Christian architecture

“ It is our privilege to-day to seek the unity of truth and goodness with beauty, to maintain the faith of the Reformation along with that beauty of church architecture which, in its brighter days, the old church witnessed to. It is a one-sided view which sees in Gothic nothing but the development of utility or the endeavour to attain greater height; it is the true view which beholds in it the ideality, piety, and faith that possessed the hearts of our forefathers. The architect's design could never have been realised apart from their offerings of devotion to the Christian religion. ”

“ Now, what we claim for Pointed architecture is, not that it is the only Christian style which has arisen or is likely to arise, but that it has been more entirely developed under the influence of the Christian religion, and more thoroughly carries out its tone and sentiment than any other style. ”

“ I closed my last lecture with the statement, on which I desired to give you time for reflection, that Christian architecture was, in its chief energy, the adornment of tombs,—having the passionate function of doing honour to the dead.
But there is an ethic, or simply didactic and instructive architecture, the decoration of which you will find to be normally representative of the virtues which are common alike to Christian and Greek. And there is a natural tendency to adopt such decoration, and the modes of design fitted for it, in civil buildings. ”

“ If, therefore, the buildings of classical architecture as a rule offer the expansion of breadth, we find in contrast to this that the romantic character of Christian churches asserts itself in the growth upwards from the soil and a soaring to the skies. ”

“ The reception of Christianity as the religion of the empire, not only changed to a very great extent, the entire frame and aspect of society, but in a particular manner influenced the practical art of building. As in the heathen temple was traced the great source of perfection in ancient art, so in the Christian church then established, is to be found the origin of those modes and forms, which, for so many centuries, guided modern practice. ”

“ This conception of the company of Christ with His saints, (the eastern chapel of all being the Virgin's,) was at the root of the entire disposition of the apse with its supporting and dividing buttresses and piers; and the architectural form can never be well delighted in, unless in some sympathy with the spiritual imagination out of which it rose. We talk foolishly and feebly of symbols and types: in old [Pg 91] Christian architecture, every part is literal: the cathedral is for its builders the House of God;—it is surrounded, like an earthly king's, with minor lodgings for the servants ”

“ Benedict soon added to his Rule a decree providing for the teaching and study of architecture, painting, mosaic, sculpture, and all branches of art; and it became one of the most important duties of abbots, priors, and deans to make designs for the churches and auxiliary buildings of the communities they ruled. From the early centuries of the Christian era down to the thirteenth century, therefore, architecture was practised only by the clergy, and came to be regarded as a sacred science. ”

“ A modern poet has called pointed architecture “the petrification of the Christian religion.” Did our space permit, we might multiply quotations from the fathers and schoolmen, as well as from the more recent divines of the Catholic Church, all tending to the same effect—the demonstration that Christian art was a symbolical language, expressive of the doctrines and discipline of the Christian Church. ”

“ There is no reason to doubt that the earliest Christian churches were very unpretentious in form and that some time elapsed before there was anything which could be called a definite church architecture, beyond that to which we have alluded. ”

“ Mark's be truly ecclesiastical and Christian, is evidently determined together with the first; for, if not only the permission of ornament at all, but the beautiful execution of it, be dependent on our being familiar with it in daily life, it will follow that no style of noble architecture can be exclusively ecclesiastical. It must be practised in the dwelling before it be perfected in the church, and it is the test of a noble style that it shall be applicable to both ”

“ Yet, though Mr Bond’s solution is probably correct, in the main, with respect to our cathedrals, minsters, and abbey churches, it seems quite unsatisfactory for hundreds of parish churches. All thoughtful students must, indeed, admit that the aesthetic and devotional aspect of church architecture—its grandeur, its freedom, its wealth of what was choicest in design and ornament, its sculpture, painting, stained glass, and mosaic work—cannot be eliminated when considering the question of size. ”

“ There is also a pressing necessity for us to obtain fuller information, and come to a decision about the subject of church architecture, and all that relates to the exterior of divine worship. We are building cathedrals and churches in every style, and on principles which are as various as there are fancies and theories in the brains of architects. ”

“ It is obvious, for example, that the features of a large Church, compressed into a small building, form a mere caricature; and, on the other hand, the features that would be perfectly suitable in a small Church, being increased in their dimensions, to accommodate them to a large building, produce a monster in art. The materials should likewise affect the style of architecture. Many features—such as deeply-sunk mouldings, and traceried windows—which are easily worked in sand and free stones, cannot be produced in our granites and limestones. ”

“ The Roman Catholics press all the lighter emotions of the heart into the service of religion, which with us maintains a more solemn and serious character. The upper church is a simple, Gothic hall, with some very interesting early paintings. It is without side aisles, pretty well proportioned, although it might perhaps have been more lofty, and much, and perhaps rather gaudily, ornamented. Yet certainly painting and gilding, if well applied, tend to deepen the impression, even of the most severe and solemn styles of architecture. ”

“ The church as a lecture-room will interest only the cultivated few; the church as the temple of art sanctified by religion is the home of worship for the multitude.
Religion, if it be anything, must be popular, which science can never be, and which art always is. Then, in the name of the religion of the poor, let architecture advance to raise to God the temple of majesty and beauty, the democratic palace of the people, where the prince and the beggar sit side by side as brothers, a basilica prouder and loftier than that of the sceptred monarch. ”

“ From whatever source his inspiration came, Christ Church is a peculiarly beautiful and graceful structure, well meriting all the praise that has been bestowed upon it and incidentally affording a striking instance of what might be achieved by the amateur architects of the eighteenth century who believed that a knowledge of architecture was an essential part of every gentleman’s education and who were willing to put aside their own professional vocations for a time in order to plan and superintend the erection of some public structure as a kind of public duty. ”

“ Neither interior nor exterior impresses you with the feeling of awe common to other large churches. The sun struggles through the immense windows of painted glass, staining every pillar and carved cornice with the richest hues, and wherever the eye wanders it grows giddy with the wilderness of architecture. ”

“ In my own practice of architecture I am constantly providing Presbyterian, Congregational, and even Unitarian churches, by request, with chancels containing altars properly vested and ornamented with crosses and candles, while the almost universal demand is for church edifices that shall approach as nearly as possible in appearance to the typical Catholic church of the Middle Ages. Of course some of this is due to a revived instinct for beauty, that almost sacramental quality in life which was ruthlessly destroyed by Protestantism, and also to a renewed sense of the value of symbol and ritual ”

“ An age of church-building, such as this, ought to produce good architects, not only from the great encouragement given to their professional efforts, but from the increasing appreciation of the principles and powers of their art. And yet it cannot be denied, however we may account for the fact, that (at least among those for whom we write, the members of our own communion) , no architect has as yet arisen, who appears destined to be the reviver of Christian art. ”

“ Good architecture is the work of good and believing men; therefore, you say, at least some people say, 'Good architecture must essentially have been the work of the clergy, not of the laity.' No—a thousand times no; good architecture has always been the work of the commonalty, not of the clergy. What, you say, those glorious cathedrals—the pride of Europe—did their builders not form Gothic architecture? ”

“ You do not pretend to judge of a Greek temple without being able almost to count the stones of which it is composed or without appreciating fully the relative part which they play. In Gothic architecture, assuredly no person would dream of finding any enjoyment in a church without having first secured a good working knowledge of how it came to be what it is—how the stone roof is kept in place in the wonderful way that we see it and what part is played by pier and flying buttress. ”

“ For the Anglican architect, it will be necessary to know enough of the earlier styles to be able to restore the deeply interesting churches, which they have left us as precious heirlooms; enough of the Debased styles, to take warning from their decline: but for his own style, he should choose the glorious architecture of the fourteenth century; and, just as no man has more than one hand-writing, so in this one language alone will he express his architectural ideas. ”

“ In our grand specimens of ecclesiastical architecture, we may read the world's later history, and to-day they breathe the sombre reverential influence of a faith which sought to satisfy itself with the visible symbolizing of those half-poetical, half-superstitious conceptions with which the religion of the Middle Ages was so deeply imbued. ”

“ This loftiness and detachment of site give a peculiar majesty to the building, and conduce no doubt to the impression that in all church architecture there is nothing quite like it, nothing in which the passive strength of the elder style so imperceptibly blends with the springing grace of the new. ”

“ Père Du Breul (one of the Benedictines of S. Germain des Près) , writing in 1612 in his Théâtre des Antiquités de Paris, speaks of the church as follows: "Ce sera un des plus beaux bâtiments de l'Europe, s'il peut être parfait comme il a été commencé; car rien n'y manque pour ce qui est de la perfection de l'architecture, soit pour le haut exhaussement, les fenêtres et ouvertures, et aussi l'enrichissement des diverses frises et moulures de toutes sortes et façons. ”

“ The general form of the church being thus determined, more through chance than design, yet with great convenience and propriety, this accidental form was adhered to in the subsequent erections for sacred purposes; but with certain internal arrangements, modified by the lessened resources of the art, the prevailing taste, and the novel exigencies of the case. Instead of the horizontal entablature resting upon the internal ranges of pillars, as in the more classical Basilicon, churches were constructed internally of arcades, the arches resting upon the capitals of the columns. ”

“ Provided the priest has his basilica and his altar, he has nothing to say. The four walls belong to the artist. The architectural book belongs no longer to the priest, to religion, to Rome; it is the property of poetry, of imagination, of the people. Hence the rapid and innumerable transformations of that architecture which owns but three centuries, so striking after the stagnant immobility of the Romanesque architecture, which owns six or seven. Nevertheless, art marches on with giant strides. Popular genius amid originality accomplish the task which the bishops formerly fulfilled. ”

“ Mark’s had once their match on the walls of every palace on the Grand Canal; and the only difference between the church and the dwelling-house was, that there existed a symbolical meaning in the distribution of the parts of all buildings meant for worship, and that the painting or sculpture was, in the one case, less frequently of profane subject than in the other. A more severe distinction cannot be drawn: for secular history was constantly introduced into church architecture; and sacred history or allusion generally formed at least one half of the ornament of the dwelling-house. ”

“ It must constantly be repeated; every part of a church and every material object used in divine worship is representative of some theological truth. In the script of architecture everything is a reminiscence, an echo, a reflection, and every part is connected to form a whole. ”

“ Our Protestant churches are built, not for ceremonies and spectacles and processions, but for prayer and preaching. And the fitness of means to ends that first law of architecture is sacrificed by a church interior made more to be looked at than to be heard in. ”

“ Construction and ornament were in fact advancing and improving, if not from year to year, at any rate from decade to decade, so that by the commencement of the twelfth century a remarkable development had taken place. The ideas of the dimensions of churches then entertained were really almost as liberal as during the best period of Gothic architecture. ”