Chapel Royal

“ Penetrating the sombre vault which leads from the door of entrance to the interior court, the visitor finds before him the ancient royal residence, whose façade preserves something of the majesty of antiquity. To the left stands the chapel built by Charles V. in imitation of the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris, and which he dedicated to the Trinity and the Virgin, the fencing-room, and the tower of the reservoir; to the right the formidable dungeon rears its head towards heaven. ”

“ Chapel Royal, a chapel in each of the King’s palaces, neatly ornamented on the inside. They are under the government of a Dean, who acknowledges no superior but his Majesty; for the Chapel Royal, or King’s Chapel, is not within the jurisdiction of any Bishop, but is a regal peculiar under the immediate government of the King. By the Dean are chosen the Sub-dean and all the other officers.
These are the King’s Clerk of the closet, a Divine whose office is to attend at his Majesty’s right hand during divine service, to wait on his Majesty in his 85private oratory ”

“ Mount to the Upper Chapel (or Sainte Chapelle proper) by the small spiral staircase in the corner. This soaring pile was the oratory where the royal family and court attended service; its gorgeousness bespeaks its origin and nature. It glows like a jewel. First go out of the door and examine the exterior and doorway of the chapel. Its platform was directly approached in early times from the Palace. The center pillar bears a fine figure of Christ. In the tympanum (as over the principal doorway of almost every important church in Paris and in the district) is a relief of the Last Judgment. ”

“ Though I have been here only two days, I have already seen a great deal, amongst other things the Emperor and the Empress; they go to the royal chapel every morning, which, though in the palace, is open to everybody. It is a small but beautiful chapel, very simple, with a Christ on the Cross over the altar, a picture on the right hand side, and Maria with her crown of rays on the left; four tall Heyduks, or Hungarian soldiers, stand in front of the altar, with their backs to the people and their faces to the officiating priests. ”

“ It is a chapel, not a church; therefore it consists (practically) of a choir alone, without nave or transepts. (2) It is the domestic Chapel of the Royal Palace. (3) It is, above all things, the Shrine of the Crown of Thorns. These three points must be constantly borne in mind in examining the building.
Erected later than Notre-Dame, it represents the pointed style of the middle of the thirteenth century, and is singularly pure and uniform throughout. Secularized at the Revolution, it fell somewhat into decay ”

“ 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. ”

“ We make our way round, above the Confessor's Chapel, and see his coffin lying in his shrine. We pass great rooms where all sorts of débris from the building are kept—old oaken chairs, bits of stone carving, paraphernalia for the coronation or for any great ceremony. We walk under the painted glass windows that we have watched, shining like jewels at the end of the apse, when we are at service in the choir. Then comes another door, another narrow stair, and we find ourselves in the strangest place of all. We are on the roof of Henry the Seventh's chapel. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ It is approached by a narrow, winding stairway from the outside of the church, and is about forty [260] feet from the ground. It was enriched in the time of Louis XV, but its decorations were much damaged by the Revolutionaries. The pictured coffer containing the relics of the saints is in a chamber closed by ornamented double doors, in which are also the pulleys and cords by which it is lowered to the floor of the church on the great day of the pilgrimage. All round the little chapel are the crutches and other offerings of those who have been cured by attendance at the shrine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Exquisite ornament is seen in the triforium arcade, and between some of the arches in the transept are figures, especially finely carved, though much mutilated, known as the censing angels. Henry VII.’s Chapel replaces an earlier Lady Chapel, and is the most remarkable building of its period. It coniprises a nave with aisles, and an apsidal eastward end formed of five small radiating chapels. ”

“ From one of the streets leading out of the Place Royale you can see the cathedral, and as you come nearer you see that it is clear enough of houses or such like things; the great apse rises over you, with its belt of eastern chapels; first the long slim windows of these chapels, which are each of them little apses, the Lady Chapel projecting a good way beyond the rest, and then, running under the cornice of the chapels and outer aisles all round the church, a cornice of great noble leaves ”

“ The examining magistrate made the gardener, who had the key, open the chapel, a real gem of carving, a shrine in stone which had been respected by time and the revolutionaries, and which, with the delicate sculpture work of its porch and its miniature population of statuettes, was always looked upon as a marvelous specimen of the Norman-Gothic style. The chapel, which was very simple in the interior, with no other ornament than its marble altar, offered no hiding-place. ”

“ But the court is a large, rough pasture, fenced on the north and east, where the cliff is bare and perpendicular, and towards the town shut in by a range of old wall, pierced by a few embrasures, some low buildings, and the remains of an ancient chapel. There is no picturesque assemblage of ruins; but little indeed besides the shattered keep, and that appears to best effect from without. Near the chapel, Our Lady’s Well, a spring famous from time immemorial, bubbles silently up in a darksome vault. ”

“ The Choir (See the Chevet, p. 46.)
The ambulatory with its radiating chapels is of incomparable beauty. Excepting the larger central chapel, known as the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament, which is nine-sided, each chapel has seven sides rising from a circular floor.
In each chapel, three windows similar to those of the nave, light the three hindmost walls. Blind windows imitate the true ones on the side walls.
At the base of the windows a narrow gallery, passing through the pillars, continues all along the side-aisles of the transept and nave—a peculiarity in Champagne architecture. ”

“ The Lady Chapel is a late and poor addition of a very inferior kind, and completely modernized—as indeed is the greater part of the church—on the exterior. On the south side of the cathedral there are old sacristies and a large cloister, of which more presently. The west end seemed to me to have been intended for two steeples, but one only has been completed, and this is on the north side of the north aisle. ”

“ 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. ”

“ VIEW LOOKING N. IN ANTE-CHAPEL TO LADY CHAPEL.
This chapel is roofed with a neat Perpendicular vault and lit with a poor Perpendicular window, and a couple of depressed arches (i.e., with their springing below the capitals) open into the Lady Chapel. An enormous buttress, however, is an unsightly necessity to prevent the wall above these arches falling eastwards. Our view (page 67) is taken from the east, looking west, and shows one of these arches and, on the south side, the fine Decorated tomb of Bishop Martyn. ”

“ The Elizabethan chapel is solemn and interesting with its dark oaken pews, its arched roof, on the keystones of which are carved the Charter House arms, and the monumental tombs here and there. A bright coal-fire in an open grate gives it a comfortable, homelike aspect that must be grateful to the aged pensioners. ”

“ No sooner had I entered Aix than I went to the chapel.... The effect of the great "portail" is not striking; the façade displays the different styles of architecture—Roman, Gothic, and modern—without order, and consequently, without grandeur; but if, on the contrary, we arrive at the chapel by Chevet, the result is otherwise. The high "abside" of the fourteenth century, in all its boldness and beauty, the rich workmanship of its balustrades, the variety of its "gargouilles," the somber hue of the stones, and the large transparent windows—strike the beholder with admiration. ”

“ The mind is completely fettered by their spirit. Everything is forgotten but the mighty dead, who still "rule us from their urns."
The Chapel of Henry VII., which we next entered, is one of the most elaborate specimens of Gothic workmanship in the world. If the first idea of the Gothic arch sprung from observing the forms of trees, this chapel must resemble the first conceptions of that order, for the fluted columns rise up like tall trees, branching out at the top into spreading capitals covered with leaves, and supporting arches of the ceiling resembling a leafy roof. ”

“ Arrived at the Poets’ Corner once again, they found that one of the vergers was just about to conduct a party “in behind the scenes,” as Barbara called it. “Behind the scenes” includes the Chapel of Henry VII and that of Edward the Confessor, besides the many smaller ones which surround the choir.
These little irregular chapels are crowded with all sorts of tombs, from those of the long effigy to those of the high canopy. Sometimes a husband and wife are represented on the tomb, their figures either kneeling side by side, or facing each other. ”

“ The burial chambers hollowed in the solid rock were necessarily smaller than the old chambers dug in the gravel and no longer sufficient to contain the great mass of furniture gathered by a king for his grave. On the other hand, the chapels with the increase in architectural skill could be build of great size. Corresponding to these technical conditions we find a great increase in the importance of the chapel. It becomes a great temple, whose magazines were filled with all those objects which had formerly been placed in the burial chamber and were so necessary to the life of the spirit. ”

“ This chapel is perhaps twenty feet high, twenty-six feet long, and seventeen feet wide. Entering through a door so low that you have to stoop to go in, you finally come into a chamber six feet square and lighted only by candles. This is the alleged tomb of the Saviour. Over it is a marble slab covered with glass to keep the kisses of the pilgrims from wearing the stone. There are always priests here, and all who come in are sprinkled with holy water. Every worshipper brings with him rosaries, beads, and holy pictures which are laid upon the tomb to be blessed. ”