of the timber roof. It will be seen that the 
 two plans have almost nothing in common. Both 
 were established types of church-building when 
 Constantine turned his attention to the matter, for 
 he built churches at Constantinople in both man- 
 ners. I cannot but think that the emperor's 
 reference of the type of building to be adopted, not 
 to his prefect, or to his architect, but to the judg- 
 ment of the Bishop, is significant ; and points to 
 the fact that these two types were even then matters 
 of ecclesiastical tradition and not merely of archi- 
 tectural taste. Our course, however, takes us now 
 far away from this great branch of church archi- 
 tecture (of which the crowning glory is Justinian's 
 vast dome of St. Sophia, at Constantinople), to 
 
 the humbler theme of British and early English 
 art. 
 
 We have almost nothing to guide us as to the 
 architecture of the first British christians. Some 
 light may, however, be thrown upon the question 
 by a reference to the early churches of Ireland. 
 
 Ireland was christianised, from Britain, early in 
 the fifth century. At that time, when the inva- 
 sion of Alaric had compelled Honorius to with- 
 draw the legions, and with them too the civil 
 officials, from Britain, St, Patrick, who describes 
 himself as at once a Britain and a Roman, crossed 
 over into Ireland to effect the conversion of the 
 pagan " Scots." 
 
 It was from Britain, therefore, that the Irish 
 must have received whatever type of church archi- 
 tecture we find them to have adopted, but it is 
 only fair to credit with the extreme rudeness of 
 character of these works the Irish disciples, and not 
 their British teachers. It is impossible to suppose 
 that the Britons after five centuries of roman civi- 
 lization, when their connection with Rome had only 
 just been severed, could have been in that state of 
 almost primitive barbarism which the early irish 
 churches seem to indicate. In Britain we find 
 great roman roads driven across the country, just 
 as in Italy or in Gaul : we find the remains of 
 roman villas, finished with all the luxury of 
 Rome itself: we have specimens of their glass 
 and their pottery showing all the refinement 
 of the cultured artisan : and roman altars and 
 sarcophagi, bearing inscriptions which, in the 
 precision of their execution, and the correctness 
 of their wording, are not behind those of the capital 
 itself. The art-work of roman times of which we 
 have remains in this country shows us, in the large- 
 ness of its amount, that the work must have been 
 produced by native workmen, and not by a tew 
 imported artists, and it betokens a high state of 
 advance in civilization and general culture. 
 
 It is impossible therefore to suppose that upon the 
 withdrawal of the roman administration, civilization 
 retired too. It is to the frightful devastations of the 
 Saxons that we must attribute the destruction of the 
 roman civilization of Britain, and we must believe 
 that St. Patrick, and the succeeding british mission- 
 aries, accustomed though they were in their own 
 country to churches of roman architecture, perfectly 
 civilized in character and even magnificent, were 
 unable to impart to the Irish the skill and know- 
 ledge which such works require. 
 
36 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 The early irish oratories are built without mortar, 
 with walls converging upwards in curved lines till 
 they meet at the ridge ; and the churches are only 
 a little less rude. In them the walls are indeed 
 upright, but the sides of the windows and doorways 
 incline inwards in a strange cyclopean manner. 
 They are roofed sometimes with stone, but where 
 of any size with wood. Nothing can be ruder or 
 more uncultured than these simple buildings, and 
 yet they have points of interest to which it is 
 necessary to refer. 
 
 They lie always east and west, with an entrance 
 to the west and a window to the east. Their plan 
 is that of a double parallelogram, a nave in fact 
 and sanctuary, united by an arch, which corre- 
 sponds to the triumphal arch of the basilica and 
 to the chancel arch of medieval churches. What 
 is very interesting is the fact that the apse is never 
 found. The eastern termination is always square. 
 Across the east wall we generally find a stone bench, 
 and in advance of this stands a stone altar. In 
 this arrangement we see the parallel to the basi- 
 lican apse, with its seats for the clergy, and its 
 altar standing between them and the people. It is 
 in fact a square version of the basilican plan. 
 
 When we consider the close connection, through 
 five centuries, of Britain and Rome, then only 
 recently broken off, this universal prevalence of the 
 square-ended plan in the churches founded by the 
 british missionaries is very remarkable. This plan 
 was unknown in Rome, and probably not a single 
 example of it then existed on the continent, for it 
 is even at the present day most rare. But here in 
 Ireland we find it universal. We cannot, I think, 
 evade the conclusion that it was the prevalent plan 
 in christian Britain, at any rate in the fifth century. 
 
 It is a striking fact that at the present day, four- 
 teen hundred years after, it is still the prevailing 
 plan of our english churches, and that still to this 
 day in this custom we stand alone in Christendom. 
 
 In the english churches of the middle ages the 
 early british tradition is very closely followed, for 
 until quite toward the end of the medieval period 
 the high altar was invariably placed in advance of 
 the eastern wall of the church, and not in contact 
 with it, as is now the custom. The stone bench 
 behind it was represented by sedilia on its southern 
 side, but the altar still stood where it had ever 
 done. It can only be in ignorance of the venerable 
 antiquity of this square-ended form, that some in 
 the present day are introducing, in place of it, the 
 apse. A custom peculiar to these isles — older than 
 the invasions of the Normans, of the Danes, and 
 of the Saxons — is one not lightly to be abandoned 
 to an ignorant caprice, or a morbid craving after 
 novelty. 
 
 Christianity, no more than civilization, left our 
 isle with the departing roman legions, nor was the 
 former extinguished by the invasions of the anglo- 
 saxon barbarians. There were many christian 
 bishops in Britain in St. Gregory's time, as we 
 know from his famous correspondence with St. 
 Augustine. Such, however, was the antipathy of 
 
 the conquered British towards their pagan oppres- 
 sors, that the celtic clergy would do nothing to- 
 wards the conversion of their teuton conquerors, 
 the consideration of whose inevitable perdition in 
 a future world afforded perhaps some consolation, in 
 despite of christian charity, to those who had suffered 
 so bitterly from their triumph in this. The british ec- 
 clesiastics, with all their good qualities, were not at 
 all anxious that Angles should have the opportunity 
 of becoming Angels, and they seem deliberately to 
 have declined any missionary efforts in behalf of 
 those who had so brutally ill-used them.* 
 
 The work, however, had to be done, and as those 
 to whom it naturally fell, and who were bound by 
 every principle of christian piety to undertake it, 
 refused the task, it became the duty of the bishop 
 of Rome, not only as Pope, but as Patriarch of the 
 West, to take steps to ensure, at least its attempt. 
 The mission of St. Augustine was the result of 
 the culpable negligence, or worse, of the british 
 christians, and the Christianity of our England is 
 to be attributed to a happy exercise of the patriar- 
 chal authority of the latin see. 
 
 " On the arrival of Augustine in Canterbury, he 
 found the church of St. Martin already used by the 
 christian Queen Bertha. This was, as we know, a 
 romano-british structure.'' He found also a second, 
 but in ruins ; and this he made the nucleus of his 
 metropolitan cathedral." 
 
 This church had, as is evident, I think, from the 
 account of Eadmer the precentor, an apsidal termi- 
 nation at its western extremity. We are brought, 
 therefore, to this inference that although the square 
 east-end was so prevalent in Britain, that the british 
 missionaries introduced it invariably, and estab- 
 lished its use over the whole of christian Ireland ; 
 that there were, nevertheless, churches in Britain, 
 and those of considerable importance, which did 
 not follow this plan, but were apsidal. Bede gives 
 us, as I think, a hint for the solution of this apparent 
 anomaly. Of this ancient church, so recovered and 
 restored, the historian states, " that it had been 
 constructed as Augustine had learned originally 
 by the labour of Roman believers," ecclesiavi qiiam 
 inibi aiitiquo Romanoniin fidelium opcre fadam fiiisse 
 didicerat."^ Bede would hardly speak of the Britons 
 themselves as Romans. This church was therefore 
 in all probability the work of roman colonists and 
 not of native christians. If this conjecture be 
 correct, the distinction thus drawn between the 
 work of the british christians and that of their 
 roman masters is suggestive. Nothing is more 
 natural than that " Roman believers " should have 
 followed that type of church-building which, since 
 
 ■* See Bede, Ecc. Hist. b. i. 22, ii. 2. Bede refers to 
 Gildas, the british historian, as "mournfully taking notice" 
 of this. 
 
 "Built," says Bede, "whilst the Romans were still in 
 the island," Eccl. Hist. i. 26. '^Ib. i. 33. 
 
 Just as in India, at the present day, had we succeeded in 
 largely christianising the population, the churches of the 
 native converts would undoubtedly ijie very different from 
 those imitations of buildings in England which are erected 
 there under the direction of the english engineers. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 37 
 
 the time of Constantine, had become universal in 
 Rome and on the continent : but the question still 
 remains, whence came the British model ? 
 
 The only possible answer seems to be, that this 
 peculiar type prevailed in this island before the 
 time of Constantine : that it dates in fact from 
 the first introduction of Christianity into this 
 country — whether by St. Joseph of Arimathea, St. 
 Paul, or by later missionaries : and that the apse, 
 an introduction of the roman immigrants, was 
 foreign to the traditions of the native church, and 
 never became naturalised here. This square-ended 
 plan has survived in a remarkable manner repeated 
 attempts to supplant it by the apse. The first we 
 have just alluded to, the constant immigration of 
 Romans, bringing with them the ecclesiastical 
 customs of their own country. Again, the roman 
 missionaries to the Saxons naturally introduced 
 the roman plan, but the primitive british tradition 
 again re-asserted itself as we shall see as we proceed. 
 At the norman conquest a similar struggle between 
 the two types occurred. Again the british plan 
 triumphed. Let us hope that from its present 
 struggle, with an unnatural imitation of continental 
 architecture and a feeble affectation of novelty, it 
 may issue again successful. 
 
 As regards, therefore, the architecture of the 
 christian Britons, we have little beyond the very 
 probable assumption that they resembled the 
 churches of Ireland, in being divided into a nave 
 and sanctuary by a chancel arch, in having square 
 east ends instead of apses, but with an arrangement 
 of the altar and of the seats for the clergy in reality 
 analogous to that of the roman basilicas. We 
 have the further fact that, side by side with these, 
 which represented the earliest tradition of the native 
 church, there existed larger churches of the basilican 
 plan, erected by the roman immigrants. 
 
 We now pass on naturally to consider the church 
 architecture of the Saxon period. When St. 
 Augustine in 602 came to Canterbury, he found, 
 therefore, the church of St. Martin already assigned 
 to the use of Ethelbert's christian consort. He 
 found also, as I have said, a second church, but in 
 ruins, which he determined to repair and to make 
 his cathedral. The building thus restored existed 
 until the year succeeding the Norman Conquest, 
 when it was destroyed by fire. The only altera- 
 tion which it had undergone, as far as we are aware, 
 was that it was re-roofed by Archbishop Odo in 
 950, who at the same time added to the height of 
 the walls. We possess most fortunately a description 
 of this church given by Eadmer, who was precentor 
 of the cathedral early in the eleventh century, and 
 who in his youth had seen the building of which he 
 speaks. " To these things," he says, " I, Eadmer, 
 can bear witness, for I was then a boy at the 
 school." 
 
 "This," he informs us, " was the very church which 
 had been built by the Romans, as Bede bears wit- 
 ness in history, aud which was planned to a certain 
 extent in imitation of that church of the blessed 
 Peter, the prince of the apostles, in which his 
 
 reliques are duly honoured by the veneration of the 
 whole world." 
 
 " The venerable Archbishop Odo had translated 
 the body of the blessed Wilfrid, pontiff of York, 
 from Ripon to Canterbury, and had worthily placed 
 it, to use his own words, in a somewhat lofty re- 
 ceptacle, that is within the high altar,"^ which was 
 erected of rough stone and mortar in the eastern 
 part of the presbytery and in contact with the 
 wall." 
 
 " Furthermore there was another altar, placed at 
 a convenient distance in advance of the high altar, 
 which was dedicated in honour of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, at which the Divine mysteries were daily 
 celebrated. In which altar the blessed Alphcge 
 had solemnly deposited the head of St. Swithin, 
 which, when he was translated from Winchester to 
 Canterbury, he had brought with him, together with 
 the relics of many other saints. These two altars 
 were reached by an ascent of several steps from the 
 choir of the singers. Below was a crypt which the 
 romans term the confessio. This was formed after 
 the likeness of the confessionary of St. Peter (at 
 Rome), and its vault was raised so high that the 
 platform above it could only be reached byascending 
 many steps. Within the crypt towards the east was 
 an altar which held within it, as antiquity asserts, 
 the head of the blessed Furseus. Enclosed within 
 the curved portion of the crypt extended westward a 
 single passage-way leading to the resting-place of 
 the blessed Dunstan, which was separated from the 
 crypt itself by a strong mass of masonry. For that 
 most holy father lay buried at a great depth before 
 the aforesaid steps, and a large and lofty tomb of 
 pyramidal form was erected above him, having 
 at the head of the saint the matutinal altar. 
 
 "Thence the quire of the singers, psallentium, 
 stretched westward into the nave of the church, 
 shut in from the crowding of the congregation by 
 a becoming enclosure. 
 
 " About middle of the length of the nave itself 
 were two towers, which projected beyond the aisles 
 of the church. That towards the south had in 
 its midst an altar dedicated in honour of the 
 blessed pope Gregory, and in its side was the 
 principal entrance of the church, which from of 
 old even to the present day is known by the 
 English as the Siitltdurc, and is often mentioned 
 by this name in the law-books of the ancient 
 kings. For all disputes from the whole kingdom, 
 which cannot be legally referred to the king's 
 court, or to the hundreds or counties, do in this 
 place receive judgment. 
 
 " Opposite to this tower and on the north, was 
 another tower built in honour of the blessed Martin, 
 and it had about it cloisters for the use of the 
 
 ^ " In majori altari.''' This altar against the wall of the 
 eastern apse had become the high altar in later times, but 
 the second altar standing in advance of it, on the chord of 
 the apse, must have been the high altar of Augustine's 
 foundation, as is clear from the fact that its dedication is 
 that under which he placed the whole cathedral-church. 
 (Bede, Eccl. Hist. i. 33.) 
 
38 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 monks. And as the first tower was devoted to the 
 legal contentions and judgments of this world, 
 so in the second the younger brethren were in- 
 structed in the knowledge of the offices of the 
 church, for the different seasons and hours of the 
 day and night. 
 
 " The extremity of the church was adorned by 
 the oratory of Mary, the blessed Mother of God, 
 the approach to which, such was its construction, 
 was by a flight of steps. In the eastern part of this 
 oratory stood the altar, consecrated in veneration 
 of that Lady, and in it was enclosed the head of 
 the blessed virgin Austroberta. When a priest cele- 
 brated the divine mysteries at this altar he had his 
 face turned toward the east, and toward the people, 
 who stood facing down the church.' Behind the 
 celebrant towards the west was the pontifical throne, 
 constructed with handsome workmanship of large 
 stones and cement. This stood removed some 
 distance from the Lord's table, since it was quite 
 in contact with the wall which enclosed the whole 
 church. And this was the plan of the church of 
 Canterbury."*-' 
 
 In considering this interesting account, I may 
 first note that Eadmer the narrator had accompanied 
 Anselm to Rome, and that therefore he was well 
 qualified to judge of the resemblance which he 
 asserts to have existed between the Vatican basilica 
 and the church of Augustine and Odo. 
 
 A short time back I had occasion to remark 
 upon the resemblance between the church erected by 
 Constantine at Tyre, as described, by Eusebius, and 
 the ancient St. Peter's. It is striking to see the very 
 same model accepted as the type in our own Can- 
 terbury. It is clear, however, from the account of 
 Eadmer that the church of Augustine differed in 
 two important points from St. Peter's. 
 
 In the first place its principal high altar and its 
 choir were towards the east, those of St. Peter's 
 towards the west. In the second place, Canterbury 
 had an apse at both ends. In place, therefore, of 
 the atrium and the grand eastern entrances, we 
 find, at Canterbury, a porch formed under the 
 southern of the two towers which flanked the 
 nave. 
 
 In this plan, of a church with apses at each ex- 
 tremity, we meet for the first time a new type and 
 one which is not without interest. I have already 
 dwelt upon the fact that in the early ages the 
 altar stood commonly at the west end of the build- 
 ing, and the priest faced towards the people, 
 whereas in a medieval church, while the priest 
 retained his original position, the people having, 
 as it were, wheeled round, were now behind him. 
 The cause and manner of this revolution have 
 always been a puzzle. I cannot but think that in 
 this plan of a church with an apse at either end, 
 we have a clue to the history of the change. 
 
 This plan is quite common in the churches of 
 
 ' " Sacerdos facieni ad populum, qui deoisum stabat, ad 
 orientem versani habebat." 
 
 8 The original is given in Willis' " Canterbury," pp. lo et 
 ,seqs. 
 
 Rhenish Germany, erected during the eighth, ninth, 
 and tenth centuries, and sometimes even later. 
 Well-known instances of it are afforded by the 
 cathedrals of Treves, Mayence, and Naumburg, and 
 the abbey of Laach. In France the cathedrals of 
 Nevers, Besan^on, and Verdun presented formerly a 
 similar arrangement. An early instance of this plan 
 is found in the curious ancient design for the mon- 
 astery of St. Gall, supposed to be of the eighth or 
 ninth century. 
 
 The question naturally arises, What was the origin 
 of so singular an arrangement ? I am inclined 
 myself to attribute it to the growth of the monastic 
 system and the increasing importance of the part 
 occupied by such communities in the system of the 
 Church. 
 
 We have seen that the choirs of the basilicas were 
 of small size and offered little of the seclusion which 
 the religious desired. In St. Peter's the choir of the 
 canons was a small wooden enclosure placed on 
 one side of the nave, with its altar abutting upon 
 the respond of the great transept arch. A position 
 so unimportant, and arrangements so simple, did not 
 fall in with the growing importance, and the devel- 
 opement, of the monastic system. The monks re- 
 quired both an altar of their own, and also more 
 lofty screens for their enclosure than was consis- 
 tent with the basilican plan. The difficulty was 
 met, as I conceive, by leaving the original altar at 
 the west end to serve still as the people's altar, and 
 by adding at the east end a new apse to accommo- 
 date the altar of the religious. 
 
 A careful study of the plan of St. Gall and of the 
 description of Augustine's church seems to support 
 this conjecture. It is in the western apse at Can- 
 terbury that we find the throne of the archbishop, 
 whereas the monastic choir is placed at the eastern 
 end of the edifice. In the eastern apse stands the 
 altar, which in Eadmer's time was the high altar, 
 but which had originally been, as I conceive, the 
 altar of the convent. The altar in the western apse, 
 adjacent to the archiepiscopal throne and dedicated 
 in honour of St. Mary, was undoubtedly, in early 
 times, the great altar of the church. In the plan of 
 St. Gall we see similar indications. The western 
 apse has seats returned round it, as in all the basi- 
 licas, and it has before it a small choir such as we 
 see at St. Clement and at Torcello. The eastern 
 apse is elongated in a manner quite unlike the apse 
 of a basilica. It has no seats for the clergy, but in 
 front of it extends a very spacious choir, not at all 
 basilican in its planning or proportions. It is to 
 be remarked that both at Canterbury and in the 
 plan of St. Gall the crypt, or confessionary for the 
 reception of relics, is in the eastern or more recent 
 apse. 
 
 The position of the towers described by Eadmer is 
 so peculiar that I am inclined to think that they 
 belong to the early roman building and stood 
 at its eastern end, flanking possibly a portico or 
 atrium. If this be so, Professor Willis, in his plan, 
 has placed the towers somewhat too far towards the 
 west. Eadmer merely states that the towers stood 
 
PLATE IX. 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF CANTERBURY. 
 CONJECTURAL PLAN PREVIOUS TO THE FIRE OF A.D. I067. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 39 
 
 about the middle of the length of the nave {sub 
 tnedio longitudinis aulce ipsiiis). 
 
 I suppose therefore that what Augustine found 
 was an aisled basilica, without transepts, with its 
 apse toward the west in the usual manner, and with 
 a portico flanked by towers at the east end. We 
 may imagine him to have wished both to enlarge the 
 church wliile restoring it, and also to provide a 
 more ample choir: the old church, like many of the 
 early basilicas, possessing, possibly, none. This 
 he effected by removing the eastern entrance; and, 
 extending the church in that direction, he added 
 an apse with an altar for the monks, which, as time 
 went on, became at last the high-altar of the church. 
 The archiepiscopal throne continued to stand, or 
 was then re-erected, in its primitive position, in the 
 western apse. The formation of a porch under a 
 southern tower was thus a sort of tradition of the 
 original purpose of this tower as a part of the 
 atrium. 
 
 Whether this be in truth the history of the 
 church described by Eadmer, we cannot tell, but 
 that it is the history of the invention of the double- 
 apsidal plan there is, I think, little doubt. The 
 problem to be solved was, how to provide in the 
 same church an altar for a community, and one for 
 the people. It is the same problem which is per- 
 plexing the authorities of St. Paul's Cathedral at 
 the present time — how to provide, at once for the 
 service of the chapter, and for the great popular 
 services. The ecclesiastics of the sixth century 
 solved the problem by introducing a second altar ; 
 and only by the same principle, somewhat differ- 
 ently applied, can the same difficulty be met at St. 
 Paul's. 
 
 In this type then we see the transition between 
 the primitive and the medieval plans. The old is 
 represented in the western apse, the new, in that 
 towards the east. 
 
 It is very characteristic of the history of the me- 
 dieval church that the altar of the monks or canons, 
 at first no doubt quite subordinate to the original 
 high altar, where the bishop had still his throne, 
 became gradually of more and more importance. 
 In Eadmer's description it has usurped the title of 
 high altar, though the throne still stands in its 
 ancient place, before what is now simply the altar 
 of St. Mary. This eastward high altar is further 
 removed from the basilican traditions in being 
 erected, as Eadmer tells us, in contact with the 
 eastern wall instead of being placed in the centre 
 of the apse. The date of the adoption of this, then 
 novel, arrangement seems to be fixed by the state- 
 ment that archbishop Odo, in 950, placed within 
 this altar the relics of St. Wilfred. It is exceed- 
 ingly probable that he then re-erected tliis altar, 
 for the first time, in contact with the wall, and that 
 we have here the beginning of that mode of ar- 
 ranging altars, which is characteristic of the later 
 medieval and of modern times, in marked contrast 
 with the usages of primitive antiquity.' 
 
 ^ As was also, no doubt, its importance as a legal curia. 
 ' In the old english, or Saruin rite, a compilation of St. 
 
 This western apse, a relic of primitive times, 
 which had been preserved till the fire of 1067, was 
 not retained in Tanfranc's rebuilding, which was 
 completed in 1077. His church had transepts, 
 a central tower, and an eastern limb of two 
 bays with aisles, terminating in an apse, in which 
 the throne was now placed. The altar of the 
 monks therefore formed in the new church the 
 centre of the whole, and its venerable rival no 
 longer from the western extremity of the church, 
 disputed with it the priority. In Lanfranc's 
 building the change from the primitive model is 
 complete: scarcely a trace of the basilican arrange- 
 ment remains : and yet the monks were dissatisfied. 
 The choir provided for them by Lanfranc was not 
 deemed sufficiently imposing, and only twenty years 
 later, during the episcopate of Anselm, the monks 
 took down Lanfranc's eastern wall, and extended 
 the church eastward to nearly double its original 
 length, forming thus the work which Gervase calls, 
 after the prior who completed it, " the glorious choir 
 of Conrad." It thus may be said to have required 
 a period of about six hundred years to transform 
 the primitive basilica into the medieval church. 
 
 Eadmer tells us that in some parts the church, as 
 restored by Augustine, was arranged in imitation of 
 St. Peter's at Rome. This was doubtless in the 
 confessionary, the description of which agrees re- 
 markably well with what is known of the arrange- 
 ments of the ancif nt basilica of the Vatican. Now 
 it is remarkable that both in this church and in the 
 plan of St. Gall this confessionary is placed in the 
 eastern apse, and not, as at St. Peter's, towards the 
 west. The following'appears to me to be the explana- 
 tion of this reversal of the ancient plan. In primitive 
 times these confessionary crypts, though a charac- 
 teristic feature of the typical basilica, were not by 
 any means universal. The old Roman law forbad 
 interments within even the neighbourhood of sacred 
 places, and the sentiment survived the virtual abro- 
 gation of the law which had been its expression.^ 
 It was only in special cases that it was set aside in 
 favour of the honoured remains of some athlete of 
 the faith ; as where a church was erected over the 
 burial-place of a martyr, or where his body, rescued 
 from the amphitheatre by the piety of "devout men," 
 was laid beneath its altar. As time went on the 
 army of the martyrs was ever on the increase ; and 
 the ardour with which their relics were sought 
 for, rendered it necessary to provide such crypts 
 in all the large churches, even where no martyr's 
 
 Osmond, designed to combine the peculiarities of the anglo- 
 saxon and norman ceremonials, the detached position of the 
 high altar is very distinctly indicated. Thus we find the 
 expression thurijicando allare circiicat of the incensing of the 
 altar during the offertory ("Sarum Consuet.," cap. 25); and 
 priiicipale allafe circtimquaqne aspcrgat of the aspersion (ib. 
 cap. 68). The high altar is also in the same treatise spoken 
 of as altare in medio presbiterii with an evident reference to 
 its position standing thus free and detached in the midst of 
 the sanctuary. 
 
 j It is therefore the more remarkable to find in so e.avly 
 a monument of the primitive age as is the Apocalypse, an 
 allusion, hardly to be mistaken, to this christian innovation 
 (Rev. vi. 9). 
 
40 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 grave, below the high altar, existed to suggest 
 the arrangement. As the primitive western apses 
 did not, in such cases, provide any crypt, we 
 see an additional reason for the erection of the 
 eastern apse and confessionary. The first examples 
 of such crypts, as this of St. Augustine, followed 
 closely the model afforded by those of the basili- 
 cas which did possess this feature. In later times 
 the crypts were enlarged and lost their primitive 
 character : while their original purpose, as a reposi- 
 tory for the body of a martyr or confessor, was en- 
 tirely lost, when the custom was introduced of 
 raising the bodies of the saints above, instead of 
 below, the sanctuary floor; on lofty shrines, instead 
 of in a narrow crypt. Here too we see the gradual 
 method by which the medieval idea modified and 
 finally supplanted the primitive arrangements. 
 
 This interesting account of the church founded by 
 the great missionary of the Saxons, itself consisting 
 in part of the work of " roman believers," seems to 
 me of great interest, and well deserving of the space 
 which has been devoted to it in our survey of the 
 history of english ecclesiology. 
 
 At Lyminge, near Folkestone, there have been 
 discovered the foundations of the church erected 
 by St. Ethelburga, the daughter of Ethelbert,'' pro- 
 bably during the lifetime of St. Augustine; This 
 also has an apse at either end. This evidence is 
 very valuable, since it makes it almost certain that 
 the similarly planned church at Canterbury, de- 
 scribed by Eadmer, was actually, in the main, as he 
 states it, the work of Augustine, and not of one of 
 the succeeding saxon archbishops ; though it con- 
 sisted largely, as we have seen, of the work of a still 
 earlier age. 
 
 In considering the case of the cathedral of 
 Canterbury, we have been of necessity con- 
 fined to a somewhat conjectural discussion of the 
 plan of Augustine's church, since not a fragment 
 of the actual building now remains from which to 
 judge of its distribution. In the case, however, of 
 " the basilica of St. Mary, the Mother of God, in 
 Lyminge," we have more than mere written evidence. 
 
 This was, with possibly one exception,' the first 
 convent for women established in England: in it 
 its foundress and first abbess received the veil (in 
 633), from the hands of Archbishop Honorius, and 
 in it she was at length interred." Its foundations 
 
 ^ As St. Ethelclreda of Ely was, in popular parlance, 
 Audrey, so was St, Ethelburga known, in the familiar idiom, 
 as Tata or Tate. Cf. Bede, " Eccl. Hist.," ii. 9. 
 
 ' Namely that of the nunnery founded by St. Eanswitha, 
 niece to Ethelburga, at Folkestone, which is said to have 
 been established three years earlier. Of this, nothing now re- 
 mains : but a few years since were there discovered, as Canon 
 Jenkins informs me, the foundations of a church, which in the 
 character of their stonework and cement, agreed csactly with 
 those of the western (roman) portion of the Lyminge basilica. 
 The whole was, however, soon after its discovery, utterly 
 demolished, and no plan of it was taken. 
 
 " Scimus enim Aithelburgam post necem regis, reversam 
 et Limingce conversatam, sacro velaminea bea to Honorio 
 consecratam defunctam et ibi sepultam." Goscellinus Co7ttra 
 B. Mildrethx usurpalores, quoted by Canon Jenkins 
 (" Archseol, Cantiana," ix. 206), to whose kindness I am in- 
 
 have been discovered and have been investigated 
 with great acumen by the rector and vicar, Canon 
 Jenkins. They are formed of stones of large size, 
 many of them being a yard or even more in length, 
 set in solid concrete of lime and pebbles. The ex- 
 isting church does not occupy the site of the original 
 basilica, but stands parallel with it, distant a few 
 feet toward the north. Its older portions are, how- 
 ever, clearly pre-norman, and are built up of the 
 debris of the earlier edifice. The rector attributes 
 this latter work, with great probability, to Arch- 
 bishop Dunstan, into whose hands the patronage 
 passed upon the suppression of the convent in 965. 
 The original church had been ruined by the Danes 
 in 804, and " remained destitute," says an ancient 
 writer quoted by Goscellinus (circa 1089), "until 
 it fell into the hands of the Archbishops of Canter- 
 bury, who rebuilt it." 
 
 The foundations of the more ancient church, now 
 exposed, are of two dates, those of its western 
 portion being of an entirely different character from 
 those of the eastern half. There is also indicated 
 a cross-wall dividing the one portion of the church 
 from the other. We have thus the remains of the 
 work of three periods, all of them previous to the 
 introduction of the norman style. If the church 
 now in use was, in its original shape, the work of 
 St. Dunstan, the eastern foundation of the basilical 
 building must be attributed to St. Ethelburga — a 
 conclusion which is confirmed by the remains of her 
 burial-place, as described by Goscellinus, which are 
 distinctly visible in the eastern apse." It will 
 follow from this that the western portion of the 
 foundations belong to an earlier church, erected, 
 like that at Canterbury, *' by the original labour of 
 roman believers," and conformed to the roman 
 model of a westward apsidal sanctuary, with aisles 
 terminating squarely. 
 
 If this conjecture be sound,the eastward addition, 
 made by St. Ethelburga when she restored the 
 edifice to christian worship, occupies the site of the 
 atrium, or narthex, of the earlier roman basilica. 
 This addition terminated toward the east in three 
 apses, as did also the church of St. Martin, at 
 Canterbury, similarly recovered to Christianity by 
 Augustine." This is an arrangement not to be 
 met with in the ancient basilicas of Rome, but 
 which became common in the west in later ages.P 
 
 debted for valuable information upon the subject of this 
 basilica. 
 
 " " I am more and more convinced," says Canon Jenkins, 
 in a private letter, "that the eastern apse is the work of 
 Ethelburga in 633, when the roman mode of building had 
 become debased but not extinct." He adds with great truth, 
 " We are apt to imagine too great a breach between the 
 close of the roman occupation and the saxon colonisation of 
 England." 
 
 ° Cf. " Archoeol. Cant.," x. 102. 
 
 P It was common in oriental Christendom at a very early 
 period. The church of the " white monastery," upon the 
 liill near Thebes, attributed to St. Helena, has this peculi- 
 arity. (Curzon's"Monasteriesinlhe Levant, "p. 133.) Several 
 of the early churches figured in Texier and Pullan's valuable 
 work on 15yzantine architecture exhibit the same plan. I 
 may refer to the churches of St. Sophia and of St. Bardias 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 41 
 
 The process thus indicated will be seen to be pre- 
 cisely similar to that followed by St. Augustine, only 
 thirty years earlier, at Canterbury. In each case the 
 westward apse with its high altar was retained for 
 the worship of the laity, while an eastward quire 
 and sanctuary was added to the original building 
 for the use of the monastic community. We have 
 thus at Lyminge visible evidence of the plan and 
 general distribution of a church erected during the 
 roraan occupation of Britain, and in accordance 
 with the well-known type of such buildings in other 
 parts of the empire ; and also an additional confir- 
 mation of the truth of the explanation, which I 
 have suggested, as to the mode by which the plan 
 illustrated by St. Gall's, and so common in Germany, 
 was reached. 
 
 The five centuries which preceded the norman 
 conquest seem in contrast with the succeeding 
 period as lost in gloom. We call them the dark 
 ages, though to those who lived in them they were 
 no doubt light enough, for all the practical pur- 
 poses of life. " Do we always clearly know what 
 we should understand — or, indeed, what we mean 
 to express — when we hear or talk of the dark ages ? 
 Do we mean ages which were dark in themselves, and 
 with respect to those who lived in them, or do we 
 mean that they are dark to us, and that it is very diffi- 
 cult for us to form a clear idea of them ? I suppose 
 that we mean one and sometimes the other, and 
 very frequently both, and in fact both are true ; but 
 it is better not to confound two ideas, which are in 
 themselves perfectly distinct." The obscurity in 
 which the history of these times is undoubtedly in- 
 volved has not been lessened by the half-mythic 
 accounts of them, contained in many modern works. 
 " I have heard," says the author quoted above, " of 
 a traveller at an inn, who wished to look out and 
 see if it were day ; and who returned to bed with a 
 very wrong judgment on the matter, owing to his 
 being in the dark himself, whereby he was led to 
 open the glass door of a cupboard instead of a 
 window ; and I must say, that in trusting to the 
 representations of some popular writers, you will 
 be doing much the same thing." 
 
 It is only from the monuments which these ages 
 have left to us, in literature and in art, that a clearer 
 notion of their character is to be obtained. The 
 amount of this evidence is not so small as is com- 
 monly assumed ; and by a comparison of the 
 various notices of the edifices erected during this 
 long period, which are to be found in the writings 
 of the time, with what is left to us of their actual 
 remains, enough may certainly be learned to show 
 us, at least, the general course of its architectural 
 history. 
 
 The havoc wrought by the danish incursions in 
 the eighth and ninth centuries, and the wholesale 
 rebuilding of all the larger churches which followed 
 the advent of the Normans, have combined to 
 leave us but little of the architectural works of the 
 
 at Thessalonica, to that of St. Nicliolas at Myra, and to two 
 churches, the cathedral and that of St. Sophia, at Trebizond. 
 "> Maitland's "Dark Ages," vol. i., p. 4. 
 
 previous centuries, but there is nevertheless a cer- 
 tain number of such buildings remaining to us, 
 greater than most persons are aware of ; and I have 
 myself found so many indications of saxon work 
 and saxon design in our village churches, that I am 
 convinced that the list might be very considerably 
 increased by more careful observation — although 
 the number of the monuments of these, as of later 
 ages, is being steadily diminished by the progress 
 of, what is termed, restoration. " 
 
 On the continent these remains are not less rare 
 than in our own island, though no doubt more 
 careful examination may add considerably to their 
 number. 
 
 As examples well-known to antiquaries, I may 
 mention the nave (basse-oeuvre) of Beauvais, the 
 churches of St. John at Poitiers, and of Quenque- 
 ville in Normandy, that at Lorsch on the Rhine, 
 the western apse of the cathedral of Treves, and 
 the older portion of St. Pantaleon at Cologne. 
 
 In Italy the monuments of this age are more 
 numerous, and they furnish a fairly complete catena 
 of examples which throw a flood of light upon 
 the progress of the architectural art in our own 
 country. Thus at Ravenna we may examine for 
 ourselves buildings erected, speaking roughly, be- 
 tween the years 400 and 600 ; at Lucca, those of 
 from 600 to 800; while those at Pavia bring us on 
 to the year 1000; and the monuments of Pisa carry 
 on the history to the end of the twelfth century. 
 
 "Ravenna," says my father,^ " is a new world of 
 its own ; an interval between the classic and the 
 medieval periods, which we rarely see much of else- 
 where ; a piece of history which begins when the 
 Romans were leaving Britain, and terminates about 
 the time that they were returning thither as mission- 
 aries : the italian version of the mythic days of 
 Arthur and Merlyn, a myth lighted up into plain 
 unmistakeable fact. The days of Honorius, of 
 Theodosius, of Justinian, and of the Exarchs are 
 here illustrated in art, as distinctly as those of our 
 Henry VII. are by his chapel at Westminster. The 
 tomb of Valentinian nearly as good as new : those 
 of Honorius, of Theodosius, and of Galla Placidia 
 (his daughter), as plainly before you as Torregiano's 
 monuments in the Abbey ; and a host of arch- 
 bishops laid to rest in sarcophagi almost as classic 
 as those of pagan Rome, and as perfect as our own 
 monuments of the i6th and 17 th centuries. Lucca 
 is only one step later. If the former in its later 
 remains illustrates the days of the Exarchs, so does 
 the latter that of the lombard kings. A majority 
 of the churches here contain portions, some nearly 
 — one quite — the whole, built by them. And this 
 not as a mere fancy, such as led Thomas Hope and 
 his followers to give the name ' lombardic ' to the 
 churches at Pavia, and to many like them, which 
 
 ' That is to say, the practical working out of the false idea 
 that the past can be galvanised, as it were, into life, and that 
 an imitation of romanesque, for example, carried out in the 
 last quarter of the present century is twelftli century work. 
 
 s In a private letter, written from Italy in 1873, when I 
 was working more particularly at this subject. 
 
42 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 are in reality lombardo-german romanesqiie of 
 three centuries later, but the actual work of these 
 old Lombards themselves, built, it is true, not in 
 any style of their own, but in the vernacular of 
 Italy — that roman manner, in which our saxon 
 forefathers attempted ignorantly to build — and a 
 very good style it is. Tliese churches are veritable 
 basilicas — their columns, the ordinary corinthian — 
 their arches and vaultings, the simplest roman — 
 their windows narrow and plain, some having the 
 mid-wall pillar. One of them, which no guide-book 
 deigns to name or even the plans to mark, is 
 absolutely perfect.' It is all of marble, and is 
 clearly the italian version, or prototype, of our 
 own saxon architecture, yet beautifully refined 
 throughout. Its windows are from eight inches 
 to a foot wide with semicircular heads cut out of 
 single blocks of stone. Its apse externally is beau- 
 tiful, with a delightful arched corbel-table, charm- 
 ingly inlaid. 
 
 " Ravenna and Lucca seem to fill up the interval 
 between the first barbarian invasions and the age 
 of Charlemagne, and show that it was far from 
 being so dark as one has fancied. 
 
 "The splendid fronts (of which one sees fre- 
 quently pictures, etc.) at Lucca were put on, in 
 the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, to hide the 
 plainness of the old lombard west ends. St. 
 Michael's has this later work continued all round 
 to certain heights, the lombard work showing 
 above, and preserved undisturbed in the interior. 
 I had long known, and argued, that the churches 
 of Pavia had nothing to do with the lombard 
 kings, but were built under the rule of the german 
 emperors ; but, then^ I had imagined the true 
 lombardic style to be infinitely less refined than 
 they : I now find it to have been far more so." 
 
 These remains of the contemporary art of Italy 
 throw light upon the architecture of our saxon 
 ancestors, the intention of which is frequently 
 obscured by the rudeness of its execution, and 
 serve to explain the references to the roman 
 manner of building, so frequent in the writings of 
 Bede and others of the period. 
 
 There is little to be found now in Rome which 
 illustrates this phase of the art, owing to the zeal 
 for the rebuilding of churches which there prevailed 
 during the flourishing times of the Renaissance. It 
 is not, in fact, to Rome, but to Ravenna and Lucca 
 that we must look for examples of what to Bede was 
 "the roman manner." From these works we see 
 that the style in which our saxon forefathers were 
 working was not the rude, almost barbarous, thing 
 which their want of experience causes their works, 
 studied alone, to suggest. It was, on the contrary, 
 a perfectly refined and systematized mode of 
 building, derived in an unbroken succession from 
 the times of classic art, and already showing signs 
 of the working of that vigorous christian common 
 sense, which was destined to transform the arcuated 
 style of old Rome, hampered, as it had ever been, 
 
 ' It is a single-aisled basilica, without transepts, the nave 
 terminating in an apse as at Lymingeand at Canterbury. 
 
 by the traditions of trabcated greek architecture, 
 into the perfectly new manner of the later middle 
 ages. 
 
 The style of these italian churches of the so- 
 called dark ages differs from that of the classical 
 period in being more rational and more free. The 
 principles of scientific construction, which in the 
 pagan roman architecture are concealed, too often, 
 by an affectation of the primeval simplicity of 
 Greece, are, in these works, for the first time, 
 carried out in an untrammelled and logically 
 consistent manner. The result is a style which, 
 however simple, is yet reasonable, and, therefore, 
 even beautiful, and which is big with the promise 
 of the future. 
 
 Viewed by the light of these contemporary 
 remains, our own saxon architecture acquires to 
 our eyes a new character, and we are enabled to 
 see, through all its rudeness, a meaning and a 
 purpose which only failed to produce its legitimate 
 effect in the developement of a new style, because 
 its somewhat slow progress was at once arrested, 
 and distanced, by the invasion of the more advanced 
 art of the gallicised Normans. 
 
 The italian missionaries, not being architects or 
 masons themselves, could only convey to the saxon 
 artificers, in the untechnical language of amateurs, a 
 description of the mode of building and planning 
 churches, which prevailed in the country from 
 whence they had come. It is not, therefore, to be 
 wondered at that they should have failed to impart, 
 to their rude converts, a very intelligent apprecia- 
 tion of a style, which the latter had never seen, and 
 of which they themselves had made no scientific 
 study. It is, however, sufiiciently clear that our 
 saxon buildings were erected in a very rude imita- 
 tion of the contemporary churches of Italy. 
 
 There is no feature more characteristic of 
 saxon architecture than the use of rude pilaster 
 strips. The imitation of the mode of bonding of 
 such pilasters in the construction of quoins, and in 
 the jambs of doorway and other openings, constitutes 
 what is so well known as " long and short work." 
 This has sometimes been supposed to be a tradition 
 of a wooden construction. It is certainly nothing 
 of the kind. It represents simply the manner in 
 which a classic pilaster is ordinarily constructed, as 
 distinguished from the medieval method of forming 
 a quoin. This system of construction is found in 
 the ancient classic remains, and may be seen 
 very frequently in modern Palladian work." The 
 pilaster is a sort of engaged column, and some 
 uncertainty was always felt as to its proper con- 
 structional treatment. In its form it stood related 
 to the monolithic column, while its engaged position 
 made it in reality a part of the wall. These con- 
 flicting considerations were reconciled, in a manner, 
 by constructing such pilasters mainly of upright 
 stones, that they might retain as much as possible 
 of the columnar character, but with a few bond- 
 
 " The "long and short " mode of constructing pilasters 
 may be observed, for example, in the church of St. Martin- 
 in-the-fields, by Charing Cross. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 43 
 
 stones at long intervals, which were shallow in 
 depth and long in their horizontal measurement. 
 
 Saxon " long and short work " is nothing but 
 the tradition of this classic construction of the 
 pilaster, which our forefathers continued to apply 
 to the angles of their buildings, even when the 
 pilaster, which had first withered to a meagre strip, 
 was altogether omitted. The meaning of saxon 
 work becomes clear enough when we compare it 
 with the churches building at the same period upon 
 the continent. In the churches of the lombard 
 kings at Lucca, and in the tenth century work of 
 St. Pantaleon at Cologne, and the western apse 
 of Treves cathedral, we see in a reasonable and 
 not inelegant form, the features which in our own 
 examples are followed, clumsily always, and often 
 ignorantly. 
 
 In many cases these pilasters are connected 
 by arches, with a very classic effect : of this, a 
 very excellent example is found in the exterior 
 of the chancel at Repton : while in such examples, 
 as the church at Bradford-on-Avon, the pilaster 
 seems to be losing its classic character, and tending 
 toward the romanesque treatment, in which the 
 relation of the pilaster to the column is finally lost 
 sight of. 
 
 Another feature not uncommon is the use 
 of straight-sided triangular heads to doorways 
 and windows in lieu of arches. I see no reason to 
 attribute this treatment to a wooden origin, any 
 more than the " long and short work." It is not a 
 common mode of treating small openings in car- 
 pentry, and it seems rather the natural result of an 
 effort to avoid the use of the arch proper, such as 
 we see, in another form, in those arched heads 
 which are cut out of a single stone. Straight-sided 
 arches, so to call them, occur frequently in french 
 romanesque — as in the domed church St. Front, 
 at Perigueux — where the scientific nature of the 
 construction, and the perfection of the detail, forbid 
 us to attribute it to the habit of building in wood. 
 
 Although undoubtedly many churches were 
 erected during the saxon period in wood," this mode 
 of construction had, in fact, no influence upon the 
 architectural style. Greek architecture is essentially 
 wooden, and even in its most refined advance it 
 never wholly lost the trace of its origin. But our 
 rude saxon churches exhibit, in however crude a 
 form, the principles of a style essentially arcuated— 
 a style, that is, of which the typical forms are deter- 
 mined by scientific masonry. However rude and 
 even barbarous in execution they may be, they are 
 not rightly termed even debased roman. They are 
 
 ^ Paulinus's first church at York was of timber, but this 
 was only a temporary erection. Bede mentions a church at 
 Doncaster (Campodunum) which was of wood, though its 
 altar was of stone. (" Eccl. Hist.," ii. 14.) The church 
 near Bamborough, at which St. Aidan died, was, as the story 
 of his death, told by Bede (lb. iii. 17), shows, of wood, 
 as were the two churches which succeeded this upon 
 the same site. The origin of the Saxon verb gdyiiibrian, 
 must be sought, not in christian England, but in the original 
 home of our pagan ancestors among the forests of North 
 Germany. 
 
 roman indeed, but roman which has thrown off 
 the greek swaddling-clothes. They exhibit a purely 
 arcuated style, true in its science, however imperfect 
 in its art. 
 
 The use of timber construction, however, does not 
 imply necessarily a state of barbarism. I know of 
 two timber churches, in Hampshire— one of the 
 thirteenth, the other of the fifteenth century — 
 both of which are admirable as works of art ; 
 and the timber houses of the later middle ages, 
 and of the elizabethan period, are as refined and 
 as admirable in every way as any stone buildings 
 can be. 
 
 Another well-known peculiarity of the anglo-saxon 
 style is the use of baluster shafts, very commonly 
 turned in a lathe. This curious feature is found at 
 every period of the style from the churches at Monks 
 Wearmouth and Jarrow, erected by Benedict Biscop 
 in 674 and 6S2 respectively,™ to the transepts of St. 
 Alban's Abbey, built just after the Conquest. For 
 some four centuries this strange method of orna- 
 menting shafts prevailed. It was unknown to the 
 ancients, and was discarded by the medieval builders, 
 but it seems to have been very dear to the architects 
 of the dark ages. It is curious to see the same 
 principle, which, as we see it in saxon, we consider 
 so barbarous, reappearing in the style of the early 
 Renaissance. In the cinque cento, and elizabethan 
 styles the enrichment of shafts becomes again a fea- 
 ture of architecture, and one which was then deve- 
 loped into extraordinary elegance. Yet in some of 
 the more rude elizabethan balusters, we find forms 
 with which saxon shafts compare not unfavourably. 
 When we condemn as uncouth this characteristic 
 feature of saxon architecture, it is only fair to re- 
 member that the principle of it reappeared in one 
 of the most refined periods of later art, and pro- 
 duced then forms of extreme elegance and beauty. 
 This idea of enriching the shafts themselves by 
 mouldings and so forth, was in fact a new invention 
 in architecture, with which the genius of the anglo- 
 saxon architects is to be credited. The course 
 which the developement of the romanesque and of 
 the medieval styles assumed did not allow of its 
 legitimate growth, but when it was again taken 
 up by the artists of the Renaissance, the ca- 
 pabilities of the principle were found to be 
 unexpectedly wide. The anglo-saxon architects 
 thus originated an idea, which after the whole of the 
 middle ages had intervened, was at length to receive 
 its fuller expansion, and to assert its value as a 
 real addition to the elements of architectural effect : 
 and when we admire the results which it has pro- 
 duced in such monuments as the screenwork of 
 King's College Chapel, or the interior of St. 
 Eustace at Paris^ we should not forget that the 
 system was first originated by the rude designers 
 of our saxon churches." 
 
 " Bede, "Eccl. Hist.," iv. 18; v. 2. 
 
 " So far was the system carried, that there has been dis- 
 covered at Jarrow, as my father mentions, " a stone in which 
 is sculptured, as a continuous ornament, a long row of these 
 balusters represented on a miniature scale, as if they were so 
 
44 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 It is clear from the churches erected during the 
 four centuries and a half which intervened between 
 the mission of St Augustine and the invasion of 
 the Normans, which have been preserved to us, as 
 well as from the written descriptions of others, of 
 much more importance, which are extant, that 
 during this long period two distinct ecclesiological 
 traditions were in conflict. 
 
 There is first of all, as the most obvious, the 
 roman influence. British Christianity, although it 
 did not, probably, derive its first life from Rome, 
 but was rather oriental in its origin, was yet in- 
 fluenced, necessarily, to a considerable extent, by 
 the official conversion of the imperial administra- 
 tion of the province, which followed upon the peace 
 of the Church. 
 
 The principal churches which were recovered 
 to religion by St. Augustine and his companions 
 were those which had been erected by the roman 
 settlers, and not by the native christians. Their 
 buildings were probably too humble in construc- 
 tion to have left any remains worthy of a recon- 
 struction.^ 
 
 The roman missionaries imported, naturally 
 enough,the fashion of buildingthenprevalentin Italy. 
 Common as the expression " the roman manner " is 
 in Bede and other writers of the same period, we 
 can see from their descriptions of the churches 
 erected in this style, and from the actual remains of 
 some of them, that it is to the manner in their day 
 prevalent in Rome and in Italy that they refer, and 
 not to that of the early roman basilicas. 
 
 The traditions, however, of the Christianity of the 
 imperial administration of Britain, concurred in the 
 main with those which the missionaries brought with 
 them. The most zealous of their successors were 
 in constant communication with Rome. Benedict 
 Biscop went several times to Rome, and was inti- 
 mate with Pope Agatho.^ Even the liturgical 
 music of Rome was introduced into England, and 
 the arch-chanter of the Vatican basilica, John, abbot 
 of the monastery of St. Martin, came here (about 
 680) to instruct the clergy in the method of the 
 plain-song as it was practised at St. Peter's at 
 Rome.^° 
 
 The Saxons, had in fact, no architecture of their 
 own, properly so-called. Bede mentions a temple, 
 with its enclosures, at Goodmanham, in the east 
 riding of York, but this was clearly a wooden 
 structure.^''' What we term saxon architecture is in 
 reality but an english version of the contemporary 
 art of Italy, with which the roman missionaries and 
 their successors were well acquainted, and which 
 they endeavoured, with imperfect success, to natu- 
 ralise here. There is, strictly speaking, no such a 
 
 established an architectural clement as to be imitated, just as 
 arcades and windows are in gotliic architecture, as a mere 
 ornament." ("Lectures on Medieval Architecture," vol.ii,, 
 p. 50 ) 
 
 y Bede, slates incidentally, that churches of stone were not 
 usual among the Britons. " Eccl. Hist.," iii. 4. 
 2 Bede, "Eccl. Hist.,"iv. 19. 
 
 Bede, " Eccl. Hist.," iv. 18 ; cf. also ib. ii. 20. 
 '''> Bede, "Eccl. Hist.," ii. 13. 
 
 thing as saxon architecture. The fashion of build- 
 ing wliich prevailed in England from the reign of 
 Ethclbert to that of the Confessor, was determined 
 by the architects of Lucca and Pavia, whom our 
 own inexperienced artists followed according to 
 tlieir lights. It is somewhat humiliating to observe 
 how great is the distance between the Italian 
 model and the anglo-saxon imitation. Our saxon 
 forefathers were, with all their good qualities, es- 
 sentially rude, and their descendants long retained 
 a considerable trace of this well-marked character. 
 It is certainly striking to compare, as we may to 
 some extent, the state of southern Britain during 
 the roman occupation, with its condition during 
 many succeeding centuries. 
 
 The evidence afforded by the remains of the 
 roman villas all over the country is amply sufficient 
 to show, that, in point of artistic culture, we are 
 perhaps even now at a lower stage than was reached 
 on this same soil of ours fifteen hundred years ago ; 
 while our railways are but a recent improvement 
 upon the thoroughly scientific system of road- 
 making which was carried out by the roman ad- 
 ministration of Britain. During the saxon and 
 the medieval periods, the few good roads that 
 existed were those of the roman engineers. These 
 were preserved in tolerable order by the care of 
 the monastic orders. When, at the Reformation, 
 these, as a rule, public-spirited corporations were 
 dissolved, the roads of England fell into final 
 neglect. The unscrupulous set of new men, into 
 whose hands the lands of the religious orders then 
 too generally passed, had of course no conscience, 
 and recognized no duty, in respect of the property 
 they had thus acquired, and the roads were com- 
 pletely neglected. Our eighteenth century literature 
 illustrates, clearly enough, this result of the jobbery 
 of the Reformation period. England was probably 
 better provided with roads in the fourth century 
 than it was in the eighteenth. The old roman 
 scheme was rivalled indeed by the perfection of the 
 coach roads, formed in the early days of the present 
 century, throughout the country, and is only at 
 last surpassed by the more recent invention, the 
 railway. 
 
 It is certainly a remarkable fact, and one which 
 exhibits in a striking manner the essential barbarity 
 of our pagan saxon forefathers, that while at the 
 period of their arrival in Britain the country was 
 full of architectural works, both secular and religious, 
 of a high degree of refinement ; while there were 
 basilicas and villas, emulating those of Italy, erected 
 indeed under the direction of the roman colonists, 
 but by the labour of native artificers, yet so 
 disastrous was their triumph to the civilization of 
 the country, that upon their conversion it became 
 necessary to import from abroad the very rudiments 
 of the architectural art. Erom the point of view of 
 artistic progress, our country was much in the same 
 condition at the beginning of the sixth century 
 which it had occupied in the first; and methods 
 had then to be adopted by the roman missionaries 
 to re-introduce the arts, similar to those which had 
 
PLATE X. 
 
 FIG. I. SAXON CHURCH AT BRADFORD-ON-AVON : VIEW FROM THE NORTH-EAST. 
 FIG. II. PLAN OF THE CHURCH AT WING, IN THE VALE OF AYLESBURY. 
 FIG. III. PLAN OF THE CONFESSIONARY CRYPT AT WING. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 45 
 
 been necessary for their first establishment by the 
 roman colonists of five centuries earlier.'^" 
 
 In spite, however, of these efforts, the saxons 
 never attained to any real skill in architecture. Their 
 buildings, however interesting in many points of 
 view, are but copies, often so rude as to be well- 
 nigh unintelligible, of contemporary foreign build- 
 ings, and with details which exhibit a curious 
 ignorance of the meaning of the features which 
 they caricature. It is fair, however, to recollect 
 that the remains of saxon building which exist 
 to us, are those of small and mostly (though not 
 always) unimportant churches. In point of style, 
 they no doubt agree with the larger and more 
 dignified churches, which are known to us only by 
 description, but we may fairly suppose that the 
 workmanship was somewhat better and the treatment 
 of detail more intelligent in these latter, than in the 
 remains of those smaller buildings, which have alone 
 survived to our time. In the subsidiary arts too, 
 such as embroidery and illumination, our forefathers 
 showed a rare skill and refinement, which contrasts 
 very strangely with the rudeness of their masonry. 
 
 The fact however cannot be denied, that during 
 the five centuries which intervened between the 
 conversion of England and its conquest by the 
 Normans, no contribution to the progress of archi- 
 tecture was made by this country. '''' 
 
 One cannot but contrast this singular inaptitude 
 of the saxon race with the very opposite qualities 
 exhibited by the Scandinavian invaders of Neustria. 
 As ruthless as the angles and the saxons, they had 
 during the course of the ninth century devastated 
 the north of France, and destroyed very completely 
 its existing civilization. Yet no sooner did they 
 become christian ; no sooner was Normandy settled 
 as a fief of the french crown under Duke RoUo 
 (905-912); no sooner did the inhabitants receive 
 again the elements of that culture which their 
 fiithers had destroyed, than a new life is seen to be 
 stirring within it. An ability to deal with archi- 
 tecture, more especially, in a singularly free and 
 intelligent spirit, manifests itself ; and little more 
 than a century after the, once savage, northmen had 
 accepted the mild yoke of christian civilization, 
 they had developed a new mode of architectural 
 
 What the artistic progress lost by the saxon invasion is 
 well illustrated by a sarcophagus, discovered a few years back 
 in the Abbey-yard at Westminster, and now to be seen in the 
 chapter-house there. It is of the roman period, very simple, 
 and probably not later than the third century. It was made 
 use of again in saxon times for a second occupant, and the 
 covering-slab, bearing a rudely cut cross, is of this later date. 
 Anyone who would wish to realise something of that utter 
 collapse of civilization which the saxon triumph caused, 
 may feel it for himself, as he looks at the perfectly refined, though 
 simple, pagan work, with its beautifully cut inscription ; and at 
 the grotesque rudeness of the saxon slab which surmounts it. 
 
 '''1 Almost the only exceptions to this statement are, the 
 baluster shaft, and the use of the chevron or zig-zag as an 
 architectural ornament. This latter is best known to us by 
 the works erected after the Conquest, of which it is so char- 
 acteristic a feature, but from its occurrence in the crypt at 
 Repton, and in other saxon buildings, as well as from its 
 comparative rarity in NoiTnandy, I believe it to have been of 
 saxon and not of norman origin. 
 
 composition, which the Confessor adopted in his 
 refounded monastery at Westminster, and the 
 triumph of which was assured, not more by the 
 conquest of a few years later, than by its own 
 essential sui^eriority. 
 
 It was natural enotigh therefore that roman and 
 Italian traditions should have reigned supreme here 
 during this long period of 500 years. 
 
 These were not however the only elements at 
 work, and this is a very remarkable and interesting 
 fact. Although, as we have said, the saxon period has 
 contributed almost nothing to the advance of the 
 art of architecture, such is far from being the case 
 as regards ecclesiology. Though the style remained 
 much the same rude following of ill-understood 
 italian originals, from St. Augustine to St. Alphege, 
 the type and planning of the churches had, at the 
 later period, become very considerably modified, 
 and new elements had come into play, which were 
 destined to give a character of its own to all our 
 medieval church architecture. With all their rude- 
 ness too, there must have been a vein of real ten- 
 derness in the saxon race, which their buildings 
 give no expression of, but to which must be attri- 
 buted that peculiarly sweet and touching strain 
 which is interwoven through all our pointed archi- 
 tecture, and the absence of which in the continen- 
 tal gothic, gives an expression, to english eyes at 
 least, unsympathetic and cold. 
 
 The earlier churches of the period show naturally 
 little or no deviation from the roman or italian 
 arrangements. The additions made by Augustine 
 at Christ church, Canterbury, and by Ethelburga 
 at Lyminge, are quite in accordance with the plan- 
 ning of the contemporary churches of the continent ; 
 and the resemblance of the arrangements of the 
 sanctuary and confession-crypt at Canterbury, to 
 those of the Vatican basilica, asserted by Eadmer, 
 is confirmed by his own description of them. 
 
 Of Paulinus' stone church at York enough was 
 discovered beneath the quire of the present minster, 
 during the repairs made necessary by Martin's con- 
 flagration, to give a general notion of its plan and 
 its scale. It had, what Canterbury and Lyminge 
 appear to have wanted, transepts. These transepts 
 (about 25 feet wide) agreed in position with the 
 lesser transepts of the existing quire, a point of 
 some interest, as we shall see later on. Its altar 
 appears to have occupied the precise spot " upon 
 which the high altar of the minster always stood, 
 until removed by Mr. Kent about 1736." In the 
 crypt below the altar was, and is still, " a well of 
 semicircular form, full of pure water." 
 
 The nave was 27 feet wide, with aisles of about 
 18 feet, and it reached westward as fiir as the 
 present central tower. The eastern termination, 
 whether of one apse or of three, is obscure. 
 Browne,*^*^ from whom I have borrowed the descrip- 
 
 ■^^^ A similar well has recently been discovered close to the 
 high altar in Beverley minster, 
 
 'f History of the Metropolitan church of St. Peter, York. 
 By John Browne. (1838-47.) See the description appended 
 to plate iii. 
 
46 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 tion, shows it as square, but his plan is in this 
 respect obviously imperfect, and he pleads guilty to 
 "some supposition." The crypt appears to have 
 extended along the aisles of the nave, but not along 
 the nave itself, in which no doubt was left standing, 
 until the completion of the work, the wooden church 
 in which King Edwin had received the rite of 
 baptism. 
 
 The walls are described as of herring-bone 
 masonry of small stones, not unlike the work attri- 
 buted to St. Ethelburga at Lyminge, and the mode 
 of bonding together the concrete, whichis extended 
 over the greater part of the building, and which 
 formed at once the floor of the crypt and the founda- 
 tion of the walls is very curious. This was done by 
 bedding in the concrete " hewn oaks varying from 
 9 to 17 in. in breadth, and from 14 to 24 in. in 
 depth," running from end to end of the floor of the 
 crypt to give rigidity to the whole mass. 
 
 The church at Wing, near Leighton Buzzard, is 
 a very good example of a church, which must have 
 been erected very shortly after the conversion of 
 England, and is quite basilican in its character. It 
 well illustrates by its severity and by its classical 
 proportions (which are sufficiently obvious in spite 
 of later alterations) the " roman manner " of the 
 early days of saxon Christianity. It consisted, 
 in its original form, of a nave with aisles, and a 
 polygonal apse of seven sides. Of this the eastern 
 is larger than the other faces. The angles of the 
 apse are ornamented, externally, by narrow pilas- 
 ters, united above by semicircular arches. The 
 floor of the apse is elevated upon a confessionary 
 crypt, and is ascended to by a flight of steps extend- 
 ing into the nave. The triumphal arch, like those 
 of the basilicas, is almost as wide as the church it- 
 self, and is lofty in proportion. The crypt " is of 
 excessive rudeness, being built only of very rough 
 stone, but it is notable for the completeness of its 
 plan (being apsidal, with two ranges of pillars), and 
 as having remains of the two doorways, through 
 which it was approached by steps from either side 
 of the chancel arch." s*-' These doorways have 
 been interfered with by later work, but it is suffi- 
 ciently clear that, the ascent to the sanctuary must 
 always, as at present, have extended some distance 
 into the nave, and that the altar stood originally 
 in the centre of the apse. To allow space for this 
 stately flight of steps, and possibly also for a 
 chorus cantoruiii, the nave walls appear to have 
 been unpierced by arches for some distance west- 
 ward of the triumphal arch, though in later times 
 arches have been here inserted. Westward of these, 
 originally, blank spaces, the walls are pierced by 
 tliree arches on each side opening into the aisles. 
 These are, of course, semicircular, and in one order 
 only, and their only ornamentation is a very simple 
 impost of three separe set-off's, which is confined to 
 the reveal of the piers, and does not extend along 
 their lateral faces. The piers are single oblong 
 masses some six feet long by three feet thick. 
 
 SB See my father's "Lectures on Medieval Architecture," 
 ii. 50 Also injya pp. 189, 190. 
 
 Above the arches there are indications of a rather 
 lofty clerestory, and the level of the saxon wall- 
 plate is evident enough, in spite of the heightening 
 of the walls, which took place in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury. 
 
 The ancient disposition of the interior is thus 
 sufficiently obvious, and little imagination is needed 
 to picture it in its original condition. The effect 
 thus reached is strikingly basilican and even 
 classical, and the additions of later times, while 
 they have added new beauties, have but little ob- 
 scured the primitive character of this venerable 
 monument. 
 
 The church of Brixworth, near Northampton, is 
 another very early building. As will be seen by 
 the plan which I give, it is less basilican in one 
 respect than the church at Wing, since it possesses, 
 in addition to the apsidal sanctuary, a chancel of 
 equal width with the nave. This may be attributed 
 with probability to the fact that the church was from 
 the first a monastic one, and it is known to have 
 been a dependency of the great abbey of Medhamp- 
 stead (Peterborough) as early as the year 690. The 
 original disposition of the opening or openings" 
 between the chancel and the nave was disturbed, 
 probably in the fourteenth century, but there are 
 indications visible which appear to confirm the 
 statement of the late vicar, that the east wall of 
 the nave " had a central arch in the middle, cor- 
 responding to the large arch which opens into the 
 eastern apse. Beside this central arch, the bases, 
 of whose piers," he continues, " I developed by ex- 
 cavation some years ago ; it had arched openings on 
 either side with clear-story windows corresponding, 
 and opposite, to those at the east end of the chan- 
 cel," certainly a remarkable and, as far as I know, 
 unique arrangement. The nave, which is sixty feet 
 by thirty, has upon each side of it four arches, in 
 proportion not unlike those at Wing, and con- 
 structed in roman brick. Whether these opened 
 into aisles or in a series of "oratories" or side 
 chapels is not clear, but the former is the opinion 
 of the late vicar and is on the whole the more 
 probable. The chambers, of which the foundations 
 were discovered at the eastern and western ex- 
 tremities of the aisles, are remarkable as recalling 
 the disposition of several of the churches of Central 
 Syria." 
 
 The arrangement of the eastern portion of the 
 church is perfectly clear and of great interest. The 
 apse, which is polygonal and slightly elongated on 
 plan, was surrounded by a sunk passage-way or crypt 
 external to it, which is approached by doorways 
 and flights of steps on each side of the sanctuary- 
 arch. From this passage-way there appears clearly 
 to have been, in the eastern face of the apse, a 
 
 '■1' Rev. C. F. Watkins. See his published description of 
 the church, from which, aided by personal observation, my 
 plan is taken. It differs slightly from that given in my 
 father's " Lectures," ii. 39, which the late Mr. Roberts 
 prepared. 
 
 >' See the plans, in the Count de Vogiie's work, of the 
 churches of Soueideh, pi. 19; El-Bazah, pi. 60; Roueiha, 
 pi. 68 ; Qualb-Louzeh, pi. 122 ; and Tourmanin, pi. 130. 
 
PLATE XI. 
 
 10 a 10 20 30 LO 50 
 
 BRIXWORTH CHURCH, NORTHANTS. 
 GROUND-PLAN. 
 
4 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 47 
 
 doorway opening into a passage running westward, 
 under the elevated floor of the apsidal sanctuary. 
 It is remarkable that this arrangement should so 
 closely accord with the description given us by 
 Eadmer of the crypt at Canterbury, as well as with 
 the plan of that (still extant) of the ancient basilica 
 of the Vatican, upon which, as he states, the Can- 
 terbury confessionary was modelled. It is also to 
 be noticed that in the plan, of St. Gall, the approach 
 to the crypt would appear to have been disposed 
 in a manner somewhat similar to that at Brixworth, 
 by passage-ways external to the wall of the apse 
 itself. 
 
 Some have supposed this passage-way to have 
 supported an aisle upon the level of the sanctuary. 
 This, however, was clearly not the case. It was 
 covered by a barrel-vault and a roof of its own, 
 probably of stone ; above this roof the apse has at 
 its external angles pilasters such as exist in the apse 
 at Wing and in the chancel at Repton, and there 
 appear to me to be indications that, as in these ex- 
 amples, the pilasters were connected with decora- 
 tive arches. 
 
 The early date of this interesting building is 
 proved not only by the classical character of its pro- 
 portions, but also by the fact that a tower has been 
 carried up above the original western portico in 
 the style of a later saxon period, and that a triple 
 window (undoubtedly saxon and formed with 
 baluster shafts), which was inserted to give light 
 from the nave to a chamber in this tower, cuts off 
 the head of the original west window of the nave. 
 Later again, but still in Saxon times, a large stair 
 turret was added to this tower. In this church we 
 see the first example of that tiipaiiite disposition of 
 plan so frequent in the churches of the norman 
 style. The Brixworth sanctuary is no doubt the 
 equivalent of the transeptal crossing-bay under 
 wliich, in the plan of St. Gall, is placed the choir of 
 the monks. The elongation of the apse is also a 
 feature in which, on a humbler scale, it agrees with 
 this plan, and also, remarkably enough, with some 
 of the churches of Central Syria. 
 
 At Jarrow, on the Tyne, the chancel of the 
 church is of saxon character, and is thought to 
 have formed part of the building erected in 682 by 
 Abbot Benedict Biscop. It appears to have termi- 
 nated in an apse. 
 
 Of the church erected eight years earlier by the 
 same abbot at Monks Wearmouth, the existing 
 building contains some remains, though not enough 
 to determine its original plan and distribution. 
 The very remarkable western porch, in later days 
 converted into a tower, is clearly saxon, but, as I 
 take it, much later than Biscop's time. 
 
 The characteristics of all the churches of the 
 roman missionaries or of their more immediate 
 successors, of which we have any evidence, are as 
 follows : 
 
 1. The apsidal termination. 
 
 2. The confessionary crypt. We know of such 
 by description, as at Canterbury ; by tlie existence 
 of the saxon crypt itself, as at Brixworth, at Wing 
 
 and at Repton ; or from the later crypts, which are 
 the successors of these early confcssioiies, as at York, 
 London (old St. Paul's), Rochester, Winchester, 
 Gloucester, Worcester, Lastingham and Glasgow. 
 
 It must be considered that choir-crypts are in all 
 cases of early, rather than of medieval, foundation ; 
 that they had their origin in the system of the 
 basilica ; and that their retention, enlargement 
 and even reconstruction in later times was due 
 to the sentiment and tradition of earlier days. 
 Intended originally for the repose of the bodies of 
 the martyrs, they ceased to serve this purpose when 
 the system of placing such relics in shrines above 
 the sanctuary-floor came into vogue. 
 
 3. The wide chancel arch. This is the successor 
 of the triumphal arch of the basilica, and the im- 
 portance of this characteristic of those churches, 
 which were built " according to the manner of the 
 Romans," will be seen subsequently. 
 
 As time goes on, however, we find churches 
 erected having certain special features, and also a 
 general type, very different from these. These 
 elements are distinctly not basilican in their origin : 
 they become more marked and more widely dis- 
 tributed as the fusion of the saxon and british races 
 and churches progresses, and to their influence is 
 due much of that peculiar character by which our 
 own medieval churches are differenced from those 
 of the rest of western Christendom. 
 
 The special characteristics of this non-basilican 
 type of church are these : 
 
 1. The square east end, as in the church on the 
 castle hill at Dover, at Bradford in Wilts,jj and at 
 Repton. If we remember how universal was the 
 prevalence of the apsidal type from the Conquest 
 onwards for many a long year, this appearance of 
 the square end at a much earlier date is very 
 significant. 
 
 2. Transepts lower than and subordinate to the 
 nave, as at Dover, and at Worth in Sussex. This 
 treatment of the transepts is wholly foreign to that 
 of the basilica : it lasted on all through the middle 
 ages in England, and, as far as we know, in England 
 alone. Almost all our larger parish churches illus- 
 trate this peculiarity. 
 
 3. Taking in part its origin from this innovation, 
 which rendered it possible, we find the central 
 tower [an arrangement entirely impossible on the 
 basilican plan], as at Dover, at Stow, and Wootton 
 Wawen. 
 
 4. The single western tower. This, so charac- 
 teristic a feature of our village churches, is quite 
 foreign to the " roman manner," while it is quite 
 common in the later saxon. We find it in the 
 description of Ramsey Abbey in the time of St. 
 Dunstan, in existence at Holy Trinity Church, 
 Colchester, at Barnack, at Earls Barton, and in 
 instances which will readily occur to every student : 
 indeed there is probably no feature of the style so 
 well known as this. 
 
 Jj Of this church I give a view taken from the north-east; 
 a plan of it will be found, together with elevational drawings, 
 in my father's " Lectures," ii. 46. 
 
48 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 5. The last peculiarity is a very significant one, 
 and one in marked contrast witli the basilican tra- 
 dition — I mean the extreme narrowness of the 
 sanctuary arch observable in so many of the later 
 saxon clnirches. These arches are in many cases, 
 as at Bradford in Wilts, and at Wootton Wawen, 
 little more than doorways. 
 
 It is noticeable that in those saxon churches in 
 which we find the apse, we generally find, as at 
 Wing, a wide chancel arch, the successor clearly 
 of the triumphal arch of tlie basilica. Where, how- 
 ever, the square east end is found, there we find, 
 as a rule, the chancel arch to be of the smallest 
 possible dimensions. This tradition of a small 
 doorway-like chancel arch continued, through the 
 norman period, on into the thirteenth century. 
 Numbers of these were removed in the fifteenth 
 century and many have been destroyed in our own 
 day. There were frequently altars placed on either 
 side of the arch, the evidence of which is often 
 afforded by the piscina remaining in the south-east 
 corner of the nave, where the early arch itself has 
 given place to a wide one of later date, allowing no 
 space for an altar. In some instances window-like 
 openings have been formed at a later period above 
 the side altars on either side of the narrow early 
 arch. The fact, so common in our old churches, of 
 the chancel arch being of later date than any of the 
 work about it, is due to a conservative sentiment 
 which prevailed during the middle ages as regards 
 certain particular features. Fonts and doorways 
 shared this feeling with chancel-arches; and it is 
 owing to it that many of these narrow early arches 
 were preserved, when perhaps the whole of the rest of 
 the building had been piece by piece renewed, to be 
 swept away by the last great wave of medieval inno- 
 vation which immediately preceded the Reformation. 
 
 It is clear then that there was an influence at 
 work, in the ecclesiological developement of the 
 saxon period, other than that which is distinctly 
 italian and roman. 
 
 I have myself little doubt that this was derived 
 from the traditions of the british church, and it is 
 certainly an interesting fact that our medieval archi- 
 tecture appears to have drawn much of its special 
 and peculiar character from so remote and venerable 
 a source. 
 
 We know nothing directly of the churches 
 erected by the labour, not of roman, but of british 
 believers, but we can arrive at certain conclusions 
 concerning them from the evidence afforded, first 
 by the early irish churches, and secondly by those 
 peculiarities of saxon ecclesiology of which Rome 
 and Italy afford no explanation. 
 
 We must never forget that Christianity was intro- 
 duced into these isles in the first ages ; that for more 
 than two centuries previous to the peace of the 
 Church it flourished here \ that it had become the 
 religion of the nation long before it was officially 
 adopted by the roman administration ; and that 
 the british church had, as is clear from the corre- 
 spondence between Augustine and Pope Gregory, 
 a liturgy differing from that of Rome, but analogous 
 
 to the primitive rite of Gaul. This rite, termed by 
 some Ephesine, by others Hispano-Gallican,'''' pre- 
 sents unmistakeable indications of a connection 
 with the East. It gave place during the eighth 
 and ninth centuries to that of Rome, both in Gaul 
 and in England, but it has left its traces to this day 
 in the ceremonial of the french churches, while the 
 Sarum and the allied rites, no less than those of 
 the anglo-saxon church, are full of such elements. 
 
 It would be out of place to dwell here upon 
 these traces of an independent christian tradition, 
 which dius survived, in a remarkable manner, the 
 abandonment of the rite itself, and the substitution 
 of the liturgy of the roman church; but it is im- 
 possible not to be struck with the parallel which 
 holds between the history of the british ritual and 
 that of the british ecclesiological traditions. Both 
 were overborne by the centralizing influence which 
 radiated from, and drew all hearts toward, Rome, 
 yet both alike were too deeply rooted to be effaced, 
 and both alike continued to influence and to 
 modify that master impulse to which they had 
 each to succumb. Neither our medieval rituals, 
 nor our medieval church architecture, would have 
 been what they were, but for this strand of a 
 wholly independent make, which is interwoven 
 through and through into the very body of the 
 fabric, originally fashioned in a different loom. 
 
 The ancient ijritish rite was gradually abandoned 
 for the roman in the course of the centuries which 
 immediately followed the conversion of the Saxons 
 to Christianity. The old gallican liturgy was so 
 completely suppressed early in the ninth century, 
 under the influence of Charles the Great, that when, 
 only fifty years later, Charles the Bald wished to 
 have mass sung before him, according to the ancient 
 rite of Gaul, he had to summon priests from Toledo 
 to celebrate it, because there, as still to this day, 
 the Mozarabic, a virtually identical liturgy, was 
 still in use." In spite, however, of this complete 
 extinction of the rite, both here, as in France, it 
 left its traces in the customs of the local churches : 
 traces which in France are still sufficiently obvious, 
 and were so among oiu-selves until Protestantism 
 effaced alike the supplanter and the supplanted.""" 
 
 As by Mr. C. E. Hammond inliis "Ancient Liturgies," 
 Ixii. See loo Palmer, " Origines Liturgicre." 
 " Hammond's " Ancient Liturgies," Ixiii. 
 
 Tlie question of the proper observance of Easter, which 
 plays so conspicuous a jiart in the discussions between the 
 Roman and .Saxon divines and those of the British church, 
 was in reality a question rather of science than of theology. 
 The Council of Nice had determined the Catholic rule upon 
 the subject (Eusebius : " Life of Constantine IH." 14), but 
 Pope Ililarius (463) had made a correction of the Calendar, 
 introducing the improved cycle of nineteen years, in place of 
 the ancient but incorrect cycle of eighty-four years. The 
 disturbed state of the British church during the fifth century 
 had prevented its rulers becoming acquainted with this 
 alteration, and national prejudice alone delayed so long the 
 acceptance of this purely scientific correction. A very similar 
 stupidity prevented the adoption by England of the new 
 style, inaugurated, again at Rome, under Gregory XIIL, in 
 1582, for a hundred .and seventy years till 1752. It is curious 
 that the same country should twice, under such different con- 
 ditions, have exhibited the same perverse prejudice. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 49 
 
 The same was the case with the architectural 
 traditions of british Christianity. For some time 
 after the mission of St. Augustine not a trace of 
 any other influence than that of Rome and Italy 
 is to be observed in the architecture of our newly- 
 converted forefathers. Gradually, however, as the 
 two churches, of the conquerors and the con- 
 quered, became fused and welded into one, new 
 elements, wholly foreign to the basilican traditions, 
 are seen to be at work, which gradually, as time 
 goes on, give a new and special character to the 
 church architecture of saxon England, and which 
 are destined to affect, in a conspicuous manner, 
 the future of english art throughout the middle 
 ages. 
 
 Of these, the square east-end is of course the most 
 striking and the most unmistakeable. It stands in 
 conspicuous contrast with the most characteristic 
 feature of the basilican type, and looking at its 
 universal prevalence in Ireland, one cannot doubt 
 its derivation from the traditions of the early british 
 church. 
 
 Next to the apse there is no feature of the 
 basilica so marked as the great triumphal arch. 
 Nothing can well be more opposed in its whole 
 conception to this spacious ample arch of triumph 
 than the small narrow chancel arches of so many 
 of the later saxon churches, a plan which was 
 followed, as I have already remarked, for many 
 ages after the norman conquest."" This peculiarity 
 is not indeed found in the early churches of Ireland, 
 where the " triumphal arch " is commonly of the 
 basilican type, but there is evidence, nevertheless, 
 of the prevalence in the sister isle of the same 
 feeling of which the narrow saxon chancel arch is 
 the expression here. 
 
 Cogitosus, in his life of St. Bridget, written about 
 the year 800, gives a description of the church of 
 Kildare as it existed in his day, from which it 
 appears that the sanctuary was cut off from the 
 body of the church by a wall pierced by two door- 
 ways. This wall, he states, was decorated by paint- 
 ings and furnished with veils. °° 
 
 In this irish arrangement, and in the peculiarity 
 of the later saxon churches, which is its ritual 
 equivalent, we seem to see an eastern influence: 
 the same in fact which has led to the developement 
 of the solid screen or iconostasis, which in a greek 
 church completely conceals the whole rite from the 
 view of the faithful. To the sameoriginwe must refer 
 the feeling which prevailed in England all through 
 the middle ages, and which led to the erection of 
 
 St. Edmund's Church at Hauxton, near Cambridge, 
 retains the narrow chancel arch of Norman character, which 
 was flanked by side-altars standing under arched recesses, 
 the work of Bishop Northwold (1229). Under the southern 
 of these arches are the remains of a distemper wall-painting 
 representing St. Thomas of Canterbury, which formed the 
 reredos of this altar. 
 
 °° In this church, he says, "unus paries decoratus, et 
 imaginibus depictus, ac linteaminibus tectus, per latitudinem 
 in orientali ecclesice parte, a pariete ad alterum parietem 
 ecclesiae se tetendit : qui in suis extremitatibus duo habet 
 osiia." See Petrie's " Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland," 
 p. 194. 
 
 those high chancel screens, surmounted by imagery 
 and paintings, by which the chancel arch was 
 often completely filled up. The tendency which is 
 shown in all this, and which is quite characteristic 
 of english medievalism, is so entirely opposite 
 to that of which the basilica is the expression, 
 that it is impossible to suppose that the one is 
 derived from the other. We cannot avoid the con- 
 clusion, that the two represent two separate and 
 independent traditions, whose distinction is coeval 
 with the very foundation of the christian church. 
 In striking contrast with the outcome of this british 
 and later saxon tradition, in the elaborate rood- 
 screens and lofts of our english churches, stands the 
 more modern continental arrangement, according to 
 which no screen or veil of any kind intervenes, and 
 where everything is performed almost as on a stage, 
 in full view of the congregation. In this we see the 
 opposite principle — that of the basilica — carried 
 out perhaps to an exaggeration. 
 
 It is probable that these narrow arches of the 
 saxon churches were closed at the time of the 
 consecration by a curtain, and that they thus an- 
 swered a purpose analogous to that which, as we 
 have explained, the baldachino was designed to 
 serve.pp 
 
 The remains of the saxon period may be classi- 
 fied roughly in three groups : those that preceded 
 the first danish incursions ; those erected from this 
 date on to the time of the invasion of Svveyn ; and 
 lastly, the works erected under Canute and his suc- 
 cessors up to the norman conquest. 
 
 Of the first class I have already given examples. 
 
 Of the second group, the church in the castle at 
 Dover, the towers of Earls Barton, of Barnack, of 
 Holy Trinity, Colchester, of Wootton Wawen, and 
 of Sompting are good examples. To the same pe- 
 riod probably belongs the crypt at Repton, the very 
 interesting church at Worth, in Sussex, and the 
 western portions of the church of Barton-on- 
 Humber. These last consist of a complete tower 
 having small north and south doorways. Its east 
 and west sides are pierced by narrow arches, the 
 former, which is the larger of the two, opening into 
 the nave, the latter into a chamber of some size 
 and of tall proportions, gabled east and west. This 
 does not appear to have been a porch, as sometimes 
 described, as it has no external doorway, and can 
 be entered only from the tower. It has a small 
 window on each side, and in its western front are 
 two small circular openings. The whole arrange- 
 ment is very singular, and I am at a loss to con- 
 jecture its purpose. 
 
 It was during this second period that the so-called 
 roman manner is seen to become transfused by 
 traditions derived, as I conceive, from the british 
 church. 
 
 PP It must be always remembered that the chancel arches 
 in our parish churches were, as a rule, sanctuary-atches. All 
 within them was sanctuary, not choir and sanctuary. There 
 were no stalls or chancel-seats in most of our chancels; in 
 no case, in fact, in which there was not a college of priests or 
 a religious community using the parish church as their own 
 chapel. 
 
 H 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 The last period of the style is that which 
 succeeded the invasion of Sweyn in loii. 
 Symptoms now begin to appear preluding that 
 great artistic revolution which the norman conquest 
 was destined to effect. The Confessor's church at 
 Westminster exhibited in its earliest form that " new 
 mode of composition " which was so soon to put 
 an end to the old saxon style. 
 
 Many of the churches ruined by Sweyn were 
 rebuilt during the half-century which then elapsed 
 before the conquest of the country by the Nor- 
 mans.'''' To this date we may refer the tower of St. 
 Benet's church in Cambridge, and a great number 
 of towers of similar type all over the country. 
 That the saxon style was quite distinct from that 
 which the Normans brought with them, is proved 
 in an interesting manner by the history of the 
 towers of St. Mary's and St. Peter's at Lincoln. 
 These are of very similar character to that of 
 St. Benet's at Cambridge. They stand on the 
 flat ground at the bottom of the great hill, on which 
 the Cathedral is built. When the Normans took 
 possession of the city, they expelled the saxon in- 
 habitants, who were forced to erect for themselves 
 a new quarter on the level meadows near the 
 river. These churches therefore were built by 
 the Anglo-Saxons, though subsequently to the nor- 
 man conquest, and it is very interesting to find 
 them presenting a style of their own — that which 
 we know to be the saxon style — and one quite 
 different from that in which the Normans were, 
 at the same time, erecting, according to their own 
 taste, the castle and the cathedral upon the hill 
 above. 
 
 At this point we may conveniently pause. Our 
 survey has now brought us to the eve of the great 
 change with which the modern history of architec- 
 ture, in this country, commences. 
 
 I have dwelt with greater detail upon the ar- 
 chitecture of our anglo-saxon forefathers than is 
 usually given to it in art-histories, and this for two 
 reasons. 
 
 In the first place the period is one very little 
 known. Many persons who can tell you accurately 
 enough the style of any gothic building, are 
 exceedingly hazy when the distinction has to be 
 drawn between norman and saxon works. Others 
 are under the impression that England had no art- 
 history until the Conquest, and that there are no 
 buildings remaining to us of any style earher than 
 the norman. Others again believe that the Saxons 
 built only in timber, and, perhaps, wattle, and that 
 the Danes burnt up everything of that sort. These 
 false impressions I have endeavoured to remove, 
 and if the survey of this somewhat dull period has 
 
 I'l His son Knut was as zealous in the re-building of the 
 churches as his father in their destruction. He assisted at the 
 coronation of the Emperor Conrad II. at Rome in 1024. 
 Wippo, quoted liy Mr. Bryce, in his " Holy Roman Empire," 
 c. xii., page 186, says, "His ita peractis, in duorum regum 
 prassentia, Ruodolfi regis Burgundire et Chnutonis regis 
 Anglorum, divino officio finito, Imperator duorum regum 
 medius ad cubiculum suum honorifice ductus est." According 
 to the Anglo-Saxon chronicle he visited Rome again in 1031. 
 
 appeared at times tedious, the object which I have 
 had in view must serve as my apology. 
 
 In the second place what I have desired 
 beyond everything else to enforce, is the 
 fact that we English have a continuous church 
 history of our own, the material monuments of 
 which form a real unbroken series. Largely as 
 we are indebted, as regards church architecture 
 and ecclesiology, to the roman missionaries and 
 to the norman architects, we did not derive 
 from them our earliest or our most persistent 
 traditions. 
 
 We have seen that in the earliest ages of the 
 faith there existed in Britain a simple type of 
 church building, distinct from that of Rome or of 
 Constantinople. We have seen how this type 
 survived the overthrow of british Christianity by 
 the teutonic pagans ; how, when the Saxons had 
 become christians, it re-appeared, competing for 
 the pre-eminence with the latin basilica of the 
 roman missionaries, and gaining, in the long run, 
 the victory. We shall see this type maintaining 
 itself against the foreign fashions imported by the 
 norman invaders, and again victorious ; and as 
 the result of its triumph, imparting to our english 
 churches, throughout the whole of the middle ages, 
 a character which is distinct from that of all the 
 rest of Christendom. 
 
 If we consider, for a moment, what it is that 
 goes to make an english village church so entirely 
 different from those of any continental country, we 
 shall find that, apart from architectural style, the 
 following are among the important points of 
 contrast : — 
 
 The single tower placed in the centre of the 
 west front. 
 
 The principal entrance by a south porch, instead 
 of by a great western portal. 
 
 High chancel screens, surmounted by lofts, 
 closing up, more or less, the chancel arch, and 
 breaking up the vista, and also similar screens 
 enclosing every chantry-altar : the principle, in fact, 
 of withdrawing the altars into a certain amount of 
 retirement, instead of bringing them forward into 
 strong prominence. 
 
 Transepts lower than the nave, not forming a 
 bay of intersection — a crossing bay — but simply 
 opening into the nave, which is continued inde- 
 pendently of them. This is a peculiarly english 
 arrangement, common here, but almost unknown 
 elsewhere. 
 
 Lastly, and most important of all, the square- 
 ended chancel. 
 
 Now, all these points of peculiarity, either directly 
 or in their germs, we find, as we have endeavoured 
 to show, in the later saxon churches, and as we 
 find some of them also in the ancient churches of 
 Ireland, we are driven to refer them, in part at least, 
 to a common origin in the traditions of the primitive 
 british church. 
 
 It is not for architectural style that we are in 
 any way indebted to these early times. The 
 interest of the question is not artistic, but eccle- 
 
TtiE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 siological. What we English inherit from the early 
 churches of this island is, not any special manner 
 of building, but an ecclesiastical type. This type 
 may be said to have imbued the very soil of cur 
 country, for it has lasted on, though Saxon has 
 overthrown Briton, Dane overborne Saxon, and 
 Norman conquered both. 
 
 Like Rome and Byzantium, England, too, has 
 its own ecclesiastical traditions ; its own antiquity ; 
 its own type of church-building, distinct from theirs, 
 though witnessing to one and the same faith ; 
 monuments of art whose merits are all her own ; 
 and — as in state so in church — a history not ia- 
 glorious. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 DISCURSUS 
 
 ON EARLY CHURCHES IN EASTERN AND WESTERN CHRISTENDOM. 
 
 It will, I think, be convenient to give here an account of a certain number of early churches, 
 which may serve to illustrate the progress of church architecture, from the first ages of our 
 religion down to the time of the mission of St. Augustine. The reader will thus be the better 
 able to appreciate that stage in the ecclesiological advance, which had been reached generally 
 throughout Christendom, at the period at which the history of english church architecture 
 properly commences. Without such a survey it is impossible rightly to understand the 
 subsequent progress of the religious art in our own country. 
 
 One of the earliest monuments of christian antiquity which now exist, is the group of two 
 rock-cut churches near Surp Garabed, in Cappadocia, figured in Texier and Pullan's 
 " Byzantine Architecture," p. 39. These were evidently excavated at a time when the chris- 
 tians were subject to the persecution of the authorities, i.e., previous to the reign of Constantine. 
 They exhibit the basilican type in its most elementary form. Each is a simple aisle-less 
 parallelogram, with an apsidal termination, and each has a stone altar hewn in the body of 
 the living rock. The outer church is lighted by one small window, and has a lateral narthex. 
 The inner church is so dark that it must have been impossible to officiate within it without 
 artificial light." 
 
 These churches are interesting as specimens of the basilican plan in its very rudiments. 
 There are here no aisles, from which, as we have seen, the name basilica is probably derived. 
 There is here no resemblance whatever to the pagan basilica, of which the surrounding 
 arcades are the essential feature. They exhibit in short, though on a diminutive scale, that 
 aisle-less type of church, which, as I have endeavoured in a previous discursus to show, is the 
 groundwork of the vision of the Apocalypse. 
 
 Turning southward, we find exemplified in the singular convent church of Der el Adra, 
 on the banks of the Nile, of which a plan is given by Curzon in his " Monasteries in the 
 Levant" p. 100, a further advance, and yet one which exhibits almost no analogy with the 
 pagan basilicas. It is attributed to St. Helena or, as the present occupants describe her, " a 
 rich lady of the name of Haland, who was the daughter of a certain Kostandi, king of Roum." 
 
 * Curzon describes (in his "Monasteries in the Levant," pp. 121,122) an ancient subterranean tomb near 
 Thebes, in Egypt, which has apparently been adapted to the purposes of christian worship, during the early per- 
 secutions, and which is thus an instance parallel to those afforded by the catacombs of Syracuse and Rome, 
 and by the churches of Surp Garabed. This tomb is a magnificent hall, divided into three aisles by square 
 columns ; " its walls retain the brilliant white, which is so much to be admired in the tombs of the kings and 
 other stately sepulchres. On the walls are various hieroglyphics, and on the square piers, tall figures of the gods 
 of the infernal regions — Kneph, Khonso, and Osiris, are portrayed in brilliant colours, with their immense caps 
 or crowns, and with the heads of the jackal and other beasts." The christian occupation of this subterranean 
 hall is indicated "by a stone altar, standing upon one or two steps, in an apsis or semicircular recess." 
 
PLATE XII. 
 
 FIG. I. PLAN OF THE CHURCH OF .SURP-GAR ABED, IN CAPPADOCIA. 
 FIG. II. PLAN OF THE CHURCH OF DER-EL-ADRA, UPON THE NILE. 
 
The history op English church Architecture. 
 
 S3 
 
 This church is also, in part, subterranean, being built in the recesses of an ancient stone 
 quarry. The roof is formed of beams of palm-tree wood, on which a terrace of reeds and 
 earth is laid. Its height is about twenty-five feet. It is approached by a long descent of steps 
 opening upon the end of one of the aisles. The aisle is continued across the end opposite to 
 the apse, as in the cathedral of Messina, and the church of St. Agnes, without the walls, at 
 Rome. The apse is of regular antique architecture, ornamented by six pilasters and three 
 recessed niches. Here, as at Surp Garabed (although there are aisles), there appears to be 
 no suggestion of any reference to the pagan basilican type. 
 
 Indeed, by the writers of the eastern church the term basilica is never used,^ which is the 
 more remarkable when we remember that the word itself is greek. Churches of what we term 
 the basilican plan are common throughout the east : indeed by far the greater number of those 
 erected by Constantine at Constantinople are of this plan, as we know those, which he erected 
 at Jerusalem, and at Tyre, to have been. Yet this plan is never described by the byzantine 
 authors as basilican, but as resembling a stadium (opofiiKiZ <rxv/taT(), which is defined as " an 
 oblong area, terminated, at one end by a straight line, at the other by a semicircle having the 
 breadth of the stadium for its base." Thus the stadium was, on plan, exactly analogous to 
 the earliest form of the christian church, such as we see it at Surp Garabed, and elsewhere. 
 
 If therefore the use of the term basilica, in the west, is to be allowed to create any pre- 
 sumption that the christian churches were founded on the pagan basilica, as good an 
 argument for the derivation of their plan from the pagan race-course may be drawn from this 
 constant reference to the cpo^uKou ffX7/'n, on the part of the eastern writers. The one inference 
 is worth as much, or as little, as the other. 
 
 The next church which I will mention is that of Dana, near the Euphrates, illustrated in 
 Texier and Pullan's valuable work (p. 173). It is a very good example of the simplest form 
 of an aisled basilica. It presents the peculiarity of a triumphal arch of the horse-shoe form. 
 " The invention of this form of arch is often attributed," say our authors, " to the mussulmans, 
 but this example proves its prior existence." They also mention a church in Armenia, of the 
 seventh century, in which the same form of arch occurs. The church at Dana bears an 
 inscription which fixes its date as 540 A.D., being the thirteenth year of the reign of Justinian. 
 
 At Thessalonica is a magnificent church of the fifth century, exhibiting the basilican plan in 
 its purest form. Its dedication is wholly lost, and it is known only as the ancient mosque, 
 Eski Djouma." It consists of a nave 120 feet long, with side aisles, an apse, and a small 
 narthex. Its altar lies toward the west. Above the aisles is a second range of columns and 
 arches, opening into a gallery for the women, as at St. Agnes without the walls of Rome. 
 There are no lateral apses, but there is a niche at the western extremity of the southern aisle 
 which appears to have served as the table of prothesis or, as we now term it, the credence table. 
 The interior has been decorated throughout in mosaic* 
 
 Let us turn now from Asia Minor, Egypt, and the Levant, to the monuments of an early age 
 
 ^ Texier and Pullan, " Byzantine Architecture," p. 128. ' Ibid., p. 145. 
 
 The word ' credence,' (from the kalian credensa, credentiarta), indicates a side table, or buffet, upon which 
 the articles of plate required at a banquet were arranged, and at which proof was made, by a confidential serv ant, 
 of the meats to be served at the high table. " Credentlam appellant mensam supra quant uasa argentea, sive 
 aurea, ad conviviui/t opportuna prapafantur : et similiter, in divinis, supra quani ad sacrificanduni necessafia 
 continentur. Dicitur et Credentia actus ipse pre-gustationis cibarioriini, et aliaruni rcrunt." (Ceremoniale 
 Romanum I: i., sect 13 in Ducange sub voce.) This table of prothesis, in the sanctuaries of the orthodox 
 
54 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 of Christianity, which are to be found in Central Syria, for the investigation of which we are 
 indebted to the labours of the Count de Vogiie. 
 
 Here we shall find the same principles of ecclesiology ruling the distribution of these 
 churches, all of them erected before the year 565. At the same time the architectural forms 
 have a character unique and admirable. They show a freedom and an originality of treatment, 
 quite amazing at so early a date, which anticipates by some six centuries the progress of 
 western art. These monuments afford a striking illustration of what Christianity could do for 
 art, where the traditions of classical antiquity were strong enough to inspire, but not so 
 strong as to trammel, its new and vigorous life. 
 
 At Chaqqa in the middle region of the province, a little to the south-east of Damascus, are 
 remains of a secular basilica. I give a plan of it, in order to exhibit, by the contrast of its 
 arrangements with those of the simplest church of the district — that of Babouda, between 
 Damascus and Aleppo — how unreasonable is the notion that, because the same name is 
 applied by western writers to both, the form of the christian basilica is in any way derived from 
 that of the pagan. A glance at the two plans will show how little the one is indebted to the 
 other. There is indeed absolutely nothing in common, and but for that tyranny, which words 
 have ever exercised over thought, the notion of a connexion between types so dissimilar, both 
 in themselves and in their whole intention, could never have arisen. 
 
 The basilica of Chaqqa appears to be of the third century, the church at Babouda is probably 
 of the fourth. It exhibits the simplest form of the christian church, exactly similar to the 
 rock-cut churches in Cappadocia, and in principle identical with the early churches of 
 Ireland, to which I shall shortly have to refer. 
 
 Of the next stage in the progress of the ecclesiological developement — a stage which had not 
 apparently been arrived at when the Apocalypse was written — that of the single-aisled basilica, 
 there are several examples, all in the northern portion of the district. The churches of 
 Kherbet-Hass, Deir-S^ta, Baqouza, and of Tourmanin, are of this type : indeed throughout the 
 northern district the so-called basilican type is universal. All these churches have square 
 sacristies, or chapels,® at the eastern extremity of their aisles, instead of the subordinate apses 
 by which the aisles are terminated in the later western basilicas. I have selected the church 
 at Tourmanin for illustration, and the view which I give from the Count de Vogue's work' 
 
 communion resembles, exactly, one of the small side-altars of a catholic church, and is similarly adorned 
 by two lighted tapers. In the west this character of a quasi-altar is retained by the custom of placing upon the 
 credence (as in the oriental churches), two lights. In the old english coronation-rite the altar at the head of the 
 shrine of St. Edward (in Westminster Abbey), served as a table of prothesis, both for the eucharistic elements 
 and for the regalia, and since the Reformation, the massive oak table, which now occupies the site of the altar 
 of the Confessor, has been employed — as, for example, at the coronation of the reigning sovereign — for the same 
 purpose. This table is, to the present day, in all the authorised copies of the coronation-office spoken of as 
 "the altar there" — "in King Edward's Chapel." (Cf. Maskell's Monumenta Ritualia, iii. 127, 138.) I may 
 remark, in passing, that the Holy Table (of Westminster Abbey) is also, in this office invariably termed '' the 
 altar." Thus two "altars " are, to this day, required for the due coronation of our sovereigns. To object to the 
 use of this word argues therefore a sort of disloyalty, and is, in fact, a reflection upon the british constitution. 
 
 e These sacristies were termed, says Dr. Rock (" Hierurgia," p. 200), Pastophoreia. The pagan priests, who 
 in processions carried the images of the gods, were known as iratrTOipSpoi. Mention is made of these chambers 
 in the description of the basilica of St. Felix, at Nola, which will be found in a later discursus. 
 
 ' " Syrie centrale. Architecture civile et religieuse du premier au septieme si&cle par de Comte de Vogii^. 
 Paris : T. Baudry, Libraire dditeur." M. de Vogii^ was accompanied on his tour by M. W. H. Waddington, 
 distinguished like himself, equally as an antiquary and as a statesman, and one in whom France and Cambridge 
 have a common interest. 
 
PLATE XIII. 
 
 BASILICA OF DANA ON THE EUPHRATES, A.D. 540. 
 FIG. I. CROSS-SECTION. FIG. II. GROUND-PLAN. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 55 
 
 shows the external treatment of these sacristies in conjunction with the apse. Tourmanin is 
 situate near Aleppo. 
 
 Somewhat further south, at Moudjeleia, is a beautiful little church, which I give an illustration 
 of, rather as an example of an unusual and original plan, and as an instance of the freedom of 
 treatment characteristic of the architecture of this interesting country, than as having any direct 
 bearing upon our more immediate subject. Its half-octagon nave might afford a hint to modern 
 church-builders. Its nave appears to have been hypjethral, and its conception has thus some- 
 thing in common with the great church of St. Simon Stylites, which I shall have to refer to 
 presently. 
 
 As an example of the double-aisled basilica, the church of Soueideh, of the fourth or fifth 
 century, in the southern portion of the province, maybe mentioned. It is interesting as exhibiting 
 a sanctuary of two bays, interposed between the apse and the nave. This is a developement of 
 the primitive plan very remarkable at so early a date, conforming as it does to the type of our 
 western churches of several centuries later.^ The inner aisles terminate in long and narrow 
 apsidal chapels. The aisles are roofed by slabs of stone, the nave has had a wooden roof 
 
 Apses similarly elongated are found also in the churches of Roueiha, and of Qalb-Louzd^ 
 both of the sixth century, and both situate in the northern district, — to the west and south-west 
 of Aleppo. The nave of the latter church is wholly unlike that of a basilica, being separated 
 from its aisles by three wide arches of low proportion, carried, not by pillars, but by piers, which 
 are in fact portions of the wall. Its apse, externally, bears a remarkable resemblance to those 
 of many churches of central France of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It is very similar 
 to that of the great church at Kalat Sem'an, in the extreme north of the province. 
 
 Two churches of the northern region exhibit a peculiarity which it is indeed striking to find 
 far away in central Syria. They have square-ended sanctuaries. One is the church at Hass, 
 one of the most beautiful in the whole country. The other is at Behioh. In both the sanc- 
 tuary is shallow : both are single-aisled ; and each has the square sacristies, at the end of the 
 aisle, so characteristic of the Syrian churches. 
 
 The great glory of the whole district is the magnificent church at Kalat Sem'an, erected 
 around the pillar on which Simon Stylites lived out his self-inflicted and bizarre penance. 
 
 In its centre stood the column of the christian fakeer : around it is extended an immense 
 
 B For example, the eastern limb of St. Alban's Abbey, built by Abbot Paul, the relative and friend of Arch- 
 bishop Lanfranc (between the years 1077 and 1088) is, scale apart, precisely similar on plan to that of this church 
 of Soueideh (to the south-east of Damascus), erected seven centuries earlier. This is a very striking instance of 
 the futility of that docirinaire teaching which represents human history as a uniform progress. Such views, 
 proper enough to clever schoolboys, do not become grown men. They should be left to what is, intellectually 
 as morally, lasciva decentius atas. As we study these Syrian ruins, we realise that seven centuries hardly sufficed 
 to make good the loss which human progress sustained at the hands of the eastern moslems and the western 
 teutons. While examining any museum of romano-british antiquities, one cannot but feel that the whole period 
 which is comprised in, what are called, the dark ages, and the medieval ages, together with all the years that have 
 intervened between the termination of these and our own time, have scarcely sufficed to bring up the level of 
 material human culture to the point which it had reached 1500 years ago. The same may be observed in the 
 sphere of politics. But for the Reformation, and the earlier reactionary movements of which it was the outcome 
 what is termed " international arbitration " would have, before now, put an end to the scandal of war among 
 christian nations, by the realisation of the solidarity of Christendom under one universally acknowledged spiritual 
 head. Many centuries will now, as far as we can see, elapse before the progress of our race has recovered the 
 ground lost by this unfortunate reaction. There are in human affairs but " two swords " (Luke xxi. 38), and the 
 only practicable arbitrator in a conflict of the one, is he who is recognised as the wielder of the other. Humanity 
 lias ever paid for its reactions a very heavy price, 
 
 1 
 
56 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 octagon, exposed of course to the sky, into which open the four arms of the church. Each of 
 these arms forms a fine nave, separated from its aisles by arches of the basilican type, sup- 
 porting a clerestory. The manner in which the aisles of the four arms abut upon the central 
 octagon is exceedingly ingenious. The plan has the advantage, which Sir Christopher Wren 
 has secured at St. Paul's, of prolonging the vista of each aisle across the central octagon, with 
 the further merit, which St. Paul's does not possess, of continuing the aisle round the octagon. 
 The eastern limb is longer than the rest, and terminates in three apses pierced by two tiers of 
 windows. There are two porches on each side of each of the arms, except in one part, where a 
 continuous arcade is substituted. The triple portals at the extremities of the nave and tran- 
 septs have pediments over them, and are of great magnificence. This noble church is of such 
 an extraordinary character, and stands so completely by itself, both in design and in the strange 
 purpose of its erection, that, although it lies far out of the main course of our inquiry, I need, I 
 think, make no apology for calling attention to so singular and splendid a monument. 
 
 It was erected between the year 459, in which the saint died, and the year 560, in which it 
 was visited by Evagrius, who has left a description of it which is still extant.*" 
 
 It may be compared, as I would remark in passing, with the church at Naplouse, the 
 ancient Sichem, described by Arculphus (who has given a rough plan of it) in the seventh 
 century,* and of which there are still some considerable remains.-* This also consisted of four 
 great limbs extended toward the cardinal points of the compass. In the central point of the 
 cross so formed, probably hypsethral, was the well of Jacob, or otherwise of the woman of 
 Samaria. The authenticity of this well, says the Comte de Vogiie, is contested by no one. 
 Catholics, mahometans, jews, and even protestants, all agree in recognising here that " parcel of 
 a field " which Jacob bought of the sons of Emmor, the father of Sichem," the well which he 
 sunk in the spot so purchased,' the burial-place of Joseph after the long rest of his honoured 
 relics in Egypt and their weary wanderings in the desert of Sinai," and beyond all the rest 
 the scene of the interview between our Lord and the Samaritan woman, when Jesus " being 
 wearied with His journey sat down to rest upon the margin of this venerable spring. Here 
 even scepticism itself is at fault, and the Count is able to refer his readers to Dr. Robinson 
 for an argument, which from such a quarter is above suspicion, in favour of the authenticity 
 of the well, around which this great church was erected." 
 
 h Evag., Schol. Hist. Eccl. i. 14, quoted in full in the Count de Vogue's work, p. 142. 
 ' Cf. Lenoir's " Archit. Monast.," !., p. 254. 
 
 j Cf. the Comte de Vogiid's " Les Eglises de la terre sainte," p. 356. 
 
 ^ " And Jacob came to Shalem, a city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, when he came from Padan- 
 aram ; and pitched his tent before the city. And he bought a parcel of a field, where he had spread his tent, at 
 the hand of the children of Hamor, Shechem's father, for an hundred pieces of money. And he erected there 
 an altar, and called it El-elohe-Israel." (Gen. xxxiii. 18-20.) 
 
 ' " Then cometh Jesus to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob 
 gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob's well was there." (John iv. 5,6.) "Art thou greater than our father Jacob, 
 which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle ? " (lb., iv. 12.) 
 
 "And the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, buried they in Shechem, 
 in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem, for an hundred pieces 
 of silver." (Joshua xxiv. 32 ; cf also Gen. 1. 24-26 ; Ex. xiii. 19 ; Acts vii. 16.) 
 
 " John iv. 6. 
 
 ° The custom of erecting churches upon sacred and historical sites, as those of the martyrdom of an athlete 
 of the faith, was quite universal in the early ages, and Syria and the Holy Land abound with examples of it. 
 The Jewish synagogues were more commonly associated each with some symbol which recalled an event in 
 the history of the nation, Aaron's budding rod, for example, or the table of the shew-bread. And this symbol it 
 
PLATE XIV. 
 
 FIG I 
 
 FIG. I. CHURCH AT BABOUDA, NEAR ALEPPO. 
 
 FIG. IL SECULAR BASILICA AT CHAQQA, NEAR DAMASCUS. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 57 
 
 Retur-ning from this digression into Palestine, I would observe that the churches of the 
 northern part of the country are, as I have said, all of the basilican model, and that it is 
 these, therefore, to which I have chiefly directed attention, as illustrating, in a remote land, 
 the gradual developement of that type from which our own church architecture is mainly 
 derived. These churches have all been roofed in wood. 
 
 In the south, where timber was not to be procured, the roofs are of stone, and great ingenuity 
 is exhibited in meeting the requirements of such a mode of construction. Here, too, we find 
 examples of that other type, wholly distinct from that of the western basilica, which we 
 commonly term byzantine : churches of which the great feature is the domical form of roofing. 
 As, however, this type exercised no influence upon our english ecclesiology, until, in the seven- 
 teenth century, it had ceased to be, strictly speaking, english at all, there is no occasion to 
 refer here to these buildings, most valuable though they are, in illustrating the progress of this 
 branch of the general history of christian architecture. 
 
 Among the ancient churches of Rome, to which we will now direct our attention, there is 
 found no example of that earliest type — an apsidal sanctuary opening upon an aisle-less 
 nave — of which there are numerous instances elsewhere. I have referred to several in Asia 
 Minor and in Syria, and the same simple model — but with a rectangular sanctuary — is to be 
 found in all parts of Ireland. That it should be entirely unrepresented among the churches 
 of early date in which Rome, beyond all other spots, abounds, is therefore somewhat 
 remarkable. 
 
 It is so common, and indeed so natural, to assume, as the starting-point in the history of 
 ecclesiology, the basilicas of Rome, that the fact that none of these exhibit the earliest type 
 of a christian church has contributed, not a little, to that misconception of the subject which is 
 so general. 
 
 The same tendency to restrict the view to the monuments of the primitive age, afibrded by 
 Rome, has led to the assumption that in the chapels of the catacombs are to be found the 
 typical examples of the churches of the earliest age." A wider study has led to the correction 
 of these crude theories. The christian basilicas of Rome are now seen to be derived, not 
 from the contracted sanctuaries which the exigencies of a persecution — bitter indeed, but 
 
 was the custom to represent in sculpture upon the lintol of the principal entrance. The Rev. George Williams 
 (so well known as an explorer of the Holy Places) when upon a visit, in company with the Count de Vogiid, at 
 my father's house, many years ago, mentioned that the remains of the synagogue at Capernaum had recently been 
 discovered, and that upon raising the fallen lintol of its door, which for centuries had been lying upon its face, 
 the symbol carved upon it was found to be the Pot of Manna. Thus the synagogue in which our Lord deliverec 
 His ever-memorable discourse upon "the bread of God," was dedicated — as we should say — in honour of that' 
 earlier "food of angels" (Ps. Ixxviii. 25), in which was foreshadowed the enduring "wonder" of the New Law 
 (John vi. 50). Very real becomes the scene to our view when (in front no doubt of this very doorway, as, with 
 the people who had pursued Him across the lake, Jesus was about to enter this synagogue) we find Him 
 addressed with the words, " What sign showest thou then that we may see and believe thee What dost thou 
 work ? Our fathers did eat manna in the desert ; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat." 
 Most impressive the fact, that this appeal to that great ancient miracle, which the building they were then 
 entering itself commemorated, elicited from our Lord as the answer to the challenge " Your fathers did eat 
 manna in the wilderness, and are dead — I am the living bread. The bread that I will give is my flesh." 
 (John vi. 49, 51.) 
 
 " On the same assumption some have attempted to derive the use of lighted tapers at the mass from the 
 necessity of artificial light in these subterranean chapels. This theory requires us to believe, that Rome was the 
 unique cradle of Christianity, and that there, persecution was for three centuries perennial, and not, as was the fact, 
 temporary and exceptional. The ritual use of lights in the early christian church was, like that of incense, 
 inherited (of course) from the ceremonial of the old Iw 
 
 I 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 always short-lived — allowed of, but from churches — of a simpler form but nevertheless of a 
 characteristic and essentially christian type — erected above ground, of which, although Rome 
 itself presents no remaining example, instances are to be still found in many parts of 
 Christendom. 
 
 Upon this simple model of a nave terminated by an apsidal tribune, the first advance was 
 made by the addition of aisles. Of this second stage in the progress of ecclesiology numerous 
 examples are to be found in Rome. The basilicas of Rome form, indeed, a subject of them- 
 selves, and it would lead us too far away from our theme to enter upon it here, with anything 
 of the fulness which it demands. I shall therefore only remark upon a few of these invaluable 
 monuments, as illustrating the course of developement of the tradition, which was at length 
 transplanted into our own country. 
 
 Of the simplest model afforded by the roman basilicas, the church of Sts, Nereus and 
 Achilles, in the Appian street, of which I give an illustration, is a good example. This basilica 
 is said, indeed, to date from the eighth century, but both in its general plan and in the distri- 
 bution of its fittings it presents, very exactly, the tradition of earlier ages. To the basilica of 
 St. Caesareus, situate near to it, is attributed a much greater antiquity, but the arrangements 
 of the two are similar. The church of St. Clement is a well-known example of this type, 
 and it is a remarkable fact that the basilica recently discovered, beneath the floor of the present 
 church, is of the same plan as the building above, with one point of exception. In the lower 
 church the range of columns and arches is returned across the eastern end of the building, in 
 the upper church it is not. The existing church is valuable as affording the most complete 
 example of the ritual arrangements of the early ages, for there is reason to believe that 
 its fittings were erected originally by Pope John II. (532-535) in the earlier church, and that 
 upon the completion of the present building they were removed into it.'' The choir enclosures 
 — low walls of white marble having a bench upon their inner face — the pulpita for the gospel 
 and the epistle, together with the tall marble shaft to support the paschal candle, appear to be 
 all of the earlier date. In the churches of St. George, in Velabro,' and of St. Lawrence we find 
 indications of a similar arrangement, but these basilicas have lost the enclosing walls of the 
 choir. The church of Sts. Nereus and Achilles retains its original distribution and fittings, 
 but it is, though of the greatest interest, upon a rather limited scale.' 
 
 We must not, however, place too great a reliance upon the details of these most interesting 
 remains, as evidence of early usage. In their general distribution they no doubt represent 
 very accurately the traditions of the first ages, but probably few, if any of them, are in their 
 actual construction as early as the sixth century.* 
 
 We see, in the Apocalypse, the indication of the existence of a chorus psallentiim, and 
 
 1 An umbo or pulpitum was erected in the church of Sts. Cosmo and Damian by Pope Sergius I., in 687, as 
 Anastasius relates. Cf. Lenoir, Archit. Monast.," i. 191. 
 
 ' This church was founded in the fourth century. Always venerable to Englishmen as the one church in 
 Rome dedicated in honour of the patron of England, it acquired for us a still closer interest when the greatest 
 of english theologians, and the most profound of english thinkers, adopted it as the titular church of his 
 Cardinalate. 
 
 * There is a pulpitum, very similar in its general type to that of St. Clement's, in the church of St. Peter at 
 Corneto (figured in Lenoir's " Archit. Monast.," i., p. 191) which dates from the thirteenth century (1209). 
 
 ' Some attribute the fittings of the choir of St. Clement's to the commencement of the ninth century. 
 Those of which we see the remains at St. Lawrence can hardly be earlier than the portion of the church in 
 which they stood, which we know to have been added to the original basilica, in 12 16, oy Pope Honorius III, 
 
PLATE XV. 
 
 FIG. I. GROUND-PLAN OF THE CHURCH OF QUALB LOUZE, NEAR ALEPPO. 
 FIG. II. ^: III. SECTION AND GROUND-PLAN OF THE CHURCH OF .MOUDJELEIA. 
 
THE: HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHVRCH ARCHITECTURE. $9 
 
 of the position which it occupied, identically the same with that presented to us in these 
 roman monuments, so that we have a clear proof (which is confirmed from other sources) 
 that no radical innovations, like those which were effected in the course of the middle ages, 
 had as yet taken place. 
 
 But the arrangements of churches were being slowly, but very distinctly, influenced by that 
 developement of the coenobite, or monastic, idea which resulted from the very completeness of 
 the triumph of the Church. 
 
 In the first ages of the faith, the christian society consisted exclusively of those upon whom 
 the rigorous principles of the new religion had taken such a hold, that they governed absolutely 
 the whole life. The first believers "had all things in common." The church was, so to speak, 
 a monastery, and long after it had ceased — in fact — to be such, men were loath to admit that 
 this ideal was too high to be realised, for long, upon earth. 
 
 The especial glory of the early basilicas is, that they express this, all-too-fair, ideal of a 
 civitas Dei. They are designed for a community in which the prophecy had been fulfilled, that 
 " Thy people shall be all righteous."" 
 
 They are thus in their arrangements what, in the language of later ages, we should call 
 "secular churches"; but only for this reason, that the saculum itself is become "religious," 
 "and the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ." 
 
 We are constantly hearing of " the decay of primitive piety," of the " zeal of the faithful ever 
 diminishing," of the sad contrast between the fervour of the first ages and the lukewarmness 
 of the generations which succeeded to them. But this easy common-place conveys, in reality, 
 a very false impression. It is not the case that the numbers of the intensely zealous and 
 devoted, who were prepared to follow, at any cost, the " sweet folly of the Cross," decreased 
 as time went on. Far from it : their numbers were ever upon the increase, and doubtless are 
 so still. But what augmented ever, in a much higher ratio, as the triumph of Christianity 
 became more assured and more irresistible, in every department of human thought and action, 
 was the number of the half-hearted believers, of those who were christians, only because it 
 required no sacrifice to be so, because every one about them was such, and because, in short, 
 it had become " respectable." 
 
 The result of this accession of the indifferent and character-less crowd produced, as its 
 proper effect, the developement of the " regular " and monastic life. The church, ever willing 
 to be "made all things to all men, that it might by all means save some,""' was no longer, as 
 a whole, adequate to its ideal. It could not, if it was to do its work in the world, be such. 
 But within it was gradually being formed an inner circle, in which the pure and ardent " first 
 love of early times should be preserved, and the ideal of the primitive church should 
 continue, in its measure, to be realised upon earth. 
 
 Hence the formation of bodies of regular clergy, and of laymen living under the monastic 
 rule,'' carrying out in actual practice those communistic principles of the apostolic teaching 
 
 * Is. Ix. 21. ^ Rev. xi. 15. ^ I Cor. ix. 22. ' Rev. ii. 4. 
 
 ^ It must not be forgotten that monasteries are essentially lay-communities. In many orders of monks there 
 exists even a sort of jealousy of the admission of persons in holy orders (as, of necessity, interfering somewhat 
 with the desired equality of all the members of the family), which has led to the restriction of the numbers 
 of such to the ininitnum which will suffice for the performance of the offices of religion. In the Liber Vitte 
 which lay upon the high altar at Durham (and which is now in the British Museum) the names of the bene- 
 factors of the house, of which it is list, are classed under the following heads (among others), abbots in priest's 
 orders ; abbots in deacon's orders ; abbots, priests, deacons, clerks, monks. Cf. Eyre's " St. Cuthbert," p. 216. 
 
6o 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURk. 
 
 which are the logical result of christian charity and its fairest fruit ; and which, applied apart 
 from this, form the severest scourge of a self-indulgent society — corniptio optimi pessimal 
 
 It is obvious that a body of regular clergy, living in community, and bound to a daily and 
 nightly round of choral offices, requires a choir-area more extended and generally more 
 developed, in its fittings and arrangement, than suffices for the accommodation of those clerics 
 in minor orders, who, in the ritual of the early church, during the singing of the great mass, 
 had their station in this part of the basilica."* Still greater were the necessary innovations 
 of arrangement in those churches erected, not to be served by a body of regular canons, but 
 for the use of a community of monks. The members of such societies were, not even clerics 
 of the lower rank but, simply laymen, living together and apart, under a severe rule, and 
 endeavouring to maintain, in the midst of a corrupting society, the high standard of the 
 apostolic age. 
 
 It is therefore naturally in the quires of churches that we find the greatest innovations to 
 have resulted (during the dark ages, and those which succeeded) from that movement which 
 concentrated more and more in the coenobitic communities, those communistic principles, and 
 that rigorism, which, in the first days, were diffused, more or less, throughout the whole 
 christian society. 
 
 St. Clement, the companion of St. Paul, and the second in succession from St. Peter in the 
 see of Rome, was banished to the Crimea by the Emperor Trajan, by whose orders he was 
 shortly afterwards drowned in the sea. Upon his conversion Clement had erected in his own 
 palace, at the foot of the Coelian hill.^" an oratory, to which, after the martyrdom of its founder, a 
 peculiar reverence naturally attached. It is probable that the basilica, the remains of which 
 have recently been discovered and exposed to view, through the discernment and the zeal of 
 Father MuUooly, beneath the floor of the upper church, was erected by Constantine, in close 
 proximity to this venerated sanctuary. It is certain that a church was here in existence in 
 the time of St. Jerome (who died A.D. 420), since that father speaking — in his catalogue of 
 ecclesiastical writers — of Clement says, " nominis ejus memoriam usque hodie Romcs exstructa 
 ccclesia cnsiodit." 
 
 The body of the martyred pontiff was not brought to Rome until the time of Adrian II. 
 {2>6y-Sy2), so that the mcmoria of which St. Jerome speaks was not, as is usually the meaning 
 of the term, the place in which the saint's relics were deposited, but in all probability the 
 oratory which he had dedicated in his own house. 
 
 " The two forms of communism may be thus distinguished. The christian communist says — "property is an 
 evil, all things should be held in common — therefore I will surrender what is mine." The infidel communist 
 says — " property is an evil, all things should be held in common — therefore I will take what is yours." The 
 early monastic settlements were, in modern language, great co-operative farms. The principle of what is now 
 termed co-operation, was first realised, and effectively carried out, by christian monks, and at the present day 
 the Cistercian monasteries exhibit the most complete model of co-operative agriculture, hitherto attained in 
 practice. 
 
 The choir of the Apocalypse appears, from the description of the habit in which the 144,000 are vested 
 (the ungirded linen rochet or collobium)^ to answer to this body of inferior clergy, but a certain affinity is also 
 indicated with the "regular" and coenobite clergy, to whom in later times, the function of the choir came to be 
 assigned. Cf. Rev. xiv. 4. Of the numbers of these clergy in minor orders a curious piece of evidence, of 
 very early date, is afforded in the letter of pope Cornelius (251-252) upon the heresy of Novatus, which Eusebius 
 has given us in his Ecclesiastical History (vi. 43). It appears from this that while, in the church of Rome, there 
 were at that time forty-six presbyters, seven deacons, and seven sub-deacons, there were of clerics in the four 
 minor orders (acolytes, exorcists, readers, and ostiarii), forty-two. 
 
 And in close proximity to the wall of Servius TuUius, which at this point is unusually well preserved. 
 
■ PLA^ ■ OF ■ 
 GRBAT C/fC/RCH- Of ST SJMOJV ■ STVLITES 
 ■ KALAT ■ SEMA^/V • 
 
The history of English church architecture. 
 
 61 
 
 In this church, the remains of which, after the lapse of eight, or possibly of ten, centuries, 
 have been thus strangely brought to light. Pope Zosimus in 417 promulgated the condemnation 
 of the Pelagian Celestius, as we know from his own statement,''" and in it Gregory the Great 
 delivered his panegyric. 
 
 The cause of the ruin of the original church is attributed either to the earthquake of 896, 
 or the destruction of this quarter of the city by Robert Guiscard, in 1084. The existing 
 church was built, above the ruins of the older building, and generally upon the same lines, but 
 upon a somewhat smaller scale. 
 
 The basilica of St. Agnes, without the walls, resembles this earlier church of St. Clement 
 in having the aisle returned across its eastern extremity, and the same peculiarity is to be 
 observed in the basilica of St. Lawrence. These two churches have also the striking feature 
 of an upper range of aisles, not, as in later churches, a mere triforium, but a spacious gallery as 
 large, and almost as lofty, as the aisle below. As this gallery, like the aisle itself, is returned 
 across the end of the building, the effect of these interiors is exceeding fine." In these upper 
 stories the women had their station. It is possible that the earlier St. Clement's possessed 
 the same arrangement. This type is, in idea, an extension and developement upon that of 
 which Sts. Nereus and Achilles is an example, though it is not certain that it is actually later 
 in date. The greater basilicas, to which I shall have next to refer, do not possess either the 
 returned aisle or the upper gallery, and as they are both of the fourth century," it seems to 
 follow that the plan, which we see exemplified in the upper St. Clement's, and from which, 
 rather than from that of the lower church or of St. Agnes, they are obviously derived, is 
 really as early in actual date, as it is in the order of idea. 
 
 I may draw attention in passing to the characteristic process of enlargement applied by 
 Pope Honorius III. (in 12 16) to the basilica of St. Lawrence, by which the body of the original 
 church became the presbytery of the new, and its orientation was reversed. It contrasts very 
 remarkably with the mode in which (as we have seen at Canterbury and at Lyminge) an 
 equivalent expansion of the simple basilican plan was effected north of the Alps." 
 
 " " Resedimus in Sancti Clementis basilica, qui imbutus Beati Petri apostoli disciplinis tali magistro veteres 
 emendasset errores, ratos-que profecto habuisset, ut fidem, quam didicerat et docuerat, etiam niartyrio con- 
 secraret, scilicet ut salutiferam castigationem tanti sacerdotis auctoritas prassenti cognitione esset exemplo." 
 ( Epist. S. Zosimi ad Africanos.) I am indebted for this quotation, as well as for most of the information here 
 given regarding this most interesting church, to Father Mullooly's work, " St. Clement and his Basilica in Rome " 
 (Guerra, Rome, 1869), assisted by the plans there given, and by my own observation. 
 
 The same is the arrangement of the great basilica at Thessalonica, already referred to. 
 
 " The ancient St. Peter's was commenced by Constantine in the year 306. The basilica of St. Paul, without 
 the walls, which was destroyed by the lamentable fire of 1823, was commenced by the Emperors Valentinian II. 
 and Theodosius in 388, on the site of a more ancient church founded by the first christian emperor. 
 
 * The result is suggestive of a solution of many of the difficulties which the arrangement of a modern cathedral 
 presents. The only satisfactory treatment, for example, in the case of our own St. Paul's, must be to place the 
 principal altar (as at St. Lawrence) between the nave and the choir. It would thus occupy the only position which 
 is tolerable in such a church, in full view and under the full light of Wren's magnificent dome — the dominant 
 feature of the interior, and the centre of the whole architectural composition. This alteration would be simply a 
 return, from the practice of the middle ages, to that of the primitive church. The great church of St. John at 
 Malta offers a noble example of such an arrangement. The model of Wren's original and favourite design, now 
 in the South Kensington Museum, serves to show that this arrangement of the existing building would have 
 approved itself to the great architect, had it been — in his day, and with the conditions under which he was forced 
 to work — feasible, and some slight confirmation of this assumption is afforded by the fact, that he took a journey 
 to Paris in 1665, in order to make the acquaintance of Bernini, who had just completed the glorious baldaquin 
 which stands beneath the dome of Michael Angelo. Cf. Parentalia, p. 261. 
 
62 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 The great Vatican, lateran, and ostlen basilicas^^ exhibit two features of great magnificence^ 
 by the introduction of which the basih'can model reached its grandest and fullest expansion. 
 These are, first, the doubled aisle, and secondly, the transept. In the case of St. Paul's, with- 
 out the walls, the latter member is itself doubled. In these splendid examples the basilican type 
 of the christian church is exhibited upon the grandest scale and in its furthest developement. 
 
 It would be foreign to our purpose to dwell, in any detail, upon these well-known churches. 
 But it is necessary to observe that in neither of them do we find a chorus cantorinn. The 
 absence of this, in the case of the Vatican basilica, the mother church of the whole latin 
 patriarchate, is particularly to be remarked. 
 
 In the old St. Peter's, at the time of its demolition, the choir of the canons was in a side- 
 chapel, occupying the same relative position on the south side of the nave, that it has in the 
 existing church. In earlier times it was situated in a small enclosure against the southern 
 pier of the triumphal arch. This position is analogous to that which the choir of singing- 
 clerks occupy, during the high mass, in the present building. 
 
 The high altar in both of these basilicas was protected by a baldaquin, but St. Peter's 
 possessed, in addition, a sanctuary screen of twelve Parian marble columns, arranged in two 
 rows. These were of a spiral form, and decorated with sculptured vine-leaves. Their 
 pedestals were connected by lattice-work in bronze breast-high ; which in the central opening 
 was formed into gates, which thus gave access, both to the presbytery, and to the confessionary 
 crypt beneath it. 
 
 Of these columns, six are attributed commonly to Constantine, and the other six to Pope 
 Gregory III. in the eighth century ; but the portions of this enclosure, which are preserved in 
 the new basilica, appear to me to be of an earlier date than either.'^'' It is clear from the 
 account which Eusebius has left us of the great church, erected by Constantine, at Tyre, that 
 that basilica possessed, from the first, a similar sanctuary-enclosure, a feature independent 
 altogether of the baldaquin, which stood within the area which it enclosed. 
 
 I am enabled by the kindness of Canon Jenkins" to place side by side with these remarks 
 upon two of the greatest of the roman basilicae, the description of one — apparently of very 
 similar plan — erected by St. Paulinus at Nola, in honour of St. Felix, early in the fifth century .^j 
 
 St. Paulinus was born at Bordeaux in the year 352, and was, very early in life, employed in 
 some of the most dignified functions of the empire. In 393 he received the priesthood, and 
 towards the end of the year 409 he was elected to the episcopal chair of Nola. His literary 
 talents were such that St. Jerome says of him (Epist., loi, 102) : — "Every one admired the 
 purity and elegance of his diction, the delicacy and elevation of his thoughts, the strength 
 and sweetness of his style, and the playfulness of his imagination."'''' 
 
 The learned canon to whom the reader is indebted for the publication of this interesting 
 description of these two adjacent basilicas," has appended to the text of the epistle, a full 
 
 I speak, of course, of these churches in their ancient form. The plan which I give of St. Peter's is taken 
 from Fornici, that of the old St. Paul's from Letarouilly. 
 hi* Tradition says that they were brought from Greece, or from the temple of Solomon. 
 " Rector and Vicar of Lyminge. 
 
 ^ It will be found in the following discursus, which Canon Jenkins has allowed me to introduce in this place. 
 This entire section is contributed by the learned author of " The Basilical Church of St. Mary at Lyminge." 
 Cf. Dr. Rock's "Hierurgia," 238, 271. 
 
 1' At Trieste may be seen two basilicas, standing side by side, and communicating with each other by what is 
 termed, in the letter of St. Paulinus, a transenna. This double building (a plan of which will be found in Lenoir, 
 
PLATE XVII. 
 
 FIG. I. EXTERIOR OF THE APSE OF THE CHURCH OF ST. SIMON STYLITES, NEAR ALEPPO. 
 FIG. II. PLAN OF A BASILICA AT THESSALONICA. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 63 
 
 translation, and has illustrated it further by notes and observations, which make it unnecessary 
 for me to enter upon a description of this great church, or indeed to do more than to refer the 
 reader to them. I will only remark that, like the Vatican basilica, the church at Nola had its 
 high-altar toward the west : it resembled it further in having doubled aisles, and also, as I 
 believe (although it is not expressly so stated), in being transeptal."" It differed from St. 
 Peter's in the fact that its apse was in some sense triple. Whether, as Canon Jenkins suggests, 
 there were lesser conchulce recessed from the apse itself, as is common in the East, or three 
 distinct apses opening out of the transept, side by side, as is common in the western churches 
 of somewhat later date, is not clear. 
 
 In these three great churches we see the primitive model in the stage of its highest expansion, 
 and a review of the progress, by which this was arrived at, affords a complete refutation of the 
 crude theory which sees in the pagan basilica the prototype of the christian. 
 
 Leaving out of consideration the simple oblong room of the earliest oratories (which afford 
 necessarily no indication of their ritual arrangements), we see the first starting-point in that 
 progress, of which the Vatican and ostien basilicas are the highest expression, to have 
 been an oblong building, standing always west and east, having its entrance towards the east, 
 and at its western extremity, an arch opening upon a smaller chamber or recess, semi-circular 
 on plan in most parts of Christendom, but in Britain of rectangular form. In the centre of 
 this recess stands a quadrangular altar, and the arch itself is closed by a veil.°° Such is — so to 
 speak — the protoplasmic germ of christian ecclesiology ; such is the model afforded us by the 
 earliest churches extant in east and west, in Asia Minor and central Syria, as in our own isles : 
 such is the form which was present to the mind of the author of the Apocalypse ; and such 
 the simple stage upon which this inspired drama is displayed. 
 
 Nor is the source whence was derived this pregnant germ far to seek. The Tabernacle and 
 the Temple of the old dispensation, in its Holy Place and its Holiest of Holies, separated the 
 one from the other by a veil, supplied — sufficiently obviously — the model from which, with 
 certain characteristic differences, is derived the sanctuary of the New Law. Of this simple 
 
 ^ *' Archit. Monast.," i., p. 181) explains, I think, very clearly the description of the twin churches at Nola, which, 
 
 as regards their relative position, and the mode in which the communication between the two was designed, 
 is, of itself, somewhat obscure. 
 
 mm As is clear, I think, from the mention of the lateral entrance of the smaller basilica as being exceptional. 
 Of the prospectus or facade of entrance of this latter church it is stated " non^ ut usitatior est ?/ios, ad orientem 
 spectat." It fronted towards the confessionary crypt of the greater basilica. "Acl domini mei Beati Felicis 
 basilicam pertiitet, memoriam ejus aspiciettsP 
 
 °° We may infer the existence of a transept from the following considerations : — i. There is no example known 
 of a double-aisled basilica without transepts. 2. It is difficult to see how the great triple transcjina can have 
 opened upon the flank of the great church unless there was a transept. At any rate the junction must have been 
 a very awkward one if there were no transept, but it would be perfectly easy, and architecturally very effective, 
 if we conceive the transenna as opening by three portals upon the end of the transept. Upon this theory the wall 
 which was removed {^'■paries obstructus ") in order to open out a communication with the new basilica was the 
 end wall (north or south) of the transept, in which the apsis ctcjusdam monumenti formed a recess. 
 
 00 Of this, almost embryonic, stage there is a good example (figured in my father's Lectures, ii., p. 17) at 
 TeampuU Rona, in the Hebrides. This tiny church has a nave only 8 feet 3 inches in width by about 14 feet in 
 length. A sanctuary arch, narrower than an ordinary doorway, gives access to chancel 1 1 feet long. It has a 
 small altar, of stone, and a piscina-recess. Its principal door is in the south side of the nave. Its side- walls 
 are built battering, and its sanctuary is eastward. In the smallness of its chancel-arch it is further removed from 
 the roman basilica than are the early churches of Ireland, which, as we shall presently see, have always spacious 
 " arches of triumph." 
 
64 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 idea, having its origin in the sacred tent erected, three-and-thirty centuries ago, in the 
 desert of Sinai.PP all the magnificent temples with which the piety of eighteen centuries has 
 adorned Christendom, present but the expansion.*!"* 
 
 This primitive type was enlarged in the first instance by the addition of aisles, either lateral 
 only, or returned also across the eastern end of the building ; and from this plan the parish 
 churches of the west derive their model. Further enlargement was gained by the addition, 
 first of a second story to the aisles ; and then of a second aisle beyond the first range ; and 
 finally by the introduction of the transept, in, which was at length reached that cruciform 
 plan, of which all the great churches of later times exhibit the wonderful capabilities. 
 
 Thus from the very simplest germ, by a gradual progress, a form of building was arrived 
 at, in which vastness of area is combined with a stately simplicity and a dignified severity, 
 which are without a parallel, even among the most magnificent works of later ages. 
 
 The history of the secular basilica is almost the exact reverse of this. Its origin is to be 
 sought in the great open forum surrounded by colonnades and shops, of which it was a smaller 
 version. This relation to the forum is well seen in the great unroofed basilica of Julius Caesar 
 (basilica Julia), and in t\\2A.o{ llx2!]2x\.(basilica Ulpiana). It is illustrated upon a smaller scale 
 in the similarly un-roofed basilica still standing at Pompeia ; and among modern buildings the 
 Bourse at Liege, the Palais Royal at Paris, and our own Royal Exchange give, perhaps, the 
 best notion now to be had of the nature of such buildings, and of the purposes for which they 
 served." 
 
 It was only, of course, when the basilica was comparatively small that it was possible to roof 
 it in. The earliest instance which we find, of a basilica which was not hypaethral, is given us by 
 Vitruvius in his description of the one which he carried out at Fanum. 
 
 In treating of the basilica in general he clearly contemplates an unroofed and cloistered area, 
 since he says, " hasilicarum loca adjuncta foris quam calidissimis partibiis oportet constitui tit 
 per hicmem sine molestia tempestatuni se conferre in eas negotiatores possintP 
 
 He then proceeds to describe a second and smaller class, in which the central space is covered 
 by a timber roof. This he illustrates by an example of his own designing. He describes an 
 oblong area, 120 feet by 60, surrounded by a colonnade or aisle in two stories, the centre of one 
 side of which is left open to afford a prospect of the adjoining Forum and of the temple of 
 Jupiter. Upon the centre of the opposite side abuts the pronaos of the temple of Augustus, the 
 roof of which is at the same level with that of the basilica itself, and is continued so as 
 
 PP Cf. p. 33. The Solomonic temple was precisely of the same form of distribution : it consisted of a 
 rectangular sanctum, 90 feet by 30, opening upon an adytum (or oracle), 30 feet square, parted from it by the 
 symbolical veil. As the height of these two apartments was different, that of the sanctum being 45 feet, while 
 that of the adytum was only 30, it is evident that there intervened something of the nature of an arch, across 
 which the veil was suspended. (Cf. i Kings vi. 2-20 ; 2 Chron. iii. 3-8.) It is singular that the british and Irish 
 churches, in the rectangular form of their sanctuaries, conform, more nearly than does the roman or basilican 
 plan, to the Mosaic and Solomonic original. 
 
 qq In the fact of orientation the christian basilicas present a peculiarity unknown to the secular basilicas. 
 This orientation is clearly a tradition of the Jewish ritual, and that form of it which is characteristic of the 
 primitive age (that in which the sanctuary is toward the west), is simply that of the ancient Tabernacle. 
 (Cf Exod. xxvi. 18, 20, 22, 27, 35 ; xxvii. 9, 11-13.) It is remarkable that any one, who is acquainted with the 
 Pentateuch, should have considered (as so many have done, even in recent times) the westward position of the 
 early christian sanctuaries puzzling and even abnormal. It is also remarkable that so venerable a tradition 
 should ever have been (as it has been universally, ever since the earlier dark ages) disregarded. 
 
 " In one of our own cathedrals, it is not the church, but the cloister, which most resembles in its general 
 notion, the idea of the secular basilica. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 6S 
 
 to intercept with it. There is in this basih'ca no apse, but provision is made for the trans- 
 action of legal business by a semi-circular tribune, placed in advance of the pronaos of the 
 temple of Augustus, and so low as not to interfere with the view of the temple behind it.^' 
 Vitruvius states that the tribunal is thus planned in order that the transaction of legal busi- 
 ness might not interfere with, what was the main purpose of the basilica, the meeting of 
 commercial men. 
 
 From the manner in which the account of this building is introduced by Vitruvius, following 
 on, as it does, upon that of the larger and hypsethral basilica, as well as from the rather clumsy 
 provision which is described for lighting the interior (by mere voids left between the roofs of 
 the upper gallery and the testudo of the central area), we may infer that, in the time of Augustus, 
 a covered basilica was a novelty. It is possible that the one thus described was actually the first 
 ever so treated. It is at any rate the only timber-roofed secular basilica known, and beyond 
 this fact of having a wooden testudo and galleried aisles, it has absolutely nothing in common 
 with the christian model." 
 
 Of the next stage in the history of the roofed basilica, that upon the Palatine hill (the 
 basilica Jovis) is an example of which we have actual remains. It was constructed by the 
 Flavian emperors in the first century. On plan it resembles the christian buildings in having 
 aisles (possibly galleried) and an apsidal termination. But in the most important feature of its 
 whole construction it is entirely unlike any early christian church. I allude, of course, to the 
 vast concrete or brick vault by which — as is clear from the provision made, in the plan, for its 
 abutment — it was covered in. There is not one of the christian basilicas which is so treated, 
 or to which such a vault could, by possibility, be applied. The vault is as foreign to their 
 construction, as it is the germinating principle of the plan of this secular hall. 
 
 In the basilica commenced by Maxentius and completed by Constantine, the vault is again 
 the dominating feature, and in the type, which is illustrated by this noble ruin, the original 
 notion of the secular basilica — a central area surrounded by porticos — is finally lost. There is 
 here no longer any tradition of the Forum. There are no colonnades, no lateral aisles. 
 Here is no longer a cloistered garth, no longer an aisled exchange, but simply a vast vaulted 
 hall. Such is the form which the secular basilica had assumed at the time when Christianity 
 became the religion of the imperial government. 
 
 Thus the history of this form of building is almost exactly the reverse of that which we have 
 observed in the case of the christian temple. 
 
 The latter is the history of a constant expansion and enlargement of a very small original, 
 through which, by a avaTrX-^pwaii, very significant of the spirit of the new dispensation, the one 
 narrow sanctuary at Jerusalem, while it was multiplied over the whole world, was also gradually 
 extended by successive developements, till — from being one of the most confined of adyta — it 
 had come to cover the vast areas of the Vatican or the ostien basilicce. 
 
 The secular basilica, on the other hand, originating in the Forum, became, first a cloistered 
 court, then a colonnaded exchange, and lastly a vaulted hall. As the history of the one is 
 that of a constant expansion of area, so that of the other exhibits an equally uniform diminution. 
 
 The pronaos of the temple occupied the length of three intercolumniations. As the tribunal was not a com- 
 plete semicircle, but a segment 46 feet by 15, a small space would be left, on either side of it, to give access to the 
 temple in rear of it. 
 
 The whole passage, with a translation, will be found below. 
 
 From which the name itself {paaCkiKt], sc. arli-n) is, as we have seen above, p. 4, derived. 
 
 K 
 
66 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 There is one stage in each series in which the two are not dissimilar, but even these do not 
 synchronise. 
 
 The theory commonly taught requires us, in fact, to believe that the basilicas, which, in the 
 fourth century were, as it is assumed, handed over to the christian congregations were build- 
 ings which had been erected in the first, and that the Church, being without any traditional 
 type of edifice adapted to her ritual, was compelled, in the time of Constantine, to imitate 
 buildings which had been erected under Augustus or Nero/^ 
 
 I may notice, in passing, that an obscurity, parallel to that in which the origin of the typical 
 christian temple of the first ages has become involved, surrounds the early history of the 
 vestment characteristic of the christian priesthood. 
 
 In each case there exists — side by side with the christian model — a pagan one, sufficiently 
 nearly resembling it, to lead to a confusion which more accurate study is gradually clearing 
 up. As in the case of the material church we have one, out of the many forms of the secular 
 basilica — that of the Basilica Jovis — resembling in several respects the christian model of 
 some three centuries later, so to the casida or phenolion, of the christian ceremonial, we find 
 a parallel in the pcenula of every-day roman life. In each instance the resemblance is 
 misleading : in the latter case it appears to be purely accidental. 
 
 We have seen that the christian basilica, of the type of the ancient St. Clement's, was at 
 OHce an expansion of a simpler form, — that without aisles, — and also a transition towards 
 one of much more elaboration, the double-aisled and double-transepted model of St. Paul's 
 without the walls : while the corresponding pagan example, upon the Palatine hill, is an instance 
 of one stage in a progress of quite an opposite tendency, namely from the vast unroofed and 
 cloistered Basilica Julia — an enclosed forum rather than a hall — to the vaulted type of the 
 basilica of Constantine — a hall rather than a basilica. The stages of these two opposite lines 
 of developement, which alone appear parallel, the one to the other, are not even contem- 
 porary in date, and the coincidence is in fact, to a great degree, accidental. So too with 
 the history of the christian vestment. 
 
 The resemblance between the early form of the chasuble and that of the pce^iula is clear 
 enough, and the greek name phettolioit is no doubt derived from (patvo\T]9, and yet, for all 
 this, the two appear to have no real connexion. Nothing indeed is so misleading as an 
 all-too-obvious resemblance. How many errors of classification — for example — in the 
 treatises of Matthiolus, Gerard, and the early botanists, are due to this one source alone. 
 
 First then of the origin of the name, always to be distinguished carefully from that of the 
 thing. Planeta appears to refer simply to the ample form of the vestment, and to its loose 
 
 That some few secular basilicas were, like many of the heathen temples, converted into christian churches is 
 possible. Ausonius, addressing the Emperor Gratian (a.d. 375), says : "The basilicas, which heretofore were wont 
 to be filled with men of business, are now thronged with votaries praying for your safety." Strangely enough we 
 have not a single well-authenticated instance of such a conversion : while of the adaptation of pagan temples to the 
 purpose of christian worship there are abundant instances. But the appropriation of some secular basilicas can 
 no more establish the derivation of the christian model from these buildings, than the much more common 
 conversion of the temples of the gods can prove the christian Church to have derived from these its own 
 distinctive architectural type. I think it just possible that in the passage which I have quoted, Ausonius is playing 
 upon the new meaning which — since the official recognition of Christianity — the word basilica had acquired. 
 Once it signified only an exchange, now it denoted a house of prayer. This, rather than the actual transfer- 
 ence of any of the buildings themselves, may have been in the writer's mind. The establishment of the peace 
 of the Church had no tendency to diminish the numbers of the " men of business," or to render it any less neces- 
 sary, than it had been before that event, that they should possess exchange-halls in which they might assemble. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 67 
 
 folds, swaying with every movement of the figure. Castila I suppose is derived from its 
 completely covering and enclosing, as it were in a conical hut, the whole body. Phetiolion 
 indicates its obvious resemblance to the pcsnula of common life. Pallium rotmidum, the 
 term occasionally used, indicates in the same way its general similarity to the secular 
 pallium, or luariov — a very large piece of stuff, enveloping loosely the whole body — and also 
 its distinction from the latter as being not square, as this was, but circular. 
 
 All these names then are of a popular character : they are derived, not from the history or 
 origin of the thing, but from its shape, and from the appearance it presented when in use. The 
 name phenolion is no better evidence that the vestment it described was derived from the pcemila 
 in common use, than is the name casula that it took its origin from a wigwam. 
 
 The prima facie presumption is all against the identity of the chasuble and the pcenula. The 
 latter was regarded as an undignified, and slightly vulgar, costume as compared with the toga. 
 Laws were passed under the early Empire to forbid its use, in public, by senators and magistrates. 
 The toga was the dress of the emperor, of the consuls, of the praetors and quaestors, of the augurs, 
 and of the priesthood generally, and was worn, too, by all persons, of whatever class, when 
 engaged in sacred rites, or in the discharge of religious vows. It is not credible, then, that the 
 christians, had they needed to borrow, from their pagan fellow-citizens, a habit for the use 
 of their own priests when performing the most venerable mysteries of the New Law, should 
 have adopted, not the stately toga, but the unceremonious and almost vulgar pcenula. 
 
 At the present day when the inhabitants of some remote island think fit to array their sove- 
 reign, or their high-priest, in a dress of european make, they have generally the good sense to 
 select the uniform of a naval officer, or the frock coat of a missionary, rather than the " cut- 
 away " coatee of the trader, or the sailor's jacket. We must credit our forefathers in the faith 
 with sufficient tact to have avoided an error, which even uncivilized tribes, in contact with the 
 novelty of civilisation, do not commonly commit, and we must not, therefore, suppose the author 
 of the Apocalypse to have represented the high-priest of heaven itself as clothed in a dress, 
 which was forbidden by law to be worn, by any person of high social or official position, or by 
 any one when engaged in the performance of religious rites ; a dress which owed its popular, 
 and gradually increasing favour, to its unceremonious freedom and its homely comfort. 
 
 That there was no objection, upon the part of christians, to the toga, we may gather from 
 this fact, that it is the toga which is the traditional habit of the apostles, and that even 
 our Lord himself, when conceived as the judge of all, or in what is termed, a majesty^ 
 has from the earliest ages been represented in this, the imperial and magisterial robe. 
 Why then should the priestly vestment of the Apocalypse (in which the four-and-twenty 
 presbyters are robed, as well as the high-priest himself), if it were but an adoption 
 from the secular fashion of the day, be, not the full dress T);/3ci/f09 or toga, but the vulgar 
 pcenula ? It appears to me much more reasonable to suppose that the vestment intended 
 by the word l/iajlov — the form of which we ascertain from early christian monuments, and 
 which in latter times came to be known as planeta or casula — although in shape it was not 
 unlike the secular paenula,^^ was yet derived from elsewhere, and that the resemblance 
 between the two was, in point of fact, accidental.'"' 
 
 The pcenula was usually of wool, or even of leather, the traditional material of the casula is silk. 
 
 The notion of forming a sort of ample cloak by the simple process of cutting a hole in the centre of a large 
 piece of cloth, through which the head may be passed, is one so obvious that it has occurred to men of many 
 different ages and countries. The mexican poncJia resembles the christian vestment quite as much as did the 
 
68 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 The girded white h'nen robe of the christian clergy has its admitted prototype in the vesture 
 of the Jewish sacerdotal order/^ and this fact suggests the probability that the upper vestment 
 characteristic of the christian priesthood, is derived from the same source, rather than from a 
 plebeian dress of every-day life. 
 
 This presumption is increased almost to a certainty when we find that one of the distinctive 
 features in the vestiture of the Jewish high-priest was a robe precisely resembling the christian 
 chasuble. 
 
 Upon the upper linen ephod Aaron was directed (Ex. xxviii. 15, et seq.) to suspend the 
 breastplate {rationale Vulg.), and over all he was to assume what is termed (ib. 31) "the 
 robe of the ephod," the nature of which is clear from the description which follows : — " There 
 shall be a hole in the top of it, in the midst thereof : it shall have a binding of woven work 
 round about the hole of it (as it were the hole of an habergeon), that it be not rent. And 
 beneath, upon the hem (or skirts) of it, thou shalt make pomegranates of blue, and of purple, 
 and of scarlet, round about the hem thereof ; and bells of gold between them round about : 
 a golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, upon the hem of the 
 robe round about. And it shall be upon Aaron to minister : and his sound shall be heard 
 when he goeth in unto the holy place before the Lord, and when he cometh out, that 
 he die not." We see here a vestment so ample that it swayed with the movement of the 
 figure, so that the little bells of gold, which adorned its lower edge, tinkled as the high-priest 
 walked. In the midst of it {i.e., when laid out flat), at the top of it (when in wearing) was 
 to be a hole for the wearer's head to pass through, and the hem of this is directed to be 
 protected by a binding, lest it should be rent in the putting on, or in the taking off" It had 
 thus but two hems in its making, the one at its lower edge, to which the golden bells were 
 attached, adorned with embroidery, the other about the aperture through which the head was 
 to be passed, protected by a binding. It appears therefore to answer exactly to the primitive 
 and ample form of the chasuble, and if this be the case there can be little doubt as to 
 whence that peculiar ornament of the christian ministry is derived.^* 
 
 pcetmla ; and I remember that at Eton we boys (though in happy ignorance that castcla, which we should have 
 translated " a little cottage," could ever mean " a large overcoat,") used to go to the bathing-places, on Sunday 
 mornings, vested in railway-rugs, to which an extemporised head-slit or capitium had given exactly the same 
 form. I once heard some clever person speak of the chasuble as " the full dress of a roman gentleman of the 
 fourth century." It might with equal truth be described as the shooting-coat of a mexican gentleman of the 
 nineteenth ; and perhaps the one statement would throw as much light upon the origin of the christian vest- 
 ment as the other. 
 
 " Samuel ministered before the Lord, being a child, girded with a linen ephod " — accincius ephod lineo, 
 I Sam. ii. 18 ; (cf Exodus xxviii. 39, 40, where what is apparently the same girded linen vestment is termed in 
 our translation " coat," and in the Vulgate tunica.') A second ephod, richly embroidered in colours, was worn 
 by the high-priest alone. It was worn over the former, and was probably shorter than it, and is commonly so 
 represented. Exodus xxviii. 4, et seq. 
 
 " Our translation compares this aperture to that of an habergeon, or coat of chain-mail, which resembles, in 
 this respect a chasuble, in that it is put on overthe head, which is passed through the hole formed for this purpose. 
 The Vulgate reading is different ; it merely speaks of the binding of the hem of the aperture : sicut fieri solet 
 in extremis vestium partibus. This outer robe i^, singularly enough, omitted in all the popular english repre- 
 sentations of the vestiture of the Jewish high-priest, and even in those usually given in catholic illustrated bibles. 
 It is, however, exhibited quite correctly in the interesting 15th century sculptures, adorning the baptistery of 
 the cathedral of Amiens, in which the ritual of the ancient dispensation is represented in a very accurate and 
 very noble manner. The sacred scriptures would appear to have been more carefully studied at this period 
 than at the present day. 
 
 »»a This suggestion is made by Dr. Rock in his " Hierurgia " (p. 437). If it be, as it appears to me, a sound one, 
 it will follow : — First, that the sacrificial vestment, in habitual use throughout the latin, greek, oriental, and 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 69 
 
 In this case, as in that of the basilica, the accidental resemblance between a pagan type, and 
 a christian model, having its origin from a very different quarter, has tended to obscure the 
 history, both of the sacred vestment and of the sacred building, and the error, detected in 
 either instance, is the more easily recognised in the other. 
 
 From this digression returning to our more immediate subject — the examples namely 
 which remain to us of churches erected before the mission of St. Augustine, as illustrating the 
 course of ecclesiology and the progress which, in its developement, had been reached at the 
 time of the conversion of the English — this would have been the place to give some examples 
 of the churches of british Christendom. Unfortunately existing monuments are here wholly 
 wanting,^''^ and of written accounts we have but very little. 
 
 Putting aside the remains of the basilica of Lyminge, and the indications afforded by the 
 account, preserved to us by Eadmer, of that at Canterbury (both of which buildings appear to 
 have been the work of the roman colonists rather than of the native christians), I do not 
 know of any direct evidence which we have, except in the case of the church, known as that of 
 St. Joseph of Arimathea, at Glastonbury, and of this we have but little that can be relied on. 
 " In Glastonbury," says Mr. Freeman, " in this old part of Somerset, in this south-western 
 corner of England, we are in a land which was not conquered until after the English had 
 become christians. In this land therefore the religious establishments of the conquered 
 people were respected, as they were not elsewhere, and Glastonbury, the greatest of all, 
 lived on, as it had been, the greatest of british ecclesiastical foundations : it belonged alike 
 to the conqueror and the conquered. What Exeter was among cities, Glastonbury was 
 among churches." 
 
 The saxon stone church was erected to the eastward of the british wooden building of 
 Glastonbury — lignea basilica as it is termed in the account of Canute's visit. " This wooden or 
 wicker church was standing when Glastonbury passed into the hands of the English : it was 
 not destroyed, but was respected and allowed to remain as a highly venerated place." Thus 
 it remained until, in the twelfth century, it was replaced by the beautiful stone chapel, which 
 fell to ruin, with so much else, at the Reformation. Previously to this catastrophe there was 
 affixed to a pillar in the more modern church an inscription, upon a brass plate, giving the 
 following information concerning the original british church."''^'' 
 
 " In the thirty-first year after the passion of the Lord, twelve holy men, of whom Joseph of 
 Arimathea was the chief, came hither, who upon this spot erected the first church which 
 was founded in this kingdom, which Christ, in His own person — as Saint David archbishop 
 of Menevia, bears witness — Himself consecrated in honour of His Mother, and as a place of 
 burial for His servants. For when he (St. David) was proposing to dedicate this church, the 
 
 Scandinavian communions, has been in use, with an unbroken continuity, for over three thousand years : and 
 secondly, that that which was one of the distinguishing marks, not of the priesthood generally, but of the high- 
 priest alone, under the Old Law, is, in the Newer Rite, the characteristic ornament of every priest. This vest- 
 ment, in combination with the alb, or xfwctoc, forms a costume, the use of which, extending as it does at the 
 present time over every part of the world, has an area far larger, and an antiquity far more remote, than that 
 of any other dress in which man has ever clothed himself: a significant fact upon which a Sartor resartus might 
 comment. 
 
 I much doubt whether the so-called british church of Peranzabuloe (St. Peran in sabido), in Cornwall, is 
 of so early a date as some would attribute to it. I have not had an opportunity of examining it myself, but 
 from the descriptions given of it I suspect that it is, by many generations, later than the time of St. Augustine's 
 mission. 
 
 eoo See Spelman's Concilia^ vol. i., p. 9, quoted in Fetrie's " Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland," p. 192. 
 
70 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Lord appeared to him in a dream, and bade him to abandon his intention. And for a sign that 
 the Lord himself had already consecrated the church and its cemetery, He, with His finger 
 pierced the bishop's hand, which the next morning was seen, thus perforated, by many persons. 
 Some time after, in consequence both of a revelation from the Lord, and also of the increasing 
 number of the holy relics laid up in the church {sanctorum imtnero in eadem cresccnte), the 
 same bishop added a certain chancel {cancellum) at the east end of this church, and consecrated 
 it in honour of the Blessed Virgin, the altar of which he adorned {insigjiivit) with a sapphire 
 of inestimable value, as a lasting memorial of these events. And lest the position or the 
 dimensions of this former church should, in consequence of such enlargements (as have since 
 taken place), pass into oblivion, this column is erected upon a line drawn through the two 
 eastern corners of the said church (of Joseph of Arimathea), separating the aforesaid chancel 
 from it, and continued some distance southwards. The length of the church westward from 
 this line was sixty feet, and its breadth twenty-six feet, and the distance of the centre of 
 this column from the middle point between the aforesaid corners of the church is forty-eight 
 feet." 
 
 From this curious, and very precise, notice we gather that the original church was sixty feet 
 long by twenty-six broad, and that until the time of St. David (who died about 544) it had no 
 chancel, but was simply, in its primitive form, a rectangular chapel. 
 
 Beyond this scanty evidence we can only infer the character of the british churches from that 
 of the buildings erected in Ireland, under the influence of the british missionaries, St. Patrick 
 and his successors. Of these I have already spoken, but a few further remarks, extracted from 
 Mr. Petrie's valuable work, may be added here, to give more completeness to the account. 
 
 Of these churches there are two kinds. The first is a mere quadrangular oratory, roofed in 
 stone, with a western doorway and a south-eastern window.'^'*'* The larger churches present in 
 addition to this nave " a second oblong of smaller dimensions extending to the east, and con- 
 stituting the chancel, or sanctuary, in which the altar was placed, and which is connected with 
 the nave by a triumphal arch of semi-circular form. These churches have rarely more than a 
 single entrance, which is placed in the centre of the west end; and they are very imperfectly 
 lighted by small windows splaying inwards, which do not appear to have been ever glazed. 
 The chancel is always better lighted than the nave, and usually has two, and sometimes 
 three, windows, of which one is always placed in the centre of the east wall, and another in 
 the south wall ; the windows in the nave are also usually placed in the south wall, and, 
 excepting in the larger churches, rarely exceed two in number ... In all cases the sides of 
 the doorways and windows incline, like the doorways in the oldest remains of cyclopean 
 buildings, to which they bear a singularly striking resemblance . . . The walls of these churches 
 are always perpendicular, and are generally formed of very large polygonal stones, carefully 
 adjusted to each other, both on the inner and outer faces, while their interior is filled-in with 
 rubble and grouting."'^''® 
 
 The " long and short work," so common in saxon buildings, is in Ireland rarely found 
 except in the sides of the doorways and windows.™ 
 
 " In the smaller churches of oblong form, without chancels, the roofs appear to have been 
 
 '^'^'^ Thus even at this early date the primitive orientation, derived from that of the Jewish temple, had come 
 to be reversed. 
 
 eee « Eccles. Architect, of Ireland," p. 159. Many of the smaller oratories and cells are constructed without 
 mortar. Cf. lb., p. 420. 
 lb., p. 185. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 71 
 
 generally constructed of stone, their sides forming at the ridge a very acute angle ... In the 
 larger churches, however, the roof appears to have been constructed commonly of wood, and 
 covered with reeds, straw, or oak-shingles. There are also instances of the chancel being 
 roofed with stone, while the nave was roofed with lighter materials. 
 
 There is found occasionally a small apartment on one side of the chancel, serving no doubt 
 as a sacristy. " Of such structures there are several examples remaining, as at Glendalough, 
 Iniscorthy, the churches on the island at Killaloe, and in the cathedral of Killaloe."'^'''* 
 
 These buildings, simple though they be, present many points worthy of notice, and they are 
 particularly interesting to us, as throwing light upon the character of the churches of Britain, 
 the ecclesiological traditions of which they undoubtedly represent. 
 
 In the first place we may remark the smallness of their dimensions. " The ancient irish 
 churches," says Mr. Petrie, " are almost invariably of small size, their greatest length rarely ex- 
 ceeding eighty feet, and being usually not more than sixty. One example only is known of a 
 church of greater length, namely, the great church, or cathedral, of Armagh, which, according to 
 the ' Tripartite Life of St. Patrick,' was originally erected of the length of one hundred and forty 
 feet. That sixty feet was, however, the usual length, even of the larger churches, appears not 
 only from their existing remains, but also from the accounts preserved in the ancient Lives 
 of St. Patrick, in which that length is given as the measurement of the Domhnach Mor or 
 Great Church of Patrick, near Teltown, in Meath."'" On the island of Inchaguile, in Lough 
 Corrib, is a church called Templepatrick, which " though exhibiting the usual form of the 
 larger churches, having a nave, triumphal arch, and chancel, is in its greatest external 
 length only thirty-five feet six inches. The interior of the nave is seventeen feet eight inches 
 in length, and thirteen feet six inches in breadth ; and the chancel is a square of nine feet 
 internally."'" 
 
 In these small dimensions, and in the short and square proportions of their sanctuaries 
 they are resembled by many of our saxon churches. There is a marked difference in respect 
 of scale between the two classes into which these latter — the churches erected in our own land 
 in the course of the five centuries which intervened between the primacies of Augustine and of 
 Lanfranc — are divided, those namely which are built upon the roman, or more strictly upon the 
 nltramontane model, — for it is to Ravenna and Lucca, rather than to Rome, that we must look 
 for their prototypes — and those which illustrate other and, presumably, british traditions. The 
 very small saxon churches, such as those at Bradford in Wilts, and Escomb in the county 01 
 Durham, have square east-ends and belong to the latter class, while those churches which 
 exhibit the Italian manner, such as Brixworth, Wing, and Worth, are commonly upon a scale 
 larger than is usual in our village churches, even of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 
 The confessionary crypt, too — an essentially latin feature — is found only in those of the saxon 
 churches which exhibit this larger, and ultramontane, type. It is not found in any of the smaller 
 square-ended churches, and is wholly unknown in Ireland. Those, therefore, of our great 
 medieval churches which have crypts, as York and Canterbury, represent, in so far, the latin 
 tradition : those which are without this feature, as St. Albans, Salisbury, and Westminster, 
 follow, in this respect, the traditions of Glastonbury and of the early british Church. 
 
 In connection with their smallness of size is the fact of the entire absence of pillars and 
 aisles. Although these churches are termed, by the oldest writers, basilicce^'^^ they are wholly 
 without that especial feature of the secular basilica, from which indeed the name itself is 
 
 ggs lb., pp. 103, 184. hhh lb., p. 438. «i lb., p. 158. jjj lb., p. 161. ''tk lb., p. 159. 
 
72 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 derived, the continuous colonnaded portico. This is a fact which is not without its bearing 
 upon the christian application of the word. 
 
 In place of large churches, the custom prevailed, in Ireland, of erecting several small ones 
 in proximity."' 
 
 We see here a tendency clearly not derived from roman traditions. It is a fashion which 
 prevails still in Russia, and of which our own great medieval churches, divided up as they were 
 in every direction, by screens and enclosures, into separate chapels and chancels, each with its 
 own altar — an arrangement as different as possible from that of the latin basilica, — display 
 the tradition. 
 
 " That the unadorned simplicity and contracted dimensions of the earliest irish churches," 
 says Petrie again, "were not altogether the result of poverty and ignorance of the arts in their 
 founders, appears to me extremely probable. Poor those honoured individuals unquestionably 
 were, but that poverty appears to have been voluntary, as became men walking in the foot- 
 steps of the Redeemer, and who obtained their simple food by the labour of their hands : but 
 that they were ignorant of the arts, or insensible to their influence, could scarcely have been 
 possible in such, very many of whom — Romans, Gauls, and Britons — were educated where 
 those arts, although they had become debased, were still cultivated : and we have not only 
 abundant historical evidence to show, that many of the ecclesiastics in those early times 
 obtained celebrity as artificers and makers of the sacred implements necessary for the service 
 of the church, and as illuminators of books, but we have also still remaining, the most indis- 
 putable evidences of their skill in those arts, in croziers, bells, shrines, etc., and in manuscripts, 
 not inferior in splendour to any extant in Europe. It is, indeed, by no means improbable that 
 the severe simplicity, as well as the uniformity of plan and size, which usually characterises 
 these early churches, was less the result of the poverty or ignorance of their founders, than of 
 choice, originating in the spirit of their faith, or in a veneration for some model given to them 
 by their first teachers.""™"" 
 
 The next point of interest is the fact that, although frequently termed basilicce, " they never 
 present the conched semi-circular absis at the east end."""" The eastern termination is 
 invariably rectangular : the chancel, or rather the sanctuary (for such it really is), is on plan 
 a square : the altar, always of stone, stands a little in advance of the east wall, along which 
 a stone bench is commonly carried, forming the throne of the presiding bishop, or priest, and 
 of his assistants — an arrangement virtually the same as that of the early roman churches, 
 though treated in a very different manner. 
 
 In the centre of the east v/all is invariably placed a window. This again is in marked contrast 
 with the latin basilica, the apse of which was never, in early times, pierced by windows. Here 
 again we see the germ of a tradition which has developed in these isles — and here alone — into a 
 feature of special and characteristic magnificence. In the little window-slits which pierce the 
 eastern walls of these humble irish sanctuaries we see the prototype of those glorious windows 
 which adorn the square east-ends of our english chancels, which are peculiar to our traditions, 
 and which are without a parallel in any other portion of Christendom. 
 
 In some instances there are as many as seven churches thus grouped together. Similarly we find at 
 Glastonbury, that there were at one time three churches in such close proximity that they were subsequently 
 united into one. In later times, were seen at Coventry, a cathedral and two of the largest parish churches in the 
 country, all standing within the same garth. St. Margaret's, Westminster, almost in contact with the Abbey, and 
 St. Helen's, under the very shadow of York Minster, illustrate the same tradition, 
 mmm "Ecclcs. Architect, of Ireland," p. 189. lb., p. 159. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 73 
 
 Among other points in which these early irish churches are distinguished from those erected 
 in Rome, or elsewhere under roman influence, I may refer to the common use of the stone 
 barrel vault for covering in the naves and chancels. Of this there is absolutely no example in 
 Rome itself until the period of the renaissance, and in England flat wooden ceilings prevailed 
 until many centuries later than the erection of these irish churches. Another point, which I may 
 instance, is the sloping jambs of the doorways and windows, which Mr. Petrie states to be the 
 almost invariable custom.""" This is a form, almost never, met with in the saxon churches of 
 our own country,PPP and entirely foreign to that mos romamis to which Bede so frequently refers. 
 Possibly we may attribute this very curious fashion to a tradition of british origin. 
 
 Most of these churches, or groups of churches, were monastic, for Ireland, like England, was 
 converted by monks, but these early monasteries were very different from the admirably 
 organised establishments of a few centuries later. The eremitical life was still struggling against 
 the caenobite, and it is clear that, in the earliest monastic establishments of Ireland, the abbat, 
 clergy, and monks had each their separate house, or cell, and that such other buildings as were 
 required for the accommodation of strangers, for kitchens, etc., were all distinct edifices standing, 
 with the church, in an enclosure, surrounded by a cashel, or circular wall, and forming, rather 
 an eremitical town, than a monastery in the proper sense of the term.i'"' Such an arrangement 
 represents clearly a transition from the anachoretical to the community life. Such ecclesiastical 
 towns are common in the Thebaid of Upper Egypt, as elsewhere in the east, and were known 
 among the Egyptians by the name Laura. 
 
 I will conclude this notice of the only buildings, now extant, from which any know- 
 edge can be derived (and that only by inference) of the churches erected in this country by 
 the native christians prior to the saxon invasion, with the following remarks of Mr. Petrie : — 
 " That there is little in these primitive churches to interest the mind or to attract regard as 
 works of art, it would be childish to deny : yet in their symmetrical simplicity — the dimly- 
 lighted nave, entered by its central west doorway, and terminated on the other side by its 
 chancel arch, affording to the devout worshipper an unimpeded view " — save only during 
 the recitation of the canon of the mass, when, as we have seen, the arch was closed by a veil 
 — " of that brighter sanctuary, in which were celebrated those divine mysteries, which afforded 
 to him consolation in this life, and hope in the next — in the total absence of everything 
 which could distract his attention — there is an expression of fitness to their purpose too often 
 wanting in modern temples of the highest pretensions ; as the artless strains sung to the 
 Creator, "r which, as we may believe, were daily hymned in these unadorned temples, were 
 
 000 lb., pp. 159-174. 
 
 PPP An instance has recently been observed in the north doorway of the church of Escomb, near Bishop 
 Auckland. Attention has, for the first time, been called to this interesting building by Dr. Hooppell, who con- 
 tributed a paper upon it to the archaeological congress at Yarmouth (1879). This very perfect saxon church, 
 hitherto unknown to archteologists, consists of a nave, forty-three feet by fourteen, and twenty-three feet in 
 height to the wall-plate. From this a tall and narrow chancel arch, five feet three inches in width, and eleven 
 feet from floor to springing, opens into a rectangular sanctuary, ten feet square, andover eighteen feet in height 
 to the plate. There is a south porch, of the same dimensions on plan, and eleven feet in the height of its walls, 
 and in the north wall is the doorway to which I have referred. This is five feet nine inches from floor to 
 head, three feet in width at the top, and about three feet five inches at the threshold. The head is formed 
 of one massive stone, and each jamb of three stones of similar character, two being placed perpendicularly 
 and one between them horizontally. The church is constructed of materials from the neighbouring roman 
 station of Vinovium. 
 
 aqq " Eccles. Architect, of Ireland," p. 416. ^ The ecclesiastical Plain Song. 
 
 L 
 
74 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 calculated, from their very simplicity, to awaken feelings of deep devotion, which the gorgeous 
 artificial music of the modern cathedral but too rarely excites, even in minds the most 
 predisposed to feel its influence and to appreciate its refinement." 
 
 Here our survey of the still extant monuments of christian antiquity, erected prior to the 
 conversion of our own countrymen, may conclude. A few remarks, however, upon the plan 
 of the monastery of St. Gall, to which reference has been more than once made, may, for 
 want of a better opportunity, be inserted in this place. 
 
 We have seen in the case of the basilica of St. Lawrence, at Rome, one mode by which, 
 in the middle ages, a primitive basilica was enlarged to meet more modern requirements. In 
 this instance the necessary extension was effected by means of a second nave added behind the 
 altar, which, retaining its ancient position, stood now in the midst of the enlarged building, upon 
 the line which separated the old and the new work. The nave of the ancient church thus 
 became, in the new arrangement, the quire, the altar standing now between the nave and 
 the quire. In the plan of St. Gall we shall see an example of an exactly opposite mode of 
 extending the original basilican type. 
 
 Conceive the eastern end-wall of an early basilica — that in which the principal entrance was 
 situated — removed, and a complete church of the early medieval type, with transepts and an 
 elongated apsidal presbytery, added to the primitive building : we have then exactly the form 
 of the church shown in this curious plan. At St. Lawrence we see, in fact, a double nave with 
 a single high altar standing betwixt the two : at St. Gall, we find a nave of unusual length, 
 having an apsidal sanctuary at each end of it, and two high altars, one at either extremity of 
 the building. 
 
 Of this remarkable project, some have attributed the authorship to Gerung, architect to 
 the court of Charles the great : but the terms in which its designer addresses the abbat of St. 
 Gall, in the inscription upon the original parchment, makes this suggestion improbable. 
 " Hcec tibi, dulcissime fili Gozberte" writes the author of the project, " de positione officinarnm 
 pmicis exemplata direxi, quibus sollcrtiam excrccas tuam, meamque devotionem nt-cunqiie 
 cognoscas, qua tim bonce voluntati satisfacere me segncni non inveniri confido. Ne snspiceris 
 antem 7ne hcBc ideo elaborasse, qnod vos piitemus nostris indigere magisteriis, sed potius ob 
 amorem Dei tibi soli perscrutinanda pinxisse amicabili fraternitatis intuitu crede. Vale in xpo 
 semper mentor nostri. Amen!' 
 
 From this address it is evident, first, that the plan is a project for buildings to be erected, 
 and not an illustration of any existing monastery ; and secondly, that its author occupied a 
 position of eminence, which permitted him to address the abbat of one of the most famous 
 monastic houses then existing, as his son."' It is therefore highly probable, as was suggested 
 by Mabillon, that the design is the work of abbat Eginhardus, who was prefect of the royal 
 buildings under Charles the great, and was well skilled in architecture.""*"* 
 
 »" My authorities for this account are : (i) the paper contributed by the late professor Willis to the fifth 
 volume of the Archceological Journal (1848) ; and (2) Lenoir's " Architecture Monastique," i. 23-26. The author 
 has in each instance given a fac-simile of the original plan. A copy was published by Mabillon, in the 
 second volume of his "Annals of the Benedictine Order ;" and in 1844, Keller, of Zurich, issued a veiy exact 
 fac-simile very nearly of the size of the original. 
 
 Charlemagne himself was a frequent guest at St. Gall's. " Karoliis magmes Imperator^' says Ekkehardus 
 (Vit. B. Notkeri, c. 29, G., p. 277, quoted by Willis), " in tantum dilexit locum S. Galh', et ita familtaris erat 
 fratribus, ut eum non aliter noininarent nisi — 7ioster Karolus." 
 
 uuu Eginhardus had married Imma, the daughter of Charlemagne, but later in life, no doubt upon the death 
 of his wife, he had adopted the monastic profession. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 75 
 
 St. Gall was born in Ireland in the middle of the sixth century. He accompanied St. 
 Columbanus into France in 585, and finally established the monastery which ever after bore 
 his name/^ in a desert spot called Himilinberg, near the lake of Constance. The rule of 
 St. Benedict was introduced here by St. Othmar, who became its first abbot in 720. 
 
 Gozbertus, to whom this plan is addressed, commenced a complete rebuilding of the church 
 and of the monastic buildings at the beginning of the ninth century. He commenced the 
 new basilica in 829, and it was dedicated nine years later. 
 
 The plan, which, from its inscription, is evidently a project for a rebuilding, may therefore 
 be attributed with considerable certainty to the first quarter of the ninth century. It has no 
 pretensions to have been laid down to scale, as the proportions of the edifice, as shown thereon, 
 do not tally, with any exactness, with the dimension given in the legends written upon it. It 
 must be considered therefore as a diagram of a suggested arrangement of the church, and of 
 the various monastic buildings, proposed to the abbat Gozbertus, when contemplating the 
 rebuilding of his house, by one in high position, who is anxious, as his letter shows, that his 
 friendly suggestions should not be taken as commands. 
 
 The plan itself, which is drawn upon a large sheet of parchment, shows not only the church, 
 but all the buildings necessary to a complete benedictine establishment ; which was, in one 
 point of view, a great co-operative farm, worked in common by a body of monks and lay-brothers 
 {fraircs convcrsi), who all shared equally in the produce ; all being provided alike, from the 
 proceeds, with shelter, food, and clothing, while none could amass any private property, the 
 increment, if any, belonging to the community as a whole.^'^"' We find, therefore, beside the 
 church, the cloisters, the conventual offices, the abbat's house, the infirmary, the guest-house, 
 the schools, etc., granaries, factories, cow-bires, stables, a hen-house, a yard for geese, folds 
 for sheep and goats, and gardens in which are indicated the position of the various fruit-trees 
 then cultivated, and even of the herbs and vegetables. We are only concerned, however, with 
 the church itself, and accordingly the plan which I give is confined to this and to the adjacent 
 cloister, and its surroundings.^" 
 
 The church resembles that of which the foundations have been discovered at Lyminge, near 
 Folkestone, and the early cathedral church of Canterbury, as described by Eadmer, in having 
 an apse at each extremity. It differs from these in having towards, what was no doubt 
 intended to be, its eastern extremity, a transept. In advance of the eastern apse is the quire 
 of the monks, in front of the western one is a smaller quire, in its proportions somewhat 
 basilican. As at Canterbury there is a confessio, or crypt, beneath the eastern sanctuary. Above 
 it, upon an ascent of seven steps, is the high altar dedicated, as the legend upon it states, in 
 honour of the Blessed Virgin, and of the patron St. Gall, whose relics were designed to rest in 
 the crypt below. This crypt is approached by a descending passage at each side of the 
 
 Until its suppression in 1808. Its library and buildings still exist, 
 www This, the essential notion of a benedictine house, is at the present day best exemplified by the Cistercian 
 brothers. The establishment of this order upon Charnwood Forest, in Leicestershire, has converted, in recent 
 years, a great stony waste into a richly productive farm. There is an interesting account, given in the life of 
 the unfortunate Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, of the similar work doing by the monks of the same order in 
 french Algeria. The lay-brothers, or f nitres conversi, are under the same essential vows (of poverty, chastity, 
 and obedience) as the cloistered monks, but they are not bound to the choral recitations of the offices, so that 
 their farm-labour is less interrupted than is, necessarily, the case with the monks themselves : all, however, 
 share equally, with this exception, in the ordinary manual labour of their great farming establishments. 
 
 It is taken, with a few trifling corrections, from professor Willis' rendering of the original in a form 
 more intelligible, than this is, to modem eyes. 
 
76 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 presbytery, and has also another entrance in the middle of the flight of steps leading up to the 
 high altar. Its distribution is, so far, very similar to that of the ancient Vatican basilica, to 
 that, described by Eadmer, at Canterbury, and to that of which the indications may still be 
 seen at Brixvvorth. Eastward of the high altar was a second, of which the dedication is 
 indicated by the legend, " Hie Pauli dignos magni celebramus honores." The western apse 
 contained a second high altar, just as may be seen at the present day in the cathedrals of 
 Mayence and of Naumburg. This was to be dedicated in honour of the Prince of the Apostles 
 " Hie Petrus ecclesice pastor sortitur honorem." Midmost of the length of the nave is the rood- 
 loft, or pulpitum, under which is the altar of the Holy Cross, or rather of the crucified Saviour, 
 A I tare sci salvatoris ad crucem. It bears the legend, "Crux, via, vita, saliis, miser ique 
 rcdemptio immdi." 
 
 Westward of the jube is shown the altar of Sts. John the evangelist and John the baptist, so 
 placed evidently with a respect to the font, which stands a little further west, also in the centre of 
 the nave. The transepts, are enclosed by screens, and have altars placed against their eastern 
 walls. That in the north transept is dedicated to Sts. Philip and James, that in the south to 
 St. Andrew. Along the central line of each aisle, and ranging with the alternate pillars, are 
 other altars, whose dedication is indicated upon the plan which I give. 
 
 The church is thus planned to contain no less than fifteen altars, beside those that, no doubt, 
 occupied the crypt, and two others which are placed upon the summit of the towers. 
 
 In the quire of the monks may be observed, beneath the crossing bay, benches, for the 
 singers, formula; psallentium, who here stood facing, no doubt, toward the high altar, as did the 
 " rulers of the choir " once at Salisbury, and as they still do in France and elsewhere. Imme- 
 diately westward of the crossing is a transverse screen with a central opening, upon which are 
 indicated two desks, such, no doubt, as still exist in the basilica of Sts. Nereus and Achilles, of 
 which I have already given an illustration. These were to serve for the reading of the lections 
 in the night offices : Analogia duo ad Icgendum in noete,'^ say the legend upon them. The 
 side-screens of the choir are continued for a distance of rather more than one bay westward 
 into the nave, where they are connected by a second transverse screen having two doorways. 
 In the space thus inclosed stands a circular pulpit for the reading of the gospel at the high 
 mass, as is testified by its title : "Hie evangeliccs recitatur leetio pacis." The smaller western (or 
 basilican) choir contains no indication of its fittings. 
 
 Each of the apses (termed in the inscriptions exedrce) is surrounded internally by a bench 
 no doubt of stone, but there is no indication, in either, of the episcopal throne {eathcdra) 
 commonly to be found in the centre of such tribunes. The fact of the church being monastic 
 and not cathedral, may account for this omission. 
 
 To the north of the eastern apse is the library, in two stories, " infra sedes seribentium, 
 supra bibliolheca." In a corresponding position on the south side is the sacristy, " subtus 
 saeratorium, supra vestium eeelesics rcpositio." 
 
 Externally there is attached to the western apse a semi-circular cloister, termed upon the 
 
 plan Paradisus. Upon its covered colonnade is the following legend : — 
 
 " Hie mtiro tectum impositum patet atqtie coliiinnis, 
 Has ittterqiie pedes denos moderare coltiiiinas." 
 
 In the open space thus enclosed is written : — 
 
 " Hie paradisiacuin sine tecto sternito campum^'* 
 
 A similar arrangement prevailed in the basilica of St. Felix at Nola, see infra p. 8i. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 77 
 
 A similar paradise, but without a cloister, is shown about the eastern apse also. It bears 
 the legend : — 
 
 " Hie sine domatibus paradisi plana paranturP 
 
 These enclosures form a very curious feature of the plan. I strongly suspect that these 
 paradisi were suggested by the original arrangement of the church of the Holy Sepulchre as 
 erected by Constantine. Beyond the apse of this latter church was formed an area "of great 
 extent and open to the pure air of heaven. This was adorned with a pavement of polished stone, 
 and enclosed on three sides by porticos of great length," f.ia.Kpoi'i TrepiSpofioi's aTo(hv tV ipinXevpov,^^'^ 
 where the existing form of the rock appears to indicate, not a quadrangular, but a semi- 
 circular colonnade. In the centre of this open space was the rock-hewn sepulchre " standing 
 out erect and alone upon a level plot," as Eusebius describes it. We have only to give to 
 the paradisiaais campus of St. Gall the " great extent " of Eusebius' description to have a 
 fairly exact representation of the arrangement of this highly venerated sanctuary."'*^* 
 
 On the two sides of the western semi-circular paradise are indicated two towers, the access 
 to which is by short passages from the atrium. These, as in most of the ancient basilicas of 
 Italy, stand detached from the church, but, singularly enough, they are shown as circular on 
 plan, a form of tower common enough in Ireland, but most rare elsewhere. Can we venture 
 to attribute this peculiarity to the tradition of the native land of the patron saint and founder 
 of the house ? Each is designed to have upon its summit an altar dedicated, respectively, in 
 honour of the archangels St. Michael and St. Gabriel. Abnormal as these towers are in plan 
 and in position, yet in the fact of there being two of them, and these placed, in a manner, 
 flanking the western termination of the church, we may see, perhaps, a tendency toward that 
 type of the western facade which is common in all the great minsters of later ages. 
 
 This plan is most interesting as exhibiting the transition between the basilica of early 
 times and the great monastic churches of the medieval period. The details of its arrange- 
 ments are so minutely indicated and in many instances so remarkable, its general distribution 
 throws so much light, not only on that reversal of the normal primitive orientation, of which 
 every ancient english church now existing is an example, but also upon the plan of the first 
 in date of our english cathedral churches, that the notice I have given of it here needs, as I 
 think, no apology; 
 
 With it our review of early christian monuments may well conclude, as with it that of the 
 medieval churches may be said to commence. 
 
 Eusebius, " Life of Constantine," iii., c. 35. 
 aaaa When we remember the fascination with which men were attracted to the sepulchre of the Lord, 
 through all the earlier ages of Christianity, during the so-called dark ages, and throughout the medieval period : 
 when we recall the constant stream of pilgrims which it drew toward it, and the great historical events which the 
 desire to free it from the hands of the infidel, — the one grand motive of all the crusades, — brought about, we need 
 not be surprised to find that the church, which adorned and enclosed it, has had, in all the ages, a distinct 
 influence upon the ecclesiology of Christendom. The sentiment still lives, and still attracts christians to this 
 monument of the great fact, with the truth of which Christianity must stand or fall. A french writer has, in our 
 day, given expression to this irresistible fascination in the following eloquent words : — " Whether for the 
 philosopher, for the naturalist, or for the historian, this tomb is the boundary which separates two worlds, the 
 ancient and the modern : it is the point of departure of an idea which has renewed the universe, of a civilization 
 which has transformed everything, of a word which has resounded over the whole world. This tomb is the 
 sepulchre of the old world, and the cradle of the new : no stone of this world was ever the foundation of so vast 
 an edifice, never was there a tomb so prolific. No doctrine, entombed for three days or for three ages, has ever 
 broken so grandly and victoriously the rock, on which man had put his seal, or proved the impotency of death 
 by so splendid and incontrovertible a resurrection." — Lamartine, " Travels in the Holy LandP 
 
78 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 THE DESCRIPTION OF THE BASILICA OF St. FELIX AT NOLA, 
 
 BuiU by Si. PauUnus of Nola, circa an. 400. 
 
 FROM THE XIlTH EPISTLE OF St. PAULINUS TO SEVERUS 
 (Bom 352, Died 431). 
 
 TRANSLATED, WITH A FEW BRIEF NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS, 
 
 By R. C. J. 
 
 Basilica igitur illa, quae ad Dominaedium nostrum communem patronum in nomine Domini 
 Christi jam dedicata celebratur, quatuor ejus basilicis addita/'' reliquiis Apostolorum et Mar- 
 tyrum intra apsidem trichora^' sub altaria sacratis, non solo B. Felicis honore venerabilis est. 
 Apsidem solo et parietibus marmoratam camera musivo'' illusa clarificat, cujus picturae hi 
 versus sunt : — 
 
 " Pleno coruscat Trinitas mysterio ; 
 Stat Christus Agno : vox Patris coelo tonat 
 Et per columbam Spiritus sanctus fluit. 
 Crucem corona lucido cingit globo 
 Ciii coronae sunt corona Apostoli. 
 Quorum figura est in columbarum choro. 
 Pia Trinitatis Unitas Christo coit, 
 Habente et ipsa Trinitate insignia, 
 Deum revelat vox paterna et Spiritus, 
 Sanctam fatentur Crux et Agnus Victimam. 
 Regnum et triumphum purpura et palma indicant. 
 Petram superstat ipse petra Ecclesiae, 
 De qua sonori quatuor fontes meant, 
 Evangelistae viva Christi flumina." 
 
 ^ The four basilicae here referred to must inckide several in other places, including that at Fondi, founded by 
 Paulinus himself. 
 
 ^ On the word iric?iora, Rhosweyd has a long and learned note ; but after many references to other passages 
 he concludes that its meaning is best cleared up by this place of Paulinus itself. It seems to mean a place 
 having three chambers or recesses, and here in connection with altatia would indicate that there were three 
 altars in the greater apse, each in a recess or conchiila of its own. Of these the centre one must have been the 
 high altar, that of St. Felix being on the one side, and probably that of St. Melana, with the relics of the holy 
 cross on the other. It is also quite possible that the trichora altaria stood in three separate apses opening out 
 of the western side of a transept. 
 
 ^ Musivo illudere (observes the same learned Jesuit) is equivalent to musivo depittgere, " to paint in mosaic." 
 There is constant mention of such work in the lives of the Popes by Anastasius Bibliothecarius, and it seems 
 to have been a favourite art with them in almost every age. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 79 
 
 Inferiore autem balteo, quo parietis et camerae confinium interposita gypso crepido'' con- 
 jungit aut dividit, hie titulus indicat deposita sub altari sancta sanctorum : — 
 
 " Hic pietas, hic alma fides, hie gloria Christi 
 Hic est Martyribus Crux sociata suis. 
 Nam crucis h ligno magnum brevis astula pignus, 
 Totaque in exiguo segmine vis crucis est. 
 Hoc Melanae sanctae delatum munere Nolam 
 Summum Jerosolymae venit ab urbe bonum. 
 Sancta Deo geminum velant altaria honorem, 
 Cum cruce Apostolicos quae sociant cineres. 
 Qukm htnh jungantur ligno crucis ossa piorum, 
 Pro cruce ut occisis in cruce sit requies ! " 
 
 Totum vero extra concham® basilicae spatium, alto et lacunato culmine, geminis utrimque 
 porticibus^ dilatatur, quibus duplex per singulos arcus columnarum ordo dirigitur. Cubicula 
 intra porti'cus quaterna longis basilicae lateribus inserta, secretis orantium vel in lege Domini 
 meditantium, praeterea memoriis^ religiosorum ac familiarium, accommodatos ad pacis 
 aeternae requiem locos praebent. Omne cubiculum binis per liminum frontes versibus 
 praenotatur, quos inserere his Uteris nolui : eos tamen quos ipsius basilicae aditus habent 
 scripsi ; quia possent si usurpare velis, et ad tuarum basilicarum januas convenire ut istud 
 est : — 
 
 " Pax tibi sit quicumque Dei penetralia Christi 
 Pectore pacifico Candidas ingrederis." 
 
 Vel hoc, de signo Domini super ingressum picto, hac specie qua versus indicat : — 
 
 " Ceme coronatam Domini super atria Christi 
 Stare crucem, duro spondentem celsa labori 
 Praemia : tolle crucem qui vis auferre coronam." 
 
 Alteri autem basilicae, qua de hortulo vel pomoerio quasi privatus aperitur ingressus, hi 
 versiculi banc secretiorem forem pandunt : — 
 
 " Coelestes intrate vias per amoena vireta, 
 Christicolae — et laetis decet hue ingressus ab hortis, 
 Unde sacrum meritis datur exitus in Paradisum." 
 
 Crepidines are found mentioned in Vetruvius, b. iv., c. vi. : " Dextra ac sinistra projecturae sic sunt faciendae 
 uti crepidines excurrant et in ungue ipsa cymatia conjungantur." John de Laet, who has corrected here the 
 learned Baldus (in his Lexicon Vitruv.), considers a crepido to mean any projection or member either at the top 
 of a building or elsewhere — a kind of prominent moulding. The word excurrant describes the continuous 
 moulding which returns at the tmgids, or corner of the wall. Here the crepido of fine plaster seems to have 
 run along the upper part of the wall throughout the apse. Hence the conjungit aut dividit, for it gave at once 
 continuity and distinction by the angle it formed with the wall. 
 
 " Note the contrast between the camera, or vaulted semi-dome of the apse, and the lacunatutn cuhnen, or 
 flat coffered ceiling, of the body of the building. 
 
 ' Porticus, I think, must be here taken rather in its medieval sense as aisle or cloister, than in its ancient 
 sense a.s porch, though St. Isidore of Seville defines it in the latter meaning as late as the seventh century 
 (Origin., b. xv., c. vii.). Paulinus, in his ninth Natalis (the passage itself is given below), speaks of the cubicula, 
 or cells in the nave of his church, as impositas longis porticibus, and almost everywhere his meaning seems 
 to be aisles separated by ranges of columns. 
 
 8 Me?noria is used especially of the place, commonly beneath an altar, in which relics are deposited. 
 Cf. infra memoriam ejus aspiciens.''^ Also Augustine, " De Civ. Dei," xxii. 8. 
 
8o 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Hoc idem ostiolum aliis versibus ab interiore sua fronte signatur : — 
 
 " Ouisquis ab aede Dei perfectis ordine votis 
 Egrederis, remea corpore, corde mane." 
 
 Prospectus vero basilicae,'^ non ut usitatior mos est, ad Orientem spectat, sed ad Domini 
 mei Beati Felicis basilicam pertinet, memoriam ejus aspiciens : ' tamen cum duabus dextra 
 laevAque conchulisj intra spatiosum sui ambitum apsis sinuata laxetur, una earum immolanti 
 hostias jubilationis antistiti patet, altera post sacerdotem capaci sinu receptat orantes,'' 
 Laetissimo vero conspectu tota simul haec basilica in basilica memorati confessoris aperitur 
 trinis arcubus paribus perlucente transennfi' per quam vicissim sibi tecta ac spatia basilicae 
 utriusque junguntur. Nam quia novam a veteri paries (apside cujusdam monumenti inter- 
 posita)™ obstructus excluderet, totidem januis patefactis a latere confessoris quot a fronte 
 ingressus sui foribus, nova reserabatur, et quasi diatritam speciem ° ab utraque in utramque 
 spectantibus praebet, sicut datis inter utrasque januas titulis indicatur. Itaque in ipsis basilicae 
 novae ingressibus hi versiculi sunt : — 
 
 " Alma domus triplici patet ingredientibus arcu, 
 Testaturque piam janua trina fidem." 
 
 Item dextra laevaque crucibus minio superpictis haec epigrammata sunt : — 
 
 "Ardua floriferae crux cingitur orbe coronae 
 Et Domini fuso tincta cruore I'ubet. 
 Quaeque super signum resident caeleste columbae 
 
 Simplicibus produnt regna patera Dei." . 
 
 Item de eodem : — 
 
 " Hac cruce nos mundo et nobis interfice mundum 
 Interitu culpae vivificans animam. 
 Nos quoque perficies placitas tibi Christe columbas 
 Si vigeat puris pars tua pectoribus." 
 
 ^ Prospectus basilicae would appear to refer to the position of the principal entrances, the facade of the 
 building. 
 
 ' This indicates the position — lateral or transverse — which the new basilica occupied in relation to the 
 original building. 
 
 j Coticha is equivalent to an apse, ConcJiula a small apse or circular recess within an apse. (See Rhosweyd 
 on this place.) 
 
 ^ It would seem from this description as though the new building ended in a double apse, for two apses 
 within a larger one would hardly be sufficiently spacious to satisfy this description, and there is no allusion to 
 a third apse, as in the former case. Yet the description of these recesses as conchulae within a single apse 
 seems to point in the other direction. Altogether this is one of the obscurest places in Paulinus' description. 
 
 ' Transenna Rhosweyd defines as cancellattim aliqtwd opus. It represents here a kind of open cloister, lighted 
 apparently from the roof and connecting the two buildings in the same manner in which a cathedral cloister 
 might connect the actual church with some dependent building. Here it must have been extremely short, 
 joining the two basilicae so closely that through it there was a vista from both the edifices. It was also, unlike 
 the transemia of the basilica of Trieste, triple. 
 
 " This tomb must have been one of those ctibicula in the sides of the nave (or, possibly, of a transept), de- 
 scribed above. It would thus tend to fix the point at which the second church was connected with the former one. 
 
 ° I.e., at the side of the altar of St. Felix, which would concur with the previous view. 
 
 ° Diatritam speciem is a very unusual term, almost a &ira.^ Xeybnevov. The word diatrita is used in its Greek 
 form in a medical sense, but here it must be translated in subordination to the word species., which is used in 
 the sense in which Vitruvius so often employs it, meaning an aspect or scope of vision. Thus he says of the 
 sun, " si tantis intervallis nostra species potest id animadvertere " (b. ix., c. iv.). The diatrita species might be 
 perhaps translated here, " a perfect vista through the three arcades." 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 8i 
 
 Intra ipsarn vero transennam (qua breve illud, quod propinquas sibi basilicas potius disclu- 
 debat, intervallum continuatur) e regione basilicae novae super medianum arcum hi versus 
 sunt : — 
 
 " Ut medium valli pax nostra resolvit Jesus 
 Et cruce dissidium perimens duo fecit in unum : 
 Sic nova, destructo veteris discrimine tecti, 
 Culmina conspicimus portarum foedere jungi." 
 »***•»• 
 
 Haec vero binis notata versiculis epigrammata super arcus alios dextra laevaque sunt : In 
 uno hoc : — 
 
 " Attonitis nova lux oculis aperitur et uno 
 Limine consistens geminas simul aspicit aulas." 
 
 In altero hoc : — 
 
 " Ter geminis geminae patuerunt arcubus aulae 
 Miranturque suos per mutua lumina cultus." 
 
 Item in iisdem arcubus a fronte quae ad basilicam domini Felicis patet, mediana hi sunt : — 
 
 " Quos devota fides densis celebrare beatum 
 
 Felicem populis diverso suadet ab ore, 
 
 Per triplices aditus laxos infundite coetus. 
 
 Atria quamlibet innumeris spatiosa patebunt, 
 
 Quae sociata sibi per apertos comminus arcus 
 
 Paulus in aeternos antistes dedicat usus." 
 
 • ••***• 
 
 In secretariis " ver6 duobus quae supra dixi circa apsidem esse, hi versus indicant officia 
 singulorum. A dextra apsidis : — 
 
 " Hie locus est veneranda penus qua conditur et qui 
 Promitur alma sacri pompa ministerii." 
 
 A sinistra ejusdem : — 
 
 " Si quern sancta tenet meditanda in lege voluntas, 
 Hic poterit residens sacris intendere libris.'"* 
 
 TRANSLATION. 
 
 That BasiHca already well known as dedicated to our common patron Dominaedius (St. 
 Felix) in the name of the Lord Christ, which forms an addition to his four basilicas, is 
 venerable not only from its dedication to St. Felix, but also for the relics of apostles and 
 
 P The secretariwn may be a secret place of any kind, from a council-chamber to a chest or closet. Here it 
 must have more of the latter sense, as it relates to the keeping of the sacred vestments and furniture of public 
 worship. It is in fact the sacristy. The sacristan is not infrequently spoken of as secretariits. 
 
 1 The arrangement is the same in the plan of the monastic church of St. Gall (of the ninth century). To 
 the south of the apse is indicated a building of two stories, " subtiis sacratorium — supra vestiian ecdesiae reposition 
 To the north is a building which, in its plan and dimensions, corresponds exactly with the sacristy, and which 
 is described upon the plan as " infra sedes scribentiutn — supra bibliotheca." 
 
82 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 martyrs deposited under the threefold altars within its apse. This apse has its floor and walls 
 of marble, and is adorned with a vault decorated in mosaic work, the design of which is 
 described in these verses : — 
 
 " The Trinity in fullest mystery shines ; 
 Christ is the Lamb, the Father's voice resounds 
 From heaven, and through the dove the Spirit breathes. 
 The cross is seen with dazzhng circlet girt : 
 The Apostles form its crown, a nimbus bright, 
 Like choir of doves, around the cross displayed. 
 The sacred Persons meet as one in Christ. 
 The Trinity, in symbols clear, is there. 
 The Father's voice, the Spirit's form reveal 
 A present God ; the Cross and Lamb confess 
 The holy Victim ; palm and purple prove 
 The kingdom and the glory — Christ, the rock 
 Of all the church, the base of rock sustains, 
 From which, as living streams, four fountains flow — 
 The four Evangelists whose words are gone 
 Through every land." 
 
 Upon a frieze below, where a moulded cornice of fine plaster is interposed, at once uniting 
 and distinguishing the wall of the apse and its vault, the following motto indicates the holy- 
 relics deposited beneath the altar : — 
 
 " Here piety, here genial faith repose, 
 Here Christ's true glory, here the Cross is joined 
 With its own martyrs ; for a relic here 
 Of the blest cross, becomes the pledge of life : 
 Its secret power this slenderest fragment proves. 
 By holy Melana to Nola given 
 The precious gift from Salem's city came. 
 The hallowed shrines a twofold glory veil, 
 And join the saintly relics with the cross. 
 Well with its precious wood may we combine 
 The bones of those who for the cross were slain, 
 Which meetly find in that loved cross their rest ! " 
 
 The whole area of the basilica beyond the apse has a lofty and coffered ceiling, and spreads 
 out in double aisles on either side, along which a double range of columns is carried on through 
 each arcade. Opening into each of the aisles recessed chambers, four in number, are inserted 
 in the long side-walls of the basilica, places adapted both for the retirement of those engaged 
 in prayer or meditation, and also devoted to the memory of the religious and of their friends'" who 
 here rest in eternal peace. Each of these chapels is illustrated by two verses placed over its 
 entrance, which I was unwilling to insert in this letter. Those, however, which the approaches 
 to the basilica itself exhibit, I have written down, as they might, if you wish to adopt them, 
 be suitable to the entrances of your own basilica. They are as follows : — 
 
 " Peace be to thee, with peaceful heart and pure 
 Who comest within the secret place of Christ." 
 
 ' The Familiares of a monastic house were lay persons, living in the world, who were associated with the 
 community in good works, and who shared in the prayers of the monastic family. In some orders such persons 
 were termed ablates. Cf. Ducange sub voce. The argument of one of the Epistles of Paulinus (VII. Ad. Severum) 
 runs thus : — Describit eleganter dissohitorion hofmnum mores et monachorum, et docet quales conveniant mon- 
 achis familiares. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 83 
 
 And these, which refer to the sign of the Lord painted over the entrance, in the form which 
 the verses indicate : — 
 
 " Lo ! on the courts of Christ the crowned cross, 
 Promise of high reward to conquering toil : 
 Take but the cross away, the crown is lost ! " 
 
 To the other basilica, to which a kind of private access is gained through the garden or 
 orchard, these verses open the secret entrance : — 
 
 *' Children of Christ, the heavenly path is traced 
 Through gardens fair — through these ye enter in 
 To those blest courts whose exit leads the just 
 Into the fairer realm of Paradise." 
 
 This same small doorway upon its inner front is illustrated by these lines : — 
 
 " Whoe'er, with vows performed, from God's own house 
 Comest forth, in body leave, in heart remain ! " 
 
 The fagade of this basilica does not (as is the more usual plan) front towards the east, 
 
 but adjoins the basilica of my lord St. Felix, and faces toward the confessionary crypt of the 
 
 saint. Its apse is complex, being relieved in its spacious circuit by two circular recesses, on the 
 
 right hand and on the left. Toward one of these the prelate, when engaged in offering the 
 
 sacrifice of praise, faces ; the other, which is behind the priest, affords space in its ample 
 
 circuit for the worshippers. The whole of this basilica lies entirely open, with a most pleasing 
 
 aspect, to the basilica of the aforesaid confessor, by means of three equal arches, an open cloister 
 
 intervening, by which the roofs and the area of the two basilicze are united together. For 
 
 whereas (at first) the obstruction of a wall shut off the new basilica from the old (the apse of 
 
 a certain monument intervening), the new building was (afterwards) disclosed by the opening 
 
 out of as many gates, on the side of the confessor's altar, as there were doors to give access 
 
 to it, in the front of the building. And thus a perfect vista through the three openings is given 
 
 to the eyes of those looking from the one to the other. Hence in the accesses to the new 
 
 basilica there are these lines : — 
 
 " With threefold arch to those who enter in 
 The sacred house expands its triple gate, 
 Bearing true witness to the tri-une faith." 
 
 On the right and left, under crosses painted over them in vermilion, are these mottoes : — 
 
 " The bitter cross is bound with floral crown, 
 And blushes with the blood of Christ the Lord. 
 The doves which on the heavenly symbol rest, 
 Proclaim God's kingdom to the meek in heart." 
 
 Also on the same : — 
 
 " O ! slay us to the world, the world to us ; 
 Through death of sin restore the soul to life. 
 Make us, O Christ ! as gentlest doves to be. 
 That we may all be pure in heart like Thee ! " 
 
 Within the open cloister, by which the short interval which separates the adjoining basilicas 
 is connected, on the side of the new basilica over its middle arch, are these verses : — 
 
 " Jesus, our peace, destroys the middle wall ; 
 And with His cross hath slain the enmity. 
 Making both one : thus buildings now we see 
 Joined, as in compact, by their opening gates 
 To older pile — the severing wall removed." 
 
84 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 These mottoes, marked in two lines, are over the other arches to the right and left. On the 
 one : — 
 
 "New light is to the wondering eye revealed : 
 Upon one threshold standing you behold 
 Two churches seen as one." 
 
 On the other : — 
 
 "Two sacred courts by two fair triplets joined ; 
 Witness their rites, through mutual thresholds seen." 
 
 Also on the same arches in the front which opens upon the basilica of Felix, these lines are 
 over the central one : — 
 
 " Ye whom devotion bids with varied tongue 
 
 To join the throng which Felix celebrates, 
 
 Through triple gate pour in your loosened ranks ; 
 
 For countless worshippers these spacious halls 
 
 Are raised, which now by open cloister joined 
 
 Paul for unceasing worship dedicates." 
 
 • •*•*«• 
 
 In the two secret receptacles which I have already described as around the apse, are these 
 verses indicating the object of each of them. On the right of the apse : — 
 
 " Here is laid up, and hence is brought the pomp 
 Of holy ministry and rites divine." 
 
 On the left of the apse : — 
 
 "If any heart the holy wish inspire 
 Upon the law of God to meditate, 
 Here may he rest and here his wish fulfil." 
 
 NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 The description of the older basilica, which is first spoken of in this letter, represents it as bearing an obvious 
 similitude to the greater Roman basilicas, as that of the Lateran, Sta. Maria Maggiore, St. Paul, and other well- 
 known churches. A long and very broad nave with double aisles on either side divided by rows of columns, 
 most probably of the Corinthian order (if not of some composite and more debased character), supporting a 
 system of arcades, having a fiat coffered ceiling lacitiiatum culmen, and terminated by an apse of sufficiently 
 large proportions to include three inner apses spacious enough to be used as oratories — presents to the mind a 
 picture which it is easy to realise, and might well suggest a theme to the pencil of the architect. Little here 
 even in the details of the building is left for the imagination to fill in, and the description of the symbolical 
 paintings which form the subject of Paulinus' not very classical, though not altogether inelegant, verses might 
 well enable any artist to reproduce these interesting memorials of early Christian art. It is from the connection 
 of the second building with the first, that the chief difficulty arises, and from the effort to realise the relation of 
 the two buildings and the manner in which they were so united as to become almost a single pile. 
 
 The writer of these lines has often attempted to sketch out a ground-plan of the two buildings, but without 
 satisfying himself fully on the subject. In order to make an approach to the solution of the difficulty we must 
 bear in mind : — 
 
 1. That the second church had an entirely different aspect from the first, and therefore could not be 
 
 parallel with it. 
 
 2. That it could not join it at the eastern end, as the point of junction is distinctly indicated to be at 
 
 opposite to the altar of St. Felix in the apse, and to have been contrived by the removal of a 
 monument, which must have been one of the ciibiacla described as inserted in the wall of the nave, 
 or possibly in the end of a transept. 
 
 3. That the union was by means of an open cloister, here called a transenna, and qualified by the term 
 
 perlucense. This would more probably be on the south than on the north side. 
 
PLATE XIX. 
 
 FIG. I. CONJIiCTURAL RESTORATION OF THE GROUND-PLAN OF THE BASILICA OF NOLA. 
 FIG. II. PLAN OF THE BASILICA OF TRIESTE. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 85 
 
 4. That the apse and altar of the new church must have been in the direction of that of the earlier one 
 in order to look towards the altar (or " memory ") of the confessor, and hence as this was most 
 probably on the " gospel side " of the high altar, the new church must have stood S.E. and N.W., 
 the cloister (or transctma) having a transverse direction. 
 
 [I have ventured, with much diffidence, and only at the bidding of the learned Canon (whose wish, under the 
 circumstances, is, for me, a command), to draw out a conjectural plan of the two basilicas, as I understand St. 
 Paulinus' description. It will be seen from this plan that I differ a little from the conclusions which the Canon 
 has arrived at in regard to the relative positions of the two churches. 
 
 1. I conceive the second basilica to have had a different prospectus from the larger one, only because its 
 principal approach — viz., from the great basilica, — was a lateral one. 
 
 2. Since it is, not the altar but, the facade of entrance {prospectus) which is stated to have fronted toward the 
 confessio of St. Felix, and since I judge these entrances to have been lateral ones (as in the case of the smaller 
 basilica, dedicated in honour of Sts. Justus and Servulus at Trieste), I am led to the conclusion that the two 
 buildings were parallel to each other; and that while in the larger church the high altar — as was usual in early 
 times — stood toward the western extremity of the building, and the celebrant, facing eastward, fronted toward the 
 nave, in the smaller one, on the contrary, the altar was placed in the more modern manner, in the eastern apse, 
 and the priest — here, as always, facing eastward — had the congregation {orantes) behind him {post sacerdotein). 
 This conjecture may afford a hint of an additional reason why the principal entrances of this smaller basilica 
 were arranged facing, fton, ut usitatior est mos ad orientevi, but laterally. By this reversed direction of the 
 high altars in the two churches each altar was, through the transenna, in view of the other. 
 
 In my sketch-plan, A is the high altar, with the confessionary crypt of St. Felix below it ; A, B, and C together 
 are the trichora altaria of the text. I have introduced a transept, for reasons which I have already mentioned 
 (p. 62) ; at the north end of the transept I have shown, at D, an apsis citjusdam inomcmenti corresponding to 
 the one which was removed in order to open a communication by means of the triple transenna, E, with the 
 smaller basilica upon the opposite side of the church. F and G are the two secretaria described as placed circa 
 apsidem, the one being the sacristy, the other the library. The nave has double aisles, and beyond these is, on 
 either side, the range ol cicbicula or side-chapels. H, I, and J are the three great doorways of the eastern end 
 of the basilica. These appear to have opened upon a cloistered atrium, spoken of in the succeeding extract 
 from the same author's, Natalis IX., as vestibulum, beyond which was an outer portico or narthex. The whole 
 area, or rc/nevos, in which were situated these two conjoined basilicas — together with a third church, referred to in 
 the passage from the Natalis X., which is given below — was enclosed by a vast colonnade, circumjectis porticibus, 
 the nature of which is not very clear. It is evident, however, that we have here an exact parallel to the great 
 basilica at Tyre, to which I have fully referred above (p. 16). We see there, as here, the "outer enclosure" 
 with its wall ; " secondly, the large and lofty entrance vestibule, extended toward the rays of the rising sun ; " 
 and thirdly, the " quadrangular atrium, with pillars rising on every side," which opened upon the eastern termi- 
 nation of the nave. The outer enclosure my plan does not attempt to show, as its description is, as I have said, 
 obscure. 
 
 The transenna, E, opens into the smaller basilica K, affording the Icetissimiis conspectus, spoken of in the text, 
 from the one church into the other. At L, is the ostiolum M, by which, into the smaller basilica, de hortulo vel 
 pomcerio quasi privatus aperitur ingressus. — G. G. S.] 
 
 The following passages from other writings of St. Paulinus of Nola refer to the same basi- 
 lica of St. Felix, and to its architectural features and arrangement : — 
 
 From the "NATALIS NONUS"* OF ST. PAULINUS OF NOLA. 
 
 Ergo veni pater et socio mihi jungere passu, 
 Dum te circumagens operum per singula duco. 
 Ecce vides istam quajanua prima receptat 
 Narthex. Porticus obscuro fuerat priiis obruta tecto. 
 
 Nunc eadem nova pigmentis et culmine crevit. 
 
 * De Adventu Nicetae Episcopi e Dacia, qui ad natalem Dni. Felicis occurrerat. 
 
86 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Cloistered Atrium. 
 
 Confessionary Ciypt. 
 
 Nave. 
 
 Confessionary Crypt. 
 
 Nave. 
 
 Side-Chapels. 
 
 Transenna. 
 
 Ast ubi conseptum quadrato tegmine circa 
 Vestibulum medio reseratur in aethera campo, 
 Hortulus ant6 fuit male casto cespite, rarum 
 Area vilis olus nullos praebebat ad usus. 
 Intercci nobis amor incidit, hoc opus isti 
 Aedificare loco : namque hunc deposcere cultum 
 Ipsa videbatur, venerandam ut Martyris aulam 
 Eminus adversa foribus de fronte reclusis, 
 Laetior illustraret honos ; et aperta per arcus 
 Lucida frons bifores perfunderet intima largo 
 Lumine, conspicui ad faciem conversa sepulcri 
 Quo tegitur positus sopitus corpore Martyr. 
 Qui sua fulgentis solii pro limine Felix 
 Atria bis gemino patefactis lumine valvis 
 Spectat ovans, gaudetque piis sua moenia vinci 
 Coetibus, atque amplas populis rumpentibus aulas 
 Laxari densas numerosaper ostia turbas. 
 Ipsaque, quk tumulus sacrati Martyris extat, 
 Aula novos habitus, senio purgata, resumpsit. 
 Trina manus variis operata decoribus illam 
 Excoluit : bijugi laqueari et marmore fabri 
 Picta imaginibus divina ferentibus ora. 
 Ecce vides quantus splendor, velut aede renata, 
 Rideat insculptum camera crispante lacunar. 
 In ligno mentitur ebur, tectoque supern^ 
 Pendentes lychni spiris retinentur ahenis, 
 Et medio in vacuo laxis vaga lumina nutant 
 Funibus : undantes flammas levis aura fatigat. 
 Quaeque prius pills stetit, haec modo fulta columnis 
 Vilia mutato sprevit casmenta metallo. 
 Sed rursum redeamus in atria, conspice rursum 
 Impositas longis duplicato tegmine cellas 
 Porticibus, metanda bonis habitacula dign^ 
 Quos hue ad sanctijustum Felicis honorem 
 Duxerit orandi studium, non cura bibendi. 
 Nam quasi contignata sacris coenacula tectis 
 Spectant de superis altaria tota fenestris, 
 Sub quibus intus habent Sanctorum corpora sedem. 
 Namque et Apostolici cineres sub coelite mensa 
 Depositi, placidum Christo spirantis odorem 
 Pulveris inter sancta sacri libamina reddunt. 
 
 Aspice nunc aliud latus ; ut sit porticus una 
 
 Et paries mediis spatis bipatente columnis, 
 Culmine discretas aditu sibi copulat aulas. 
 
 From the "NATALIS DECIMUS." 
 
 Istic porticibus late circumdata longis 
 Atrium, Vestibula impluvio tectis reserantur aperto, 
 
 Et simul astra oculis, ingressibus atria pandunt. 
 lUic adjunctae sociantur moenibus aulae 
 Diffusoque sinu simul et coeunte patentes 
 Aemula consertis jungunt fastigia tignis, 
 Et paribus variae et speciosae cultibus extant 
 Marmore, pictura, laquearibus atque columnis. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Inter quae et modicis variatur gratia cellis, 
 
 Quas in porticibus (quh longius una coactum 
 
 Porticus in spatium tractu protenditur uno) 
 
 Appositas lateri tria cominus ora recludunt, 
 
 Trinaque cancellis currentibus ostia pandunt. 
 
 »♦«•«» 
 
 Temenos. Basilicis haec juncta tribus, patet area cunctis 
 
 Diversosque aditus ex uno pandit ad omnes, 
 Atque itidem gremio diversos excipit uno 
 A tribus egresses, medio spatiosa pavito. 
 Quod tamen ordinibus structis per quinque nitentum 
 Agmina concharum, series densata coacto 
 Marmore, mira oculis aperit spatiantibus arte. 
 Sed circumjectis in porticibus spatiari 
 Copia larga subest, interpositisque columnas 
 Cancellis fessos incumbere. 
 
88 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 M. VITRUVIUS POLLIO : 
 
 HIS REMARKS UPON THE SECULAR ROMAN BASILICA. 
 
 Marci Vitruvii Pollionis de architectura lihri decent. Lib. v., cap. I, De foro hasilicisque. 
 
 Basilicarum loca adiuncta Foris quam calidissimis partibus oportet constitui, ut per hiemem 
 sine molestia tempestatum se conferre in eas negotiatores possint ; earumque latitudines ne 
 minus quam ex tertia, ne plus quam ex dimidia longitudinis [parte] constituantur, nisi loci 
 natura impedierit, et aliter coegerit symmetriam commutari. Sin autem locus erit amplior in 
 longitudine, chalcidica in extremis partibus constituantur, uti sunt in Julia Aquiliana. 
 
 Columnae basilicarum tarn altae, quam porticus latae fuerint, faciendae videntur : porticus 
 quam medium spatium est ex tertia finiatur. Columnae superiores minores quam inferiores, 
 uti supra scriptum est, constituantur. Pluteum, quod fuerit inter superiores columnas, item 
 quarta parte minus quam superiores columnae fuerint oportere fieri videtur ; uti supra 
 basilicae contignationem ambulantes ab negotiatoribus ne conspiciantur. Epistylia, zophori 
 coronae, ex symmetriis columnarum, uti in tertio libro diximus, explicentur. 
 
 Non minus summam dignitatem et venustatem possunt habere comparationes basilicarum, 
 quo genere coloniae Juliae Fanestri collocavi, curavique faciendam ; cujus proportiones et 
 symmetriae sic sunt constitutae. 
 
 Mediana testudo inter columnas est, longa pedes CXX, lata pedes LX. Porticus ejus, circa 
 testudinem, inter parietes et columnas lata pedes viginti. Columnae, altitudinibus perpetuis 
 cum capitulis, pedum quinquaquinta, crassitudinibus quinum, habentes post se parastaticas, 
 altas pedes viginti, latas pedes duos semis, crassas pedem unum semis ; quae sustinent trabes, 
 in quibus invehuntur porticuum contignationes : supraque eas aliae parastaticae, pedum decem 
 et octo, latae binum, crassae pedem, quae excipiunt item trabes, sustinentes cantherium et 
 porticus, quae sunt submissa infra testudinem, tecta. Reliqua spatia inter parastaticarum et 
 columnarum trabes, per intercolumnia, luminibus sunt relicta. 
 
 Columnae sunt in latitudine testudinis, cum angularibus dextra ac sinistra, quaternae, in 
 longitudine (quae est Foro proxima) cum iisdem angularibus, octo ; ex altera parte, cum 
 angularibus, sex, ideo quod mediae duae in ea parte non sunt positae, ne impediant aspectus 
 pronai aedis Augusti, quae est in medio latere parietis basilicae collocata, spectans medium 
 Forum et aedem Jovis. 
 
 Item tribunal est in ea aede, hemicycli schematis minore curvatura formatum : ejus autem 
 hemicycli, in fronte, est intervallum pedum quadraginta sex, introrsus, curvatura pedum 
 quindecim, uti, qui apud magistratus starent, negotiantes in basilica non impedirent. 
 
 Supra columnas, ex tribus tignis bipedalibus compactis, trabes sunt circa collocatae, 
 eaeque ab tertiis columnis, quae sunt in interior! parte, revertuntur ad antas, quae a pronao 
 procurrunt, dextraque ac sinistra hemicyclum tangunt. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 89 
 
 Supra trabes, contra capitula, ex fulmentis dispositae pilae sunt collocatae, altae pedibus 
 tribus, latae quoquo versus quatcrnis. Supra eas, ex duobus tignis bipedalibus, trabes 
 cuergancae circa sunt collocatae, quibus insuper transtra, cum capreolis columnarum, contra 
 corpora et antas et parietes pronai coUocata, sustinent, unum culmen perpetuum basilicae, 
 alterum a medio supra pronaum aedis. Ita fastigiorum duplex tecti nata dispositio, extrin- 
 secus, et interioris altae testudinis, praestat speciem venustam. 
 
 Item sublata epistyliorum ornamenta, et pluteorum columnarumque superiorum distributio, 
 operosam detrahit molestiam, sumptusque imminuit ex magna parte summam. Ipsae vero 
 columnae, in altitudine perpetua sub trabes testudinis perductae, et magnificentiam impensse, 
 et auctoritatem open, adiungere videntur. 
 
 The passage may be thus translated : — 
 
 The" situation of basilicas should be, adjoined to the Fora upon their warmest side, in order 
 that, in the winter-time, men of business may be able to assemble together in them, without 
 being incommoded by the weather. The breadth of such buildings should not be made less 
 than the third, nor more than the half, of their length, unless the nature of the site should in- 
 terfere, and impose a different proportion. If, however, the site is unusually long, chalcidica}' 
 must be formed at each extremity of the building, as is the case in the basilica Julia at 
 Aquileia. 
 
 It seems right to make the height of the columns of a basilica equal to the width of its 
 porticos (or aisles'^) and this should be one-third of the breadth of the space in the middle. 
 The columns of the upper range must be smaller than those of the lower, as is mentioned 
 above. 
 
 The balustrade-wall (pluteum) between the columns of the upper order should also be 
 made, as it seems, only one-fourth less than the height of these columns, in order that those 
 who are walking in the upper storey (of the porticos, or aisles) may not be in view of the 
 negotiants below. 
 
 The episfylia (architraves), zophori (friezes), and coronae (cornices), should be proportioned 
 to the columns, in the manner explained in my third book. 
 
 Nor will basilicas planned like that which I have myself designed, and carried out, in the 
 colonia Julia at Fanum, have less dignity and beauty,'' the proportions and symmetry of 
 which are as follows : — 
 
 There is a roof {testudo) over the central area within the columns, one hundred and twenty 
 feet long, and sixty feet broad. Around this central roofed space is an aisle (or cloister, 
 porticus) twenty feet in the clear, between the wall and the columns. The total height of the 
 columns, with their capitals, is fifty feet, and their diameter five feet. Behind these are piers 
 (parastaticae) which support the beams upon which the upper floor of the aisles is carried : 
 these are twenty feet high, two-and-a-half feet wide, and eighteen inches deep. Above these (in 
 the upper storey of the aisle) there are other piers, eighteen feet in height, two feet in width, 
 and one in depth, which similarly support beams upon which rest the rafters of the aisle-roofs, 
 
 a In this translation I have followed generally that of " The architecture of M. Vitruvius Pollio, translated 
 from the original latin by W. Newton, 1791." 
 
 ^ These were, as it seems, apartments separated from the basilica, by some kind of partition. 
 We must remember that our author is here speaking of a basilica, whose central area is hypsthral. 
 
 ^ Vitruvius now proceeds to describe a basilica, of his own design, in which the central space was roofed in. 
 He seems to treat of it as somewhat of a novelty, and very possibly it was the first example of its kind. 
 
 N 
 
90 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 which are at a lower level than that of the great roof {tesiudo). The spaces, in each inter- 
 columniation, between the beams which rest upon the piers, and those which are carried by 
 the great columns^ are left open in order to admit light. 
 
 Across the ends of the central nave, there are (including the angle-columns, right and left) 
 four columns ; in its length there are, upon the side nearest to the Forum, eight (including the 
 same angle-columns). Upon the opposite side of the nave there are (inclusive of the same 
 angle-columns) but six, since the two central pillars of this range are omitted, in order not to 
 obstruct the view of the pro-naos of the temple of Augustus, which is situated in the centre of 
 the side-wall of the basilica, facing toward the midst of the Forum, and the temple of Jupiler. 
 
 The tribunal, moreover, is placed in this temple (of Augustus*"). It is formed upon a circular 
 sweep somewhat less than a semi-circle. The width of its curve in front is forty-five feet, and 
 its depth fifteen feet. It is thus placed in order that those who may have to appear before the 
 magistrates may not obstruct the negotiants in the basilica.^ 
 
 Upon the great columns are placed girders running round the building, formed of three 
 beams, each two feet square, and these, from the third pillars (from the angle, right and left), 
 on the side away from the Forum, are returned to the aniae, which project from the pro-naos 
 (of the temple of Augustus) and which, on each side, touch the curved tribunal. 
 
 Upon the beams, over each of the capitals, are placed blocks to serve as corbels, each of 
 them three feet in height, and about four feet broad. Over these, moulded girders formed of two 
 beams, each two feet square, are carried all round, upon which rest the principal rafters and 
 braces of the roof, ranging with the columns. These form together one continuous roof over 
 the basilica itself, and also another, intersecting with it in the centre of its length, which 
 extends over the pro-naos of the temple (of Augustus), and rests partly upon the antae and 
 partly upon the walls of the pro-naos. The intersection (resulting from this disposition) of 
 the ridges externally, and of the lofty ceiling internally, has a very beautiful effect. 
 
 Moreover, the omission of the enrichments of the architraves, and the arrangement both of 
 the balustrade-wall, and of the upper range of pillars, diminishes the labour of the work, and 
 reduces, very considerably, its cost. At the same time, the columns, being carried in one 
 unbroken height up to the beams which support the ceiling, add to the apparent magnificence 
 of the expense, and to the dignity of the work. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 The basilica of Pompeia, alluded to in the text, illustrates to some extent the description given (in the first 
 section of the above) of the unroofed type of these exchanges. The site being very long " imposed," as Vitru- 
 vius has it, " a different proportion " to that which he recommends as the normal one. The unroofed area is 
 140 feet by 40, its breadth being thus two-sevenths of its length, while in addition to this a chalcidicum is 
 
 = The columns being fifty feet in height, and the piers in rear of them being, respectively, twenty and eighteen 
 feet high, the spaces thus left, after allowing for the thickness (i) of the upper floor of the aisles, and (2) of the 
 aisle-roof, would be about ten feet in height. These formed, in fact, a clere-story. 
 
 'Clearly in its pro-naos. 
 
 ^ Thus the tribunal is placed, not at one end of the building, as in the christian basilicas, but in the centre of 
 one side. Moreover, it is not, in any sense, an apse, but a low erection, in the nature of a podium, which in no 
 way obstructed the view of the temple behind it. Vitruvius (iv. 8, vulgo 7) terms the podium under the 
 columns of a circular temple, tribunal, which serves to show what was his notion of such an erection as is here 
 described. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 91 
 
 added, as suggested by our author, which, in this instance, served as the tribunal of the magistrate. This chal- 
 cidicujii is rectangular, its floor is raised some six feet above that of the aisle of the basilica (which is returned 
 across the front of the tribunal), and upon the deep podium., thus formed, stands a range of six columns much 
 smaller, of course, than those of the main building. It would be difficult to imagine a distribution more com- 
 pletely at variance with the conception of the apsidal sanctuaries of the christian basilic^e. There was no direct 
 ascent from the body of the building into the tribunal, to which two flights of stairs contrived in the mass of 
 the side walls of the chakidiaan alone gave access. The rule of Vitruvius, that the width of the porticoes 
 should be one-third of the breadth of the central space, is followed in this instance. 
 
 A plan of this building will be found in Lenoir ( " Archit. Monast.," i., p. 105). It is a curious fact that this 
 basilica was excavated out and explored immediately after the destruction of the city, in order to recover the 
 legal archives, deposited in the tribunal, and buried among its ruins. 
 
92 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 In the preceding chapter I have brought down the 
 history of our national church architecture to the 
 period of the norman conquest. 
 
 It will be remembered that while confining my 
 subject to the history of our own ecclesiastical build- 
 ings, I showed that it is impossible to view this as 
 isolated from the general history of christian art, 
 more especially from the progress of the architec- 
 ture of the Western Church. 
 
 The church architecture of the Anglo-Saxons is 
 the first of which we have in this country any 
 distinct remains, and I endeavoured to make it 
 clear that this architecture derives from two inde- 
 pendent sources. On the one side is christian 
 Rome ; on the other, the traditions of the primitive 
 church of Britain. 
 
 Both of these two elements I have endeavoured, 
 with some care, to exhibit. The one is represented 
 by the apsidal basilica, the other by the square- 
 ended churches of Ireland. 
 
 I endeavoured to show that the basilican type was 
 not a mere adaptation of a pagan model, but was 
 the outcome of a primitive tradition. We have 
 seen too that this was not the only model which 
 Constantine found existing : that there was also, side 
 by side with this, the peculiarly eastern, or byzantine 
 type, from which is derived the churches of the 
 orthodox communion; and further that there was a 
 simple and characteristic type, peculiar to british 
 Christianity. 
 
 With the second of these our inquiry has nothing 
 to do, for it has at no period influenced the course 
 of english church architecture : but with the other 
 two, the latin and the british models, we are inti- 
 mately concerned, for from the meeting and inter- 
 action of these two have been formed the charac- 
 teristics of our own architecture. 
 
 Let it be clearly understood that it is to neither 
 of these alone, but to the two — as they became, in 
 the course of ages, combined — that our own medieval 
 ecclesiology owes its origin ; as did also those rites 
 for the celebration of which our ancient churches 
 were designed. 
 
 The old english ritual, of which that of the church 
 of Salisbury is the typical example, is curiously par- 
 allel in its history to that of our church architecture. 
 
 The anglo-saxon use was, in essence, the roman 
 or petrine rite, as brought over by St. Augus- 
 tine, modified (by himself and his successors, in 
 accordance with the wise instructions of pope 
 Gregory the Great) by the introduction of certain 
 
 features peculiar to the ancient british liturgy, which 
 features are allied to the old gallican or ephesine 
 ritual. The history of the norman, or Rouen use, 
 is not very different. 
 
 Some time before the conversion of the norman 
 conquerors of Neustria, the whole of France " had 
 exchanged," as Dr. Rock puts it,* " her national 
 liturgy for that of the apostolic see." But this 
 adoption of the petrine liturgy did not greatly affect 
 the ceremonial itself, in which numberless peculiari- 
 ties of the old gallican use were retained, and are 
 still retained to this day. Thus, these north-men, 
 upon becoming christians, adopted, indeed, the 
 roman ritual, but with those modifications of it — 
 more especially in matters ceremonial — which were, 
 in the tenth century^ traditional in Gaul. 
 
 Upon the conquest of England by the Normans, 
 St. Osmund, a nephew of the Conqueror, was ap- 
 pointed (in succession to Herman, the ninth bishop 
 of Wilton, and the first bishop of Old Sarum) to 
 the see of Salisbury. He was a man of a truly 
 christian spirit, and he was above all things anxious 
 to promote the fusion of the two races, thus vio- 
 lently brought into contact. With this end he 
 drew up a ritual for the church of his adoption, in 
 which the peculiarities of ceremony, dear to each of 
 the two nations, should be incorporated. 
 
 This was not a difficult task, just because the 
 norman and the saxon rites had had, so nearly, 
 the same history. Both were, in their essence, 
 roman, and in both the petrine original had been 
 modified by traditional usages, which in each case 
 were, at bottom, oriental. 
 
 There was, in fact, no great or important variance 
 between the rites of the conquerors, and of ~ the 
 conquered. St. Osmund appears to have introduced 
 nothing of his own, but to have simply arranged 
 the church-offices in such sort that his clergy, com- 
 posed as they were, of Normans and of Saxons, 
 might have one uniform rule, in which the little 
 details, to which each were attached, should be 
 preserved. 
 
 We see here, as is so frequently the case also in 
 the history of our church architecture, that latin ele- 
 ment which is supreme in all modern history, in 
 combination with other influences, as ancient as 
 itself, and witnessing to the same faith, but of which 
 the origin is to be sought in the far-off" east.*" 
 
 "Church of our Fathers," iv. 119. 
 
 b The practical identity of the Salisbury and Rouen rites 
 is so great that any one who may, at this day, desire to see 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 93 
 
 Returning to the proper subject of our present 
 investigation we observe that it is through the roman 
 basilica, and the british church, that we trace back 
 the art of the middle ages to the early days of 
 primitive Christianity. 
 
 I have attempted in the last chapter to exhibit, 
 under this double aspect, the architecture of the 
 saxon period, and I come now to that great event 
 which influenced even more strongly the architec- 
 tural history of England than it did its political : I 
 mean the norman conquest. 
 
 The style introduced by the Normans is the 
 earliest form of ecclesiastical architecture of which 
 we possess numerous and complete examples in this 
 country of the first rank, in point of scale, and of 
 importance. 
 
 It is, as we have seen, a mistake to suppose, 
 as many do, that it is the first of which we have 
 any remains. We have in England, and in Ireland, a 
 few relics which carry us back to the period of the 
 british church : we have several churches of saxon 
 date tolerably complete, and many in which certain 
 portions— a doorway, or an arch, or it may be only 
 a font — belong to that age. I believe, further, the 
 number of remains of saxon work, existing in the 
 country, to be very much greater than is commonly 
 supposed. 
 
 Still, it is not until after the Conquest that the 
 history of english church architecture becomes 
 clear and easy to be followed. From this date 
 onwards we find buildings of large size, or very con- 
 siderable portions of such, remaining untouched 
 and still in use, — we are able to affix with certainty 
 the dates of the different remains, — to complete, with 
 a fair amount of accuracy, their designs where im- 
 perfect, — and to follow in every detail the steps of 
 the progress, by which the refined works of the later 
 middle ages were evolved from the rude, but 
 vigorous, elements of the norman romanesque. 
 
 The norman invasion was eminently favourable 
 
 in action the Saram ceremonial has but to cross the channel 
 and go to Rouen. The differences between the old Sarum 
 use, and that of the capital of Normandy at the present 
 moment, are so slight that they would be almost unnoticed by 
 any but a scientific student of ritual. The Sarum use differed, 
 in ceremonial, from the roman little more than does the exist- 
 ing Rouen use, and certainly less than does the liturgy still 
 employed in the arch-diocese of Milan. There are, of course, 
 numerous bodies of oriental christians in communion with 
 the latin patriarchate, whose rituals, unlike that of Salisbury, 
 are derived from a tradition wholly distinct from that of 
 Rome. The french uses, which have been, within the last 
 half-century, replaced by the roman ritual, were all of them 
 much more modern than the Book of Common Prayer. They 
 had been drawn up by different bishops, many of them during 
 the last century, for use in their own dioceses. The princi- 
 pal motives which determined their edition were, (i) a pedan- 
 tic wish to improve the latinity of the older missals ; and (2) 
 the notion of adopting in all cases the ipsissima verba of the 
 Holy Scriptures. (Cf. Dr. Neale's " Essays in Liturgiology.") 
 In these recensions the ancient features of the french cere- 
 monial, many of them really gallican ephesine), were 
 retained, and these have been, and still continue to be, pre- 
 served now that these modern innovations have been cor- 
 rected. So true is, as Dr. Rock well observes, the prophecy 
 of the Psalmist concerning the Church, ^' astitit regina a 
 dextris tuisin vestitudeaurato, circumdata varietate." 
 
 to ecclesiastical art. During their settlement in 
 Neustria, short though it had been, the Norsemen 
 had taken up, with wonderful readiness, the thread 
 of roman tradition, which Gaul had never lost, and 
 they had already infused into it a new life. 
 
 How far their style was distinct from the ro- 
 manesque of other parts of the north of France it 
 would be difficult, perhaps, to ascertain. 
 
 We have, however, the direct evidence of those 
 who knew both styles, that the art, introduced into 
 this country by the invader, was distinct from that 
 which had previously prevailed here. It is spoken 
 of as " a new mode of architectural composition — 
 novum genus compositionis," and the evidence of 
 our own observation confirms the truth of the 
 statement. But to a certain extent the style was 
 new, not only to England but in itself ; and the 
 Conquest was, possibly, only the means by which 
 this new style was brought in, somewhat sooner than 
 it would otherwise have been. 
 
 Nevertheless, the energy and vigour which dis 
 tinguishes the norman work in England, from that 
 of the saxon period, is very striking, and the differ- 
 ence between the two styles seems to me to be one, 
 not of degree, but of kind. 
 
 The saxon work exhibits, as a matter of fact, the 
 last dying out of an enfeebled tradition, which had 
 never been heartily grasped, or thoroughly under- 
 stood. On the other hand the norman work seems 
 to me the free, spontaneous, developement of a new 
 life within the veins of the old tradition. The one 
 is the withering away of the old, the other, the first 
 budding forth of the new. The saxon recalls, in its 
 sad falling off", the glories of the past, the norman 
 is pregnant with the suggestions of a great future. 
 
 To one who has realized that all art owes its 
 character, not to tradition alone, but to the senti- 
 ments, to the beliefs, to the very natures of the men 
 who created it, the difference in expression of the 
 two styles is most significant. 
 
 It is true that the influence of this change of ex- 
 pression may be traced, in the works of the eleventh 
 century, over the whole of western Europe; but it is 
 none the less true that the norman conquest was 
 the occasioning cause of its appearance among our- 
 selves, and that this great event constituted, in 
 England, the turning-point in the history of its 
 architecture. 
 
 This change, from the debased roman manner, to 
 the new and vigorous romanesque, forms the point 
 at which ancient art becomes transformed into mo- 
 dern ; and it is extremely important to a proper 
 understanding of the history to realize this distinctly. 
 
 The great line which separates ancient and modern 
 art is not to be drawn at the discovery of the pointed 
 arch. It is not the first invention of the gothic 
 style, which is the most significant fact in the tran- 
 sition, — it is the developement of the romanesque. 
 
 This great change is essentially one of spirit and 
 expression rather than of form : but once effected it 
 began to modify decisively the received types, and 
 it led finally to the adoption of entirely new and 
 original systems, both of design and of construction. 
 
94 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 We must, in my opinion, attribute this great 
 revolution in art to tlie native genius of the teu- 
 tonic races. 
 
 It is perfectly true that the northern tribes had 
 long been settled in western Europe before any 
 effect, beyond a uniform deterioration, is observable 
 in the progress of architecture. Indeed, it is not 
 until the tenth century that we observe the symp- 
 toms of a new life in the art. The civilization of 
 Rome had been adopted by those who broke up 
 its empire, as something extraneous and foreign, 
 and many centuries elapsed before it had become 
 assimilated. 
 
 But the new races at length succeeded in making 
 the old civilization so thoroughly their own, that they 
 were able to treat it with perfect freedom, and to mo- 
 dify it according to the bent of their own originality. 
 
 The result of the mastery at length obtained, over 
 the borrowed forms of the ancient world, was at once 
 striking, and characteristic of the northern mind. 
 
 For centuries the Romans, and the latinized 
 nations, had striven to reconcile in their architecture 
 two incongruous elements — the arcuated construc- 
 tion, which had been derived from the Etruscans — 
 and the trabeated system of architectural decoration, 
 adopted from the Greeks — the principle of the arch, 
 with the forms proper to the lintol. In spite of the 
 real nobleness of the works which they produced, 
 under these conflicting impulses — a grandeur due 
 rather to expression than to consistency — they had 
 never succeeded in creating a rational round-arched 
 style of building. The greek details which they 
 would not abandon, because they felt themselves 
 incapable of inventing better, hampered them at 
 every turn. 
 
 Yet their natural bent is shown in the fact, that 
 they succeeded best in those buildings in which 
 arched and vaulted construction plays the more im- 
 portant part in the design. With all their masterly 
 detail, the temples of the Romans are less impress- 
 ive than their amphitheatres, — in the former the lin- 
 tol determines the construction, in the latter the 
 arch, — while those works which are most character- 
 istic of their genius, are their aqueducts and their 
 bridges, works from which the suggestion of the 
 trabeated system is almost entirely absent. 
 
 In the remarkable group of buildings, both eccle- 
 siastical and civil, erected in central Syria between 
 the third and the sixth centuries, to which I have 
 already had occasion to refer, there is evidence of 
 a readiness to break away from the, essentially 
 retrograde, traditions derived from greek architec- 
 ture, which might have saved Christendom long ages, 
 sterile of architectural progress, but this bright hope 
 was destined to be crushed out; all too soon, by the 
 triumph of the Mohammedan reaction. 
 
 It was left, therefore, to the talent of the northern 
 nations to produce a genuine round-arched style, 
 in which the tradition of greek construction — always 
 unreasonable in an arcuated architecture — should 
 be finally and completely abandoned, and in which 
 the decoration should grow naturally out of the 
 necessities of the constructional system. 
 
 The change thus effected may be illustrated by a 
 comparison of the two modes of treatment in a few 
 important features of architectural construction. 
 
 In the ornamentation of the arch itself the 
 Rom.ans, having no greek precedents to follow, 
 adopted the plan of bending the mouldings of the 
 horizontal lintol to follow the sweep of the arch. 
 Unreasonable as this undoubtedly was, a very fine 
 expression is given by the contrast of the flat and 
 delicate treatment proper to an architrave, with the 
 massive construction of the arches to which it was 
 applied. It is certainly singular that a system of 
 moulding, expressly designed for a horizontal posi- 
 tion, should look so well applied thus to the sweep 
 of a curve : and when, in the sixteenth century, 
 that new system, which was destined to supersede 
 the romanesque method, had at last played itself out, 
 men turned back again to this crude device — this 
 naive application of greek detail to roman construc- 
 tion — and found in it, again, a strange attraction. 
 
 But this compromise did not satisfy the tenth- 
 century builders, and they set themselves to work 
 out a more scientific treatment. 
 
 An arch of any great strength is constructed 
 naturally of several concentric rims, as may be 
 noticed in any ordinary brick railway-bridge. To 
 the I'omanesque builders it occurred to recess 
 each rim order, as it is termed), instead of setting 
 them all upon the same face. The section of an 
 arch thus came to present a series of salient and re- 
 entering angles. This simple innovation was 
 pregnant with possibilities of future growth. The 
 treatment, thus adopted, forms in itself a sufiicient 
 arch decoration, but it is capable of any amount of 
 enrichment, by carving or by mouldings, and the 
 working out of the various modes, by which this 
 new principle may be elaborated, may be said to 
 constitute, in one point of view, the history of 
 medieval architecture. 
 
 Instead, therefore, of a mode of decorating the 
 arch, foreign to its construction, and sub-serving no 
 practical purpose, the romanesque builders intro- 
 duced a system, in which the construction itself 
 determines the decoration ; and by which an 
 economy of materials is effected, bcith in the arches, 
 and in the piers on which they rest. 
 
 For the change, thus introduced, necessarily 
 affected the pier, as well as the arch. 
 
 In roman architecture the pier is a mere square, 
 or oblong, mass of wall, which is relieved, if at all, 
 by the addition of an engaged column, or pilaster, 
 having no constructional raison d'etre, serving only 
 to support an architrave equally unmeaning. Yet 
 it was only by such a contrivance that the naked- 
 ness of the pier could, on this imperfect system, be 
 relieved. 
 
 The romanesque architects, by their invention 
 of the sub-ordination of arch-orders arrived at once 
 at a natural and reasonable mode of giving a decora- 
 tive form to the pier. The salient and re-entering 
 angles of the arch section are continued down the 
 pier, and the requisite relief of light and shade is at 
 once obtained. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 95 
 
 As the salient angles of the arch may be enriched 
 by mouldings, so the corresponding angles of the 
 pier may be converted into engaged shafts, each 
 with its own capital and base, each colonnette 
 having its own decorative function, the support — 
 as suggested to the eye — of one of the several 
 orders of the arch." From this innovation grew 
 naturally that beautiful feature of gothic architec- 
 ture, the clustered pillar. 
 
 By this system the engaged column of the classic 
 pier — which had no function but to carry an archi- 
 trave, which again had no function except to be 
 carried by the column — ceased to be needed. It was 
 therefore abandoned, and columns were affixed to 
 the faces of piers, only where they were required to 
 carry the groin-arches, or to support the timbers of 
 the roof. 
 
 A similarly logical process transformed the 
 pilaster into the buttress. 
 
 The classic pilaster had reference always to a 
 column. It was, in fact, as we should now term it, 
 a respond. This relation to the column is shown 
 in the mode of its construction, in which long 
 upright stones are employed, with only a few bon- 
 ders, so as to interfere as little as possible with its 
 vertical character.** 
 
 In default of other modes of decorating wall- 
 spaces, it had become customary to employ, for the 
 purpose, such pilasters, still preserving their original 
 relation to the column — which in such a position 
 was entirely unmeaning — and furnished with capi- 
 tals, to justify which it was necessary to introduce 
 an architrave, equally wanting in constructional sig- 
 nificance. 
 
 The pilaster was, by the romanesque builders, 
 freed altogether from this, its traditional relation to 
 the column, which had long become obsolete. They 
 treated it as simply a thickening out of the wall, in- 
 troduced at those points at which special strength is 
 required: they bonded it in coursed work, like the 
 rest of the wall, and terminated it, not by a capital 
 but by a weathered slope, or allowed it to run up as 
 a support to the overhanging eaves-course, which 
 carried the gutters. 
 
 This new and reasonable character once assumed, 
 the pilaster began to expand itself, offering resistance 
 to stronger and stronger thrusts, till it became at 
 length the gothic buttress, and all trace of its classic 
 parentage had finally disappeared. 
 
 A similar freedom is shown in the romanesque 
 treatment of architectural proportion. 
 
 The Romans, here agam, had been trammelled 
 by the greek traditions, and by the rules which they 
 had deduced for themselves from the greek models. 
 Every composition, large or small, was bound by 
 the same rules, so that a doorway or a window 
 was treated almost as if it were a small model of a 
 temple facade. 
 
 c See a very remarkable chapter "On Mechanical and 
 Decorative Construction," in Professor Willis's "Remarks 
 upon the Architecture of the Middle Ages," cap. ii. 
 
 d From this, as we have already seen, is derived the saxon 
 " long and short work." 
 
 The super-position of orders, one standing upon 
 the architrave of the other, for which the roman ar- 
 chitects have been blamed by purists, was really an 
 attempt after a more reasonable system of propor- 
 tioning buildings : but it was left to the romanesque 
 artists to emancipate the art of proportion, altogether, 
 from the rules of pedantry, and to leave it to the 
 free handling of genius and good sense. Small 
 buildings were no longer to be designed as models 
 of large ones, but each scale had its own appropriate 
 treatment. 
 
 So, too, with every feature of architecture. A 
 large arch no longer appears as simply a small one 
 magnified, as is the case in the classic work, it 
 is now formed with many orders instead of few. 
 The pier follows the same rule, increasing in com- 
 plexity as it increases in size, and so with every 
 other portion of the work. The large arch is con- 
 structed of many orders, the small one of few : the 
 large building is designed with nearly the same scale 
 of detail as the smaller one, but it consists of a greater 
 number of parts, and in the increased multiplicity 
 of these parts, the spectator realizes the magnitude 
 of the whole. 
 
 Such were the new principles of design at which 
 the architects of the tenth and eleventh centuries 
 had arrived. The style thus produced was the first 
 pure and rational arcuated architecture which Europe 
 had as yet seen. 
 
 It was the norman conquest which introduced 
 to England the early results of this great move- 
 ment. 
 
 One of the first and noblest examples remaining 
 to us of the new mode of design then introduced is 
 St. Alban's Abbey. 
 
 This church was originally founded, only ten 
 years after the martyrdom of St. Alban, who suf- 
 fered in the Diocletian persecution at Veru- 
 1am.® This was a place of some importance upon 
 the arrival of the Romans, and was, accordingly, 
 constituted a mjinicipium. It remained faithful to 
 the imperial government, and was taken and sacked 
 by Boadicea, in the year 6i. 
 
 In the third century the site of the present city 
 of St. Albans was a wooded hill (hence termed 
 by the Saxons, in later times, Holmhurst). This 
 hill served — as Calvary did at Jerusalem — for the 
 place of public executions. Thus, as the doggerel 
 runs — ■ 
 
 " When Verulam stood, 
 St. Albans was a wood; 
 Now St. Albans is a town, 
 And Verulam's thrown down." 
 
 The cause which has brought about this con- 
 spicuous result, is an event which must have seemed 
 of very small importance to most of those who saw 
 it — the execution of a mutinous native legionary, 
 whose crime consisted, mainly, in this, that he 
 had, while yet a pagan, protected and concealed a 
 
 e Verulam = Gwer, llan — the temple upon the river Ver, 
 now the Mure, a tributary of the Colne, which falls into the 
 Thames. 
 
96 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 christian deacon, who was flying from the per- 
 secution then raging/ 
 
 The story of the martyrdom, as told by Bede,'^ 
 is extremely interesting. 
 
 Alban, a pagan british soldier,'' had, from motives 
 of humanity, given shelter to Amphibalus. This 
 cleric having been for some days entertained by 
 him, it came to the ears of the roman governor 
 " that this holy confessor of Christ, whose time of 
 martyrdom had not yet come, was concealed in 
 Alban's house" in Verulam. Thereupon soldiers 
 were sent to make a strict search for him. When 
 they came, Alban, who had been so impressed by 
 the intense reality of his guest's devotion, that he 
 had "cast off the darkness of idolatry, and had 
 become a christian in all sincerity of heart," pre- 
 sented himself to the soldiers, instead of his guest 
 and master, in the long habit which the deacon 
 was accustomed to wear, and was led, bound, before 
 the magistrate. 
 
 The judge was, at the moment, standing at the 
 altar in the act of sacrificing. When he saw Alban, 
 he was incensed that he should thus, of his own 
 accord, put himself into danger, and commanding 
 him to be brought up to the altar, he said — " Since 
 you have chosen to conceal a rebellious and sacri- 
 legious person, rather than deliver him up, that his 
 
 ' The name of this deacon was Amphibalus. He escaped 
 for the time, but was subsequently captured in Wales. The 
 intention of the persecutors seems to have been that he, too, 
 should suffer at Verulam ; but he was, as a matter of fact, 
 executed at Redbourn, four miles to the south of the city, 
 where there is, to this day, a church dedicated in his honour. 
 His body lay in the abbey church at St. Albans, within a 
 shrine, the substructure of which has recently been discovered 
 and re-erected, upon its original site, in the vestibule of the 
 lady-chapel. His name has given occasion to some wild 
 and characteristic conjectures. Fuller suggests that it may 
 be a greek translation of a nickname in his own language, 
 derived from the long coat which, as we learn from Bede, he 
 — in common, no doubt, with all the clerics of his day — was 
 accustomed to wear. " Samuel," he observes, "was marked 
 by such a mantle. So Robert Curt-hose had his surname 
 from going in such a garment." But if the greek language 
 was knovm in Britain in the third century, we may assume 
 that it was known correctly, and the nickname thus derived 
 would be, not Amphibalus, but Amphibolus (iI^t0(j3oXos). 
 Some modern mythicists have built upon this theory of 
 Fuller's a curious superstructure. According to them, the 
 man whose bones were burnt by Henry VHI. was himself a 
 mere cloak — St. Amphibalus was but a christian idealisation 
 of St. Alban's overcoat. We have here a good illustration 
 of the very common process by which a blunder becomes a 
 myth (cf. a very clever reduction, by a french priest, of the 
 history of Napoleon the Great into a most complete solar 
 myth, given in Baring Gould's " Curious Myths of the Middle 
 Ages," p. 127). I believe myself that the name, Amphibalus, 
 has as much to do with the Greek A^^i/SdWw as the name 
 Albanus has to do with the Latin albus. Both are, clearly, 
 brilish names expressed in roman characters. Alban is evi- 
 dently connected with albion, and possibly with alp (cf. alba 
 longa), certainly not with albus, and when the language, not 
 perhaps of our forefathers, but of our fore-bears, is better 
 known, we shall be able, no doubt, to see through the latinised 
 amphibalus its british original. 
 
 g "Ecclesiastical History," i. 7. 
 
 J> Bede states that the priest, Fortunatus, in his " Praise of 
 Virgins," in which he makes mention of the blessed martyrs 
 who had come to the Lord from all parts of the world, says — 
 
 " .In Britain's isle was holy Alban born." 
 
 contempt of the gods might meet with the penalty 
 due to such blasphemy, you shall, if you abandon 
 the worship of our religion, undergo all the punish- 
 ment that was due to him." 
 
 When questioned as to his name, the saint re- 
 plied, "I am called Alban by my parents, and I 
 worship and adore the true and living God, who has 
 created all things." Upon this he was ordered to 
 be scourged, the magistrate thinking that " he might 
 by stripes shake that constancy of heart, on which he 
 could not prevail by words." This failing, Alban was 
 condemned to death. 
 
 " Being led to execution, he came to the river 
 (Gwer, now the Mure) which, with a most rapid 
 course, ran between the wall " (of Verulam) " and 
 the hill" (now St. Albans city), "where he was 
 to be executed. He there saw a multitude of 
 persons of both sexes, and of all ages and con- 
 ditions, who were doubtless assembled by a 
 divine instinct, to attend upon the blessed martyr, 
 and who had so taken up the bridge, which here 
 crosses the river, that he could scarce pass over 
 that evening. Alban, urged by an ardent and 
 devout desire to arrive quickly at martyrdom, drew 
 near to the running stream, and upon his lifting up 
 his eyes to heaven, the channel was immediately 
 dried up, and he perceived that the water had de- 
 parted and had left a way for him to pass across. " 
 The executioner that was to have put him to death 
 observed this, as did the others who were upon 
 the bridge and about it, and, " moved by a divine 
 inspiration," he hurried to the place of execution, 
 met the saint as he was quietly walking up from 
 the little valley in which the river runs, and " cast- 
 ing down the sword which he had been carrying 
 ready drawn, fell at his feet, praying that he-might 
 rather suffer with the martyr, or if it might so be, . 
 instead of him. 
 
 " Thus he, from a persecutor, was become a 
 companion in the faith, and the other executioners, 
 too, hesitated to take up the sword, which was left 
 lying upon the ground. 
 
 " But the venerable confessor of Christ, accom- 
 panied by the crowd, ascended the hill, which was 
 situated about five hundred paces from the town 
 (of Verulam), adorned, or rather clothed, with all 
 kinds of flowers, having its sides neither perpendicu- 
 lar, nor even craggy, but sloping down into a most 
 beautiful plain, worthy, from its lovely appearance, 
 to be the scene of a martyr's sufferings.' Here the 
 head of our most courageous martyr was struck oft. 
 
 " At the same time was also beheaded the soldier, 
 who, through a divine admonition, had refused to 
 give the stroke to the holy confessor, of whom it 
 is apparent, that although he was not regenerated by 
 baptism, yet was he cleansed in the laver of his own 
 blood, and made meet to enter into the heavenly 
 kingdom." 
 
 Gildas, who wrote De Excidio BritannicB,'\n 564, 
 Bede, writing in 731, and the author of a MS. for- 
 merly in possession of the church of Rochester, to 
 
 ' This description of the site of the martyrdom is as true 
 in fact, as it is touching in its beauty. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 97 
 
 which the date 794 is assigned (in Leland's "Collect- 
 anea"), all agree that a church was erected in honour 
 of St. Alban, on the spot where he had suffered, 
 upon the establishment of the peace of the church, 
 under Constantine (himself half a Briton), within a 
 very few years of his martyrdom^ 
 
 Bede's words are as follows : — " A church was 
 there erected, of remarkable workmanship, and not 
 unworthy of the martyrdom of the saint which it 
 commemorates." Ecclesia est, mirandi oJ>ens atque 
 ejus inartyrio co?idigna, extnicta. (I. 7.) 
 
 In the year 429 a council was assembled in this 
 church of St. Alban, to combat the Pelagian heresy, 
 which, as Bede says,'' "had been introduced by 
 Agricola, a Pelagian bishop, and had sadly cor- 
 rupted the faith of the Britons." At this council 
 were present, " by command of holy church," Ger- 
 manus, bishop of Auxerre, and Lupus, bishop of 
 Troyes.' Upon the suppression of the heresy, the 
 clergy "repaired to the tomb of the martyr, St. 
 Alban, to return thanks to God through him."'" 
 Upon this occasion, Germanus commanded the 
 tomb to be opened, and having abstracted a little 
 of the dust therein, imbued with the martyr's blood, 
 he placed within the coffin certain relics of the holy 
 apostles, which there remained until the honoured 
 bones of these illustrious men were destroyed, with 
 much else, by Henry VIII. 
 
 This may serve to show that the church of the 
 saint was, in the fifth century, one of importance." 
 
 Not long after the visit of Germanus, Verulam 
 fell into the hands of the pagan saxons. Uther Pen- 
 dragon, after a very tedious siege, recovered it ; but 
 upon his death it appears to have fallen again into 
 their hands, for Gildas plainly intimates that the 
 
 j St. Alban was executed under the edict of Diocletian, 
 which was promulgated at Nicomedia in the year 303. Con- 
 stantine's decree of toleration was issued in the year 323. 
 Dr. Nicholson mentions, on the authority of an ancient 
 Agonal, or history of the passion of our saint, that upon his 
 execution the inhabitants of Verulam caused an account of 
 his death to be recorded upon a marble tablet, which they 
 placed in the town-wall as a public opprobrium to him, and 
 a terror to all christians. 
 "Eccles. Hist.," i. 17. 
 
 1 St. Prosper of Aquitain, a contemporary authority, informs 
 us that St. Germanus was nominated to this mission as papal 
 legate by pope Celestine I., who had previously sent over, 
 upon the same errand, the deacon Pelladius, whom he after- 
 wards ordained bishop and commissioned to pass into Scot- 
 land. (Cf. Prosp. in Chron. oet. I. contra Collat. c. 21, re- 
 ferred to by Butler, " I^ives of the Saints," ii., p. 138.) 
 "Eccles. Hist.," i. 18. 
 
 n The Pelagian heresy was essentially a practical error. 
 While the orientals were employed in the worlcing out of 
 subtle metaphysical fallacies, the inhabitants of our own 
 island were interesting themselves in questions of free-will 
 and of human spontaneity. It is remarkable that it is the 
 same class of questions which have always occupied the 
 minds of their teutonic successors. The anglo-saxon race, like 
 their british predecessors, have always felt the force, not of 
 the metaphysical, but of the practical objections against the 
 catholic religion. At the present day, the difficulties which 
 vex the soul of an english unbeliever are not— as far as I am 
 able to judge— theoretical, but practical. The question of the 
 origin of evil, an essentially practical one, lies at the root of 
 most honest english unbelief of Christianity. Our home-grown 
 sp^cnlaHve heresies are, to this day, not gnostic, but agnostic. 
 
 Saxons, in his day (circ. 564), were in possession of 
 the city. 
 
 The Saxons changed its name to Werlam-ceaster, 
 or Watling-ceaster, according to the readings of 
 different MSS., the former being, of course, derived 
 from the romanised-british Verulam, the latter from 
 the Watling Street which passed through it." 
 
 Giraldus Cambrensis (writing about the year 
 1300) states that many churches were erected in 
 honour of St. Alban by the british christians prior 
 to the saxon invasion. 
 
 About the year 793, Offa II., king of Mercia, who 
 had murdered Ethelbert, king of the East Angles, 
 and was desirous to re-establish his character be- 
 fore the world, and to appease his troubled con- 
 science," determined to found a monastery of the 
 Benedictine order, in the church of St. Alban, upon 
 the hill of Holmhurst. William of Malmesbury 
 states'' that Offa was urged to do this by Charles 
 the Great, with whom he held a friendly correspon- 
 dence." 
 
 It appears that the body of the saint had been 
 removed from the church, in order that it might 
 escape the desecrating hands of the pagan saxons, 
 and had, for a long while, laid buried — sub capite 
 dill absconditum (Matt. Paris). When the coffin was 
 opened by Offa, it was found to contain, beside 
 the body of St. Alban, those other sacred remains 
 which had been placed therein by St. Germanus. 
 These venerable relics were deposited by Offa in 
 a suitable shrine, and were translated, in solemn 
 procession, into the small ancient church (eccle- 
 siola) which he had already repaired.' 
 
 Offa undertook a journey to Rome in order to 
 obtain the sanction of Pope Adrian I. to his pro- 
 posed monastic foundation, which was granted, 
 together with the canonisation of our martyr, and 
 certain especial privileges were then accorded to 
 the new establishment.' 
 
 It thus appears that Offa did not found at St. 
 Albans a church, but a monastery in connection 
 
 ° The Waetlings were the wild banditti who lived in the 
 unreclaimed forests, as contra-distinguished from the husband- 
 men who tilled the cultivated land. They were the precur- 
 sors of Robin Hood and of the " Green man," in honour of 
 whom so many of our road-side hostelries are dedicated. The 
 woodlands through which the Watling Street {strata via) 
 ran for some thirty or forty miles after leaving London, were 
 notorious, during the middle ages, for the forest-caitiffs by 
 which they were infested. 
 
 P Cf. "An Account of the Abbey of St. Alban " (Bell and 
 Sons,Covent Garden), by the late rector of the parish. Dr. H. 
 T. B. Nicholson, to which I am largely indebted for the 
 early history of the place. 
 
 1 Lib. i., cap. 4. 
 
 ' King Offa founded also the church of St. Alban in Wood 
 Street, in the city of London, contiguous to his own palace 
 there. 
 
 ^ Matthew Paris, "Vita Offce II." It was an "ecclesiola" 
 to the historian, who had seen the greater church of Paul 
 and of Trumpington, but it was doubtless a very large and 
 splendid edifice in the eyes of those who built it, and of those 
 who first worshipped within its walls. 
 
 ' The abbat of St. Alban's was the premier abbat of 
 England until his primacy was disputed, in later times, by his 
 brother of Westminster. The question was then settled, in 
 true english fashion, by a compromise. 
 
 
 
98 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 with the church which already existed. It is pos- 
 sible that the original " ecdesia mirandi operis " of 
 Bede's account, the "ecdesiola" of the later histo- 
 rian (Matthew Paris), who had lived under the shade 
 of its truly colossal norman successor, remained 
 unaltered, except by successive reparations, until 
 the norman conquest. 
 
 This church is thus, in its history, a parallel to 
 that of Canterbury : erected, like it, " by the labour 
 of roman believers ; " ruined by our pagan saxon 
 forefathers ; restored through the influence of the 
 roman missionaries ; and re-erected, upon a vastly 
 enlarged scale, upon the conquest of our land by 
 the christianised and gallicised Norsemen. 
 
 The two last anglo-saxon abbats had prepared a 
 great quantity of materials for the work, excavated 
 from the ruins of the, then deserted, city of Veru- 
 1am, but a famine, and the troubles of the norman 
 invasion, had prevented the execution of their plan. 
 
 In the year 1077, Paul, a relative of the norman 
 archbishop, Lanfranc, and a monk of St. Stephen's, 
 at Caen, was appointed abbat, and he is stated to 
 have rebuilt the whole church in eleven years. 
 
 The church thus erected is on a vast scale, and 
 immensely massive in construction. The transepts, 
 the central tower, a great part of the nave, and the 
 mass of the walls of the presbytery remain as Paul 
 built them, and they give us an admirable example 
 of the work immediately succeeding the Conquest. 
 
 It is remarkable that while Lanfranc (as we shall 
 presently see ), when he became primate, but repro- 
 duced, as his metropolitan cathedral, the monastic 
 church at Caen, of which he had been abbat, the 
 monk, Paul, when he found himself abbat of St. 
 Alban's, set to work to rebuild his church upon a 
 far grander scale. The following table will serve 
 to illustrate the difference : — 
 
 St. Stephen's at Caen, and Lanfranc's Canterbury Cathedral, 
 
 Nave . - . - - 9 bays, 
 
 T?-ansepts- - - - 2 bays, with one chapel. 
 
 Quire . . - . 2 bays, and the apse. 
 
 Total length - • 300 feet. 
 
 Width across Transept 140 feet. 
 
 mdth of West Front 88 feet. 
 
 Paul's St, Alban's abbey church. 
 Nave- - - - - 13 bays. 
 Transept - - - - 3 bays, with two chapels. 
 Quire ... - 4 bays, and the apse. 
 Total length - • 465 feet. 
 Width across Transept 210 feet. 
 
 Width 0/ West Front 155 feet. 
 
 This contrast in point of dimensions between 
 the first of english monasteries and the first of our 
 cathedral churches (itself, too, monastic), erected at 
 the same date, and under the direction of two great 
 men, relatives in blood, and monks, originally, of 
 the same house in Normandy, is not without its 
 significance." 
 
 It is further to be noticed, as illustrating the force 
 
 " It serves to illustrate the immense importance in our 
 country, re-christianised as it had been by monks, of the 
 monastic establishments. It is not often considered what a 
 serious change in the constitution of the country was effected 
 by the dissolution of the great religious houses. Not only 
 
 of the distinct ecclesiastical traditions of each 
 church, which even the Conquest did not interrupt, 
 and which the norman ecclesiastics could not choose 
 but respect, that archbishop Lanfranc's cathedral had 
 a crypt, while the church of abbat Paul at St. Alban's 
 had none. Lanfranc, in this particular, and in this 
 alone, departed from his model, the church of his old 
 monastic home in Normandy, in order to conform 
 to the traditions of the church of his adoption : 
 while Paul's great work, whose grander conception 
 owed almost nothing to St. Stephen's, resembled it 
 in this — and in this, perhaps, alone — that it had no 
 crypt. 
 
 Canterbury had, from the time of Augustine, as 
 we know from Eadmer, a confessionary crypt, 
 planned upon the model of that of the ancient 
 Vatican basilica, while the church on the gibbet- 
 hill, |by Verulam, appears never to have possessed 
 this essentially roman feature.* 
 
 A comparison of this grand work with the church 
 in Dover Castle, constructed also of roman brick — 
 putting aside, of course, the difference of scale — 
 enables us to realize the immense advance which 
 architecture had made." 
 
 The work is constructed entirely of brick. So 
 scarce, indeed, was stone that we find the triforium 
 of the transepts differing in design from that of the 
 nave, apparently because there existed, ready to 
 hand, some few stone balusters of saxon workman- 
 ship — portions, no doubt, of Offa's work.^ These 
 
 was the voting power of the church, in the House of Lords, 
 diminished by more than one-half — it had numbered fifty 
 votes (in a house which rarely comprised much more than 
 one hundred members) before the dissolution, and it counted 
 but twenty-two after that event ; but the abbacies which were 
 suppressed were probably, upon the whole, more important 
 politically, and represented larger interests, territorial and 
 social, than the episcopal sees themselves. The church be- 
 came a much less important factor in the constitution of the 
 country than it had hitherto been, as a consequence of the 
 act of Henry VIII. 
 
 " Eadmer, in his Historia Novorum, lib. i., tells us that it 
 was the policy of the normans to replace the monks, " qui in 
 nonnullis episcopatibus Angliga ab antiquo vitam agebant," by 
 secular canons : that Walkelyn attempted this at Winchester, 
 and that especial efforts were made to bring about the change 
 (anticipating by five centuriesthe work of Archbishop Cranmer) 
 at Canterbury, where it was contended that monks were 
 entirely out of place, " partim ob sublimitatem primatis sedis, 
 quae dispositioni et correctioni ecclesiarum per suas personas 
 quacunque per Angliam invigilare habet, partim ob alias 
 multiplices causas quarum executio, juxta quod ipsi confin- 
 gebant, magis clericorun quam monachorum ofificiumspectat." 
 The innovators were, however, defeated in both instances, as 
 our author says — "gratia Dei et instantia boni Lanfranci." 
 
 " Cf. the drawings of this church given in my father's 
 " Lectures," ii., p. 41. 
 
 ^ These are commonly spoken of as portions of Offa's 
 church. This is clearly a mistake. It is evident, from the 
 early accounts, that Offa did not rebuild the existing church. 
 What he did was to found a benedictine house in connection 
 with it, Dugdale remarks ("Monasticon," ii., p, 179), "The 
 chapel noticed by Bede " — ecclesia mirandi operis are his 
 words — " which had been built by the early converts to 
 Christianity, appears to have been appropriated by Offa, as 
 the church of his new monastery ; the officinal buildings in 
 addition being completed by him within four or five years." 
 It appears to me very probable that the balusters now to be 
 seen in the triforia of the transepts of St. Alban's church 
 originally formed part of the cloister of Offa's work. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 99 
 
 fragments enabled the norman builders to sub- 
 divide the transept triforia, unlike those of the 
 nave, into coupled arches. Norman caps and basts 
 were added to the saxon balusters, and where these 
 shafts were too short, the length was eked out in 
 roman tiles. 
 
 Stone being so rare, the material used throughout 
 is brick, but none of this brickwork was exposed to 
 view. Following the custom which the Romans 
 themselves adopted, in every case where freestone 
 was not procurable, the whole was plastered both 
 internally and externally. 
 
 The external plastering has been in modern times 
 removed, by which a certain picturesque effect is 
 produced, quite contrary to the intention of the 
 original builders. For the present the plastering 
 of the Interior has been happily spared, though 
 there are — I believe — architects who would uncover 
 the nakedness, even of this venerable monument. 
 Were the same treatment to be applied to the 
 interior which has been adopted externally, the 
 building would appear, internally, as a mere rude 
 grotto. 
 
 Such an effect was, however, the exact reverse of 
 that which its designer intended. Plain as the 
 internal architecture is — the arches being perfectly 
 square, though of several orders, continued down 
 the piers, and relieved only by an impost — never- 
 theless the effect aimed at was, in reality, one of 
 great refinement, contrasting very favourably with 
 the works of these modern purists, who venture to 
 condemn the simple means by which its effect is 
 obtained. 
 
 Not only are the proportions admirably adjusted, 
 and an effect of real delicacy obtained by the 
 contrast of the small recesses of the piers and 
 arches, with their wide and imposing reveals and 
 soffits, but the whole was decorated in colour. Of 
 this system of coloured enrichment sufficient re- 
 mains to us to enable even the amateur to form a 
 fair notion of what the complete effect must have 
 been. 
 
 I know few things more imposing, and in its way 
 more refined, than the effect of the north side of 
 the nave of this noble church, where the original 
 norman design remains unaltered. Almost every 
 portion of this fine work shows remains of its 
 coloured decoration, much of it in a very perfect 
 state, and the effect is at once dignified and 
 beautiful. Such parts of the decoration as are 
 wanting here may be supplied to imagination by the 
 remains, existing in other parts of the church, while 
 the painting of the wooden ceiling, though of later 
 date, presents sufficiently the tradition of the original 
 treatment.'' 
 
 The whole of the interior has been painted in 
 simple ochreous colour, on a white or yellow 
 ground ; the principal points of the enrichment 
 being the wide soffits of the arches. 
 
 In the early-pointed system of decoration, which 
 
 y See the notice of this interesting work in a subsequent 
 discursus. 
 
 succeeded to the norman, the one great idea is the 
 suggestion of a stone construction by red lines ; 
 each conventional stone being occupied by a rosette 
 of some kind. But in this earlier work a more 
 reasonable mode prevails : a great variety of geo- 
 metrical diaper is employed, while breadth and 
 simplicity of effect is never lost. 
 
 The most interesting portion of the work is the 
 nave. Against each pier stood an altar, for which 
 the wide plain reveal gives quite sufficient space. 
 
 I may notice in passing that it seems to have 
 been the english custom to place the side-altars of 
 the naves of churches against their piers. In Ger- 
 many, and elsewhere, such altars are very commonly 
 arranged in the midst of the aisles (as in the plan 
 of St. Gall), or in some cases with their ends in 
 contact with the lateral walls, as at Naumberg and 
 Xanten. The usual french arrangement is to form 
 distinct chapels between the buttresses of the aisles. 
 Of this Melrose Abbey and the parish church of 
 Scarborough, in Yorkshire, offer examples in our 
 own island. The more typical english plan is illus- 
 trated by Lindisfarne and Durham, as also by the 
 chantries of William of Wykeham, and of Cardinal 
 Beaufort, at Winchester, and by numbers of simi- 
 larly-placed chantry-altars in our cathedrals and 
 parochial churches. At St. Alban's Abbey we have 
 later examples of it in the chapels of abbats Wal- 
 Imgford and Ramrydge, in the presbytery. 
 
 The altars against the piers of the nave were re- 
 moved, in after times, to other parts of the church. 
 Those which had stood against the piers, upon the 
 south side of the nave, which fell in the year 1323, 
 were not re-erected upon the re-building of this 
 side of the church ; but it is clear that those upon 
 the north side, against the undisturbed norman 
 piers, were not interfered with, as one of them is 
 provided for (with some loss of symmetry, in 
 consequence of the disappearance of his southern 
 fellow) in the beautiful screen, which was erected 
 shortly after the restoration of the fallen walls was 
 completed.'' 
 
 * This altar was known in the fifteenth century, as that 
 of St. Benedict ; as, however, this screen is traditionally 
 known as St. Cuthbert's screen I suspect that this altar was 
 originally dedicated in honour of this saint (possibly in con- 
 junction with St. Benedict, thus combining the two great 
 patrons of an english monk), as the dedications of the other 
 three altars which stood against this most elegant screen are 
 known (viz., St. Thomas of Canterbury, the Holy Cross, and 
 the Blessed Virgin). If this conjecture be correct, this altar was, 
 no doubt, founded by the fifteenth abbat (Richard D'Aubeny) 
 early in the twelfth century. This worthy man, " qui beatum 
 Cuthbertum multo semper excoluit amore, ejusque sepul- 
 chrum (at Durham) srepius solitus fuerat invisere," had for 
 a long while (says the anonymous author of the Vila Sti. Cuth' 
 berti given in the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum, Martii iii. 117) 
 had something amiss with his left hand, which prevented his 
 saying mass, and which the surgeons could make nothing of. 
 He was present in Durham at the translation of the saint's re- 
 lics from the old saxon church into the new building (which 
 is still one of the wonders of England), in the year 1 104, and 
 when the shrine was being lifted into its place upon its new 
 feretry, the prior Turgot, who was standing upon the freshly 
 made marble erection, in order to receive the body from those 
 who had carried it in the procession, being in need of assistance 
 to raise so heavy a weight, called to the abbat of St. Alban's 
 
ibo 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Over each of these nave altars is painted a cruci- 
 fixion, having below it a predella of smaller subjects, 
 which have reference to the dedication of the par- 
 ticular altar. 
 
 I can scarcely conceive of anything finer than this 
 series of paintings as viewed from the west-end of 
 the church. The great mystery of the redemption 
 of mankind preached thus, under varying aspects, 
 again and again, from every pier produces an im- 
 pression which no description can properly convey.''^ 
 It is only upon the spot that its dignity can be 
 really felt. 
 
 These paintings are not all of one date. They 
 range, from the work of the original builders, down 
 to the early part of the thirteenth century ; but they 
 are all treated on the same broad and simple system, 
 and produce, both as to colour and treatment, a 
 perfectly harmonious whole. 
 
 At Ely cathedra], which was rebuilt by Abbot 
 Symeon, brother to the conqueror's chaplain, 
 Walkelyn, and at Norwich cathedral, commenced 
 by bishop Herbert de Losinga in 1096, there are 
 also considerable remains of the original colouring. 
 
 In the galilee of Durham cathedral, over the 
 site of the altar of the Piety, there are also to 
 be seen remains of the paintings, of the twelfth 
 century, which once adorned this altar. These 
 are particularly valuable, as an example of norman 
 decoration, owing to the beautiful preservation of 
 the fragments which have been spared to us, and 
 the amazing subtleness and delicacy of the colour- 
 ing. In this respect they put to utter shame the 
 hideous caricatures of early art, which may be seen 
 in too many new, or "restored," churches.'''' 
 
 to get up quickly and help him. He, accordingly, mounted 
 upon the feretry, and not thinking of his lame hand, assisted 
 the prior to heave up the shrine and to set it in its place. No 
 sooner had this been completed, than abbat Richard became 
 aware that his hand was restored, and never after had he any 
 pain or inconvenience from it. In gratitude for this recovery, 
 he founded, at St. Alban's, an altar in honour of the northum- 
 brian saint. (Cf. Eyre's " History of St. Cuthbert," p. 174.) 
 
 We must add to these, in our imagination, the great 
 rood which stood above the screen of St. Cuthbert. Beyond 
 this, under the eastern arch of the tower, was erected, in 
 later times, a second ci ucifix : a portion of the richly orna- 
 mented beam upon which this rested may still be seen, in 
 situ. Still further eastward, in the great altar-screen, which 
 bears the arms of abbat Whethamstede ; a work which 
 his registnim. describes as " that most highly decorated, 
 sumptuous, and lofty face of the high altar, which greatly 
 adorns the church, and fills with pleasure the eyes of 
 beholders, and to all who gaze upon it, is the most divine 
 object in this kingdom " (i. 477, quoted in Mr. Ridgway 
 Lloyd's "Account of the Altars, etc., existing, a.d. 1428, in 
 St. Alban's Abbey," p. 43), there was yet another great 
 image of the Crucified. The monks of St. Alban's expressed 
 in the language of art, quite unmistakeably, the words of the 
 apostle, " Mihi absit gloriari, nisi in C7-uce dotnini nostri 
 jfesu Christi." 
 
 The complete design is thus described in the " Rites of 
 Durham," p. 38 : — " On the north syde of the saide Galleley 
 was an alter, called the Lady of Pitties alter, with her pictur 
 carryinge our Saviour on hir knee, as he was taiken from 
 the cross — a very dolorouse spectacle." There was further 
 depicted, " above the alter, on the wall, the one part of our 
 Saviour's passion, in great pictures, the other part being 
 above Saynt Beedes alter on the south syde " of the galilee. 
 
 These and other fragments, to be found in dif- 
 ferent parts of the couatry, give us a good notion 
 of what the effect of a norman interior was intended 
 to be. 
 
 The decorative treatment which is thus exhibited 
 is, in fact, identical with that of the Romans, namely 
 — the enrichment of every part of the surface, 
 whether of stone or plaster, by colour, generally upon 
 a white or pale ochre ground, the forms of the deco- 
 ration being for the most part geometrical. I re- 
 member seeing at Rome several houses, probably of 
 the second century, which had just been uncovered. 
 The colouring of their rooms was as fresh as when 
 first put on. The houses were but small, and the 
 decorations simple, and possibly somewhat rude, 
 but both the system of enrichment and the tone 
 of colour adopted was exactly what we may see to 
 this day at St. Alban's, at Ely, or at Norwich. 
 
 I have dwelt the more upon this finished charac- 
 ter of norman decoration, because people are apt 
 to regard the style as rude and even barbarous. 
 Having carefully removed all the plastering and 
 distemper work, with which the norman architects, 
 deliberately, and in pursuance of the roraan tradi- 
 tions, adorned their buildings, and having exposed 
 the original tooling of the early masons, which was 
 not their forte, we then enlarge upon the roughness 
 of their work, and the barbarism of the age which 
 produced it. Would any of our own drawing-rooms 
 show as favourably if similarly treated ? 
 
 It is a fact that ever since civilization commenced 
 it has been the custom to finish the interior of a 
 building with all possible care, and our norman 
 churches are no exception to the rule. 
 
 Every ancient edifice, whether of egyptian, greek, 
 roman, or medieval times, was carefully faced in- 
 ternally with wrought stone, or with plaster, and 
 decorated throughout in colour, or, it might be, en- 
 crusted with marbles and mosaic. The notion of 
 leaving the interior of a building as rough and rugged 
 as an exterior generally must be, has been from a 
 very early date abandoned by civilized man. 
 
 In the interiors of our houses this tradition has 
 never been broken. We still plaster them and de- 
 corate them, either by painting or with coloured 
 paper, on the same principles, however badly ap- 
 plied, as those of a pompeian villa, or a medieval 
 hall. Imagine a handsome apartment, say in 
 Grosvenor square, " restored " upon the principle of 
 a spurious truthfulness — its painted decorations, its 
 enriched plaster-work all removed ; and the naked, 
 honest brickwork carefully pointed in coloured 
 mortar : — after the application of such a process, 
 it would not, I think, be fair to judge of the inten- 
 
 Those portions of the design in which the sufferings of the 
 Lord, and the anguish of His mother, were represented, have, 
 of course, been destroyed ; but much of the merely decorative 
 work, together with a figure of a bishop upon the southern 
 reveal of the recess, are in an unusually complete state, and 
 display a very remarkable refinement of colour. 
 
 These houses were discovered only to be destroyed im- 
 mediately afterwards, in order to enlarge the railway goods 
 yard. 
 
PLATE XX. 
 
 St. ALBAN'S ABBEY-CHURCH. 
 
 NORTH SIDE OF THE NAVE. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 101 
 
 tion of the architect who had designed the room, 
 from the appearance which it might then present. 
 Yet many of our ancient monuments have fared 
 little better. 
 
 A norman interior so treated serves to illustrate 
 the barbarism, not of the eleventh century, but of 
 the nineteenth. 
 
 Before leaving St. Alban's I will mention, in order 
 somewhat to relieve the dryness of our subject, a 
 curious history which connects itself with that house. 
 During the rule of the eighteenth abbat (Robert 
 of Gorham), in the middle of the twelfth century, 
 there lived in the parish of Langley, by Watford, a 
 servant or tenant-farmer of the abbey, whose son, 
 Nicholas, having a turn for letters, was desirous to 
 become a monk. The lad accordingly underwent 
 the usual examination, but he failed to pass the re- 
 quired standard, and was rejected as too ill-educated 
 for the tonsure. We may well imagine the young 
 man's chagrin, and his father's country gibes — " Better 
 have stuck to the plough-tail, Nick, like your fathers 
 before you, than have mazed your silly head with 
 book-learning, all for naught." 
 
 Years pass on. In the course of the long struggle 
 between the ecclesiastical and the civil jurisdictions, 
 which is one of the most conspicuous events of the 
 middle ages, Frederic Barbarossa, the greatest of 
 the Hohenstaufen, and, after Charles the Great, the 
 most famous ruler of the holy roman empire, is 
 brought to admit that there is a power stronger 
 even than his, and to humble himself so far as to 
 hold the stirrup-iron of the man who wields that 
 power, because he presides over and represents 
 the holy roman church. That man is Nicholas — 
 Nicholas Breakespeare — the farmer-lad of Langley, 
 and the rejected of St. Alban's, now pope Adrian 
 IV. The stone which the builders had disallowed, 
 was become, indeed, the headstone of the corner. 
 
 Whatever view we may be disposed to take of 
 the long struggle between the spiritual and the 
 temporal powers, we — as Englishmen — cannot 
 but feel a certain patriotic pride in the reflection 
 that the only english pope, once a Hertfordshire 
 yokel, was found more than a match for the most 
 splendid of the sovereigns of Germany — the great 
 Barbarossa. 
 
 The first experiment of a pope of english blood 
 was so successful, that one wonders that it has 
 never been repeated.^" 
 
 There exists in Germany a sort of popular tradition that 
 like Nero, Barbarossa is not dead, but that laid in weird slum- 
 ber beneath the great KyfThauserberg, he awaits the moment 
 when his nation is to rise and shake off, with the help of his 
 m ight, the fetters of Christianity. Cf. Baring Gould's ' ' Curious 
 Myths of the Middle Ages," p. 105, and Kenan's "L'Ante- 
 christ," p. 317. 
 
 e« It went near to be repeated in 1550, when, upon the 
 death of Paul III., Cardinal Pole might, had he wished it, 
 have been elected to the sovereign pontificate. (Cf. Sander, 
 " De origine et progressu schismatis Anglicani," tr. David 
 Lewis, 1877, p. 202.) "The Life of Pole," published at Venice 
 in 1563 (referred to in a note to the above), states that at the 
 first scrutiny he wanted but two votes of the requisite majority. 
 Harpslield, in his "Treatise of Marriage" (quoted in the 
 same place), states in so many words, " He was, by the car- 
 
 Let us turn now from St. Alban's, the chief among 
 english religious houses, to Canterbury, which, while 
 it was also monastic, was, beside this, the metro- 
 politan church of the english hierarchy. '^'^ 
 
 We have already traced the history of this church 
 down to the period of the norman invasion. We 
 have seen that the romano-british church, restored 
 and enlarged, in a very characteristic fashion, by 
 St. Augustine, was standing at the time of the Con- 
 quest.es 
 
 In the year following the invasion, " and while," 
 says Eadmer, " misfortunes were falling thick upon 
 all parts of England, it happened that the city of 
 Canterbury was set on fire by the carelessness of 
 some individuals, and thattthe rising flame caught the 
 mother-church thereof How can I tell it? — the 
 whole was consumed, as well as the church of blessed 
 John Baptist,''*' wherein the remains of the arch- 
 bishops were buried." " Now, after this lamentable 
 fire, the bodies of the pontiffs rested undisturbed 
 in their coflSns for three years, until that most ener- 
 getic and honourable man, Lanfranc, abbat of Caen, 
 was made archbishop of Canterbury. And when he 
 came to Canterbury, and found that the church of 
 the Saviour, which he had undertaken to rule, was 
 reduced to almost nothing by fire and ruin, he 
 was filled with consternation. But, although the 
 magnitude of the damage had well-nigh reduced 
 him to despair, he yet took courage, and neglecting 
 
 dinals lawfully elected, for whose consent they stayed their 
 election of any other person two whole months, a thing that 
 was never read or heard of, I trow, before, in any pope's elec- 
 tion, and yet could they not win his consent." Both Sander 
 and Harpsfield attribute his reluctance to a desire to reserve 
 himself to the service of his native country, " whose reforma- 
 tion he desired of all other things." "This thing," adds 
 Harpsfield, "as it is of itself most notable, so it should be to 
 us Englishmen most comfortable.'' Mr. Lewis's translation 
 of Sander's work should be in the hands of every student of 
 the english Reformation. 
 
 York was not, as it appears, originally a metropolitan see. 
 "The kings of Northumbria and Kent, "says Dr. Hook ("Lives 
 of the Archbishops of Canterbury," i., p. 157), "together with 
 the other kings of the heptarchy, had determined to place all 
 the churches of England under one metropolitan, the arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury." The fact stated is, no doulDt, correct, 
 but the learned dean appears to have held that " the kingdom 
 of heaven " is " of this world," and that secular princes (and 
 by parity of reasoning, presidents of republics, and chairmen 
 of local boards) are the fountains of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. 
 
 gg We have Eadmer's authority for the fact that the church 
 was not destroyed in the danish invasion — " ecclesia ipsa in 
 passione beatissirai martyris Elphegi nec igne consumpta nec 
 tecto aut parietibus diruta fuit." The pagans profaned it, 
 and despoiled it of many of its ornaments, and even attempted 
 to set it on fire from the outside, in order to force the holy 
 pontiff, who had taken refuge within the church, to come 
 forth. But as soon as St. ^iphege had come out and sur- 
 rendered himself, "omissis ignibus et aliis mails, quibus ad 
 captionem illius occupabantur, ipsum, necatis aliquibus 
 monachis in oculis ejus, abduxerunt." Edm., Epist. de 
 Corp. S. Dunst. ii. 225, quoted in Willis's " Canterbury 
 Cathedral," p. 8. 
 
 Wi This was, no doubt, a baptistery, and was situate to the 
 east of the church. "Cuthbert (the eleventh archbishop, 
 740—750), among his other good works, constructed, to the 
 east of the great church, and almost touching it, a church 
 which he solemnly dedicated in honour of St. John Baptist." 
 Eadmer, Vit. S. Bregwini,ii. 186, in Willis's "Canterbury," 
 p. 2. 
 
102 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 his own accommodation, he completed in all haste 
 the buildings essential to the monks." " As for the 
 church, which the aforesaid fire, combined with its 
 age, had rendered completely unserviceable, he set 
 about to destroy it utterly, and to erect a more 
 noble one. And in the space of seven years, he 
 raised this new church from the very foundations, 
 and rendered it nearly perfect."" 
 
 This rebuilding commenced, as was customary 
 throughout the middle ages, at the eastern extremity 
 of the church.jj For, says Eadmer, "before the 
 work began, Lanfranc commanded that the bodies 
 of the saints which were buried in the eastern part 
 of the church, should be removed to the western 
 part, where the oratory of the blessed Virgin Mary 
 stood." '''' The eastern part of the new church 
 occupied therefore the site of the corresponding 
 portion of the church of Augustine, and so the 
 eastern apse, with its confessionary crypt, was re- 
 moved to give place to the presbytery of the new 
 building, which was elevated high upon a crypt of 
 its own. As the new work progressed westward, it 
 became necessary, as Eadmer tells us, to take down 
 that venerable western apse, which was well-nigh as 
 old as british Christianity itself 
 
 Thus the church of Lanfranc stood upon the site 
 of the old church, of which I have given the de- 
 scription in a previous chapter, and it is extremely 
 probable that the high-altar and the crypt of the 
 new building occupied, as was usual in such re- 
 buildings, the same position as those which they 
 replaced. 
 
 A curious confirmation of the accuracy of the 
 interpretation which professor Willis has given of 
 Eadmer's account of the ancient metropolitan 
 cathedral, is afforded by the little village-church of 
 Godmersham, some few miles to the south of 
 Canterbury. It will be remembered that a peculiar 
 feature of this church, as enlarged by St. Augustine, 
 was the position of the towers, midmost of the length 
 of the whole building. Of these, th? southern one 
 constituted the principal entrance of the church — 
 
 quod antiquitus ab Anglis et nunc usque Siithdure, 
 dicitur ; '' and as it also contained an altar " in medio 
 sui," dedicated in honour of St. Gregory the Great, 
 Willis has conjectured that this altar must have 
 been placed in an apse projecting from the eastern 
 side of this tower." 
 
 Both the position of these towers, and the com- 
 
 ii Eadmer, in Willis's " Canterbury," pp. 9, 13, 14. 
 
 jj Most of our great churches underwent, during these ages, 
 an almost uninterrupted course of rebuilding, which, beginning 
 at the east end, travelled slowly down to the west ; and when 
 it had finished there, re-commenced where it had, a century 
 or so before, begun. This uniform movement of the wave of 
 restoration was arrested finally, and— as it were— in an instant, 
 by the Reformation, and our cathedrals have come down to 
 us of the present day, exactly as that event found them, saving 
 only— and it is a wide exception — the havoc then, and since, 
 wrought in them. 
 
 '''' Eadmer, in Willis's "Canterbury," p. 15. 
 
 " It is accordingly thus shown upon my plan, which is but 
 a very slightly modified version of that which was worked 
 out by this truly masterly antiquary. 
 
 bination of a tower and an apse, is most unusual, 
 and while cold reasoning forced me to admit that 
 the professor was right, imagination somewhat 
 rebelled, I must confess, against the admission of 
 an arrangement which, if it ever existed, must have 
 been, as far as was known, unique. I was therefore 
 greatly interested to find, but a few miles from Can- 
 terbury, and almost within sight of its towers, a 
 little village-church in which these two peculiarities 
 still exist. The tower of Godmersham church 
 occupies the centre of the north side of the build- 
 ing (a very unusual position), and from its eastern 
 side projects an apse, ceiled by a semi-dome. This 
 work is of the very earliest norman, resembling 
 (except that flint rubble is used, instead of roman 
 bricks) the work of abbat Paul at St. Alban's. Now, 
 it is true that in the quire at Canterbury, as rebuilt 
 under the priors Ernulf and Conrad, there were, 
 in the sweep of the great apse, two towers (of St. 
 Andrew and Anselm respectively) having apses 
 projecting from them, but these are not (like those 
 of Eadmer's description, and that of Godmersham) 
 placed " sub medio longitudinis aulse ipsius," and — 
 what is more to the purpose — they were not erected 
 till after the opening of the twelfth century ; whereas 
 this work at Godmersham must, as is evident from 
 its style, have been built within a very few years of 
 the Conquest. I conclude, therefore, that it was 
 erected immediately after that event, and before, 
 " as the new work of the commenced church " at 
 Canterbury " proceeded, it became necessary to 
 take down the remainder of the old work " (that is, 
 approximately before the year 1075), ^iid in imita- 
 tion of this venerable ruin. There is thus afforded 
 a singular confirmation of the accuracy and preci- 
 sion of the learned professor's deductions from 
 Eadmer's description of the romano-saxon cathe- 
 dral."'" 
 
 All, however, that remained of this venerable 
 monument disappeared in Lanfranc's rebuilding, 
 although, as I have just pointed out, a tradition 
 of these two flanking towers, Avith their pro- 
 jecting apses, seems to have survived the de- 
 struction of the old church, and to have suggested 
 that unique arrangement of apsidal towers, which 
 forms one of the peculiarities of the extension of 
 the eastern limb of the church, which was carried 
 out during the primacy of St. Anselm. 
 
 I have already observed that the church of Lan- 
 franc appears to have resembled very closely in its 
 plan and general arrangement that of St. Stephen, 
 at Caen."" Of the church, as thus rebuilt, there 
 are still some remains, and the northern tower of 
 Lanfranc's west front actually was in existence up 
 to the year 1834, when the chapter, at great cost, 
 destroyed this venerable monument, in order to 
 
 '"™ The rest of this church has been so done to death by 
 " restoration," that it is impossible now to ascertain whether 
 there was here, as at Canterbury, a corresponding tower upon 
 the other side of the nave. 
 
 "" A plan of this church is given in my father's "Lectures," ii., 
 p. 98 : it may be compared with that which I give of Lan- 
 franc's church, from Willis's " Canterbury Cathedral," p. 38. 
 
PLATE XXI. 
 
 FIG. I. PLAN OF THK CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF CANTERBURY, AS REBUILT BY A. BP. LANFRANC (A.D. IO70 — 77). 
 FIG. II. PLAN OF THE PRIORY-CHURCH OF LINDISFARNE. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 103 
 
 erect a nineteenth-century duplicate of prior Gold- 
 ston's fifteenth-century southern tower. 
 
 The monk, Gervase, has given us a complete 
 and detailed account of this church, so far as it 
 existed in his time — i.e., subsequent to the altera- 
 tions effected in its eastern limb under the priors 
 Ernulf and Conrad ; — but of the arrangements of 
 this part of the church previous to these altera- 
 tions, he confesses himself to be wholly ignorant. 
 " You must know," he says, " good reader, that I 
 never saw the quire of Lanfranc, neither have I been 
 able to meet with any description of it." Gervase, 
 as professor Willis remarks,"" was at Canterbury in 
 1 1 70, the year of Becket's martyrdom, and the 
 eastern arm of Lanfranc's church had been pulled 
 down about seventy years before. In this time, as it 
 seems, all tradition of its arrangement had vanished. 
 
 The dimensions of this, the metropolitan church 
 of all England, were somewhat smaller than those 
 of the monastic church of duke William's founda- 
 tion at Caen. The breadth between the walls of the 
 nave of St. Stephen is seventy-three feet, which is 
 one foot greater than at Canterbury. The width of 
 the central alley was apparently less at Canterbury 
 than at Caen, and while the ceiling at Canterbury 
 was sixty-three feet above the pavement of the 
 church, that at Caen was about seventy feet. 
 
 Lanfranc's church, as we have already seen, pos- 
 sessed — what St. Stephen's did not — a crypt ; but 
 no part of the present crypt can, as it would appear, 
 belong to his church ; unless, indeed, some of its 
 columns may have been re-erected in new positions 
 in the later crypt. 
 
 The quire of the monks was situate, not in the 
 eastern limb, but, as in all early churches, and in 
 pursuance of the basilican tradition, in the eastern 
 bays of the nave, — as at Hereford, Rochester, Nor- 
 wich,Gloucester, Winchester, Chichester, St. Alban's, 
 and formerly at Ely, Worcester, and Peterborough, 
 — while the crypt was confined to the presbytery (or 
 eastern arm of the cross), as the crypts never ex- 
 tended under the central towers.^^ 
 
 The transepts were galleried, so that the apsidal 
 chapels, which projected from their eastern faces, 
 had in them altars on two floors. "The great tower," 
 says Gervase, " had a transept from each side — to 
 wit, a south transept, and a north transept — each of 
 which had in its midst a strong pillar : this pillar 
 sustained a vault which proceeded from the walls 
 on three of its sides." In the south transept this 
 gallery was occupied, in part, by the organ. 
 
 0° " Canterbury Cathedral," p. 42, footnote. 
 
 pp The english eastern crypts are Canterbury, York, Win- 
 chester, Gloucester, Rochester, and Worcester, all refounded 
 before the year 1085. To these may be added Lastingham 
 and St. Peter's, Oxford. Hexham has a saxon crypt of a very 
 remarkable character, which, no doubt, occupied the eastern 
 extremity of the saxon church. I have already referred to 
 the similarly-placed crypts at Brixworth, Wing, and Rep- 
 ton. The lady-chapel at Hereford is an example of the same 
 feature, of first-pointed date. Wimborne minster has one, 
 rather later in date, but still within the same century ; and 
 Madeley church, in Herefordshire, has one, of the fourteenth 
 century — a very rare case. 
 
 •(<i Mason, the poet, in his essay on instrumental church 
 
 Such transeptal galleries were not uncommon in 
 the early churches of Normandy. They occur in 
 the abbey churches of St. Stephen's at Caen, of 
 Cerisy, and of Fecamp, in the cathedral of Seez, 
 and in the church of St. George, at Boscherville. 
 In our own country the cathedrals of Winchester 
 and Ely afford examples of the same arrangement." 
 
 This is almost all that we know of our metro- 
 politan cathedral, as re-constructed by the first of 
 the norman archbishops, and it is interesting to 
 compare the plan of the new church, with that of 
 the older one, which was pulled down to give it 
 place. 
 
 There is, between the two, one essential difference 
 of ritual arrangement, and one of constructional 
 design. 
 
 In Lanfranc's church the western apse — " the 
 oratory of Mary, the blessed mother of God," that 
 venerable relic of a Christianity older than that of 
 St. Augustine — had finally disappeared. 
 
 His church, too, possessed a feature which the 
 older building had not, and which is wholly alien 
 to the basilican idea, namely, a central tower. 
 
 The transept of an early basilica was virtually a 
 transverse nave. The nave opened into it by an 
 arch, and a corresponding arch opened from it 
 into the great apse. But there were no transverse 
 arches connecting these two, and consequently no 
 true cruciformity of plan, and no possibility of a 
 central tower, to be carried up from the intersection 
 of these two naves. Lanfranc's church is therefore 
 basilican as regards the position of its ritual choir, 
 but completely un-basilican in the treatment of its 
 transepts, and in the position of its principal cam- 
 panile." 
 
 music, gives the following translation of a description by 
 Wolstan, the learned monk of Winchester, of an astounding 
 organ erected in that church more than a century earlier (in 
 951) by Elpheg, then bishop of that see : — 
 
 " Twelve pair of bellows, ranged in stated row, 
 Are joined above, and fourteen more below : 
 These the full force of seventy men require, 
 Who ceaseless toil and plenteously perspire, 
 Each aiding each, till all the wind be pressed 
 In the close confines of th' incumbent chest, 
 On which four hundred pipes in order rise. 
 To bellow forth that blast the chest supplies." 
 
 " This arrangement was suggested, — with the view of pro- 
 viding a fitting place (as in Lanfranc's Canterbury) for the 
 organ, — in the case of St. Mary's episcopal cathedral in Edin- 
 burgh. As the consequence of the rejection of this suggestion, 
 the floor of the north transept of this fine church is entirely 
 taken up by a monster music-mill, and the proportions of the 
 interior are completely sacrificed to the prevailing mania for 
 noise. One is tempted to exclaim with Erasmus (in the Pere- 
 grinatio religionis ergo), " Quorsum attinent organorum, quae 
 vocant, immensi sumtus ? — quorsum ille musicus hinnitus, 
 magno censu conducendus ? " 
 
 " It is an important and interesting observation that the 
 cruciform plan was not the original type of a christian church. 
 This form was only arrived at after some ten centuries of de- 
 velopement, and then its evolution was determined, not by 
 symbolical, but by constructional considerations. As far as I 
 can judge, but few features of an ancient church were dictated 
 by symbolism. Symbolism is always, and fitly, ex post facto. 
 All churches were built by practical men, and were planned 
 and contrived to meet the practical requirements of cere- 
 
I04 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 From Canterbury and St. Alban's — two of the 
 greatest of english benedictine houses — it is natural 
 to turn to Durham, of which the monastic history 
 connects itself with that early Celtic Christianity 
 which was crushed indeed, but not destroyed, by 
 the triumph of our pagan ancestors." If the former 
 churches remind us of the work of St. Gregory and 
 St. Augustine, of the labours of the italian mission- 
 aries, of Subiaco and Monte Casino ; Durham takes 
 our thoughts back to a rule other than that of St. 
 Benedict, to St. Aidan and the Celtic evangelists, 
 to the Holy Island among the Hebrides, and to 
 him, to whom it owes its christian name, the great 
 Columba."" 
 
 It was by the instrumentality of a monk from 
 this Celtic house that the saxon Oswald, during 
 his banishment among the Picts, became a convert 
 to the faith, and it was from this monastery that 
 St. Aidan came, by Oswald's invitation, upon his 
 accession to the throne of Northumbria," to confer 
 upon his subjects the blessings of the religion 
 which their sovereign had first learned to value in 
 the school of adversity. 
 
 A result of this mission was the establishment of 
 the bishopric and monastery of Lindisfarne,*" the 
 cradle of the see of Durham. 
 
 monial and of construction. Then — with that beautiful 
 consonance that is ever to be noted in human affairs — what 
 honest practice found necess ary, pious meditation saw to be 
 also symbolical of very deep mysteries. 
 
 " I do not wish to be understood as regarding the english 
 nation, of the ages preceding the norman conquest, as by 
 any means purely teutonic. I have no doubt that the old 
 british blood contributed very materially to form the stock 
 from which we, English, have come. A tribe of roving 
 marauders, crossing the sea in boats, probably not much 
 larger than our own man-of-war's launches, does not encumber 
 itself with its women : a few would, no doubt, be brought, 
 but the proportion of males to females in every such expedi- 
 tion must necessarily have been very high. [See the cu- 
 rious account given in Bede ("Eccles. Hist.," i. i). "The 
 nation of the Picts (from Scythia, as is reported) putting to 
 sea in a few long ships, being driven by the winds, arrived 
 on the northern coasts of Ireland, where, finding the nation 
 of the Scots, they begged to be allowed to settle among 
 them. Now the Picts had no wives, and asked them of the 
 Scots, who would only consent to grant them upon these 
 terms : that whenever any difficulty should arise, they should 
 choose a king from the female royal race, rather than from 
 the male — which custom, as is well known, has been observed 
 among the Picts to this day."] The males of the conquered 
 race might, perhaps, have been, in many parts of Britain, ex- 
 terminated, but we may be quite sure that the females were 
 not. The women were among the most valued prizes of war, 
 and our english stock, which is derived from sires of angle, 
 jute, saxon, and danish blood, had british and Celtic mothers. 
 Like all strong races, we are a crossed breed, and our native 
 church architecture well illustrates this truth, which only a 
 doclrinaire historian can mistake. 
 
 uu lona — in Gaelic, " the island of the waves " — became 
 Icolmkill, the cell or monastery of Columba, who landed here 
 from Ireland, with twelve companions, in the year 563, in 
 order to convert to the faith the inhabitants of these western 
 isles. 
 
 v» Northumbria included the whole of what is now the 
 north of England, together with the lowlands of Scotland. 
 It extended from the Forth to the Humber. 
 
 WW Lindisfarne is an island on the east coast of Northumbria, 
 about ten miles south of Berwick. It was chosen, no doubt, 
 both on account of its seclusion, and also of its proximity to 
 Oswald's royal home at Bamborough. 
 
 Aidan erected there the first church, in the year 
 635. His successor, Finan, replaced this, merely 
 temporary, structure by one " sedi episcopali con- 
 grua,"="' but this, too, was only of timber, thatched 
 with rushes. In this simple building St. Cuthbert 
 had his episcopal throne during that short, but me- 
 morable, episcopate of little more than two years 
 (685 — 688) which has associated his name, for all 
 time, with the Christianity of the north of England. 
 
 Cuthbert was, no doubt, of saxon blood, as his 
 name itself indicates, and as Bede, in his metrical 
 life of the saint, seems to imply though the author 
 of the " Rites of Durham " " states that he was 
 " said to be descended from the blood-royal of the 
 kings of Ireland, being the son of one Muriardach 
 and Sabina^ his wife, who was daughter to a king 
 there." 
 
 Parentage, however, is of little consequence in the 
 history of one who became illustrious as "a citizen 
 of no mean city," — the civitas dei, — and who has 
 made for himself such a mark in the history of 
 english Christianity. 
 
 The noble character which impressed all who 
 were brought in contact with him in life, and the 
 prodigies, attested in the most remarkable manner, 
 which, from age to age, were wrought by his 
 honoured remains, have to this day their witness in 
 the especial dignity still attaching to the see of 
 Durham, and in the glorious church which was 
 erected four centuries after his death, and which, to 
 this day, after another eight centuries have passed 
 away, is still the delight and the wonder of all who 
 have visited and prayed within its venerable walls. 
 
 St. Cuthbert was the sixth bishop of Lindisfarne.*^^ 
 He was succeeded by Eadbert, who covered Finan 's 
 timber church, both roof and walls, with lead, — 
 " ablata arundine, plumbi laminis cam totam, hoc 
 est et tectum et ipsos parietes co-operire curavit.'"''''' 
 
 Then began the miseries of the danish incursions, 
 and the faithful of Lindisfarne, in obedience to the 
 directions which Cuthbert, with a truly prophetical 
 foresight of the coming troubles, had given upon 
 his deathbed, bore away his body into the moun- 
 tainous districts of Cumberland and Westmoreland.'" 
 
 " Cf. Turgot's "Libellus de Exordio Dunhelmensis Ec- 
 clesiae" {Bedford, 1732), p. 87, in " The History of St. Cuth- 
 bert," by the Very Rev. Monsignor C. Eyre (Burns, 1849), to 
 which work I shall have frequently to refer. Turgot's history 
 passes under the name of "Symeon Dunhelmensis." 
 
 yy Bede was fourteen years of age at the time of the saint's 
 death, and was thus one of St. Cuthbert's flock. 
 
 '^^ " A description or breife declaration of all the ancient 
 monuments, rites, and customs belonginge or beinge within 
 the monastical church of Durham before the suppression, 
 written in 1593." (Surtees Society), p. 55. 
 
 aaa jje was consecrated at York on Easter-day, 685, by 
 Archbishop Theodore. Cf. " Anglo-Saxon Chron." (Bohn's 
 ed., p. 329.) 
 
 bbb " Symeon Dunhelm.," p. 27. 
 
 <^'^<^ Monsignor Eyre says (" History of St. Cuthbert," p. 78) : 
 " Probably in giving this order about his body, the holy 
 man had in his mind the last words of Joseph, who, when 
 dying in Egypt, spoke to his brethren, and ' made them 
 swear to him, saying, God will visit you : carry my bones 
 with you out of this place ' (Gen. 1. 24). It is interesting to 
 note, in this connection, the following from "The Rites of 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Here, and in other parts of the district similarly 
 inaccessible to the savage pagan invaders, they 
 wandered, bearing about with them their sacred 
 burden, during seven years (875 — 883). 
 
 With this weary exodus we are not here con- 
 cerned, but I cannot forego, in passing, to quote 
 the following touching description of this strange 
 journeying/''"'' 
 
 " St. Cuthbert was borne about, for the space of 
 seven whole years, to and fro, upon the shoulders 
 of pious men, through trackless and waterless places, 
 and when no house afforded him a hospitable 
 roof, he remained under the covering of tents. How 
 blessed were those dwellers in tents that sheltered 
 so illustrious a guest. How happy the shoulders 
 that were found worthy to bear so sweet a 
 burden. Truly they that bore the weight of such 
 a burden were perfectly initiated in the hope of 
 the heavenly sweetness. They who performed so 
 heavenly a work of mercy were already made par- 
 takers with him of the heavenly glory. They might 
 be called the ' lowing kine ' of which we read in the 
 Book of Kings (i Sam. vi. 12), which, bearing the 
 ark of God upon a cart, took it the straight way 
 that leadeth from the land of the Philistines to 
 Bethsames, where the Bethsamites were reaping 
 wheat in the valley. For might they not be truly 
 called the 'kine that have calved' (v. 7), who for 
 the love of St. Cuthbert left their children and their 
 wives, and yoked themselves to carry his venerable 
 body? They 'lowed,' indeed, for the love of the 
 pledges which they had left at home, and at the 
 same time, daily and hourly, with entreaties and 
 tears, begged the prayers of Cuthbert for their 
 safety and their well-being. ' Turning not aside, 
 to the right hand or to the left ' (v. 12), they came 
 to Bethsames — i.e., the house of the sun — bearing 
 the cofhn with his incorrupt body, according to 
 the orders of the bishop and his brethren, whither- 
 soever he bade them. For the house of the sun of 
 righteousness is the monastery of that existing holy 
 church, which, in the valley of humility, possesses 
 the blessed Cuthbert, while she retains, too, his 
 meek precepts ; and in the valley of humble con- 
 versation reaps the seed of the virtue of justice, 
 while she imitates his example, and follows his 
 teaching." 
 
 This long wandering was terminated by the vic- 
 tories of Alfred, which restored peace to the chris- 
 tians of the north of England; and the church in 
 which the remains of the saint at last rested, and in 
 
 Durham " (p. 3) : "In the south alley end of the nine altars 
 there is a good glazed window" (the southern wheel-window), 
 "the which hath in it all the storye, life, and miracles of 
 that holy man, St. Cuthbert. In the north alley of the said 
 nine altars there is another goodly faire great glass window " 
 (the northern wheel-window), " called Joseph's window, the 
 which hath in it all the whole story of J oseph, most artificially 
 wrought in pictures, in fine coloured glass, according as it is 
 sett forth in the Bible, very good and godly to the beholders 
 thereof." 
 
 ddd Reginaldi Monachi Dunhelmensis Libellus," Surtees 
 Soc, 1835, cap. xiv., p. 20., given in Eyre's " St. Cuthbert," 
 p. 101. 
 
 which the episcopal sedes was then established, was 
 that of Chester-le-Strect, about six miles to the north 
 of Durham. Here a wooden church was erected 
 by the bishop Eardulf, which remained standing 
 until the year 1045, when it was replaced by a stone 
 edifice, by the directions of bishop ^^^gelric. 
 
 The body of the saint rested at Chester-le-Street 
 for one hundred and thirteen years, till, in the year 
 995, the incursions of the Danes again drove the 
 bishop Aldhune and his clergy from their quiet 
 home. This second wandering appears to have 
 lasted only a few months. It seems to have been 
 the intention of the bishop to deposit the remains 
 of the saint at Ripon, beside the body of St. Wil- 
 frid, but the danish war ceasing, the brethren set 
 out to return to Chester-le-Street. For no assignable 
 reason, however (if we reject the miraculous inci- 
 dent related by Turgot,^^* and by the author of the 
 " Rites of Durham " they stopped a few miles 
 short of their natural destination, and established 
 themselves upon the hill of Durham, then an in- 
 culta telhis, though having in its midst a small plain 
 which was under tillage. 
 
 Here was erected a temporary chapel (ecclesiola^ 
 of boughs. This was upon the site of the cloistei 
 of the existing church, " in the cloister garth, over 
 against the parlour dour, where through the monncks 
 was carried to be buried, which is nowe maid a re- 
 gister house,"*^'-'^ and the memory of its exact position 
 has thus been preserved to our own day. Bishop 
 Aldhune (Alwinus) at once set to work to erect a 
 more permanent building. 
 
 Concerning this church, into which the body of 
 the saint was solemnly translated in the year 999, 
 the monk Reginald, writing in the twelfth century, 
 has left us the following valuable information. 
 
 "In the white church" (for so was Aldhune's build- 
 ing termed, either from its being built of stone, or 
 perhaps from its being whitewashed externally, as 
 was common in early times'"'''') "there were two towers 
 of stone, as has been related to us by those who 
 had seen it, rising high in air. One of these con- 
 tained the choir, but the other stood at the western 
 extremity of the church, and they bore upon their 
 summits brazen pinnacles of extraordinary size." 
 
 The arrangement of the church, is thus clearly in- 
 dicated. It had its choir, not in the eastern limb, 
 but in accordance with the basilican traditions, as 
 worked out in the course of the early middle ages, 
 under the crossing bay. It had also the single 
 western tower, a peculiarly english feature, for 
 which we are not indebted to Italy or to Rome. 
 Reginald also mentions the enriched flat ceiling, 
 artijiciosa celaiura, which is again an inheritance 
 from the basilica, and very characteristic — as I have 
 
 " Symeon Dunhelm.," p. 141. p. 61. 
 
 egg " Rites of Durham," p. 59. 
 
 hhh " We find St. Wilfrid glorying in having washed the 
 York minster of his day ' whiter than snow ; ' and at Peter- 
 borough it vras the boast of one of the saxon abbats, that he 
 had so skilfully whitewashed his cathedral, that it appeared 
 as if cut out of a single stone." Cf. my father's " Lectures." 
 ii., p. 99. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 more than once had occasion to observe — of the early 
 medieval churches, and to a certain extent of our 
 english church architecture all through its history. 
 
 " When Harold lost his crown, and William pos- 
 sessed himself of the throne of England, the men 
 of Northumbria, who were always opposed to inno- 
 vations, as well in state as in church, for three years 
 refused him allegiance. Not being able to subdue 
 them by means of his generals, the Conqueror un- 
 dertook the task in person, in the year 1069. The 
 same year he advanced as far as York with his army, 
 laying waste all the country.""' 
 
 In consequence of these events the bishop Egel- 
 wine deemed it prudent to retire, bearing with him 
 the venerated remains of St. Cuthbert, thus a third 
 time a wanderer, to the church of Lindisfarne, at 
 this time half-ruined by the Danes."^ 
 
 These troubles, however, were soon at an end, 
 and in the following year (1070) the bishop and his 
 monks returned to Durham, solemnly reconciled the 
 white church, and entering it on the 24th day of 
 March, deposited the body of the saint in its former 
 resting-place. Thus ended the third, and last, flight 
 made with St. Cuthbert's body. 
 
 Aldhune's church was served by secular canons, 
 who, however, appear to have followed, in the church 
 services, the monastic customs of Lindisfarne.'''* In 
 1082 bishop Carileph, the second norman prelate, 
 with the sanction of pope Gregory VII., removed 
 the canons, and replaced them by benedictine 
 monks from Wearmouth and Jarrow. In the year 
 1093 he commenced the erection of the still exist- 
 ing church, which was consecrated by his successor 
 upon the feast of the beheadal of St. John Baptist 
 (August 29th), in the year 1104. 
 
 Of this event a very interesting account is pre- 
 served in the Historica Narraiio, printed in the 
 Acta Sanctorum, one portion of which I will venture 
 to introduce here. " When all, in their exultation, 
 had solemnly sung the Te Daim (in the saxon 
 church), and everything that was necessary had been 
 prepared with due respect, the holy body of the 
 saint was raised upon the shoulders of the bearers, 
 and the voices of the singers sounded, chanting 
 heavenly hymns in honour of Almighty God. Shrines 
 containing the relics of the other saints were carried 
 first in the procession : last was borne the venerable 
 body of the blessed bishop Cuthbert. 
 
 i» Eyre's "St. Cuthbert," p. 125. 
 
 jjj The descendants of those who had taken a part in one 
 or other of these three exodus were known, ever after, as the 
 Haliwork folk. It was their privilege to keep and defend the 
 corpse of St. Cuthbert, and in consideration of this service 
 they could not be called upon to go out of the bishopric to 
 fight either for king or bishop. Cf. Eyre's " St. Cuthbert," 
 p. 131. 
 
 kkk Lindisfarne — colonised, as we have seen, in the first in- 
 stance by monks from lona — followed originally the monastic 
 rule of St. Patrick, which St. Columba had brought with him 
 from Ireland. In later times it had become benedictine. The 
 same course had been adopted at Canterbury, where the rule 
 established by St. Augustine was that of St. Gregory, which 
 differed from others, in assigning to study the hours devoted 
 by other religious orders to manual labour, Cf. Eyre's "St. 
 Cuthbert," p. 14. 
 
 " As this was carried out through the door (of 
 Aldhune's church), with all the pomp of a splendid 
 ceremonial, the crowd of people, who were waiting 
 for it in the open air, burst into tears of joy, and all 
 pressed toward it, so that the bearers of the holy 
 body could scarcely move for the crowd, and the 
 voices of the singers were drowned by the loud and 
 mingled sounds proceeding from those that prayed, 
 that exulted, and that wept for joy. When they 
 had gone round the outside of the new church they 
 halted at its eastern end, and the bishop preached 
 there a sermon ; while those that stood by him ex- 
 plained to all the assembled people that they had 
 seen and had touched'" the miraculous body that 
 had continued incorrupt for 418 years. With fresh 
 joy they thanked God for vouchsafing to reward 
 their devotion with so great a manifestation of 
 heavenly grace. The day was now considerably 
 advanced, and the bishop, weaving into his dis- 
 course many things that had no reference to the 
 occasion, wearied not a few with the length of his 
 sermon. The sky had before this been so bright 
 that there was no appearance of rain in the heavens : 
 yet, on a sudden, the rain fell so copiously that 
 the brethren interrupted the discourse, lifted up the 
 coffin that contained the holy body, and carried 
 it in haste into the church. When it had been 
 borne in, the rain immediately ceased, as if to show 
 that it was not God's will that the holy body of 
 His servant should be kept so long out of holy 
 ground."""™ ~ 
 
 The church then consecrated was not completed 
 until many years later, but it still remains to us, 
 with only one important exception, just as it was 
 when finished, and it is undoubtedly the noblest 
 and the most complete example of the early norman 
 style which our country possesses. This church is 
 too well known to need illustration here,""" but 
 certain points seem to call for remark. 
 
 The first is the question, whether the church was 
 originally designed to have its central division( of 
 quire, transepts, and nave) vaulted. I have come 
 myself to the conclusion that it was not, but the 
 problem is not without its difficulties. 
 
 We must remember that the anterior presump- 
 tion is in favour of a flat, boarded, ceiling. With 
 the single exception of the little chapel erected by 
 Gundulph in the keep of London, no church in 
 England at this date, or for many a year later, had 
 its central areas ceiled in stone. In the next place 
 all the vaults of the central spaces are pointed in 
 
 "'Viz., both on that very morning, and also upon the pre- 
 vious examination of the remains, which had taken place a 
 few days earlier. 
 
 mmm \[ interesting to remark that the preacher who thus 
 wearied the patience of his auditors, was the notorious Ralph 
 Flambard, the unscrupulous minister of an equally notorious 
 king (Rufus). This is, as far as I know, the only instance 
 on record of a miraculous intervention to put an end to a 
 too-tedious sermon. One might wish it less rare. 
 
 Cf. my father's "Lectures," ii., p. 127, et seq., where a 
 plan, together with sketches of the architecture of the norman 
 church, is given. Avery complete plan, showing the position 
 (in the 15th century) of all the altars, is given in Eyre's " St. 
 Cuthbert," p. 207. 
 
The history of English church architecture. 
 
 section, and those of the eastern limb have the 
 early english dog-tooth ornament. Apart from the 
 existence of wliat would seem to be intended to 
 serve as vaulting-shafts, the design of the clerestory 
 does not at all suggest an intention to groin the 
 central spaces. Even in the existing vaults there 
 are no wall-ribs ; and it is remarkable that that 
 portion of the church which appears (from the 
 mouldings of its vaulting-ribs) to have been the first 
 in which the wide central area was groined in stone 
 — the north transept — is precisely that in which the 
 evidence of a design to ceil in wood is the most 
 unmistakeable. 
 
 We must remember that whether a flat boarded 
 ceiling, or a stone vault, was intended, in either case 
 the external and high-pitched roof would have been 
 erected first, and that upon its completion the church 
 could be at once used for purposes of worship. 
 
 The aisles were, beyond all question, designed to 
 be vaulted, yet the section of the groin-ribs of the 
 choir-aisles, and of the two aisle-bays west of the 
 crossing, is the same with those of the transepts, 
 which, as there is sufficiently clear evidence, were 
 from the first planned to be ceiled in wood. 
 
 It thus appears that although the aisles were de- 
 signed to be groined in stone, this work was not 
 actually carried into execution, even as far as two 
 bays west of the crossing, before a departure from 
 the original design of the transepts had been de- 
 cided on. 
 
 In those parts of the aisles which were thus the 
 first to be groined, the transverse section of the 
 vault is a semi-circle, while the diagonal ribs, which 
 would — theoretically — form an eUipse, are set out 
 to a segmental-circular curve. In the quire and 
 nave, however, the diagonal ribs form a semi-circular 
 curve, while that of the transverse arches (the true 
 section of the vault) is of a segmental-pointed 
 sweep. The cause of this somewhat ungraceful 
 line is to be attributed to the fact, already noticed, 
 that the timber roofs, with their tie-beams, had been 
 erected long before, and thus imposed, in the cen- 
 tral spaces, a limit of height, which was felt (by the 
 later architect) as a restriction here, although in the 
 aisles, always designed to be vaulted, they allowed 
 amply all the height required. 
 
 It, therefore, seems clear that at the time at 
 which the wooden roofs were executed, and the 
 church (in great part) became serviceable for the 
 purposes for which it was erected, it was the in- 
 tention to vault its aisles, but to ceil in wood its 
 central spaces. 
 
 Some arguments may, however, be adduced in 
 favour of a contrary conclusion. The first is the 
 singular narrowness of the nave and quire of the 
 church, in proportion to its aisles. This becomes 
 the more remarkable when we observe that the tran- 
 septs are some eight or nine feet wider, although the 
 width of their eastern aisle is precisely the same as 
 that of the nave-aisles. Now it is in the transepts — 
 so exceptionally wide, as regards the other members 
 of the cross — that the evidence of an intention to 
 ceil in wood is the most obvious. 
 
 Again, the piers are alternately cylindrical and 
 clustered, the clustered piers having three shafts 
 on either side (north and south), which, toward the 
 aisles, carry the vaulting-ribs, but which, toward the 
 central areas, would have had nothing to bear unless 
 vaulting was intended, here, as in the aisles. 
 
 This alternation of circular piers, bearing the 
 wall above and the springers of the aisle-vaulting, 
 with clustered columns, designed, apparently, to 
 receive the springers of the great central vault, 
 suggests at once the sex-partite system of groin- 
 ing. Unfortunately, however, it can be proved that 
 this system was not in the mind of the original 
 designer. 
 
 In the first place, owing to the narrowness of the 
 nave and quire (in relation to the width of their 
 respective bays), the double severies are very much 
 longer from east to west than from north to south, 
 and thus the very difficulty of an oblongated plan, 
 which it was the object of the sex-partite scheme to 
 evade, is created by the very arrangement which 
 appears, at first sight, to be dictated by it. 
 
 In the next place, this duplicate distribution of 
 the piers is interrupted at the western extremity ol 
 the church, by the occurrence of a single bay. 
 
 The nave consists of three double-bays and a 
 half. " This," says my father,°°° " seems an imper- 
 fection, for four couplets, clear of the tower-bay, 
 would appear a more perfect arrangement." More 
 than this, a definite number of couplets is essential 
 to the sex-partite arrangement. 
 
 The question is rendered still more puzzling by 
 reference to the church of Lindisfarne, Durham's 
 " little sister," as regards architectural style, al- 
 though her mother in point of historical fact. This 
 church, of which the ruins still exist, exhibits a 
 similar alternation of cylindrical and clustered 
 piers.PPP but it is obvious from the arrangement of 
 the latter, as well as from the distribution of the 
 whole design, that it was never intended to vault 
 its central areas. 
 
 It appears from the charters of bishop Carileph, 
 that remains of the old saxon church upon the 
 Holy Island were in existence in 1084. The priory 
 church, which now stands in ruins, was begun by 
 him in the same year in which he commenced 
 his great work at Durham, and like that, it was 
 completed under his successor, Ralph Flambard. 
 " From the time of its completion until the time of 
 its suppression" (by Henry VIII.), "the mother- 
 church of Durham appointed for her branch-house 
 at Holy Island a regular succession of priors and 
 of monks.'"""' 
 
 This church is, therefore, particularly interesting 
 as having been erected by the same prelates to 
 whom we owe that greater church which, " huge 
 and vast, looks down upon the Wear." I give a 
 plan of it ; and a comparison of its remains with the 
 
 000 " Lectures on Medieval Architecture,'' ii., p. 127. 
 
 PPP Cf. the plan which I give from Eyre's "St Cuthhert," 
 p. 229 ; and the views in Britten's "Architectural Antiqui- 
 ties," iv., p. 58. 
 
 «<ii Eyre's " St. Cuthbert," p. 229. 
 
io8 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 cathedral of Durham leads to the conclusion that 
 the original designer of both had, in planning the 
 larger church, no very clear notion of how the cen- 
 tral areas were to be ceiled. At Lindisfarne he was 
 quite sure that vaulted groins were beyondthe means 
 of the community, and he designed the church ac- 
 cordingly. At Durham, he did not expect that 
 means would ever be available for groining the 
 transepts, and he therefore planned those of the 
 usual ample width. But the central spaces of the 
 choir and of the nave, he hoped, might some day 
 be vaulted in, although he was, probably, himself 
 uncertain as to how this could be done, and he ac- 
 cordingly set out these parts with a comparatively 
 narrow span, and provided, in the design of the 
 alternate piers, shafts which might serve for vault- 
 ing should it ever be found possible to cover in 
 with stone so wide a space. The vaulting was not 
 actually completed until about 1240, nearly 150 
 years later. 
 
 The next feature to which I would draw atten- 
 tion is the singular flutings — vertical, spiral, and 
 cancellated — which ornament the massive cylindri- 
 cal columns which alternate with the clustered piers. 
 Much of the awful weirdness of this tremendous 
 interior is due to these strange and colossal decora- 
 tions. I am convinced that they are to be traced to 
 the traditions of saxon art. Unquestionably the 
 three churches which most conspicuously exhibit 
 them — Waltham,"' Lindisfajne, and Durham — are 
 precisely those in which we should expect to find 
 saxon influence unusually strong. 
 
 The last point to be mentioned, is the question 
 of the original form of the eastern end of the nor- 
 man church. In the case both of Lindisfarne and 
 of Durham, this has given place, in later times, 
 to a rectangular termination, which is, in the latter 
 church, formed by that magnificent eastern transept 
 known as " the chapel of the nine altars." 
 
 The question therefore arises, was the church of 
 Carileph terminated with three apses, as at St. 
 Alban's ; or was the aisle continued, as a proces- 
 sion path, around a central apse, as in Gundulph's 
 chapel in the White Tower, at Norwich, at Bury, and 
 elsewhere ? The doubt might be easily set at rest 
 by excavation, but at present the evidence upon 
 the point is imperfect. I am myself inclined to 
 believe, after a careful examination upon the spot, 
 that the aisle was carried round the great apse. 
 
 That there was an apse is clear, not only from 
 the very strong presumption arising from what is 
 
 At Waltham Abbey, as every one Inows, was interred 
 the last of our saxon kings, Harold Infelix. The same fea- 
 ture is to be seen in the cathedral of Norwich ; in the abbey 
 of Dunfermline, founded by St. Margaret, sister to Edgar 
 Etheling ; on a smaller scale, in the earliest portion of the 
 crypt at Canterbury (cf. Willis's " Canterbury Cathedral," 
 fig. 12); and what is still more significant of its origin, in 
 the undoubtedly saxon crypt at Repton, Derbyshire (cf. my 
 father's "Lectures," ii., p. 51). There is a tradition in the 
 church of Waltham that tliese channelings were filled with 
 bronze-gilt bands. I can observe no trace of anything of the 
 sort having existed at Durham, but at Waltham, oddly enough, 
 there are some marks which may, possibly, have had to do 
 with the fitting-in of such metal-work. 
 
 known of other early norman churches, but from 
 some pieces of direct evidence. 
 
 The first is the actual existence of indications 
 of a circular sweep in the pavement of the saint's 
 chapel, which occupied the eastern portion of the 
 norman church. The next is a peculiarity in the 
 treatment of the external wall-arcading of the aisle- 
 walls in the bays which, north and south, abut 
 upon the eastern transept. The third is a curious 
 passage in the "Rites of Durham" (p. 3): "Next to 
 these nine altars was the goodly monument of Saint 
 Cuthbert, adjoyninge to the quire''' and the high 
 altar on the west side, reachinge towards the nine 
 altars on the east, and toward the north and south 
 containinge the breadth of the quire, m quadrant 
 form, in the midst whereof his sacred shrine was 
 exalted," etc. 
 
 To a proper appreciation of this statement, we 
 must remember that the area of the saint's chapel 
 is raised (as at Westminster) some six feet above 
 the floor-level of the adjacent aisles, and of the 
 eastward transept. It appears from this passage 
 to have projected eastward into the chapel of the 
 nine altars in a semi-circular form. 
 
 So unusual an arrangement admits of only one 
 explanation. When, in the thirteenth century, the 
 apse of Carileph's church was removed, the " quad- 
 rant form" which it had imposed was retained, and 
 so continued within the memory of our author, who 
 wrote in 1593. The position of the shrine, indeed, 
 which is marked, to this day, by a slab of Froster- 
 ley marble, was such that it was impossible but that 
 the raised area, upon which it stood, should project 
 into the chapel of the nine altars in some form or 
 another,'" and the fact that the shrine stood so far 
 to the eastward of the raised area, inclines me to 
 the conviction that there was, in the original nor- 
 man plan, a circumscribed aisle.""" 
 
 In the account of the cure of abbat Richard 
 d'Aubeny, to which I have already referred, there 
 occurs incidentally, a notice of the feretrum, or sub- 
 structure of marble upon which the shrine itself 
 
 5" It would, as I think, tend to clearness, if we were 
 habitually to speak of that portion of the fabric of a church in 
 which the choir have their station as the quire, reserving the 
 word choir for the body of clerics who occupy the same. 
 
 It has now lost its " quadrant form," by additions which 
 have brought it to a rectangular contour, but its eastern 
 extremity is still, as ever, advanced some fifteen feet into the 
 eastern transept. When this alteration of plan took place, 
 I am not aware. During the middle ages the circular sweep 
 of the elevated area was surmounted by a grille of ironwork, 
 upon the top of which were wrought " very fine candlesticks 
 of iron, like unto socketts, which had light set in them be- 
 fore day, that every monke might have the more light to see 
 to read upon theire bookes at the said nine altars when they 
 said masse, and also to give light to all others that came 
 thither to heare and see the divine service" ("Rites of 
 Durham," p. 5). Subsequently to the suppression, possibly 
 under the influence of Cosin, an open screen of oak, of what 
 it is the f.ishion to term " debased work," was here erected, 
 and remained until the year, 1839 (cf. Eyre's " St. Cuthbert," 
 p. 225). Whether this followed the semi-circular or the 
 quadrangular plan, I am not aware. 
 
 Since it is improbable that the shrine would have been 
 placed with its eastern extremity within a few feet of what 
 would have been the solid wall of an aisleless apse. 
 
The history of English church architecture. 
 
 rested, which is interesting. The author mentions 
 that, " on account of its great size, it was supported 
 upon nine pillars." From the " Rites of Durham " 
 (p. 3) we learn that it had, at its western extremity, 
 " a little altar adjoyned to it, for mass to be said on 
 upon the great and holy feast of St. Cuthbert's day, 
 in Lent." It is clear, therefore, that, as in the 
 case of the feretry of St. Edward, at Westminster, 
 this altar, with its retabulum, formed the support of 
 the western end, and that the structure had four 
 bays at its sides, and two at its eastern end — its 
 plan was, in short, that of two squares, the length 
 being twice the breadth. 
 
 The description which the author of the " Rites " 
 has left us is so curious, and brings so vividly be- 
 fore the imagination the arrangement of the whole 
 shrine, that the reader will not, I think, be disposed 
 to blame me, if I conclude my notice of this great 
 church by transcribing the entire passage. 
 
 In the centre of the raised area, which had, to the 
 west of it, the high altar, and to the east of the 
 chapel of the nine altars, into which it protruded in 
 " a quadrant form," stood the elevated feretrum, 
 having for its support, as we have seen, nine 
 columns, together with the retable of the small altar 
 of the saint, which stood at its western end. Upon 
 this structure, which is described as of green marble, 
 rested, in the position to which abbat D'Aubeny's 
 crippled hand had helped to raise it, the coffin in 
 which the saint's incorrupt body, for four centuries, 
 reposed. This was protected by a cover, " beinge," 
 as our author tells us,^'"' "of wainscott, whereunto 
 was fastned unto every corner of the said cover, to 
 a loope of iron, a strong cord, which cord was all 
 fest together over the midst over the cover. And 
 a strong rope was fest unto the loopes or bindinge 
 of the said cordes, which runn upp and downe in a 
 puUy under the vault which was above over St. 
 Cuthbert's Feretorie, for the drawinge upp of the 
 cover of the said shrine, and the said rope was 
 fastned to a loope of iron in the north piller of the 
 ferretory, haveinge six silver bells fastned to the 
 said rope, soe as when the cover of the same was 
 drawinge upp, the belles did make such a good 
 sound that itt did stirr all the people's harts that 
 was within the church to repaire unto itt, and to 
 make ther praiers to God and holy saint Cuthbert, 
 and that the behoulders might see the glourious 
 ornaments thereof. Also the cover had att every 
 corner two ringes made fast, which did runn upp 
 and downe on the fower staves of iron, when it was 
 in drawinge upp, which staves were fast to every 
 corner of the marble that Saint Cuthbert's coffin 
 did lye upon, which cover was all gilded over, and 
 of eyther syde was painted fower lively images 
 curious to the beholders : and on the east end was 
 
 "v Cf. Eyre's " St. Cuthbert," p. 175. 
 
 www -j-j^g fi_retru?n of Carileph remained unaltered until the 
 dissolution, and it is therefore to this that our author refers. 
 It was removed in November, 1541, by John Symson, who 
 was paid two shillings for the job, which took him four days 
 to complete. {Cf. Eyre's " St. Cuthbert," p. 186.) 
 " Rites of Durham," p. 4. 
 
 painted the picture of our Saviour sittinge on a 
 rainbowe to geive judgement, very lively, to the be- 
 houlders : and on the west end of it was the picture 
 of our Lady, and our Saviour on her knee. And on 
 the topp of the cover, from end to end, was most 
 fyne (brattishing of) carved worke, cutt owte with 
 dragons and other beasts, most artificially wrought : 
 and the inside was vernished with a fyne sanguine 
 colour, that it might be more perspicuous to the be- 
 houlders : and att every corner of the cover was a 
 locke to keepe itt close, but att such tymes as was 
 fitt to show itt, that the beholders might see the 
 glorye and ornaments thereof." 
 
 This early norman work, illustrated by the 
 churches to which I have been referring, has, it 
 seems to me, a certain high quality which we miss 
 somewhat in the more advanced stages of the style. 
 There is a severe dignity about it which is very im- 
 pressive, and the proportions of piers and arches, and 
 often of the whole building, have a character which 
 recalls somewhat the traditions of ancient roman art. 
 
 Where there are aisles, these were, as we have 
 seen, vaulted in rubble stone, without ribs, and 
 plastered. The surfaces thus obtained are well 
 adapted to receive coloured enrichments, and both 
 the mode of groining and the system of decoration 
 applied to it, are in their principles classic, at least 
 as much as medieval. The wider span of the nave 
 was not, as a rule, vaulted, the builders feeling 
 themselves, perhaps, unequal to covering in in stone 
 the larger span. 
 
 We have, however, in the chapel of the tower of 
 London an exception which shows how fine an 
 effect our architects were capable of producing in 
 those cases in which they were able to vault in the 
 whole of a building. I would draw especial atten- 
 tion to this chapel, because, though so small in 
 scale, it is so thoroughly satisfactory. 
 
 It was built by Gundulph, a monk of Bee, 
 and the friend of Lanfranc, by whom, in 1077, 
 he was consecrated bishop of Rochester. If St. 
 Alban's abbey shows us what the early Normans 
 could produce, when working upon the grandest 
 scale, this little chapel shows us that they could 
 be equally successful upon the smallest.^^'' It con- 
 sists of a choir and aisles — the aisle, which is re- 
 turned round the apse, being in two stories. The 
 whole is vaulted in rubble, the central space with 
 a barrel-vault, termmating in a semi-dome. The 
 upper aisle has also a waggon-vault, but the lower 
 one is groined. There is no clerestory, but the 
 same plan might, of course, be applied to a clere- 
 storied church, using a groined roof instead of a 
 barrel- vault. The effect of the double aisle, one story 
 above the other, is exceedingly good, and serves to 
 show how, even in a small church, galleries may be 
 introduced with positive advantage in point of 
 effect. Nothing can be simpler than this little 
 building, and nothing in its way more satisfactory. 
 
 yyy When I first knew this unique chapel, it served as a 
 lumber-room, and it retained every one of its original features 
 —with the exception, of course, of its altar and fittings, and of 
 
lio 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 As a rule, however, the central spaces of our 
 norman churches were, as already observed, un- 
 vaulted. The roofs were not, however, exposed to 
 view, but were covered by a flat boarded ceiling — 
 following in this the tradition of the roman basilica. 
 These flat ceilings are a very characteristic feature of 
 the english style, and it is the more necessary to 
 call attention to them, because in the great majority 
 of cases they have been replaced, in later times, by 
 stone vaulting, or by open timber roofing. 
 
 It is important in judging of the effect of a 
 norman interior to have this fact in view. Peter- 
 borough cathedral retains the original treatment, 
 though it has been renewed and repainted from 
 time to time. St. Michael's church, Hildesheim, 
 retains its original ceiling complete with its 
 paintings, which are exceedingly fine, and give a 
 very high notion of the effect which such ceilings 
 are capable of producing.^^^ Lanfranc's nave at 
 Canterbury was thus ceiled, for Gervase, writing 
 in the twelfth century, alludes to the " well-painted 
 ceiling " which concealed too long the fire which 
 was consuming the roof above.^**^ 
 
 This treatment of the central areas was retained 
 far into the thirteenth century. The abbeys of 
 Buildwas, Fountains, Selby, Whitby, Old Malton, 
 Holy Trinity at York, and numerous other great 
 churches, were thus covered. 
 
 Even when, in the thirteenth century, waggon or 
 cradle-roofs of trussed rafters came in vogue, these 
 were always boarded below the rafters. Some of 
 the roofs even of fourteenth-century date are flat 
 in pitch, as is the nave roof of Sparsholt church, 
 Berks ; where the chancel, also of this century, 
 appears to have had a flat boarded ceiling beneath 
 a roof of higher pitch. Haslingfield church, near 
 Cambridge, and St. Martin's, at Leicester, have also 
 retained low-pitched roofs of the decorated period. 
 
 Ornamental open-roofs of high pitch were, as a 
 matter of fact, of later introduction, and it is worth 
 noticing that they did not continue in fashion 
 for very long. Except in some particular districts, 
 they soon gave place to the flat-pitched roofs of 
 the perpendicular period, which are virtually a 
 return to the treatment adopted by the norman 
 builders. 
 
 I cannot help thinking that this anglo-norman 
 preference for flat ceilings was not due merely to 
 want of skill on the part of the builders, or to a 
 distrust of their ability to vault over large spaces. 
 We may ascribe it rather to a saxon tradition 
 which the conquering race was unable, or unwilling, 
 to break up. 
 
 The choice lay, it will be seen, not between the 
 flat ceiling and the groined-roof, but between the 
 former and a stone barrel-vault ; and any one who 
 
 the coloured decorations which once adorned its walls and 
 vaults. The attention recently directed to it has, most un- 
 fortunately, led to its restoration under the direction of incom- 
 petent persons, and it has now lost much of its interest. 
 
 is^z A painted ceiling of this kind has been put up of late 
 years in Waltham abbey with good effect. 
 
 aaaa ggg the passage translated from Gervase's history in 
 Willis's " Canterbury Cathedral," p. 33. 
 
 has seen the somewhat gloomy and depressing 
 effect of a plain waggon-vault upon a large scale, 
 will see that there was much to be said, on merely 
 aesthetic grounds, for the choice made by the 
 english architects. 
 
 On the continent stone barrel-vaults were used 
 in preference to flat ceilings, and in the section of 
 these vaults is to be found, probably, the first ex- 
 amples of the use of the pointed arch, adopted of 
 course to gain greater strength and to relieve the 
 abutments. This plan allows only of a very small 
 clerestory, and there is often none at all. 
 
 A comparison of the nave of Peterborough, for 
 example, with that of the church of St. Sernin, at 
 Toulouse, will illustrate this point. The pier arches 
 and triforia of the two are not unlike, but St. Ser- 
 nin's has no clerestory, and is roofed with a waggon- 
 vault, the triforia being roofed with half- waggons; 
 while Peterborough has windows in the rear wall of 
 the triforium, an ample clerestory, and a flat ceiling. 
 The effects of the two are in striking contrast : the 
 one is as gloomy as a building well can be, and im- 
 pressive from its gloom: the] other is full of light, 
 and most attractive from its brightness.'''''''' 
 
 In those waggon-vaulted churches which have 
 clerestories, the windows are small, and are of neces- 
 sity placed a long way below the highest point of the 
 interior — the apex, that is, of the vault. The effect is 
 therefore, even in this case, very gloomy. The flat 
 ceilings, however, allowed of a spacious clerestory, 
 introducing the light at the highest point of the 
 interior. We may well understand that the english 
 builders were unwilling to give up the more cheer- 
 ful effect thus produced, even for the sake of the 
 greater solemnity and dignity, as well as the 
 diminished risk of fire, which the waggon-roof un- 
 doubtedly secures. 
 
 This early style, if we take into account the works 
 of the same date upon the continent, supplies every 
 feature which a complete system of architecture 
 can require, and I cannot but think that, even at 
 the present day, there is much to be learnt from 
 this thoroughly masculine mode of building. I 
 speak especially of the early form of the norman 
 and romanesque style, rather than of its later and 
 more elaborated phases. 
 
 We find in it the barrel-vault, with or without cross 
 arches ; the groined vault in its simplest form, with- 
 out ribs ; and last, though not least, the dome. It 
 is in the churches of Perigord that this grand feature 
 is found, and although they lie out of the main line of 
 our subject, which is engUsh church architecture, yet 
 some notice of these interesting buildings seems re- 
 quired in order to complete our survey of a style, to 
 the merits of which I would draw especial attention. 
 
 bbbb " I often wonder," says my father {"Personal and Pro- 
 fessional Recollections," p. 300), "that the interior of Peter- 
 borough cathedral does not excite to stronger expressions of 
 admiration. It seems to me, next to Durham, to be the finest 
 norman interior that we have. Not only the nave, but also 
 the transepts, with the remarkable variation between their 
 eastern and western sides, have always filled me with thu 
 highest admiration, and this is renewed by every visit." 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Ill 
 
 At Perigueux we find examples of domical con- 
 struction, both of the earlier and of the later roman- 
 esque ; and here, too, the simplicity of the early 
 examples is not improved upon in the more elabo- 
 rate and later specimens. 
 
 The type of these churches is, on plan, a greek 
 cross. Five square bays, of very large dimensions, 
 are formed by immense plain piers of masonry, 
 unrelieved by any shafts or mouldings, having plain 
 imposts, and corresponding in treatment with the 
 nave piers of St. Alban's. Upon these piers rest 
 vast arches with plain, unenriched, soffits. Between 
 these arches rise the pendentives of the dome, by 
 which the square area is reduced to a circle of the 
 same diameter. A simple impost, or string, crowns 
 and unites these pendentives, from which rises a 
 plain, hemispherical or slightly pointed, dome, 
 pierced in its lower portion by small and plain 
 window-openings. 
 
 Nothing can be simpler than such a composi- 
 tion, and yet, from the grandeur of their scale, 
 and the excellence of their proportions the effect 
 of these churches is exceedingly impressive. That 
 such buildings are capable of receiving art-en- 
 richments of the highest order we may see in St. 
 Mark's, at Venice. This church is of the same plan 
 and scale, exactly, as the cathedral of Perigueux, 
 but the wall-faces, which are plain masonry in the 
 french example, are, in the case of St. Mark's, 
 veneered with slabs of rich marbles, and the arch 
 soffits, the pendentives, and the domes are enriched 
 with the most striking mosaics. The effect of the 
 one is as impressive, from its gorgeous magnificence, 
 as is that of the other, from its cheerful simplicity. 
 
 Taking the style as a whole, it appears to me to 
 furnish valuable suggestions for modem architec- 
 ture. There is in it the smallest possible amount 
 of architectural ornament. The whole is a matter 
 of building rather than of architecture, and such 
 churches require little beyond careful proportioning 
 to make them most imposing. 
 
 The whole work might be executed in brick, like 
 St. Alban's, and plastered, and as no materials and 
 no skilled labour would be required, beyond what a 
 rail way- bridge demands, we should be able to raise 
 churches, of great size and massive construction, 
 at small expense. We should thus be working in 
 accordance with the conditions of the present day, 
 in which we find every facility for building, but no 
 native genius for architectural detail. At the same 
 time, such buildings would offer every opportunity 
 for ornamentation by painting or mosaics, by 
 marble veneering or terra-cotta enrichments ; or by 
 the introduction of panel-paintings, in triptychs, or 
 in frames of wood or of marble. Thus we should 
 be using the building-facilities which we certainly 
 possess, and the sort of art in which we are not 
 deficient, instead of striving after a more strictly 
 architectural style, at which we seem singularly 
 inapt. 
 
 Of course such buildings need not be in the 
 norman style. So far as they had any definite style, 
 this may be either round-arched or pointed, late 
 
 gothic or renaissance. But their principal cha- 
 racteristic would be the absence of any pronounced 
 architectural style, and an effect dependent chiefly 
 upon noble proportions and fine colour. 
 
 As an illustration of what I mean, I cannot do 
 better than refer to the well-known church of Roslyn 
 near Edinburgh. This is not, as it is commonly 
 called, a chapel, but the quire of an unfinished 
 church. It was founded by Sir William St. Clair, 
 and was commenced in 1446. The works ceased 
 upon the death of the founder, in 1484, but it is 
 clear that it was designed to have had a nave 
 (roofed like the quire, with a stone barrel-vault) 
 thirty-seven feet in the clear — as wide, in fact, as the 
 quire and its aisles, — from which it was to be sepa- 
 rated by a transept of the same large span. It is a 
 subject of deep regret that this magnificent plan 
 was never completed, owing, no doubt, to the parsi- 
 mony of Sir William's heirs. The quire is, however, 
 complete, and is a most original and exceedingly 
 able example of the style of the Scottish architec- 
 ture of the fifteenth century. Its eastern extremity is 
 square, with a procession-path, and chapels beyond 
 it, arranged upon a rectangular plan, of which we 
 may see examples, of the thirteenth century, at Glas- 
 gow cathedral, and at abbey Dore, in Herefordshire. 
 With this exception, and with the omission of the 
 upper aisle, it is, however, strikingly similar in con- 
 ception to the chapel of bishop Gundulph, in the 
 keep of London, and it is thus very valuable, as show- 
 ing how a norman idea may be translated, by a man 
 of genius, into the latest phase of the gothic style. In 
 one respect it is even simpler (and we may almost 
 say earlier) in point of construction than its roman- 
 esque prototype. In Gundulph's little gem, the 
 lower aisle is groined. At Roslyn the aisle is covered 
 in by a succession of transverse barrel-vaults, whose 
 springings are carried by lintols, the really arched 
 construction of which is very cleverly masked. I 
 know myself of only one other example of such a 
 treatment, and this occurs in the upper aisle of the 
 fine thirteenth-century church of Mantes, upon the 
 Seine. In this instance the apparent lintol is a true 
 one, and is supported by a series of small columns. 
 
 This beautiful work is well deserving of a more 
 careful study than it has hitherto received. It is, 
 to my mind, extremely suggestive, as showing how 
 independent of architectural style are constructive 
 principles. The building is as romantic in the 
 story of the circumstances which gave occasion to 
 its erection, as it is in the masterly fantasy of its 
 design. The popular instinct, always true in such 
 cases, has ever done justice to its high merit, but 
 the professional students of our art have neglected 
 to give it the attention which it well deserves, in 
 consequence of that stupid prejudice, which would 
 restrict the admiration of the nineteenth century — 
 by an artificial and arbitrary rule — to the buildings 
 which were carried out in the thirteenth. 
 
 Great as are the merits of the works of the twelfth 
 and thirteenth centuries, I have no hesitation in 
 saying, that there is no building of those great 
 ages, of anything like the same dimensions, which 
 
1 12 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 display nobler invention, or greater constructive 
 skill, than this. Had the original design been com- 
 pleted, this church would have been one of the 
 wonders of Christendom. 
 
 I do not propose to follow in detail the history 
 of the norman style in its later stages, partly be- 
 cause I think that its earlier variety is the more 
 interesting, and, for ourselves, the more sugges- 
 tive, and also because the study of its advance 
 will not greatly help us to understand the inven- 
 tion of pointed architecture. Two points, however, 
 seem to me to be, in this view, of interest. 
 
 The first is, the constant tendency towards lofti- 
 ness of proportion. The second is, the importance 
 which groined vaulting gradually assumed, and the 
 dominant part which this constructional element 
 came to play in determining the course of architec- 
 tural developement. Upon this latter point I shall 
 have, in the course of the following chapter, to dwell 
 somewhat in detail. 
 
 The characteristics of the advanced norman style 
 are known to the veriest tyro in architectural know- 
 
 ledge ; and in spite of a certain interest which they 
 possess, they do not seem to be in themselves very 
 attractive. Wherever the style differs from the 
 contemporary romanesque of the continent, it ap- 
 pears to me to differ for the worse ; and its truly 
 grand features are those which it has in common 
 with the corresponding architecture of France, and 
 of Germany. 
 
 The real glory of the norman period lies in the 
 number and the vastness of the churches with which 
 it enriched our land. " Nearly every cathedral and 
 great abbey was rebuilt on a stupendous scale : new 
 cathedrals and new abbeys were founded, and new 
 churches of all grades, from these vast temples down 
 to the smallest village church, erected throughout 
 the length and breadth of the country.""" Few 
 periods, probably, in the world's history have been 
 marked by the construction of buildings so " mul- 
 titudinous and so vast." 
 
 "cc "Lectures on Medieval Architecture" (Sir G. Gilbert 
 Scott), ii., 90. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 113 
 
 DISCURSUS 
 
 ON THE HISTORY OF THE CHASUBLE. 
 
 A FEW remarks on the history of the vestment peculiar to the christian ministry will not be 
 out of place here, the more so as the variations observable in its form in different countries 
 and times have a certain relation to the general course of ecclesiological progress, which they 
 serve to illustrate. 
 
 It is impossible to separate the study of church architecture from that of church ritual, and 
 of this latter, or — speaking more accurately — of the ceremonial which is its necessary accom- 
 paniment, the sacerdotal vesture forms a necessary part. 
 
 This venerable habit, appropriated originally to the Jewish pontiff alone, but now imposed, 
 at his ordination, upon every christian priest, had its origin, as we have seen, from the " pattern 
 shewed to Moses in the mount " ^ upon that memorable day when " Sinai was altogether in a 
 smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire." ^ 
 
 There is no reason whatever to believe that this vestment, in its earliest form, was a seamless 
 one, or that it ever consisted of a mere flat circular disk of cloth, or other fabric, pierced by 
 a central head-hole. Some modern theorists have, indeed, assumed this to have been its 
 primitive shape, but there is no authority for such a supposition, which is disproved by the 
 obviously absurd results of its practical application.'^ 
 
 The true conception of the chasuble is that of a semi-circular piece of some woven material, 
 folded in two, so as to form a quadrant, the two edges of which are sewn together from the 
 circumference up to the centre, with the exception of a small portion at the summit of the 
 angle left unsewn for the passage of the head.** 
 
 A vestment thus designed has but one seam, and this will form a vertical line, extending 
 from the front lower margin of the head-hole, downwards to the circumferent hem ; a line 
 which, in the language of anatomy, would be termed the front mesial line of the figure. 
 
 It is therefore an essential and a characteristic feature of the chasuble that it has a front 
 vertical seam. In accordance with the rule — instinctive where an art-sense exists — that 
 
 " Heb. viii. 5. " Ex. xix. 18. 
 
 " See, for example, the diagram entitled " A chasuble opened out," on pi. ii. of Pugin's " Glossary of Ecclesias- 
 tical Ornament," in which is represented such a form as never has been, nor perhaps could be, worn. The 
 grotesque arrangement of the Y cross, amounting in fact to a caricature, is noticeable. Such a blunder is 
 pardonable enough in a work published in 1844, but it is somewhat amusing to see it reproduced, thirty years 
 later, in M. VioUet-le-Duc's " Dictionnaire raissonn^ du mobilier fran^ais," iii., p. 143, and in other works of as re- 
 cent a date. 
 
 * In practice it is necessary to cut away a little of the material about the head-hole, and also to make the 
 front of the vestment a trifle shorter than the back, although I doubt whether this latter modification would be 
 required except where the custom of genuflection prevailed. 
 
 Q 
 
"4 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 decoration shall accentuate construction, this seam has been, from the earliest times, enriched 
 by braids and embroideries, forming what is termed " the pillar." Thus the vestment in use 
 in the roman church has the cross — which is derived, as we shall presently see, from the 
 " pillar " — upon the front of it,^ and those english monuments of ecclesiastics, in which the 
 Y cross does not appear, almost always exhibit this frontal orphrey/ 
 
 The so-called "pillar" upon the front of the vestment is therefore its more important 
 decoration. 
 
 But although this is all that is required to the ideal of the chasuble — namely, a cone-like 
 form, having a head-hole at its apex and a frontal suture — in practice it is necessary to consider 
 the width of the material to be used, and its economical employment. To these purely prac- 
 tical considerations, and to the modes in which they have been dealt with, are to be attributed, 
 as appears to me, those two types of the chasuble, commonly known as the roman and the 
 old-english. 
 
 This latter expression would, however, be misleading. In the first place, the existence in 
 this country of a type of vestment, differing from that which is traditional in Rome, is suffi- 
 cient of itself to show that the form was not introduced by St. Augustine and the roman 
 missionaries to the Saxons, but that it belongs to an earlier date, and is, like the square 
 east-ends of our chancels, and like so many peculiarities of our native rituals, derived from 
 the customs of the ancient british church. And, in the second place, this particular form of 
 the chasuble is not by any means confined to our own land. It was in use in the north of 
 France, in the Low Countries, in Germany, upon the shores of the Baltic, and possibly even 
 in Spain. 
 
 St. Regnobert's chasuble at Bayeux, and St. Thomas's at Sens, are examples of the use 
 of the Y cross in France. In Shaw's " Dresses and Decorations of the Middle Ages " (i., pi. 29) 
 there is another and a later instance, from the abbey of St. Genevieve. The same work 
 (ii., pi. 67) has another example from a flemish illumination. The Y cross is also shown in 
 the " Exhumation of St. Hubert " in the National Gallery, a work of the dutch school attributed 
 to Dierick Bouts, who died in 1475. More interesting still is the appearance of the same form 
 upon the chasuble of the prelate in Ruben's " Conversion of St. Bavon," of which there is a 
 study, by the master, in the National Gallery. The Y-crossed vestment of Ruben's picture is 
 not unlike a very splendid one which is preserved in the sacristy at Xanten, in Guelderland. 
 In King's " Study Book of Medieval Architecture " there are figured several examples from 
 the churches of Lubeck (iv., pis. 50, 57, 60, 61), and at St. Mary's College at Oscott there is 
 a medieval picture, said to be Spanish, in which the same form is represented. It would be 
 curious to work out, as might be done, the exact limits of the wide area over which the 
 Y-crossed chasuble once prevailed. 
 
 Thus if the more normal type be termed the latin, this other may be considered as the 
 trans-alpine, or perhaps the hispano-gallican form. Names, however, are of little consequence 
 provided it be clearly understood, first, that this peculiar model in no sense belongs exclu- 
 sively to our own country ; that in strictness it is not english, but british ; and secondly, that 
 the differences between it and the roman pattern results from considerations, not doctrinal, 
 but sartorial. 
 
 e Fornici : " Institutiones Liturgies," p. 46. 
 
 f For example, the brasses of the bishops Goodrich (a.d '554) in Ely Cathedral, and Pursglove (a.d. 1579) in 
 Tideswell church, Derbyshire. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 It is commonly supposed that these two types of the planeta are distinguished by the form 
 of the cross embroidered upon them — the one exhibiting the latin cross, the other what is 
 termed the Y cross/ This is a misapprehension. The real difference between them lies in 
 the arrangement of the seams. 
 
 It is clear that a semi-circular piece of stuff set out with a radius of about four feet is very 
 wasteful of material if cut out in one piece, even if it were easy to procure fabrics of so large 
 a width. 
 
 In the latin chasuble this difficulty was met by making up the semi-circle out of three 
 breadths. 
 
 Thus, referring to the diagrams given in the accompanying illustration. Fig. i. shows the 
 unbroken semi-circle which is the ideal of the vestment. Fig. ii. shows the same as made up, 
 A-B representing the frontal seam.** In Figure iii. the semi-circle is shown, made up of 
 three breadths of material A-B, B-B, B-A. Fig. iv, shows the vestment so made up, viewed 
 laterally. Fig. v. is the front view of the same, and Fig. vi. the back view. Such is the 
 original form of the latin vestment, and the seams resulting from this mode of setting out 
 the material are to this day marked by the braids which are to be seen upon every, so-called, 
 roman chasuble. 
 
 The latin cross, which is characteristic of the roman planeta, is always upon the front of 
 the vestment, and is but an amplification of the cruciform outline suggested by the seams 
 themselves, as may be observed in Fig. v., where the lines D-D, and A-B suggest at once 
 the T-shaped cross.' 
 
 But there is another mode of setting out the chasuble. 
 
 Suppose that, instead of forming it of one semi-circular piece of stuff, two quadrant-shaped 
 pieces are employed (as in Figure vii.), the result is that when made up, such a vestment will 
 exhibit a vertical seam both on front and back. This is shown in Figure viii., where the two 
 seams are indicated by the lines A-B, C-G. It is upon this type that the, so-called, old english 
 vestments are modelled, and if the width of the material is sufficient no further sutures are 
 needed. 
 
 Accordingly, we sometimes find english ecclesiastics represented in chasubles having only 
 these two vertical pillars. 
 
 This is at bottom the essential distinction between the two types, latin and non-latin, that 
 the one takes its origin from a semi-circular piece of stuff, the other from two quadrant-shaped 
 pieces. Thus, while the frontal " pillar " is common to both, the especial peculiarity of the 
 
 B This latter is sometimes spoken of as the pallium-cross. I avoid the use of this expression as calculated to 
 suggest a false impression as to the origin of this particular arrangement of the orphreys. 
 
 In this diagram the chasuble is viewed laterally. It is very important to a clear understanding of the 
 matter to look at the vestment from this point of view rather than from the front. In this diagram, as in all the 
 others, the seams are indicated by a double line ; the fold, which is formed by the shoulders of the wearer, and 
 which may be conceived as continued down to the hem, by a dotted line. 
 
 ' In Italy the cross has always continued to be displayed upon the front of the chasuble. Fornici, in his 
 " Institutiones Liturgicse" (p. 46), says : — "Et quando antiquitus dum planeta totum corpus tegebat, spectabatur ut 
 vestis ad christi Domini jugum repraesentandum accommodata, nunc mysticam banc significationem exhibet 
 casula crucis figura, quae eidem apponitur, vel ante ut in Italia, vel retro ut in Gallia, vel utrinque ut in Gerrnania." 
 This variation in the position of the cross is connected, no doubt,'with the fact that in Rome the normal position 
 of the celebrant faced toward the assistance ; in France, away from the people ; and in Germany — owing to the 
 prevalence of that type of church in which there is both an eastern and a western apse — sometimes toward the 
 congregation, sometimes the reverse, according as the mass was said at the eastern or western high altar. 
 
ii6 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 latter is not what is termed the Y cross, but the dorsal seam, elaborated, as time went on, 
 into the dorsal " pillar." j 
 
 The Y cross of the trans-alpine chasuble, like the frontal latin cross of the roman planeta, 
 was suggested by the seams which the width of the fabric used, and its economical employ- 
 ment, necessitated. In making up the quadrant-shaped piece of stuff, whose diameter is greater 
 than the width of the material available, the most natural procedure is to form a seam (E-F 
 in Fig. ix.) at right angles to the central line of the whole. If in setting this out the length 
 E-F be made equal to the length A-E, there is the minimum of waste of material, and this is, 
 speaking generally, the rule by which the exact position of these seams, and therefore the 
 proportions of the Y cross, are determined. 
 
 We thus arrive at the typical form of, what might perhaps be termed, casula alterius orbis. 
 Of this model Fig. x. shows the front view, and Fig. xi. the rear view,'' 
 
 It is certainly striking to find that, just as our church architecture and our ancient rituals 
 exhibit features which have come down from a period far earlier than the mission of St. 
 Augustine, so too the very seams of our ancient chasubles bear witness to the fact of the 
 continuity of british and english Christianity. 
 
 The modifications which the chasuble has, since early times, undergone in every country, 
 have been due to changes in the ceremonial, which have rendered a freer use of the arms 
 necessary to the action of the celebrant. 
 
 In the early ages, during the canon, the priest was concealed from view by the altar-veils. 
 The adoration of the people did not, therefore, take place at the moment of the sacrifice, as is 
 now the custom of the western church, but at a later point in the service,' when, the veils 
 being withdrawn, the celebrant advanced and, while presenting the Eucharist to the worship 
 of the people, gave with it the solemn blessing."" 
 
 This, the primitive manner of the eucharistic adoration, has never been abandoned by the 
 easterns, and as it does not require the celebrant to raise his arms above the level of the 
 breast, the mutilation which the oriental phenolion has undergone is confined to the front of 
 the vestment." 
 
 The western casula has also been curtailed, but — owing to the difference of the rite — in a 
 different direction. 
 
 The dorsal " pillar " (without the Y cross) is well shown in the brass of John Booth, bishop of Exeter, 
 (dd. 1478), in East Horsley church, Surrey. Cf. "Monumental Brasses," published by the Cambridge Camden 
 Society, p. 83. It occurs also upon the very ancient vestment, known as St. Bernard's chasuble, preserved in 
 the sacristy at Xanten. 
 
 This, the primitive form of the trans-alpine planeta, is exhibited in its purity in the chasuble of St. Regno- 
 bert (who was living in 630), preserved in the cathedral-church of Bayeux. A drawing of this vestment forms 
 the frontispiece to vol. i. of Rock's " Church of our Fathers," and a description of it is given at p. 320 of 
 the same. It is an early example of the use of the Y cross in France. 
 
 ' The place of the ancient benediction is marked by the Pax domini sit semper vobiscum of the petrine rite. 
 Where this early rite prevailed there appears to have been no " final blessing." 
 
 " This primitive usage, still universal in the eastern churches, appears to be the origin of the service now 
 termed (in the west) " Benediction " ; in which one feature — and a very characteristic one — of the primitive 
 ritual, is employed, as a ceremony, apart from the mass itself. 
 
 " Figure xii., in the diagram, exhibits the side view of the modern greek form of the vestment, and Fig.xiii.the 
 front view, the dotted lines showing the portion lost in the modern curtailment. In its present mutilated form, 
 phenolion somewhat resembles, to an uncritical eye, the western cope. Possibly a misapprehension, arising 
 from this accidental resemblance, may have contributed to the adoption of the — purely choral — cope, as a 
 eucharistic habit, by the Caroline divines. 
 
DIAGRAMS ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE HISTORY OF 
 THE CHASUBLE. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 117 
 
 When the custom of veiling the altar during mass had grown obsolete in the latin church, 
 it became possible, and fitting, to make the moment of consecration the moment also of 
 adoration, and one action to suffice for both. Thus the elevation of oblation became also the 
 elevation for worship. 
 
 The change thus made in the ceremonial began at once to affect the shape of the 
 chasuble on this side of the Alps. 
 
 In Rome, however, where, in the normal position, the celebrant faced toward the people, 
 no change in the form of the chasuble was required by the change of use, and we accord- 
 ingly find that the ancient ample unmutilated vestment was retained in Rome for many 
 centuries after it had been abandoned, for a more or less curtailed planeta, in the trans- alpine 
 countries." 
 
 For here, where the celebrant, as a rule, had his back toward the people, it was necessary, 
 as a consequence of the alteration in the moment of adoration, to elevate the oblata much 
 higher than the act of offering alone required. Thus the sarum rubric prescribes " post haec 
 verba (sc. Hoc est enim corpus meum) inclinet se sacerdos ad hostiam, et postea elevet earn 
 supra frontem ut possit a populo videri." To the performance of such an elevation the 
 ample vestment is by no means well adapted, and the practical inconvenience resulting from 
 this led to that modification of the primitive shape which is characteristic of our own middle 
 ages. 
 
 The pointed medieval vestment is, in fact, the earliest example of the mutilation of the 
 chasuble, and the first instance of an abandonment of its primitive type. 
 
 The alteration of form which convenience now demanded, was effected by cutting off a 
 slice from each side of the vestment, whose lower edge, no longer a quadrant, described from 
 the highest point of the vestment, became, as viewed laterally (Fig. xiv.), a smaller segment of 
 a larger circle, assuming, as viewed in front and rear (Fig. xv.), a pointed contour, due to the 
 intersection of two circular curves. At the same time, in order to allow of a larger curtail- 
 ment, and to give greater freedom to the arms, the angle at the apse of the vestment, hitherto 
 a right angle, was made somewhat obtuse. 
 
 Such is the vestment familiar to every student of our medieval monuments, and 
 such the reasons which led to this, the first, innovation upon the primitive model. It is of 
 importance to understand clearly, first, that this innovation was a mutilation, and the earliest 
 example of this process ; and secondly, that it was determined by considerations of practical 
 convenience, and not by the notion of introducing the pointed form. It is very remarkable 
 that, from necessities purely practical and geometrical, there should have resulted a model 
 singularly in harmony with the contemporary architectural fashions. 
 
 The curtailed form of the chasuble thus arrived at, continued in use, with little or no 
 
 ° Thus in Letarouilly's "Rome Moderne" (ii., pi. 190 ; iii., pis. 234, 239, 241, 251, 262, 315, 330, 350) and in 
 Tosi and Becchio's " Monument! Sepulcrali di Roma" (pis. 4, 7, 16, 22, 25, 26, 27, 39, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50) 
 we find every pontiff and cardinal-bishop represented in their monumental effigies (down to the com- 
 mencement of the sixteenth century), as vested in the ample form of the planeta, as exhibited in Figures iv., v., 
 and vi. The same shape is seen in the fresco of "The Miracle of Bolsena," painted by Raphael in 15 13. The 
 edition of the roman pontifical, printed by Giunta in 1520, and dedicated to Pope Leo X., shows, in its 
 numerous illustrations of the ceremonies, the same primitive form to have been then in use. The same ample 
 vestment is prescribed by the acts of the church of Milan, drawn up by St. Charles Borromeo in 1599. At 
 the present day the rubrics of the roman pontifical require the ample form, and cannot be obeyed to the letter 
 without it. 
 
ii8 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 further change, until the Reformation troubles led to the abandonment of our ancient 
 rites." 
 
 Had the course of history been different, and the english nation remained catholic, the 
 Y-crossed chasuble would, no doubt, have undergone, in the seventeenth century, the same 
 more extensive curtailment to which the roman chasuble at length submitted."* It will, 
 therefore, be as well to explain the mode in which the ancient petrine vestment has been 
 mutilated, in comparatively modern times, in order to give completeness to the history, 
 although — except in its bearings upon what " might have been, yet might not be " — it lies 
 out somewhat of the limits of my proper subject. 
 
 It is, however, important to observe, that up to the period of the Reformation, the only 
 curtailment of the primitive form that had been ventured upon anywhere, was the innovation 
 effected in our own country — and elsewhere, north of the Alps — during the middle ages, 
 which had as its result the pointed-shaped vestment figured in our ancient brasses. This 
 mutilation was never adopted in Italy, and the primitive form (as shown in Figs, iv., v., vi., 
 of the diagram) was retained in Rome after chasubles, even of the mutilated medieval form, 
 had ceased to be worn in the english churches. 
 
 The mode in which the petrine vestment came at last to be curtailed is parallel to that by 
 which the phenolion of the easterns has been shorn (as illustrated by Figs. xii. and xiii.), 
 except that the difference of ceremonial, which I have already explained, necessitated a lateral, 
 in place of a frontal, modification. 
 
 In order to allow a complete freedom to the arms of the priest, the primitive vestment, as we 
 see it in Fig. iv., was reduced to the form exhibited in Figures xvi., xvii., and xviii.'' Thus the 
 extent of the mutilation is about the same, in east and in west, but it is differently distributed. 
 
 The Y-crossed vestment of our medieval monuments would, but for the disuse of chasubles 
 by the anglican church, have undergone, doubtless, exactly the same abridgment, and for the 
 same practical reasons. 
 
 I need not apologise for the introduction, in this place, of matters rather sartorial than 
 architectural. The history of the Church's principal vestment serves to throw light upon 
 the history, not only of church architecture, but of the Church herself. 
 
 Moreover, all art is founded, in fact, upon those which minister to the simplest necessities 
 of life — sheltering, clothing, and, I may add, cooking, and the frenchman who described 
 England as a land of a hundred religions and one sauce made a remark profound in its 
 Boral and culinary aspect, as in its recognition of the relation which holds between the two, 
 
 ^ The date of the final relinquishment of the sarum use is indicated in the following passage from the intro- 
 auction to Mr. David Lewis's translation of the work of Dr. Nicholas Sander, " De Origine et Progressu Schismatis 
 Anglicani." Speaking of Edward Rishton, the first editor of this work, he says (p. xiv.) : " On Easter eve, April 7, 
 1577, he was ordained priest at Cambrai, and on the second Sunday after Easter, said mass for the first time. 
 He sang on that day the high mass at the high-altar of the parish church, according to the rite there in use ; 
 but the priests who were trained at Douai, vexatione dante intellectum, abandoned the local rites, to which their 
 forefathers had been accustomed in England, and said mass according to the roman rite, in obedience to the 
 decrees of St. Pius V." He gives a reference to the "Collegii Anglo-Duaceni Diarium," ii., p. 118. 
 
 " The Laudian divines, had they revived the use of the chasuble, would doubtless have followed in the form 
 of the vestment the contemporary fashion of the continental churches, as they did in the introduction of altar- 
 rails and in the forms of their mitres, croziers, and copes. They would probably have adopted the form which 
 we see in Ruben's " Conversion of St. Bavon," in the National Gallery. 
 
 ' Fig. xvi. shows the lateral view. Fig. xvii. the frontal, and Fig. xviii. the dorsal. It will be observed that 
 the seam (b-c) of Fig. iv. has become the hem (d-c) of the reduced form, which Fig. xvi. illustrates. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 119 
 
 DISCURSUS 
 
 ON THE PAINTED CEILINGS OF ST. ALBAN'S ABBEY-CHURCH. 
 
 The abbatial church of St. Alban appears to have been peculiar in its adherence to the early 
 tradition of painted ceilings. The vestibule of the lady-chapel was thus adorned, as we have 
 seen, in the fourteenth century, by a celatiira, upon which was depicted the Assumption of the 
 Mother of God. The presbytery had a ceiling which, though in the form of a stone groin, was 
 of wood, decorated originally with red stone-lining, and in later times (by abbat John Wheat- 
 hampsted) with the symbols of his patrons, the Baptist and the Evangelist. The weak point 
 in the design of a wooden groin is always the junction of the wooden ribs with the stone 
 springers. This is very happily masked here by large emblazoned shields, which have an 
 excellent effect.* Altogether this is as charming a piece of coloured decoration as exists 
 anywhere in England. 
 
 The tower and the transepts retain the flat celaturce which were originally decorated by 
 that " pictor et sculptor incomparabilis," Walter of Colchester, during the abbacy of William 
 Trumpington,*" though the existing paintings exhibit but a poor tradition of the original 
 work. 
 
 The nave and quire were ceiled at the existing level by the same abbat (1214-1235), and 
 although the roof was in later times reduced to a flat pitch, the level of Trumpington's ceiling 
 was retained, and possibly much of the material of that " tectum de praeelecta materie " of 
 those "tigna," "trabes," and " laquearia " of which Matthew Paris tells us.° 
 
 » The existing shields are not very ancient, but they have preserved the tradition of the device of the 
 medieval architect. 
 
 Cf. " Gesta Abbatum," Rolls reprint, !., p. 287. " Tegmine quodam, quod vulgariter labrescura ' vel 
 celatura dicitur, quo trabium seriem cooperuit, ecclesiam mirifice supra memoratam Mariolam " (in the 
 southern transept) " venustavit abbas Willelmus, ne tignorum vel trabium deformitas (i"), quas vetustas 
 denigraverat, oculos offenderet intuentium." While he thus added painted ceilings, he whitewashed the walls : 
 the historian thus continues, " Simili quoque ratione, muros ecclesi« in magna parte, quos longaevus squalor 
 pulveris deturpaverat, dealbavit." The notion that the use of whitewash is modern, or protestant, arises from 
 mere ignorance. St. Wilfrid, in the seventh century, gloried in having washed the York minster of his day, 
 " whiter than snow," and at Peterborough it was the boast of one of the abbats that he had so skilfully white- 
 washed his cathedral that it appeared as if " cut out of a single stone." St. Alban's and Westminster, the whole 
 interior of which was distempered white and varnished, afford examples of the thirteenth century. The Liberate 
 Rolls, from which numerous extracts will be found in Hudson Turner's " Domestic Architecture," supply 
 instances of the same and of later periods. The fragments still existing of Dale Abbey, including the high 
 altar and a fine canopied tomb, are covered by successive coats of whitewash in many cases nearly an eighth 
 of an inch thick (cf. Journal of Derbyshire Archceol. Soc, i., p. 105). Yet this church was never in protestant 
 hands, having been pulled down upon the surrender of the abbey to Henry VII L's commissioners. 
 
 " "Opus frontale ipsius ecclesise, post quandam nimis damnosam ruinam, misertus ac miseratus abbas 
 Willelmus, eo quod tam tsediosam moram protraxerit, suis humeris sibi suscepit supportando perficiendum. 
 Quod infra breve tempus, cum tecto de praeelecta materie, tignis, et trabibus, cum laquearibus, cumque vitreis 
 fenestris, ad unguem perfectis, veteri operi, decenter plumbo coopertum, continuavit" ("Gesta Abbatum," !.), 
 
I20 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 As the question of the level of Trumpington's roof has given occasion to a recent con- 
 troversy, I may state, in passing, the evidence for this conclusion as to the roof and ceiling 
 of abbat William, although the existing paintings, with which we are here more especially 
 concerned, belong of course to a somewhat later period. 
 
 Trumpington's " opus frontale ecclesiae " included the rebuilding of four bays upon the north 
 side of the nave, and five upon the south.* The wall-plate of this work is some four feet 
 above that of the norman walls, of abbat Paul's work, to the east of it Therefore the level of 
 at least one bay of the northern clerestory must have been raised, as is evident indeed from the 
 building itself. The question therefore arises, was the same additional altitude given to the 
 remaining eight norman bays > I think so, and for these reasons. 
 
 In the first place, Matthew Paris' words seem to me to imply this. What he says is, 
 " Quod — sc. opus frontale ecclesiae — cum tecto, cum laquearibus, cumque vitreis fenestris, 
 plumbo coopertum, veteri operi continuavit." I do not see how a new roof can be said to 
 have been made continuous with that of an existing building four feet lower than it, except by 
 raising the latter. If this had not been done, one of the most conspicuous features of the 
 exterior of the church upon the completion of William's new work would have been this 
 awkward cripple, this break of continuity in wall-levels and roof-ridge. Could a constant eye- 
 witness of this glaring defect have applied to such a clumsy junction the word " continuavit " "i ^ 
 
 Moreover, Trumpington, as we learn from the " Gesta," ' renewed entirely the timber roofs 
 above the norman aisles of the nave, " quae putredine et teredine prius consumpta pluviam 
 abundantem admiserunt." Is it at all probable that, if the aisle roofs were in such a bad condi- 
 tion as to necessitate so heavy an outlay, the great roof itself was in good repair and in no 
 need of a similar renewal ; beneath which he was about to erect his new " pulpitum," with the 
 altar of the Holy Cross in front of it, adorned by a gorgeously-painted retable, and the great rood 
 
 p. 281), Observe the tigna et trades of the roof distinguished from the laqiiearia of the flat ceiling beneath 
 it. The following passage refers to the same work, and is interesting also in other respects : — 
 
 " Hujus quoque tempore, cum magister Walterus de Colecestre, tunc sacrista, (pictor et sculptor incom- 
 parabilis), pulpitum in medio ecclesice, cum magna cruce sua, Maria quoque et Johanne, et aliis celaturis et 
 decentibus structuris, sumptibus sacristarise, sed proprii laboris diligentia, perfecisset ; ipse abbas Willelmus 
 feretrum, reliquiis beati Amphibali, sociorumque ejus, a loco ubi prius collocatum fuerat (videlicet, secus majus 
 altare, juxta feretrum Sancti Albani) in parte aquilonari, usque ad locum qui in medio ecclesiae includitur 
 pariete ferreo et craticulato, solemniter transtulit, altari decentissimo ibidem constructo, cum tabula et super- 
 altari pretiose pictis. 
 
 " Fecitque ipsum altare solemniter dedicari in honorem sanctas Crucis, quia ipsum fuerat antea sanctae 
 Crucis, et in honorem Sancti Amphibali sociorumque ejus, quia ibidem corum corpora requiescunt, ab episcopo 
 Hartfordensi, Johanne. Et ab eodem fecit crucem magnam, ipso altari suprapositam, cum suis imaginibus 
 consecrari." lb. 
 
 * The serious settlement which these five bays had undergone gave occasion, in 1878, to an operation to which 
 the following remarks, in an appendix to my father's " Personal and Professional Recollections " (p. 377), have 
 reference : — " The great work of forcing back to the perpendicular by mechanical means the south wall of the 
 nave of St. Alban's abbey-church for some one hundred and five feet of its length, a wall sixty-six feet in height, 
 which in the course of the length to be dealt with, overhung its base to the extent of two feet three inches, is an 
 example of architectural engineering upon a large scale, which has attracted much attention : the more so, per- 
 haps, since he who had devised the whole plan, which has been carried out with such complete success, did not 
 live to enjoy the satisfaction of it." My father had devoted immense pains to the elaboration of the scheme, all 
 the details of which he had most carefully contrived. It was carried out with perfect success only a few weeks 
 after his death. 
 
 ^ I need scarcely observe that " veteri operi continuavit " cannot be translated, " continued up to the old 
 work." The latin of the Gesta may be " monkish," but it is not canine. 
 ' lb., p. 280. 
 
I'l.vrE xxiu. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 121 
 
 above it, and to deposit, within an enclosure of iron-work, the " feretrum " of St. Amphibalus 
 and his fellow-martyrs.^ Is it probable that abbat Trumpington would have placed relics so 
 sacred, and works of art so splendid, beneath a roof of the same antiquity as those in the 
 aisles, whose rotten condition had just necessitated their entire reconstruction } 
 
 Within a century a catastrophe did actually occur to that portion of the nave in which 
 stood these priceless objects of pious veneration and of art : but it was not the roof, which 
 was the cause of the ruin which occurred upon the feast of St. Paulinus, in the year 1323.'' 
 It was the norman piers which were in fault, of which two, upon the southern side of the 
 nave, fell to the ground — "duae magnas columnae partis australis ecclesiae a fundamento primo 
 deficientes cum horribili strepitu et fragore, ad terram successive, proh dolor (!) corruerunt." 
 It is not, I think, an unreasonable conjecture, that the additional weight imposed upon the 
 norman walls, by the increased height which Trumpington had given them, may have 
 contributed to this catastrophe. 
 
 Nothing was done to repair the ruin, thus caused, for some twenty years, owing partly, no 
 doubt, to the fact that the disaster did not seriously interfere with the use of the church, the 
 quire of the monks, in the eastern part of the nave, being untouched by it, and partly to 
 the pre-occupation of the then abbat, Richard Wallingford, who was engaged upon the 
 construction of a wonderful clock. At length, however, Edward III., when, on a visit to St. 
 Alban's "vidisset tam sumptuosum opus" — sc. horologii — " inchoari, ecclesia nondum reaedi- 
 ficata post ruinam quam passa est temporibus Hugonis abbatis " (sc. Eversden), urged upon 
 the abbat to undertake the rebuilding of the ruined bays.^ A commencement was accord- 
 ingly made, which was completed by his successor, Michael Mentmore (1335 — 1349), who 
 consecrated, in this part of the church, three altars.^ 
 
 Now the five bays comprised in this work are of the same height as Trumpington's portion 
 of the nave. It is exceedingly improbable that this would have been the case had all this 
 portion of the church retained, up to this period, the original norman level. The new work 
 would have necessitated, at any rate, the heightening of the norman clerestory of the 
 corresponding five northern bays, and — either at the same time, or subsequently — the three 
 remaining bays to the eastward must have had their walls raised to the uniform level which 
 they now present. But of such an operation we find no hint in the " Gesta," nor, although 
 the erection of the roof (tectum), or, possibly, the vaulting, of the five bays of the south aisle 
 is described,'' do we find any mention of the new roof of this part of the nave, nor of that 
 portion of it between the ruined bays and the great tower. 
 
 It is possible that the timbers of the portion of the roof which fell with the two piers — a 
 roof, as I conceive, not norman, but of Trumpington's date — may have been in part re-used 
 and so, as a work of mere reconstruction, " went without saying." However this may be, 
 the fact remains that the " Gesta " has but one passage which can refer to the raising of the 
 nave walls and its roof, and this is the " veteri operi continuavit " of the description of 
 Trumpington's work. If it be objected that this is but a very slight notice, if such it be, of 
 
 sCf. " Gesta," i., p. 281, already quoted in full, in a preceding note. In a subsequent passage (ii., p. 129) 
 there is mention made of the " columnae marmorea; tumble suae," sc. Sti. Amphibali, and also of the " capsa 
 lignea in qua ejusdem reliquiae continebantur." 
 
 " Cf. " Gesta," ii., p. 128. The passage, which is too lengthy to be quoted here, gives a remarkably graphic 
 account of the calamity. 
 
 ' lb., ii., p. 281. lb., ii., p. 362. " lb., ii., p. 361. 
 
 R 
 
122 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 SO extensive an operation, the reply is obvious that the operation, as a matter of fact, was 
 carried out, for its result is before our eyes ; and if this passage does not — as I conceive it 
 does — describe the work in question, we have even less than a very slight notice of a very 
 important and costly work — we have none at all. 
 
 The nave-roof, as it existed previously to the recent alterations, was of flat pitch. We have 
 no record of the alteration of its form, no doubt because the ceiling itself, with its "tigna 
 laquearia," ^ was not interfered with, the flat roof being but a reconstruction of the timber- 
 work above it out of the old materials. It was probably the work of abbat Wheathamp- 
 sted, who died in 1464, and who is known to have erected the great west window. It is, 
 however, certain from the internal evidence of its heraldic paintings, that the existing ceiling 
 is much more ancient than this change in the pitch of the roof above it." 
 
 From these it may be proved to have been in existence some twenty years after the 
 re-erection of the fallen portion of the nave was completed by abbat Mentmore (1335 — 1349), 
 and the best part of a century before the roof above it was lowered to a flat pitch. I have 
 little doubt but that it is virtually of Trumpington's time, and is — in substance, at least — the 
 same " laquear " which he put up — the same " caelatura " which that " incomparable painter 
 master Walter of Colchester" executed under Trumpington's rule, "at the expense of the 
 sacristy, but by the diligence of his own labour." " This painted ceiling is one of the most 
 valuable and remarkable works remaining in England. 
 
 It is divided into two portions, that over the nave proper, and that over the quire. The 
 former consists of cusped panels containing monograms. These have been repainted at a 
 later date, and some of the panels are of deal, but upon those which are of oak, and therefore 
 original, my brother has discovered the " pricking-out " of the old design, of which the existing 
 painting is a rude, but by no means inaccurate, reproduction. 
 
 That portion which lies over the quire-stalls is a work of extraordinary interest. It has 
 only of recent years been brought into view by the removal, under the care of Mr. Thomas 
 Grylls, of some modern paintings, designed without any reference to the earlier work, which 
 they served at once to conceal and to preserve. 
 
 For a detailed account of this unique work, and of the internal evidence of the date 
 of its execution which it affords, I would refer the curious reader to the monograph of Mr. 
 Ridgway Lloyd (than whom there is no better authority in all that concerns the history of St. 
 Alban's church) upon the subject. I will only state that the work was originally carried out, 
 as is proved by Mr. Lloyd, about the close of the fourteenth century, and that it was 
 retouched, and the design of its central panels completely changed about the middle of the 
 fifteenth. 
 
 The design consists of panels containing, alternately, shields and legends : of each of these 
 there are in each row of panels, three. Beginning with the legends, the six of the first two rows 
 
 ' lb., ii., p. 129. 
 
 Mr. Ridgway Lloyd remarks, in his valuable paper upon the quire-ceiling, that its paintings must, as is 
 clear from their heraldry, have been commenced — (i) after the death of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, in 1368, as 
 his arms do not appear; (2) before the death of the Black Prince, in 1376, and before the advancement of 
 Thomas of Woodstock to the earldom of Buckingham, in 1377 ; and, further, that they could not have been 
 completed before 1385, when Edmund of Langley became Duke of York, but must have been completed 
 before 1403, since the arms of France, as quartered in the english coat, are represented in the ancient manner, 
 which in that year was changed, by order of King Henry IV. 
 n Cf. ib., i., 281, as quoted above (in a footnote). 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 123 
 
 (going from west to east, and from south to north) are sentences in honour of the B, Trinity, 
 taken from the Sarum liturgy. The rest consisted originally of twenty-six, out of the twenty- 
 nine, clauses of the Te Deum. In the central row, as I have said, an alteration was made by 
 later artists, by which three clauses of the hymn were replaced, respectively, by the Gloria 
 Patri, the Gloria in Excelsis, and a figure of our Lord, forming — with the adjacent painting of 
 the B. V. Mary — a representation of the coronation of our Lady. 
 
 The shields present the following bearings : in the first two rows are the arms of six saints 
 — Edmund, Alban, Oswyn, George, Edward the Confessor, and Louis. In the next, those of 
 the Holy Roman emperor, of " the King of the Jews " (a very remarkable coat), and of the 
 emperor Constantine. Then follow the bearings of Spain, England, and Portugal ; of 
 Sweden, Cyprus (somewhat interesting now to Englishmen in view of recent events), and of 
 the isle of Man. Then come two very singular pieces of heraldry — " the shield of faith," and 
 " the shield of salvation." The central coat of this row disappeared in the fifteenth-century 
 alterations. Then follow the arms of Aragon, Jerusalem, and Denmark ; of Brittany, 
 Bohemia, and of "the Lord Thomas" of Woodstock, youngest "son of the king," Edward 
 III.; of Sicily, Hungary, and France ; then those of three of the sons of Edward III. — John 
 of Ghent (the fourth son), Edward the Black Prince (the eldest), and Edmund of Langley 
 (the fifth). In the last row are the arms of Norway, Navarre, and Scotland. 
 
 I would commend the study of this invaluable heraldic monument to the notice of English 
 antiquaries, and its reverent preservation to the guardians of the church of St. Alban. 
 
124 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The history of the production of the pointed style 
 out of the preceding round-arched romanesque, is 
 that of a constant striving after a more lofty pro- 
 portion. This tendency may be traced for many 
 years previous to the actual appearance of the 
 pointed arch. 
 
 The norman builders had obtained a mastery over 
 their materials,which made them dissatisfied with the 
 massive piers, small openings, and comparatively 
 low proportions, which had hitherto been adopted. 
 The increasing knowledge of the science of con- 
 struction, moreover, made them ambitious of bolder 
 efforts. 
 
 The same sort of delight in novel and daring effects, 
 which now leads our engineers to construct railway- 
 bridges of wider, and still wider, spans, with iron of 
 lighter and lighter scantling — even where stone and 
 brick would be, at once, cheaper and more durable 
 — had, to some extent, taken hold of the twelfth- 
 century architects. They felt themselves to be 
 masters of their material ; and they were anxious 
 to show their command of it, by raising arches to 
 heights hitherto unattained, and by vaulting over 
 spaces, wider than any which had hitherto been 
 attempted. 
 
 There is a great sense of restless power about the 
 works so produced — a constant striving after new 
 and bolder effects — which contrasts very strongly 
 with the calm and dignified character of the earlier 
 phase of the style. 
 
 This may be illustrated by a comparison between 
 the naves of Peterborough and of St. Alban's, but 
 no mere description can convey an impression of 
 the different stages of feeling represented by the 
 two. 
 
 St. Alban's has all the quiet, self-contained dignity 
 of the classic school. In Peterborough one feels 
 oneself already in face with the restless energy of 
 the gothic. 
 
 That this change was due, to a great extent, to 
 other causes, than simply to the progress of archi- 
 tectural skill, cannot be doubted. The twelfth 
 century was the period of a great religious and in- 
 tellectual activity. This movement had commenced 
 in the previous century, but it is observable that al- 
 ways a certain time elapses before an intellectual 
 movement of this kind produces its effect in the 
 sphere of art,* 
 
 * Thus the magnificent outburst of artistic power at Athens, 
 and more or less throughout Greece, which characterised the 
 
 I shall, however, confine myself to the strictly 
 architectural history of the transition; and, from 
 this point of view, the cause which was most in- 
 strumental in bringing about those changes, which 
 resulted in the formation of a new style, was, unques- 
 tionably, the scientific working out of the principle 
 of groined vaulting. 
 
 The Romans, although they did occasionally make 
 use of this construction, yet employed for the most 
 part the barrel-vault and the dome. Even to this 
 day, in purely classic work, groined vaulting is not 
 common. What are termed welsh groins'' are more 
 usually employed, as is the case, for example, 
 throughout St. Paul's cathedral. 
 
 The peculiarity of the proper groin is this, that it 
 gives, by the intersection of the two semi-cylinders, 
 
 age of Pericles, is not to be attributed to the essentially scep- 
 tical, and materialistic philosophy, which synchronised with 
 it, and which is illustrated, in a striking manner, by the 
 radically mechanical speculations of Anaxagoras — a personal 
 friend of Pericles — of whom Aristotle complains that he 
 named, indeed, mind, as the ultimate principle of things, 
 but in his explanation of existent phenomena sought its aid 
 only as a deus ex mackifia, whenever, that is, he was unable 
 to deduce their necessity from any purely physical causes. 
 
 It was, in fact, the outcome of that very deep religious 
 revival which preceded, by nearly a century, the artistic 
 movement, and of which the essentially religious philosophy 
 of Pythagoras was the scientific outcome. 
 
 So, too, in the present day, many of the great leaders in 
 that great revival of true art, and of a genuine and almost 
 popular love for it, which is now in progress, are themselves 
 the victims of the feeble agriosticism, which happens to syn- 
 chronise with the movement. But the real power of it is to 
 be sought in that vigorous religious movement, with which 
 the present century opened, and under which the shallow 
 destructiveness of the eighteenth century has already almost 
 disappeared. A mere materialism, a hopeless uncertainty as 
 to the future of the individual and of the race, a blank scep- 
 ticism, or an arbitrary agnosticism, have never, and never 
 can, originate any advance either in art or in any other de- 
 partment of practical life. Such influences are, at their 
 heart, destructive, and destruction is antithetical to edifica- 
 tion, in the material, as in the moral sphere. 
 
 t> This peculiar form of vaulting has played (as we shall 
 have occasion to observe later on), a very important part in 
 the progress of our native architecture. The origin of the 
 term — welsk, groin — I am, I must confess, unable to explain. 
 To a Teuton, any foreigner is a wdhch; and to a German of the 
 earlier ages the foreigner par excellence, the one stranger with 
 whom he was brought, of necessity, in contact was the Italian. 
 Thus for a German the Italian language was die wdlsche 
 spraclie, and the Italian noce (to him, the distinctly foreign 
 nut) vizs, die -wdhche nuss — whence our own -wal-nitt. But 
 that this particular mode of groining was introduced into 
 Germany from Italy at any early period, I am not, myself, 
 prepared to state. I know, in fact, of no evidence bearing at 
 all upon the question. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 125 
 
 or barrels, of which it is composed, a cutting-Une 
 or arrise, extending in a plane diagonally from 
 corner to corner. In the early norman work, as in 
 the roman (where this form of groin is used at all), 
 the arrises are left to show themselves as mere lines 
 of intersection. 
 
 It is obvious, however, that such a mode of con- 
 struction is, especially in rubble-work, inherently 
 weak, and the question soon arose how it could be 
 strengthened. 
 
 The necessity of this became the more urgently 
 felt when the attempt was made to apply such 
 vaulting to the wide span of the central nave, in- 
 stead of resting content with the wooden ceilings, 
 hitherto used. 
 
 In early times, where vaulting over large spaces 
 was attempted at all, it was effected by means of 
 barrel-vaults, as we see in the instances of St. Sernin 
 at Toulouse, and of Gundulph's chapel in the tower 
 of London. In this chapel, too, while the lower aisle 
 is groined, the upper is covered, as we have seen, 
 by a barrel-vault. 
 
 It had early become common to strengthen the 
 simple barrel-vaults by transverse arches, and 
 similar arches were also employed to divide the 
 groined vaults of the aisle into separate compart- 
 ments. It was, probably, from this system that the 
 notion of strengthening the diagonal arrises of the 
 groined vaults, by the addition of similar stone-ribs, 
 arose. 
 
 This simple device does not appear to have 
 occurred to the able architects of ancient Rome, 
 and, had it done so, they would probably have felt 
 it to be inconsistent with that repose, and gravity of 
 effect, at which they were aiming. In it, simple 
 though it may seem, was involved the whole con- 
 structional history of the succeeding styles. Until, in 
 the fifteenth century, the invention of fan-vaulting 
 introduced a new principle ol construction, almost 
 everything in the scientific progress of architecture 
 may be traced to this, one, pregnant germ. 
 
 This novel conception at once enabled the 
 builders, of the twelfth century, to attempt the vault- 
 ing of wider spaces than they had hitherto ventured 
 to deal with. The steps through which this advance 
 was worked out are curious. 
 
 It will be seen that a groined vaulting-bay, 
 bounded by four semi-circular arches of equal 
 height, is necessarily square. The nave, as well as 
 the aisles, had therefore to be divided, for vaulting 
 purposes, into square bays. 
 
 As a nave is, of course, much wider than its aisles, 
 the nave-bays were, necessarily, of greater size 
 than those of the aisles, and to meet the difficulty 
 arising from this, the plan was adopted of so dis- 
 posing the plan of the building that two bays of the 
 aisle should be equal, longitudinally, to one of the 
 nave. 
 
 Upon this system the width of the aisle was, of 
 course, one half of that ot the nave. There would 
 thus be comprised under each arch of the nave- 
 vaulting two arches opening into the aisle, corre- 
 sponding with the distribution ot the aisle-groins. 
 
 This plan was never actually adopted in England, 
 in churches of a large scale, for a reason which I 
 will explain, but naves so vaulted are common in 
 Anjou, and in other parts of France.*^ 
 
 In our own country, however, it was felt that 
 these wide bays conflicted with that subdivision of 
 parts, which the norman builders were more and 
 more aiming at, and which was to be fully achieved 
 only in the coming style. A very clever invention 
 removed the necessity for these over-large nave- 
 bays. 
 
 From the pier, which separated the two bays 
 of the aisle, a rib was carried up transversely to 
 the meeting-point of the diagonal ribs of the nave- 
 vaulting. By this means the great vault of the 
 nave becomes divided into six portions, instead of 
 into four, and a sort of half-bay is produced in the 
 nave-groin, corresponding with each of the smaller 
 bays of the lateral aisle. 
 
 This ingenious device, — which is known by the 
 name of sex-partite groining, given to it by Dr. 
 Whewell, — was the firstfruits of the great invention 
 of groin-ribs. 
 
 It would have been impossible to construct 
 such a vault previous to the introduction of ribs : 
 and in the clever winding of the surfaces, which 
 this method requires, and in the ingenious manner 
 in which the clerestory- windows are carried up into 
 the irregularly-shaped lateral cells, we have — at 
 once an example of the freedom, which the new ele- 
 ment allowed of, and — an anticipation of its later 
 achievements. 
 
 The true intersection of the two half-cylinders, of 
 which a groined vault is composed would, of course, 
 be an ellipse, and this is the form which the arrises 
 of most of the early un-ribbed groins actually take."^ 
 
 ' There is, however, a charming example of the artistic 
 capabilities of this system, in the hands of a thirteenth-cen- 
 tury architect, at Boxgrove, by Chichester. Of this church, 
 which is dedicated in honour of Sts. Mary and Blaise (the 
 patron of the wool trade), the quire, transepts, and central 
 tower still exist, and sufficient remains of the nave to indi- 
 cate its general distribution and design. The quire is a most 
 exquisite work, and its design is determined by that arrange- 
 ment of the groining of the central area and of the aisles, to 
 which I have been referring. The house was benedictine, 
 and was subject to the abbey of Essey, in Normandy. 
 
 It is evident that towards the centre of the bay (defined 
 by the intersection of the diagonal arrises) the diagonal lines, 
 formed by the intersection of the two half-cylinders, would 
 cease to exist as visible angular ridges, and would be lost. 
 So that what had commenced — at the spring of the vault — 
 as a salient right-angle, at its crown has become (if mathema- 
 tically worked out), a straight line. Such an effect, however 
 theoretically perfect, is unsatisfactory in execution. In idea, 
 the intersection of the two half-cylinders, is continued dia- 
 gonally right across the groin, although its expression in the 
 torm of a definite salient angle disappears at the crown of the 
 vault, and practically ceases to exist — as an angle appreciable 
 by the visual organ — at some distance from the crown. 
 
 The early norman builders were fully sensible of this un- 
 avoidable conflict between the ideal and the real. The 
 intersection of the half-cylinders— if carried out, with mathe- 
 matical precision, into practical execution — failed, as they 
 instinctively perceived, to give expression to the mathematical 
 idea. They therefore accentualed the lines of the intersection, 
 towards their common apex, by pinching-out the plastered 
 surface ot the groin, so as to continue — in fact — the line. 
 
126 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 This form, however, is both awkward in appear- 
 ance and difficult of execution when applied to a 
 vault-rib, and it was never in practice adopted. The 
 ribs, whether wall or diagonal, were, as a matter of 
 fact, set out to a circular sweep, either stilted, or 
 struck from below the springing line, according as 
 the width to be spanned was less, or more, than 
 the transverse width of the bay itself. 
 
 It will be seen at once how clumsy is the semi- 
 circular form of arch when applied under such 
 conditions. 
 
 What the new system of groining, obviously, 
 required to its further advance was a method of 
 arching which, while retaining a fixed height, should 
 be applicable to any width. 
 
 The necessity of this was especially felt in the 
 arches of the wall-ribs — which had to rise as high 
 as the arch which spanned the nave, and which yet 
 had only one-half its width. 
 
 The semi-circular arch is singularly unmanageable 
 in such a position. It has only one proportion, it 
 can only rise half its span — neither more nor less 
 — and it is only by the clumsy devices, on the one 
 hand of stilting, or on the other of cutting off its 
 lower portion, that the difficulties involved in the 
 system of sex-partite vaulting could, in any degree, 
 be met. 
 
 These depressed or segmental arches are, more- 
 over, constructionally weak — especially, of course, 
 at their apices — and the necessity of a new and 
 better form of arch was thus forced upon the atten- 
 tion of architects, more and more, as they ventured 
 to make use of the new invention of rib-groining 
 with greater boldness. 
 
 The general tendency of the style, of which the 
 advance in groining was a part, equally demanded 
 a new form of arch. 
 
 Classical proportions having been completely dis- 
 carded, and the utmost freedom being now allowed 
 in the height of the column and the pier, it seemed 
 most unreasonable that the arch should be restricted 
 to one unvarying proportion. 
 
 The progress of architectural construction had 
 therefore now arrived at a point beyond which it 
 was impossible, under the limitations of a round- 
 arched style, to carry it. To the next step a new 
 form of arch had become indispensable. This, the 
 constructural necessities of rib-groining, no less than 
 the general freedom of proportion, and of effect, 
 demanded as a condition of their further advance. 
 
 The history of the origin of the pointed arch is 
 obscure. Whether it was deliberately invented to 
 meet the difficulties which I have explained — as some 
 think — or was suggested by the intersecting round- 
 arch arcades, so common in late norman work — as 
 others have conjectured — cannot be known. 
 
 I am inclined myself to believe that it had been, 
 from early times, in use in the east — ^just as the 
 
 which exists, of necessity, in idea. This very subtle refine- 
 ment has been lost in the recent vulgarisation of Gundulph's 
 chapel in the Tower of London, as in other norman buildings 
 "restored," by ignorant persons, to what they never were. 
 
 round arch had been in Etruria, — and that it had 
 been already adopted by the Saracens, though 
 possibly not as a principle of construction.' If this 
 be so, its introduction into western Europe is to be 
 attributed to the crusades. 
 
 Saracenic architecture is itself an outcome of 
 the art of Byzantium, with the addition of certain 
 elements which would appear to be traditional in 
 the east. Many of those who, as crusaders, had 
 become familiar with this — to them — new form of 
 arch, would be capable of appreciating the impor- 
 tance of this suggestion to their architecture at the 
 stage at which it was now arrived. Here was ex- 
 actly what was wanted, and it is scarcely remark- 
 able that the new idea, once introduced, spread 
 with the greatest rapidity over western Europe. 
 Everywhere the art was ripe for its reception. 
 
 The influence,therefore,of eastern art — due to the 
 opening up of this new world through the crusades — 
 and to the enlarged intercourse with the east, which 
 resulted from the establishment, less than a century 
 before, of the christian kingdom of Jerusalem, sup- 
 plied that element which is required to explain the 
 genesis of gothic architecture. 
 
 Medieval art is thus seen to have resulted from 
 the combination of romanesque and Saracenic art. 
 Romanesque is the art of old Rome, as expanded by 
 the free genius of the northern nations. Saracenic 
 is the art of new Rome — Byzantium — modified by 
 traditions and influences purely oriental. We 
 have thus, in each factor of the total, that latin 
 element, from the influence of which no portion of 
 modern life is exempted, while in each factor ap- 
 pears also a new and even heterogeneous element. 
 
 The result of these two factors thus strangely 
 compounded is gothic architecture.' 
 
 ' An interesting parallel is presented in the very similar 
 history of the ogee form of arch. This is unquestionably, 
 in its origin, oriental. It has been employed in the east — 
 as in the case of the great mosque at Delhi — upon a scale 
 never attempted in Europe. I may observe that it is not 
 in reality a form of arching, but of corbelling. If it be 
 desired to cover-in, by corbelling, a large span, in an — 
 apparently — arched form, a difficulty will at once arise in 
 treating that portion of the arched contour which is nearest 
 to the apex of the curve. This difficulty suggested the 
 adoption — in this part of the sweep — of a reversed curve, 
 as appropriate in a system of corbelling, as it is unconstruc- 
 tional in a system of arching. Most of the great ogeed openings 
 which form so striking a feature in the mohammedan archi- 
 tecture of India, are, in reality, corbelled, not arched. Now 
 as medieval architecture advanced the necessity arose — 
 particularly in window-traceries and such like — of a form of 
 arch which should present at its apex a very acute angle. 
 The style was ripe for an innovation, and once again — as in 
 the instance of the pointed arch — the east supplied the hint 
 how to meet the need which was felt. Ogeed arches can 
 never be constructed — as arches — and they were accordingly 
 employed, by the masterly builders of the middle ages, only 
 upon a small scale, to which their construction — essentially 
 one of corbelling — could, without danger to the stability of 
 the fabric, be rationally applied. 
 
 ' Thus the history of the genesis of gothic architecture 
 adds yet another illustration to the truth, which Mr. 
 Freeman has expressed with such vivid force. " Eternal 
 indeed Rome has shown herself, in her tongue, in her laws, 
 and in the borrowed faith which, by her own law of adoption, 
 she made her own. The spell which she once threw over 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 127 
 
 Continuing our review of the history of groining, 
 I would observe that the introduction of the pointed 
 arch did not at once alter the system. Sex-partite 
 groins continued to be used, but the pointed arch 
 was now introduced, especially in the transverse 
 arches of the vaulting, where its employment made 
 it possible to give to the diagonal ribs the form of 
 an unmutilated semi-circular sweep. 
 
 But the freedom which the new form of arch gave 
 led very soon to another great step in advance. It 
 was sOon seen that, with pointed arches, it was as 
 easy to groin an oblong space, as a square one, 
 because — by this new form of arching — it was 
 possible, upon any given base, to describe an arch 
 of any required height. 
 
 The standing difficulty of round-arched groining 
 was thus removed, and the sex-partite contrivance 
 became unnecessary; since it was now easy enough 
 to divide up the nave-vault into oblong bays, cor- 
 responding in width to the square compartments of 
 the aisle-groins. 
 
 This great advance, in the gradual perfecting of 
 groined vaulting, was rendered possible by the 
 adoption of the pointed arch, and by that alone ; 
 and, once arrived at, it was never abandoned during 
 the whole future progress of the style. It was even 
 retained in those varieties of the revived classic of 
 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in which 
 northern influence, to a great extent, holds its own 
 against the italian, and of which France and the 
 Low Countries present the finest examples. 
 
 The new form of arch, once introduced, rapidly 
 affected every detail of architecture. Yorkshire 
 is particularly rich in specimens of the early phase 
 of the new style — at Kirkstall we see the very first 
 influence of the new principle : in Ripon and in By- 
 land we have examples of its earliest completed 
 developement. 
 
 I have already dwelt upon the great romanesque 
 invention of the subordination of the arch orders. 
 The invention and perfection of rib-groining gave 
 opportunity for a great extension of this prin- 
 ciple. 
 
 The fashion of strengthening the barrel-vaults by 
 transverse arches dividing up its length into bays 
 had been inherited by the romanesque builders from 
 the architects of imperial Rome.^s Accordingly 
 when groined vaults first came into use they were, 
 as we have already seen, commonly crossed upon 
 the line of each pier by a transverse arch, to the 
 support of which an engaged column was employed, 
 while the starting of the arrise of the intersecting 
 half-cylinders was carried — in the pier or respond 
 
 those whom she conquered, she now knew how to throw over 
 those who conquered her. She won the Goth to restore her 
 material fabrics, and the Frank to restore her poHtical 
 dominion. The local Rome has fallen from her high estate, 
 but she is the Eternal City none the less. Wherever men 
 speak her tongue, wherever men revere her law, wherever 
 men profess the faith which Europe and the European colo- 
 nies have learned of her, there Rome is still." — " Compara- 
 tive Politics," p. 44. 
 
 g The vault of the basilica of Constantine was, as is evident 
 from the existing ruins, thus constructed. 
 
 below — by a salient angle of masonry flanking the 
 column. 
 
 As soon as rib-groining appeared, we find a dis- 
 tinct shaft assigned to the transverse arch — gra- 
 dually waning into a mere transverse rib — and a 
 second employed to carry the wall and diagonal 
 ribs. 
 
 As the style began to aim at greater elegance 
 separate shafts were assigned to the wall-ribs and 
 to the diagonals, giving tJtrcc shafts instead of tuio 
 — or on a respond-pier, yfrv in place of three, and 
 the shafts naturally became less massive. The pro- 
 cess was soon carri' d further, and the shafts become 
 detached and stand free of the pier, to which they 
 are tied by stone bands. The use of marble, now 
 first introduced, rendered this construction easy 
 and natural. 
 
 The intense interest, which the progress of so 
 novel a mode of building excited, produced its 
 effect upon every branch of the architectural art. 
 Carving now began to take the place of the rude 
 zig-zag work, and cushion capitals with which the 
 norman builders had been obliged to content 
 themselves. 
 
 It is particularly to France that this advance was 
 due, and it is impossible to exaggerate the beauty 
 of the carving of the french transitional period. 
 
 By some means — never yet satisfactorily ex- 
 plained — the french architects of the late twelfth 
 century had become imbued with an influence 
 distinctly greek. The type of foliage and of capital, 
 adopted at this date, is founded directly upon 
 the Corinthian, and this — not the corinthian of the 
 Romans, of which the french architects had models 
 in their own country, but — the corinthian of ancient 
 Greece, as handed down by byzantine tradition. 
 
 Thus, while at Ripon, for example, our own 
 architects, dissatisfied with the cushion capital and 
 the rude norman attempts at foliage, were employing 
 capitals without any foliage at all, throughout the 
 royal domain of France, the new buildings were 
 being enriched with capitals which, in elegance, 
 hardly yield to the classic works of ancient Athens, 
 and, in vigour and invention, surpass them. 
 
 Upon this interesting question the late M. Viol- 
 let-le-duc,*" in his " Lectures on Architecture," has 
 made some remarks which, as it appears to me, are 
 exceedingly valuable, and to which I have no hesi- 
 tation in here referring.' Our author states the 
 problem with characteristic French nettete. 
 
 ^ The premature loss of this talented man is regretted — 
 even in spite of his prompt abandonment of former patrons, 
 imperial and clerical, upon the establishment of the third 
 republic — by every archa:ologist. 
 
 ' It is only right to state that my father, who had given as 
 much attention to this matter as any man, did not agree with 
 M. Viollet-le-duc's conclusions. He considered the works 
 referred to by him to be of the date of the emperor Justinian, 
 but his attention was drawn, by myself, to M. Viollet-le- 
 duc's theories only a few months before his death, and his 
 opinion might possibly have been modified, had his life been 
 spared to us longer. I do not, myself, know enough of the 
 subject to have any right to an opinion upon it, and only 
 give M. Viollet-le-duc's theory as at least highly interesting, 
 and for what it may be worth. 
 
128 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 "Under the empire of Rome the Greeks, in Greece 
 itself as well as in Italy, felt themselves constrained 
 to adopt the pompous taste of the Romans : how, 
 then, can we account for the fact that, upon the estab- 
 lishment of the eastern empire, the Greeks found 
 themselves in a position to apply novel forms to 
 the roman structure, without any apparent process 
 of transition ? The key to the arts of the middle 
 ages, both in the east and in the west, is to be found 
 in the investigation and solution of this question." ■> 
 
 M. Viollet-le-duc finds in the architecture of the 
 Jewish church, which Christianity had opened out 
 to the greek world, the source of this hitherto un- 
 explained phenomenon, and it is certainly in favour 
 of his bold speculation that it is in central Syria, 
 in a region adjacent to the Holy Land, that we ob- 
 serve the earliest and most complete expansion 
 of that germ which was destined to bear its fruit 
 in the art of the twelfth and following centuries. 
 
 "The Greeks," he says, "became ardent con- 
 verts to Christianity, and naturally so, for it had 
 been presaged by their own philosophers. They 
 were the first, therefore, to betake themselves to the 
 land which had been the cradle of the new faith — 
 an easy matter, moreover, to them, as the country 
 was a neighbouring one. When Christianity began 
 to overspread the territory of ancient Greece, 
 intercourse with Palestine became frequent and 
 necessary : and taking into consideration the ver- 
 satile spirit of the Greeks, it was natural enough 
 that they should seek the elements of a new art in 
 that land which had witnessed the birth of the new 
 religion." " I am aware," he continues, " of the pre- 
 judices that oppose this hypothesis : we have none 
 of us forgotten the opinions of Voltaire respecting the 
 Hebrew people, but I suggest that his very persis- 
 tence in the endeavour to depreciate that people, 
 and the wit which he employs in order to render it 
 ridiculous, should put us on our guard against his 
 views upon the question. One does not take so 
 much pains to destroy that which has no veritable 
 basis ; and the warmth of Voltaire's attack upon 
 this inconsiderable Jewish people is an indication 
 of its real importance." ^ 
 
 Our author, following M. de Saulcy, sees in the 
 " Golden Gate " at Jerusalem, commonly attributed 
 to the age of Justinian, an undoubted work of 
 Herod the Great, while to the rock-hewn tombs — so- 
 called — of the judges and of the kings, he attributes 
 a far earlier date. 
 
 It is undoubtedly the case that, in these singular 
 monuments, one does find an exact prototype of 
 
 ' I quote from Mr. Benjamin Bucknall's translation 
 (Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1876), 
 p. 2 1 3 scq. 
 
 ^ One other nation, tha; of which he wrote — 
 
 " Ce peuple sot et volage 
 Aussi vaillant dans le pillage, 
 Que lache dans les combats," 
 
 sliared with the Jews the honour of Voltaire's contem.pt. It 
 wjs the French. Neither love of God, nor of Fatherland, 
 inspired ths evil genius of the eighteenth century, from whosi; 
 shrunken heart bjth had alike died away. 
 
 that Style of foliage, and even of moulding, which 
 is characteristic of the architecture of central and 
 northern France at the time of the first appearance 
 of the pointed arch, and the fact, however one may 
 be disposed to account for it, is certainly remark- 
 able. 
 
 From France this style was introduced into 
 England, although it was but slowly that the great 
 advance thus made in the art of carving began to 
 produce its effect in this country. Some of the 
 best early examples of it, such as those at Canter- 
 bury, are distinctly french in type. 
 
 The capitals and bases continued, after the 
 adoption of the new form of arch, to retain that 
 square form which they had inherited, through 
 romanesque, from classic architecture. As, how- 
 ever, each shaft had its own separate order or 
 vault-rib to support, it seemed reasonable to set the 
 capital, and its base, in the direction of the member 
 of the groining which the shaft was designed to 
 carry. From this it results that the plan of an 
 early-pointed church indicates, by the position and 
 direction, even of the bases, of its several shafts, 
 the arrangements of the vaulting and arches above, 
 and not a base could be worked until the design 
 of the future groin had been determined. There 
 is a logical precision about this system which is 
 very fascinating. The whole building acquires, 
 through it, an intellectual unity of design which 
 cannot be too much admired. 
 
 In England, however, it prevailed only for a 
 short period, although it reappears, strangely 
 enough, in some examples of the later perpen- 
 dicular style. In France, with whose eminently 
 logical architects it had originated, it lasted much 
 longer — it may even be said to have continued in 
 that country throughout the whole course of the 
 pointed style. For even in flamboyant work, after 
 capitals had been entirely abandoned, it is common 
 enough to see the whole design of the vaulting 
 indicated by the bases of the pillars and responds, 
 the vaulting-ribs dying apparently into the pier, 
 and re-appearing, below, in the more salient portions 
 of their bases, which emerge from the general con- 
 tour of the great base, in which they are conceived 
 as embedded. This is, of course, a highly abstract 
 version of the early idea. 
 
 In its original form it, for a long while, satisfied 
 the french architects, but it was soon felt by the 
 english to be somewhat crude. The english mind, 
 then as now, showed itself less disposed, than the 
 french, to rest content with the results of the merely 
 logical application of a principle. The square capi- 
 tals, standing at different angles, were felt to be awk- 
 ward and harsh, and to remove this purely aesthetic 
 defect, the plan of the capital was changed from 
 the square to the octagonal, or the circular form. 
 
 Two other causes contributed to this interesting 
 advance. The first was the very particular atten- 
 tion which was paid by the english architects to 
 mouldings. 
 
 Thcfirst innovation madeupontheperfectly square 
 
PLATE XXIV. 
 
 WELLS CATHEDRAL-CHURCH. 
 
 INTERIOR OF THK NORTH PORCH. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 129 
 
 arch-order of the early norman was the working of a 
 bead upon its arrise, followed soon by the addition 
 of fillets and hollows. As the style advanced, greater 
 richness was attempted in the sections, but it was 
 now felt that further elaboration was impossible, so 
 long as the square form of the order was retained. 
 
 The next step, therefore, was to design the 
 mouldings upon a splayed contour, instead of on 
 a square outline. This advance was not adopted 
 in France until a very late period, and in that country 
 the capitals accordingly remained square, almost 
 until capitals ceased altogether to be employed. 
 
 This change of the general section of arch-moulds, 
 however, determined the future of english gothic, 
 and contributed, of course, to the general introduc- 
 tion of capitals of circular plan. Square capitals be- 
 came unreasonable, so soon as the general contour 
 of the arch-moulds had ceased to be rectangular. 
 
 The second of the causes to which I have re- 
 ferred, was a certain indifference of the english to 
 architectural carving. 
 
 We have seen how, in norman times, the enrich- 
 ments were generally mere mason's work. Chev- 
 rons and zig-zags take the place, in England, of the 
 foliage so nobly developed in the french roman- 
 esque : what are termed cushion capitals are as 
 characteristic of english norman, as a free imitation 
 of the greek corinthian capital is of the corre- 
 sponding continental style. 
 
 This difference arose in part, no doubt, from 
 inability to execute the more artistic work.' The 
 great enthusiasm which the rise of the pointed style 
 evoked produced, indeed, in England, for the time, 
 a very fine school of architectural carvers, and the 
 elegance of its carving is one of the great beauties 
 of the early english gothic. But it was found diflS- 
 cult to maintain this high standard, after the first 
 excitement of the great transition had passed away. 
 
 The same cause which had led before to the 
 invention of the rude cushion-capital now brought 
 about the adoption of a new form of capital, con- 
 sisting entirely of mouldings. 
 
 The earliest type of these moulded capitals is 
 square on plan — examples may be seen at Ripon 
 and at York, — but the superior elegance of the cir- 
 cular form is even more obvious in moulded capitals, 
 than in foliated ones, and thus this new invention 
 contributed, not a little, to the general adoption of 
 the circular plan. 
 
 Thus were arrived at the three great characteris- 
 tics of english early pointed — viz. : first, rib-groin- 
 ing : then the splayed contour of mouldings, with 
 all that elaboration of section for which that inven- 
 tion gave the opportunity ; and, lastly, the circular, 
 moulded capital. 
 
 It is impossible to speak in too high terms of the 
 works produced in this and in other countries, under 
 the stimulus which the invention and first working- 
 out of the new style applied. 
 
 ' In part, too, in all probability, from the influence of the 
 tradition.^ of saxon art. 
 
 The transitional periods of architectural history 
 are ever distinguished by works of more than 
 ordinary power, and of this truth there is no more 
 illustrious instance than is afforded by what is 
 termed — par excellence — the transition. The pecu- 
 liar merit of the buildings erected during these 
 crises is due, no doubt, to the fact that the keen 
 interest excited, at such times, by striking innova- 
 tions, in an art which is always popular, when 
 alive at all, attracts to its service men of a higher 
 order of mind than is the case under more normal 
 circumstances. 
 
 The ages of Pericles, of Augustus, and of Con- 
 stantine, of the transition to the pointed style of 
 architecture, and of the italian renaissance, are only 
 conspicuous examples of a truth which is illustrated, 
 in a degree, by every period of accelerated art- 
 movement.'" 
 
 This period is, in the number and the vastness 
 of the churches which it rebuilt or remodelled, 
 second only — if it be second — to that which fol- 
 lowed the norman invasion, and in the originality, 
 and the high artistic value, of the works which it 
 produced, it is certainly surpassed by none. 
 
 These works are so well known that I am dis- 
 pensed from the necessity of dwelling upon them at 
 any length. 
 
 I have selected for illustration the church of the 
 Abbey of Dore, in Herefordshire, not only upon 
 account of the singular merit of its design, but be- 
 cause the arrangement of its rectangular chevet is 
 peculiarly english, and illustrates, in a strikingly 
 beautiful form, a type to which I shall presently 
 have to refer." 
 
 This house, the abbatia Dorensis, was cistercian, 
 and its church was dedicated in honour of the Blessed 
 Virgin. It derived its name from the vallis de Dora, 
 so-called from the small stream which waters it. It 
 was founded in the reign of Stephen, by Robert 
 de Ewyas. King John made to it a considerable 
 grant of land, and to this, perhaps, is to be attri- 
 buted the completion of the eastern portion of the 
 
 °'In our country, in the course of the middle ages, the 
 following periods (in addition to the Transition), illus- 
 trate, only upon a somewhat smaller scale, the same truth — 
 that of the first introduction of the norman style, of the first 
 complete working out of tracery, of the invention of the per- 
 pendicular manner, and lastly of the discovery of that new 
 principle of vaulting known as the fan-groin. 
 
 " This church, owing to its situation among the Black 
 Mountains, is not very well known. The view which I give 
 of the interior of its eastern end is a fac-simile of a sketch by 
 my dear friend Edward O'Brien, whose high genius — too early 
 lost to us here — was the adornment of a singularly noble 
 christian character. I am almost afraid to draw attention to 
 this, or to any other little-known but precious monument, 
 lest doing so should help on a "restoration" by which a 
 venerable sanctuary may lose all its interest, and be reduced 
 to as near a resemblance to a modern suburban meeting-house 
 as the funds which can be got together will allow of, and it is 
 remarkable how little it costs to achieve such a disaster. A 
 very few five-pound notes — ^judiciously applied — will effect 
 the virtual eflacement of what years of violence and centuries 
 of neglect, have spared to us. The process of Madame 
 Rachel was not, I believe, a lengthy one, but while it failed to 
 restore the sweet bloom of youth, it very effectually destroyed 
 all that is venerable in age. 
 
 S 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 cliurch as we now see it. This comprises a transept 
 of two bays to each limb — making, with the square 
 crossing-bay, five, an aisled presbytery of three 
 bays, and an eastern double-aisle, of which more 
 anon. The westernmost bay of the eastern limb 
 differs in design from the other two, as the result of 
 the position of the two towers, which are placed 
 over those bays of the presbytery-aisles which open 
 into the transepts. In consequence of this peculiar 
 and very beautiful distribution, the arches which 
 open upon the presbytery from these bays of the 
 aisle are very nan-ow, forming, in fact, those ostia 
 presbyterii which are required by the old english 
 rituals, and of which we have existing examples 
 at St. Alban's, Salisbury, and Canterbury, and the 
 clerestories of this bay open into the second story 
 of the towers. Each transept has thus one eastern 
 chapel, and the quire of the monks occupied its 
 normal position beneath the crossing-bay, extend- 
 ing, possibly, one or more bays into the nave. 
 The whole has been groined, or, at any rate, was 
 designed for groining, of which that of the aisles 
 alone exists. These are constructed in the early 
 manner, without ridge-ribs. 
 
 This work is peculiarly typical of the more ad- 
 vanced phase of the transition, both in the general 
 character of its details, and in the fact that capitals, 
 of the square and of the circular plan, are employed 
 in combination. 
 
 The east end, internally, is a most lovely design. 
 It presents that rectangular version of the french 
 cha'et, the wonderful beauty of which may well 
 reconcile us to that abstinence from the apsidal 
 form of the eastern termination — the most striking 
 feature of the continental churches — which our 
 own venerable traditions have imposed. The aisle 
 is continued as a procession-path across the square 
 east end, which is planned in three bays, and 
 beyond this extends a row of chapels, separated 
 from each other, originally, by low stone walls. 
 Of these there are five, three behind the presbytery, 
 and one somewhat wider, answering to each of its 
 aisles. The whole is upon a very moderate scale, 
 and the eastern aisle, with its chapels, is particularly 
 so, and acquires from this circumstance a delicacy 
 of effect which is perfectly charming. Indeed, to 
 my mind, there is nothing better, in its way, to be 
 found anywhere in England, and the architect who, 
 having seen this rectangular chevet, can think of 
 abandoning the most conspicuous tradition of our 
 native ecclesiology, on account of a superior beauty 
 to be found in the apsidal chevets of France, can 
 have no true appreciation of architectural effect. 
 
 Square chevets of very similar plan are to be found 
 at Glasgow, and at Roslyn, and although these are 
 less perfect in conception than this little Hereford- 
 shire abbey, — inasmuch as their eastern end is 
 distributed in two bays, instead of three, giving 
 therefore four chapels in place of five, — they are 
 yet wholly charming, and ought surely to render the 
 adoption of a foreign treatment as uncalled for as 
 it is unpatriotic. 
 
 In the presbytery stands the original high altar 
 
 of stone, re-erected, in the seventeenth century, by 
 a descendant of John Scudamore, to whom the 
 property of the abbey was granted in the 31st yeai- 
 of Henry VIII." 
 
 Before following the history of the more com- 
 plete pointed style, it will be well to make a few 
 remarks upon the history, during the period which 
 I have just reviewed, of that rectangular form of 
 sanctuary, of which the church of Dore affords so 
 beautiful an example — which is characteristic of our 
 own land, and which stands in such striking contrast 
 with the apsidal terminations both of the christian 
 basilicas of Rome, and also of almost all the great 
 churches of continental Christendom. 
 
 From the earliest ages of Christianity two distinct 
 ecclesiological traditions have, as we have already 
 observed, been in conflict. Both are, in principle, 
 identical, but each represents a different mode of 
 satisfying the same ritual requirements. The one 
 is native, so to speak, to our soil, the other is 
 foreign. 
 
 Again and again in the course of ages has the 
 native use succumbed for a time to the foreign 
 importation, but in every instance it has in the 
 long-run triumphantly re-asserted itself. 
 
 I have in a preceding chapter, exhibited the 
 grounds for believing that the sanctuaries of the 
 native british churches were rectangular. 
 
 When Christianity became the recognised religion 
 of the empire the churches of the roman colonists 
 and officials of Britain were erected — like those of 
 the capital of the empire — with apsidal sanctuaries. 
 
 Again, St. Augustine and his fellow-missionaries, 
 quite naturally, re-introduced the Italian type, but 
 during the later years of the saxon period, the square 
 end had virtually triumphed over its competing 
 rival. 
 
 The norman conquest, iox the third time in the 
 history of the curious conflict, gave an artificial and 
 temporary victory to the foreign plan. Indeed, it is 
 curious to observe that — some years before the in- 
 vasion — the normanising taste of the Confessor led 
 to the adoption of the un-english model in his 
 rebuilding of the abbey church of Westminster. 
 
 This appears clear from the description of this 
 work in the Vita yEdtcuardi J?egis,^ published in 
 1858 under the direction of the Master of the Rolls. 
 The passage runs as follows : " That portion of the 
 building in which stands the high altar is erected 
 with very lofty vaults, and finished in a circular form 
 (circiimvolvitiir) with square and even-jointed ma- 
 sonry. The aisle which surrounds the sanctuary 
 
 ° To the same benefactor the church is indebted for a 
 very beautiful high-screen of oak, in the style of his day, 
 which serves, together with many others in all parts of the 
 country, to testify to that re-action of catholic feeling which 
 followed upon the death of Elizabeth. There are also some 
 interesting wall-paintings of the same date. Altogether this 
 church affords, or did so when I saw it, now many years ago, 
 almost a precise english parallel to an untouched french 
 church, to the charm of which it is impossible to give expres- 
 sion in words. 
 
 P MS. 526 in the Harleian collection in the British 
 Museum. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 itself (ambitus'* ipsius cedis) is enclosed by two 
 ranges of arches which start from either side (of the 
 sanctuary), right and left, and the continuity ( coin- 
 pages) of this work is ensured by a construction of 
 great strength.'" 
 
 Almost all the great churches erected under the 
 stimulus of the norman immigration exhibit the 
 apsidal form, but no sooner had the Conquest be- 
 come gradually tided over, and the conquering race 
 had begun to coalesce with the conquered, than the 
 square east-end began slowly, but steadily, to gain 
 upon its foreign rival. 
 
 By the thirteenth century its triumph was com- 
 plete, and although we see in the abbey church of 
 Westminster one of the most complete and beauti- 
 ful examples of the apsidal ckevct to be found in 
 Christendom, the circumstances of its rebuilding, 
 and the french tastes of king Henry, render it 
 clearly an exceptional case. The language spoken 
 (in the thirteenth century) in that monastery was, 
 as abbat Ware tells us in his " Liber Consuetudin- 
 arius/' neither latin, nor english, but french.'' 
 
 1 In the Rolls reprint (p. 417), this word appears as ahitiis. 
 In 1868 I had to render into english the whole passage for my 
 father, who wished to refer to it in his second professorial 
 lecture at the Royal Academy, and while making this transla- 
 tion I became convinced that abitits could not make sense, 
 and that ambihcs must be the true reading. At my sugges- 
 tion the original MS. was examined, with the aid of the 
 experts of the library, and a mark of abbreviation was de- 
 tected above the a, which had escaped the notice of the 
 transcriber and editor. 
 
 ' It may be well to give the whole passage. I will only 
 add that the bases of the piers of this duplex lapidiim anus 
 exist below the pavement of the present sanctuary, and one 
 of them may now be viewed, by means of a trap-door con- 
 trived for the purpose in the flooring, to the north of the high 
 altar. 
 
 "Ad regis itaque prseceptum opus nobiliter coeptum 
 feliciter prasparatur, nee impensa siva impendenda pensantur, 
 drummodo Deo et beato Petro dignum et acceptum probetur. 
 Principalis arte domus altissimis erecta fornicibus quadrato 
 opere parique commissura circumvolvitur ; ambitus autem 
 ipsius Kdis dupplici lapidum arcu ex utroque latere hinc et 
 inde fortiter solidata operis compage clauditur. Porro crux 
 templi quae medium canentium Deo chorum ambiret, et sui 
 gemina hinc et inde sustentatione mediae turris celsum apicem 
 fulciret, humili primum et robusta fornice simpliciter surgit, 
 cocleis multipliciter ex arte ascendentibus plurimis tumescit, 
 deinde vero simplici muro usque ad tectum ligneum plumbo 
 diligenter tectum pervenit. Subter vero et supra disposite 
 educuntur domicilia, memoriis apostolorum, martyrum, con- 
 fessorum, ac virginum consecranda per sua altaria. Haec 
 autem multiplicitas tam vasti operis tanto spatio ab oriente 
 ordita est veteris templi, ne scilicet interim inibi commo- 
 rantes fratres vacarent a servitio Christi, ut etiam aliqua pars 
 spatiose subiret interjaciendi vestibuli." 
 
 ^ " In qua quidem schola (sc. noviciorum) sicut nec alibi 
 in claustro debet anglico ydiomate aliquid proferri. Sed 
 
 neque latino , sed gallice jugiter, sicut et in capitulo, ab 
 
 omnibus et a singulis in claustro est loquendum." Quarta 
 pars libri consuetudinarii, scripta ad preceptum D. Richardi 
 de Ware, abbatis Westmonasterii, anno gratire 1266, cap. 
 xvi., Cottonian MS., otho c. xi. This, the fourth volume of 
 the entire work, is the only portion of it known to be in 
 existence. It was destroyed, as was supposed, in the burning 
 of the Cotton Library, in October, 1 731. Modern science 
 and skill have, however, succeeded in restoring into a legible 
 form its remains, " withered like a parched scroll." At the 
 suggestion of my father, a transcript of this valuable MS. 
 was prepared for the Dean of Westminster (Dr. Stanley), 
 
 Durham and Lindisfarne, to whose history I 
 have had occasion already to refer, afford good 
 examples of this fact. Each was rebuilt immedi- 
 ately after the Conquest, and in each case the new 
 church was terminated by an eastern apse. 
 
 Early in the thirteenth century. Bishop Poore 
 (i 235-1241) commenced the destruction of the 
 norman apse, at Durham, and the erection in its 
 place of the eastern transept, that wonderful work 
 known as the chapel of the nine altars, which is the 
 noblest extant example of the rectangular mode of 
 termination.' This great extension of the original 
 plan was not completed until (about) 1275, during 
 the episcopate of Robert de Insula. 
 
 The priory church of Lindisfarne, as we have 
 already seen, had been rebuilt under the bishops 
 Carileph and Flambard, between the years 1093 
 and 1 130. Its architect was ^dwardus, a monk 
 of Durham, who, says Reginald," " built upon the 
 island a church new from the foundations, in 
 honour of St. Cuthbert, which he finished with 
 squared stones, by the labour of his industry and by 
 the gift of the faithful, with very elegant workman- 
 ship." This church, which had a nave of three 
 coupled bays, and a transept of one bay on either 
 side of the crossing was terminated by three apses. 
 Of these, those which projected from the transept- 
 bays were semi-circles, but the central one was 
 elongated by the intervention of one square bays 
 between the eastern limit of the transept and the, 
 commencement of the apse itself."' 
 
 But in later years this semi-circular termination 
 was, as in the case of Durham, removed, and a 
 rectangular form was given to the sanctuary, the 
 eastern wall of which now stands (but in ruins) 
 some fifteen feet to the east of the original norman 
 apse. 
 
 The struggle between the two plans continued, 
 however, even after the victory of the native type 
 was assured, and produced, in the course of the 
 middle ages, many examples of a compromise be- 
 
 which is now in the library ot the abbey. To this I had 
 myself the interesting task of preparing an index. A second 
 copy was, by permission of the Dean, written out for my 
 father, and is now in my possession. 
 
 ' The description of this magnificent work, given in the 
 " Rites of Durham," is particularly interesting. It is too 
 long to be given here in full, but the following extracts will 
 perhaps tempt the reader to consult the original. After 
 giving the respective dedications of the several chapels which 
 it contained, our author continues : " All the foresaid nine 
 altars had theire severall shrines and covers of wainscote 
 overhead, in very decent and comely forme, having likewise 
 betwixt everye altar a verye faire and large partition of 
 wainscote, all varnished over with fine branches and flowers 
 and other imagerye most finely and artificially pictured and 
 guilted, conteyninge the severall lockers or ambers for the 
 safe keepinge of the vestments and ornaments belonginge to 
 everye altar ; with three or four amryes in the wall pertain- 
 inge to some of the said altars for the same use and pur- 
 pose." 
 
 " " Reginaldi Monachi Dunelmensis Libellus de admiran- 
 dis beati Cuthberti virtutibus," Surtees edition, p. 45, quoted 
 in Monsignor Eyre's " St. Cuthbert," p. 229. He wrote 
 between the years 1160 — 1172. 
 
 » The foundations of this apse were discovered in the year 
 1821. Cf. Eyre's " St. Cuthbert," p. 232. 
 
132 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 tween the two, which are as beautiful as they are 
 suggestive. Lichfield is a charming example of 
 the pure form : Pershore priory, Tewkesbury abbey, 
 Winchelsea priory, St. Michael's, Coventry, and 
 Gloucester cathedral," are good illustrations of the 
 intermediate type. 
 
 As a rule, whenever in England the apse occurs 
 in work later than the commencement of the thir- 
 teenth century, the eastern bay and windows are 
 larger than the lateral ones. This is the case, too, 
 in the church at Stirling, a peculiarly beautiful 
 example. 
 
 If, under peculiarities of circumstance, the apsidal 
 termination should ever appear desirable, an english 
 architect may learn from these admirable models 
 how to concede so much as may be necessary to 
 the foreign type, without withholding what is due 
 to our native traditions. 
 
 The history of our medieval architecture has 
 now been brought down to the complete formation 
 of the pointed style. 
 
 We have ascertained the elements of which it 
 was composed, and have traced their origin and 
 their history. Each of these elements stands in 
 direct contrast with the principles of the classic 
 style, yet all are seen to follow logically from that 
 expansion, which the roman style received in the 
 hands of the teutonic nations, and, more particu- 
 larly, of our own saxon and norman progenitors. 
 
 A few remarks will here be in place as to those 
 changes in church-arrangement, which coincided 
 with — though they can scarcely be said to have 
 affected — the strictly architectural progress already 
 described. 
 
 The principal innovations to which I shall here 
 refer, form a uniform series, tending regularly in one 
 direction. 
 
 The history of medieval ecclesiology, as it affected 
 the structure of churches, may almost be summed up 
 in one conception — the constant increase, in length 
 and in architectural importance, of the eastern limb 
 of that cruciform-plan, which all the larger churches 
 exhibit. 
 
 In the basilica this member of the plan was merely 
 a semi-circle, projecting but half its width from the 
 line of the transept. 
 
 We have seen in central Syria, in such churches 
 as Soueideh and Roueiha, the first step towards 
 the medieval plan, in the elongation given, in these 
 examples, to the apsidal sanctuary. In the church 
 built by Ethelburga, the daughter of Ethelbert, at 
 Lyminge, there is no such extension, nor, so far 
 as we can judge by the description of Eadmer, was 
 there any such in the cathedral church at Canter- 
 bury, as enlarged by Augustine ; although it is 
 found (in the eastern apse only) in the very typical 
 plan for the church of St. Gall. In those churches 
 of the saxon period which remain unaltered, or of 
 which we can trace the original plan, we observe, 
 
 * In this case the suggestion of the apsidal form is exceed- 
 ingly subtle. 
 
 commonly, a slight lengthening out of the eastern 
 arm. 
 
 The first churches erected after the Conquest are 
 a little more developed in this respect. Thus 
 Lanfranc's church at Canterbury, begun in 1070, in 
 imitation, as we have seen, of St. Stephen's, at Caen, 
 has an eastern limb of two bays with aisles, in 
 addition — of course — to the apse. St. Alban's, 
 Winchester, and Ely, all commenced within some 
 ten years of the erection of Lanfranc's church, show 
 a length of four bays, instead of two. 
 
 But, at Canterbury, scarcely twenty years had 
 elapsed before Ernulf, appointed, by Anselm, prior 
 of the monastery, extended Lanfranc's presbytery, 
 from two bays in length, to nine bays, beyond which 
 again there was a seven-sided apse, the whole 
 surrounded by an aisle, and furnished with a second 
 transept, and three chapels in the chevet. 
 
 The expansion of the simple basilican apse into 
 a vast choir, such as that of Ernulf, is one of the most 
 striking features in the whole history of eccle- 
 siology, and it is very noteworthy that nowhere 
 but in England did this eastward extension attain 
 such extraordinary dimensions. The vast length 
 of our great minsters, by which they are con- 
 spicuously distinguished from the great continental 
 churches, is due principally to this extension of 
 their eastern hmb. 
 
 In spite, however, of this magnificent innovation, 
 the position of the high altar, and of the ritual choir, 
 remained for a long while unaltered. 
 
 The short eastern arms of St. Stephen's, at Caen, 
 of Lanfranc's cathedral, or of Kirkstall Abbey, are 
 nothing but elongated versions of the basilican 
 sanctuary, an elongation determined mainly, as I 
 believe, by that benedictine custom which placed, 
 in advance of the high altar, a second altar for the 
 celebration of the matutinal mass. They were, in 
 fact, long sanctuaries, not short quires. The choir 
 — like the chorus caiitorum of the basilica — was still 
 placed under the crossing, or extended across it into 
 the eastern bays of the nave. 
 
 This arrangement, so characteristic of early nor- 
 man churches, is simply that of the primitive basilica. 
 Like it, it assigns a distinct constructional division 
 of the church to the altar-area, while the quire is 
 treated as a mere enclosure of convenience, and is 
 ignored in the planning of the fabric. 
 
 The change effected as the Middle Ages passed 
 on, is very significant. The monks, as a matter of 
 fact, pushed forward their quire, out of the nave, 
 eastward into the sanctuary, which was therefore 
 lengthened to receive them. 
 
 The constructional division which had once 
 severed, monks and people alike, from the altar-area, 
 now severed the people from the monks ; while 
 no structural division now intervened between the 
 quire of the monks and the sanctuary itself. The 
 monks had, in fact, come within the sanctuary, 
 and the laity alone remained without in the nave,* 
 
 ^Lenoir mentions ('' Archit. Monast.," i., p. 187) that at 
 Cluny " la communion des laiques se faisait a tra vers une 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 133 
 
 The primitive arrangement was retained at Ely 
 until the last century, and it exists to this day at 
 Westminster, at Norwich, and at St. Alban's. 
 
 The immense expansion of the eastern limb re- 
 mained, all through the middle ages, the great 
 peculiarity of our english churches. There are 
 few parish churches upon the continent which can 
 compete with ours in the proportionate length of 
 their chancels, and there are no cathedrals, which 
 in the architectural importance of their quires, can 
 rival ours. 
 
 The cathedral church of Canterbury illustrates 
 in so very conspicuous a manner this great inno- 
 vation, which is characteristic of our medieval 
 ecclesiology, that a short review of its history 
 during the period with which we are now dealing, 
 will serve to illustrate the facts to which I have 
 been referring. 
 
 I have already, in previous chapters, given a 
 sketch of the history of this church — the seat of the 
 metropolitan of all England — from the earliest ages 
 down to the period of the primacy of Lanfranc, and 
 it will, therefore, be fitting here to dwell, in some 
 detail, upon the changes which it underwent during 
 the two succeeding centuries. 
 
 Of the general plan and dimensions of the church 
 of Lanfranc I have already spoken. The new 
 church stood upon the same site as the ancient 
 one — originally " erected by the labour of roman 
 believers,"^ and extended by St. Augustine — as is 
 evident from Eadmer's account of the rebuilding. 
 Before the new works commenced Lanfranc " com- 
 manded " — these are his words — " that the bodies 
 of the saints, which were buried in the eastern part 
 of the church " — that is, in the portion erected by 
 Augustine — " should be removed to the western 
 part, where stood the oratory of the blessed Virgin 
 Mary " — that is to say, into the apse of the primitive 
 roman basilica. Of this translation Eadmer was 
 himself an eye-witness."^ " But in process of time," 
 he continues, " as the new work of the commenced 
 church proceeded, it became necessary to take 
 down the remainder of the old work " — that is, the 
 venerable western apse — " in which the bodies of 
 the saints just mentioned had been (temporarily) 
 deposited," in order, of course, to carry out the 
 western portion of the new nave, of which, in spite 
 of its subsequent transformation into the perpendi- 
 cular style there are still certain remains.'"' 
 
 grille de fer disposee ad hoc au septum, parce que meme pour 
 communier, on ne pouvait entrer dans le choeur." He gives 
 as his authority for this statement Martene { "Voyage lit. 
 Cluny " i., p. 229). 
 
 y Gervase says " Eadmer, the venerable cantor, in his 
 opttscula describes the ancient church built in the roman 
 manner, which archbishop Lanfranc, virhen he came to the 
 see, utterly destroyed, finding it in ashes." Cf. Willis's 
 "Canterbury," p. 36. 
 
 ^ "Testis enim est mihi— quia cum adhuc in scholis 
 puerulus essem, &c." Cf. Wiilis s " Canterbury," pp. 14, 15. 
 
 aa Cf. Willis's " Canterbury," p. 64. The north-western 
 tower of Lanfranc's church existed complete until 1834, when, 
 with a truly masterly stupidity, it was destroyed, as I have 
 
 Its arrangement, with which we are now alone 
 concerned, must, as is evident from Gervase's ac- 
 count, have been similar to that which still exists at 
 Westminster. Gervase's description, however, only 
 extends to the eastern limb of the transept. " You 
 must know," he says, "good reader, that I never 
 saw the quire {i.e., the eastern limb or presbytery) 
 of Lanfranc, neither have I been able to meet with 
 any description of it. Eadmer, indeed, describes 
 the old church, which, before the time of Lanfranc, 
 was constructed after the roman manner. Also he 
 mentions, but does not describe, the work of Lan- 
 franc which succeeded this old church " (WilUs's 
 " Canterbury," p. 42). But what Gervase does state 
 is sufficient, taken together with the remains exist- 
 ing, here and elsewhere, to show us what was the 
 general distribution of the original norman building. 
 
 The short eastern limb constituted the presby- 
 tery, and was raised upon a crypt. It was probably 
 separated from its aisle, as in the case of St. Alban's, 
 by unpierced walls. 
 
 The crossing-bay constituted, as it does to this 
 day at Westminster, that space, which (as Leland, 
 speaking ot Salisbury, well describes it) " standeth 
 as a light and division betwixt the quier and the 
 presbytery." Its pavement was lower than that of 
 the eastern limb, but was elevated many steps above 
 that of the body of the church. Upon each side 
 of it were the doors of the presbytery, those ostia 
 presbilerii so often alluded to in the Salisbury " De 
 Officiis Ecclesiasticis Tractatus,'"''' and indeed es- 
 sential to the performance of the old english rite, 
 and here too was, no doubt, erected the matutinal 
 altar. 
 
 The quire of the monks was wholly in the nave, 
 immediately to the west of the transept." Of the 
 exact position of the high altar and of the various 
 shrines we have no account. 
 
 The case is, however, very different with regard 
 to the next stage in the history of this church, that 
 " glorious quire of Conrad," as Gervase terms it, to 
 make way for which the presbytery of Lanfranc was 
 pulled down, after it had stood but twenty years. 
 
 No reason for this destruction of a comparatively 
 
 already had occasion to notice, in order to allow of the erec- 
 tion of a mere copy of prior Goldston's fifteenth-century 
 tower, which stood to the south of it. 
 
 '"'^ Given in full in an appendix to Dr. Rock's " Church of 
 Our Fathers," vol. iv., a work, the value of which one may 
 not easily exaggerate. 
 
 The arrangements of Lanfranc's church are a matter of 
 inference rather than of direct evidence. I have arrived at 
 the above conclusions, by a comparison of what is known of 
 the early norman distribution at St. Alban's and elsewhere, 
 with what little can be gathered with regard to Canterbury. 
 In such a comparison it must be remembered, I. That Lan- 
 franc's church possessed a crypt, while St. Alban's did not. 
 This crypt did not probably extend under the side-aisles or 
 chapels of the eastern limb, just as at Westminster the ele- 
 vated area of the presbytery and apse does not affect the 
 levels of the surrounding aisle. 2. That the eastern arm of 
 Lanfranc's church was in all probability considerably shorter 
 than that at St. Alban's, and that therefore Xhzostia presbtkrii, 
 which in the latter case are placed in the westernmost bay 
 of the presbytery, were planned, in the former, in the crossing- 
 bay. 
 
134 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 new work is recorded, but after the review, which we 
 have already taken, of the history of the develope- 
 ment of the medieval model out of its basilican 
 prototype, we can well understand the causes which 
 determined the change, and it is interesting to 
 note that the work owed its origin and its success 
 to the suggestion and the assistance of Lanfranc's 
 immediate successor, St. Anselm (i 093-1 109). 
 
 This work, by which the area of the church was 
 doubled, is thus a dated example, and it enables 
 us to give the precise period of the introduction of 
 the great medieval innovation, by which the quires 
 of the religious (and of the secular canons) were 
 transferred, from their primitive position in the 
 nave, into the eastern limb, hitherto reserved for the 
 sanctuary alone. 
 
 Of this great work, Gervase, an eyewitness, has 
 left us a full account, and it is to be noted that in 
 this, probably the earliest example of that radical 
 departure from the basilican arrangement, which is 
 so characteristic of the middle ages, we find also the 
 earliest example of a secondary, or eastern transept. 
 
 This is a feature peculiarly english. It is found 
 at Lincoln, Salisbury, Beverley, and York, and I 
 attribute its origin to a desire to adhere to early 
 basilican traditions, in despite of the great innova- 
 tion which had moved the quire of the monks out 
 of the nave into the eastern limb. The great tran- 
 sept, which had originally intervened between the 
 sanctuary and the chorus cantorum, had now come 
 to serve as the constructional demarcation between 
 nave and quire. But its primitive intention was not 
 lost sight of by the medieval ritualists, in spite of 
 the radical change of arrangement which they had 
 introduced. It was this feeling whichled, as I believe, 
 to the introduction of a second, and subordinate 
 transept, to the eastward of the ritual quire, which 
 should continue to separate off (as the greater tran- 
 sept had once done) the sanctuary itself, from all 
 the rest of the church. 
 
 In Anselm's quire we see this eastern transept 
 in its rudimentary form. Although upon the plan 
 it is well defined, it was, in this, the first instance 
 of its appearance, ignored in the design of the 
 eastern limb ; which was carried across it unbroken, 
 two bays of the internal elevation taking up the 
 space which, in the reconstruction after the fire of 
 1 1 74, is occupied by one wide crossing-bay, open- 
 ing into the, then fully-recognised, eastern transept. 
 
 Let us now take notice of the arrangements of 
 the church as enlarged during the primacy of St. 
 Anselm. 
 
 In the midst of the nave (Lanfranc's work) was 
 suspended a gilded corona or chandelier. Across 
 the western arch of the central tower was erected a 
 screen surmounted by a loft {pulpitum), which " had 
 in its midst, upon the side toward the nave, the altar 
 of the holy cross." " Above the pulpiiion, and 
 placed across the church, was the beam, which 
 sustained the great cross, two cherubim, and the 
 images of St. Mary and St. John the apostle.'"''^ 
 
 Gervase, in Willis's " Canterbury," p. 37. 
 
 On either side of this, the people's altar, the 
 screen was pierced by a doorway."' An ascent of 
 many steps in front of this screen led upwards 
 from the nave-level to that of the area of the 
 crossing-bay (beneath the central tower), and by a 
 similar ascent, access was obtained from this inter- 
 mediate level to that of the quire itself, through a 
 second screen, under the eastern arch of the tower, 
 pierced by one central doorway. 
 
 This was, indeed, the normal benedictine arrange- 
 ment. At St. Alban's, the westernmost screen 
 (known as St. Cuthbert's screen) still exists, and 
 the foundations of the second, situate one bay 
 eastward, have recently been discovered. There 
 are indications of a similar distribution in the 
 cathedral of Norwich. The author of the " Rites 
 of Durham " describes a similar arrangement. In 
 this instance, as at Canterbury, the two screens 
 occupied the eastern and western sides of the 
 crossing-bay beneath the central tower. 
 
 " In the former part of the quire/' says this 
 writer, " of either side, the west dore, or chief 
 entrance thereof, without the quire dore in the 
 lanthorne, were placed in theire severall roomes, 
 one above another, the most excellent pictures 
 all gilted, verye beautifull to behould, of all the 
 kinges and queenes, as well of Scotland as Eng- 
 land, which weere devout and godly founders and 
 benefactors of this famous church" (p. 17). Upon 
 this screen was placed the great organ. The 
 church possessed three." 
 
 Of the westernmost screen our author gives the 
 following description (p. 28) : — " In the body of 
 the churche, betwixt two of the hiest pillors sup- 
 portinge and holding up the west syde of the 
 lanterne, over against the quere dore, ther was an 
 alter called " Jesus Alter," where Jhesus mess was 
 song every fridaie thorowe out the whole yere. 
 And of the back-syde of the saide alter there was 
 a faire high stone wall : at either end of the wall 
 there was a dore, which was lockt every night, 
 called the two roode dores, for the procession to 
 goe furth and comme in at ; and betwixt those two 
 dores was Jhesus Alter placed as is afforesaide. 
 And at ether ende of the alter was closed up with 
 fyne wainscott, like unto a porch adjoyning to 
 eyther roode dore, verie fynely vernished with fyne 
 read vernishe ; and in the wainscott, at the south 
 end of the alter, ther was four faire almeries, for to 
 locke the chalices and sylver crewetts, with two or 
 thre sewts of vestments, and other ornaments, be- 
 longinge to the said alter, for the holie daies and 
 principall daies. And in the north end of the alter in 
 the wainscott, there was a dore to come in to the 
 
 « lb., p. 41. 
 
 " " One of the fairest paire of the three did stand over the 
 quire dore, only opened and played uppon at principall 
 feasts, the pipes beinge all of the most fine y^ooA and work- 
 manshipp, very faire, partly gilded uppon the inside, and the 
 outsides of the leaves and covers up to the topp, with 
 branches and flowers finely gilt, with the name of Jesus 
 gilted with gold. There was but two paire more of them in 
 all England of the same makinge, one paire in York, and 
 another in Paules " (p. 14). 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 135 
 
 said porch, and a locke on yt, to be lockt both daie 
 and nighte. Also ther was standing on the alter 
 against the wall aforesaid a moste curiouse and fine 
 table, with two leves to open and clos againe, all 
 of the hole passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, most 
 richlye and curiously sett furth in most lyvelie 
 coulors, all like the burninge gold, as He was tor- 
 mented, and as He honge on the cross, which was 
 a most lamentable sighte to beholde. The which 
 table was alwaies lockt up but onely on principall 
 dales. Also in the fore parte of the said porch, from 
 the utmoste corner of the porch to the other, ther 
 was a dore with two erode leves to open from syde 
 to syde, all of fyne joined and through-carved 
 worke, the height of yt was sumthinge above a 
 man's brest ; and in the highte of the said dore yt 
 was all stricken full of irons piks, that no man 
 should clymme over, which dore did hing all in 
 gymmers and clasps in the insyde to claspe them. 
 And on the principall dales when any of the monks 
 said mess at that alter, then the table was opened 
 which did stand on the alter, and the dore with two 
 leves which stoode in the fore parte of the said closett 
 or porch was sett open also, that every man might 
 comme in and se the said table in manner and 
 forme as is aforesaid. Also there was, in the hight 
 of the said wall, from piller to piller, the whole 
 storie and passion of our Lord wroughte in stone 
 most curiously and moste fynely gilte, and also 
 above the said storie and passion, was all the 
 whole storie and pictures of the XIL Apostles 
 verye artificially set furth, and verie finely gilte, 
 contening frome the one piller to the other, wrowght 
 verie curiouslie and artificially in the said stone. 
 And on the hight above all thes foresaide storyes, 
 from piller to piller, was sett up a border (brattish), 
 very artificially wrowght in stone, with mervelous 
 fyne coulers, very curiouslie and excellent fynely 
 gilt with branches and flowers, the more that a 
 man did looke on it the more (desires he had and 
 the greater) was his affection to behold yt, the 
 worke was so fynely and curiouslie wroughte in the 
 said stone that it cold not be fynelyer wroughte 
 in any kynde of other mettell. And also above the 
 hight of all, upon the waule, did stande the most 
 goodly and famous roode that was in all this land, 
 with the picture of Marie on the one syde and the 
 picture of John on the other, with two splendent 
 and glisteringe archangels, one on the one syde of 
 Mary, and the other of the other syde of Johne. So, 
 what for the fairness of the wall, the staightlynes of 
 the pictures, and the lyvelehoode of the paynting, it 
 was thowght to be one of the goodliest monuments 
 in that church." 
 
 This very vivid description may enable one to 
 realize what was the effect of the very similar ar- 
 rangements at Canterbury. Oneof the great monastic 
 churches of Erfurt, in Saxony, retains the two screens 
 unaltered. I may remark that in such cases the rood, 
 and its beam, were placed above the western of the 
 two enclosures, and such, no doubt, was the case 
 in the church of Anselm. 
 
 Gervase further speaks of the triforium {qu. 
 
 thorough-farium), from which pallia and curtains 
 might be suspended,^*-' and also of the flat-boarded 
 ceiling decorated with excellent painting.*'*' 
 
 The stalls of the monks extended eastward, as far 
 as the western side of the smaller transept, at which 
 line there was an ascent of three steps " from the 
 quire to the presbytery," forming the gradus c/iori, 
 an essential feature in every medieval church." 
 
 From the pavement of the presbytery to that of 
 the high altar, there was a further rise of three 
 steps, to the eastward of which was placed the 
 patriarchal throne, again elevated eight steps above 
 the altar-area. 
 
 On either side, in advance of " the great altar 
 dedicated in the name of Jesus Christ," were the 
 altars of Sts. Dunstan and Elphege, with their holy 
 bodies. 
 
 Between the piers of the quire and presbytery 
 " there was a wall built of marble slabs, which, sur- 
 rounding the quire and the presbytery, divided the 
 body of tlie church from its aisles. This wall en- 
 closed the quire of the monks, the presbytery, the 
 high altar, the altar of St. Dunstan, and the altar 
 of St. Elfege : above this wall, in the circuit behind, 
 and opposite to the altar, was the patriarchal seat, 
 formed out of a single stone, in which, according to 
 the custom of the church, upon high festivals, the 
 archbishops were wont to sit during the solemnities 
 of the mass, until the consecration of the blessed 
 sacrament, upon which they came down the flight 
 of eight steps in order to approach the altar of 
 Christ." 
 
 I may observe in passing that this description of 
 the monk Gervase is well illustrated by the evidences 
 of the norman arrangements which still exist at 
 Norwich cathedral. 
 
 The quire of the monks, at Norwich, was placed 
 west of the crossing-bay in the nave, from which it 
 was divided at its western extremity by two screens. 
 The ascent from the quire to the high altar is very 
 moderate, but the episcopal throne, fragments of 
 which still remain in situ, was elevated upon a plat- 
 form more than six feet above that of the altar- 
 area. 
 
 This, the primitive arrangement of the episcopal 
 cathedra, as it is described to us in the apocalypse (of 
 St. John the Divine) is preserved to this day, in spite 
 of all the changes that Christendom has undergone, 
 in St. Peter's at Rome. Once only have I myself 
 seen a christian bishop occupying this his ancient 
 and venerable position. The throne was in this 
 
 ee lb., p. 41. 
 hh lb., p. 43. 
 
 " This ascent of steps is still preserved, and Willis observes 
 (p. 108) that, west of it, " the pavement is of grey marble in 
 small squares, but eastward is of large slabs of a peculiar stone 
 or veined marble, of a delicate brown colour. When parts 
 of this are taken up, for repair or alteration, it is usual to 
 find lead which has run between the joints of the slabs, and 
 spread on each side below, and which is, with great reason, 
 supposed to be the effect of the fire of 11 74, which melted the 
 lead of the roof, and caused it to run down between the 
 paving stones in this manner. This part of the pavement is 
 consequently the undisturbed pavement of Conrad's (Anselm's) 
 quire." 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 instance the cathedra Petri, in the Vatican basilica, 
 and the occupant was the president of the Vatican 
 council.^j 
 
 It is interesting to observe that the distribution of 
 our own metropolitan cathedral, so far as regards 
 the position of its " patriarchal seat," was, until the 
 primacy of Howley, essentially that of a primitive 
 christian basilica. Only in the present century has 
 this tradition — derived from the first ages, and ex- 
 hibited by every early basilica — in this the one 
 church in England in which it had hitherto sur- 
 vived, been broken through. 
 
 Of the arrangement of the high altar itself, Ger- 
 vase gives an interesting account. " At the eastern 
 horns of the altar," he says, " were two wooden 
 columns gracefully ornamented with gold and silver, 
 and sustaining a great beam, the extremities of which 
 rested upon the capitals of two of the pillars" — 
 those, namely, from which the apse commenced. 
 " This beam, carried across the church, above the 
 altar, and decorated with gold, sustained a re- 
 presentation of the Lord in majesty (majestatem 
 domini), and images of Sit. Dunstan and St. Elfege, 
 together with seven shrines (scrinia) covered 
 with gold and silver, and filled with the relics of 
 divers saints. Between the columns there stood a 
 gilded cross, of which the centre was surrounded by 
 a circle of sixty transparent crystals."'''* 
 
 Of the crypt it is only necessary to observe that 
 it extended beneath the whole of the church, 
 eastward of the great transept, and that the quire- 
 aisles were, in the bays adjacent to the transept, 
 divided into two breadths — "that is, for the few steps 
 by which the crypt is gained " (these were placed 
 against outer walls), "and for the many steps by 
 which the upper parts of the church are reached," 
 i.e., the quire-aisles, and the quire itself, situated at 
 the higher level above the crypt. 
 
 In a work entitled "Rome, Turkey, and Jerusalem," 
 the author, a canon of Canterbury, thus refers to this reten- 
 tion of the primitive rite : — " I cannot forbear the mention 
 of one illustration of a verse in that prophecy (2 Thess. ii.) 
 which I saw myself in Rome. Many people think that the 
 description in the fourth verse is too strong for popery, but 
 there is a curious illustration of it in St. Peter's. You may 
 there see what they call the altar in the usual place at the 
 end of the chancel, and above it, surrounded by an elaborately 
 decorated reredos, is what is called the chair of St. Peter, 
 or the pope's throne, the seat of papal power. On the altar 
 below, according to their own teaching, is the living person 
 of the King of Glory, perfect God and perfect man, and in 
 front of that altar may be seen men worshipping the wafer 
 because they call it God. But above it is the pope's chair, 
 and if he were to occupy it, he would sit there with that which 
 they call God, and worship as God beneath his feet. Can 
 anything be a more exact fulfilment of the words, 'opposeth 
 and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is 
 worshipped ' ? " 
 
 An attempt to prove the anti-christianity of the bishop of 
 Rome from the fact that he, almost alone among christian 
 bishops, adheres in this particular to the usages of primitive 
 Christianity, seems a little unfortunate. It is in contemplation 
 to restore the archiepiscopal cathedra of Canterbury to that 
 ancient and primitive position, which at Rome it has never 
 lost. Would the learned canon's respected diocesan, the 
 primate of all England, thereupon become an homunculus 
 feccati, and filiohts peraitionis ? 
 
 Willis's " Canterbury," p. 44. 
 
 Such were the arrangements of the church of 
 Anselm, which the description of the monk Gervase 
 enables us to realise with a vividness to which pro- 
 fessor Willis's masterly investigation of the scant 
 remains of it still existing, has added scientific pre- 
 cision." 
 
 In the north transept of the church of Lanfranc, 
 thus enlarged by St. Anselm's priors, and just in 
 front of a portion of its eastern wall which inter- 
 vened between the north aisle of the presbytery 
 and the apse of the transept chapel (the altar of 
 which was dedicated in honour of St. Benedict), 
 there occurred, in the year 11 70, an event, ever 
 memorable in the history of the church in England, 
 the martrydom of St. Thomas of Canterbury. 
 
 St. Thomas's connection with Canterbury had 
 commenced at a very early period of his career. 
 Upon leaving Merton College, Oxford, he had en- 
 tered into the service of the primate Theobald 
 (1136-1161). The story of his life and of its tra- 
 gical termination, so disastrous to the cause which 
 the cowardly murder was designed to subserve, is 
 too well known to need repetition. 
 
 There is no recognition of the moral and intel- 
 lectual power of a great man, so conspicuous and 
 so splendid as the putting of him to death. By 
 this act his enemies proclaim to the world that it 
 is beyond their moral and intellectual power to 
 resist the force of this one man's soul, the power 
 of his highly organised brain, and the scathing 
 logic of his tongue, except by the destruction of 
 the organism itself. Assassination, judicial murder, 
 martyrdom, these are the homage paid by over- 
 mastering common-place to transcendent genius of 
 soul or intellect. 
 
 By this unerring stamp of moral nobility, the 
 character of St. Thomas was in a peculiar manner 
 distinguished. It was not enough that his life 
 was embittered by exile and cut short by murder. 
 Three-and-a-half centuries after his death he was 
 honoured by the hate of a tyrant, cruel, lustful, 
 and able. "The mock trial of the saint by Henry 
 VIII., and his condemnation as a traitor, affords the 
 most grotesque example of impotent malice which 
 history has recorded. 
 
 Gervase was a monk of Christchurch at the 
 time, and he has given us a very precise descrip- 
 tion of the spot which was the scene of this world- 
 renowned tragedy. 
 
 " This small volume — "The Architectural History of 
 Canterbury Cathedral," is, or ought to be, the text-book of 
 the scientific archxologist. A man who has gone over this 
 church with the professor's work in his hand, has followed 
 step by step its rigorously logical procedure, and has made 
 himself thoroughly master of the problems involved, and of 
 the solutions, not so much discovered by the investigation, as 
 imposed by the facts themselves when observed with cold 
 accuracy, knows, if he be capable of knowing anything, what 
 is scientific method as applied in archaeological research. 
 Such a study is as improving to the logical faculty as it is to 
 the antiquarian. It is an honour to belong to a university 
 which, in these days of " dabbling " and inaccuracy, has 
 produced one man whose mind, at once iceily logical and 
 ardently practical, could give to an applied science all the 
 precision of a pure. 
 
PLATE XXVI. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 137 
 
 The primate had passed from the palace along 
 the north walk of the cloister, and had entered the 
 church by the door in the west wall of the north 
 transept. His intention was to hear vespers, which 
 the monks were already commencing in the quire. 
 He had ascended a few of the "many steps" in 
 the north quire-aisle, by which the higher level 
 was gained, intending, no doubt, to pass along this 
 aisle and through the northern ostium presbiterii 
 to his throne in the quire, when his four murderers 
 forced their way into the church by the same door 
 through which he had himself just passed. Hear- 
 ing their loud menaces, the primate paused in his 
 ascent, and turning, descended again into the tran- 
 sept and confronted them. Between the north 
 quire-aisle and the apsidal chapel of the transept, 
 dedicated in honour of St. Benedict, there inter- 
 vened a blank piece of wall (still in existence), 
 and in front of this wall " that glorious companion 
 of martyrs, and guest of the apostles, the holy 
 Thomas, fell in the body by the swords of raging 
 men, but transmitted his unconquered soul to 
 heaven to be straightway crowned with the glory 
 and honour of the eternal kingdom. This place of 
 martyrdom is opposite to the door of the cloister by 
 which those four notaries of the devil entered, that 
 they might stamp the seal of the genuine prero- 
 gative of the martyr between the anvil and hammer : 
 that is, that they might adorn the head of St. 
 Thomas, prostrate between the pavement and their 
 swords, with the stamp of the Most High,thechaplet 
 of martyrdom." 
 
 Upon this wall there was an image of the Mother 
 of God, and before it, as Erasmus tells us, "the 
 holy man was said to have bade his earthly farewell 
 to the blessed Virgin when at the point of death." 
 The exact spot was marked in the time of Erasmus 
 by " an altar of wood consecrated in honour of the 
 blessed Virgin, small, and only worth seeing as a 
 monument of antiquity.'""" 
 
 Gervase mentions that the pillar which stood in 
 the midst of this transept, "as well as the vault 
 which rested on it " — the gallery, that is, which 
 contained the upper transeptal chapel — " were, in 
 process of time, taken down out of respect for the 
 martyr, that the altar elevated upon the place of 
 the martyrdom," and dedicated, as we learn from 
 Erasmus, in honour of St. Mary, " might be seen 
 from a greater distance." 
 
 The martyrdom occurred upon the 29th of De- 
 cember, 1 1 70. In less than four years, upon the 
 5th of September, 11 74, "by the just but occult 
 judgment of God, the church of Christ at Canter- 
 bury was consumed by fire — that glorious quire, to 
 wit, which had been so magnificently completed by 
 the care and industry of prior Conrad.""" 
 
 mm " Altare ligneum divas Virgini sacrum, pusillum, nec 
 uUa re visendum, nisi monumentum vetustatis." — Pereg. 
 Relig. ergo. 
 
 lb., p. 32. Gervase goes on to add, " The people were 
 astonished that the Almighty should suffer such things, and 
 maddened with excess of grief and perplexity, they tore their 
 hair and beat the walls and pavement of the church vifith their 
 
 Of the subsequent rebuilding, Gervase has given a 
 minutely detailed account, which will be found in 
 full in professor Willis's work. We are only here 
 concerned with the alterations in plan and arrange- 
 ment which the new work, happily still in existence, 
 exhibits, and which are so characteristic of the 
 thirteenth century."" 
 
 In the first place, the position of the choir, in the 
 reconstructed eastern limb, was the same as that 
 which it occupied in the work of St. Anselm. One 
 of Archbishop Winchelsey's statutes (issued in 1298) 
 directs that " duo ostia minuta sub majori pulpito 
 inter corpus ecclesiae et chorum per duo latera, 
 juxta altare sub magna cruce ecclesicc constituta, 
 clausa remaneant : nisi, ratione divini officii vel 
 ministerii, egressus vel ingressus immineat neces- 
 sarius, aut tempore peregrinationum solemn iorum," 
 on the occurrence, that is, of a great public pilgrim- 
 age to the shrine of St. Thomas,PP "de permissione 
 presidentis expressa, hujusmodi ostia quandoque 
 dimittantur aperta." 
 
 The same statute contains also a reference to 
 the easternmost screen, from which it appears that 
 its central opening had, up to this date, no door. 
 " Item precepimus et priori injungimus ut statim 
 quam citius fieri poterit opportune, ostium pulchrum 
 et forte ligneum cum forti et decente serura, ad in- 
 gressum chori versus occidentem cun« serura con 
 grua construatur, ita quod claudi possit : et clausum 
 ac servatum temporibus opportunis remaneat, ne 
 per chorum liber ingressus pateat cuilibet transeunti, 
 et ut superiori parti ecclesije (ubi magnum posset 
 SEepius imminere periculum), major per hoc securi- 
 tas praeparetur."'''' 
 
 The crypt of Ernulph's quire had, of course, 
 escaped the ravages of the fire, and it remains to 
 this day virtually unaltered, except, of course, by 
 that extension of it eastward, which formed part of 
 the great enlargement of the eastern arm of the 
 church, which was designed and carried into execu- 
 tion by the two Williams. 
 
 The first of these two architects, to whom is 
 
 heads and hands, blaspheming the Lord and His saints, the 
 patrons of the church ; and many, both of laity and monks, 
 would rather have laid down their lives than that the church 
 should have so miserably perished " (ib., p. 34). 
 
 °° Before finally taking leave of the "glorious quire of 
 Conrad," it may be interesting to note that in the eastern- 
 most chapel of its apse, dedicated in honour of the holy 
 Trinity, "the blessed martyr, Thomas, celebrated his first mass 
 upon the day of his consecration. In this chapel, both before 
 and after his exile, he was wont to celebrate mass, to hear 
 divine service, and frequently to pray" ("Gervase," in Willis's 
 " Canterbury," p. 46). The chapel, once that of St. Thomas, is 
 now known as the Trinity chapel, and there is, in this rever- 
 sion, an unconscious homage to the saint, whose private and 
 particular devotion is thus preserved. 
 
 PP The popularity of the saint, who could say with truth " I 
 will speak of thy testimonies also, even before kings, and 
 will not be ashamed " — a virtue which Englishmen have ever 
 appreciated highly — is evinced to this day by the frequency 
 among us of the christian name of Thomas. Every englisfi 
 Thomas is a namesake of Canterbury's martyr, just as every 
 William Henry commemorates the more short-lived popu- 
 larity of "our Great Deliverer," 
 
 11 Willis's "Canterbury," p- no. 
 
 T 
 
138 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 attributed, with much probability, the introduction 
 into England of the pointed style, was "a certain 
 William of Sens, a man active and ready, and as a 
 workman most skilful in wood and stone."" This 
 able man was not destined to carry his work on to 
 its completion. " He was, in the beginning of the 
 fifth year (1178), in the act of preparing with ma- 
 chines for the turning of the great vault, when sud- 
 denly the beams broke under his feet, and he fell 
 to the ground (stones and timbers accompanying 
 his fall), from the height of the capitals of the 
 upper vault, that is to say, of fifty feet. Thus, sorely 
 bruised by the blows from the beams and stones, 
 he was rendered helpless alike to himself and for 
 the work."^ 
 
 The master, for some months " reclining in bed, 
 commanded that all things should be done in 
 order," but about summer-time, " perceiving that he 
 derived no benefit from the physicians, he gave up 
 the work, and crossing the sea, returned to his 
 home in France." The work was ultimately com- 
 pleted under the direction of another architect, 
 " William by name, english by nation, small of 
 body, but in workmanship of many kinds acute 
 and honest."" 
 
 To this english architect we are indebted for the 
 great eastward extension of the presbytery, beyond 
 the limit of Conrad's apse. " He laid the founda- 
 tion for the enlargement of the church at the eastern 
 part, because a chapel of St. Thomas was to be 
 built there. For this was the place assigned to him, 
 namely, the chapel of the Holy Trinity, where he 
 had celebrated his first mass, wherein he was wont 
 to prostrate himself with tears and prayers, under 
 whose crypt for so many years his body had lain 
 buried, where God for his merits had performed so 
 many wonders, where poor and rich, kings and 
 princes had venerated him, and whence the sound 
 of his praises had gone forth into all lands.""" 
 
 In the new arrangement the high altar retained 
 its old position, and in advance of it were re-erected 
 the altars of St. Dunstan and St. Elphege. The 
 quire and the presbytery were enclosed as before 
 by a wall, the lower portion of which is still in 
 existence. 
 
 The monks took solemn possession of their 
 new quire upon Easter eve, in the year 1180. 
 " The convent," says Gervase, " was ejected by the 
 fire from the choir, even as Adam from paradise, 
 in the year of the world, 1174, in the month of 
 September, upon the fifth day of the month, and 
 about the ninth hour. They remained in the nave 
 of the church " (the work of Lanfranc, to which the 
 fire had not extended,) "five years, seven months, 
 
 "lb., p. 35. "lb., p. 50. "lb., p. 51. 
 
 When the ruins of the chapel of the Holy Trinity were 
 removed, by William the englishman, in order to make way 
 for the great eastward extension of the church, its altar was 
 taken down, and from its materials was constructed the altar 
 of St. John the apostle, in the northern-most apse of the 
 south-eastern transept. " I mention this," says Gervase, 
 " lest the history of that holy stone, upon which St. Thomas 
 celebrated his first mass, and many times after performed the 
 divine offices, should be lost." (lb., p. 56.) 
 
 and thirteen days. They returned into the new 
 choir in the year of grace 11 80, in the month of 
 April, on the nineteenth day of the month, at about 
 the ninth hour of Easter eve." 
 
 Upon the completion of this great work, the 
 patriarchal chair was re-erected a trifle to the east- 
 ward of its previous position, and upon a similar 
 ascent of steps. These, however, were now carried 
 transversely across the presbytery, whereas formerly 
 the position of the throne, in the extreme point of 
 the sweep of the apse, had necessitated a curved 
 arrangement, such as we may still see evidence of 
 in bishop Losinga's apse at Norwich. Behind the 
 patriarchal seat the presbytery was parted from the 
 chapel of St. Thomas by a screen, which Gostling 
 describes as " a fence of ironwork finished at the 
 top with a rail or cornice of wood."" 
 
 The stalls of the monks were arranged in two rows 
 on each side, and at the eastern end of the southern 
 row was the archbishop's wooden throne, which he 
 occupied, when assisting at a function in which he 
 did not pontificate. Somner, writing in 1640, de- 
 scribes this as " sometime richly guilt and otherwise 
 well set forth, but now nothing specious through 
 age and late neglect. It is a close seat, made after 
 the old fashion of such stalls, called then faldistoria ; 
 only in this they differ, that they are movable, this 
 is fixt.""" 
 
 The new quire differed in two respects from that 
 of the priors Conrad and Ernulf. 
 
 In the first place, the earlier building had a flat, 
 painted ceiling of wood, while the new work was 
 groined in stone. 
 
 In the second place, the eastern transept, which 
 in Anslem's quire was masked by the continuation 
 across it of two bays of the general design, with 
 pier-arches, triforium, and clerestory complete, is in 
 the late work treated as a proper transept, with its 
 own proper crossing-bay. We can thus see pre- 
 cisely the period at which this secondary crossing, 
 peculiar to England, received its full recognition, as 
 the ritual representative of the transept of the greater 
 primitive basiliccc. 
 
 " lb., p. 102. 
 
 ^""^ lb., p. 106. The primates of Canterbury were, and are 
 still, I believe, thrice enthroned, viz., "in primo stallo chori 
 ex parte australi," as head of the convent; " super sedem 
 suam ligneam in choro," as bishop of the diocese ; and lastly 
 in the patriarchal seat, as primate. These quotations are from 
 theformof inthronizationofarchbishop Winchelsey(A.D. 1294), 
 of whichVVillis gives (p. 106) the following abridgment: — "The 
 archbishop and the prior, together with the convent, solemnly 
 convey the pallium to the high .altar and deposit it thereon. 
 The convent take their place in the quire, and the archbishop 
 first remains prostrate in prayer before the high altar, and 
 then proceeds to his wooden throne in the quire. Afte» 
 certain other ceremonies, the archbishop (wearing the pallium), 
 the prior, and six other ecclesiastics, take their station behind 
 the high altar, beneath the ferelrum of St. Blaise and in front 
 of the marble throne, with their faces toward the east. The 
 king in the meantime takes his station, together with many 
 of his nobles, near the said chair. Then the prior, leading 
 the archbishop to the chair, inthrones him therein, and then 
 eight monks, standing beneath the shrine of St. Blaise, sing 
 the ' Benedictus, dominus Deus Israel ' before the primate 
 seated upon his throne. Lastly the archbishop descends "^rom 
 his seat and comes before the high altar." 
 
PLATE XXVII. 
 
 NETLEY ABBEY. 
 
 WINDOW IN THK CHAPTER-HOUSE. 
 
The history of English church architecture. 
 
 The eastern transept of Conrad (circ. iioo)is the 
 eariiest instance on record of the introduction of 
 this very significant concession to the requirements 
 of ritual tradition, and it here appears with a certain 
 modesty, being ignored in the design of the central 
 area. In the work of William of Sens (circ. 1180) 
 it is frankly recognised as an essential feature of 
 the construction of their quire, just as we see it, in 
 later times, at Lincoln, at Beverley, at Salisbury, and 
 at York. 
 
 Of the conspicuous enlargement of the church 
 eastward of the presbytery, which was carried out 
 under the direction of the English William, it is 
 only necessary to state that it consisted of an addi- 
 tion of four straight bays, terminating in a five-bayed 
 apse, with the aisle continued round it for a proces- 
 sion path. It had only one chapel, a circular one, 
 which Gervase describes as a " round tower, at 
 the eastern extremity of the whole building. This 
 great work was finally brought to completion in the 
 year 1 184. 
 
 The whole of this addition was dedicated in honour 
 of St. Thomas. In the eastern chapel, or corona, 
 there was an image of the saint, gilt, and decorated 
 with precious gems, and in the centre of the new 
 work stood his shrine. The feretry upon which this 
 rested was of stone for about six feet in height, 
 above which was a structure of timber. Within this, 
 enclosed in a chest of iron, lay the body of the martyr. 
 The woodwork of the shrine was covered by plates 
 of gold, enriched with filigree-work and enamels, 
 and garnished with images, precious stones, and 
 pearls."' 
 
 From the "Peregrinatio Religionis Ergo" of Eras- 
 mus, who visited the church in 1524, we learn that 
 the shrine, like that of St.Cuthbert, already described, 
 had a wooden cover, suspended by ropes from the 
 vaulting above, so that it might be raised, without 
 any difficulty, when the shrine was to be exposed. 
 
 At the west end of the feretry was an altar, and 
 the whole was enclosed by a screen of ironwork, 
 in which were formed two doorways, one toward 
 the west, the other in the north side.^' 
 
 I have thus reviewed the history, from the earliest 
 ages of british Christianity down to the thirteenth 
 century, of our great metropolitan church. I have 
 
 « Willis's "Canterbury," p. 61. 
 
 yy Compare with this the description given by Lenoir (ii., 
 261) of the shrine of St. Denis, erected by the abbat Suger. 
 The spoils of theslirine of St. Thomas filled two great chests, 
 all of which were taken for the king's use in 1538, Wilkins 
 (" Concilia.," iii., p. 836) has printed Henry's order for the 
 sacrilege, dated June 11, 1538: "Mandamus ejus ossa ex 
 sepulchre erui et publice comburi,"etc. This was carried into 
 effect on the 19th of August following. (Willis's "Canter- 
 bury," p. 100.) 
 
 " The statutes of archbishop Winchelsey mention, " Ostia 
 feirea aute altare ad caput feretri sci Thomae, videlicet, tam 
 ex altaris opposite quam etiam a latere boreali." At the west 
 end of this enclosure stood one bay (about twenty feet) to the 
 eastward of the iron screen, in rear of the patriarchal seat. 
 The arrangements of such shrines are best studied now at 
 Westminster Abbey, where, upon the feretrum of St. Edward, 
 still rests the body of that canonised king. Here, too, as at 
 Canterbury, there remains about the shrine the original 
 pavement of marble mosaic. 
 
 shown what was, in all probability, the distribution 
 of the basilica erected by the labour of the chris- 
 tianised roman settlers, and what enlargement and 
 modification it received when it was restored from 
 its ruins by St. Augustine. I have exhibited the 
 plan of the new church erected by Lanfranc im- 
 mediately after the Conquest, the extension of this 
 building eastward during the primacy of St. Anselm 
 some twenty years later, and the further expansion 
 of the eastern limb, for which the fire of 1 1 74 gave 
 an opportunity. 
 
 It is impossible to exhibit, in a more graphic 
 manner, the progress of ecclesiology in our land 
 during the centuries which elapsed between the 
 establishment of the peace of the Church and the 
 complete developement, in the thirteenth century, 
 of the pointed style of architecture. 
 
 The characteristics of what is known as the early 
 english style, at which we are now arrived, are, in 
 addition to the new form of arch, a fully developed 
 system of rib-groining : the subdivision of the piers 
 into elegant shafts, each carrying its own order in 
 the arch or vaulting above, often detached from the 
 pier itself and frequently of marble : and lastly, the 
 circular plan of the capital, either enriched with 
 peculiarly elegant foliage of a very original type, or 
 simply moulded. 
 
 These conditions remained unchanged from the 
 complete formation of the style, about the year 
 1200, until the close of the century. But a new 
 element was now to appear, the progress of which 
 was for a long period to determine the future history 
 of the style, as that of groining had decided its 
 past. 
 
 We have seen that in saxon times the windows 
 were for the most part unglazed, protected often 
 with carved lattices of wood. Under the Normans, 
 the use of glass became more common, but its 
 costliness led the builders to content themselves 
 with very narrow openings, widely splayed inter- 
 nally, so as to obtain the most advantage from the 
 scanty light which they admitted. 
 
 In the twelfth century the use of glass became 
 general, and it is, no doubt, to that intercourse 
 with the east which the crusades brought about, 
 that we owe the introduction into Europe of orna- 
 mented and coloured glazing. 
 
 The supposition that it is to the east that we are 
 indebted for the invention of stained glass is con- 
 firmed by the character of the painted glass of the 
 norman period. 
 
 The Mohammedans, observing with strict exact- 
 ness the second commandment of the jewish law, 
 allow of no representation of forms, animal or 
 vegetable. Their ornamental glass-work was there- 
 fore confined to mere geometrical arrangements of 
 colour, and to a severely mosaic treatment. They 
 had to rely solely upon an effect of colour, without 
 any grace of drawing, or any suggestion of solid 
 relief: while the circumstance of their brilliant 
 chmate rendered depth and richness, more impor- 
 'tant than delicacy, of colouring. Now the stained 
 
140 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 glass of the norman period has exactly these cha- 
 racteristics. 
 
 The Gospel, unlike the Koran, lays no restriction 
 upon the imitation in art, of animal or vegetable 
 shapes, and the Normans were quite accustomed, 
 in wall-painting and in sculpture, to the representa- 
 tion even of life-size figures. Yet in their stained 
 glass, the figure-work is usually quite subordinate 
 to the merely decorative details. The treatment is 
 thoroughly decorative, and so unimportant are the 
 groups and figures, that in many cases they might 
 have been omitted altogether, without altering the 
 general effect of the window as a piece of coloured 
 ornamentation. 
 
 The art did not, however, long remain in the 
 simple form, which it owed to its oriental parentage. 
 The northern artists soon saw that it was capable 
 of much higher effects. 
 
 The glass in the eastern portion of Canterbury 
 cathedral exhibits the early mosaic treatment. The 
 colouring is deep and rich, white glass being used 
 only in the smallest proportions, and the figures 
 are upon a very small scale, and are quite subor- 
 dinate — especially at a distance — to the coloured 
 ornament. 
 
 The glass in the south transept window, only a 
 very little later in date, exhibits a great advance. 
 Although the system of colour is much the same, 
 the figures are upon a large scale, and form the pro- 
 minent feature of the design. 
 
 In France — at Chartres and elsewhere — the two 
 systems are seen in a similar conjunction. 
 
 The developement of the art thus commenced, 
 demanded in the first instance wider window 
 openings, and soon led to still further changes. 
 
 The lancet-window of the early-english style is 
 simply the norman window, heightened in propor- 
 tion, and somewhat widened, with a pointed head 
 in place ol a semi-circular, with shafts of slenderer 
 diameter, and with capitals circular instead of square. 
 These lancets became, as the style advanced, 
 steadily larger and larger, in order to afford more 
 space for stained glass, till in the west end of Char- 
 tres cathedral we find one, actually thirteen feet in 
 the clear. 
 
 It was now felt that no further enlargement was 
 possible, without a sacrifice of proportion, detri- 
 mental to the apparent scale of the building itself, 
 and the expedient of grouping two or more lancets 
 together was adopted to meet the growing demands 
 of the art ot stained glass. 
 
 From this simple beginning, took its origin the 
 most characteristic feature of gothic architecture — 
 window tracery. 
 
 In the west ends of Kirkstall and Byland, and in 
 the east end of Rievaulx abbey, we see the first 
 steps, by which from the simple lancet was evolved 
 the traceried window of the middle pointed style. 
 
 In the two former we find two lancets with a rose 
 window above, arranged under one comprising arch. 
 In the latter example we see three lancets similarly 
 grouped, the centre window rising higher than the 
 lateral ones 
 
 The notion thus reached was soon expanded: 
 the next step being to pierce with smaller circles, 
 trefoils, or quatrefoils, the spaces of masonry left 
 between the lancets and the arch which enclosed 
 them. A new idea was thus arrived at, the capa- 
 bilities of which were soon appreciated. 
 
 A reference to a few very simple but character- 
 istic specimens, of which I give illustrations,^** will 
 serve to exemplify the history. 
 
 In the first, from one of the eastern chapels of 
 Netley abbey (erected about 1240), we see a group- 
 ing of two lancets, which has the faintest possible 
 suggestion of the muUion form, into which the 
 intermediate pier was destined soon to dwindle. 
 In the next, from the chapter-house of the same 
 abbey, we find the shield of stone above the 
 coupled-lancets pierced by a sex-foil. The third, 
 from the clerestory of Tintern abbey, shows the 
 fully-developed bar-tracery. 
 
 The two following views illustrate the same pro- 
 gress in the case of a triple group of lights. In the 
 example from the west end of Tintern abbey, the 
 spandrils are sunk but not perforated ; in the other 
 (again from Netley abbey — a window of the nave- 
 aisle), they are pierced by trefoil openings. 
 
 As the style advanced, gradually the lancet 
 arches become more subordinate, and the compris- 
 ing arch grows in importance. The piercings of the 
 stone shield, thus formed, become larger and larger, 
 while the piers between the lancets grow thinner and 
 thinner. Thus by a steady but very gradual pro- 
 cess, the lancets have become mere window-lights, 
 the piers which separated them have diminished to 
 muUions, and the ornamental piercings, at first small 
 and star-like, have become the most important 
 feature of the design. The result is seen in what 
 is termed the plate-traceried window. 
 
 The next step in the progress is one which 
 appears small, but which led to wonderful changes 
 in the sequel. 
 
 The irregular spaces of masonry left between the 
 heads of the lights, and the various geometrical 
 openings above them were now cut away. This 
 may seem merely to have contributed to the light- 
 ness of the effect, by diminishing the proportion of 
 the solid stonework to the glazed openings, but it 
 did more than this. It converted, what had been 
 mere piercings in a stone shield, into bars of stone 
 surrounding piercings. 
 
 Those who dislike the later developements of the 
 style, are accustomed to view the change, from geo- 
 metrical tracery to flowing, as the first stage of an 
 assumed deterioration. By this change, as they say, 
 
 aaa These are fac-similes of sketches made by a friend 
 
 I have already referred to him— whose loss, after more 
 
 than twenty years, is felt as a recent sorrow. " I do not 
 wonder at what men suffer, but I wonder often at what 
 they lose. We may see how good rises out of pain and evil ; 
 but the dead, naked, eyeless loss, what good comes of that ? 
 The fruit struck to the earth before its ripeness ; the glowing 
 life and goodly purpose dissolved away in sudden death." 
 (Ruskin's " Stones of Venice," ii., f). I49') " C?«'"^ ^S'' 
 facio, tu nescis mode, scies aiitem postea." 
 
PLATE XXVIII. 
 
 TINTERN ABBEY-CHURCH. 
 
 WINDOW OF THE CLERESTORY^ 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 the form of the opening, on which alone a rational 
 decoration of the window should be based, became 
 subordinate to the lines which the stone tracery- 
 bars describe, a merely accidental element. 
 
 But to be consistent, such purists should draw 
 the line at an earlier stage of the evolution. The 
 admission of — what they consider — a false principle 
 was made, not when geometrical forms gave place to 
 flowing, but when, about the middle of the thirteenth 
 century, the notion first occurred of piercing the 
 eyes of the plate tracery. It was then, that pierced 
 openings gave place to circles and quatrefoils of 
 stone. The line of the tracery-bar, then for the first 
 time became of interest ; and flowing-tracery became 
 inevitable as soon as plate-tracery had become con- 
 verted, by this simple innovation, into bar-tracery. 
 
 Those who would consistently maintain Mr. 
 Ruskin's views on this matter, must condemn the 
 geometrical traceries of St. Mary's, at York, or of 
 Westminster Abbey, scarcely less than the flowing 
 windows of York and Carlisle cathedrals, or the 
 flamboyant, of France. 
 
 One circumstance which contributed to the ex- 
 traordinary expansion of window-tracery is to be 
 found in the conditions of groined vaulting. 
 
 In a barrel vault, the thrust is distributed evenly 
 along the whole of the bearing walls. In a groined 
 vault, on the contrary, it is concentrated upon certain 
 points, those from which the vault- ribs spring and 
 to which they converge. It was found necessary, 
 therefore, to enforce these points by buttresses of 
 considerable strength and projection. 
 
 As soon as this system had been matured it was 
 seen that the vaulting-piers and buttresses, in 
 reality, carried all the weight of the stone roof, and 
 that the wall between them was needed, only for 
 enclosure, and not for strength. 
 
 It would be possible, indeed, to erect a great 
 gothic church, such as Westminster, without any 
 walls at all, the whole being open on every side ; 
 and the groined roof would then appear, sailing in 
 air, supported only upon its piers and buttresses. 
 
 The realization of this principle coincided with 
 the great advances made in the art of stained glass. 
 The painted-glass artists demanded an ample field 
 for the display of their work, and it was, at the 
 same time, seen that the whole of the wall, comprised 
 below the wall-ribs, could be pierced for windows, 
 without at all interfering with the construction. 
 
 In this manner the windows came to occupy the 
 entire space below the wall-ribs, and solid walls, 
 pierced by a single lancet, gave place to a mere 
 curtain, containing only so much stonework as was 
 required to support the glazing. 
 
 The window had now become the ruling feature 
 of the architecture, and from the close of the thir- 
 teenth century until the fifteenth, its treatment and 
 expansion constitute, in the main, the history of 
 the gothic style. 
 
 The piercing of the eyes of the plate-tracery had, 
 as is now seen, introduced a new idea. 
 
 From looking, as hitherto had been done, simply 
 at the window openings and piercings, the architects 
 
 had come to regard, rather, the lines of the circum- 
 scribing stone-work. And the arrangement of these 
 lines began now to usurp the place hitherto occupied 
 by the consideration of the forms of the glazed 
 spaces. 
 
 It is impossible not to see, in this significant 
 change of view, an indication of that great artistic 
 revolution of which it was but one of the modes. 
 
 In the history of vaulting, which I have already 
 reviewed, we have seen, at an earlier date, a similar 
 change of the point of view. In the treatment of 
 vaulting by the architects of the early romanesque, 
 as in that which prevailed in the classical roman 
 style, the view is directed entirely to the surfaces of the 
 vault. The groin was regarded simply as the in- 
 tersection of two semi-cylindrical surfaces. The line 
 of intersection, which is an ellipse, was not regarded ; 
 and in the roman vaults, the welch groin is common, 
 in which the line of intersection does not even lie in 
 a plane. As soon, however, as the notion occurred 
 of accentuating the cutting-lines by ribs, at once the 
 whole view-point changes. The surfaces cease to 
 be regarded ; it is the lines of intersection which 
 are now all-important. The surfaces soon became 
 twisted with an utter disregard of that breadth and 
 symmetry so characteristic of the classic style, and 
 the elliptical cutting lines, which the Romans did 
 not feel to be ungraceful because they never thought 
 of them as lines at all, were modified into ribs which 
 form proper segments of circular curves. Thus the 
 line became all-important, and the surface-forms fell 
 into a quite subordinate place. 
 
 An analogous change had now come over the 
 other great element of northern architecture, the 
 window : and the same transference of interest, from 
 the surfaces and the masses, to the lines of the archi- 
 tecture, may be traced through every detail of the 
 future progress of the style for nearly two centuries. 
 
 Of the perfected style which was the immediate 
 result of this change of view, — that which is known 
 as the early, or geometrical decorated, or first- 
 pointed style, — I will notice but three examples, and 
 these but briefly, as they are all too well known to 
 need any detailed description. These are, the en- 
 tire church of Salisbury, erected between the years 
 1 2 20 and 1258 ; the earlier portions of Westminster 
 Abbey, executed, as far as the western wall of the 
 transept, between 1245 and 1269, together with the 
 four next bays of the nave completed by Edward 
 I. ; and the presbytery of St. Alban's Abbey, exe- 
 cuted under the abbats, John of Hertford, Roger 
 of Norton, and John of Berkhampstead, who ruled 
 in succession from 1235 to 1301. 
 
 The see of Wilton had been transferred by 
 bishop Herman, nine years after the Conquest, to 
 what is now known as Old Sarum. " The choice 
 of this town," says Mr. Freeman,'''''' " as the seat of 
 the bishoprick of Wiltshire and Dorsetshire, shows 
 that it must already have been a place of import- 
 ance according to the standard of the time. Yet 
 
 bbb << History of the Norman Conquest," i., p. 349. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 one would think that its importance must always 
 have been mainly that of a military post : one can 
 hardly conceive Old Sarura being at any time a 
 place of trade, or the centre of any considerable 
 population." 
 
 A cathedral church was commenced here by Her- 
 man, and completed by his successor, St. Osmund, 
 in the north-western part of the town, with a cloister 
 situate to the north of its nave."'= 
 
 The inconvenience of the site began at once to 
 be felt, and little more than a century had elapsed 
 before a gradual migration of the inhabitants, from 
 the water-less hill to the well-watered vale below, 
 had commenced. 
 
 Herbert Poore was the last bishop of Old Sarum. 
 He died in 1 2 1 7, and was succeeded by his brother, 
 Richard Poore (translated from Chichester to 
 Salisbury), who removed the episcopal see into the 
 present city. Of this translation his friend, William 
 de Wanda, has left an account, the original of 
 which is in the muniment-room of the church. 
 From it we learn that upon Easter Monday, in 
 the year 1219, a wooden chapel, in honour of the 
 Blessed Virgin, was begun to be erected at New 
 Sarum, in which, upon the feast of the blessed 
 Trinity following, bishop Poore celebrated the 
 divine service, and consecrated the cemetery ad- 
 joining to it. In the following year, upon the 
 festival of St. Vitalis (April 28), the foundations of 
 the new church were commenced. The bishop 
 laid the first stone for the pope (Honorius IH.), 
 the second for the primate of Canterbury (Stephen 
 Langton), and the third for himself. William 
 Longespee, earl of Salisbury, laid the fourth stone, 
 and Ela, his countess, the fifth. Other stones 
 were laid by the nobility then present, by the dean, 
 and the dignitaries of the church, both laymen and 
 clerics binding themselves to certain payments for 
 seven years. 
 
 In the course of five years the work was so far 
 advanced that upon the vigil of Michaelmas, 1225, 
 the bishop consecrated three of its altars, one in 
 the eastern part of the church, dedicated in honour 
 of the blessed Trinity and of all saints ; another 
 to the north, in honour of St. Peter ; and a third 
 to the south, in honour of St. Stephen and all 
 martyrs. 
 
 This must have been but a small portion of the 
 whole,'"'''^ as thirty-three years passed away before 
 
 In 1331, Edward III., by a grant dated at Sherborne, 
 permitted the chapter to pull down this church, together 
 with the episcopal and canonical residences adjoining to it, 
 and to remove the materials to the new city, "for the im* 
 provement of the church of New Sarum, and of the enclosure 
 of the close thereunto belonging." (Cf. Dugdale, "Monast.," 
 vi.,p. 1296.) Considerable fragments of the norman build- 
 ings may, to this day, be seen built up in the embattled walls 
 which surround the close. 
 
 I suspect that it included little more than what is now 
 called the lady-chapel. This contained three altars, one at 
 its eastern extremity, and one in each of its lateral chapels. 
 If, as I am inclined to believe, these three were the three 
 consecrated in 1225, it will follow that, as was the case 
 originally at Canterbury, the eastern chapel was dedicated in 
 
 the completion of the work. At length, upon the 
 day following the feast of Michaelmas, in 1258, 
 Boniface, archbishop of Canterbury, presided at 
 the solemn dedication of the stately pile, in the 
 presence of king Henry HI. and his queen, and 
 a great gathering of prelates and nobles. The 
 prelate who had the happiness to bring to a ter- 
 mination this great work was bishop Giles of 
 Bridport. He died in 1262, and was interred in 
 the south-eastern transept, upon the north side of 
 the chantry chapel, which he had founded, under a 
 tomb of remarkable beauty.'" 
 
 The cathedral church, thus completed in thirty- 
 eight years, did not possess, what is now the most 
 striking feature of its exterior, the truly elegant 
 steeple which rises from the centre of the great 
 crossing. As originally designed and finished, 
 there rose at this point a lantern-tower of very low 
 proportion, elevated but little above the ridges of 
 the abutting roofs, and topped, no doubt, by a 
 pyramidal leaded covering. The exterior of the 
 church, as it now stands, is, with all its merits, 
 somewhat cold, and — so to speak — pedantic ; an 
 effect due to the wearisome repetition of one design 
 — not itself very interesting — throughout the bays 
 of the lady-chapel, quire, transepts, and nave, both 
 in the aisle-range and in the clerestory j and when 
 one pictures it, as it left the hand of its original 
 designer, and without that glorious tower and spire, 
 by which a later architect has redeemed all the 
 shortcomings of his predecessor, one must confess 
 that its exterior must have been, as a whole, dull. 
 
 Not so, however, the interior, the proportions of 
 which are, to my mind, remarkably satisfactory. It 
 is difficult, however, to realise even to imagination, 
 the effect which its architect designed to produce, in 
 consequence of the destruction of the stained glass 
 of its windows, and the obliteration of the coloured 
 decoration of its walls. 
 
 Purbeck marble is used with profusion through- 
 out, and as we now see the church, contrasts in a 
 striking and crude manner with the white stone- 
 work about it, but such an effect is totally opposed 
 to the scheme of the man who conceived this great 
 work. 
 
 The ruling intention appears to have been to 
 have light-coloured window-glass, and richly co- 
 loured wall-spaces. The stained glass, of which 
 
 honour, not of our Lady, but of the blessed Trinity. In the 
 list of the " ornamenta tradita ab A. Thesaurario ad deserv : 
 diversis altaribus in ecclesia Sarum," given in Dr. Rock's 
 " Church of Our Fathers," iv., app., pp. 107, loS, the first 
 three altars are given as altare St. Petri, altare Omnium 
 Sanctorum, and altare Sti Stephani. There is no mention in 
 the " De Officiis Ecclesiasticis Tractatus" of an altar of the 
 B. V. M. as distinct from the high altar, which was, of course, 
 under her invocation. 
 
 liee Of this truly admirable work I give an illustration, 
 again from a sketch by Edward O'Brien. It is clearly the 
 work of a more imaginative artist than he who designed the 
 church itself. It is not only interesting historically, and for 
 its beauty, but may serve also as an early specimen of the fully- 
 developed bar-tracery which succeeded to those modifications 
 of the grouped-lancet idea, ol which I have already given 
 examples. 
 
PLATE XXIX. 
 
 SALISBURY CATHEDRAL-CHURCH. 
 TOMB OF BISHOP GILES OF BRIDPORT. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 M3 
 
 a. few fragments have escaped the vandalism of the 
 puritans, and the stupidity of the chapter, was re- 
 markable, both by the absence of figure-work, and 
 the unusual predominance of white glass. The 
 walls, on the contrary, were painted a full red, 
 relieved by bold scroll-work in black, and the 
 mouldings were decorated upon the same system. 
 
 Thus the marble-work, instead of showing, as it 
 now does, almost black upon white, was designed to 
 be in perfect tone, as regards chiaro-oscuro, with the 
 red and the black of the wall-spaces. The only 
 parts in which white was employed as a ground were 
 the vaultings, the ribs of which were decorated in 
 full colour, while the inter-spaces were occupied by 
 medallions, in which red is again the predominating 
 tint.f" 
 
 Of the general plan of this, the typical english 
 church of the thirteenth century, ^i^*^ planned de novo 
 for the due carrying out of the most famous of our 
 medieval rituals, a few words must be said. 
 
 In the first place, the eastern end is rectangular, 
 and the fact of this being so, in the case of a church 
 where no, more ancient, apsidal quire had been in 
 existence to suggest (as at Canterbury and at West- 
 minster) the semicircular chevet, enables us to 
 note with accuracy the period of the triumph of our 
 native traditions, over the fashion introduced by the 
 gallicised Normans. 
 
 The procession-path is continued behind the 
 row of three arches, by which the presbytery is ter- 
 minated, and beyond it extends three rectangular 
 chapels, the lateral ones being of one bay only, the 
 central one of three bays in length. The disposi- 
 tion is thus not very dissimilar to that of the eastern 
 portion of St. Alban's Abbey, commenced about the 
 same time, and completed, as we shall see presently, 
 rather more than half a century later. At Salisbury, 
 however, the principal chapel is divided into three 
 transverse divisions, by slender marble columns. 
 
 In the presbytery, about half a bay to the west 
 of its termination, stood the high altar.*""' The 
 
 The painted decoration recently introduced upon the 
 walls of the quire bears no resemblance in its scheme of 
 colour, to the ancient work, oi which the remains, almost 
 complete, were discovered in the course of the recent restora- 
 tion. These I had the opportunity of investigating in com- 
 pany with my father, who was anxious, as always, to restore 
 with strict faithfulness the ancient work, but who had to yield 
 in this matter (as was too often the case) to an outcry raised by 
 amateurs of " a little knowledge." The effect of the bold broad 
 treatment of the ancient colouring, particularly in its relation 
 to the abundant use of Purbeck marble, must have been, as 
 was evident from the considerable remains of it then exposed 
 to view, astonishingly fine. 
 
 Since it w.is erected upon a new site, no remains of 
 an earlier church imposed, as was almost always the case 
 elsewhere, restriction either upon the fancy of the architect 
 or upon the requirements of the ritual. The De Officiis Ecde- 
 siasticis Iractatus is, as far as can be judged from the MS., of 
 the same date as the newcathedral,and I am myself convinced, 
 from the great accordance (which I have tested upon the spot) 
 of its directions with the distribution of the existing build- 
 ing, that it was written out for the use of the chapter, upon 
 their taking possession of their new cathedral church. 
 
 hhh For the proof of this, its ancient position, I may refer 
 the curious reader to a paper by my father, " On the Posi- 
 
 limit of the presbytery proper is marked by that, pecu- 
 liarly english feature, the lesser transept. Across the 
 eastern arch of the crossing-bay ran the gradus 
 presbiterii, and across its western arch the gradiis 
 chori. Between the two, the enclosing walls, under 
 the side-arches of the crossing, were pierced by the 
 osiia presbiterii. This intermediate space is well 
 described by Leland as " a light and division be- 
 twixt the quier and the presbytery." 
 
 At the line of the gradus presbiterii was drawn 
 the lenten veil, the winch for the raising and lower- 
 ing of which still exists, refixed in the fourteenth- 
 century casing of the south-eastern pier. 
 
 The quire of the canons extended from the 
 lesser to the greater transept, a length of three bays. 
 It was furnished with three rows of seats. In the 
 lowest, in prima forma, were placed the boys of the 
 foundation, canonici pueri — who, as a sort of cor- 
 porate body of mass-servers, probably wore, as is 
 the case in France to this day, albs"' — and also other 
 boys, not ot the foundation, who wore surplices. In 
 the next range, in secunda forma, stood the minor 
 canons, deacons, subdeacons, and clerics of the 
 minor orders. In the highest row, in supcriori 
 gradu, were the dignitaries, canons, priest-vicars, 
 and a few of the deacons — paiici admodum diaconi 
 qui etate et inoribus exigentibus in superiori gradu 
 tolerantur ex dispensatione. 
 
 Of the dignitaries, the dean and the cantor oc- 
 cupied the first stalls, to right and left respectively 
 of the western entrance of the quire : the chancellor 
 and treasurer occupied the easternmost stalls of 
 each row. The stalls next to those of the four great 
 dignitaries were assigned to the four archdeacons 
 of the diocese. 
 
 The whole of the quire and presbytery was 
 enclosed by a solid wall some ten feet in height, 
 which was standing in 1778.^^^ The sedilia occu- 
 pied the easternmost bay of this wall, upon the south 
 side, and in the opposite bay, to the north, the 
 enclosure was interrupted by the tomb of bishop 
 Richard Poore, whose body thus occupies the nor- 
 mal position of interment assigned to the founder 
 of the church. The western limit of the quire 
 was shut in by the rood-screen, pu/pitufn, a solid 
 erection of stone, surmounted by a loft, from which 
 the gospel was sung at the high mass on festival 
 days. Upon a beam above this stood the great 
 crucifix, or rood, the most striking feature of the 
 
 tion of the High Altar in the Cathedral Church of Salisbury," 
 to which I contributed a chapter upon the evidence to be de- 
 rived from the ritual of Sarum. 
 
 From the presence in quire of these altar-boys when not 
 actually on duty in the sanctuary is derived the name of the 
 latest added of the four voice-parts of a musical score. In 
 the plain song, when harmonised, the air (tenor) is allotted 
 to the middle part, with one upper part (alto) above it, and 
 one lower part (basso) below it. The treble part was subse- 
 quently added upon the top of the alto, in order to make use 
 of these thitrihidarii, or altar-boys. 
 
 jjj As is clear from the indication afforded by Hungerford 
 chantry, now known as " the Radnor Pew." This enclosure 
 was removed by that first perpetrator of a "restoration," 
 Wyatt, in 1789. 
 
144 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 whole interior, as was the case in every church, 
 collegiate or parochial, throughoat the realm.'"'''' 
 
 To the south of the nave was erected the cloister, 
 a work of great beauty, but of some unreality in a 
 secular church. The adoption here (as at St. Paul's, 
 London, and at Lincoln) of this feature, essential 
 to a monastic establishment, in a church which was 
 not monastic, but, in the words of a medieval his- 
 torian, a mere " sty for secular canons,'"" has a 
 strange air of affectation. 
 
 Upon the very slight walls of the original central 
 lantern was shortly afterwards erected, with com- 
 summate audacity, the lofty steeple which is the 
 great glory of this church. The exact date of this 
 fme work is not given, but that it took place during 
 the reign of Edward II. is clear from the profuse 
 use made by its designer of the so-called " ball- 
 flower,"™'"™ a feature peculiar, as far as I have ob- 
 served, to that miserable period of our history. 
 
 The next example of this early decorated, or 
 early middle-pointed style, to which I have referred, 
 is the eastern portion of Westminster Abbey. Upon 
 this famous building I shall make but few remarks. 
 Few buildings are so well known as this, and its 
 merit speaks for itself. I never return to it after 
 a visit to some of the wonderful churches of con- 
 tinental Christendom, without a sense that, though 
 there may be larger buildings elsewhere, there is 
 none more beautiful. 
 
 It is clearly the work of an english architect, but 
 of one who was well acquainted with the great 
 buildings then in progress in the north of France — 
 at Rheims, at Amiens, and at Beauvais. 
 
 In its general distribution it follows the normal 
 and primitive plan — deriving from the early basi- 
 licas — in having its quire wholly in the nave, to 
 the west of the great crossing-bay. Its eastern 
 limb constitutes the presbytery, and the chapel of 
 St. Edward, where the bones of the patron-saint 
 still rest upon their marble bier. 
 
 The stalls were canopied, as usual, and " on the 
 north side," says Dart,"™ " over the middle of the 
 stalls is a stately organ, gilt ; and on the south side, 
 at the upper end of the dean's (once the abbat's) 
 
 kkk 'With much significance the image of the divine but suf- 
 fering Head ot the church, gave place, at the Reformation, to 
 the coat-armour of its new poHtical head, " Ecclesire et cleri 
 Anglicani — supremum caput." (Cf. Wilkins' " Concilia," iii., 
 p. 742.) 
 
 What would the good monk, who thus contemns cathe- 
 dral dignitaries, who were at least celibates, have thought of a 
 bishop of Salisbury (Dr. John Thomas, who died in 1766) 
 who, upon the occasion of his fourth marriage, inscribed this 
 "posy" upon the wedding ring — 
 
 " If I survive, I'll make them five " ? 
 
 — Cassan's "Lives," ii., p. 315. 
 
 mmm Xhis omament is not in reality a flower at all, but 
 simply a common horse-bell, such as may still be seen hanging 
 from the necks of country teams. The leather thong which con- 
 nects these little bells, is commonly indicated, clearly enough, 
 in their sculptured representations. They have, no doubt, an 
 heraldic significance, and I think it possible that they may 
 have been the badge of those who, in the dissensions of this 
 reign, adhered to the party of the queen. 
 
 nnu '< Westmonasterium," i., p. 62. 
 
 row, is the pulpit, by which is remaining an ancient 
 
 painting of that unhappy, beautiful prince, Richard 
 
 J J "000 
 
 The area below the crossing-bay, which Dart 
 terms, " the second pavement," was elevated, by an 
 ascent of three steps (forming the gracilis chori, so 
 frequently referred to in the " Liber Consuetudi- 
 narius"), above that of the quire, to the west of it. 
 Here, as Dart informs us, was placed the paschal 
 candlestick, and here, too, stood the matutinal 
 altar. Pf'P 
 
 A second ascent of two steps led to the presby- 
 tery-level, to the beautiful mosaic flooring of which 
 I have already had occasion to refer. 
 
 Here, two bays to the east of the crossing, stood 
 the high altar. This was not, as we now see it, 
 backed by a solid screen, but stood free in the 
 centre of the eastern limb, as was the case every- 
 where, from the earliest ages until the commence- 
 ment of the fifteenth century. The reredos, now 
 so much in vogue, is of very late origin, and is 
 wholly opposed to the primitive conception of the 
 christian altar.'''ii 
 
 On the epistle side of the altar are sedilia of four 
 bays, and there is no piscina. Above the altar, at the 
 level of the capitals of the piers, was a rood-beam, 
 upon which stood a great cross, the arms of which 
 were supported by a second beam, which stretched 
 itself across the church at the level of a few feet 
 below the lower string course of the triforium. On 
 either side of the image of the Crucified were placed 
 the figures of St. Mary and John, together with two 
 great cherubs, poised each upon his wheel."" 
 
 Upon a further ascent, and immediately in rear 
 of the altar, stood " a certain chair, of gilded wood, 
 qiiadavi cathedra lignca deaiiraia," as it is described 
 in the inventory of the last year of Edward I. This 
 seat thus occupied the position of the episcopal 
 throne of an early basilica, and it served, as Wal- 
 singham informs us, as " celebrantium cathedra 
 sacerdotum." 
 
 It possesses, however, a still higher and unique 
 interest, as the coronation-chair of the sovereigns 
 of England since the time of the great Malkiis 
 Scotorum, who caused it to be made, " ut reges 
 Anglise et Scotise infra sederent die coronationis 
 eorundem." 
 
 Beneath its seat is fixed the " fatal stone," upon 
 
 °°° This is now placed in the presbytery. 
 
 ppp This " second pavement " existed until the innovations 
 carried out by Mr. Blore, in the present century. It was, up 
 to that date, enclosed from the transepts by solid screens of 
 oak-work. These were then removed, and the area itself 
 levelled, the result being the formation 01 that most awkward 
 flight of five steps by which ihe presbytery is now approached. 
 It is to be hoped that under the present able "surveyor'' 
 the ancient levels may be restored. 
 
 <w\ Hence those modern reredoses, designed in the manner 
 of the thirteenth century, are anachronisms. 
 
 This rood is shown in one of the dravs'ings of abbat Islip's 
 funeral in the Heralds' College (and published in the " Vetusta 
 Monumenta"). It is evidently, from its design, as there shown, 
 of early date. 
 
 Cf. Mr. Burges' paper in the " Gleanings from West- 
 minster Abbey," p. 121. 
 
PLATE XXX. 
 
 TINTERN ABBEY-CHURCH. 
 
 WEST WINDOW OF THE SOUTH AISLE. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 145 
 
 which the kings of Scotland had always been 
 crowned, and which Edward I. caused to be 
 removed from the abbey of Scone. 
 
 " No stone," says Mr. Burges, " ever had so 
 wonderful a history. It is said to have been the 
 identical one upon which Jacob's head rested when, 
 at Bethel, he saw the vision of the angels ascend- 
 ing and descending: it had thence travelled into 
 Egypt, from thence into Spain, thence to Ireland, 
 and lastly to Scotland. Moreover, king Kenneth 
 caused the following distich to be engraved upon 
 it :— 
 
 ' Ni fallat fatum Scoti quocunque locatum 
 Invenient lapidem regnare tenentur ibidem.'" 
 
 The termination of the eastern limb of the church 
 is apsidal. Its designer was evidently well ac- 
 quainted with the chevets of the great contem- 
 porary churches of France — Rheims, Amiens, and 
 Beauvais — yet its plan differs greatly from any of 
 these. The apse is five-sided, as at Rheims, but its 
 sides, instead of forming five faces of a decagon, are 
 distributed thus — the eastern three are sides of an 
 octagon, the other two, to right and left, incline but 
 slightly from the general line of the lateral arcades 
 of the church. This system, peculiar to Westminster, 
 has these great advantages : it avoids the narrow- 
 ness of the apsidal bays, so unpleasantly apparent 
 in the trench examples, and it gives a beautiful 
 gentleness of transition from the line of the main 
 arcades into the sweep of the apse. There is, further, 
 a great peculiarity in the arrangement of the apsidal 
 chapels, which are far more spacious in their pro- 
 portions than in the great French chevets. This 
 advantage is obtained by the omission of one of 
 the lateral rectangular chapels (on each side), by 
 which the five radiating chapels are made to occupy 
 much more than the semicircle, though every line 
 of their setting-out converges with mathematical 
 exactness to one central point, that about which 
 the whole chevet is described."' 
 
 Beyond the high altar and the " celebrantium 
 cathedra sacerdotum," was the chapel of the patron- 
 saint, occupying the whole of the apse proper. Of 
 the feretry, of Purbeck marble inlaid with glass 
 mosaic, I need not here speak, " when," as Euse- 
 bius says, under similar circumstances, " the testi- 
 mony of the eyes renders needless instruction 
 through the ear." I will only remark that the ex- 
 isting wooden shrine which surmounts the feretry, 
 and in which lies the body of the Confessor, was 
 constructed in the reign of Philip and Mary, by 
 abbat Fakenham, when, in 1557, the relics were 
 restored to the position from which Henry VIII. 
 had caused them to be removed. Henry Machyn, 
 in his diary, says, " Ytt was a godly shyte to have 
 seen yt, how reverently he was cared from the 
 plasse that he was taken up wher he was led when 
 that the abbay was spowled and robyd ; and so he 
 was cared and goodly syngyng and senssyng as 
 has bene sene and masse song." 
 
 On the setting-out of this, the only quite perfect chevet, 
 see my father's " Gleanings from Westminster Abbey," p. 21, 
 et seq. 
 
 Ax. the west end of the shrine was, as was usual 
 in such cases, an altar.""" The side-curtains of this 
 altar were hung upon rods, of which the ends were 
 supported by twisted columns of marble enriched 
 with mosaic-work, upon whose summits were placed 
 figures of St. John the evangelist and St. Edward.""' 
 
 It does not appear that any screen, even of iron- 
 work, fenced off the chapel of the saint from the 
 sanctuary itself, since, upon the removal, in 1867, 
 of the portions of the altar-screen (erected in the 
 fifteenth century) which abutted upon the main 
 piers, these were discovered to be ornamented by 
 coats of arms, emblazoned upon paper, and pasted 
 upon the marble pillars.*'"" Whatever may have 
 been the occasion for which these, no doubt tem- 
 porary, decorations were put up, it seems clear that 
 at the date of their execution — some time prior to 
 the erection of the altar-screen — these piers stood 
 free and unencumbered. 
 
 With regard to the system of coloured decoration 
 adopted in this church, some few facts have recently 
 come to light. From these it would appear that, 
 in spite of the so-called " constructional poly- 
 chrome " of its vaultings, the whole interior was — 
 with the exception, of course, of those portions 
 which were executed in the Purbeck marble — dis- 
 tempered white, and " stoned " in red lines. The 
 diaper-work of the triforium was gilded upon a 
 ground of red, and the sculptured bosses were 
 similarly relieved by gilding and colour, the labels 
 having inscriptions illuminated upon them, some 
 of which are still legible. The wonderfully rich 
 tone of colour, in which this interior surpasses all 
 others that I have seen, is due, in great measure, 
 to the singular fact that the tempera painting was, 
 in this instance, protected by a coat of some sort 
 of varnish. To the gradual darkening of this 
 resinous film, where it has remained, and to the 
 exposure, more or less complete, of the two kinds 
 of stone employed in the construction, in those 
 portions in which it has perished, is due that 
 exquisite beauty of colour which is quite unique. 
 
 This simply perfect work has been termed ""^ *' a 
 great french thought expressed in excellent english." 
 I would rather compare it to one of Chaucer's lays, a 
 sweetly english poem inspired by a french romance. 
 
 In Westminster we see illustrated the first stage 
 in the history of bar-tracery. In the eastern portions 
 of St. Alban's abbey, to which I have now to refer, 
 we have a classical example of the perfection and 
 refinement of which this form of tracery is capable, 
 while still confined to strictly geometrical forms. 
 
 uuu Already referred to in p. 109. 
 
 These are indicated in the illumination from the MS. 
 " Life of St. Edward," of the thirteenth century, now in the 
 University library at Cambridge. (Cf. " Gleanings," p. 136.) 
 The shrine, as it appeared early in the last century, is figured 
 in Dart's " Westmonasterium," ii., pi. 23. There is a still 
 better view of it, engraved about the same time, by Vertue. 
 
 www These were at a height of about fourteen feet from the 
 floor-line. 
 
 By my father, in his " Lectures on Medieval Architec- 
 ture," i., p. 175. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 This great work, which comprises, speaking 
 generally, the whole of the existing building east- 
 ward of the central tower, was begun by abbat 
 John Hertford, who ruled the house from 1235 
 until 1260. Matthew Paris, who was a monk of 
 St. Alban's, informs us">' that in the year 1257 " it 
 happened that, owing to some gaping cracks which 
 caused alarm, the eastern part of the church of St. 
 Alban (by the advice of the abbat and convent), 
 after the roof had been removed, in advent, had 
 its walls pulled down in order that that part might 
 be rebuilt in a substantial manner."^^^ 
 
 Of the form of the eastern limb, as erected by 
 abbat Paul, I have already spoken. It would ap- 
 pear that in the thirteenth-century reconstruc- 
 tion, the position of the high altar, and of the 
 shrine of St. Alban's, was not interfered with. The 
 eastern wall of the nornian presbytery-aisles appear 
 to have coincided with the termination of these 
 aisles in the new work, and the arch which once 
 opened upon the apse of abbat Paul, is represented 
 by the square east-end of the reconstructed sanc- 
 tuary. 
 
 More than this, one bay of the northern aisle, and 
 two of the southern one, were left untouched, and 
 still retain their norman character, and it is pro- 
 bable that much of the mass of the walls eastward 
 of these bays is of the work of abbat Paul. 
 
 In the new design there was, however, included 
 a great eastward extension of the area of the church. 
 The terminating walls of the aisles, originally, of 
 course, solid, were now pierced by arches, opening 
 upon an ante-chapel, of two bays in length. Into 
 this the eastern wall of the saint's chapel was 
 opened by three arches, as at abbey Dore and at 
 Salisbury 
 
 Of this ante-chapel, the westernmost bay served 
 as the procession-path, while the second bay was 
 reckoned as forming a part ot the lady-chapel it- 
 gg]f^bbbb which it appears to have been enclosed 
 by some sort of screen, possibly of metal. 
 
 yyy " Chron." (Bohn's ed.), iii., p. 213. 
 
 Mattliew Paris died about two years after this. Of him, 
 the anonymous author of the second section of the Gesta 
 Abbatimi (Roll's Edition, i., p. 394), speaks thus : — "Vir 
 quidem eloquens et famosus, innumeris virtutibus plenus, 
 historiographus ac chronographus magnificus, dictator egre- 
 gius, corde frequenter revolvens — ' otiositas inimica est 
 animse.' Quam quidem, ubi nunquam fecerat presentia 
 cognitum, partibus remotis fama reddiderat divulgata com- 
 mendatum. Inerat ei tanta subtilitas in auro et argento 
 coeteroque metallo, in sculpendo et in picturis depingendo, 
 ut nullum post se in latino orbe creditur reliquisse secun- 
 dum." He adds, " Igitur, exemplo ipsius, operibus insude- 
 mus salubribus incessanter, ut cum ipso proemiis remuneramur 
 ccclestibus. Amen." 
 
 aaaa These arches occupy the position of the "triumphal 
 arch," opening into the apse of Paul's presbytery, and the 
 ante-chapel is upon the site of the original norman apse. 
 
 bbbb Sgg tijg translation, by Mr. Ridgway Lloyd, of" Certain 
 annotations concerning the altars, monuments, and sites of 
 tombs in the church of the monastery of St. Alban," the ori- 
 ginal of which is published among " Chronica Monasterii 
 Sancti Albani," edited for the Master of the Rolls, by Mr. 
 H. T. Riley. In this the procession-path is termed (p. 18), 
 "the f«r/cj//;'^ extending from the saint's chapel to the 
 chapel of St. Mary. " This is only one of the valuable con- 
 
 In this easternmost bay there were two altars, 
 dedicated, respectively, in honour of St. Michael 
 and of the blessed Virgin. This latter was known 
 in popular parlance as our Lady's altar " of the 
 four tapers," because, says the author of the 
 " Annotations," " four wax tapers, maintained 
 by four officers of the convent, are there daily 
 lighted,'""" Against each of the pillars of the ante- 
 chapel stood an altar, the one under the invocation 
 of St. Edmund, of east Anglia, the other under 
 that of St. Peter. In the centre was the shrine of 
 St. Amphibalus, with the altar of the saint at its 
 head. 
 
 The high altar of the central chapel was, of 
 course, dedicated in honour of our Lady, and in the 
 vestry ot the same was another altar, consecrated 
 in memory of the transfiguration of the Saviour.'''''''' 
 
 In the westernmost bay of the presbytery, thus 
 remodelled, were the " ostia presbyterii," from 
 which we may conclude that the stalls of the monks 
 extended across the area below the central tower. 
 The high altar occupied the position which is in- 
 dicated, at this day, by the great altar-piece erected, 
 between the years 1476 and 1492, by abbat Walling- 
 ford.""''^ But at the period with which we are now 
 concerned, it stood free and detached in the centre 
 of the presbytery, and the shrine of the saint, to 
 the east of it, was in full view of those in the 
 quire. 
 
 This table-like character of the altar is a tradi- 
 tion of the primitive ages, which was preserved until 
 the later years of the middle ages, when it gave 
 place, in England, to what may, perhaps, be de- 
 scribed as the side-board treatment. In this in- 
 novation there was a great loss of dignity, as well 
 as of traditional propriety, and modem ecclesiolo- 
 gists are ill-advised who elect to follow this late and 
 short-lived fancy.™ At Rome this abuse — for such I 
 
 tributions to the elucidation of the history of this great church 
 for which we are indebted to the learned labours of this 
 accurate investigator. 
 
 Cf. p. 16 of Mr. Ridgway Lloyd's translation. 
 
 dddd a.nd about the church were (in the year 1428) 
 twenty-six altars, of which six were under the invocation of 
 the Mother of God. At this date all but one of the altars, 
 originally placed against the piers of the nave (from twelve 
 to eighteen in number), had been removed. 
 
 eece Of this magnificent work the " Registrum Johannis de 
 Whethamstede," i., 477, says: — "Abbat William Wallingford 
 made that highly-decorated, sumptuous, and lofty face of the 
 high altar, which greatly adorns the church, and fills with 
 pleasure the eyes of beholders, and to all who gaze upon it, is 
 the most divine object in this kingdom." (Cf. Mr. Ridgway 
 Lloyd's work, p. 43.) It has now lost all its figures, as well 
 as the great silver crucifix which once adorned it, and is 
 but a lovely frame without a picture. 
 
 The original conception of the christian altar was nut, 
 however, wholly lost sight of by those who introduced this 
 great innovation, as is clear from the doorways with which 
 these reredos walls are pierced — as here, at St. Alban's, at 
 Christchurch, Hants, at Westminster, and at Durham. The 
 object of these doorways was to permit of the carrying out of 
 the old english rite, which enjoined the aspersion and the 
 incensing of the altar upon all its sides. " Deinde sacerdos 
 thurificando altare circueat," at vespers. (" De Off. Ecci. 
 Tract.," cap. xxv., in Dr. Rock's " Church of Our Fathers," 
 iv., app., p, 19.) " Sacerdos accedat ad principale altare et 
 
PLATE XXXI. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 14? 
 
 regard it — was never naturalised, for there the tra- 
 ditions of the primitive church have ever been 
 religiously conserved. 
 
 As to what were the arrangements of the high 
 altar we have no evidence. Probably there was 
 above it, as at Canterbury and elsewhere, the cus- 
 tomary beam,ss^s supporting the image of the 
 Redeemer, which, as we may venture to infer from 
 the most conspicuous feature of Wheathampsted's 
 altar-piece, was not a " majesty," as- at Canterbury, 
 and here, too, before Trumpington's time, but a 
 rood. 
 
 Of the whole work, the central and most 
 conspicuous feature was the shrine of the sainted 
 british legionary. The shrine itself has disappeared 
 long ago, in the melting-pot of Henry VIII. : the 
 honoured dust of Alban lies somewhere unnoticed, 
 and, though angels guard it, " no man knoweth of 
 his sepulchre unto this day.'"'''*''' But the wonder- 
 fully-wrought feretry may now again be seen erect 
 upon its ancient site, and as we now view it, while 
 it offers a most perfect example of the style we are 
 now engaged in considering, it affords matter, too, 
 for other and more serious reflection. 
 
 There exist in human nature tendencies destruc- 
 tive, as well as constructive. Each has its part in 
 the drama of history, as in the diversions of child- 
 hood. Constructive energy was never more con- 
 spicuously displayed than during the centuries 
 which constituted the middle ages. On the other 
 hand, the advent of protestantism marks a period in 
 which destructiveness for the time overbore the 
 constructive impulse, and the force of this retro- 
 grade movement is still, after three centuries, unex- 
 hausted, though signs are not wanting that the 
 inevitable reaction has at length commenced. 
 
 This marble structure, on which, enclosed in a 
 fitting shrine, once rested the bones of the proto- 
 martyr, of Britain (of this land of ours, primitm deo 
 et agno), has recently, by most patient ingenuity, 
 been in great part re-constructed on its ancient 
 site. Its debris, through more than three centuries, 
 has formed part of a wall, designed to secure, 
 within the walls of the abbey-church, and upon the 
 site of five desecrated altars, a convenient covered 
 playground for the grammar-scholars of St. Alban's 
 
 ipsum circumquaque aspergat," during the asperges. (lb., 
 cap. Ixviii., p. 47.) 
 
 ssssi Such a beam had been, as we know from the " Gesta 
 Abbatum" (p. 283), erected above the high altar of the 
 norman presbytery, some fifty years before, by abbat William 
 Trumpington (1214-1235), of whom we read, " quasdam 
 structuras nobilissimas circa majus altare construxit, cum 
 quadarn trabe, historiam Sancti Albani reprcesentante, quae 
 totam illam artificiosam machinam supereminet." Nor was 
 this the first beam here erected, for we learn from the "Gesta" 
 (p. 287) that abbat Trumpington's " machina " replaced a 
 still earlier erection, which was by him removed into the 
 south transept. " Transpositam veterem trabem quae supra 
 majus altare ponebatur — in australi ecclesiae parte, juxta 
 nobilem Mariolam, ad magnum ecclesios ornatum eminenter 
 attoUebat. In qua trabe, series duodecim patriarcharum et 
 duodecim apostolorum, et in medio, majestas, cum ecclesia et 
 synagoga, figuratur.'' 
 
 hhhh Deut. xxxiv. 6 ; also of. Jude 9. 
 
 town. In contemplating this monument, whose 
 fragments, like the dry bones in Ezekiel's weird 
 vision, have thus, after long years of dissolution, 
 come together, ossa ad ossa, unuiiiquodqiie ad 
 junduram suam, two thoughts impress the mind. 
 It is difficult to say which is the more striking 
 fact: that menshould ever havehad the patience and 
 the zeal to fashion, in so intractable a material, a 
 work so tenderly delicate : or again, that men 
 could have found it in their hearts to shiver into 
 fragments, by the ruthless labour of one short hour, 
 so fair and sweet a thing. Add to these subjects 
 of wonder the one, common to and crowning both, 
 that those who worked through long years to per- 
 fect its beauty, and those who defaced and 
 destroyed this incomparable work, were alike 
 actuated, or professed to be so, by a sense of duty 
 to God. In that one structure, as it now stands, 
 is summed up the history, of english church archi- 
 tecture as a living fact, and of the death which 
 finally overtook it. The one is seen in the exquisite 
 finish and beauty of the monument thus recovered 
 from its ruins ; the other in the marks, which it 
 bears upon it, of the crowbar-blows which shattered 
 it into splinters, starring the finely-wrought marble, 
 as ice is shivered by a mattock. Thus in one work 
 we may admire a masterpiece of human construc- 
 tion, and at the same time contemplate with wonder 
 that re-action to primitive destructiveness to which 
 protestantism, as an essentially negative idea, opened 
 up a new career. If it is asked why the history of 
 english church architecture ends in the sixteenth 
 century, this one monument alone supplies an 
 answer. 
 
 The great work, of which this exquisite marble 
 shrine is the crowning glory, was not completed by 
 one abbat. John Hertford, who, as we have seen, 
 commenced it, finished, as I believe, but one aisle- 
 bay upon the south side. His successors, Roger 
 Norton (1260 — 1291) and John Berkhampsted 
 (1291 — 1302), appear to have finished the presby- 
 tery itself, but they left the procession-path, and the 
 ante-chapel beyond it, still incomplete, and carried 
 the lady-chapel itself no higher than the string- 
 course beneath the windows. 
 
 The Purbeck marble feretry destined to fall be- 
 neath the blows of the Anglonim malleus^''' was 
 erected during the abbacy of John de Marinis 
 (1302 — 1308). Walsingham, writing in 1380, 
 states that " he caused the tomb and feretry of St. 
 Alban to be removed from the place where it had 
 stood " — presumably during the rebuilding of the 
 presbytery — " and the marble tomb which we now 
 see, to be constructed at a cost of 820 marks. "•'j^-' 
 
 The lady -chapel was completed by the next abbat, 
 Hugh Eversden (1308 — 1326), as we learn from 
 the following passage in the Gesta abbatum : — '''''''' 
 
 Edward I. is styled, upon his tomb at Westminster, 
 Scoiorum malleus. Henry was most successful when harrying 
 his own subjects. 
 
 jjjj Cf. Nero, D. 7., quoted by the late Dr. Nicholson in his 
 "Abbey of St. Alban," p. 23. 
 
 kkkk Roll's edition, ii., p. 115. 
 
14^ 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 "Hie Abbas cum, inter omnes electos Dei, Beatam 
 ejus Genitricem speciali devotione veneraretur, loca 
 sua et ornamenta eidem Virgini dedicare semper 
 studuit toto posse. Inter cujus gesta, quee semper 
 fecit magnifica, Capellam dictje Virginia in parte 
 orientali ecclesiae, inceptam a multorum annorum 
 tempore, modo qui sequitur laudabili fine com- 
 plevit. 
 
 " Erat siquidem quidam clericus Magister Re- 
 ginaldus nomine, maximum corrodium et feodum 
 de domo Sancti Albani percipiens, qui ad comple- 
 tionem dicti operis, divini amoris intuitu, manus 
 adhibuit adjutrices. Sed cum in Curia Romana 
 preefatus clericus, velut continue occupatus, moram 
 faceret, turn propter ejus absentiam, tum propter 
 procuratoris desidiam, rarus, piger, et tardus ef- 
 fectus ejusdem operis sequebatur. Tandem cum 
 usque ad summitatera murorum opus fuisset per- 
 fectum cum magna morositate, idem clericus 
 concessit in fata, testamento legans prsedicto operi 
 ducentas marcas. Quam pecuniam dominus Abbas 
 Hugo recipiens, in tantum desudavit circa ipsius 
 operis completionem, ut, in brevi tectum cum electo 
 meremio et volta arcuata fenestrisque vitreis de- 
 centissimis, opus pulcherrimum, consummaret, ad 
 honorem Virginis gloriosse ; Waltero de Langleie, 
 et Alicia, ejus uxore^ juvantibus eundem Abbatem 
 in expensis." 
 
 He further brought to a finish the space, com- 
 prising the procession-path and the vestibule to the 
 chapel of St. Mary, which had hitherto remained 
 incomplete. In doing this he departed in two 
 particulars from the plan of its original designer. 
 He omitted the four columns, by which its central 
 space would have been divided into three alleys, and 
 he also substituted for the stone groinings a flat 
 ceiling of wood, panelled and painted. This por- 
 tion of the work is thus spoken of in the Gesta : — 
 " Ilium locum insuper, formte quadratje capellae, 
 contiguum, separantem presbyterium et dictam ca- 
 pellam (sc. B. V. M.), cum celatura in cujus me- 
 dio beatse virginis assumptio figuratur (in quo jam 
 feretrura sancti Amphibali collocatum est) eodem 
 tempore studuit consummare.""" 
 
 The object of these changes, the execution of 
 which occupied, as we have seen, about half a cen- 
 tury, was not merely an enlargement of the eastern 
 limb and the addition of a chapel of our Lady, it was, 
 first and foremost, the substitution of the traditional 
 english rectangular termination, in place of the ap- 
 sidal one, given to the church by the first norman 
 abbat. Another respect in which, apart from that 
 of style, the new work differed from its predecessor 
 was, the fact that the central area of the presbytery, 
 originally, no doubt, ceiled, was groined. This 
 vaulting was designed to be of stone, as is clear 
 from the preparation made for the erection of flying 
 buttresses, but it was eventually carried out in oak, 
 and these buttresses were therefore omitted. 
 
 This vault was decorated in colour, indications 
 of which are still to be seen through the later 
 
 " Gesta Abbatum," Roll's edition. 
 
 paintings, executed (in the fifteenth century) by 
 abbat John VVhethampsted, whose cognisances, the 
 agnus dei of the Baptist, and the eagle of the 
 Evangelist, form its conspicuous adornment. 
 
 The style of the earlier portion of the work is 
 that of the most perfect geometrical decorated, that 
 of the lady-chapel is an equally charming example 
 of the transition, from this, to the more graceful, 
 but less masculine manner which succeeded to it. 
 
 I may notice in passing that the whole of the 
 new buildings eastward of the great tower were 
 covered by flat, leaded roofs. It is a mere popular 
 prejudice which supposes that roofs of high pitch 
 are essential, even to the earliest phase of the 
 decorated style. 
 
 This noble example is particularly valuable, as 
 illustrating the history of the evolution of window 
 tracery, with the course of which, as it determined 
 the progress of architecture generally, we are here 
 more particularly concerned. 
 
 One other example of the perfected geometrical 
 style I will mention. It is small in dimensions 
 compared with the great works we have just been 
 considering, but its exquisite beauty, and the interest 
 which attaches to its history, dispense me from the 
 necessity of making any apology for dwelling 
 shortly upon the church of St. Ethel dreda, in Ely 
 Place, Holborn. 
 
 This lovely monument is all that the Reformation, 
 and its seqnelce, have left us of the town residence 
 of the bishops of Ely. 
 
 The property on which this, then sub-urban, 
 palace was erected, was originally the bequest of 
 bishop John Kirkeby (1286 — 1290) who left to the 
 see what is termed in the licence granted, in the 
 thirty-first yearof his reign, by Edward I.,"""™™ "unum 
 messuagium et novem cotagia cum pertinentiis in 
 vico de Holeburn in suburbiis civitatis nostrse Lon- 
 don." This estate, says Bentham,"""" was so much 
 
 rammra Given in a paper, entitled " St. Etheldredra and her 
 Churches in Ely and London," by Alexander Wood, M.A., in 
 the " Belfrey " of April, 1876, p. 27. To this valuable com- 
 munication I am largely indebted for the history of this 
 monument. I will also refer the curious reader to the " Re- 
 marks on Ely Palace, Holborn, accompanying some original 
 drawings of the same, made in 1772, kindly given by the 
 Rev. Charles Ruck Keene, of Swincombe House, Nettlebed, 
 to Sir G. Gilbert Scott, R.A., F.S.A., and presented by him 
 to the Society of Antiquaries." In this paper my father very 
 effectually demolishes the theory — sufficiently absurd upon 
 the face of it — that the present building is not the chapel, 
 but the dining-hall of the ancient palace. His argument is 
 summed up in one short sentence. We know, from the Har- 
 leian MS., 3,789, 15 et sej., that a drinking-cellar was 
 established beneath the chapel in Elizabeth's reign ; and also 
 that the back approach to the palace having been closed, 
 " the bishop was fain to own as a courtesy and kindness the 
 bare convenience of a back-gate to convey away the stable- 
 dung, and is always forced to bring his horses through the 
 great hall whenever he uses them." Upon this my father 
 remarks : — " Now, of two buildings, one ten or twelve feet 
 above the ground^ and the other upon a level with it, it 
 would seem strange if a public cellar to sell drink in were 
 formed beneath the latter, and the bishop's horses were con- 
 stantly led through the former" (" Remarks," p. 14). 
 
 imnn " History and Antiquities of the Conventual and 
 Cathedral Church of Ely," p. 151, footnote 11. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 '49 
 
 enlarged by subsequent purchases of land that the 
 whole contained, upon the accession of Elizabeth, 
 about twenty acres. 
 
 It was then a very delightfully situated sub-urban 
 residence. The Fleet river — now a sewer, but then 
 a clear, flowing stream, taking its rise from the 
 springs of Hampstead and Highgate, and flowing 
 through the Kentish town and under Battle Bridge 
 to join the Thames by Baynard's Castle — ran between 
 it and the New-gate of the city, to whose walls it 
 formed, for a considerable distance, a natural dyke. 
 This delightful residence was thus without the city 
 but within its liberties,™™ and its gardens, sloping 
 down towards the Fleet river, were famous for their 
 produce. Even to this day their fame lives, in the 
 name of Hatton Garden, given to a street upon the 
 site of this once-noted spot. Sir Thomas More, 
 in his " Historic of King Richard the Thirde," p^pp 
 has the following : — " On friday the thirteenth day of 
 June (1483) many lordes assembled in the tower, 
 and there sat in counsaile devising the honorable 
 solempnite of the kinges coronacion. These lordes 
 so sytting together comoning of thys matter, the 
 protector (Richard III.) came in among them, fyrst 
 about nine of the clock, saluting them curtesly, and 
 excusing hymself that he had bene from them so 
 long, saieng merely that he had bene a-slepe that 
 day. And after a little talking with them, he sayd 
 unto the bishop of Elye : My lord you have very 
 good strawberies at your gardayne in Holbeme, 
 I require you let us have a messe of them. And 
 therewith in al the hast he sent hys servant for 
 a messe of strawberries." 
 
 Shakespeare has borrowed from Sir Thomas 
 More this incident. He renders it thus : — 
 
 " Gloucester. My Lord of Ely. 
 Ely. My lord. 
 
 Gloucester. When I was last in Holborn, I saw good 
 strawberries in your garden there, I do beseech you send for 
 some of them. 
 
 Ely. Marry, and will, my lord, with all my heart." 
 
 The prelate thus referred to was John Morton, 
 More's early patron, from whom, no doubt, he ob- 
 tained the story which Shakespeare has adopted. 
 England owes to him some gratitude, since it was he 
 who negociated, in his exile during the supremacy 
 of Richard III., the marriage between the Duke 
 of Richmond and the eldest daughter of Edward 
 IV., by which the long feud of the rival roses was 
 healed. In i486 he became archbishop of Canter- 
 
 0000 These are marked still, or were so within our own day, 
 by such advanced posts' as Holbom-bars, Norton Folgate 
 (Foregate), and Temple bar. These corresponded with those 
 archways, such as that of Drusus upon the Appian way, which, 
 standing far in advance of the original walls of Rome (those 
 of Servius Tullius), indicated the limits of the pomcerium, 
 which in later times was included within the walls of Aurelian 
 and Probus. A similar line is indicated to this day, in many 
 of the french cities, by the stations which mark the limits of 
 the octroi. 
 
 pppp Whittingham's reprint, p. 6g. 
 
 qqqq " Richard III.," act iii., scene 4. That More's history 
 is his authority for the scene, is clear from the passage — " My 
 nobles, lords, and cousins all, good morrow. I have been 
 long a sleeper." 
 
 bury, and seven years later he was raised to the 
 cardinalate, under the title of St. Anastasia."" 
 
 The chapel of this episcopal mansion, with 
 which alone we are here concerned, was erected by 
 bishop William de Luda (Louth), who, in 1290, 
 succeeded the famous Hugh Balsham, the founder 
 of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and of the chapel of 
 St John's college in the same university."" 
 
 It was designed by him to serve at once as the 
 private chapel of the prelates of Ely, and as his own 
 chantry. He gave by his will, says Bentham,"" 
 " two hundred marks, to purchase twenty marks a 
 year for maintenance of three chaplains to pray 
 for his soul, and the souls of the bishops of Ely and 
 their successors for ever" in the chapel there — i.e., 
 in Holbourn in the suburbs of London. 
 
 Bishop de Luda was interred at Ely, under a 
 sumptuous canopied tomb, upon the south side of 
 the presbytery, which still exists, although its beauty 
 has been well-nigh destroyed by a wretched carica- 
 ture of the coloured decoration which once adorned 
 it, perpetrated in recent times. At the present time 
 the slab which once contained the memorial brass 
 of De Luda is laid level with the floor, but, as my 
 father states,"""" " its central compartment was origi- 
 nally raised as an altar-tomb, as in Crouchbeck's 
 monument at Westminster. It was cut down at 
 a later date, in order to form an entrance to the 
 presbytery. The sides, which once formed its front, 
 still exist in the chapel of bishop West." Thus, 
 though his remains lie at Ely, it was his intention 
 that his chantry should be in Holborn, and it is to 
 him that we owe this singularly beautiful example 
 of the perfected geometrical style. 
 
 The preservation of this unique monument to 
 our own day is little short of miraculous. 
 
 The see of Ely fared badly under Elizabeth's 
 rule. The virgin-queen compelled the intruded 
 bishop,""' Dr. Richard Cox, to alienate the greater 
 part of the episcopal residence to her favourite, Sir 
 Christopher Hatton. The bishop remonstrated : 
 " In his conscience," he said, " he could not do it, 
 being a piece of sacrilege — he could not bring his 
 mind to be so ill a trustee for his successors, nor 
 to violate the pious wills of kings and princes, and 
 in effect to rescind their last testaments." But 
 he and his fellows had gone too far along the 
 road of mis-appropriation to be able to ofl'er any 
 
 Cf. Bentham's " Ely Cathedral," pp. 179-181. 
 SS5S This invaluable monument of the antiquity of this society, 
 together with the remains of another smaller chapel, also of 
 Balsham's erection, was destroyed, against the advice of my 
 father, in order to enlarge the first court of the college, in 
 1863. As a consequence of this, St. John's no longer disputes 
 with Peterhouse the priority of foundation. 
 
 " History and Antiquities of the Cathedral Church of 
 Ely," p. 153. Bentham also states (in footnote 7) that "this 
 will was proved in the court of Hustings, London, Die lune 
 prox., post festum S. Luce Evang. an. R.R. Edvv. fil. Regis 
 Hen. 26." 
 
 imuu Iji a, MS. note to Mr. Wood's paper, now in my posses- 
 sion. 
 
 WW jjis predecessor, bishop Thirlby, was deprived, in 1559, 
 for refusing to take the oath which recognised the supremacy, 
 in a christian church, of a woman. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 effectual opposition to the will of the supreme ordi- 
 nary of the church, and his remonstrances were of 
 no avail. 
 
 Sir Christopher's occupancy produced certain re- 
 sults which were characteristic but not altogether 
 edifying. " Half of the vault, or burying-place, 
 under the chapel," says the Harleian MS., 3,789, 
 " is made use of as a public cellar (or was so very 
 lately) to sell drink in, there having been frequent 
 revellings heard there during divine service ;" or as 
 Malcomb puts it in his " London" — " the intoxica- 
 tion of the people assembled often interrupted the 
 offices of religion above them."""™" 
 
 That portion of the palace which ultimately re- 
 mained in the possession of the see of Ely, and 
 which included the chapel, was leased by bishop 
 Lancelot Andrews to Gondomar, the Spanish am- 
 bassador. There is a good story to be told in con- 
 nection with his occupancy of the house. Sir 
 Christopher Hatton died (apparently of chagrin at 
 losing the favour of his royal patroness) in 1591, 
 leaving a widow, whose hand "was an object of 
 rivalry to those great luminaries of the bar. Coke 
 and Bacon. She gave her preference to the for- 
 jjjgj.^i'xxxx jjyj. ^jjg marriage was not a happy one, and 
 she quarrelled hopelessly with her new husband. 
 She seems, indeed, to have been of a disagreeable 
 temper, for the Spanish ambassador, who had the 
 art of ingratiating himself with the people of qua- 
 lity, ladies especially, could not prevail upon her to 
 allow him the use of the garden-gate, " to go abroad 
 into the fields." " Whereupon, in a private audi- 
 ence lately with the king," James L, " he told him 
 that my lady Hatton was a strange lady, for she 
 would not suffer her husband to come in at her 
 fore door, nor him to go out at her back door.''^^^'' 
 
 What, however, is of lasting interest in the 
 occupancy of the palace by Gondomar, is the fact 
 that the chapel reverted, during the residence here 
 of himself and of his successor, the marquis Inijosa, 
 to its original purpose, and the ablatio miinda was 
 again celebrated daily within its venerable walls. 
 Mr. Wood refers^^"' to a letter of Chamberlain to 
 Carleton, of October 30th, 16 19, in which it is 
 stated that it will be a disgrace to religion if mass 
 is again said in the chapel of the bishops of Ely. 
 Four years later, Chamberlain, in another letter to 
 Carleton, says that the chapel of Ely House, "serves 
 for the english retainers of the marquis Inijosa, 
 who begin to talk of toleration"; and in a scurrilous 
 pamphlet, printed in Holland in 1624, entitled 
 " The Second Part of Vox Populi, a Gondomar ap- 
 pearing in the Likeness of Matchiavell in a Spanish 
 Parliament," Gondomar is made to say that the 
 church ceremonies drew more people to his private 
 chapel in Holborn, than the best protestant 
 preachers of sermons could do to any church they 
 had."^^'"^ 
 
 www Quoted in my father's "Remarks on Ely Palace, 
 Holborn," p. 14. 
 xi.xx Wood's " St. Etheldreda," p. 34. 
 yyyj' Howell, quoted by Wood, "St. Etheldreda," p. 35. 
 
 (zzz JJj aaaas Jlj_ 
 
 The chantry of bishop De Luda was thus, of all 
 our medieval churches, the one in which mass was 
 last said ; and, by a remarkable destiny, it is also 
 the first in which, in our own day, mass has again 
 been celebrated. 
 
 In 1772 bishop Keene surrendered the property 
 to the crown, which thereupon proceeded to pull 
 down the whole of the buildings, with the excep- 
 tion of the chapel, and to let out the site upon 
 building leases. Four years later the chapel itself 
 was sold. It was occupied for many years by a 
 Welsh congregation, and a few years ago this 
 priceless monument was upon the point of being 
 destroyed, to give space for the erection of a big 
 workshop. An attempt was made to save it by 
 the Institute of British Architects, at the instance 
 of my father, but a kindlier fate has restored it 
 again to the religion of its founder. 
 
 It is in form a parallelogram of, internally, 
 ninety feet by thirty, being about the same dimen- 
 sions as St. Stephen's chapel, Westminster, the 
 Sainte chapelle of St. Louis, at Paris, and the beau- 
 tiful chapel of the templars at Temple Balsal, in 
 Warwickshire. 
 
 Like the two first of these, it is raised upon an 
 undercroft which can scarcely be termed a crypt, 
 since it is not vaulted. Domestic chapels were 
 commonly thus arranged, but the lower story is 
 generally groined.''''^''''' In this instance the upper 
 floor is carried by eight story-posts, bearing massive 
 beams, all of chestnut. Internally the side windows 
 are connected by pedimental panels, into which are 
 built brackets to support images of saints, before 
 each of which in a metal sconce there burnt, upon 
 the festival of the saint, and upon other great days, 
 a wax taper. The easternmost bay upon the south 
 side contained the triple sedilia and lavacrum, 
 originally of great beauty, but now to be traced 
 only by most scant indications of their design. 
 The western bay forms a sort of ante-chapel. 
 
 The side windows are brought down unusually 
 near the floor, in a manner which gives to the inte- 
 rior a very domestic character, though one of great 
 dignity, and there were clearly no stalls. The roof 
 is of the polygonal cradle form, boarded upon the 
 under side, with massive tie-beams and kingposts. 
 It was no doubt richly painted. It is pertinent to 
 observe that the nave of Ely cathedral is roofed 
 and ceiled in the same manner.'''''''''^ 
 
 bbbbb xhis is the case in the royal chapels already men- 
 tioned. The same is the arrangement of the beautiful chapel 
 of Broughton Castle, near Banbury, which is much of the 
 same date as De Luda's chantry, and is valuable, not only on 
 account of its elegant window tracery, but also as retaining 
 intact its ancient altar, the mensa of which rests upon stone 
 brackets built into the east wall. 
 
 '"^<^ A door has recently been pierced in the wall, where 
 once the sedilia stood, and this having been carried out in 
 the style of the chapel itself, will tend to obscure, to future 
 antiquaries, the original arrangement of the sanctuary. 
 
 ddddd Tjjis yQof ancient, and was undoubtedly boarded 
 from the first, although the actual ceiling is quite modem. 
 The following buildings, among many others of this date, are, 
 or once were, thus covered in — St. Stephen's, Westminster, 
 Merton college chapel, Wimbourn Minster, the chapter house 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 This building, so unique in its history, is par- 
 ticularly valuable, as illustrating the history of the 
 window tracery. It still retains one of its ancient 
 side windows, of which my father was the discoverer. 
 "I had long and often lamented," he says,""' "the 
 mutilated condition of the side windows, and was 
 one day trying to get at some clue to the design of 
 the tracery, by examining the scars where it had 
 been amputated, when the thought struck me that 
 the two westernmost of them, being blocked up by 
 the adjoining houses, might, if opened out, be found 
 to retain their decorative features. I applied for 
 permission to do this, and what was my delight, on 
 removing the material which obtruded them, to find 
 the old window — mutilated, indeed, and shat- 
 tered, but still retaining every element needful to 
 the recovery of its design." 
 
 Its east and west windows are grand examples 
 of the perfected working out of the bar-tracery, 
 being in their treatment intermediate between those 
 of the presbytery of St. Alban's abbey and those 
 of the lady-chapel of the same church.""^' 
 
 The examples upon which I have dwelt, as 
 characteristic of the perfected geometrical style, 
 serve to illustrate the important part which window 
 tracery had come to play in the architectural 
 movement of the last quarter of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury. They further enable us to trace the influences 
 which led to that further developement of it which 
 is so characteristic of the later Edwardian period. 
 
 As soon as ever the attention of architects had 
 become directed from the forms of the window- 
 piercings to the lines of the tracery-bars, the irre- 
 gular forms of the spandrils, occurring between the 
 several geometrical forms and the comprising arch, 
 began to attract notice. 
 
 at Canterbury, and the chancels of Trumpington Church 
 by Cambridge, and of St. Nicholas, Pevensey. The treat- 
 ment is indeed common enough, and quite characteristic of 
 churches of the latter part of the thirteenth, and the earlier 
 years of the fourteenth centuries. 
 
 eeeee " Lectures on Medieval Architecture," i., p. 182. My 
 father had a singular love for this building. 
 
 flfff -pjjg sijg windows are figured in my father's "Lectures," 
 i., plate 115, and the east and west windows in plates 171 
 and 172 of the same volume. 
 
 These, being determined by the chance juxta 
 position of the geometrical figures, are perfectly 
 irregular, capricious, and unsymmetrical. In plate- 
 tracery this was not observed, since attention was 
 not directed to them, but as soon as the lines of the 
 tracery came to be thought of, the awkwardness of 
 these residual spaces began to be felt. 
 
 The meaning of flowing-tracery is simply this — 
 the persistent endeavour to bring all the lines of the 
 tracery into an harmonious relation with each other, 
 and above all, with the comprising pointed arch 
 which forms the frame of the entire design. 
 
 The first part of this problem was the earliest 
 attempted to be solved. It was felt that the tra- 
 ceried circles rode very awkwardly upon the pointed 
 heads of the window-lights. The steps taken to 
 remedy this crudity were therefore attempts to com- 
 bine the two into a more harmonious arrangement. 
 
 This was essayed in two ways — the one is what 
 is termed the reticulated tracery, a modification, evi- 
 dently, of the geometrical tracery formed of super- 
 imposed circles : the other is that termed intersecting, 
 in which an attempt is made to determine the whole 
 design of the tracery by an extension of the forms 
 given by the arched heads of the lights. A third 
 form intermediate between these two is that in which 
 all the figures of the tracery consist of spherical tri- 
 ano;les, the base of one resting upon the apices of 
 the two below. 
 
 These three forms of tracery supply the elements 
 of that intermediate style, which forms the transition 
 between the geometrical and the flowing systems of 
 tracery. 
 
 In all three, however, and in the immense variety 
 of patterns in which these principles were expanded 
 and combined, there is still a want of continuity 
 between the tracery- lines and the enclosing window- 
 arch. It is the glory of our english fourteenth- 
 century architects that they, first, set themselves to 
 the solution of this problem, inexorably demanded 
 by the style as the condition of its further advance, 
 and that they were the first to solve it. 
 
 The results, at which they thus arrived, deter- 
 mined the character of the style for nearly a cen- 
 tury. Upon these I shall have to dwell in the 
 next chapter. 
 
153 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 DISCURSUS 
 
 ON CERTAIN MEDIEVAL INNOVATIONS IN THE DISPOSITION OF CHURCHES. 
 
 In the course of that period of the architectural history of our country which is treated of in 
 chapter iv., the long series of changes by which the basilica of the primitive ages was trans- 
 formed into the typical medieval church was completed. Some of the steps by which the 
 disposition of plan characteristic of the middle ages was arrived at, have been in the course 
 of our survey already referred to. But the subject is one of so much importance, to a right 
 understanding of the history of church architecture, and to an intelligent study ol those 
 ancient churches with which we are naturally most familiar — the medieval churches of our 
 own country — that it will be well to give a short resjime of the progress which, starting from 
 the simple basilican model, had for its result a type of plan so strikingly different from that in 
 which it had originated. 
 
 Christian churches have, from the first ages, been composed of two compartments, distin- 
 guished, more or less strongly, in the disposition of the structure itself — a sanctuary in which 
 is placed the altar, and a nave in which the faithful assemble. It is most important to a 
 proper comprehension of the subject to realise this two-fold division of the church into 
 sanctuary and nave, as lying at the root of the whole matter. This distinction of parts is 
 primal, and alone essential. 
 
 Let it be clearly understood, then, that the typical distribution of a church is — not nave, 
 and quire, or nave, quire, and sanctuary, but — nave, and sanctuary.^ 
 
 Having constantly before us our own ancient churches, erected mostly during the four 
 centuries which constitute our middle ages, and new buildings constructed in imitation of 
 them, and upon similar lines, we are apt to suppose that a church consists typically ot a nave 
 and a quire (or chancel). This is a mistaken notion : a church consists essentially of a nave 
 and a sanctuary ; a quire being an addition, necessary, indeed, where there is a collegiate estab- 
 lishment, regular or secular, but otherwise wholly ad libitum, and in the smaller churches 
 unnecessary. In a basilica, this principle is enforced by the disposition of the structure itself. 
 The triumphal arch divides the sanctuary from the body of the church, and the quire (where 
 
 The nave, by medieval writers, is commonly designated ecclesia, a v/ord never applied to the sanctuary, to 
 which, from its meaning, it is inapplicable. It signifies, of course, in strictness, the assembly of the faithful, and 
 is used by the author of the Acts of the Apostles (xix. 32) for the riotous mob at Ephesus, who, rushing " with 
 one accord into the theatre," " all with one voice, for the space of about two hours, cried out, Great is Diana of 
 the Ephesians," but who are not, on that account, to be confused even with the pagan chorus. The english 
 equivalent of ecclesia is church, which is never applied to the sanctuary, but (when used distinctively) means 
 always the nave. Thus, in the ballad of Lord Lovel — 
 
 " They buried him in St. Mary's church, 
 And her in St. Mary's quire." 
 
 So, too, in the first rubric of the Book of Common Prayer, we read of " the accustomed place of the church, 
 chapel, or chancel," 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 153 
 
 it occurs) is a mere enclosure in the midst of the nave. The sanctuary, too, is most usually 
 raised upon a confessionary crypt, high above the general level of the church, while the quire 
 is elevated little, if at all, above the floor of the nave. 
 
 In many of the smaller basilicas of Rome, as in other early churches, a quire is wholly 
 wanting. Even in St. Mary Major, although anciently this basilica was furnished with ambones, 
 there appears to have been no choir-enclosure.'' No mention is made of a quire in the 
 descriptions of the churches erected by Constantine at Jerusalem and at Tyre ; the ancient St. 
 Peter's appears to have had simply a wooden structure, placed opposite to one of the southern 
 pillars of the nave, to serve this purpose, which, in the existing church, is represented by a 
 small latticed enclosure against the north-western pier of the dome. Among the oriental 
 christians, in many respects so conservative of early usage, this primitive twofold division 
 has ever prevailed. Their churches are still basilican in disposition. Their structural division 
 now, as anciently, divides off the sanctuary from the nave, and the choir has its station with- 
 out the iconostasis, in the body of the church. 
 
 If we turn now to one of the larger churches of the middle ages — the cathedral of Salisbury, 
 for example" — we find there a very different arrangement. In the first place, the quire has 
 become an essential feature of the plan, determining more or less the whole scheme of the 
 building. In the next place, the principal structural division of the church is no longer 
 placed, as in the basilica, between the sanctuary and the nave, but has been shifted westward. 
 It now separates no longer sanctuary from nave, but quire from nave. 
 
 That which had been originally a very subordinate feature, often, even in large churches, 
 altogether wanting, had now come to be of the first importance, separated off in the most 
 conspicuous manner from the body of the church, and but slightly distinguished from the 
 sanctuary itself. 
 
 In place, therefore, of the basilican triumphal arch, marking the separation of nave and 
 sanctuary, we find now the chancel-arch, the high screen, the rood-loft, the rood-beam, and 
 the rood — the whole forming the most striking feature both of the structure and of the adorn- 
 ment of the building — placed between the quire and the nave ; while the distinction of the quire 
 from the sanctuary has become of quite subordinate importance, and is, in the case of the 
 smaller churches, indicated only by a slight difference in the floor-level, and by the hooks 
 which supported the lenten veil, drawn across the presbytery at this line. 
 
 In the same way the transept, which, in those of the basilicas in which it occurs, lies 
 immediately in front of the sanctuary, in the great medieval churches has shifted its position, 
 and is now drawn across the church westward, not of the sanctuary, but of the quire. 
 
 The ecclesiological history of the middle ages may almost be summed up in this one point, 
 the developement of the quire. 
 
 In the churches of the romanesque and of the transitional periods, the eastern limb 
 
 had continued, as in the basilicae, to form the sanctuary, and the quire, as a rule, was still a 
 
 mere enclosure within the nave. This arrangement, all but universal in the earlier monastic 
 
 churches — Canterbury,'^ St. Alban's, Winchester, Gloucester, Kirkstall, Rievaulx, Tintern, and 
 
 ^ See the plan in Letarouilly's " Edifices de Rome Moderne," vol. iii., p. 311. 
 Salisbury is a particularly good example, both on account of the importance of the rite for the performance 
 of which it was planned, and also because it was built de novo, just at the period at which the medieval innova- 
 tion reached its full developement, and being erected on a new site, its builders were unfettered by any remains 
 of a more ancient plan. 
 
 It was the arrangement of Lanfranc's rebuilding which was completed about the year 1077. The charac- 
 teristic medieval innovation was introduced here only twenty years later, by that entire remodelling and 
 
 X 
 
154 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Westminster — is no exceptional peculiarity, as we are too apt to regard it. It is in reality the 
 ancient and typical plan, the tradition of the basilica and of the earliest christian churches. 
 
 It is, in truth, Lincoln, York, Lichfield, and Salisbury which represent the abnormal arrange- 
 ment, the great ecclesiological innovation of the middle ages. 
 
 In introducing this striking change, by which the principal structural division of the building 
 was transferred from the eastern end of the quire, to its western limit, the medieval architects 
 did not, of course, discard altogether the venerable traditions of the preceding twelve cen- 
 turies of church history. Indeed, at Salisbury and elsewhere, the lesser transepts, an invention 
 of the twelfth century, and peculiar to our own country,'' was so placed as to serve — as the 
 great transept had served in the basilicae — to mark off the sanctuary from the rest of the 
 building. The eastern transepts of Canterbury, Lincoln, York, and Salisbury, take the place, 
 very obviously, of the great transepts of the ancient St. Peter's, of St. Paul's without the 
 walls, and St. John Lateran.* 
 
 Indeed this primitive and essential division between the sanctuary and the whole of the 
 rest of the church, although, in the course of the middle ages, it became subordinate to that 
 introduced between the quire and the nave, was yet never wholly lost sight of, and it was far 
 more prominent to the minds of the medieval ritualists (as appears from their writings) 
 than by the study of the buildings alone we might be led to suppose. Thus Durandus treats 
 of a church as consisting (including the atrium) of four parts. He speaks of the " cancelliis 
 sive peribolus " which surrounded the quire — whence the rood-screen and the side-enclosures 
 of our chancels are derived — and also of the " cancelli " which separated the quire from the 
 sanctuary and the altar — the equivalent of the oriental iconostasis, of the sanctuary-screens 
 of some few of our own churches (as, for example, St. David's cathedral^), and of the modern 
 altar-rail. Quoting from Ricardus de Sancto Victore, he says, " Dispositio ecclesice triplicem 
 statum salvandorum significat" and he points to the structural nature of this triple division 
 when he adds, " Strictms est enim sanctuarium quam chorus, et chorus quam corpus."^ 
 
 The distinction between the quire and the sanctuary, inconspicuous as it generally is in 
 the medieval buildings, is in the ritual most strongly marked. It is, indeed, of the very 
 essence of the medieval, as of all other christian rites. In the celebration of the high mass, 
 for example, according to the Sarum use, two quite distinct bodies of clerics take part : there 
 is the choir, who occupy the stalls and their subsellae, and there is the celebrant, with the 
 "ministers of the altar," who occupy the sanctuary. Each of these two bodies has its distinc- 
 tive vestures. To the choir belong the surplice and cope, to the altar-ministers, the albe, 
 dalmatic, and chasuble. 
 
 These two groups of ecclesiastics entered the church at different periods in the service. The 
 choir, of course, before the commencement of tierce, the celebrant and his ministers after 
 tierce, during the singing of the gloria patri of the introit.' Those of the choir who had 
 
 enlargement of the eastern limb of the church, which took place during the archi-episcopate of Lanfranc's 
 immediate successor. This fact, as I have already had occasion to note, enables us to fix with precision 
 the date of the first appearance, at least in England, of the new fashion, as coincident with the primacy 
 of St. Anselm. 
 
 ' It first occurs in that enlargement of Lanfranc's presbytery which was carried out under Anselm's priors- 
 
 ' At York, indeed, the small eastern transept appears to occupy the actual site of the great transept (great, of 
 course, ritually, not as to dimensions) of the church of St. Paulinus, referred to at p. 45. 
 
 ^ At St. Alban's abbey there was a second rood under the eastern arch of the central tower, between the 
 quire and the presbytery. A portion of the beam upon which it stood still exists in situ. 
 
 ^ " Rationale Divinorum Officiorum," i., 1-3. ' " Sarum Consuetudinary," cap. 93. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 155 
 
 to take a part in the altar-service never advanced further eastward than the " gradus chori " 
 at the eastern end of the stalls, while the altar-ministers never passed to the west of this step.i 
 
 The " gradus chori," so constantly referred to in the old rituals, was in fact the limit of the 
 two domains. To this step the clerics of the choir came up to be aspersed " ad gradum chori " :'' 
 to it four clerics of the choir advanced to sing the tract:' as far as this step the deacon came 
 down to convey the kiss of peace to the " rectores," and through them to the whole choir." 
 The division therefore between quire and sanctuary was still ritually the important one, although 
 in the structure of churches of the ordinary medieval type it had become subordinate to that 
 between the quire and the nave. 
 
 It remains to inquire how this great change in the planning of churches, so striking a 
 characteristic of medieval, in contrast to primitive, usage had, in course of time, come about. 
 
 The christian church in its rudimentary form was, as we have already seen, in some sense a 
 reproduction of the Jewish temple. The atrium is the equivalent of " the court of the Israel- 
 ites." The nave, of " the holy place," the sanctuary, of " the holy of holies." Into " the 
 court of the Israelites," under the old law, Jews alone could enter ; into the christian atrium 
 those not in full communion with the church are admitted. To " the holy place " of the Jewish 
 rite the priests only had access ; into the nave, its equivalent in the christian temple, every 
 baptised man, not under censure, has the right to enter. Within " the holy of holies " of the 
 ancient dispensation, the high-priest alone might enter ; while the christian sanctuary is 
 open to every christian presbyter." 
 
 The Jewish sanctum sanctorum was separated from the holy place by a veil, and a similar 
 seclusion of the altar and of the altar-area existed in the early christian churches." But there 
 appear to have been two very distinct methods of arranging these veils in the early church, 
 
 ■> Except when on Sundays the subdeacon and the deacon passed through the quire in order to sing the 
 epistle and gospel in the rood-loft. " Sarum Consuetudinary," cap. 93. 
 
 lb., cap. 68. ' lb., cap. 94. lb., cap. 93. 
 
 " Upon the same principle (as we have already seen) the vestment, which in the mosaic rite is peculiar to 
 the high-priest (Ex. xxviii. 31-35), is now worn by every priest, and, upon occasion, even by clerics of lower 
 rank. So, too, under the old law it was true " that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship " 
 (John iv. 20), and there alone, while under the new covenant every christian church is a Jerusalem, and in every 
 place the incense and the unbloody oblation may be offered by the true worshippers (Mai. i. 11). What is termed 
 sacerdotalism, or more accurately perhaps mediation, is characteristic of the more advanced forms of religion, 
 as distinguished from the fetishism of uncultured races, and the patriarchal erastianism (to use a modern but 
 convenient term) which succeeded to it In Christianity we see combined those various elements of truth which 
 have been the savouring salt of all the religions of humanity, which have lived and influenced the life of men 
 in virtue of the germ of truth which they contained, not ol the falsehood which was the result of their purely 
 human and subjective origin. Thus in Christianity the principle of sacerdotalism is developed more widely 
 and more completely than in Judaism, just as in the mosaic system this higher element is more prominent than 
 it was in the patriarchal religion which that supplanted. 
 
 ° It is remarkable that the altar of sacrifice (dva-iaarripUv, Apoc. vi. 9, et passim), which, in the Jewish temple, 
 stood in the centre of " the court of the israelites," open to the view of all, is in the christian church withdrawn 
 into the innermost sanctum sanctorum, and in primitive times was concealed by veils from the view of the faith- 
 ful. It occupies, in fact, the place, not of the mosaic altar, but of the ark of the covenant, the resting-place of 
 the shekinah, the perpetual and visible presence of almighty God upon earth, itself a forecast and an anticipa- 
 tion of the incarnation, and of its sequel in the perpetual presence of the divine Victim upon our altars. 
 Christianity is no mere copy of the judaic system ; it is its amplification and fulfilment. Thus while many of 
 the mosaic festivals have been retained, while the passover has become our Easter, and Pentecost follows as of 
 old upon the paschal feast, and the Sabbath is observed as a day of abstinence in many parts ot the west and 
 as a feast-day in the east, the great day of Atonement, the most solemn, perhaps, of all the Jewish festivals, 
 has, very significantly, no equivalent in the christian calendar. 
 
156 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 and these two systems have a certain significance of their own, and have further been the 
 origin of two very different ecclesiological types, both of which have had their influence upon 
 the structure and distribution of the churches of our own land. 
 
 The first is that which conforms most nearly to the mosaic original, namely, a veil stretched 
 transversely across the church in front of the sanctuary. The second is that which resulted 
 in the baldaquino, an arrangement of veils surrounding the altar itself upon all sides. 
 
 These two systems agree so far, that in each the altar is completely screened from view, 
 but while, by the latter, the altar and the officiating priest alone are concealed, by the former 
 the whole of the presbytery is secluded from view, including the cathedra of the bishop and 
 the subordinate thrones of the assisting presbyters.? 
 
 Let us consider first, the transverse veil and the arrangements which owe their origin to it, 
 more especially in our own english churches. The simplest form of this is a veil stretched 
 across the building upon a cord or curtain-rod. Of this every old english church, until the changes 
 of the sixteenth century, afforded, during Lent, an example. From the evening of Ash Wed- 
 nesday or of the following Saturday, until the Wednesday before Easter, the lenten veil, as it 
 was termed (velum quadragesimale), was suspended in front of the sanctuary. It was only at 
 the reading of the gospel that it was drawn aside, and so remained till the " orate fratres " of 
 the offertory, except on festivals of the double class, when it was withdrawn for the whole day. 
 
 Thus this venerable monument of the primitive usage, deriving in unbroken succession from 
 the sacred tabernacle in the desert of Sinai, was like many other customs of the earliest ages, 
 preserved in Lent after it had long gone out of use at other seasons of the year."* It 
 disappeared, together with so many other relics of the first ages of the faith preserved in our 
 old english rites, during the innovations of the Reformation, and is now obsolete, except in 
 some of the monastic churches, throughout the west' But in many of our ancient churches 
 the hooks by which this lenten curtain was supported may still be seen.« The Sarum 
 
 p The normal position of the deacon was outside the transverse veil. Such is, to this day, the case in the 
 churches of the orthodox and other oriental communions. In the eastern liturgies a much greater proportion 
 of the prayers assigned to the priest is said secreto than in the latin, and his action is, almost throughout the 
 mass, concealed from view. While the priest is thus invisible and inaudible, the people are occupied in devo- 
 tional liturgies which are led by the deacon, standing without the iconostasis. Much of the difficulty which 
 those experience, who know the eastern liturgies only from the texts, in apprehending the continuity of the whole 
 office, and its essential oneness in principle with the latin rite, is due to this fact, and disappears when the liturgy 
 is studied in action. 
 
 ^ In the same way the " mass of the pre-sanctified," which, in early times, was the rule upon all ferial days, is 
 now used, in the western church, upon Good Friday alone. While in some of the primitive churches the 
 eucharist was consecrated upon Sundays only, and the mass of the pre-sanctified employed upon all other 
 days, in others this took place upon Wednesdays and Fridays also. A tradition of this was preserved in our 
 english churches, throughout Lent, in the procession which took place upon these two ferial days, as upon the 
 Sunday, before the high mass. The rubric of the Book of Common Prayer directing that the litany, essen- 
 tially a processional office, shall be said upon these days, is a relic of the same early custom. I have observed 
 that at Rouen, during Holy Week, all the clergy in choir, and even the choir-boys, wear hoods upon their 
 heads, which, at other seasons, are represented only by those little withered cuculli which are attached to the 
 tippets of the canons. 
 
 ' It is somewhat remarkable that this should have been the case in the west, since the transverse veil in its 
 most pronounced form, the iconostasis, with its curtained doorways, is in use to this day throughout the 
 orthodox communion, in the uniat churches, and among all the more or less heretical churches of eastern 
 Christendom. I have myself had the opportunity of seeing the lenten veil in use, in the cistercian abbey- 
 church of St. Bernard on Charnwood Forest. 
 
 » At Salisbury cathedral the winch by which the veil was raised remains, affixed to the south-eastern pier 
 of the crossing of the lesser transept. In the quire of Arundel church, Sussex, the pulleys still exist by which 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 157 
 
 Tractatus de officiis ecclesiasticis refers to it in the following terms : — " A sabbato prime 
 ebdomade quadragesime (the first Saturday in Lent) usque ad quartam feriam ante 
 pascha (Wednesday in Holy week) velum quoddam dependeat in presbyterio inter chorum 
 et altare, quod per totam quadragesimam in feriis, quando de feriis agitur, debet esse 
 demissum, nisi dum evangelium legitur tunc enim interim extoUitur et elevatum depended 
 quo-usque a sacerdote dicitur 'orate fratres! Et si in crastino sequatur festum novem 
 lectionum, de cetero eo die non demittetur, nec etiam ante proximas matutinas feriales. 
 Si tamen in ipso festo fiat missa de jegunio, demittitur velum usque ad inceptionem 
 evangelii et non ulterius. Quarta autem feria ante pascha, dum passio domini legitur, ad 
 prolationem ipsius clausule — 'velum templi scissum est' — predictum velum in area pres- 
 byterii decidat."" This tractate will be found in full in Dr. Rock's " Church of Our Fathers," 
 vol. iv., which contains also an ordinariuin of a cistercian house in the county of York, in 
 which the lenten veil is thus referred to : — " Post completorium (on Ash Wednesday) cortina 
 ante presbiterium tendatur, que sic remaneat privatis diebus per quadragesima usque ad 
 feriam quartam ante pascha et tunc post completorium deponitur. In sabbatis vero, et in 
 vigiliis sanctorum quando duodecim lectiones sunt, tunc retrahatur ante vesperas, et 
 iterum in crastino post completorium remittatur a sacrista. — Item privatis diebus ad missam 
 subdiaconus partem cortine usque abbatem modice toUat, quando subdiaconus ad altare 
 fuerit, ut sacerdos petat benedictionem ab abbate ad evangelium legendum ; quod si 
 ministri fuerint, diaconus simili modo accedat ad medium cortine ubi sublevata est 
 querens benedictionem ab abbate."" 
 
 The transverse arrangement of the veil has given rise, in the next place, to the chancel-arch 
 of the medieval churches, as distinguished from the so-called triumphal-arch of the latin 
 basilicas. The latter is rather an architectural than a ritual feature, and the altar usually 
 stood, not behind it, but beneath it, and often in advance of it. The chancel-arch, on the 
 contrary (with the veil which in early times was stretched across it), resulted from purely 
 ceremonial exigencies. 
 
 It would appear probable, as I have already observed, from the difference in height 
 between the holy place and the holy of holies of the Solomonic temple, that something of 
 the nature of an arch intervened, in that edifice, between the two divisions of the adytum, 
 and that the ritual separation which was marked by the *' veil of the temple," was further 
 accentuated by a constructional feature of the fabric itself. 
 
 The chancel-arch, therefore, is, in its original form, more nearly allied to the Jewish 
 
 the curtain cord was tightened. The hooks remain in the cathedrals of Winchester and Durham, and I have 
 observed them in many of our unrestored old churches, as at Alfriston, Sussex, and Skirlaugh in the East Riding 
 of York. In a " restoration," of course, they most commonly disappear, but their position may often be traced 
 by the pieces of new stonework which their removal has necessitated. I would commend the preservation of 
 them to the guardians of those of our ancient churches in which they still exist. 
 
 ' It was in consequence of this custom of drawing up the curtain, peculiar, as far as I am aware, to 
 Salisbury, that the winch was required to which I have already referred. The more usual plan was to draw 
 aside the curtain, not to raise it. 
 
 " By this custom the derivation of the lenten veil from the mosaic rite is well brought out. 
 
 ^ " Church of Our Fathers," iv. app., pp. 68, 8i. The velum qiiadragesiniale is frequently referred to in the 
 decrees of english synods, as in the Winchester Synodals of 1240, in the statutes of Walter De Gray, 
 Archbishop of York, in 1250 ; in the decrees of the council of York, two years later ; in the statutes of John 
 Peckham, archbishop of Canterbury, 1281 ; in the Exeter Synodals of 1287 ; and in the decrees of the council 
 of Merton, in 1300. See Ducange's " Glossarium," s. v. velum quadragesimale. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 model than is the triumphal-arch of the basilican churches," and it is remarkable that 
 this mode of effecting the required seclusion of the sanctuary, while it is unknown in 
 Rome, and in those churches which are derived from the christian basilica, seems to be 
 indigenous in these isles. As far as we can trace the ecclesiological traditions proper to the 
 native british church, as distinguished from the customs of the christianised roman colonists, 
 it appears that the necessary separation of the sanctuary from the body of the building was 
 effected, in the churches of the british christians, by an arch (usually of very narrow propor- 
 tions), across which the ritual veil was drawn/ 
 
 As I have already had occasion to observe, these two types, that of the basilican arch of 
 triumph and that of the chancel, or rather sanctuary arch, are to be seen, more or less, in conflict 
 throughout, what is termed, the saxon period. 
 
 To a considerable extent this distinctly judaic and non-roman tradition may be observed 
 to have had its influence upon the churches of the whole of northern Europe, and the norman 
 conquest introduced little change in this respect, so far as regards the smaller churches. 
 There are still in existence numbers of chancel-arches of the eleventh, twelfth, and even of 
 the thirteenth century which, in their extreme narrowness, exhibit the influence of this non- 
 basilican tradition, and in numbers of others the removal of the early chancel-arch, by the 
 fifteenth-century architects, is evidence that its proportions were too contracted to satisfy the 
 fashions of a later day.^ It must be borne in mind that these narrow arches were designed 
 in all cases to be closed by a veil, of which the latticed screens inserted in them in later ages, 
 and which in many cases have supplanted them, present the last tradition." 
 
 Our medieval parish churches, as it thus appears, derive their very characteristic type from 
 a source distinct altogether from that to which the normal plan of our cathedral churches 
 owes its origin, and the clear apprehension of this fact is indispensable to a proper under- 
 standing of our national ecclesiology. 
 
 Our cathedrals are derived from the basilica, in which, what is termed, the triumphal-arch 
 has rather a structural than a ritual importance. Accordingly, in the progress of architec- 
 tural advance, this feature practically disappeared. The element of the basilican model 
 which had the greatest influence upon the cathedrals of the middle age (in our own country 
 more particularly) was, not the triumphal-arch, but the great transept, such as we see it in the 
 plans of the ancient Vatican and ostien basilicas. In our cathedrals there is no transversal 
 
 " In the basilica, as we shall see presently, the concealment of the altar-rites, an essential feature in all the 
 early liturgies, was efifected by an arrangement of veils which is wholly independent of the, purely con- 
 structional, arch which divides the apse from the body of the building. 
 
 ^The ecclesiological type, exhibited (i) in the Apocalypse and (2) in the earliest churches of Rome, — that to 
 which the apsidal termination, the triumphal arch, the confessionary crypt, and the baldaquin arrangement of 
 the veils belong — is distinctly non-judaic ; that which prevailed in our own country in early times, under the 
 influence of a Christianity non-roman, and as some think pauline, displays, in its secluded and rectangular 
 sanctuary and its transverse-veils, the influence of Jewish ritual tradition. These facts conflict somewhat with 
 the theories of M. Renan and of some other doctrinaire writers. 
 
 y I have referred in chapter ii. (pp. 48, 49) to a few instances of these narrow chancel-arches (so character- 
 istic of the primitive age) both in England and in Ireland. Another example occurs to me in Ovingdean church, 
 Sussex, and a very interesting one at Hadleigh is figured in Mr. Buckler's " Twenty-two Churches of Essex," p. 84. 
 The writer mentions two other cases in which arches of similar character (at Fryerning and at Shenfield) were 
 removed in the later middle ages. The beautiful traceried chancel-arches of Stebbing and Great Bardfield, in 
 the same county, offer examples of what is no doubt a late, and a most happy elaboration of this earlier 
 tradition. 
 
 " In Lenoir's "Architecture Monastique," i., p. 349, there is a view of one of these contracted sanctuary- 
 arches with the veil half drawn across it, as still in use in the churches of Wallachia. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 159 
 
 arch having any importance either ritual or even architectural, but there is invariably a very 
 strongly defined transverse line, of an unmistakeable significance in both aspects, in the great 
 transept. More than this, several of our cathedral churches, and those the most character- 
 istic, have a second transverse line, of much importance from the ritual point of view, and, 
 architecturally, very striking, which, again, is not a wall of separation pierced by an arch, 
 but a second and subordinate transept. 
 
 Thus in the churches which have derived from the basilica, while the triumphal-arch has 
 disappeared, the transept has been retained and has acquired, as time has gone on, a more 
 predominating importance. 
 
 But in our medieval parish churches the case is widely dififerent. The original type to 
 which these are to be referred is not the basilica, but that model upon which the churches of 
 the british christians were planned, which is known to us only by the early churches of 
 Ireland, erected under the influence of british missionaries, and by that clearly non-basilican 
 influence which is to be detected in the churches of our anglo-saxon forefathers. 
 
 These, as we have seen, present a distribution essentially diff"erent from that of the basilica. 
 In them the transverse arch is no mere architectural feature, but forms the essential ritual line 
 of partition between the nave and the sanctuary. That seclusion of the altar-area, which in 
 the basilica is efl"ected by the curtains of the baldachino, is in the churches of this, to our soil, 
 native type, provided for in the structural distribution of the building itself : a wall, pierced 
 only by a somewhat narrow arch, across which a veil is drawn, separates the two compart- 
 ments of which these early churches are composed. It is to this transverse arch — quite 
 distinct in its conception from the basilican arch of triumph — that the chancel-arches of our 
 medieval parish churches owe their origin. 
 
 In consequence of this difference in their history, we notice that, whereas, in our cathedrals 
 and minsters, the great transverse lines of ritual partition are marked by transepts, while all 
 tradition of the triumphal-arch is lost, in our parish churches it is the chancel-arch which 
 is the most striking feature of the transverse division of the building, and the transepts, where 
 they exist at all, are usually of quite subordinate importance. As a rule they are of lesser 
 height than the nave, and form in reality merely an expansion of the aisles. They belong, 
 in short, to the nave, which is most commonly continued across them, and the ritual division 
 of the building is effected, not at all by them, but by the chancel-arch eastward of them.''* 
 
 It is clear that the chancel-, or more properly speaking, sanctuary-arches of our ancient 
 parochial churches, owe their origin to that same transverse arrangement of the ceremonial 
 veil from which the lenten curtain of the medieval rituals is also derived.'''' 
 
 This mode of secluding the sanctuary, which, as the most obvious, is probably also the 
 earliest, gave rise to a feature very characteristic of the churches of the first ages. This may 
 be described as a beam of wood, supported by a series of columns, from which the ritual 
 
 ^ In some cases, as at Heckington church, Lincolnshire, and Patrington in the East Riding of York, the nave 
 is continued a bay eastward of the transepts before the chancel-arch is reached. In almost all cases in which 
 transepts are found in our ancient parish churches, the nave runs past them comparatively unbroken, and even 
 their roofs do not, as a rule, interfere with the continuity of the great nave-roof. Such buildings are, what is 
 termed, " cross-churches," only on plan. 
 
 At Xanten, upon the lower Rhine, in Guelderland, there remains a magnificent erection of brass of the 
 fifteenth century, crossing the eastern limb of the church between the quire and the sanctuary. It is figured in 
 King's " OrfSvrerie du Moyen Age " (ii., pi. loo). It was designed, doubtless, to support the lenten veil, and 
 consists of an enriched beam of brass, supported by two brazen pillars, and, taking in the central span, the form 
 of an elaborate arching of vine-boughs. There are sconces all along the top of it for tapers. 
 
i6o THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 curtain might be suspended. That this was an arrangement of very early date may be con- 
 cluded from the fact that, what is clearly, a somewhat advanced developement of it is found in 
 the description left us by Eusebius" of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, erected by the 
 emperor Constantine. 
 
 The apse of this church was, as he informs us, enclosed by a range of twelve columns 
 (according to the number of the apostles of our Saviour), over the capitals of which, as a 
 further adornment, were silver sconces of great size, which the emperor himself presented as 
 a splendid offering to his God. We must, of course, conceive these columns as surmounted 
 by an entablature either of wood, of metal, or of marble. 
 
 A confirmation of this, sufficiently obvious, conjecture is to be found in the similar arrange- 
 ment of the Vatican basilica, as erected by the same emperor, of which professor Willis gives 
 the following description'^'' : — " In front of the steps," ascending to the platform of the apse, 
 " were placed twelve columns of Parian marble, arranged in two rows. These were of a spiral 
 form, and decorated with sculpture of vine-leaves. Their pedestals were connected by lattice- 
 work of metal, or by walls of marble. The entrance to the sanctuary was between the central 
 pillars, where the cancelli, or lattices, were formed into doors. Above these columns were 
 laid beams or entablatures, upon which were placed images, candelabra, and other decora- 
 tions ; and, indeed, the successive popes seem to have lavished every species of decoration in 
 silver, gold, and marble-work upon the enclosure and the crypt below." 
 
 It is clear that the original of such an arrangement was, in the small sanctuaries of the 
 earliest date, a simple beam reaching from wall to wall, from which the veil might be sus- 
 pended. In the larger churches such a beam would naturally require the support of two or 
 more vertical posts. Of such an arrangement the elaborate structures erected by the first 
 christian emperor, at Jerusalem and at Rome, exhibit a very advanced type, from which we 
 may draw the conclusion that the simpler form, from which they are derived, had existed in 
 the first ages of Christianity. I have little doubt myself, but that it was adopted from the 
 arrangements for the support of the " veil of the temple " of Jerusalem, and dates therefore 
 from a period prior to the destruction of that building by the emperor Titus, A.D. 70. 
 
 This appears to have been — quite in conformity with such a conjecture as to its origin — the 
 normal oriental arrangement, as distinguished from that peculiarly latin mode of suspending the 
 veils which eventuated in the baldaquino. From it is derived the solid iconostasis of the 
 modern greek churches, and it is interesting to observe that those churches in the west in 
 which this particular feature is to be found, are just those in which traces of an eastern influence 
 might most naturally be expected. Thus St. Marie's, at Venice, and the basilica of Torcello 
 retain to this day trades of marble of this type ; and as the former was not erected before 
 the beginning of the fifteenth century, we may conclude that this, the primitive mode of 
 enclosing the sanctuary, was customary in the east even at that late date, and that the solid 
 iconostasis is of very modern invention. The church of the Panagia Nicodimo, at Athens, ^"^ still 
 retains an enclosure of the same type, though upon a much smaller scale, as that which may be 
 seen at Torcello and at St. Mark's. Two columns of green cipoline marble divide the triumphal 
 
 " " Life of Constantine," iii., 38. 
 
 "Archit. Hist. Cant. Cath.," p. 21. He cites as his authorities— Fontana, "II Tempio Vaticano": 
 Roma, 1694 ; Ciampini, " De Sacris Edificiis a Constantino Magno constructis " : Roma, 1693 ; Bonanni, 
 "Templi Vatican! Historia": Roma, 1700; Costaguti e Ferrabosco, " Architettura della Basilica di S. Pietro 
 in Vaticano " : Roma, 1684. 
 
 Cf. Lenoir, " Archit. Monast.," i., p. 343. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. i6i 
 
 arch into three intercolumniations, across the capitals of which a marble entablature is 
 carried, from which originally were suspended the veils. In later times, a solid wall, decorated 
 with pictures, has been erected across the two lateral intercolumniations, leaving the central 
 one alone open. 
 
 These examples would seem to show that the inconostasis is a feature of comparatively 
 modern date, and that the trabes, supported when necessary by columns, was the original 
 form by which the sanctuary was enclosed in the oriental churches. 
 
 As from the simplest idea, that of a lateral curtain, is derived the narrow sanctuary-arches 
 of our most characteristic saxon churches, so from this enriched beam has come, not only the 
 greek iconostasis, but also the western rood-loft. 
 
 The other mode of giving to the altar that seclusion, which the ritual of the primitive church 
 demanded, was that of which the baldaquino was the outcome. 
 
 Of this arrangement, the simplest form is that of four upright supports or columns, placed 
 somewhat in advance of each of the four horns of the altar, supporting the rods from which 
 the veils are suspended, which thus enclose, upon all sides, the altar and the celebrating priest. 
 
 How early the notion occurred of erecting upon these four angular pillars a dome-like ciborhim " 
 is not clear. One of the earliest examples of the baldaquin, that shown in a mosaic picture 
 at Ravenna, executed in 451, under the exarchate of Neo, exhibits a flat wooden ceiling 
 resting upon the columns. That of the upper church of St. Clement, at Rome, attributed, as 
 we have already seen, to the ninth century, has a somewhat similar arrangment, but is sur- 
 mounted, curiously enough, by a sort of model of a classical temple. In this example the 
 rings from which the altar-veils were suspended still exist. St. Gregory erected (in 590) a 
 ciborium, " ex argento puro cum columnis suis,"^^ in the Vatican basilica, and we have accounts 
 of similar ciboria erected in the churches of St. Pancras and St. Agnes by pope Honorius I. 
 We also read'''' that pope Sergius I. renewed in bronze the baldaquino of the church of St. 
 Susanna, near to the baths of Diocletian, which was originally constructed in wood, " quod 
 ante ligneum fuerat." 
 
 A very interesting example of the baldaquin is afforded us in the mosaics, probably of the 
 fourth century, which adorn the great dome of the circular church of St. George, at Thessalo- 
 nica.*^ In this instance the altar-veils are drawn close, and the rod from which they are 
 suspended is very clearly shown, as well as the ascent of steps to the altar, and the carpet laid 
 upon the same. 
 
 This building is in its design and construction essentially roman, and it is valuable as 
 exhibiting, in Greece, the latin baldaquino. The figures which flank it represent Sts. Cosmos 
 
 In later times each compartment of a groined vault was termed a "severy" (sometimes spelt civery). But 
 Gervase, as professor Willis observes ("Canterbury Cathedral," p. 49), "uses 'ciborium' in this sense. Now the 
 ciboritim is properly the canopy of the high altar, which is supported upon four pillars, and which is usually 
 vaulted in one compartment. Thus each compartment of a vault resembles a. ciboritein j apparently, therefore, 
 severey is a corruption of ciborium^ and is not derived from the verb ' to sever,' as might at first sight be 
 supposed." 
 
 88 Anastasius, "Vita St. Gregorii," p. 62, as referred to in Lenoir, i., p. 201. 
 I'll Anast., " Vita Sergii." Cf. Lenoir, ib. 
 
 " This valuable monument is well illustrated in Texier and Pullan's "Byzantine Architecture," pp. 132-141. 
 By the kind permission of Mr. Pullan, I am enabled to give an illustration of this mosaic, as well as of another 
 of the same series, showing a baptistry. The enclosure of the font, no doubt of perforated marble or of bronze, 
 is well shown, as also the many lamps with which it was customary, in early times, to adorn all parts of a church, 
 and which may serve to explain the XojUTrdSes Ixarai of Acts xx. 8. 
 
 Y 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 and Damian, those on either side of the baptistry being Sts. Romanus and Eucarpion, a 
 legionary. 
 
 The basiHca of St. George in Velabro retains a ciborium of the early type, constructed, like 
 that of St. Clement, in marble ; and at Terracina, Naples, and Perugia, there are examples of 
 the tenth and eleventh centuries. Those of the roman basilicas of St. Mary in the Trastevere, 
 and of St. Laurence, without the walls, date from the years 1145 ^i^d 1152, while that of the 
 church of St. Peter, at Corneto, is of the end of the twelfth century. 
 
 Of the later roman baldaquins it is unnecessary to speak, as they will be known to every 
 reader. They have been retained as a typical feature of the latin arrangement, although the 
 use of the curtains (which they were originally designed to support)" has long become obsolete. 
 A tradition of their primitive intention is preserved in many of the more modern examples, 
 by those valances of bronze with which some of them are ornamented.'''' 
 
 It thus appears that the transverse veil, and the beam supported by columns, of which its 
 use gave the suggestion, was oriental in its origin, while the plan of curtaining the altar on all 
 sides, from which the baldaquin is derived, was an arrangement peculiarly latin.'' 
 
 It therefore affords an illustration of the two-fold source of our english ecclesiological 
 traditions, on which I have so much insisted, to observe that both these types have produced 
 their effect upon our church architecture. The one — due, no doubt, to british tradition — is 
 exhibited, as we have seen, in the lenten curtain, in the rood-lofts of our minsters, and in the 
 high screens of our parish churches."^™ We have here a tradition rather ephesine than latin. 
 The other, on the contrary, is distinctly roman in its origin, and it is interesting to find (as 
 from the history we should have been led to expect) that the baldaquin was common in 
 England in saxon times."" 
 
 Dr. Rock gives two illustrations of the ciborium, from the illuminations of the benedictional 
 of St. ^thelwold, both of them domed, in one of which the altar-veils are shown knotted 
 round the pillars, as in some of the early mosaics of Italy. The baldaquin is spoken of in 
 the saxon pontificals as tegumen altaris, and umbraculuin. Nor is it remarkable that its use 
 
 3J " Fecit Sergius I." (687-701) " in circuitu altaris basilicae tetravela octo, quatuor alba, et quatuor coccinea," 
 an early example of the use ot the papal colours, white and yellow. " In basilica etiam beati Pauli apostoli 
 inter columnas altaris dextra laevaque vela alba constituit Johannes VII." (705-708). Praeclarus pontifex 
 Leo III. (795-816) "fecit in circuitu altaris beati Petri apostoli tetravela rubea holoserica alythina." Lib 
 Pontif. ed. Vignolio, i., p. 311, 317 ; and ii., p. 304, quoted in Dr. Rock's " Church of Our Fathers," i., p. 197. 
 
 As in the Vatican basilica and in St. Mary Major. An example, nearer home, may be seen in the Italian 
 church of St. Peter, Hatton Garden. 
 
 ^ The ancient St. Peter's, not without significance, exhibited both the pillared entablature, and the curtained, 
 ciborium. The Apocalypse which, in the ritual arrangements which it suggests, exhibits the latin confessio 
 appears to assume also the latin arrangement of the altar-veils. 
 
 "tt™ Durandus speaks of three veils :— " Triplex genus veli suspenditur in ecclesia, videlicet, quod sacra operit, 
 quod sacrarium a clero dividit, et quod clerum a populo secernit " (" Rationale," i., 3). Of the first he speaks 
 thus : — " Sacerdos secretum intrans quasi velatur quibusdam cortinis quoe sunt in lateribus altaris " (ib., ii., 9). 
 And again: — " Cortinae quas ab utroque altaris latere extenduntur sacerdote secretum intrante " (ib., i., 3). 
 The second is the lenten curtain :— " Cortina quae in quadragesima in ofificiis missae ante altare extenditur " (ib.). 
 Of the third he gives this account: — " Tertium inde tunc habuit originem, quia in primitiva ecclesia pari- 
 bolus, id est paries qui circuit chorum, non elevatur nisi usque ad apodiacionem (quod adhuc in quibusdam 
 ecclesiis observatur), veruntamen hoc tempore, quasi communiter, suspenditur sive interponitur velum aut 
 mums inter clerum et populum ne mutuo se conspicere possint " (ib.). Thus this third curtain is but a form of 
 the ciioir-enclosure, which was more commonly efifected in the middle ages by a solid wall. 
 
 For information upon this point I am indebted to Dr. Rock, " Church of Our Fathers," i., 193, et seq. 
 
PLATE XXXIII. 
 
 MOSAICS FROM THE CHURCH OF St. GEORGE AT THESSALONIC.^. 
 
 FIG I. THE BAPTISTERY. 
 FIG. 11. THE BALDAQUIN. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 163 
 
 should have prevailed in these isles, when we know that it was the custom in the churches of 
 Gaul."" 
 
 We may reasonably conclude that in those saxon churches — such as Wing and Worth — 
 which exhibit, in the apsidal form of the eastern termination, and in the wide triumphal arch 
 the distinctly basilican type, the baldaquin once existed, while in those whose square east- 
 ends and narrow sanctuary-arches betray the british origin of their plan, the transverse veil 
 was in use. 
 
 As the two traditions became fused into one in the uses of medieval England, neither mode 
 of screening off the altar was abandoned, and in our churches of the middle ages both were 
 to be seen in use. Although the baldaquin went out of fashion some time before the period of 
 the norman conquest,PP the veils surrounding the altar in the roman manner were still retained, 
 alongside with the veil stretched transversely across the sanctuary, which belongs to the 
 oriental rites. The latter came at length to be employed only in Lent, but the former was 
 represented until the very close of our middle ages by the side-curtains which adorned every 
 old english altar. In this late form their original intention is lost, and they exhibit but an 
 instance of what physiologists term " survival." But it is clear enough that these " wings," 
 as they are sometimes called, are merely the side-curtains of the tetra-vela, which once 
 shrouded the whole altar, and we may see some indication of the transition from the one to 
 the other. Thus, in early examples, the rods upon which these side-curtains are hung, are 
 carried by pillars of marble, or of metal, which are at least a tradition of the time when the 
 veil crossed the front of the altar as well as its ends, since pillars are hardly needed to carry 
 mere side " wings," for which metal brackets in later times sufficed. There is a picture in the 
 National Gallery, of the fifteenth century, of the exhumation of the body of St. Hubert," 
 which is interesting, as showing that in the Low Countries, even at this late date, the curtain- 
 rods, at least, surrounded the altar in front as well as at its sides. The rods are of iron, 
 supported by four pillars of brass, standing upon the lower foot-pace, at the four corners of 
 the altar. These are terminated by angels, also of brass, bearing prickets for tapers. There 
 are rods from pillar to pillar at each end of the altar, north and south ; but what is remarkable 
 is this, that there is also shown a rod across the front of the altar, and this, not only between 
 the brazen pillars, but continued right across the sanctuary. The ends of this transverse rod 
 are secured to the piers of the chevet, and it rests upon the two western pillars of the four 
 which surround the altar. 
 
 The position of these small brazen columns is precisely that of the pillars of a baldaquino 
 The two eastern ones are close to the eastern horns of the altar, the two western ones stand 
 at the western corners of the foot-pace, so that when the curtains were drawn they would 
 enclose, as in the case of the baldaquin-veils, the altar and the celebrant, and no more.*'* In 
 
 00 " Super ilia tria altaria habentur tria ciboria ex argento et auro parat^, in quibus tres dependent coronaj." 
 "Descript. Thesaur. Sti. Richarii " (a.d. 831), quoted by Dr. Rock, as above. 
 
 PP Examples of later date are, however, to be found, as in the case of the baldaquin, designed by Torre- 
 giano, which surmounted the high-altar of the lady-chapel of Westminster Abbey (referred to below), that 
 designed by Sir Christopher Wren for the cathedral church of St. Paul in London (cf. Longman's " Three 
 Cathedrals of St. Paul," pp. iii, 112), and one, recently " restored" away, in the church of St. Mary at Totnes, 
 Devon. 
 
 i« As in the case of those about the altar of St. Edward, in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 A work of the dutch school, attributed to Dierick Bouts, who died in 1475. 
 ^ Great brazen candle-standards are commonly to be seen standing before the high-altais of those trans- 
 alpine churches which have retained anything of their medieval furniture, or even of the tradition of it. I 
 
1^4 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 the picture, the curtains themselves do not appear, having been removed, no doubt, for 
 the occasion, lest they should interrupt the view of what is going on, from the eager crowd of 
 spectators, who are craning their necks between the uprights of the surrounding screens, to 
 see as much as they can of the operation. 
 
 Thus the sanctuary, as regards its enclosures, and its ritual distinction from the whole of 
 the rest of the building, had retained, so far, much of its primitive character. The space 
 between the line of the lenten-veil and the altar-area was still the " presbytery," as dis- 
 tinguished from the space immediately about the altar, once enclosed by the veils of the 
 ciborium, which Durandus terms the secretum. 
 
 But in the arrangement of the presbytery great changes had come to be made. It had 
 originally included the space all about the baldaquin, especially the apse, with its semi-circle 
 of presbyterial seats** and its central throne, but it had come to occupy a position now almost 
 wholly in front of the altar. The presbyters not engaged about the altar, now sat in stalls 
 in the quire, and even the bishop, in the great majority of instances,"" had retired from his 
 throne behind the altar, to a seat of less dignity adjoining the stalls of his canons. 
 
 The semi-circular range of presbyterial thrones {epovoi, Apoc. iv. 4) having, through this 
 change, become unnecessary, disappeared, with the exception of its extremities, which are 
 represented by the sedilia of a medieval church. These seats for the functioning priest and 
 his assistants were still required, and were therefore retained after the rest of the range had, 
 owing to the retirement of the non-functioning presbyters into the quire, become unnecessary, 
 and had accordingly disappeared. In the pagan tribunals, while the central seats were 
 occupied by the praetor, the judices, and the advocates, the sides of the semi-circle, which 
 were termed the cornua, were reserved for the parties engaged in the proceedings and for 
 persons of distinction who might desire to be present.^^ It is probable that the presbyters 
 engaged in the mass were seated in the cornua of the christian tribunes : that the bishop, 
 when he himself pontificated, occupied, with his attendants, the cornu upon the gospel side; 
 and that a presbyter celebrating was accustomed to be seated with his ministers in the cornu 
 upon the epistle side. Hence the position, upon the north side of the sanctuary, of the throne 
 
 believe these to be derived from the baldaquino system of arranging the veils, and that they were originally 
 pillars, and not candlesticks. They retained all through the middle ages a certain columnar character, though 
 the function of bearing tapers — originally subordinate to that of supporting the curtain-rods — had come to be 
 their only function. In our english cathedrals, these venerable pillars have in recent years come to be repre- 
 sented by monster gas-standards. 
 
 " Sacerdos (lepevs) and Presbyterus express, the one the function, the other the order. The connection 
 between the two english words " priest " and " presbyter," has been sometimes taken advantage of in order 
 to confuse, for party purposes, this radical distinction of idea. No one, however, proposes to speak ot 
 Aaron as a high presbyter, and if priest be not the equivalent of ie/ieus and sacerdos, the english language has 
 none. The presbytery is so named because it is the proper position of those of the priestly order who are 
 assisting (as presbyters), but are not in function (as sacerdotes). The sacerdos is the one presbyter in 
 function within the altar-space {secretum or sacrarium, as distinguished from presbyterium). Sacrarium is 
 thus defiued by Ducange — " ubi sunt sancta sanctorum," "ubi est altare " ; also as "pars asdis sacrre in quo 
 sacra reponuntur " ; and as, in some cases, equivalent to diaconiciim and to sacrisia ; also as " pars altaris 
 ubi reponitur pyxis, in qua sacra eucharistia asservatur, vulgo tabernacle^'' In this sense it occurs in the 
 decrees of the Council of Trent. Sess. xiii., cap. vi., and Can. vii. (Oct. 1551). 
 
 I have already noticed the retention to a late date of the basilican position of the bishop's cathedra at 
 Canterbury and at Norwich. 
 
 It was in the cornu that the emperor Tiberius sat to overawe the judgment at the trial of Granius 
 Marcellus. Tacit., " Ann.," i., 75, referred to in Smith's " Diet. Gr. and Rom. Antiq.," s. v. basilica. 
 
The history of English church architecture. 
 
 of a bishop pontificating, and the sedilia of the celebrating priest upon the south side of the 
 sanctuary.''^ 
 
 Of the piscina, so invariable an adjunct to the sedilia in this country, little need be 
 said, as the subject is a somewhat obscure one, and its investigation would lead us into 
 details of ceremonial with which we are not here concerned. I will only observe that the 
 little shelf — very commonly of wood — which is to be found in most of our medieval piscinae " 
 is, virtually, their most important feature, and has, in fact, an antiquity (of origin) more 
 unquestioned than that of the piscina, to which it often appears as a mere accessory. This 
 small shelf is, in reality, the medieval equivalent of the primitive prothesis. This, the mensa 
 ct propositio panum^ of the new law, constituted in the primitive basilicas, as it does to this 
 day in the churches of the eastern communions, a veritable side-altar. Nor was this 
 tradition of its original dignity and importance ever wholly lost, in spite of the small 
 dimensions to which the passing fashions of the middle ages, for a time, reduced it."^ We 
 learn from the "Voyages Liturgiques" of De Mauleon (Lebrun des Marettes),^* that, as late 
 as the year 171 8, there existed in the abbey-church of Cluny, and at St. Denis, a side-altar, 
 upon the epistle side of the high altar, which was termed the prothesis. When the celebrant 
 had communicated the assistant clerics in the species of bread, the deacon, accompanied by 
 two acolytes bearing tapers, bore the chalice to this side-altar, and here the altar-ministers 
 were communicated in the cup. 
 
 Until toward the close of the fourteenth century, in spite of the alterations which I have 
 described, the high-altar continued to exhibit the primitive type. It was still of considerable 
 depth (from east to west), and stood free and unencumbered in the centre of the sanctuary. 
 This was the case even with side-altars : until far on into the middle ages they were still some- 
 what square on plan, and placed detached from the eastern walls of their chapels.''^'' 
 
 The essential notion of the basilican altar — that of a table as distinguished from a side-board 
 — has ever been preserved at Rome, but in our own country it was gradually lost sight of 
 amid the innovations of that middle age, so fertile of change — for better as for worse — and so 
 audacious. 
 
 The sanctuary of an english minster of the early thirteenth century had still about it much 
 of the character of the primitive bema. It was an open area flanked by the sedilia, and domi- 
 nated still, as of old, by the exalted cathedra of the bishop, upon the centre of its eastern side. 
 In the midst, upon its own ascent of steps, stood the altar, still somewhat square in its pro- 
 
 In some instances, as in Durham cathedral, the derivation of the sedilia from the corniia of the basilican 
 tribune, is the more clear from the fact of these canopied seats occurring upon both sides of the sanctuary. 
 
 It is wanting only in those piscinse which are large enough to allow space for the cruets and napkins to 
 lie upon the slab in which the basins themselves are formed, 
 yy Heb. ix. 2 ; Ex. xxv. 23. 
 
 " There is, I think, reason to believe that the withered little protheses of our medieval piscinas were only used 
 at low mass, and that at the high mass either a movable table, adorned with a linen cloth and two tapers, or in 
 some cases a side-altar, served as the credence. The latter is, as I have already had occasion to observe, the 
 custom still observed in the coronation of our sovereigns. (Cf. supra, p. 54.) 
 
 aaa p, j^g^ quoted in Viollet-le-Duc's " Diet. Raisonn^ de I'Archit.," vii., p. 191. 
 
 ^"^^ The apsidal chapels of the lesser transept at Lincoln, the northern chapel of the apse at Norwich, and the 
 eastern chapels at Worcester are instances in point. In the last-named church, as in many other examples, the 
 wall-arcades are returned unbroken across the eastern walls of the chapels. 
 
166 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 portions, ample in its dimensions, and severely plain.""" The crucifix and tapers required by the 
 ritual were placed directly upon the viensa?^^ The raised ledge upon which the candlesticks 
 are now most commonly arranged, and which is sometimes, but improperly termed, " the 
 super-altar," is an invention of later times, and somewhat foreign to the primitive idea. 
 But this simple type was destined to undergo a complete modification, due to two distinct 
 causes. 
 
 Hitherto the bodies of the saints had continued to rest in those crypts beneath the sanctuary- 
 level to which the custom of primitive days had consigned them. But a sort of " resurrection 
 of relics " was now in progress. These honoured remains were first raised from their resting- 
 places in the confessio, to be laid upon the floor of the sanctuary, or beneath the mensa of the 
 altar. As the middle ages went on a new conception was reached. The relics were now dis- 
 sociated from the great altar, beneath which they had heretofore reposed ; they were placed 
 in rear of an altar of their own, standing eastward of the high altar, and were elevated upon a 
 lofty feretry of stone or marble, so that their shrines should be conspicuous above the heads 
 of the clergy engaged in the celebration of the high mass. Relics of less importance were 
 placed in reliquaries upon the altar itself, and other shrines were elevated still higher, along- 
 side the crucifix, or the "majesty," upon the beam which it was now the custom to erect 
 above the high altar, and of which we have already seen examples at Canterbury and at 
 Westminster.™ 
 
 It had also become customary to place upon the altar retabiila — panels, commonly of 
 timber-work, sculptured, painted, or covered by plates of silver, or even of gold, enriched with 
 gems and precious stones. In these retables, of which examples may still be seen at West- 
 
 ccc The enriched and sculptured altars of the later middle ages are inconsistent with the spirit of the ritual, 
 and exhibit a certain frivolity, unworthy of the awe-ful character which attaches to the christian sacrifice. The 
 altar-front was at all times adorned by costly hangings, termed paramenia, during the celebration of the mass, but 
 it was felt, until a late period, that the altar itself was too serious a thing to be trifled with, and in its grim 
 simplicity it long continued to recall the tradition ol its sinaitic original (Ex. xx. 25). In a revival, excellences 
 are less easily copied than errors. It was therefore to be expected that these exceptional trivialities of mere 
 modern times should commend themselves, as they have done, to the modern revivers of medieval forms. 
 But altars which require to be veiled in violet, in order to conceal their misplaced enrichments upon the day 
 on which, in token of its mourning, the Church orders the altars to be stripped bare, are scarcely in accord with 
 the Church's intention. 
 
 •Jiid As is to this day the custom in the Vatican basilica, in most of the ancient churches of Rome, and in all 
 those of the oriental communions. 
 
 ^^'^ " Super-altare " is, of course, the small consecrated altar-slab employed in cases in which the altar itself has 
 not been blessed. There is a circular sinking for the reception oi such a super-altar in the mensa of the altar 
 in the chapel of the Pyx, at Westminster. Such a super-altar, rectangular in form, is preserved in the chapel 
 founded by bishop Alcock in Ely cathedral. It is now built into the east wall of the chapel, and bears, in 
 addition to the usual five crosses, the following inscription — "Jokannes Alcock Eps Elien. hanc fabrycam 
 fierifecit. MCCCCLXXXVIII." 
 
 This curious change in the position assigned to the bodies of the saints has a somewhat grotesque parallel 
 in the "resurrection of effigies" to be traced during the course of medieval and modern times. In the earliest 
 monumental figures the hands are crossed upon the breast, and the attitude is that of death-like rest. Then, 
 though this quiet slumber is still unruffled, there are signs as of a half-consciousness, and the hands are joined in 
 prayer. The knight reposing upon his tomb becomes aware of his lady lying by his side, and, half in tenderness, 
 half in sleep, he lays his hand in hers. But the hour of waking is at hand, the stony figures turn upon their 
 sides, they raise themselves slowly upon an elbow, and gaze, still somewhat drowsily, about them. Ere long 
 they rise, now fully awakened, and pose upon their knees in prayer; soon, grown weary of the pious posture, 
 they seat themselves in curule chairs, with a cold sic sedebat. At the last, clad in toga, or in breeches, as the 
 case may be, they stand erect upon their feet, and marshal armies or harangue senates, in all the affected 
 realism of the stage. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 minster, at Norwich, and at Romsey,*^^ we have the origin of the reredos of the later middle 
 ages, and of the altar-piece of more recent times. 
 
 We can hardly quarrel with an innovation which has given occasion to the erection, in each 
 succeeding style, of such exquisite works of art, but it is very necessary to realise it as an inno- 
 vation, and as one which has contributed more than any other to modify the primitive character 
 of the altar and of the sanctuary. 
 
 The noblest outcome of the retable was undoubtedly the triptych. This is simply an en- 
 larged and elaborated retabnliim, to which shutters have been added, for the better protection 
 of its imagery, and for its concealment during the penitential seasons. It is upon the latter 
 account that the painting of the exterior of the shutters is commonly in grisaille. Nothing can 
 be finer than the effect of sombre gloom when all the altar-pieces are thus closed, and the 
 magnificent outburst of gold and colour, when, upon the morning of some festival day, sun- 
 light, as it were, breaks out from every altar, as the shutters swing open. A violet veil is but 
 a very poor substitute for this truly artistic arrangement, which I take to be one of the 
 happiest and most original conceptions of the middle ages. If the baldaquin be the noblest 
 adornment of a basilican bema, the triptych is the crowning glory of a sanctuary of the medieval 
 type. There is this further merit in the triptych, that, like the retabulum, of which it is an 
 expansion, it is essentially a movable piece of furniture, and in no way interferes with that 
 detached and table-like character of the altar, which is in accordance with early traditions, 
 and with the spirit of the ritual.'''''^ 
 
 That triptychs were once not uncommon in this country we know from accounts which have 
 been preserved to us of the furniture of our ancient churches. I have already quoted, from 
 the " Rites of Durham," a description of one which stood upon the Jesus altar in the nave of 
 that cathedral church {supra, p. 135). Another in the church of Long Melford, in Suffolk, is 
 thus described by one, who had seen it'": — "At the back of the high-altar there was a goodly 
 mount, made of one great tree, and set up to the foot of the window there, carved very 
 artificially with the Story of Christ's passion ; representing the horsemen with their swords, 
 and the footmen, etc., as they used Christ on the Mount of Calvary, all being fair gilt, and 
 lively and beautifully set forth. To cover and keep clean all the which, there were very fair 
 and painted boards, made to shut to, which were opened upon high and solemn Feast days, 
 which then was a very beautiful show." 
 
 The retabulmn, in conjunction with the beam fixed above the altar and its super-imposed 
 imagery, gave rise, however, to a much more serious innovation upon primitive usages. 
 
 Toward the close of the fourteenth century it occurred to our architects to replace all 
 
 K«s The altar-piece of the Premonstratensian abbey of Dale is described in the inventory as " a table of wood 
 paynted." (" Journ. of Derbyshire Archsol. Soc," i., p. 104.) 
 
 Thus the high-altar at Xanten, which is adorned by a sumptuous triptych of renaissance character, is a 
 perfectly plain mass of masonry standing free in the centre of the sanctuary, with a mensa 12 ft. by 7 ft. That 
 at Calcar, in the same district, is of the same character ; its mcnsa is 10 ft. 4 in. by 6 ft. 10 in. These pro- 
 portions are quite basilican (though the altars are in fact of the fifteenth century), and the moulding of the 
 mensa is continued at the back as well as at the front and sides. The candlesticks, too, stand upon the altar 
 itself, as in primitive times. Even side-altars, bearing triptychs, are commonly as much as 4 ft. in width 
 from front to back, and sometimes more. 
 
 Viz., Roger Martyn, of Melford Place, who was churchwarden of the parish in the reign of Philip and 
 Mary, and who remained a catholic until his death (at the age of 89), in 161 5. The whole description is full of 
 interest, and gives a very delightful picture of provincial life in, what was then, merry England. It is reprinted 
 in Sir William Parker's "History of Long Melford " (Wyman and Sons, 1873), P- 7°) ^^1- ^ indebted for 
 this reference to the courtesy of the present rector of Melford, the Rev. Charles T. Martyn, 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 these by a lofty wall of stone, extending from side to side of the sanctuary, enriched with niches 
 and statuary. Of this bold novelty the earliest example of which I am aware is that at 
 Christchurch, Hants. In this very interesting work the subject of the genealogy of our Lord, 
 commonly known as the "Tree of Jesse," is introduced with great originality. 
 
 The reredos of All Souls' chapel, Oxford, is an example of similar treatment, though here 
 applied upon a solid wall. The college was founded as a thank-offering for the victory of 
 Azincourt, and in order that the souls of all, of either nation, who met their death on that 
 battle-field might be perpetually remembered before God. The reredos, as may be seen now 
 in its restoration, occupied the whole eastern end of the chapel (there is no east window), 
 and contained fifty statues of large size, and eighty-six statuettes. Over the altar was a 
 very beautiful crucifix, with the Magdalen at its foot. Over this was the image of the 
 Blessed Virgin, and above her St. Editha, on whose day the chapel was consecrated (in 1442). 
 Above all was represented our Lord, presiding in the final doom. Among the other figures 
 were those of the four latin fathers, in whose honour the chapel is dedicated, together with 
 those of cardinal Beaufort, and of other contemporary worthies of church and state.^^^ 
 
 The altar-piece of St. Alban's abbey, erected by abbat William Wallingford (1476- 1492), is 
 another magnificent specimen,'''^'' which is only equalled by the altar-screen of Winchester 
 cathedral : each of these was once adorned by an immense crucifix of silver, a tradition, no 
 doubt, of a similar effigy standing upon the beam which originally occupied the position where 
 now stand these sumptuous reredos-walls. Less lofty in proportion but not less elegant is the 
 reredos of Durham cathedral. Like the others, it has been despoiled of all its sculpture, and 
 is now but a fair frame without a picture. It is thus described, as it appeared in its former 
 beauty, in the " Rites :— 
 
 " Betwixt the High Altar and St. Cuthbert's Feriture is all of French peere, verye curiously 
 wrought, both of the inside and outside, with faire images of alabaster, being most finely 
 gilted, beinge called in the ancient history the Laordose, the said curious workmanshipp of 
 French peere or laordose reachinge in hight almost to the middle vault, and containinge the 
 breadth of the Quire in lengthe, in the midst whereof, right over the said Hie Altar were 
 artificially placed, in very fine alabaster, the picture of Our Lady standinge in the midst, and 
 the picture of St. Cuthbert on the one side, and the picture of St. Oswald on the other, being 
 all richly gilted, and at either end of the said altar was a wande of iron fastened in the wall, 
 whereon did hang curtaines or hanginges of white silk dayly. 
 
 " The dayly ornaments that were hunge both before the altar and above were of red velvett, 
 wrought with great flowers of gold in imbroydered worke, with many goodly pictures, besides 
 
 ijj In 1549, the year in which the first Prayer Book of Edward replaced the Breviary and Missal, the royal 
 Commissioners ordered the destruction of this incomparable work. " This portion of the injunctions," says 
 Professor Burrows (" Worthies of All Souls," p. 68), " was most completely, not to say ruthlessly executed. 
 The magnificent reredos was now defaced. Every one of its statues was thrown down and broken to pieces, 
 while the projecting portions of the structure were chipped away till the whole was left a ruin." The Com- 
 missioners ordered further the removal of all " altars, images, statues, tabernacles, the things they call organs, 
 and all similar monuments of superstition and idolatry." Those works of religious art which had escaped the 
 Commissioners of 1549, archbishop Parker, as visitor of the college, was at considerable pains to get destroyed, 
 and the account of his correspondence with the Warden, given in Professor Burrows' book (p. 86), is instructive 
 and curious. All the church plate in possession of the college, with the exception of some ten pieces, is 
 ordered by him to be " defaced and broken," and by a later order, " all copes, vestments, albs, missals, books, 
 and crosses " are to be " utterly defaced." 
 
 kkk cf. p. 146. p. 6. 
 
PLATE XXXIV. 
 
 CHRISTCHURCH, HANTS. 
 
 ALT.\R-PIECE IN THE PRIORV-CHURCH. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 beinge verye finely gilted, but the ornaments for the Principall Feast, which was the Assump- 
 tion of our Lady, were all of white damaske, all besett with pearles and pretious stones, which 
 made the ornaments more rich and gorgeous to behold." 
 
 The reredos of Westminster abbey was another instance of a similar erection ; of this the 
 back alone (facing towards the saint's chapel) is preserved. The front having been stripped 
 of its imagery and otherwise injured, was, in the time of Queen Anne, further mutilated, in 
 order to make room for an altar-piece of marble. When this was removed, in 1820,™""° during 
 the preparations for the coronation of George IV., " it was discovered," says Neale,°"° " that 
 the west front of the screen was wrought in a similar style of sculpture to the east front, many 
 remnants of sculptural ornament, including various pieces of a painted and gilt cornice, frag- 
 ments of gilt foliage, etc., were found among the rubbish. The whole screen, indeed, had 
 been richly embellished with gilding and painting ; the ground was, generally, either of a red 
 or azure colour, but had been covered with whitewash." We may, from this, form some 
 notion of its original magnificence. Above it was, as I have already had occasion to mention, a 
 great rood, with St. Mary and John and two cherubim standing upon a beam. Upon the top 
 of the screen were figures of Sts. Peter and Paul. 
 
 Another very fine example still exists, though deprived, of course, of its imagery, in the 
 church of St. Mary Overie, in Southwark. 
 
 Most of these reredos-walls retain an indication of their derivation from the retabuhim in 
 the plain oblong panel formed in them immediately above the altar itself, and in all of them 
 a tradition of the originally detached character of the altar is preserved in the doors by which 
 they are pierced, in order to allow of the circum-ambulation at the asperges and the incensing. 
 
 In the erection of structures such as these, almost all trace of the arrangements of the 
 basilican be^na disappeared. The part of the sanctuary beyond the altar, once the station of 
 the bishop and the attendant presbyters, had long ceased to form the presbytery, and had 
 become, what the confessionary-crypt had originally been, the resting-place of the relics of the 
 patron-saints. These remains, once laid in the confessio beneath the altar, had been raised 
 upon an elevated feretrtim to the eastward of it, and now a solid wall of stone shut off the 
 shrine of the saint from the high-altar, which had once been his memoria. 
 
 This new fashion had lasted little more than a century before the reformation-storm swept 
 away both shrine and altar. It is strange that so short-lived an innovation should have 
 seemed worthy of revival after three centuries have passed away. Yet it is to these enriched 
 walls, cutting off the saints' chapel from the sanctuary and the presbytery, that the reredos 
 (so much in vogue at the present day) is derived. And it is to these that we owe the change 
 which has converted the altar, so to speak, from a table into a side-board. 
 
 The northern nations, and our own country in particular, exhibit in their ecclesiological 
 history a tolerance of novelty and a disregard of tradition, which is in striking contrast with 
 the conservatism of primitive usage at Rome itself. 
 
 There the customs of the early ages still live, less changed than in any other church. No 
 modern reredos or retabulum encumbers the altar of the Vatican basilica. It stands free in 
 the centre of the vast edifice. Above it rises still the baldaquino, though the veils it once 
 supported have disappeared. " Under the altar " still lies the body of the foremost among 
 " them that were slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held."°°'' 
 
 mram jt was re-erected in Burnham church, by Bridgwater. (Cf. Rutter's " Somersetshire," 1829, p. 90.) 
 nnn "Westminster Abbey," ii., p, 271. 000 Apoc. vi. 9. 
 
 z 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 The pontiff celebrating still faces, as of old, towards the east and towards the people. He 
 still, as in the first ages, presents the blessed sacrament (as he elevates it) to north and south 
 and east and west, to the presbyters behind him as to the faithful all around. In the apse 
 still rises the cathedra petri. From this venerable chair the Pontiff descends as of old to offer 
 the sacrifice, and to it he returns to be communicated in the cup, in the manner practised in 
 the early ages. In the papal mass at St. Peter's the ritual of the early church may still be 
 studied in action. 
 
 In the trans-montane churches the changes effected during the middle ages have left their 
 mark. Many such have been retained, while many more have died away, nor is it perhaps 
 desirable to attempt the revival of these obsolete novelties: 
 
 One other innovation I may notice in conclusion. It is, in a sense, a small one, but it has 
 been pregnant of mischief. I refer to the introduction, during the fifteenth century, of fixed 
 sittings, or pews. 
 
 The very notion of sittings — indeed of sitting, as in any way a recognised attitude of the 
 laity, as anything more, in short, than a concession tardily extorted from the Church by 
 successful sloth — is of late date. The early Church knew nothing of sitting, except as the 
 position of those who bore rule in the congregation. 
 
 Thus, to this day, the bishop sits upon his throne, the clergy have their seats of dignity and 
 command in the quire, the preacher (in Italy, as once everywhere) sits ; but the laity, when 
 not kneeling, are bound, except as a concession to a somewhat emasculate weakness, to stand. 
 The naves of the primitive churches had no seats. The eastern churches at the present day 
 allow of none. The ladies of the oriental communions may sit, if too weak to stand, but it is 
 on the pavement only that they are allowed to seat themselves. 
 
 In those of the western churches which have preserved the ancient customs, long priedieiis 
 are provided here and there, for convenience of kneeling, but chairs are an accommodation 
 which it is permitted to the churchwardens to provide, but for which the weak-kneed of the 
 laity have to pay. Not even a chair is allowed in the Vatican basilica. The reason why one 
 has to pay a small fraction of a penny for the convenience of a chair in a french church is 
 because its use is regarded as a mere concession to weakness, which the Church rather winks 
 at than approves. 
 
 It was not until the fifteenth century that the sitting posture received a formal recognition, 
 by the introduction of oak pewing, often of a very beautiful character, into the naves of our 
 churches. 
 
 One can hardly quarrel with benches so elegant ; still it is necessary to note that they con- 
 stitute an innovation upon primitive usage, and one which gave origin, in process of time, to 
 that great abuse, the private pew. 
 
 In the medieval nave-seats we may observe a peculiar feature, of which the rubrics appear 
 to afford the explanation. In the sarum rite prostration was in common use. Thus during 
 the preces, which are said on ferial days at all the "hour-services," the choir remained pros- 
 trate : so too at mass, on every ferial day, out of easter-tide, from after the sanctus until the 
 agnus del. On rising from such prostration it was the custom to kiss, if not the ground, at 
 least the bench-seat — " osculare terram aut formulam." 
 
 It is this, the old english mode of prostration, that has given rise, as I suspect, to that ledge 
 
 PPP Cf. "Sarum Consuetudinary," cap. xviii. "Missale ad usum Sarum," Burntisland Ed., i., p. 133. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 171 
 
 which we find along the back of every ancient pew. These are sometimes mistaken for book- 
 boards, sometimes for kneelers. They are in reality neither the one nor the other : they are, 
 when not level with the seat-board, always higher than it, and therefore too high for kneeling, 
 while they are too low for book-rests, even if books had been as common in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury as now. Their real use would seem to be to render possible the osculation directed by 
 the sarum and allied rituals. As long as forms without backs were in use, it was easy to kiss 
 the seat-board in front of you. When advancing effeminacy required backs to be added to 
 the benches, this became impossible, and first a narrow strip of the seat-board was left behind 
 the back to serve this purpose, and next a ledge was introduced, higher than the seat-level, to 
 render the act of humiliation still less irksome. It is, doubtless, on account of this english 
 custom of prostration that the space between the seats in our ancient churches is so great. 
 
172 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 In the last chapter the history of the progress of 
 our medieval architecture was carried down to the 
 commencement of the fourteenth century. 
 
 This epoch, like that of the preceding and — as 
 we presently shall see — of the two following cen- 
 tenaries, is marked by a transition. 
 
 The former date is that of the transition, par 
 excellence : of the genesis, in fact, of the pointed 
 style of architecture. The latter coincide in the 
 same rough way, the one with the appearance of 
 the so-called perpendicular manner, the other with 
 that of its latest variety, for want of a better name, 
 termed the tudor. In each case, oddly enough, 
 the transition is seen to commence some twenty 
 or twenty-five years before the centenary. 
 
 Thus at Canterbury, William of Sens began his 
 great work, in which pointed architecture made its 
 first essay here, in 1175. The concentration of 
 the attention of our architects upon the lines — 
 as opposed to the form of the openings — of the 
 window traceries, of which the following style was 
 but the logical outcome, gave its character to the 
 architecture of the last quarter of the thirteenth 
 century.* The year 1380 marks pretty accurately 
 the advent of the third-pointed style, and 1480 is, 
 as we shall see, the date at which the vaulting of 
 King's College chapel in Cambridge was designed, 
 a work in which the principles of the newest, and 
 last, phase of gothic architecture were, for the first 
 time, displayed upon an important scale. 
 
 All periods of architectural transition are dis- 
 tinguished, as I have already had occasion to note, 
 by a very high order of merit observable in the 
 works executed under the stimulus of the novel 
 idea. The period, at which we are now arrived, is 
 no exception to the rule. 
 
 The buildings, which exemplify the style, which 
 — for want of a better name — has somewhere been 
 defined as the early-late-middle-pointed, display 
 an amazing originality of design, in which vigour 
 and delicacy are combined, in a manner as rare as 
 it is attractive. 
 
 To realise this it is only necessary to compare 
 the eastern portions of St. Alban's abbey, the 
 chapter-house, and the chapel of the bishop's 
 palace, at Wells, the chapter-house at Southwell, or 
 tlie quire at Winchelsea, with the somewhat dull 
 
 a We see the new principle fully established in St. Ethel- 
 dreda's, Holbom, and in the quire of Winchelsea, both 
 erected before the end of the century. 
 
 geometrical architecture of Salisbury, or of the nave 
 of Lichfield on the one hand, and with the elegant 
 but uninteresting flowing-decorated of the middle of 
 the fourteenth century upon the other. 
 
 With all their merits — and at the present day we 
 are not in a position to contemn the least able of 
 the productions of our forefathers — the perfected 
 styles are wanting in the expression of a certain 
 fine quality of intellect, which is to be found only 
 in the works of those men of genius, whose origi- 
 nality was to break up an established common- 
 place. 
 
 Although in the first use of the pointed arch, and 
 in the working out of its earlier results, the french 
 architects were slightly in advance of our own, we 
 find, now that we are arrived at the middle period 
 of the style, the relative position of the two nations 
 to be reversed. 
 
 During the extraordinary and brilliant progress, 
 which characterised the end of the twelfth and the 
 beginning of the thirteenth centuries ; in the keen 
 race in which, so to speak, the two countries were 
 engaged, France has generally a small advantage. 
 This was the case, probably, only with the com- 
 paratively small royal domain of which Paris 
 was the centre, and the lead there taken was only 
 a lead, yet it is one which cannot be questioned. 
 
 Before the close of the thirteenth century, how- 
 ever, the position is changed. We now find our own 
 architects not only taking the lead, but adopting 
 a course of their own, and one which is so able and 
 so original that, from this point, we seem to have 
 parted company with France entirely, and to have 
 followed a course peculiar to ourselves. 
 
 From a little before the commencement of the 
 fourteenth century, down to the renaissance of 
 classical architecture in the sixteenth, the history of 
 english art was determined entirely by ourselves. It 
 appears to me that, during this period, we may fairly 
 be said to have owed nothing to foreign influence, 
 but to have followed freely our own inspirations, and 
 to have worked out logically our own conceptions. 
 
 In the thirteenth century we followed France in 
 our architecture : in the sixteenth we commenced 
 to go to Italy for our art : but, between these two 
 periods, english architects and artists relied simply 
 upon themselves, and the result justified their self- 
 confidence. 
 
 A comparison of the dates of french and english 
 examples, from the close of the thirteenth to the 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 middle of the fourteenth century, enables us to 
 judge very closely the point at which we began to 
 take from France the lead, which hitherto she had 
 maintained. Towards the end of the fourteenth 
 century the english school had parted company alto- 
 gether with the french, now distanced in the race, 
 and had entered upon a course divergent and wholly 
 original. 
 
 In the process by which, from the system of 
 grouped lancets, geometrical tracery was gradually 
 evolved, the french examples, upon the whole, rule 
 a trifle earlier than the english but in the next 
 stage the case is different. 
 
 The fourteenth century is characterised, in both 
 countries, by the gradual change from geometrical 
 tracery to flowing, with all the alteration of treat- 
 ment and of aesthetic effect which that advance 
 brought with it, but this great innovation was 
 originated by english architects. 
 
 There is absolutely nothing in France to be set 
 beside the truly charming works of our earlier 
 fourteenth century. That subtle softening-off of 
 the geometrical manner, which gives such a ten- 
 derness to the transitional works in England ; that 
 exquisite refinement, which would be feminine, 
 were not the heart of it so essentially virile ; these 
 are peculiarly our own. 
 
 The architects of France continued to advance 
 in the science and engineering of architecture, but 
 their advance was intellectual rather than emotional. 
 Their works had, by this time, lost that expres- 
 sion of tenderness which is never wanting in the 
 earlier examples ot the french pointed style. There 
 is a hardness about them, which impresses one as 
 with a sense of cruelty, and which is in striking 
 contrast with the almost plaintive beauty of our 
 own contemporary architecture. 
 
 This difference in the expression of the two 
 styles is indeed observable all along, but it had 
 become, at the period at which we are now arrived, 
 most marked. 
 
 Compare, in this regard, the Sainte Chapelle of 
 St. Louis with the work of our own Henry III. at 
 Westminster, the eastern portions of St. Ouen (at 
 Rouen) with the presbytery of St. Alban's, or with 
 the Lady-chapel of Ely. What power verging to 
 hardness in the one ! what tenderness in all the 
 stately grace of the other ! 
 
 Mr. William Morris has well pointed out, in words 
 which I will venture to quote," the sympathy that 
 there is between this strain of homely pathos, 
 which breathes through all our english architec- 
 ture, and the character of our english country 
 scenery ; between these works of man and the soil 
 out of which they seem to grow : — 
 
 " The land is a little land, sirs, too much shut up 
 within the narrow seas, as it seems, to have much 
 space for swelling into hugeness : there are no great 
 
 ^ I may refer on this subject to my father's remarks in the 
 "Gleanings from Westminster Abbey," p. i8, and to his 
 "Lectures," i., p. 162. 
 
 " The Decorative Arts : an Address delivered before the 
 Trades' Guild of Learning " (Ellis and White, 1878), p. 20. 
 
 wastes overwhelming in their dreariness, no great 
 solitudes of forests, no terrible untrodden moun- 
 tain-walls : all is measured, mingled, varied, gliding 
 easily one thing into another : little rivers, little 
 plains, swelling speedily-changing uplands, all beset 
 with handsome orderly trees : little hills, little 
 mountains netted over with the walls of sheep- 
 walks : all is little, yet not foolish or blank, but 
 serious rather, and abundant of meaning for such 
 as choose to seek it : it is neither prison nor 
 palace, but a decent home. 
 
 " All which I neither praise nor blame, but say 
 that so it is ; some people praise this homeliness 
 overmuch, as if the land were the very axle-tree of 
 the world ; so do not I, nor any unblinded by 
 pride in themselves and all that belongs to them : 
 others there are who scorn it and the tameness of 
 it ; not I any the more : though it would indeed 
 be hard if there were nothing else in the world, no 
 wonders, no terrors, no unspeakable beauties: yet 
 when we think what a small part of the world's his- 
 tory past, present, and to come is this land we 
 live in, and how much smaller still in the history 
 of the arts, and yet how our forefathers clung to it, 
 and with what care and pains they adorned it, this 
 unromantic, uneventful-looking land of England, 
 surely by this, too, our hearts may be touched and 
 our hope quickened. 
 
 " For as was the land, such was the art of it, 
 while folk yet troubled themselves about such 
 things ; it strove little to impress people either by 
 pomp or ingenuity : not unseldom it fell into com- 
 monplace, rarely it rose into majesty ; yet was it 
 never oppressive, never a slave's nightmare or an 
 insolent boast : and at its best it had an inventive- 
 ness, an individuality that grander styles have 
 never overpassed : its best, too, and that was in its 
 very heart, was given as freely to the yeoman's 
 house and the humble village church, as to the 
 lord's palace or the mighty cathedral : never 
 coarse, though often rude enough, sweet, natural, 
 and unaffected, an art of peasants rather than of 
 merchant-princes or courtiers, it must be a hard 
 heart I think that does not love it, whether a man 
 has been born among it like ourselves, or has 
 come wonderingly on its simplicity from all the 
 grandeur over seas." 
 
 True of all the phases of our native art, these 
 noble words apply with an especial and peculiar 
 force to the works of our fourteenth-century 
 builders. 
 
 In France geometrical tracery seems to have run 
 on at least to the middle of the century unchanged, 
 save that the style became more and more attenu- 
 ated and liney, and the patterns of the traceries more 
 delicate and involved. But by this time in England 
 we had effected a complete revolution in our archi- 
 tecture, and had produced that flowing middle- 
 pointed style which is, to my mind, one of the great 
 glories of our country's art. 
 
 The history of the origin of the french flam- 
 boyant style is somewhat puzzling at first sight, 
 
174 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 because, as far as I have observed, there are to be 
 found in France almost no transitional examples 
 connecting it with the geometrical style which it 
 supplanted.** 
 
 I suspect that, during the fourteenth century, 
 there was much less church building in that country 
 than was going on, at this period, in England, and 
 the political state of the country may account for 
 the absence of intermediate examples. 
 
 My own impression is, that the french architects, 
 enamoured of their elegant geometrical style — to 
 which they were constantly giving an additional 
 refinement of detail — occupied, far more than our 
 own, in the advance of figure sculpture and the 
 carving of natural foliage — continued to adhere to 
 the earlier forms, for some time after our own artists 
 had developed them into a newer phase. 
 
 The circumstances are somewhat parallel to those 
 which occurred in Germany a century earlier. 
 
 The german architects of the thirteenth century, 
 devoted to their own highly-developed romanesque, 
 resisted for long the introduction of the new french 
 mode ; yet, when they had once accepted it, they 
 developed it rapidly into an exaggeration of the 
 borrowed style. So was it with the french builders 
 of the fourteenth century. 
 
 These very able artists were, for a long while, 
 loth to give up their refined geometrical style and 
 to adopt its logical outcome, the flowing tracery: but 
 when the advance could no more be ignored, and 
 they were forced to accept, from the English, this 
 new element, they seized upon the principle with 
 characteristic ardour ; and exaggerating that regard 
 of the tracery-lines over the tracery-openings, which 
 is the essence of our own middle-pointed style, they 
 worked it out into that complete subordination of 
 the one to the other, which distinguishes the flam- 
 boyant manner." 
 
 The constant effort of our own fourteenth-century 
 architects was to obtain continuity of line in their win- 
 dow traceries, without losing sight, altogether, of the 
 form of the tracery openings. And they succeeded 
 in carrying out this conception to the farthest limit 
 of which it is capable. 
 
 It is difficult to select examples where all are of 
 a high order of merit, but the style which produced 
 
 ^ The only intermediate example that I have observed is 
 the church of St. Urban at Troyes, a building in every way 
 remarkable. 
 
 e The flamboyant style is distinguished from our own 
 flowing-decorated, not only by the peculiar character of its 
 mouldings, but also by the curious fact that its tracery- 
 openings ate almost always cusped into a bi-foil shape, 
 while the english architects almost invariably employ the 
 quatrefoil. I cannot help observing here that the beauty of 
 these wonderful french works is being systematically destroyed 
 by the process, now in vogue throughout France, of painting 
 the joints of the internal masonry in black or grey. This is 
 as though one were to out-line upon an antique statue (say, 
 the Venus of the Capitol) the forms of the sub-cutaneous 
 muscles. I can only account for this barbarous fashion by 
 supposing that the sketches of M. Viollet-le-Duc are taken 
 as the standard of beauty, and as these do not resemble the 
 old work, the old work is to be made to resemble them. 
 
 St. Stephen's chapel at Westminster,' the lady- 
 chapel of St. Alban's, and the still more magnifi- 
 cent one at Ely, needs no written panegyric. 
 
 Almost every county of England possesses 
 notable monuments of this phase of art, whose 
 productiveness was equal to its merit. 
 
 Among its less-known works I will select for 
 remark Tideswell church, in the High Peak of 
 Derbyshire. This church, from its situation little 
 known, is, upon many accounts, a very typical ex- 
 ample. It is upon a fairly large scale, its nave being 
 twenty-six feet in the clear, and thirty-four feet to 
 the wall-plate. It has transepts of that subordinate 
 type which is pecuhar to England, and of which, 
 as we have seen, the origin is to be traced to anglo- 
 saxon, if not to still earlier times. 
 
 The chancel is in many ways remarkable. It is 
 of the same width as the nave, and is over sixty feet 
 in length. The side windows, which are of unusual 
 dignity, being upwards of fifteen feet from cill to 
 springing, are of three lights, and though quite 
 geometrical in their design, are square-headed. 
 
 The notion — which prevails very widely — that 
 square-headed windows are only to be found in 
 perpendicular work, is a mere blunder. There are 
 numerous instances of the employment of this form, 
 in the ecclesiastical architecture of much earlier 
 times. Thus, the chapel adjoining the Leicester 
 hospital, at Warwick, has square-headed windows 
 of the thirteenth century. The churches of Nun- 
 burnholme and of Driffield, in the east riding of 
 Yorkshire, and the chapel of Haddon hall, in 
 Derbyshire, are, like Tideswell chancel, examples 
 of the employment of this form by the architects 
 of the decorated period. 
 
 The east window is a composition of great mag- 
 nificence. It is completely "flowing "in design, 
 although in the treatment of its detail it exhibits — 
 as do the side windows of the chancel — a certain 
 reminiscence of the " sofiit-cusping " so character- 
 istic of the early geometrical period. This indi- 
 cation of an early date, together with others which 
 will be obvious to any architect upon the spot, 
 show it to be a work of transitional character, and 
 it is thus a very characteristic specimen of the 
 earliest phase of the flowing style. 
 
 The internal effect of the chancel is very noble. 
 The ascent to the sanctuary is managed with un- 
 usual dignity. The high-altar stood at a consider- 
 able distance in advance of the east wall,^ backed 
 by a solid and plain reredos wall, of the same early 
 date as the chancel itself, and extending from side 
 to side of it. This wall is pierced as usual by two 
 doorways, above each of which rises a niche of 
 excellent design. It is crowned by an horizontal 
 cornice, in the centre of which, upon the eastern 
 side of the wall, there is worked a small corbel. I 
 
 ^ Now known to us, excepting its crypt, only by draw- 
 ings. 
 
 i.' The high-altar of the chapel of King's College, Cam- 
 bridge, originally stood fourteen feet from the east wall. (Cf. 
 " King's College Chapel : Notes on its History and Present 
 Condition," by my friend Mr. T. J. P. Carter, p. 83.) 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 175 
 
 have little doubt but that this was designed to 
 carry the monstrance, in which the Eucharist is 
 exposed for veneration, and if so, it is an interest- 
 ing and (as far as I am aware) unique monument 
 of the exposition of the B. Sacrament, as practised 
 in our ancient churches. 
 
 I have already spoken of the magnificent reredos 
 walls, which form the most conspicuous adornment 
 of the sanctuary in so many of our great monastic 
 churches. We here find the same feature, though 
 of a simpler type, in a parochial chancel. Another 
 example of this plainer form of the great medieval 
 innovation, the reredos, is to be seen in the chancel 
 of Arundel church, in Sussex. Indications of simi- 
 lar walls having once existed are not uncommon in 
 our old churches.** 
 
 In the centre of the chancel is an altar tomb, 
 with which there is associated a very singular 
 story, which I will not pass over, though it does 
 not properly concern our subject. It commemo- 
 rates Sir Sampson Meverell, who died in 1462, and 
 of whom the epitaph states that he had been 
 " capitayne of diverse worshipfull places in France," 
 and that being in the service of the duke of Bed- 
 ford, " he was at xi great battayles in France within 
 the space of two yeares." The sides of the tomb 
 are open, and within it lies the figure of an emaciated 
 corpse, wrapped in its winding-sheet. The top is 
 formed by a slab of marble, into which are inlaid 
 at the four corners brass plates, bearing the symbols 
 of the evangelists. The centre is occupied by a 
 larger plate, oval in form, in which, within a label 
 bearing the inscription, " Ego sum alpha et omega 
 primus et novissimus, " is a representation of the 
 B. Trinity. 
 
 Now comes the interesting part of the history. 
 Upon the marble slab, thus inlaid, there are cut 
 the five crosses of a consecrated altar- mensa. That 
 these are of a later date than the brass inlays — that 
 the slab, in fact, is not a desecrated mensa worked 
 up into an altar- tomb — is clear both from the rude- 
 ness of their execution, and, — still more obviously, 
 — from the fact that the central cross does not 
 occupy the centre of the slab, as it would naturally 
 do. The centre is taken up, as I have already 
 described, by the representation in brass of the 
 Holy Trinity, and the cross which should naturally 
 have been engraved in the middle of the mensa is 
 placed, unsymmetrically, at a little distance from 
 the central inlaid plate. Thus the crosses, indica- 
 tive of consecration, were cut, after the erection of 
 the slab, as the cover of an altar-tomb. This is 
 a sufficiently curious fact, and becomes the more 
 so from the circumstance that upon this slab — half- 
 monument, half-altar — the parish clerk of the 
 church has been accustomed, from time out of 
 mind, to place every Sunday morning two brass 
 candlesticks.' 
 
 I have observed such in the chancels of Meopham, in 
 Kent, and Sawley, in Derbyshire. 
 
 ■ As curious an instance this of what physiologists term 
 " survival " as are the bells, that in so many village churches 
 still ring, morning, noon, and night, the a;y(7Kj-, which no 
 
 Now in this chancel lies buried Robert Pursglove, 
 who died, vicar of the parish, in 1579. This 
 worthy — like the more famous vicar of Bray, by 
 Maidenhead, in later times — knew how to accom- 
 modate himself to circumstances. He was prior 
 of Gisburn, in Cleveland, and provost of the 
 collegiate church of Rotherham, in Yorkshire, both 
 of which he resigned, in consideration of a pen- 
 sion, to Henry the Eighth's commissioners.^ In 
 Edward the Sixth's reign he became suffragan 
 bishop of Hull. Under queen Mary he became 
 again a catholic, and a protestant upon the acces- 
 sion of her sister. With an inconsistency, however, 
 truly english, while he accepted the living of 
 Tideswell, he declined to function as a bishop. 
 Upon his monument, however, he is figured in the 
 full episcopal habit, such as he may have worn in 
 Mary's reign, but certainly did not wear when first 
 raised to the episcopacy by Edward VI. He is 
 represented as vested in almuce, apparelled alb 
 and amice, stole, tunic, chasuble, gloves, and mitre, 
 and with the crozier resting upon his left shoulder. 
 The date of this efhgy is, as I have said, 1579, and 
 the protestant vicar, thus figured as a catholic 
 pontiff, lies beside the great captain ot a century 
 earlier, upon whose monumental slab are engraved, 
 so strangely, the insignia of a catholic altar. 
 
 May not the inconsistency of character to which 
 Pursglove's monument bears witness, afford an 
 explanation of the consecration crosses incised upon 
 the tomb of Meverell ? 
 
 The rubric of Elizabeth's prayer-book ordered 
 the priest to stand upon the north side of the table, 
 which at " the communion time " was to " stand in 
 the body of the church, or in the chancel." Now 
 here, in Tideswell chancel, Pursglove, half-protestant 
 as he was, and halfcatholic, found an altar-litce 
 tomb, placed just as the new rubric'' required, and 
 yet an erection of stone, capped by a marble slab, 
 such as were the catholic altars. If he was a 
 bishop, he was — jurisdiction apart — competent to 
 the consecration of an altar-slab. Is it not likely 
 enough that this half-hearted man, who would wear 
 the vestments of Catholicism while he was living 
 on a benefice which protestantism had appropriated, 
 
 one in the parish knows how to recite, even if he would ; 
 still chime at eight on Sunday morning for the last of the low- 
 masses (ot which all careful christians attended one before 
 assisting at the high-mass), though the eucharist may have 
 ceased to be celebrated at all on most Sundays ; and stOl ring, 
 after the finish of the " morning service, " ( which has taken the 
 place of the high-mass), for the "sluggard's mass" (messe des 
 paressciix), the one low-mass which was said, after the great 
 mass was over, as the last chance of those who, though lazy, 
 were not wholly lost to a sense of their duty. This is now 
 very commonly considered to be " the Sunday dinner bell." 
 Week by week the bells in many a village steeple enter an 
 unconscious and unregarded protest against what is going on 
 in the church below them. 
 
 j I owe him an especial and private grudge, because the 
 college of Rotherham had been founded only fifty years before 
 by a collateral ancestor of our family, Thomas Scot, alias 
 Rotherham, archbishop of York, and founder, besides, of the 
 university schools at Camf ridge. 
 
 k The rubric was first imposed by Edward VI., in 1552, 
 and was revived by Elizabeth's government in I559- 
 
176 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 may have gone through the catholic form of the 
 consecration of an altar over this slab, placed so 
 conveniently for one who had, nolens volens, to con- 
 form to the prescriptions of the new rubric with 
 respect to the position of the communion-table? 
 The candlesticks still placed upon the tomb of 
 Sir Sampson Meverell may be another relic of 
 Pursglove's convenient want of logic. 
 
 All this, however, is by the way : I have ventured 
 to introduce it as interesting in itself, and in order 
 to relieve the monotony of a purely antiquarian 
 investigation. 
 
 Tideswell church may serve as a typical illustra- 
 tion of what our fourteenth-century architects could 
 do. The later examples of the style are more 
 elegant, possibly, but not so able as its earlier 
 efforts. Varieties were invented during the course 
 of the century, but until its later years, no new 
 principle was evolved. 
 
 About the year 1380, however, commenced an 
 artistic movement — a transition full of interest — 
 which produced a distinctly new style, that which 
 is known as the perpendicular, or third-pointed, 
 manner. 
 
 It is customary to include under this term the 
 whole of the works executed between this date and 
 the overthrow of the gothic school in the sixteenth 
 century. But the later variety of the perpendicular 
 manner — popularly known as the " tudor " — differs 
 from its predecessor, in kind rather than in degree. 
 Not only new forms, but new principles of con- 
 struction were introduced, almost as radically 
 different from those which prevailed in the earlier 
 phase of the so-called perpendicular style, as these 
 were distinct from the methods of the preceding 
 flowing style. The later variety deserves, in fact, 
 the honour of a numerical distinction, and might 
 fairly be entitled the fourth-pointed. 
 
 It would have obtained this recognition, but for 
 the accident that the attention of the first mvestiga- 
 tors of the subject — Rickman and others — was 
 concentrated upon the form of the window- traceries, 
 to the neglect of other elements of at least an equal 
 importance. 
 
 The interest which in earlier times attached to the 
 design of tracery, began, about the middle of the 
 fifteenth century, to flag. As a consequence of this, 
 no new forms made their appearance, and the 
 architects of the fourth-pointed period were content 
 generally to continue the employment of those 
 which the third-pointed builders had invented. It 
 is this that has prevented the recognition of the 
 latest variety of the english gothic as, in reality, a 
 new style. 
 
 Gothic architecture has three main elements 
 which determine the character of the style as a 
 whole, and distinguish, by their modifications, its 
 several varieties— the arch, the vault, and the 
 window. The flamboyant of France is admittedly 
 a distinct style, yet while it revolutionised window- 
 tracery, it left the arch and the vaulting unchanged, 
 except in their detail. 
 
 The architects who originated the " tudor " 
 manner, although they left the window-traceries un- 
 changed, yet produced a perfectly new principle of 
 vault-building — the fan-groin, together with a novel 
 freedom in the treatment of the arch. 
 
 As arching and vaulting are more important 
 architectural elements than the mere pattern of 
 the window-opening, the "tudor" manner is even 
 more distinctly a new style, and stands more com- 
 pletely apart from that which preceded it, than 
 does the flamboyant of the continent. 
 
 It is important to observe that both the third, 
 and as I have ventured to term it, the fourth-pointed, 
 are peculiar to our own country. France, which 
 had originated both the gothic style and the 
 second-pointed manner, never advanced further 
 than this. It is to our own architects that the 
 credit belongs, of having worked out the full 
 capabilities of gothic architecture, and to them 
 alone. It was they who carried it out to its utmost 
 logical consequences, and who invented two dis- 
 tinct styles, unknown upon the continent, in which 
 the possibilities of the pointed manner were finally 
 exhausted. 
 
 We are now concerned with the history of the 
 production of the first of these, what is known as 
 the perpendicular. 
 
 The change, to which this new manner owed its 
 origin, was determined by two causes. Of these, the 
 first was distinctly a reaction. 
 
 Men had become, in the course of time, dis- 
 satisfied with the elegance which it had been, for a 
 century, the aim of the architects to attain. Every 
 refinement of curve, every subtlety of line, that 
 ingenuity could devise or taste adorn, had been 
 adopted and perfected, until there seemed no pos- 
 sibility of a further grace. 
 
 As a natural consequence the very sweetness of 
 the style began at length to cloy, and a reaction in 
 favour of a return toward severity set in. 
 
 Attention had been directed to the beauty of the 
 tracery-lines for so long that the subject, at last, had 
 become wearisome, and now, once again, the thoughts 
 of the architects became directed to the forms of the 
 tracery-openings. 
 
 It is interesting and curious to note this, the first, 
 check which the progress of gothic architecture had 
 received. 
 
 Up to the end of the fourteenth century the ad- 
 vance of the style had been uniform and unbroken. 
 Each step taken flowed on, as the logical result 
 and outcome of the previous ones — " bound each 
 to each by natural piety." We now find for the 
 first time in the history a check, a reaction. It had 
 come to be felt that the very luxury of the style was 
 becoming its bane. 
 
 The logical progress of the flowing style was now 
 complete, saving one step. It was left to the french 
 and german designers to take that step, and to 
 carry on the principle of continuity to its com- 
 plete outcome, in the luxuriant exaggeration of the 
 flamboyant, 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 177 
 
 The english architects, less logical, but with a 
 keener artistic sense, refused to follow them in 
 their extreme course. The result was a reac- 
 tion. 
 
 To this change the progress of the art of stained 
 glass again, — as had been the case under somewhat 
 similar circumstances in the preceding century, — 
 very materially contributed. 
 
 We have seen that the tendency, even of the early 
 advances of this art, was in the direction of giving 
 an increased prommence to the figure-work, over 
 the merely ornamental portions of the design. This 
 tendency became still more pronounced as the style 
 advanced. Now it will easily be seen that the forms 
 of flowing tracery are singularly unsuited to the 
 introduction of figures. 
 
 As long as the glass-artists were content to fill the 
 openings of the tracery with merely ornamental 
 work, glass-painting and architecture worked har- 
 moniously together, and nothing can exceed the 
 beauty of the results so attained. The stained 
 glass of the middle of the fourteenth century 
 forms, with the traceries which support it, a unity 
 of effect which is quite charming, and which leaves 
 nothing to be desired. 
 
 But art can never stand still. The glass-painters, 
 proud of their increasing skill in figure-drawing, 
 became discontented with the large proportion of 
 mere ornamental glazing which the flowing style 
 necessitated, and they felt desirous of introducing, 
 in the traceries themselves, the same abundance of 
 figure-work which they had learned so well to 
 employ in the lights below. 
 
 Figures demand simple upright openings. No- 
 thing was better for the purpose of the artists than 
 the panel-hke openings of the lights themselves, 
 and the idea not unnaturally occurred, to repeat 
 in the tracery, upon a smaller scale, the same 
 form of opening which was found so manageable 
 in the window-lights. 
 
 Any form of opening which has upright sides 
 is preferable, for the purposes of the glass-painter, 
 to those formed by flowing curves, and it is to 
 this fact that the origin of perpendicular tracery 
 may be, in a great part, ascribed. 
 
 It is to this, rather than to a desire of greater 
 continuity, that we may attribute that tendency 
 towards vertical lines which is seen in so many of 
 the later examples of the decorated window. 
 
 Thus two distinct causes combined, as is so often 
 the case, toward the same result. On the one hand, 
 the influence of the glass-painters : on the other, a 
 reaction from the excessive grace and sweetness 
 of the advanced style in favour of a treatment 
 of greater severity, and of one in which the win- 
 dow-openings should, again, be regarded as of 
 more importance than the lines of the tracery- 
 bars. 
 
 Thus was evolved one great element of the third- 
 pointed style. But there are others equally im- 
 portant which must not be overlooked. 
 
 Of these the first to be noted is the invention of 
 
 a new form of arch, that which is termed the four- 
 centred. 
 
 The origin of this peculiar, but most convenient, 
 form of arching is to be found in a refinement in- 
 troduced at an early period of the decorated style. 
 
 The monotony of curve of the pure pointed arch 
 began very soon to pall, and two modes were 
 devised for varying its crudeness. 
 
 The one was the introduction, towards its apex, 
 of a reversed curve, giving the form which is known 
 as the ogee. This is in itself a four-centred arch, 
 but two of the centres are placed above the apices 
 of the main curves. 
 
 The other variation introduced was more subtle. 
 The upper portion of the pointed arch was de- 
 scribed from centres placed below the springing 
 line. This refinement was at first introduced, only 
 at the extreme apex of the arch, and it gave a 
 peculiar sweetness to the line, while it tended to 
 strengthen the arch at its weakest point. In this 
 form it may be detected, as I think, in the crossing 
 arches of Tintern Abbey — a work of the latter half 
 of the thirteenth century. 
 
 All through the fourteenth century this system 
 was very commonly employed, and it gives a 
 characteristic delicacy of effect, which in modern 
 reproductions of the style is always wanting. The 
 ordinary four-centred arch of the perpendicular 
 period is nothing but an expansion of this idea. 
 
 In the earliest forms of the perpendicular, such 
 as we see it in the nave of Winchester Cathedral, 
 the arches are still acutely pointed, although their 
 four-centred character is very pronounced. What 
 are called depressed arches belong to the later phase 
 of the style. 
 
 In the original form of the four-centred arch 
 the lower curves would still, if continued, form 
 a pointed arch — though of a proportion very much 
 below the equilateral — and thus the relation of 
 the new curve to the simple pointed arch, from 
 which it took its origin, is not lost sight of. 
 
 But in the later varieties of the style the original 
 form is entirely obscured. The lower curves of the 
 depressed arch — which is characteristic of the 
 fourth-pointed manner — would sometimes form a 
 semi-circle if completed, but in many cases these 
 curves^ if produced, would not meet at all, their 
 radii being less than one quarter of the width of 
 the arch. 
 
 Even then the general form of the arch remains 
 decidedly pointed, as long as the centres of the 
 upper portion are kept well apart. It is only 
 when the centres of the upper curves are brought 
 very near to each other, or are described from 
 centres considerably below the springing line of the 
 arch, that the so-called "depressed form" is pro- 
 duced, and this is characteristic, generally speaking, 
 of that later variety of the perpendicular manner, 
 which constitutes, in fact, a distinct style. 
 
 In doorways, however, and suchlike openings 
 the obvious convenience of the " depressed arch " 
 led to its adoption at a very early date, as it had 
 led to the use of segmental arches for such posi- 
 
 A A 
 
178 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 tions in the thirteenth century, and of ogee arches in 
 the fourteenth. 
 
 What is to be condemned in the use of the four- 
 centred arch is not the idea itself, but the use of its 
 " depressed form" in positions — such as pier- arches 
 — in which, while no convenience is served, the 
 bearing strength of the arch is weakened, and 
 that continuity of arch and jamb, which is of the 
 essence of the later gothic, is interrupted by the 
 abruptness of the arch-curves. 
 
 Of the perfected perpendicular manner the ex- 
 amples are abundant and well-known. If I had to 
 name one as pre-eminent, where all are admirable, 
 I should be tempted perhaps to select the quire and 
 lady-chapel of Gloucester. Yet the romantic 
 beauty of this noble work is matched, though it 
 cannot be surpassed, by the stately elegance of the 
 eastern portion of York minster. I prefer, how- 
 ever, as an illustration, a less-known, but in its way 
 not less perfect work, the quire of Christchurch 
 priory (of Austin canons), in Hampshire. 
 
 This example is peculiarly interesting from its 
 retaining, in a fairly complete state, its ritual 
 fittings." I have already illustrated the noble altar- 
 piece which decorates its eastern extremity. The 
 quire retains its rood-loft, its stalls, with their con- 
 tinuous canopies, and the nobly-arranged ascent 
 of steps by which the sanctuary was gained. To 
 the north of what was once the high-altar is the 
 beautiful chantry-chapel erected by the mother of 
 cardinal Pole, Margaret, countess of Salisbury, 
 whose execution, when nearly seventy years of age, 
 disgraced even Henry VIII, 
 
 Thus our fifteenth century architects had intro- 
 duced innovations, of the most original character, in 
 two of the leading elements of all medieval archi- 
 tecture — the window and the arch. In the one 
 they had reverted to the earlier principle of regard- 
 ing the form of the opening, as of more importance 
 than the lines of the enclosing tracery bars. In the 
 other they had developed an entirely new form of 
 arch, more elastic even than the pointed. 
 
 Just as the pointed arch is superior to the round 
 arch, in the fact that, unlike its simple predecessor, it 
 can adapt itself — upon a fixed base — to any desired 
 height above a certain limit, so the four-centred arch 
 is superior to the pointed arch of two curves — in its 
 greater elasticity and in the greater range of artistic 
 expression which it most certainly affords. 
 
 The pointed arch, for example, cannot — except 
 by assuming the awkward segmental form — adapt 
 itself to the case in which the possible rise is only 
 one-half the span or less. From something a little 
 
 ' There occurs in the porch of Skirlaugh church , in the 
 east riding of York, an arch of the "depressed" form, whose 
 mouldings are thoroughly decorated in character, and which 
 was probably erected before the close of the fourteenth 
 century. 
 
 " In the view which I give the rood-beam, rood, and can- 
 tor's lectern are supplied in order to give a more complete 
 notion of a fifteenth-century collegiate quire. 
 
 higher than the proportions of the semicircle it is 
 perfectly free, but below this point it cannot fall. 
 
 The four-centred arch is absolutely unfettered. 
 Without losing anything of the freedom upwards of 
 the pointed curve, it can also depress itself to the 
 nearest possible approximation to the horizontal 
 line, and still retain its pointed contour. 
 
 Mathematically the ellipse is the freest of all the 
 curves which the architect can avail himself of, but 
 it is unfortunately always ungraceful. The four- 
 centred arch has all the freedom of the ellipse, 
 with an aesthetic refinement of line which mere 
 mathematical precision never can give. 
 
 The third, and perhaps the most influential of all 
 the elements of gothic architecture is the groined 
 vault. To the completeness of the innovation 
 effected by the architects of the perpendicular 
 period one thing was still wanting — a new treat- 
 ment of stone vaulting. 
 
 This the artists of the third-pointed gothic did 
 not attempt. They had revolutionised the window 
 traceries, but they left the vault alone. And if we 
 consider the advanced stage at which rib-groining 
 had arrived in the latter half of the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, it may well have seemed impossible that any 
 new principle should have remained to be dis- 
 covered. 
 
 The logic of the art demanded a new form of 
 groin as soon as the perpendicular reaction had set 
 in, but it was reserved for the inventors of the fourth- 
 pointed style to supply it. 
 
 Of this, the latest phase of our medieval architec- 
 ture, to which our attention is now to be directed, 
 the most important feature is undoubtedly the fan- 
 groin. 
 
 The history of this invention is exceedingly in- 
 teresting, and it is curiously parallel to the change 
 by which the luxurious flowing-tracery was converted 
 into the severe and rigid perpendicular. 
 
 The principles of rib-groining, established by the 
 architects of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, 
 had remained virtually unchanged during the pro- 
 gress of the decorated style. 
 
 In France these principles were never abandoned, 
 and they continued in that country, to the very end 
 of the style, unchanged. The english architects, 
 however, had thrown themselves into the problem 
 of vaulting with a thoroughness which the french 
 builders never attained. 
 
 One, comparatively small, difference between the 
 methods of the two nations is significant of the 
 superior grasp which our own architects had got of 
 the real heart of the matter. Given vault-ribs, our 
 architects saw that the practically best mode of 
 constructing the stone vaults, lying between the ribs, 
 was to place the beds of the filling-in at right angles 
 to a centre line drawn equi-distant from each of 
 the diverging ribs. By this means the weight of 
 the stone spandrils was made to bear equally upon 
 each of the ribs. 
 
 At this obvious improvement the French never, 
 to the latest period of gothic architecture, arrived. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 179 
 
 They continued to construct their vaults with 
 courses parallel to the ridge line, just as had been 
 done by the Romans and by the romanesque 
 architects, before rib-groining had been invented. 
 They never properly realized — as our architects 
 had done at a very early period of the style 
 — the complete revolution in the principles of the 
 construction of vaults which the introduction of 
 ribs had effected. 
 
 We showed ourselves, in this matter, more logical 
 and more systematic than the French. 
 
 Owing to this unreasonable adherence to the 
 old manner of constructing vaults, the french archi- 
 tects never properly developed the system of rib- 
 groining. 
 
 To the end of the middle ages they continued 
 to use only transverse, and diagonal ribs, — the old 
 quadripartite arrangement. 
 
 But in England we had begun very early to intro- 
 duce ribs, intermediate between the diagonals and 
 the transverse, or wall-rib. From this followed, of 
 necessity, the use of a ridge rib — a feature almost 
 never seen in french work, but most common in 
 England, and a necessary condition of the use of 
 interviediaie ribs, which would otherwise have no- 
 thing upon which to abut." 
 
 In admitting these intermediate ribs, admission 
 was given, virtually, to a new principle. 
 
 These intermediates answered no practical pur- 
 pose : they did not, like the diagonal rib, serve to 
 strengthen the lines of intersection of the vault : they 
 were brought in simply for artistic effect. 
 
 This step having been taken, the notion at once 
 occurred to break up the surfaces of the vault still 
 more by the introduction of cross-ribs (termed 
 Hemes). These — with the bosses which occupied 
 the points of their contact and intersection with the 
 main ribs — formed a perfect network of beautifully 
 designed forms, and carried out, upon the surface of 
 the vaults, that elegance of line and beauty of in- 
 tricacy, which was exhibited at the same time in 
 the window traceries, so characteristic of the flowing 
 style." 
 
 In the developement of rib-groining, as in most 
 of the steps of the later varieties of gothic, the 
 English showed a thoroughness, a logical consist- 
 ency, and an artistic power, which leaves the French 
 quite behind. 
 
 From the very fact that they had first — and 
 
 " The gradual introduction of ridge and intermediate ribs 
 may be studied with advantage at Westminster abbey-church. 
 Here the aisles and chapels of the apse, and also the aisles 
 of the transepts — the portions first vaulted in — have no ridge- 
 ribs. The eastern limb and the transepts have longitudinal 
 ridge-ribs only, while the vaulting over the five bays of the 
 quire proper has, in addition to these, transverse ridge-ribs 
 and intermediates also. The latter is known to be the work 
 of Edward I. 
 
 ° Bosses are a necessity of /zVrw^-vaulting, on this account, 
 that it is mathematically impossible for the mouldings of the 
 intersecting ribs of such a vault to form true intersections, 
 or— as they are termed — mitres. The perfect nebula of 
 bosses to be admired in the vaults of Gloucester or of Nor- 
 wich, is — not a mere decorative enrichment — but a necessity 
 imposed by the adoption of a constructional principle. 
 
 indeed alone — expanded the capabilities of the rib- 
 groininj. , the English were the first — and indeed the 
 only — architects of the middle ages, who advanced 
 beyond it. 
 
 They, alone of all the architectural schools of 
 Europe, produced, out of the gothic groin, an 
 entirely new form of vaulting. 
 
 It is interesting to observe that the very same 
 principle which determined the conversion of the 
 flowing tracery into the perpendicular, determined 
 also, later on, the developement of fan-vaulting out 
 of the Heme groining of the fourteenth century. 
 
 We have seen that one of the elements in that 
 change of architectural view, by which romanesque 
 became converted into pointed architecture, was the 
 transference of the attention of the architects, from 
 the surfaces of the vault, to the lines given by the 
 intersection of the groins. The process was now 
 to be reversed. 
 
 For nearly two centuries architects had been 
 looking to the ribs, and caring nothing for the sur- 
 faces. They had multiplied ribs in every direc- 
 tion, until no further intricacy remained to be 
 achieved. But in the height of the elaboration of 
 this idea, the very excess to which it was being 
 pushed effected — by the strangest reaction — its own 
 overthrow. 
 
 The ribs of the groining had become multiplied 
 until almost no surface of the vault was left, when 
 — all at once — it was felt that the ribs themselves 
 suggested a surface, and that, one of a wholly 
 new contour. 
 
 Thus the very multiplicity of the ribs came to 
 suggest, to the mind of the architects, that atten- 
 tion to the surface of the vault, which for two cen- 
 turies had been in abeyance. 
 
 This movement — like that which produced the 
 new form of tracery — although in principle a re- 
 action towards the old, was in reality the discovery 
 of the new. 
 
 Perpendicular tracery is as unlike the plate- 
 tracery of the early thirteenth century, as fan- 
 vaulting is unlike the unribbed romanesque groin. 
 Yet the very early and the very late form of tracery 
 have in common the great principle of regarding 
 the form of the piercing, rather than the lines of 
 the tracery bar : and the early and late forms of 
 vaulting, similarly, have this in common, that the 
 contour of the vault surface is the governing 
 element in the design of both. 
 
 To the casual observer it may seem that a fan- 
 vault, such as that of King's College chapel, does 
 not differ essentially from one of the elaborate 
 groinings of the fourteenth century, where interme- 
 diate and lierne ribs are multiplied till almost no 
 surface is left. But the resemblance between the 
 two is in reality quite superficial, although^ as a 
 matter of fact, the one grew out of the other. 
 
 The proper way to realise a fan-groin is, to view 
 it, not as a system of ribs, but as an arrangement 
 of sunk panels or coffers. The ribs are such, only 
 in appearance. You could not construct a four- 
 
i8o 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 teenth century groining without ribs, but you could 
 perfectly well build a fan-vault, unrelieved by any 
 tracery. The apparent ribs which are applied upon 
 the surface of a fan-vault are merely decorative, 
 and serve no practical purpose whatever. The vault 
 would be equally strong in construction, and equally 
 perfect mathematically, if all the ribs and traceries 
 on it — instead of being sunk out of the solid stone 
 - — were merely painted upon it, like the famous 
 ceiling of Milan Cathedral. 
 
 Of all the possible forms of groining, the fan- 
 vault is the most mathematical, and the most 
 elastic. Every curve in it may be as correct in 
 execution, as it is in the theory, and it is capable of 
 being applied to any plan, however irregular. 
 
 Fan-vaulting may be regarded as the converse 
 of the dome : a dome is described, of course, by 
 the revolution of a circular curve upon its vertical 
 radius : the fan-vault is formed by a circular curve 
 revolved upon its vertical tangent. Four such 
 curves are, of course, required to form a cell of 
 quadrangular plan. 
 
 It is quite possible to construct such a groin 
 without the use of the four-centred arch. The 
 diagonal section of the vault may be a semicircle 
 or an obtusely-pointed arch of two curves. But in 
 practice the four-centred arch is much more con- 
 venient, since it leaves the architect free to design 
 his wall-arches in any proportion that he may 
 please, and, at the same time, to raise the centre of 
 the vault at his pleasure, little or much above the 
 crowns of the enclosing arches. 
 
 The invention of this form of groin was virtually 
 the creation of a new style of architecture, and 
 this invention must have been the work of one man 
 of genius. The thought by which, out of the 
 tangled multiplicity of the Heme vault, a new, 
 simple, coldly mathematical idea was arrived at — 
 an idea by which there was substituted, for a vault 
 requiring any possible number of ribs, one which is, 
 essentially, ribless — by which, out of the extrava- 
 gant line-iness of the fourteenth-century groining 
 was produced, as in some scenic transformation, a 
 vault as line-less (in its conception) as the dome — 
 must have been the thought of some one human 
 brain. 
 
 The elaboration, into a many-sided perfection, of 
 a new and pregnant idea, is the work of many 
 minds, — of a generation, — of a people, — but the 
 production of a new simplicity out of an existing 
 multiplicity is the prerogative of individual genius. 
 
 It is impossible to ascertain who was the inventor 
 of the fan-vault, owing to the uncertainty which 
 prevails as to the precise date of its introduction. 
 
 The cloisters at Gloucester are commonly in- 
 stanced as the earliest known example,P and these 
 are of the beginning of the fifteenth century, but 
 it is quite clear to my mind that the groins them- 
 selves are much later than the wall-ribs and 
 
 P As by my father, upon the authority of professor Willis, 
 in his " Lectures," ii., p. 219. 
 
 springers. These are designed, as it appears to 
 me, for a Heme vault. Upon their completion 
 the cloister — as was the constant practice during 
 the middle ages — was roofed in, and the vault itself 
 was not executed, as I believe, till many years 
 later, and then upon a principle unknown when 
 the work was commenced.'' 
 
 Perhaps the earliest example of this new form of 
 groining, of which the date, within certain limits, is 
 known, is the chapel, once of St. Benedict, but after- 
 wards that of our Lady, in Canterbury cathedral. 
 
 It is recorded, in the obituary records, that prior 
 Goldston (1449-1468) "built, on the north side of 
 the church, a chapel in honour of the blessed 
 Virgin Mary, in which he was buried. He com- 
 pletely finished this chapel with a stone vault of a 
 most artificial construction."' 
 
 The groining thus described is still in existence, 
 and is of the fan-vaulted type. 
 
 We possess, however, in " the great church of 
 the college royal of St. Mary and St. Nicholas" 
 at Cambridge, a very conspicuous example of the 
 innovation which produced, what I have termed, 
 the fourth-pointed style of gothic architecture; 
 
 The fan-vault of this church is certainly not the 
 earliest example of the new manner. On the con- 
 trary, it is known to have been ordered as late as 
 151 2, but it is not only the grandest and the purest 
 specimen of the fan-vault that we possess, but it is 
 one of which we are able to fix with exactness the 
 date, not only of its execution, but — what is of more 
 importance — of its design. 
 
 This noble church is too well known to need de- 
 scription, but there are several points about the 
 building and its history to which I propose to refer, 
 for this reason, that they serve to illustrate the in- 
 vention of the fourth-pointed style. 
 
 The foundation-stone was laid by Henry VI. in 
 person upon St. James' day (July 25), 1446,^ but 
 the high-altar was not put up until 1545, the last 
 year of Henry VIII.'s reign.' 
 
 The work was not, however, continued uninter- 
 ruptedly all these years. There are three distinct 
 periods during which the work was actively pressed 
 forward, separated by long intervals during which 
 little or nothing was done. 
 
 1 We must remember that the springers of vaults were al- 
 ways built " in block," and were worked into the required 
 forms upon the completion of the groining, often many years 
 subsequent to their erection. 
 
 ■• Willis's " Canterbury," p. 123. 
 
 s It was laid beneath the spot intended for the high-altar. 
 A contemporary epigram states :— 
 
 " Altaris petram quam rex superedificavit 
 Henricus sextus his sacrificando dicavit. 
 In festo santi Jacobi sanctam stabilivit 
 
 Hie unctam petram regia sacra manus. 
 Ex orientali medio si bis septem peditimtim 
 
 Mensurare velis invenies lapidem." 
 
 (Cf. Carter's " King's College Chapel," p. 9.) 
 
 Several examples of medieval foundation-stones are figured 
 in Lenoir, " Archit. Monast.," i., pp. 40-44. 
 
 « Carter's " King's College Chapel," p. 52. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 i8i 
 
 For sixteen years (1446 to 1462) from the com- 
 mencement the works went on uninterruptedly, 
 but in the latter year, as a consequence of the 
 accession of Edward IV., they came to a stop from 
 want of funds. 
 
 In 1480, after an interval of eighteen years, they 
 were resumed and with some vigour, for in 1484 
 the eastern portion of the church was sufficiently 
 advanced to be used for service. 
 
 Thereupon there ensued another long period (of 
 twenty-four years) during which nothing was done. 
 In 1508 Henry VII., having it in contemplation to 
 obtain from the pope (Julius II.) the canonization 
 of his pious uncle, bethought him of the great work 
 of Henry VI. ^ still unfinished, and determined upon 
 its completion. This was the more natural, since 
 he had himself been a scholar of the sister college 
 at Eton." 
 
 Under his patronage and that of his son, the 
 church was at length brought to the perfection in 
 which we now see it. There were thus three 
 periods of activity (separated by intervals of some 
 twenty years) — viz., 1446 — 1462, 1480 — 1484, and 
 1508—1545. 
 
 To which of these periods is the design of the 
 great vault to be attributed ? I believe it to be 
 possible to ascertain this with certainty, and the 
 fact has its value, in relation to the general history 
 of the style. 
 
 It can be proved, as I propose to show, that the 
 original design did not contemplate a fan-vault. 
 More than this, it may be further shown what 
 fashion of groin was, at the first, intended. 
 
 The works executed between 1446 and 1462 are 
 readily distinguishable from those of the later 
 builders by the use in them of the magnesian lime- 
 stone from the Thesdale and Huddleston quarries. 
 By the application of this test we ascertain that, 
 at the cessation of the works in 1462, the building 
 had been carried up as far as the transoms of the 
 side-windows for five bays from the east end, while 
 at the west end it stood but some four or five feet 
 out of the ground." 
 
 Now, in the quire, the vaulting-shafts rest upon 
 corbels at the transom-level, but in the ante-chapel, 
 
 " See Sandford's " Genealogical History," p. 433. Much 
 interesting information concerning the projected canonization 
 will be found in Mr. Carter's work, pp. 20, 21. Bacon, in his 
 "History of England" (i. 634), says that the motive of the 
 pope's refusal was a wish to preserve a distinction between 
 saints and innocents. 
 
 The evidence of the stone employed is confirmed by 
 these two points : I. The angel corlsels of the quire which 
 range with the transoms are alike, and of the first date, until 
 we come to the sixth pier (always numbering from the east), 
 where they are of much larger size and of quite a different 
 design. These two corbels clearly belong to the second 
 period (1480 — 1484). 2. When the scaffolding was struck, 
 upon the cessation of the works in 1462, the holes which had 
 been left in the ashlar for the putlogs were made good (at 
 any rate in the interior). When, therefore, the operations 
 recommenced, in 1480, it became necessary either to draw 
 these stones, or, as in practice would be found much simpler, 
 to cut new ones. Accordingly, in the interior of the quire 
 we may trace the putlock-holes thus formed by the second 
 architect in the ashlar-work erected by his predecessor, as 
 
 westward from the seventh pier, they start from the 
 floor-line." 
 
 The corbels of the quire, which belong to the 
 work of the first period, give, of necessity, no 
 indication of the form of vault in contemplation 
 when they were designed ; but in the shafts and 
 bases of the ante-chapel we possess evidence of a 
 most conclusive character. 
 
 Any one who will carry up his eye from the bases 
 of these shafts to the springing of the great vault 
 will perceive at once that the section of the shaft 
 does not correspond with the plan of the vault- 
 springers. There is a sort of cripple here. The 
 shaft is, in fact, set out with seven members, while 
 the design of the vault-plan requires but five. 
 Thus two members of the pier have nothing to do, 
 and disappear somewhat clumsily in the capital.'' 
 
 Now the section of these shafts was imposed by 
 the first architect, and, as it does not agree with 
 the requirement of a fan-groin, it is certain that a 
 fan-groin was not contemplated by him. 
 
 This being made clear, two questions arise : what 
 sort of vault did he contemplate ? and at what date 
 was it decided to depart from the original design 
 in favour of the new form of vaulting which was 
 ultimately adopted? To both these questions a 
 perfectly clear answer may be given. 
 
 It is evident from the accuracy and minuteness 
 of the directions given by the founder in his will 
 (preserved in the college muniment room),'' that 
 complete working plans had been prepared by the 
 original architect. But beyond the general in- 
 struction that the building was to be " van ted and 
 charerofed," which might apply to any form of 
 stone groining,^ we have no evidence, but such 
 as the building itself supplies, as to the nature of 
 the vault as originally designed. 
 
 The evidence, however, of the work itself is 
 quite sufficient to decide this point, and more than 
 this, it is possible to recover with some degree of 
 accuracy the general distribution of the building 
 as it was plotted down by its first originator. 
 
 Let us consider the position of the architect to 
 whom this great work was entrusted. He was com- 
 missioned to design a chapel, of magnificence 
 worthy of a royal foundation, and upon a scale 
 
 far up as the window-transoms. Above this level he would 
 naturally form the holes by simply leaving out a stone here 
 and there, as had been done by the earlier builders, and thus 
 above this level no such cuttings are to be traced. 
 
 " The bases of these vaulting-shafts of the ante-chapel are 
 all of the Yorkshire stone, while the enriched curtain-walls 
 between them, obviously of a much later date, are of Weldon 
 stone. 
 
 * I have endeavoured to make this clear in the diagram. 
 The plans have been very carefully plotted down for me by 
 Mr. Thomas Godfrey. I may also refer to the very accurate 
 drawings of Mr. F. Mackenzie, published (in 1840) by Weale. 
 Of course, the greater portion of the length of these shaftings 
 belongs to a later date, but the bases and lower portions 
 being already fixed, the section could not well be changed 
 until the level of the capitals was reached. 
 
 y Cf. pp. 11-13 of Mr. Carter's work. The will is dated 
 from Eton, March 12th, 1448. 
 
 * The term charerofed appears to be derived from chare, 
 a tilted wagon. 
 
l82 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 which to this day is unrivalled by the chapel of 
 any lesser familia than that of the roman Pontiff.''* 
 
 Now where would he most naturally look for 
 his model ? Surely to that chapel, the largest and 
 the most splendid hitherto erected, that glory of 
 England, only sixteen miles distant from Cam- 
 bridge, the chapel of the Blessed Virgin at Ely.'''' 
 
 As we have already seen, the groin, which is in- 
 dicated by the plan of the vaulting shafts of the 
 ante- chapel, is not the fan- vault which, with some 
 awkwardness, they have been compelled to bear. 
 Their sections, and the peculiar distribution of their 
 bases, unmistakably indicate a ribbed vault, with 
 transverse, diagonal, and intermediate ribs." Now, 
 if we apply to the plan of these shaftings at Cam- 
 bridge the plan of the vaulting at Ely, as is done 
 in ray diagram — we find the two to tally precisely. 
 Each member of the pier has its corresponding rib, 
 in the direction of the sweep of which each member 
 of the base is laid down. 
 
 This might serve as proof sufficient, but it is not 
 all. There exist in the church two lierne- groins of 
 the work of the first period, those, namely, of the 
 two easternmost chapels of the north range, and 
 these are identical in principle with the great vault 
 at Ely, and with the plan which is indicated by the 
 distribution of the ante-chapel bases. 
 
 We know then that the first designer of the 
 church did employ lierne, and not fan-vaulting, 
 even in the small areas of the chapels,'''' and that 
 these liernes resemble, not the later form — such as 
 we may observe in the nave of Winchester Cathe- 
 dral — but the earlier manner which is exhibited 
 at Ely. There can therefore, as I conceive, be no 
 doubt that this great chapel was designed to be 
 " chare-roofed " with such a lierne- vault — it is prac- 
 tically a welsh-groin — as adorns the next grandest 
 chapel in England, only sixteen miles distant. 
 
 The Lady-chapel at Ely offered then the type 
 upon which the chapel of the King's College was 
 modelled, and this will appear natural enough 
 when we observe that it was designed, in all proba- 
 bility, by an Ely man. 
 
 The design has been sometimes attributed to 
 Nicholas Close, one of the six original fellows of 
 
 The Sistine chapel is of about the same height ; it is 
 some few feet wider, but its length is less than half that of 
 the Cambridge masterpiece. The Lady-chapel at Ely, of 
 which more anon, with about the same width, has but a 
 third of the length of the king's chapel. The templars' 
 chapel at Temple Balsal (in Warwickshire), the Sainte Cha- 
 pelle at Paris, the royal chapel of St. Stephen at West- 
 minster, and that of St. Etheldreda in Holboni, have but 
 two-thirds of its span, and only one-third of its length. 
 
 Of this, the loundation-stone was laid by Alan of Wal- 
 singham when sub-prior, in 1 32 1. 
 
 Thus, in the diagram the shaft A was intended to carry 
 the transverse rib. The base of B, set so curiously awry, 
 points exactly at the central point of the whole bay, to which 
 the diagonal rib would necessarily be carried : the shaft C has 
 no member to carry in the existing vault, but it would be 
 required in a ribbed vault for the intermediate rib, and the 
 abnormal position of its base is at once explained. It faces 
 exactly in the direction of such an intermediate. 
 
 dd Where, as we shall see, the later architects naturally 
 adopted fan vaults. 
 
 the College, who was undoubtedly the first " sur- 
 veyor " of the new work. But he was a divine, not 
 an architect. He was already an elderly man, and 
 four years later (in 1450) became bishop of Car- 
 lisle, from which see he was afterwards translated 
 to Lichfield. It is incredible that a priest, of such 
 eminence in his calling as to rise to the episcopal 
 dignity, should have been also a practical architect. 
 The study of a life is requisite to excellence in 
 either theology or architecture, and I view with 
 extreme suspicion every story of a cleric who 
 combined material and spiritual edification. 
 
 That many of the greatest ecclesiastics of the 
 middle ages took a very keen interest in the pro- 
 gress of the architectural art, and were fully com- 
 petent to criticise and suggest, there is no sort 
 of doubt, but that they knew much more about the 
 practical designing and execution of buildings than 
 their successors of the present day, I do not for a 
 moment believe. 
 
 The explanation of the importance of a position 
 such as that to which Close, and after him provost 
 Wodelarke, was appointed, is to be found in the 
 different manner in which, as compared with our 
 own practice, not merely building, but all great 
 operations were carried out by our ancestors. At 
 the present day we do everything by means of 
 committees. From the government of the country 
 by what is but a committee of a council, down to 
 the restoration of a village church, or the manage- 
 ment of a rustic school, this curious system prevails. 
 It would seem as if we had, in our own opinion, 
 dwindled down to a sartorial feebleness, and that it 
 takes some nine of us to make a man. For what a 
 numerous committee is now hardly equal, one man 
 was found competent in more vigorous days. 
 
 Nicholas Close, and his successors, did the work 
 which would now tax the concentrated abilities of a 
 posse of fellows, and perhaps with as great efficiency. 
 
 We shall form a correct notion of the position of 
 such a " surveyor " in medieval times if we conceive 
 of one of them, as concentrating in himself the talent 
 and the labours of a general building committee, 
 with a whole group of dependent sub-committees. 
 Hence the unique importance of such overseers, an 
 importance now, customarily, put into a commis- 
 sion of many. 
 
 The subdivision of labour, as Mr. Ruskin has 
 well remarked, necessitates a partition of the man. 
 In the middle ages this stage had not been reached. 
 Personal authority, under personal responsibility, 
 was recognised as the best security for the good 
 conduct of affairs ; and a generous confidence was 
 reposed in those men of talent and of genius, whom 
 it is now the aim of a domineering commonplace 
 to hamper to the utmost by associating with them 
 a quorum of fools. 
 
 It is not, therefore, " M'. Nic'. Closse " — as he is 
 termed in the weekly account-book, of which a frag- 
 ment has been discovered among the college 
 muniments''* — who is to be credited with the first 
 
 Cf. p. H of Mr. Carter's book. 
 
PLATF XXXV! 
 
 FIG. I. 
 
 FiG.n 
 
 FiG.nr. 
 
 KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 FIG. I. CROSS-SECTION OF THE EXISTING BUILDING. 
 
 FIG. II. CROSS-SECTION AS ORIGINALLY DESIGNED [CONJECTURAL]. 
 
 FIG. III. PLAN OF THE VAULTING SHAFTS. 
 
 FIG. IV. DIAGRAM OF THE EXISTING FAN-VAULTING. 
 
 FIG. V. DIAGRAM OF THE VAULTING AS ORIGINALLY DESIGNED [CONJECTURAL]. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 183 
 
 conception of this great work, but Reginald Ely, who, 
 as early as 1443, was appointed by a patent of 
 Henry VI., "to press masons, carpenters, and other 
 workmen," for the new building. He continued to 
 act as architect until the works came to a standstill 
 in 1462, and it is he, doubtless, to whom belongs 
 the honour of having planned this noble building.*^ 
 
 The next question that arises is, at what date was 
 the original design of a lieme-vault abandoned in 
 favour of a fan-groining ? The answer to this is 
 clear enough : it was upon the resumption of the 
 works in 1480. As the vaulting-shafts of the ante- 
 chapel are conclusive evidence of the mode of 
 groining originally contemplated, so the vaulting- 
 shafts of the quire indicate the form of the groining 
 which the architect of 1480 had decided upon. 
 
 We have seen that the vault-shafts of the ante- 
 chapel, having been designed to carry a lierne- 
 vault, do not correspond in their members with the 
 springer of the fan-vault above them, from which 
 there results a certain " cripple," which is masked, 
 as best may be, in their capitals. But the vault- 
 shafts of the quire are of a different section, and 
 agree perfectly with the requirement of the existing 
 groin. It is therefore clear that the fan-vault had 
 been decided upon when they were planned. 
 
 Now, as we have seen, the work of the first period 
 had been brought up to the level of the transoms 
 of the windows in the quire, and included, as would 
 appear, the corbels of the vaulting-shafts which in 
 this part of the church commence at this level. 
 These corbels were, no doubt, designed to carry 
 shafts of seven members, like those of the ante- 
 chapel, but as a matter of fact the shafts which they 
 do carry are, unlike those of the ante-chapel, of 
 five members only, and agree perfectly with the 
 springers of the fan-vault which rests upon them. 
 As clearly, then, as a lierne-vault was contemplated 
 when the ante-chapel shafts were planned (before 
 1462), so clearly, when these quire-shafts were 
 designed (in 1480), the new form of "charerofing" 
 had been decided upon.'^*^ 
 
 Some four years earHer than this, John Wolrich, 
 whose name occurs in the account-book of 1443 
 among the ordinary masons, had become the 
 master-mason of the works,'''' and it is to him that we 
 may pretty safely attribute that entire modification 
 of the original design which resulted in the build- 
 ing we now see. 
 
 There was involved in this alteration more than 
 
 ^ I once heard a well-informed archaeologist observe 
 that it was the misfortune of England in the middle ages, 
 that while it had masons, it had, unlike France, no architects. 
 We were standing in a window-recess in the first court of 
 King's college. I made him no answer, but pointed to the 
 chapel which stretched its majestic length along the opposite 
 side of the quadrangle. 
 
 The quire-corbels of the five eastern piers belong to the 
 first period, those of the sixth piers to the second period. 
 All the vault-shafts west of these piers start from the floor, 
 and belong, in execution partly, and in their design wholly, to 
 the first period. 
 
 He is so called, says Mr. Carter, in a document dated 
 17 Aug., 1476, preserved at Caius College (p. 11), 
 
 merely a change in the form of the great vault, al- 
 though this was a sufficiently bold innovation upon 
 the plans which the founder had approved. Not 
 only was the adoption of a novel mode of construct- 
 ing the vault now determined upon, but its cross- 
 section was brought down from that of a pointed 
 arch, with a rise of nearly thirty feet, to a four- 
 centred contour, rising little more than twenty feet. 
 
 Now the principle ot proportioning already 
 adopted in the building (which appears to be that ol 
 an isosceles triangle, having a base of eleven, with 
 an altitude of seven)" would have been sacrificed 
 by such a reduction in height, which, moreover, 
 the unusual length of the church could ill aflord. 
 
 The architect decided, therefore, not to lower the 
 level of his ridge -rib, but to raise that of the spring 
 of his vault some six feet above the line at which 
 his predecessor had fixed it. By this alteration he 
 was enabled to obtain that depressed cross-section 
 of vault which was then the new fashion in archi- 
 tecture, while still adhering to the system of pro- 
 portionment of the original designer. 
 
 By this change in the level of the spring of the 
 vault, the whole character of the design of the in- 
 terior (and to a certain extent of the exterior also) 
 was changed. John Wolrich (in 1480) determined, 
 as a matter of fact, to set aside the original plan, 
 and he made what was in reality a new design. 
 Entirely new it could not be, for the building was 
 already completed up to the level of the transoms 
 in the quire, and to some lesser height in the ante- 
 church. He had, therefore, like more important 
 persons, to accept accomplished facts, and while 
 rejecting the policy of his predecessor, to adopt its 
 results as the starting-point of his own. 
 
 Thus, while he raised the spring of his vault, he 
 could not raise the spring of the side-windows, 
 since this was virtually determined by that of the 
 transoms, which was already fixed. Hence arose 
 that remarkable, and, as far as I am aware, unique 
 feature of the internal design, the eccentricity of wall- 
 
 " This triangle is a reduplication of the proportional right- 
 angled triangle, whose base is to the vertical side as 11-14. 
 These numbers are not exact, as the sides of such a triangle 
 are in reality incommensurate, but they are sufficiently nearly 
 so for all practical purposes. The isosceles triangle of 1 1-7, 
 which is the double of this right-angled triangle, constitutes 
 the cross section of the great pyramid ot Jeezeh. It may be 
 detected, as the principle of the proportionment of many of 
 the finest buildings of the middle ages, as, for example, the 
 cathedrals of Paris and of Amiens, and in our own country 
 Tintern, Howden, the quire of Gloucester, and the Beau- 
 champ chapel at Warwick. It is obvious that in actual 
 working, a triangle which is defined by its altitude is far 
 more handy than one which (like the equilateral) is defined 
 by the length of its sides. I may here refer the mathematical 
 reader to a valuable paoer, entitled "The Great Pyramid 
 Triangle," by Mr. John S. Lee. 
 
 jj The spring ot the side-windows, which is that of the 
 great vault as originally intended, is given by two 11-7 tri- 
 angles described upon the clear width of the interior as 
 a base. A third determines the apex of the existing vault, 
 as doubtless of that originally contemplated. The early plan 
 has this advantage, in point of principle, over the later, that 
 both crown and spring of vault are fixed by a rule of propor- 
 tion in the former, while in the latter the ridge alone is so 
 determined, and the level of the springing is an arbitrary one. 
 
I84 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 rib and window-arch, which, though both of pretty 
 much the same sweep, have their springing at different 
 levels. The spandril-form, resulting from such a dis- 
 tribution, is the very tritone of gothic architecture, 
 but its discord is here resolved into harmony by the 
 arrangement of the wall-panelling, in a manner 
 which gives one a very high idea of Wolrich's 
 ability as an architect.'''' 
 
 To accomplish this feat he had, however, to 
 make a certain sacrifice of exterior effect. 
 
 The side-windows, as originally designed, had 
 their springing-line determined by the altitude of 
 four 1 1-7 triangles, of which the clear width of the 
 bay is the base," and it was, no doubt, intended 
 that the rise of their arch should be coincident with 
 the apex of a fifth. The window-heads would 
 thus have been of a proportion in accordance with 
 the character of the earlier perpendicular manner, 
 and with the Reginald's model at Ely. But such 
 a curve would have been hopelessly discordant 
 with the line of the wall-rib of Wolrich's fan-vault, 
 and no human ingenuity could have harmonised 
 the two. He was therefore compelled to lower the 
 pitch of the window-arches so as to accord with the 
 low curves of his wall-ribs, and of the cross-section 
 adopted for the great vault. 
 
 By doing so he brought his interior into perfect 
 unison, but at the same time he seriously compro- 
 mised his external elevation. Much of the heaviness 
 of effect — of which every one is sensible, in studying 
 the exterior of this fine building — is due to the low 
 pitch of the window-arches, which was rendered 
 imperative by the alteration in the design of the 
 great vault, and to the amount of wall-space above 
 the windows which resulted, necessarily, from this 
 change. The architect himself was conscious of this 
 inevitable defect, and did his best to mitigate it by 
 the introduction of a string-course and of piercings, 
 three in each bay, suggested, no doubt, by the some- 
 what similar openings to be seen in the Ely chapel.""" 
 But no ingenuity could conceal the discordance 
 which was the result of a change in the design 
 itself] and in looking at the exterior of the building 
 one can never get over the impression that the win- 
 dows are placed too low for the height of the walls. 
 
 The great aim of Wolrich was to complete a 
 portion of the church so far as was necessary to 
 enable it to be used for the divine service. He 
 was able to carry up to the wall-plate the five 
 eastern bays, and to cover in so much of the build- 
 ing with a roof of oak, the timber for which was 
 
 '''' The great space which intervenes between the window- 
 heads and the wall-ribs is one of the peculiarities of this 
 church, which strikes every architect. The difficulty arising 
 from it is overcome in a masterly manner, but I am not 
 aware that it has hitherto occurred to any one to inquire 
 how the difficulty itself arose. 
 
 " As the cross-section of the church is forty-four feet, and 
 the clear width of the bay twenty-two, two 11 -7 triangles 
 described upon the larger base are, of course, equivalent to 
 four described upon the smaller. 
 
 ™™ At Ely there are two in each bay, and they are designed 
 as quatrefoils inscribed within a circle ; at King's chapel there 
 are three to each severey, and they consist of quatrefoils 
 inscribed in a square. 
 
 presented by the king (Edward IV.). In 1484, the 
 windows of this portion were glazed with white 
 glass."" A partition was no doubt erected across 
 the quire, between the fifth piers from the east, and 
 this portion was then ready for use. The roof- 
 truss which lies over these piers exhibited, until a 
 recent restoration, upon its western face the 
 weather-marks and the moss which, during its ex- 
 posure for some years (1484 — 1508) as the west- 
 ward finish of the roof, had formed upon it.™ 
 
 No part of the great vault, however, was actually 
 executed by Wolrich, although by the erection of its 
 springers and wall-ribs its design was fixed.""" Upon 
 these springers he erected the wall-posts of his roof, 
 and as there was no immediate prospect of erecting 
 the vault below it, he gave it the character of a roof 
 which is to be exposed to view. It is not, like the 
 roof above a groining, purely constructional, but its 
 beams are moulded, though simply, and its design, 
 though unadorned, is not without elegance. 
 
 Meanwhile, the masonry work was carried on 
 westward of the portion thus sufficiently completed 
 for use. The sixth bay from the east on both sides 
 and also the seventh upon the south, belong to the 
 work of the second period. This is made evident 
 by the design of the small niches in the internal 
 reveals of the windows of these bays, which are 
 similar to those of the rest of the quire,"' while, on 
 the contrary, the angel corbels of both the sixth 
 piers are different in character from those to the 
 eastward of them, which belong, as we have seen, 
 to the first period. 
 
 By this time, five chapels upon the north, and six 
 upon the south had been completed as far as con- 
 cerned their walls, but none of these were as yet 
 vaulted, except the two easternmost ones of the 
 north range, which had been groined during the 
 first period. 
 
 We are thus enabled to define pretty exactly the 
 
 The account for the glaring of the east window and of 
 the two eastern windows of each side-range is preserved, and 
 will be found in Mr. Carter's work, p. 18. The others pro- 
 bably followed very shortly after. 
 
 °° It was common, naturally enough, to take possession of 
 the churches for purposes of worship, at the earliest possible 
 date, and often long before their actual completion. Thus 
 the triforium-story of the nave of Bridlington Priory church 
 still exhibits traces of its exposure, through many years, to the 
 action of the weather, while the same is not the case with 
 the pier-arches below it, or with the clerestory above. The 
 work was interrupted before thetriforium was completed, and 
 the nave was roofed in, in a temporary manner, above the 
 pier-arches, leaving the unfinished stage above it exposed. 
 It so continued until the work was resumed in the next century, 
 and the whole roofed in at the proper level. Indications ot 
 the same sort may be observed in the church of Melbourne 
 in Derbyshire, and in many other instances. 
 
 PP Of course, a drawing more or less complete of the whole 
 vault must have been prepared before a stone of its springers 
 could be set. It is possible that it is this design of Wolrich's, 
 or a copy of it, to which the executors of Henry VII. refer 
 in the indenture of 15 12, in which the provost and scholars 
 agree " without delay to vawte the church of the saide college 
 after the fourme of a platte t her for devised" (Cf. Carter, 
 " King's Coll. Chapel," p. 23.) 
 
 As far as the western sides of the sixth pier north and 
 of the seventh pier south. 
 
PLATE XXXVI 1. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 state of the work when it came to a stop for the 
 second time, about the year 1484. 
 
 In 1508, Henry VII., finding that his Hfe was 
 drawing to a close, presented the sum of ^[^^iOqo, 
 equivalent to some;^6o,ooo of our money, towards 
 the completion of his uncle's " great work. The 
 surveyor of the works was Thomas Larke, arch- 
 deacon of Norwich, but the name of the architect 
 has not been preserved. This is of the less im- 
 portance, as though the work of this third and last 
 period presents many innovations in point of detail 
 upon that of the two preceding architects, yet no 
 alteration was made in the design itself, which was 
 completed in accordance to the plans of 1480. 
 
 The work of Henry VII. and of his son, is 
 distinguished by the introduction in profusion of 
 heraldic badges and achievements. These are to 
 be found — in exact accord with the account already 
 given of the extent of the work of the second 
 period — throughout the ante-church, from the 
 seventh buttress (from the east) upon the north, and 
 the eighth upon the south. 
 
 Internally, they are found also upon the eighth 
 pier of the southern range, which the window- 
 niches show to have been erected by Wolrich, but 
 this apparent conflict of evidence disappears when 
 it is observed that the badges upon this pier are 
 not like the rest, built into the pier, but have been 
 inserted into the earlier masonry at a later date. 
 
 It is the fashion with a certain school of archi- 
 tects to condemn the exuberance of heraldry 
 which characterises the work of this third period. 
 So do not I. Let those blame it who can design 
 an ornamentation as effective." 
 
 In 1512, the provost and scholars agreed, by 
 indenture with the executors of Henry VII., to 
 execute the great vault, to put up the stalls, and to 
 fill the whole of the windows with painted glass. 
 Between this year and 15 15, the wonderful concep- 
 tion of Wolrich was at length carried into execution. 
 At the same time all the chantries (with the excep- 
 tion of the two already groined) received their vaults. 
 Of these nine chapels (three upon the north, and 
 six upon the south) were vaulted with Hemes, in 
 accordance with the springers and wall-ribs put up 
 by the earlier builders ; the remaining seven, which 
 were just built, received the fan-vaults for which 
 they had from the first been designed. 
 
 Thus, by the year 1 5 1 5 the masonry of this great 
 building had been brought to a tardy completion. 
 
 Of the painted windows, that over the north 
 door of the ante-church is the earliest, and was 
 executed between the years 1515 and 151 7. The 
 same artist (one Bernard Flower) subsequently put 
 in three others, and, upon his decease, agreements 
 
 " Edmond Tudor, father of Henry VII., was half-brother 
 to Henry VI., their mother, Catharine, daugherof Charles VI. 
 of France, having been married first to Henry V. and after- 
 wards to Sir Owen ap Tudor. 
 
 5^ In the centre of one of the great rcses in the interior, 
 there is pointed out a diminutive representation of the 
 assumption of the B.V.M. I take this to be an ex voto of a 
 pious stone-carver. 
 
 were made (in 1526) for the erection of the whole 
 of the remaining twenty-two windows." 
 
 In 1530, it was in contemplation to fill the 
 whole of the fifty-four niches of the church with 
 statuary, and what is still more interesting, to paint 
 and gild the great vault, although no mention 
 is made of extending the same decorations to the 
 walls."" These works were never carried out. 
 
 The charming rood-loft and the whole of the 
 stall-work, with the exception of the canopies of 
 the side-stalls, were completed, as is clear from the 
 H:A badges with which they are enriched, during 
 the short reign of the unhappy and notorious Anne 
 Boleyn (1533 — 1536). They are in the renaissance 
 manner, and the first example of the style in Cam- 
 bridge. They appear to me to differ in character 
 from Torregiano's works at Westminster,"^ and to be 
 rather french than italian; although the hand of 
 an italian sculptor may be traced in some portions 
 of the figure-carving, which recalls in its vigour the 
 style of Michael Angelo. They bear a striking 
 resemblance — not hitherto, as far as I am aware, 
 observed — to the stall-work of the remarkable 
 church of St. Bertrand des Comminges, in the 
 french Pyrenees, which bears the date of 1537.'"' 
 
 There exist in the hospital-church of St. 
 Katharine, in the Regent's Park, some fragments of 
 a very similar character, and as this ancient foun- 
 dation,'"' of which, as queen-consort, she was 
 patroness, is said to have been saved from the 
 rapacity of her husband by the intercession of Anne 
 Boleyn, we may reasonably refer them to the same 
 school of joiners. 
 
 The high-altar was erected in the last year of 
 Henry VIII., and it does not appear that it was 
 ever consecrated. It stood but four years, and 
 was removed upon the nth of April, 1549, exactly 
 one month after the appearance of the first printed 
 copy of king Edward's first prayer-book."' 
 
 " They are given in Mr. Carter's work, p. 40. 
 
 See the very curious estimate printed in Mr. Carter's 
 book (pp. 44-47). A sum of £2A, 13s. 4d. is allowed for the 
 decoration of each severey, equivalent at the present day to 
 about ;^3,840 for the whole. The mode of estimating the 
 cost of the statuary is curious. " Two images of kings at 
 the west dorr in two tabernacles made for the same, either 
 of viii. foote high, fowre at the south and north doorres of 
 the said churche, either of vi. foot high — and xlviii. images 
 within the saide churche, every of them of three foote high, 
 amounting in all to clxxii. foote at v^ the fote, esteamed in 
 workmanship, which amounteth unto xliii. li." This very 
 business-like manner of estimating works of high art will 
 shock some modem purists, who are accustomed to regard 
 the middle age through the spectacles of sentiment. 
 
 " Namely the tombs of the Lady Margaret, of her son 
 Henry VII., and of his consort Elizabeth, in the lady-chapel 
 re-erected by him, which were completed in 1519; and 
 the baldaquin over the high-altar of the same chapel, figured 
 in Sandford's " Genealogical History of England," p. 471 . 
 
 The work at St. Bertrand includes, what is wanting in 
 the Cambridge example, an altar-piece or reredos of the same 
 style, which would afford a valuable model for adoption at 
 King's College chapel. 
 
 " Removal to its present site upon the construction of St. 
 Katharine's docks. 
 
 yy Cf. Mr. James Parker's " Introd. to the Hist, of the 
 Revisions of the Book of Common Prayer," p. 23. 
 
 P B 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Thus ends, save for the short reaction of Mary's 
 reign, the history of the erection of this, one of the 
 noblest monuments of catholic England. 
 
 I have dwelt upon it at some length, both be- 
 cause of the great interest attaching to the history 
 of its erection, and also because it illustrates, in 
 its second design, upon a magnificent scale, that 
 latest phase of gothic, which constitutes, in my 
 opinion, a new style, and to the merits of which I 
 have desired to draw especial attention. 
 
 After such works as King's College chapel, Bath 
 Abbey, St. George's chapel, Windsor, and the lady- 
 chapel at Peterborough, there remained but one 
 advance more to be made in the construction of 
 groining, and that is one to be wondered at, rather 
 than admired. 
 
 It was impossible to push constructional science 
 further than it had been carried in the regular fan- 
 vault. It only remained to exaggerate science in 
 a tour de force. 
 
 The roof of Henry VII. 's chapel — the lady- 
 chapel of Westminster Abbey — displays this last 
 wonderful effort of constructive daring. Imagine 
 a building vaulted like King's College chapel : add 
 to it, aisles as lofty as the main vault, separated from 
 the nave by soaring pillars, and similarly groined : 
 then sweep away all your pillars, throwing nave 
 and aisles into one vast span, and leave your vault 
 resting apparently upon nothing, and exhibiting, 
 where the pillars once stood, only a series of great 
 pendants, floating in mid-air. Such is the concep- 
 tion of this truly audacious roof. The problem of 
 providing that support which pillars would naturally 
 have afforded, but without pillars, was solved by 
 the introduction of flying arches passing through 
 the pendants. The pendants are long suspended 
 bars of stone, upon the bases ot which the groining 
 is built up.^^ 
 
 This most daring work fitly closes the history of 
 the gothic style. Hardly was it completed before 
 the Italian Torregiano, in the sumptuous tomb of 
 the founder below, inaugurated that new classic 
 style which was to succeed to it. In this wonderful 
 chapel the style had said its last word, and both as 
 regards constructive ability and power of artistic 
 effect, this great work forms a noble climax to a 
 wonderful history. 
 
 I regard the later phase of the perpendicular 
 style as the most original and able thing that 
 the English have achieved in art. It was really 
 the discovery of a new and quite unlooked-for 
 capability in pointed architecture. 
 
 The French and the Germans had worked on, 
 for almost two centuries, in the flamboyant style, 
 which never, to the last, with all the advance made 
 in its elaboration, exhibited any new principle. 
 
 The English ran through the same flowing style, 
 
 There is an instance of a ribbed-vault, constructed with 
 pendants somewhat upon tliis principle, in the porch of the 
 south transept of St. Ouen's church in Rouen, but tlie scale 
 is, of course, small. There are no flying arches in this case, 
 so that the construction is less scientific than that of the 
 english example, 
 
 in their own way, in about seventy years. They 
 exhausted its capabilities — saw that there was no- 
 thing more to be got from it than they had already 
 in principle obtained, and then deliberately, with 
 the originality of genius, advanced into an entirely 
 new path. 
 
 The fourth-pointed style must be regarded as the 
 latest and most advanced phase, which medieval art 
 anywhere assumed, and in it, as we cannot doubt, 
 the capabilities of the style were finally exhausted. 
 
 It is the glory of the english school of architecture, 
 that in England alone did the gothic style receive its 
 final and complete developement. 
 
 Pointed architecture in England died a natural 
 death. It was not forcibly supplanted, but sank 
 to rest in a vigorous and green old age. The style 
 which succeeded to its inheritance had a different 
 fate. It was slain in its prime by the revived roman 
 or classic architecture. But the gothic had done 
 its work in the world before it left it. 
 
 The style of the renaissance may, quite con- 
 ceivably, have had more yet to say, but pointed 
 architecture had spoken its last word. 
 
 I have thus brought to its proper conclusion the 
 history of english church architecture. 
 
 Viewed as the working-out and expansion of 
 primitive ecclesiastical tradition, it terminates with 
 the religious catastrophe by which that tradition was 
 broken up. Regarded from a purely architectural 
 standpoint, it ends with the fall of the gothic style. 
 These two distinct events have, undoubtedly, a 
 certain correlation, though one which does not lie 
 upon the surface. In this country, however, they 
 synchronised, as they did nowhere else so exactly, 
 and their conjunction determines the point at which 
 our review of the history reaches its natural com- 
 pletion. 
 
 Our earlier studies were concerned mainly with 
 ecclesiology, our later ones with architecture. 
 
 Our first task was to exhibit the sources from 
 which was derived the type of our medieval cathe- 
 drals and of our parish churches, and we saw that 
 there were two — the roman basilica, and the church 
 of the primitive british christians. We traced out 
 the conflict and intermingling of the two types during 
 the saxon period, and noted those innovations, 
 which were gradually elaborated during the period 
 of which the norman conquest forms the central 
 event. The plans and arrangements of the churches 
 having thus attained their typical medieval deve- 
 lopement, we turned our attention thenceforward, 
 chiefly, to the history of the archi*:ecture of churches, 
 and we have followed this out to its climax in the 
 late perpendicular style. 
 
 It has been my object to unfold, as far as 
 possible, the principles which underlie changes, 
 whether of arrangement or of style, which at first 
 sight appear capricious, and are often obscure. 
 
 I shall not have occupied the reader's time in 
 vain, if I have succeeded in exhibiting some, at 
 least, of the causes and principles of which the 
 history of our church architecture is the evolution. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 187 
 
 NOTES AND REMARKS UPON THE ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 p. IV 
 
 Pl- I. Frontispiece 
 
 The abbey of Dore, interior view of the presbytery. This (as also the plate which follows it) 
 is a fac-simile, produced in photo-lithography by Messrs. Akerman (6, Queens Square, Blooms- 
 bury), of a sketch by the late Edward O'Brien. It exhibits that rectangular version of the chevet^ 
 which is peculiar to our own country, and is perhaps its most perfect example. Some remarks 
 upon this abbey-church will be found on p. 129. 
 
 PL. II 
 
 Exterior view of the east end of Tintern abbey. This is a well-known and singularly beau- 
 tiful specimen of the architecture of the cistercian order, at the period of the perfection of the 
 early decorated style. 
 
 PL. Ill p. 4 
 
 The Basilica Jovis, upon the Palatine Hill, erected by Domitian. Fig. L, interior view. Fig. 
 IL, plan. The internal view represents a purely conjectural restoration. It is clear from the plan 
 that the hall was designed to be vaulted. What was the form of its vault cannot now be known. 
 By the fact of being vaulted it stands in marked contrast to the christian basilican type, which is 
 essentially timber-roofed. 
 
 PL. IV. p. 6 
 
 Ground plan of the Basilica Ulpia, erected by Trajan. After Canina : Roma Antica. 
 
 PL. V p. 8 
 
 Ground plan of the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine. After Canina. 
 
 PL. VI p. 10 
 
 Interior view of the basilica of Sts. Nereus and Achilles, upon the Appian way. This church is 
 referred to at p. 58. The drawing has been engraved on wood by Mr. E. S. Gascoine from photo- 
 graphs, aided by reference to Letarouilly (" Rome Moderne," iii., pi. 266). The coffered ceiling, 
 which no longer exists, has been supplied from that of the neighbouring church of St. Csesareus. 
 As the sanctuary lies (as is usual in such churches) toward the west, what one sees, in the view of 
 the altar, is not its front, but its rere-side, below which is seen the grille, closing the fenestra or 
 jugulum, as it was often termed, by which a view of the interior of the confessionary-crypt is 
 afforded. If the drawing showed the mass in action, the celebrant would be seen beyond the altar- 
 cross and tapers, facing toward the spectator. Observe in the baldaquin the rods for the support of 
 the veils. Also in the apse the cathedra of the presiding prelate, from which St. Gregory delivered 
 his twenty-eighth homily. Also the analogia, or desks for the lections, and the marble candlesticks, 
 upon the septum of the sanctuary, and the great candelabrum for the paschal taper upon the gospel 
 side of the nave. This church was restored by Cardinal Baronius. Its erection is attributed to pope 
 Leo III. (795-816). If this be so, it is, speaking generally, contemporary with several churches 
 still existing in our own country of the saxon period. Its arrangements may be compared, for 
 example, with those of the church of Wing in Buckinghamshire, described on p. 46. 
 
 PL. VII p. 18 
 
 Ground plan of the ancient basilica of St. Paul (Basilica Ostiensis)at Rome. From Letarouilly 
 (" Rome Moderne," iii., pi. 334). This venerable monument was destroyed by fire on the i6th of 
 July, 1823. It has been magnificently rebuilt upon the ancient lines, by the succeeding popes. 
 In 1840, Gregory XVI. re-dedicated the transepts and the high-altar, and the whole edifice was 
 
i88 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 re-consecrated by pope Pius IX. in the presence of a vast assembly of bishops and prelates from 
 every part of Christendom, in 1854. This basilica is the most conspicuous example in Rome, of 
 the eastward position of the sanctuary, which became, in later ages, universal in the trans-alpine 
 countries, including our own. 
 
 PL. VIII p. 20 
 
 Ground plan of the ancient Basilica of St. Peter (Basilica Vaticana) at Rome. From Fontana 
 (" Templum Vaticanum," ii., c. x., pi. i.). This great church — sacer Divi Petri dominattis iorus, as 
 St. Leo the Great terms it, ades in terris, tanquam sol in athereis regionibus, ejnicans, as Gregory 
 IX. describes it — was commenced by Constantine in 306, upon the site of an oratory, erected as 
 early as the year 90, by Pope Anacletus, who had received ordination from St. Peter himself. This 
 little church marked the spot where was deposited the body of the Prince of the Apostles after his 
 crucifixion, on that spur of the Janiculan hill, upon which stands the church of St. Peter Montorio. 
 The site was further endeared to christians as co-incident with that of the circus of Nero, the 
 scene of that terrible series of martyrdoms, which followed upon the burning of Rome in 64. The 
 obelisque, which formed the central adornment of the spiiia of Nero's hippodrome, originally stood 
 some thirty yards to the south of the basilica of Constantine. In 1586 it was transferred to the 
 position which it now occupies in the centre of the great colonnade, which forms so noble an 
 approach to the existing church. The destruction of the ancient basilica was commenced under 
 Nicholas V. (1447-1455), but complete drawings were made of it before its demolition, from which 
 the plans published by Fontana and others are taken. 
 
 As St. Paul's (without the walls) is the great example in Rome, of (what is exceptional there) an 
 eastward sanctuary, so St. Peter's is the most conspicuous instance of the normal and primitive 
 arrangement of a westward bema. 
 
 In this plan is to be noted, the cathedra Petri, the pontifical throne, in the centre of the great 
 apse, a position which it retains in the existing church. This is flanked by the continuous ranges 
 of presbyteral thrones. The high-altar, surmounted by a baldaquin, occupies the centre of the 
 apse, the floor of which, ascended by many steps from the level of the nave, is elevated above the 
 confessionary-crypt in which reposed the remains of the great apostle. This consisted of a central 
 chamber, or confessio, having an ahar immediately beneath the high-altar, and, originally, visible 
 from the nave by means of a latticed window (or juguhim), to allow of which the range of steps 
 giving access to the sanctuary are interrupted in their centre. This arrangement is in principle 
 the same with that which we still see at Sts. Nereus and Achilles (pi. VI.), and at St. George in 
 Velabro. We have also good reason to believe that the same was the plan adopted by St. Augustine 
 at Canterbury (cf. pi. IX.) In the saxon crypts which still exist, under the sanctuaries of the 
 churches of Wing in the vale of Aylesbury, and of Repton in Derbyshire, the jugulum may still 
 be traced. 
 
 This central confessio was surrounded by a semi-circular passage, close to the wall of the apse, 
 serving as & polyandrium, or place of burial for the successors of St. Peter. This part of the crypt 
 was entered from the transept, to right and left of the platform of the presbytery ; for the 
 ascending flight of steps already mentioned abutted at their outer extremities upon low vertical 
 walls, supporting their balustrades, and in the face of these walls, north and south, the entrances 
 to the polyandrium were placed, close to the western wall of the transept. A plan of this 
 sanctuary to a larger scale will be found in Willis' " Canterbury" (p. 22), and it is of special interest 
 to us, as having formed the model, as Eadmer expressly tells us, of St. Augustine's additions at 
 Canterbury, and as we may see for ourselves, of the sanctuary and confessionary-crypt at Wing 
 (pi. X.). As regards the rest of the basilica, the plan will speak for itself, and it is only necessary 
 to refer the reader to the remarks to be found on pp. 7, 9, and 62. 
 
 PL. IX p. 38 
 
 Conjectural restoration of the ground plan of the cathedral church of Canterbury, previous to 
 the fire of 1067. 
 
 In this drawing the dark shade indicates the portion of the original basilica, " antiquo Romano- 
 rum opere facta " (Bede, " Eccles. Hist.," i., 33), retained by St. Augustine in his enlargement, while 
 the lighter shade shows the addition made by him. This differs from the plan given by Willis 
 (" Canterbury Cath.," p. 27), chiefly in the position given to the two towers, which stood, as Eadmer 
 tells us, " sub medio longitudinis aulas." I have ventured to account for the very exceptional posi- 
 tion of these towers by supposing them to be part of the original basilica, of the atrium of which 
 
TtiE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHUkCH ARCHITEiCTURE. 
 
 they formed the north-western and south-western angles. If this conjecture be sound, the western 
 walk of the atrium would have occupied the position indicated upon the plan by dotted lines. 
 If the reader will place his hand across the part of the drawing shaded light, he will perceive that 
 the portion left exposed exhibits the normal plan of an early roman basilica, such as St. Clement's. 
 Like this, it has a westward sanctuary and an eastward atrium. As in St. Clement's the celebrant, 
 facing as always eastward, faced towards the people, and behind him in the centre of the apse, here, 
 as in the ancient (and the modern) St. Peter's, and in all the early basilicas, was the cathedra 
 of the bishop (cf. p. 38). From the dedication of the altar of this western apse (the high-altar of 
 the original basilica), we may infer that the " Romani fideles," of the fourth century, had 
 placed their church under the invocation of the mother of God. The apostle of the Saxons, while 
 extending the church eastward, transferred the attribution from the mother to the Son, and gave to 
 it that majestic title — the church of Christ, which it has, to this day, preserved (cf. p. 37, note). 
 The dotted lines in the plan of the eastern apse indicate the distribution of the crypt, which was 
 planned by St. Augustine, " ad instar confessionis sancti Petri." Within this confessionary-crypt 
 there was to the eastward an altar, and to the westward of it were deposited, in later times, the 
 body of the great St. Dunstan. This crypt comprised (as is clear from the description of Eadmer, 
 and from reference to what is known of its model, in the ancient Vatican basilica) a central portion, 
 the confessio proper, and a semi-circular alley, termed the polyandritim, which was approached by 
 a descent of steps from the north and south aisles of the church, whose extremities formed (no 
 doubt) respectively the diaconicum, and \.ht proihesis, the equivalents of the sacristies of later times. 
 I may remark that the apse in the southern tower, suggested by professor Willis, as the site of 
 the altar of St. Gregory, belongs, as is clear, both from its position and from its dedication, to the 
 later period (cf p. 102). 
 
 Pl. X. ............... p. 44 
 
 Fig. I., View of the saxon church at Bradford-on-Avon from the north-east. Drawn on wood 
 from photographs by Mr. E. S. Gascoine. A plan and elevations of this church will be found in my 
 father's " Lectures " (ii., p. 46). It exemplifies, in its square-ended sanctuary and its narrow 
 sanctuary arch, the traditions of native british Christianity, as distinguised from the latin basilican 
 type, adopted at Canterbury by the roman colonists {romani fideles) of the fourth century, and 
 re-introduced by the roman missionaries of the sixth and seventh centuries. 
 
 Fig. II., Ground plan of the church of Wing in Buckinghamshire. This is, in spite of later 
 alterations, completely basilican and completely latin. It thus stands in marked contrast with 
 the church of Bradford (above). As Bradford illustrates the native model, so does Wing the 
 tnos romanus (cf. remarks on p. 46). The plan here given is that of the existing church, except 
 as regards the following points, in which the original arrangements are, conjecturally, restored : — 
 I. Position of the high-altar, indicated, as we shall see, by the plan of the crypt below. 2. The 
 arrangement of the ascent to the sanctuary, and of the descents to the crypt (at A and B). As 
 regards the position of the latter the evidence is pretty complete, while the former only differs from 
 the existing arrangement in the interruption of the flight, by a sort of gap (C), such as is common 
 in similar cases at Rome and elsewhere, which the existence of a jugnlum in the crypt would 
 appear to have necessitated. 3. As the church now is, the walls to the eastward of the three 
 original arches, is on either side, pierced by one arch of the medieval period. The fact of the " 
 insertion here of arches of later date, seems to prove that these walls were originally blank. They 
 are accordingly so represented upon the plan. 4. There is no actual evidence that the eastern 
 portions of the aisles were screened off, as here shown, but from what we know of the arrange- 
 ments of churches of similar plan in other parts of Christendom, it is highly probable that they 
 were so treated and served as the diaconicum and the prothesis, or as the sacristy and the library. 
 They doubtless communicated with the body of the church (as was usual in such cases) by 
 doorways, of which the medieval arches, here inserted, are expansions. The reader is requested 
 to compare the plan of this Buckinghamshire basilica (of, probably, the seventh century) with 
 that of the Syrian church of Qalb-Louz^ (pl. XV.) of the sixth. If it is remarkable to find in a 
 midland county of England a church in type basilican and roman, it is also striking to find near 
 Aleppo, a church whose plan differs from that of a roman basilica precisely in those points in 
 which this Buckinghamshire example also diverges from the same common model. 
 
 Fig. III., Plan of the crypt below the apse at Wing. When the notice of this crypt in the text 
 (p. 46) was written, I had only a description given by my father in his " Lectures on Medieval 
 Architecture," to rely on, as the crypt itself had been closed for many years. I have lately been 
 
igo 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 permitted, by the courtesy of the vicar (the Rev. P. T. Ouvry), to re-open it, and the plan here 
 given shows the result of this exploration. As the reader will observe, there is a central chamber 
 or confessio, forming an irregular polygon some twelve feet by eight feet. Inclosing this is a 
 passage-way, or polyandritim, opening into the confessio upon three sides, namely, by the arch- 
 ways E and F, and by a window-light aperture at G. This polymidriicm is continued (on each 
 side of the sanctuary) westward, until it is clear of the triumphal arch above, when its narrow 
 passages are diverted north and south ; and it is clear that they opened into the aisles (or rather 
 into what I have termed the diaconicum and the prothesis, at the east end of the aisles) by an 
 ascent of steps (A.B in Figs. II. and III.). At the west end of the central crypt are remains 
 of the juguhim, cataracta, or fenestra (D, Fig. III.) (cf. Lenoir's " Archit. Monast.," i., p. 214), 
 which clearly communicated with the nave of the church at C (Figs. II. and III.), and 
 through which a view might be obtained of the relics preserved in the confessio. The original 
 position of the high-altar, and, possibly, of a baldaquin surmounting it, is indicated by the 
 large mass of masonry, through which the passage from C to D is carried, which formed their 
 sub-structure. 
 
 The general plan of this crypt agrees, in the main, with what we know to have been the distribu- 
 tion of those of the Vatican basilica (cf. Willis, "Canterbury Cathedral," p. 23), of the churches of 
 St. Saba and St. Praxede (cf. Lenoir's "Archit. Monast.," i., p. 211), and of other early basilicas 
 at Rome ; of the church of Brixworth (p. 46), and probably of that constructed by St. Augustine 
 at Canterbury (p. 37). It differs, however, from these in the two lateral arches of communication 
 between the polyandritim and the confessio, which are unusual, and which indicate, perhaps, the 
 transition from the early type to that of the pillared crypt of the later saxon times (as that of 
 Repton, Derbyshire), and of our medieval cathedrals. 
 
 I have failed to discover anything of the early history of this interesting church, or of the relics 
 for the reception of which this confessio was designed. 
 
 The crypt is very rudely constructed in rubble, combined, in the vaultings, with calcareous 
 tufa. The whole interior was originally coated with white-washed plaster, of which there are 
 still certain remains. 
 
 PL. XI p. 46 
 
 Ground plan of Brixworth Church, Northants. This is taken from the monograph of the late 
 vicar (the Rev. C. F. Watkins). It is particularly interesting as exhibiting specimens of three 
 successive styles of saxon work. Thus the church itself is of very early work — more romano, — 
 the western tower, over the centre of the narthex, is of a later date, characterised by the use of 
 the baluster-shaft, while the circular turret, upon its western face — though clearly saxon, — is later 
 again. As the study of our pre-conquestal architecture progresses, it will become possible, I have 
 little doubt, to discriminate the successive styles of saxon architecture, and their respective dates, 
 with something of the precision which has been arrived at with regard to later medieval art. 
 
 PL. XII p. 52 
 
 Fig. I., Ground plan of the church of Surp Garabed, in Cappadocia, from Texier and Pullan's 
 
 work on " Byzantine Architecture." 
 Fig. II., Ground plan of the church of Der el Adra, upon the Nile, from Curzon's " Monasteries 
 
 in the Levant." 
 
 PL. XIII i p. 54 
 
 Fig. I., Cross section of the basilican church at Dana, near the Euphrates, A.D. 540. 
 Fig. II., Ground plan of the same. From Texier and Pullan's work. This should be compared 
 with the Canterbury plan (pi. IX.) and the plan of the church of Wing (pi. X.). 
 
 PL. XIV p. 56 
 
 Fig. I., Plan of the church at Babouda, between Damascus and Aleppo. From the Count de 
 Vogii^'s " Syrie Centrale, Architecture Civile et Religieuse du Premier au Septieme Si^cle " (Baudry : 
 Paris, 1877). This is probably of the fourth century. It illustrates the apsidal model in its 
 earlier form, such as we see it at Surp Garabed (pi. XII.) and elsewhere. It is un-aisled, and there- 
 fore not a basilica. This, the so-called, basilican plan would appear to have been, not the original 
 type of a christian church, but rather an advance upon the primitive form, which was without 
 aisles, and planned 5po)j.iKQ> ax-qixixTi, i.e. on the lines of a circus or hippo-drome. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 191 
 
 Fig. II., Ground plan of the secular basilica at Chaqqa, to the south-east of Damascus. From 
 the Count de Vogii^'s work. This illustrates the plan (wholly different from that of a christian 
 basilica) which was dictated by the requirements of the men of business, for whose convenience 
 the exchange-halls (termed also basilicce) were erected. 
 
 PL. XV p. 58 
 
 Fig. I., Ground plan of the church of Qalb-Louz^, to the west of Aleppo. From the Count de 
 Vogiid's work. This is of the sixth century, and is particularly interesting to us from the simi- 
 larity of its plan with that of the church at Wing, in Buckinghamshire (cf pi. X., Fig. II.). In 
 both cases the altar-platform is extended several feet in advance of the triumphrd arch, as in the 
 basilicas of Rome. 
 
 Fig. II., Cross-section of the church at Moudjeleia, to the south-west of Aleppo. 
 Fig. Ill , Ground plan of the same, from the Count de Vogiid's work. 
 
 PL. XVI : . 
 
 Plan of the church of St. Simon Stylites (Kalat-Sema'n), to the north-west of Aleppo. From 
 the Count de Vogii^'s work. A description of this great church will be found on pp. 55, 56. The 
 central octagon was hypaethral, the rest of the building (indicated by a shaded tint) being roofed 
 in. 
 
 PL. XVII 
 
 Fig. I., View of the apse of the church of St. Simon Stylites. Engraved on wood by Mr. E. S. 
 Gascoine from the Count de Vogu(f's work. The architecture of this church, erected between the 
 years 459 and 560, bears a resemblance, which must strike every antiquary, to the romanesque of 
 central France, as developed some six centuries later (cf. pp. 12, 13). 
 
 Fig. II., Plan of a basilica at Thessalonica (Eski Djuma, the ancient mosque). From Texier 
 and PuUan's work. Some remarks upon this church will be found on p. 53. It has the westward 
 sanctuary and the prothesis, as usual upon the epistle-side, is therefore to the left of the high- 
 altar. Observe in the exo-narthex the fountain of ablution, of which the holy-water stoup of the 
 western churches preserves the tradition. 
 
 PL. XVIII 
 
 Plan for the abbatial church of St. Gall, near the lake of Constance. 
 
 PL. XIX p. 84 
 
 Fig. I., Conjectural restoration of the ground plan of the basilica of St. Felix at Nola, as described 
 by St. Paulinus, its founder (cf. p. 78, et seq.). An explanation of the plan will be found upon 
 p. 85. 
 
 Fig. II., Plan of the basilica at Trieste, from Lenoir's " Architecture Monastique." This church 
 appears to throw light upon much that is obscure in the description of Paulinus, particularly in 
 regard to the relative positions of the two adjacent basilicEe, and of the transenna (E, Fig. I.), by 
 which they were united (cf. p. 62, footnote). 
 
 PL. XX p. 100 
 
 View of the north side of the nave of St. Alban's abbey-church. The pier upon the extreme 
 left shows the junction of the new work of abbat Trumpington (1214-1235) with the original 
 norman work of abbat Paul, erected between the years 1077 and 1088 (cf. remarks upon, p. 120). 
 
 PL. XXI p. 102 
 
 Fig. I., Planof the cathedral-church of Canterbury as rebuilt (1070-1077) by archbishop Lanfranc. 
 This should be compared with plate IX., which gives a (conjectural) plan of the earlier church 
 which this replaced. The position of the altar of St. Mary, in the north aisle of the nave, was 
 retained when this part of the church was rebuilt in 1390-1411. Of the then prior Chillenden we 
 read (Obit. Ang. Sac, quoted in Willis' " Canterbury," p. 119), "navemistius ecclesias, cumcapella 
 B. Marise virginis in eadem sita opere-que decenti fabricata, totaliter renovavit." This somewhat 
 unusual position of the principal altar of our Lady in this church is explained by reference to the 
 arrangements of Lanfranc's church, where the chapel is seen to occupy a perfectly natural and 
 indeed normal position relatively to the quire of the monks. It served very probably as the 
 chapel of the lay brothers It was in consequence of the removal of the quire, by St- Anselm's 
 priors, out of the nave into the eastern limb, that the position of this chapel became somewhat 
 
 p. 60 
 
 p. 62 
 
 P- 74 
 
192 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 abnormal. The form of the eastern termination shown upon my plan is conjectural, nor is it known 
 how the crypt, which extended beneath the whole of the presbytery, was approached. Most pro- 
 bably it was entered from either transept, by a descent of steps adjacent to the eastern piers of the 
 great tower beneath the flight which ascended to the presbytery level, or there may have been a 
 central access to the east of the matutinal altar. 
 
 Fig. II., Plan of the prioiy-church of Lindisfarne as rebuilt by bishops Carileph and Flambard. 
 The work was commenced in 1093, the same year as the norman cathedral of Durham. The 
 quire of the monks appears to have been in this case confined to the space beneath the central 
 tower. The altars against the piers of the nave are interesting, and should be compared with the 
 similar arrangement of the nave altars of St. Alban's abbey in norman times (cf. p. 99, and pi. XX.). 
 Beyond the great apse is indicated the rectangular extension given to the sanctuary, apparently 
 in the fifteenth century. 
 
 PL. XXII p. 116 
 
 Diagrams illustrative of the history of the chasuble. These are fully explained in the text 
 (p. i\l,et seq). 
 
 PL. XXIII p. 120 
 
 Longitudinal section of the presbytery (or sanctuary) of St. Alban's abbey-church. This is a 
 fac-simile (by Messrs. Akerman) of a plate from the " Spring Gardens Sketch-Book," measured 
 and drawn by Mr. T. S. Beachcroft, to whose courtesy I am indebted for permission to reproduce 
 it here. The rebuilding of this portion of the church was commenced by abbat John Hertford 
 (1235-1260), and carried on to completion by his successors, Roger Norton (1260-1291) and John 
 Berkhampstead (1291-1302). A description of it will be found at pp. 145-147. In this drawing the 
 altar-screen, erected (between 1476 and 1492) by abbat Wallingford, is seen in section. To the 
 west of this appears the chantry-chapel of abbat Ramrydge, who died in 1521, and to the east of 
 it is the saint's chapel, in the centre of which, upon the marble substructure lately re-erected 
 (p. 147), stood the shrine of St. Alban. In the eastern-most arch will be noticed the beautiful 
 " watching-chamber " for the guardian of the relics. Upon the timber vaulting may be observed 
 the coloured decorations introduced by abbat Wheathampstead in the fifteenth century (p. 119). 
 
 PL. XXIV p. 128 
 
 Interior of the north porch of Wells Cathedral. Fac-simile (by Messrs. Akerman) of a drawing 
 by my brother, Mr. J. O. Scott. This is a good example of the earliest phase of the pointed 
 style. The capitals, as will be observed, still retain, for the most part, the square plan of abacus 
 inherited from the previous style, while a tendency towards the next stage in the architectural 
 progress is indicated by the design of the capitals of the vaulting-shafts. 
 
 PL. XXV p. 134 
 
 Fig I., Plan of the cathedral-church of Canterbury, as enlarged under St. Anselm and his 
 immediate successors. 
 
 This work is fully described in the text. It is only necessary here to invite the reader to com- 
 pare this plan with that of Lanfranc's cathedral given on plate XXI., Fig. I. (p. 102). It will be seen 
 that the nave and transepts of Lanfranc's church were preserved unaltered in the rebuilding of 
 1093- 1 130. The quire of the monks is, however, moved up out of the nave, into the now extended 
 eastern limb, and thus the basilican plan, up to this time generally adhered to, is lost, and the 
 modern plan, characteristic of the middle ages, now first makes its appearance. It is only neces- 
 sary further to call attention to the spot in the north transept where the martyrdom of St. 
 Thomas took place (marked A upon the plan) and to the eastern chapel (of the B. Trinity), 
 memorable on account of the saint's especial devotion. 
 
 Fig. II., Plan of the same as enlarged after the fire of A.D. 1174, under the direction of William 
 of Sens and William " the Englishman." Lanfranc's nave and transepts still remained, the fire not 
 having extended to this part of the building, but the transept galleries were removed, and upon 
 the site of the Martyrdom (in the north transept) a small altar of St. Mary was erected. The quire 
 of the religious, the high-altar, and the patriarchal throne retained, speaking generally, the positions 
 they had occupied before the fire. But the small chapel of the B. Trinity at the east end of the 
 church (cf. Fig. I.), in the crypt below which the body of St. Thomas had been interred, gave place 
 to an immense eastward extension, dedicated in his honour, in the midst of which his shrine w^5 
 erected. 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 193 
 
 These four plans (those given on pi. IX., pi. XXL, and the two here given) form a complete 
 series, exhibiting the progress of church architecture in this country, from the time of the " romani 
 fideles " of Bede's "History" (i., 33) through St. Augustine, Lanfranc, and St. Anselm, down to 
 the period at which the transition to the medieval arrangements and to the pointed style was 
 completed, at the close of the twelfth century. 
 
 PL. XXVI p. 136 
 
 Window of the south quire aisle of Netley abbey. This, together with the five following 
 plates, have been reproduced by Messrs. Akerman from sketches by the late Edward O Brien 
 (cf. pp. 129-140). They serve to exemplify the production of the traceried window from the 
 grouped lancets of the early pointed style. 
 
 The first four plates exhibit this process in the case of the grouping of two lights, the two 
 following illustrations show the same transition applied to an opening of three lights. In this 
 example there is a very subtle suggestion of the coming change in the design of the central pier. 
 
 PL. XXVII p. 138 
 
 Window from the chapter-house of Netley abbey. Here a further step toward the traceried 
 window is indicated by the piercing of the tympanum above the grouped lights by a sex-foil opening. 
 
 PL. XXVIII p. 140 
 
 Window of the clerestory of Tintern abbey. This is a very beautiful example of the perfected 
 bar-tracery. 
 
 PL. XXIX p. 142 
 
 View of the Tomb of bishop Giles of Bridport, in the south-east transept of Salisbury cathe-~ 
 dral. This work is not only interesting in itself, as commemorating the prelate under whose rule 
 the new church of Sarum was consecrated, but it affords another specimen of the earliest form of 
 bar-tracery. 
 
 PL. XXX p. 144 
 
 West window of the south aisle of Tintern abbey. Here we have a good example of the group 
 of three lancets developed into what is virtually a traceried window, but without pierced spandrils. 
 The spandrils in this instance are merely sunk. 
 
 PL. XXXI p. 146 
 
 Three-light window from the nave of Netley abbey. In this instance the spandrils between the 
 lights and the enclosing arch are pierced by trefoil openings in a manner which is somewhat 
 peculiar, and which indicates the transition from the pure plate-tracery of the chapter-house of the 
 same abbey (pi. XXVII.) to the complete bar-tracery of the next phase of the style. 
 
 PL. XXXII p. 148 
 
 View of the sub-structure of the shrine of St. Alban. An account of the discovery of the dibris 
 of this beautiful work will be found in my father's " Personal and Professional Recollections,"p. 324. Its 
 recovery, as he truly remarks, " is one of the most wonderful facts of modern archjeology." Such 
 structures are improperly termed shrines, a word which applies in strictness to the wooden chests 
 {scrinia) within which the relics were deposited, and which these erections of stone or marble were 
 designed to support. St. Alban's abbey contains another of these structures, similarly recovered, 
 that of St. Amphibalus, which is now restored to its ancient site in the vestibule of the Lady- 
 chapel. This is of the close of the fourteenth century, as that of the proto-martyr is of its com- 
 mencement. It was erected by Ralph Whitchurch, who was sacrist under abbat De La Mare 
 (1349-1396), in place of an earlier structure serving for the same purpose which had stood in the 
 nave, in front of the altar of the Holy Cross (cf. p. 121, footnote). Notices of similar erections 
 will be found at pp. 99 (footnote), 108, 139, and 145. 
 
 PL. XXXIII p. 162 
 
 Mosaics from the church of St. George, at Thessalonica. Fig. I., A Baptistery, with its enclosing 
 cancellus. Fig. II., A Baldaquin, surmounting an altar, which is hidden from view by the veil, 
 which is here represented as drawn close. From Texier and PuUan's work. 
 
 PL. XXXIV. p. 168 
 
 Altar-piece of the Quire of Christchurch priory, Hants. This is clearly a work of the fourteenth 
 
 CC 
 
194 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 century, and therefore earlier in date than the part ot the church in which it stands. It will be 
 observed, however, that its cornice is of fifteenth-century character, and belongs, no doubt, to the 
 period at which the structure was re-erected in its present position. In this view the high-altar is 
 restored, its dimensions (ten feet four inches long by three feet four inches high) being clearly 
 enough indicated in the existing wall-face. 
 
 PL. XXXV 
 
 Internal view of the Quire of Christchurch priory, Hants. This is a very good example of the 
 perfected style of the fifteenth century, before the introduction of the fan-vault. The manner in 
 which the groin-ribs are made to spring from pendants is remarkable, and is managed with great skill. 
 Indeed, the whole work, although upon a very moderate scale (being but twenty-two feet eight inches 
 in the clear width) is particularly happy in design. The ancient quire-fittings are retained in unusual 
 completeness. I may observe that the absence of front desks to the sub-sella gives somewhat of a 
 foreign character to the arrangement of the stall-work and adds much to its dignity. The rood- 
 beam and rood are, of course, conjectural. I have ventured to restore them — in order to give a 
 more complete idea of a medieval quire — and necessarily from foreign examples, since while there 
 are ancient rood-screens to be found in every part of the country, and not a few ancient rood-lofts, 
 there is not, I believe, a single old english rood standing, though every town or village church in 
 the country once possessed this striking symbol of christian belief, and the cathedrals and minsters 
 had often many roods. The systematic destruction of these by the english Reformers is the more 
 remarkable from the striking absence of any such animosity in the country which gave birth to 
 protestantism. It would seem that in this, anglicanism owes more to Switzerland than to Ger- 
 many. Even to this day, in the land of Luther, no such feeling, as led to the wholesale destruction 
 of the roods in England, is to be found. The " Protestant Evangelical " Church of North Germany 
 has been, in our own time, formed by a compulsory fusion of the lutheran and calvinistic bodies. 
 In the new church of St. Nicholas, at Hamburg, erected for the use of this communion, my father 
 had designed to fill certain niches in the interior with figures of the apostles and evangelists. Dr. 
 Krauzer, the then pastor of the church, objected. " It is well enough," he said, " for the Roman or 
 the Anglican Church to set up statues of the saints, but what the Protestant Evangelical Church 
 insists on is the crucifix. The first thing that should strike the eye upon one's entering a church 
 of the Protestant Evangelical communion is the figure of the Crucified. That is our doctrine and 
 that is our symbol." A life-size crucifix in white marble was accordingly erected over the reredos 
 in St. Nicholas. This plate, and the preceding, have been engraved by Mr. E. S. Gascoine. 
 
 PL, XXXVI 
 
 Diagrams illustrating the design of King's College Chapel, Cambridge, as originally laid down 
 and as subsequently modified. It will be understood, of course, that the former can only be 
 conjectural, since we have no evidence (but by way of inference from the building as it exists) 
 upon the subject. The grounds of this inference are sufficiently explained in the text. Fig. I. 
 shows in block the cross-section of the chapel as it is. Fig. II. gives the same as I conceive it to 
 have been originally planned. It will be noticed that the springing-line of the side-windows is 
 the same in both, but whereas now the vault springs at a height of some six feet above that of the 
 windows, I imagine the two to have sprung, as at first designed, at the same level. This is in 
 accordance with all the precedents of this and the preceding period, and particularly with that of 
 the Ely Lady-chapel ; for while in some cases (as at Gloucester), the windows spring at a higher 
 level than the vault, in not one case do they start (as in the existing work at Cambridge) at a 
 lower line. The pitch of the vault (in Fig. 11.) is of course a matter of conjecture. I have stated 
 in the text my reasons for the height here given to it, founded upon a theory of proportionment 
 (which may or may not be correct). It is the rise which many of the medieval vaultings take, 
 and that of the Lady-chapel at Ely bears about the same proportion to the height of its springing 
 line. 
 
 Fig. III. shows the plan of the vaulting-shafts of the ante-chapel with their bases. On the upper 
 half of the figure the ribs of the existing fan-vault are shown (on plan), on its lower half the arrange- 
 ment of the ribs of the lierne-s^v\\., which, as I conceive, it was designed to bear. It will be observed 
 that the direction of the several bases (which is peculiar) has no meaning in relation to the fan- 
 vault (Fig, IV.), but coincide with remarkable exactness with the ribs which a lierne-vault (like 
 that at Ely, Fig. V.) would require. Thus the shaft A takes the transverse rib, B the diagonal, C 
 
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 '95 
 
 the intermediate, and D the wall rib. Upon the hypothesis that a lieme-vault was intended, each 
 member of the group is seen to have its proper function, which is indicated, moreover, by the plan 
 of the bases themselves. But how different is the case with the members of the existing fan-vault 
 (as shown in the upper half of Fig. III.). Here the ribs have no proper relation to the members of 
 the pier. The shaft D is made to bear not the wall-rib alone, but five other ribs. This one 
 member carries, in fact, the whole of the vaulting-ribs, with the exception of the great transverse 
 arch, and even this is partially borne by it. The shafts A and B correspond to members of this 
 great arch, but C has nothing whatever to do, and accordingly it disappears in the cap. The 
 evidence of a change of intention is, to my mind, conclusive. The plan of vaulting compartments 
 suggested in Fig. V. is taken from that of the Ely chapel, and agrees exactly with the indications 
 afforded by the vaulting-shafts. It is also very similar to that of the vaulting of the two eastern- 
 most chantries of the northern side, which are of the earlier date. 
 
 PL. XXXVII. ... p. i8^ 
 
 King's College Chapel. Fig. I., Bay of ante-chapel, actual design. Fig. II., Bay of quire, 
 conjectural restoration of the original design. The latter shows a lierne-vault springing at the same 
 level as the windows. Of course the pitch of the window-arch and the design of its tracery are 
 matters of pure conjecture. They are, however, such as would be in character with the architec- 
 ture of the period at which the chapel was originally designed {circa 1443), which is obviously not 
 the case as regards the actual design, either of the windows, or of the vaulting. It will be noticed 
 that in the design as shown in Fig. II., the great space of wall between the window-head and the 
 wall-rib does not occur. I have fully explained in the text (p. 184), how this remarkable feature 
 was the result of the alteration of design which the later architect adopted. 
 
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 EXPLICIT. 
 
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