Religious architecture

“ On parallel lines with this evolution of religious architecture we find, too, the course of civil construction, which from its particular point of view imitates and modifies the character of ecclesiastical buildings. In an architecture directed to the uses of citizen life, however, art has less opportunity for display inasmuch as here objects of more restricted character, combined with a great variety of requirements, are more strict in the range of satisfaction presented, and do not suffer beauty to pass beyond mere decoration. ”

“ We fear however that very few, as yet, take that religions view of their profession, which we have shown to be seemly, even if not essential. If, however, we succeed in proving that religion enters very largely into the principles of church architecture, a religious ethos, we repeat, is essential to a church architect. ”

“ The church continued to be the receptacle for these curious relics, and few folk were found to deny the fitness of the custom.
One by one, tiny fragments of testimony accumulate, attesting such a survival and continuance of folk-memory as few men of to-day have suspected. From the mass of facts there emerges the truth of the twofold purpose of Mediaeval church architecture—the religious and the social. ”

“ Here though we do not get evidence that the architects were the priests, yet other passages show that Buddhist temples were the works of converted kings acting under direction of the priests. Moreover, the original development of architecture for religious purposes, and the consequent sacredness of it, is curiously implied by the fact that the priesthood "forbade the people to construct their dwellings of any other material than sun-baked earth." ”

“ Every day, as the work went on, the Virgin was present, directing the architects, and it is this direction that we are going to study, if you have now got a realizing sense of what it meant. Without this sense, the church is dead. Most persons of a deeply religious nature would tell you emphatically that nine churches out of ten actually were dead-born, after the thirteenth century, and that church architecture became a pure matter of mechanism and mathematics; but that is a question for you to decide when you come to it; ”

“ The architecture of Freemasonry is altogether related to the construction of public edifices, and principally sacred or religious ones,--such as temples, cathedrals, churches,--and of these, masonically, the temple of Solomon is the archetype. Much of the symbolism of Freemasonry is drawn from the art of architecture. ”

“ Civil architecture could boast no special characteristics before the close of the thirteenth century. Its earlier buildings bore the impress of religious and monastic types, as was natural at a period when architecture was practised almost exclusively by monks and by the lay disciples trained in their schools. ”

“ The budding forth of living architecture was cotemporaneous with one of the grandest augmentations of religious sentiment the world has ever known, and was signalized by the crusades and the organization of the great monastic orders. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I therefore most earnestly conjure all those men who profess to revive true architecture to look to the wants and circumstances of the time, not to sacrifice principles, but to prove that the real principles can combine with any legitimate requirement of religion; let the bishops and clergy practically perceive that Christian architecture fulfils perfectly all their wants: let there be light, space, ventilation, good access, with the absence of drafts, which destroy devotion and excite prejudice against Pointed doorways. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ In these days it is impossible to say this too strongly: men build churches everywhere in England, as though they were only to be looked at, not worshipped in; and forget, in fact, that the sole use of art in connexion with religion is the exaltation of the solemnity of the ritual, and the oblation of our best before the altar, and not the mere pleasing of men’s eyes with the sweet sights of spires rising among trees, or gables and traceried windows standing out amid the uninteresting fabrics of nineteenth-century streets! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nowhere else does a work of Christian architecture so express purity and repose and the beauty of holiness, while the green pastures that surround it might well be those of which the Psalmist writes. When the sun shines on the pale grey stones, and the level grass, and the silent trees, and throws the long shadow of the spire across them, it is as though a choir of seraphs sang in benediction of that peace of God which passeth understanding. ”

“ The old church of remote architecture with its low, massive portal, its gothic tower, its windows rich with tracery and painted glass, its scrupulous preservation, its stately monuments of warriors and worthies of olden times, ancestors of the present lords of the soil; its tombstones, recording successive generations of sturdy yeomanry, whose progeny still plough the same fields, and kneel at the same altar ”

“ Church Buttes are more harmonious in their outlines, as well as massive in their proportions, simulating as they do cathedrals and meeting houses, some with towers and spires, and others of less ostentatious architecture, but all bearing some intimation of a worshipful purpose. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The temple of God, now in the course of erection, being already raised one story, and which is 120 feet by 80 feet, of stone, with polished pilasters, of an entire new order of architecture, will be a splendid house for the worship of God, as well as an unique wonder for the world, it being built by the direct revelation of Jesus Christ for the salvation of the living and the dead. ”

“ There can be no greater contrast than that seen in Catholic churches, between the splendor of architecture, renowned pictures, statues and ornaments of silver and gold, and the crowd of tattered, famished, misery-marked worshippers that throng them. I wonder it never occurs to them, that the costly pavement upon which they kneel might feed and clothe them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is a prevailing spirit of repose, a sense of space, fair, lightsome, and adapted to serene moods of the meditative fancy in this building, which is singularly at variance with the religious mysticism and imaginative grandeur of a Gothic edifice. The principal beauty of the church, however, is its tone of colour. Every square inch is covered with fresco or rich woodwork, mellowed by time into that harmony of tints which blends the work of greater and lesser artists in one golden hue of brown. ”