Canterbury Cathedral

“ It has left to succeeding ages not only a legacy of permanent beauty, not only a sublime symbol of religious faith, but an everlasting monument to the loveliness and greatness that are inherent in human nature. No creature with a human heart in his bosom can stand in such a building as Canterbury cathedral without feeling a greater love and reverence than he ever felt before, alike for God and man. ”

“ When a man comes into Canterbury to-day he comes into a dead city.
I say Canterbury is dead, for when the soul has departed from the body, that is death. Canterbury has lost its soul.
Go into the Cathedral, it is like a tomb, but a tomb that has been rifled, a whited sepulchre so void and cold that even the last trump will make there no stir. It was once the altar, the shrine, and as it were the mother of England, one of the tremendous places of Europe into which every year flocked thousands upon thousands upon thousands of men. ”

“ The chief glory of the exterior of Canterbury Cathedral is the central Angel, or Bell, Tower. This is one of the most perfect structures that Gothic architecture inspired by the loftiest purpose that ever stimulated the work of any art, has produced. ”

“ The cathedral of Canterbury is a fine church, without being one of the best of its class. It is neither as large nor as rich as some others in England, even, and in both respects, it is much inferior [31] to many on the continent. Still it is large and noble, its length exceeding five hundred feet. Like all the great English churches, this cathedral is free from the miserable adjuncts that clerical cupidity has stuck against the walls of similar edifices, in France. It stands isolated from all other buildings, with grass growing prettily up to its very walls. ”

“ Such was the history of Becket’s shrine. We have dwelt on it at some length because it is no exaggeration to say that in the Middle Ages Canterbury Cathedral owed its European fame and enormous riches to the fact that it contained the shrine within its walls, and because the story of the influence of the Saint and the miracles that he worked, and the millions of pilgrims who flocked from the whole civilized world to do homage to him, throws a brighter and more vivid light on the lives and thoughts and beliefs of mediæval men than many volumes stuffed with historical research. ”

“ FIRST VIEW As we stand upon the summit of Bell Harry Tower—more happily called the Angel Steeple—of Canterbury Cathedral, looking down upon city and countryside, much of the history of England lies spread beneath our feet: the Britons were at work here before the Romans came marching with their stolid legions; here to Ethelbert, Saxon King of Kent, St Augustine preached the gospel of Christ; in the church below, Becket was murdered and the Black Prince buried; to this city, to the shrine of St Thomas, came innumerable pilgrims, one of them our first great English poet ”

“ The chief point of interest in Canterbury is, of course, the Cathedral, the bourne to which countless pilgrims came from all parts of the civilized world to gain the goodwill and intercedence of that thrice sacred and potent Saint Thomas whose peculiar sanctity over-topped by far that of any other English martyr, and whose shrine possessed scarce less efficacy than that of the most renowned Continental resorts of the pious. ”

“ CHRIST CHURCH GATE
Entrance to the precincts of Canterbury Cathedral round by Becket’s Crown and the ruins of the Infirmary, by the Dark Entry and so out into Green Court.
The face of Nature never grows so familiar to us that we know her every tone and expression; so is it with some of the handiworks of man—with this Cathedral, for instance. Great changes are wrought in its aspect by the seasons of the year, by daylight, by the lights of night, by sunrise and by sunset; changes which every man may see ”

“ The times which witnessed the piling up of this great nave were days when this church was rich beyond compare with the offerings of pilgrims; and, given riches, ostentation is sure to follow, but art is not to be bought at a price.
A long array of altar-tombs of kings, princes, warriors, and archbishops adds to the historical interest of Canterbury Cathedral. Easily first, both for historic and artistic value, are the tomb and effigy of Edward the Black Prince, who, dying of a wasting disease in 1376, was entombed in the Cathedral as near as might be to the Martyr’s shrine. ”

“ Canterbury Cathedral is among the largest churches in England, being five hundred and twenty-two feet long, and its principal entrance is by the south porch. The nave is striking, and in the choir the eye is immediately attracted by its great length, one [Pg 482] hundred and eighty feet—the longest in the kingdom—and by the singular bend with which the walls at the eastern end approach each other. The architecture is antique, and the interior produces an impression of great solemnity. ”

“ The first near view which they had of Canterbury Cathedral was in approaching it from under old Christchurch Gateway. In spite of its great age, the cathedral, in contrast with the much blackened gateway, appears surprisingly [Pg 263] white and fair. The exterior is very beautiful; the two towers are most majestic, and beyond, one sees the graceful Bell Tower, rising from the point where the transepts cross. In olden days, a gilded angel stood on the very top of the Bell Tower, and served as a beacon to the many pilgrims traveling toward Becket’s shrine. ”

“ Practically nothing{18} of Lanfranc’s nave remains; it was pulled down wholesale, and the existing nave, transepts, and portions of Bell Harry raised.
With the building of the towers it is better to deal when we come to walk round the exterior of the church.
So it will be seen, and more clearly understood as we wander round the interior, that Canterbury Cathedral sets before us the history of English ecclesiastical architecture. From Norman down to late Decorated, all styles are exemplified here, often most beautifully. ”

“ From the swelling green hills that look over Canterbury the distant glimpses of the Cathedral towers gleaming in that opalescent light that is the joy of a summer's morning in Kent, are so hauntingly beautiful that it is hard to believe that no disillusionment need be anticipated when the ancient city is entered and the great church seen at close quarters in the midst of a little city whose busy streets are agog with twentieth-century interests ”

“ It is not the absence of a close that damages Canterbury; the cathedral stands amid grass and trees, with a cultivated margin all round it, and is placed in such a way that, as you pass out from under the gatehouse, you appreciate immediately its grand feature—its extraordinary and magnificent length. None of the English cathedrals seems more beautifully isolated, more shut up to itself. It is a long walk, beneath the walls, from the gateway of the close to the farther end of the last chapel. Of all that there is to observe in this upward-gazing stroll I can give no detailed account ”

“ We wandered through high-walled, cobble-paved streets until suddenly we came on the cathedral, soaring upward out of a welter of the dreary and commonplace. I had thought Canterbury was wonderful—but now I knew that I had never seen anything in my life before so imposing as Amiens. Pure Gothic, like Canterbury, it was so much larger; a perfect maze of pinnacles, towers, arches, buttresses and flying buttresses; it soared into the sky—carven saint above carven saint, and gargoyles leering from every cranny. I could scarcely believe that the faith of man had ever reared so lovely a thing. ”

“ But both ways we usually fall short of the fact; they were most picturesque, most uncomfortable. We have seen how once upon a time the Cathedral, now so decorously grey,{67} blazed with purple and fine linen; so too was it with all life; the very streets now so sober-minded were then a veritable kaleidoscope; all life was highly coloured, save that of the cloister. In those times in the good city of Canterbury it must have been as difficult when one took his walk abroad to avoid the sight of a hospital or of a holy house as to-day to escape from the clangour of church bells. ”

“ The external beauties of Canterbury Cathedral can best be viewed in their entirety from a distance. The old town has nestled in close under the walls of the church that dominates it, preventing anything like a complete view of the building from the immediate precincts. ”

“ Not by that way only did the vast crowds reach Canterbury, for there was scarcely a road that at some period of the year did not send its contribution to the throng which jostled through the gates into the narrow streets leading to the monastery gateway. Year after year wealth poured into the Cathedral coffers, and pilgrims went away lighter in spirits and in purse, but each carrying with them the little leaden bottle in which the infinitely diluted blood of the martyr mixed with water was distributed. ”

“ And indeed dead as she is and silent, Canterbury is worthy of resurrection if only because she is as it were a part of him and a part, too, of our origins, the well, though not the source from which the Faith was given us. For some thirteen hundred years when men have spoken of Canterbury, they have had in mind the metropolitan church of England, the great cathedral which still stands so finely there in the rather gloomy close behind Christ Church gate, rightly upon the foundations of its predecessors, Roman, Saxon, and Norman buildings. ”

“ There is an indescribable fascination about Salisbury Cathedral, which a person must see to understand. Any one who is at all responsive to the charm of great architecture, can sit for hours under the old trees on the little common, and drink in the whole scene,—the beautiful building with its delicate shapes outlined in shadows upon the green grass.
“No doubt it is a generally accepted fact that Lincoln is the finest of the English cathedrals,” Mrs. Pitt explained after a time. “Perhaps Durham comes next in line, and Canterbury has great historical interest. ”

“ On the spot where Christianity—more than twelve hundred years ago—first obtained a permanent footing in Britain, stands the proud metropolitan cathedral of Canterbury—a venerable and lasting monument of ancient piety and monkish zeal. St. Augustine, who brought over the glad tidings of the Christian faith in the year 596, founded that noble structure [62] on the remains of a church which Roman Christians in remote times had built there. ”

“ The scene in the building is said to have been one of extraordinary beauty, but most lovers of architecture would probably prefer to view the fabric with its own loveliness, unenhanced by numerous streams of molten lead pouring down from the roof.
Since that date Canterbury Cathedral has been happy in the possession of no history, and we pass on, therefore, to the examination in detail of its exterior. ”

“ The present organ, which was built by Samuel Green, is believed to have been used at the Handel Festival in Westminster Abbey in 1784. It was enlarged by Hill in 1842, and entirely reconstructed in 1886. In this connection we may mention that Archbishop Theodore first introduced the ecclesiastical chant in Canterbury Cathedral.
The tombs in the choir are all occupied by famous archbishops and cardinals. On the south side, hard by the site of the shrine of St. Dunstan, is the tomb of Simon of Sudbury, who was archbishop from 1375 to 1381. ”

“ But to return to Thomas. In 1071 he went with Lanfranc to Rome to receive the pall. The question of precedence was there argued, and the Pope decided in favour of Canterbury. Afterwards, at a synod held by William, it was decided that the Archbishop of York should swear allegiance to Canterbury, and must be consecrated in Canterbury Cathedral, that the diocese of York from that time should not extend south of the Humber, and that the archbishop should lose his authority over the see of Worcester. ”

“ Canterbury teems with interesting relics of the past, and weeks may be spent in its old-world streets, where one is continually coming across unexpected little bits of half-timber work, weather-beaten gables, and grotesque oak carving. The cathedral, whose "Bell Harry" or central tower seems to dominate the whole city, should be approached through Mercery Lane, at the corner of which are some slight remains of Chaucer's hostelry, "The Chequers of Hope." At the bottom of the lane the cathedral close is entered by the famous Christ Church Gateway, erected by Prior Goldstone in 1517. ”

“ Now, these are the written traditions with regard to the early churches of Canterbury. How far, then, are they confirmed by actual discoveries? A great deal of light has been thrown upon the point within the last few years. In the course of explorations conducted in the Cathedral crypt by Canon Scott Robertson, Dr Sheppard, and myself, there was found at the base of the western wall some masonry of Kentish ragstone covered by a smooth facing of hard plaster, manifestly older than the columns of Prior Ernulf's vaulting shafts, and [19] than Lanfranc's masonry in the upper portion of the wall. ”

“ By walking outside Canterbury, a mile distant to Saint Thomas’s Hill, on the Whitstable Road, you shall see how thoroughly the Cathedral dominates the city; and arrive, by an exploration of the narrow lanes and the meads below, at an understanding of how this great Minster was Canterbury, and how subservient to it was all else. Affairs are now very different. A vigorous and pulsing life belongs to the streets and lanes, while it is the Church that has passed away from the intimate life of the people, and sunk back into retirement. ”