Roman Catholic chapel

“ 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 chapel of the nunnery is no longer used as a cow-house, nor the cathedral as a stable, as in the time of Dr. Johnson’s visit. Nevertheless, many interesting relics which he saw have since disappeared. Still, enough remains to awaken emotion in the breasts of those whom the thought of noble deeds and heroic lives can move. In treading this sacred soil, and walking among the graves of kings and princes of the church, surrounded by broken walls and crumbling arches which once sheltered saints and heroes, we are lifted by the very genius of the place into a higher world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I do not know what impression it makes upon you, but the sight of that kneeling crowd of young men in their cassocks and winged surplices, absorbed in prayer before the altar at the early dawn of day, when the ray of the rising sun is just tinging the tops of the trees with a golden light, and the open windows of the little chapel admit the sound of warbled music of birds, and the sweet perfumes from the garden just below, enamelled with flowers, is to me a scene higher than earth often reveals to us of heaven's peace and rapt devotion in God. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ He is going to convert the chapel into a chantry, and has bought land about it for a cemetery, which is to be decorated with mediaeval monuments in sculpture and painting copied from the frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa, of which he has a portfolio full of drawings. "It will be quite sweet," he says, "to hear the vesper-bell tolling over the sullen moor every evening." Then there is White, a weak young aesthete who shocks the company by declaring: "We have no life or poetry in the Church of England; the Catholic Church alone is beautiful. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Males are admitted by the door which is flanked by two columns of rare black and white marble, supporting a richly-sculptured marble cornice, above which are two lines of mosaic heads in circlets—in the outer, the Saviour and the twelve apostles; in the inner, the Virgin between St. Stephen and St. Laurence, with eight female saints; at the angles St. Pudens and St. Pastor. In the interior of the chapel four granite columns support a lofty groined vault, which, together with the upper part of the walls, is entirely covered with mosaic figures, which stand out distinctly from a gold ground. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What is called the tomb of Benedict XII in another chapel is a pure "make-up," much of it of the nineteenth century. There was a beautiful monument to this great pope, but in the eighteenth century all that was left of it was moved. It stood in the chapel of the Tailors' Guild, and they wanted the space for a monument to a tailor.
The Revolution created great havoc in the cathedral. The cloisters and chapter-house that stood to the east of it were swept away, and all their treasures and those of the cathedral looted, or else broken up. ”

“ Above, at the end of the perspective, rises a chapel designed by M. A. Buonarotti; further on, an antient church, encrusted with white marble, porphyry, and verd antique. The interior presents a crowded assemblage of ornaments, elaborate mosaic pavements and inlaid work without end. The high altar is placed in a semicircular recess, which, like the apsis of the church at Torcello, glitters with barbaric paintings on a gold ground, and receives a fervid glow of light from five windows, filled up with transparent marble clouded like tortoiseshell. ”

“ Every spot is covered with treasures and works of art, and the roof is supported by forty-two Corinthian pillars of dark-red stone. All the decorations of the high altar, the immense candelabra and massive flower-vases, are of silver. At a grand festival, when every thing is richly illuminated, the appearance of this chapel must be gorgeous in the extreme. The head and two bottles of the blood of St. Januarius are preserved here; the people assert that this blood liquefies every year. The frescoes on the ceiling are splendidly painted ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We wonder why this chapel alone in the empty Cathedral, is so crowded with worshippers. They surely are not turned towards that splendid Pietà of Scalza—a work in which the marble seems to live a cold, dead, shivering life. They do not heed Angelico’s and Signorelli’s frescoes on the roof and walls. The interchange of light and gloom upon the stalls and carved work of the canopies can scarcely rivet so intense a gaze. All eyes seem fixed upon a curtain of red silk above the altar. ”