Ecclesiastical architecture

“ In restoring the ecclesiastical architecture of the middle ages, there are certain modifications and changes which the altered position of religion renders absolutely necessary; for instance, in erecting a cathedral or bishop's church it should be so arranged as to be perfectly available for the public worship of the faithful, and the choir, on that account, should not be enclosed in a solid manner, but with open screens like the great parochial churches at Lubeck, and many other continental cities, and also not unfrequently in England, as at Newark, a grand parochial church ”

“ The episcopacy stood for the rights of the Pope, on the one hand, and the rights of the people, on the other. Next to the papal supremacy, stood the kingly prerogative. Under the double patronage of the Church and the state ecclesiastical art advanced with rapid strides.
Gothic architecture reached its highest development during the thirteenth century. Europe was covered with magnificent churches, cathedrals, and monasteries. Architecture was the dominant art of the Middle Ages. The church building occupied a unique place in the community. ”

“ Under these influences ecclesiastical architecture advanced with rapid strides. No longer hampered by monastic restrictions, it called into its service the laity, whose guilds of masons and builders carried from one diocese to another their constantly increasing stores of constructive 184 knowledge. By a wise division of labor, each man wrought only such parts as he was specially trained to undertake. ”

“ There is no way of access from the interior of the Church, but “the chapel is connected with the south aisle by a single arch of poor and ordinary architecture, a sad contrast to the glorious Romanesque work of the nave.”15 At the west end there is a large and beautiful six-light, square-headed window, with a rich and peculiar arrangement of a double plane of tracery, the inner plane consisting of three arches. ”

“ In our own times, a learned ecclesiastic, unhappily not in communion with the Catholic Church, but who, in his writings, exhibits many traits of true Catholic spirit, speaks as follows—“I proceed, then, to show that ecclesiastical architecture is a language; that it has always, and not at mere accomodation without splendour ”

“ 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 ”

“ The church is the very perfection of ecclesiastical Roman architecture: that of Chremsminster, although fine, being much inferior to it in loftiness and richness of decoration. The windows are fixed so as to throw their concentrated light beneath a dome, of no ordinary height, and of no ordinary elegance of decoration; but this dome is suffering from damp, and the paintings upon the ceiling will, unless repaired, be effaced in the course of a few years. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Although the country was early christianised, and on the map of Merovingian France nearly all the present Cathedral cities of the Mediterranean were seats of Bishoprics, we cannot now see all the successive steps of the church architecture of the South. The main era of the buildings which have come down to us, is the XI-XIV centuries. ”

“ I hardly know what is best there: the strange and impressive little collegial church, with its romanesque atrium or narthex, its doorways covered with primitive sculpture of the richest kind, its treasure of a so-called pagan altar, embossed with fighting warriors, its three pyramidal domes, so unexpected, so sinister, which I have not met elsewhere, in church architecture ”

“ I told you just now that this sculpture of Niccola's was the beginning of Christian architecture. How do you judge that Christian architecture in the deepest meaning of it to differ from all other?
All other noble architecture is for the glory of living gods and men; but this is for the glory of death, in God and man. Cathedral, cloister, or tomb,—shrine for the body of Christ, or for the bodies of the saints. All alike signifying death to this world;—life, other than of this world. ”

“ The century, if unpropitious to Catholicism, was favourable to architecture, the Abbey was of ancient foundation, and from either of these facts, a fine Cathedral might reasonably be hoped for,—a dim Abbey-church whose rounded arches are lost in the gloom of its vaulting, or a bit of southern Gothic which the newly consecrated prelate might have ambitiously planned. ”

“ The Cathedrals that were built, or re-built throughout, just at the moment in which the Cathedral Architecture had attained its ultimate perfection, are more beautiful to the eye, perhaps, than those in which the story of its growth is told from the rude, massive Anglo-Saxon of the crypt or the chancel, to the last refinement of the mullion, and groin, and tracery. ”

“ 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 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ This quality then of symbolism cannot be denied to one, and a most important, expression of the teaching of the Church, namely its architecture. The cathedral (to repeat the general in the particular) is not the less material, the less solid, the less real, because we see in it the figurative exhibition of the peculiarities of our religion and the articles of our creed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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 ”

“ A grand defect in the structure of this Cathedral, as it strikes me, is, that the nave and transepts do not seem to belong to such a western front. They sink into perfect insignificance. Nor is the style of their exterior particularly deserving of description. Yet there is one feature in the external architecture of this Cathedral--namely, a series or suite of DROLLERIES ... of about four or five feet high ... which cannot fail to attract the antiquary's especial notice. ”

“ 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 figure of an emperor is carved on one of the faces, and on another that of a pagan divinity. The architecture of the church is simple and majestic, the only jarring note being the cupola raised about the time of the Renaissance over the intersection of the nave and transept. The barrel-vaulted nave, crossed by plain broad fillets, is in keeping with the early Romanesque severity of the façade. The ornament is nearly confined to the tympan over the portal, the capitals of columns, and to the choir with its seven absidal chapels. ”

“ The cathedral is the center for a large group of buildings whereof most are in the noble pointed (Gothic) style of architecture. As just explained, in the sacred close there is the bishop's palace and the houses of the canons; there are also a cloister for promenading, a school (much like that at the monastery) , a room for a library, and a synodal hall for meetings of the canons and where the bishop can conduct litigation. There is, in addition, a hospital for sick clerics. ”

“ You will easily form some conception of the vastness of these ruins, when I tell you that the buildings belonging to the abbey, when entire, covered fifteen acres of ground, and that the ruins now cover four. The nave of the church, great part of the walls of which are still standing, is three hundred and fifty-one feet in length, the oriel window fifty feet high, and the tower, though partly fallen down, a hundred and sixty-six feet high. The architecture is of the best period—the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—as simple as it is grand. ”

“ The interior of the church, which is covered over with an open timber roof, painted in colour and gilded, is decorated with inlaid patterns of black and white marble of conventional design, and the same scheme is adopted in the main façade, enriching the panels of the blind arcade on the lower storey, and above an extremely classic design of Corinthian pilasters, entablature and pediment. ”

“ Every thing has been cleared away to give it the appearance of one huge room. The little chapels, which its pious founders and benefactors had erected in the hope of exciting piety 49in others, and profiting by their prayers, are all swept away! but you may easily conceive what wild work a protestant architect must make with a cathedral, when he fits it to his own notions of architecture, without the slightest feeling or knowledge of the design with which such buildings were originally erected. ”

“ No one will deny this of the Egyptian, the Greek, or the Saracenic; and so inconsistent are people on such questions, that the very persons who would laugh at the term “Christian architecture” will almost in the same breath object to the use of our style for secular buildings, on the ground that it will make them look like churches! ”

“ PLANS. English church plans underwent, during the Gothic Period, but little change from the general types established previous to the thirteenth century. The Gothic cathedrals and abbeys, like the Norman, were very long and narrow, with choirs often nearly as long as the nave, and almost invariably with square eastward terminations. There is no example of double side aisles and side chapels, and apsidal chapels are very rare. ”