Catholic chapel

“ The supreme interest of the cathedral is, of course, the Royal Chapel, where in a sunken level Ferdinand and Isabel lie, with their poor mad daughter Joan and her idolized unfaithful husband Philip the Fair, whose body she bore about with her while she lived. The picture postal has these monuments in its keeping and can show them better than my pen, which falters also from the tremendous retablo of the chapel dense with the agonies of martyrdom and serene with the piety of the Catholic Kings kneeling placidly amid the horrors. ”

“ The ghostly figure of what may be a dead saint is laid out in wax, as upon a bed, at one shrine, and elsewhere what seems to be a dead Redeemer is altared in a glass case. In the chapel the artistic character of the cathedral is repeated, save that its high altar-columns, its cross-bearing angel, its splendidly-rayed apotheosis of the Blessed Virgin, its statues of Moses and John the Baptist, have a more modern workmanship. ”

“ The chapel was on the site of the pond in the Trocadéro gardens. There the hearts of the Catholic Stuarts were taken for preservation. Suppressed at the Revolution, the convent was subsequently razed to the ground by Napoléon, who planned the erection of a palace there for his son the “Roi de Rome.” The old street has still several old houses easily recognized: Nos. 5, 9, 19, etc. The church, on the site of an eleventh-century chapel, dates from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with a nineteenth-century chapel and presbytery. ”

“ Rollo and Carlos had not gone far before they came to a place where two children had set up what they called a chapel, under the archway which led to the interior of the house where they lived. A real chapel, in Catholic countries, is any consecrated place, large or small, containing an altar, and a crucifix, and other sacred emblems, where masses are said and other religious services are performed. Real chapels are made in the alcoves of churches, in monuments over tombs, and in other similar places, and children have toy chapels to play with. ”

“ Near by are the ruins of an old battlemented tower, and on the other side of the stream, in a still wilder, more inaccessible spot, is the cave where the Madonna was found by a girl in search of fagots. The chapel is vaulted and adorned in Spanish fashion, with a retablo over the altar, on the panels of which are painted the mysteries of religion. The Virgin and Child are in silken garments; and an iron reja protects the sanctuary. People come here to pray in time of calamity, and often hang their votive offerings on the wall. ”

“ In this chapel, or “heart” of the church, then, is the usual service performed. In Catholic cathedrals, you will understand that laymen, except in extraordinary [74] cases, are not admitted within the choir, and the organ is almost always at the end of the nave, over the great door, and beneath an oriel window. The cathedrals at Canterbury and Westminster, were both built for the Catholic worship, and they had their private chapels; but St. Paul’s having arisen under the Protestant régime, is a little different. ”

“ What is it they are all assembled to see? The large cathedral in which they stand fronts on a little square to the north. At the southern extremity is placed the grand sanctuary and high altar, with a large and rich basement chapel underneath. On either side of the church above, there are, as is usual in Italian churches, small side chapels and altars; but about the middle of the western side a large archway gives admission to a very large chapel—to-day the centre of attraction. We might call it a small church. The Neapolitans name it the Tesoro. ”

“ The proportions of the plan are considered perfect by competent judges. It forms a lengthened parallelogram, terminated at the east end by an apse, and formed of two chapels, one above the other, without aisles or transepts. The edifice measures outside 36 metres 33 centimetres in length, by 17 in width; the exterior elevation from the ground of the lower chapel to the front gable is 42m. 50cm.; the spire [8] rises 33m. 25cm. above the roof. The interior elevation measures 6m. 60cm. in the lower chapel, and from 20m. to 50m. in the upper. ”

“ The sublime usually has more of a frown and straddle, and it is not until after you have looked about you for ten minutes that you perceive that the chapel is saved from being the prettiest church in England by the accident of its being one of the noblest. It is a cathedral without aisles or columns or transepts, but (as a compensation) with such a beautiful slimness of clustered tracery soaring along the walls, and spreading, bending and commingling in the roof, that its simplicity seems only a richness the more. I stood there for a quarter of an hour on a Sunday morning ”

“ At the top of the great staircase that ascends from the entrance of the Audience Chamber there was recently “unearthed,” or unwalled, the main doorway to the chapel above. This had been built over so completely by the military that its presence was for years unsuspected. It has suffered much damage, but what remains gives indication of the rich beauty it once possessed. The Chapel has no pillars, being one great nave, its vault springing from engaged clustered columns, that run up the walls between the windows. The capitals of these columns are the only carving in this vast airy hall. ”

“ The site is now used as a recreation ground for the cathedral clergy. Above an early Renaissance door, made when the building was converted into a sacristy for the later church, is encrusted a piece of ninth-century sculpture, with the usual arches, crosses, and palmettes, and in the adjoining wall is an oculus with an ornamented moulding. By the side of the bishop's palace is a little chapel with a door apparently of the ninth century. It has a scroll pattern up the jambs and across the lintel, with the characteristic triple furrowing, and above the lintel a palmette cornice ”

“ In the interior, even though the nave is very short and the choir very deep, the same impression of unity. Nevertheless, the balustrades in Renaissance style, which garnish the upper galleries, shock us for a moment. The discrepancy in the styles is more visible inside the edifice. Outside the light envelops all and softens the contrasts; the sun creates harmony.
The chapels are poorly decorated. The architects and clergy have there rivaled each other in bad taste. They have broken open the apse to add to it a chapel of the Virgin, which breaks all the lines of the monument inside and out. ”

“ In the first place, the chantry chapel is not confined to any definite part of the plan. In our cathedrals it is frequently an excrescence from an outer wall of the church, like the bishops’ tomb chapels at Lincoln or Hereford, or it is a rectangular structure of stone, with elaborately traceried windows, cresting, and canopy work, like prince Arthur’s chapel at Worcester, or the episcopal tombs at Winchester, set up within an arch of the nave or quire. Of these types we have examples in our parish churches: the first is illustrated, on a large scale, by Hall’s chapel at Grantham ”

“ In the centre one, another cathedral, with its cupola and bell tower, could easily stand. All of them together form sixty-eight bold vaulted ceilings, which seem to expand and rise slowly as you look at them. Every thing is enormous in this cathedral. The principal chapel, placed in the centre of the great nave, and almost high enough to touch the ceiling, looks like a chapel built for giant priests, to whose knees the ordinary altars would not reach. The paschal candle seems like the mast of a ship, and the bronze candlestick which holds it, like the pillars of a church. ”

“ We embarked at Westminster Bridge and landed close by the church in Southwark, and we were so fortunate as to get permission to enter it without a guide. The oldest part of it is the Lady chapel—which, in English cathedrals, is almost invariably placed behind the choir. Through this we strolled, alone and in silence. Every footstep there falls upon a grave. The pavement is one mass of gravestones; and through the tall, stained windows of the chapel a solemn light pours in upon the sculptured names of men and women who have long been dust. ”

“ A chapel needs an altar with a foot-pace, and a credence, all of which may be smaller than those belonging to the chancel. Minor altars are not allowed unless they stand in a chapel. Chapels are intended for the Eucharist, not for choir offices.
Of all the objectionable ways of warming a church that of noisy iron gratings on the floor is one of the worst. They have a power of spoiling the effect of the architecture which is curiously beyond their importance; they are a danger at weddings and at other occasions; and they harbour rats. ”

“ Being neatly glazed, and free from paintings or Gothic ornaments, it allows a full blaze of light to dart on the chapel door; which is also adorned with marble, in a plain but noble style of architecture.
The father sacristan stood ready on the steps of the portal to grant us admittance; and, throwing open the valves, we entered the chapel and were struck by the justness of its proportions, the simple majesty of the arched roof, and the mild solemn light, equally diffused over every part of the edifice. No tawdry ornaments, no glaring pictures, disgraced the sanctity of the place. ”

“ The west front is yet sound and good. Nothing particular strikes you on the entrance, but there are some interesting specimens of rich old stained glass in the windows of the transept. The choir is completely and cruelly modernised. In the side chapels are apparently several good modern paintings; and over an altar of twisted columns, round which ivy leaves apparently composed of ivory are creeping, is a picture of three figures in the flames of purgatory. This side chapel is consecrated to the offering up of orisons 'for the souls in purgatory.' It is gloomy and repulsive. ”

“ All the workmen employed are obliged to have dispensations from the Pope, and every pretext is eagerly seized upon to delay the erection of the edifice. At present, the Protestant community, with few exceptions, are content to have service performed in an angle of the court-yard of the palace, formerly a cellar and kitchen, but now converted into an episcopal chapel and vestry-room. The members of the society have a small chapel, not adequate to the accommodation of those who desire to attend it, belonging to the Methodist persuasion ”

“ It has been recently restored and re-built in an uninteresting style,—the exterior is bare to ugliness, the interior so painted that the six old Roman columns which support the choir are overwhelmed by the banality of their surroundings. The plateau on which the chapel is built is now almost bare; olive-trees grow to its edges and there is no trace of the Seminary that was once so full of active life. ”

“ The chamber, which, for her preservation, was filled with heavenly light, has become, from the change of level all over Rome, as well as from the position of the church, a subterranean cell, and is now a chapel of peculiar sanctity, into which you descend by torchlight. The floor retains the old mosaic, and over the altar is a bas-relief, representing St. Agnes, with clasped hands, and covered only by her long tresses, while two ferocious soldiers drive her before them. The upper church, as a piece of architecture, is beautiful, and rich in precious marbles and antique columns. ”

“ The public are much indebted to the care and good taste of these gentlemen, that this valuable antiquity has been so admirably preserved; and as they are most courteous in affording strangers the privilege of examining it, we doubt not that the opportunity will be gladly taken. The chapel is of an oblong form, running from east to west. Its dimensions are 42 feet in length, 15 feet 3 inches in breadth, and the height, from the surface of the floor to the intersections of the groining of the roof, 14 feet. ”

“ The whole church has an open parapet and lofty buttresses, with rather small pinnacles. The view from the east is certainly very striking; and though the idea is completely that of a chapel, rather than of a more ambitious church, it is certainly one of the finest chapels of its size that I have ever seen. ”

“ The chapel is built of a warm, yellow stone and has a roof of rounded tiles of such exquisite tints of ashen-grey, of dull red and of chestnut brown that it may be covered with a rippled thatch of autumn leaves. At the other end of the convent is a fine campanile of sturdy mason’s work. It is still proud and commanding, although its base is occupied by a stable and is stuffed with that dusty rubbish, that mouldy hay and those fragments of farm implements that the poor seem never to have the heart to destroy. ”

“ Ascending one of the lateral staircases—no foot must touch the Santa Scala—we reach the outside of the Sancta Sanctorum, a chapel held so intensely sacred that none but the pope can officiate at its altar, and that it is never open to others, except on the morning before Palm Sunday, when the canons of the Lateran come hither to worship, in solemn procession, with torches and a veiled crucifix, and, even then, none but the clergy are allowed to pass its threshold. ”

“ Clustering to the rock we pass are buildings from which priests and "sisters" come and go with a surprising mingling of the sexes, and when we have climbed to the top a dark-eyed sister shows us for half a franc a collection of the most extraordinary Romish trash we have ever looked upon. The chapel is free to us, and within its incense-laden interior we find several comfortable priests poring over books or sitting with insensate stare at the candles burning on a particularly tawdry altar. ”