A Treatise on Chancel Screens and Rood Lofts / Their Antiquity, Use, and Symbolic Signification

by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin

THE CALVINIST AMBONOCLAST.

When we now behold the city of London, with its narrow lanes, lined with lofty warehouses and gloomy stores, leading down to the banks of the muddy Thames, whose waters are blackened with foul discharges from gas-works and soap-boilers, while the air is darkened with the dense smoke of chimneys rising high above the parish steeples, which mark the site of some ancient church, destroyed in the great conflagration, it is difficult to realize the existence of those venerable and beautiful fabrics where the citizens of London assembled in daily worship, and whose rood lofts shone so gloriously on Easter and Christmas feasts. But this great and ancient city was inferior to none in noble religious buildings; and in the sixteenth century the traveller who approached London from the west, by the way called Oldbourne, and arriving at the brow of the steep hill, must have had a most splendid prospect before him; to the right the parish church of S. Andrew's, rising most picturesquely from the steep declivity, and surrounded by elms, with its massive tower, decorated nave, and still later chancel; on the left the extensive buildings of Ely-house, its great gateway, embattled walls, lofty chapel and refectory, and numerous other lodgings and offices, surrounded by pleasant gardens, as then unalienated from the ancient see after which it was called, it presented a most venerable and ecclesiastical appearance. Further in the same direction might be perceived the gilded spire of S. John's church of Jerusalem and the Norman towers of S. Bartholomew's priory. Immediately below was the Fleet river, with its bridge, and the masts of the various craft moored along the quays. At the summit of the opposite hill, the lofty tower of S. Sepulchre's, which though greatly deteriorated in beauty, still remains. In the same line, and over the embattled parapets of the Newgate, the noble church of the Grey Friars, inferior in extent only to the cathedral of S. Paul, whose gigantic spire, the highest in the world, rose majestically from the centre of a cruciform church nearly seven hundred feet in length, and whose grand line of high roofs and pinnacled buttresses stood high above the group of gable-houses, and even the towers of the neighbouring churches. If we terminate the panorama with the arched lantern of S. Mary-le-Bow, the old tower of S. Michael, Cornhill, and a great number of lesser steeples, we shall have a faint idea of the ecclesiastical beauty of Catholic London. But to return to our more immediate subject, each of these fine churches was provided with its screen and rood. Numerous are the entries in the old churchwardens' accounts yet remaining of pious offerings made by the citizens to beautify the devotional sculptures which decorated them, and to provide tapers and branches to deck them for the returning festivals. There were veils for Lent, when the glory of our Lord was partially obscured by his approaching Passion; and there were garlands for Easter, and paschal lights, and crowns, and diadems. The old parish church of S. Mary-at-Hill was inferior to none in the beautiful partition of its chancel; it was principally the work of a pious citizen, who, on the decay of the older work, renewed the same; or, as the old chronicle expresses it:—"For the love he bore to Jesu and his holy Modir did sett up at his own proper costes and charges, and most artificially dispensil, the image of Christ, Mary, and John, and many saynts and aungels, with the loft whereon they stood: and for the due maintainyng of a perpetual light to hang brenyng before the same, and for a priest to synge at his anniversary he also left two tenements in the paryshe of Barkynge; and when he died he was buried under a grey stone, over and against the holy doors of the chancel, and till the sad time of the civil wars, was his portraieture in brass, and that of his wife, and 3 sons and 5 daughters at their feet, and his shield of mark, and the arms of the honourable Company of the Fishmongers, and round the bordure, with an Evangelist at every corner, was this inscription: '✠ Good Christen people, of your charitie pray for the soulys of John Layton, citizen and fyshemonger of London, who deceeded on the feast of S. Stephen, in the yeare of our Lorde 1456, and of Margaret his wyffe, on whose sowlys and the sowlys of Christen men may Jesu have mercy. Pater, ave, Amen.'" And on the brestsumer of the rood loft were carved divers devices, such as S. Peter's keys for his Patron, and dolphins and sea-luces salterwise for the Company, and scrolls, with Lays coming out of tuns for the founder, and above all was a most artificial bratishing, with large bowls of brass, with prickets for tapers on great feasts, and there was a staircase of freestone, closed by an oak door, set up on the south side of the aisle, for the convenience of ascending to the same; and on each of the lower panels of the holy doors and of the bays of the screen were pictures of saints and martyrs, on grounds of gold diaper, each with their legend. For nearly a century this goodly work had stood the pride and delight of the parishioners, who bestowed much cost on sustaining its lights and ornaments, as the church books yet testify. But a sad and fearful change was approaching—new and heretical doctrines were circulated and even heard at Paul's Cross; men became divided in heart and mind; the returning festivals exhibited no unity of joy and devotion; many gloomily stayed away; and it was currently reported that nocturnal meetings were privately held at some citizens' houses, where preachers from beyond sea taught novel opinions, and inveighed against altars and priests, and sacred images and ancient rites; and soon there was a quest to examine into the ornaments of the churches, and many a goodly pyx, and chalice, and chrismatory were seized by the sacrilegious spoilers for the state; and shortly after the ancient service was interrupted by scoffers and infidels, and they who adhered to the old faith of England's church were filled with sorrow and dismay, and they worshipped in fear and sadness, and every day brought new troubles and greater sacrilege.

It was late in the evening, or rather the early part of the night, that a number of persons, evidently of very varied ranks and conditions, were crowded into a back chamber in the habitation of a citizen notoriously disaffected to the ancient religion; they were listening with considerable earnestness of attention, to the exhortations, or rather ravings, of a man of sour aspect, whose dress and gestures announced him as belonging to the class of unordained preachers called the New Gospellers. The subject of his discourse was the extirpation of idolatry; the triumphs of the Jewish people over the unbelieving nations was the principal source from whence he drew his denunciations. The texts relating to the destruction of the heathen idols he transferred to the ancient images of the church, and succeeded in rousing the passions of his hearers to the utmost frenzy. "But why," he exclaimed, "do we waste time? Let us lay the axe to the root of the tree; the famous rood of S. Mary-at-Hill standeth hard by, to the shame and reproach of Christian men. Let us pluck it down and utterly deface it, so it perish and be seen no more." Some of the most zealous of the fanatics instantly acted on this suggestion. Descending to the street, they soon surrounded the residence of the aged sacrist (who still retained his office, though the duties were sadly curtailed), and rousing him from his rest, demanded the keys of the church. Alarmed by the uproar, many casements were opened; but the numbers of the clamouring party appeared so considerable, and the prospect of any assistance from the watch (which was then only perambulatory) so remote, that none ventured down to the assistance of the old clerk, who, terrified by the menaces of his assailants, and without any companion except a lad who acted as his servant, at length surrendered the keys. A few links had by this time been procured, and by their smoky and lurid light the southern door was opened, and the whole party tumultuously crowded into the venerable edifice. The lamp so liberally provided by John Layton had ceased to burn for some time; its revenue had been sequestered as superstitious, and the chancel was shrouded in impenetrable darkness. Against this gloomy background the rood and its attendant images stood out in red reflected light, but the Jews themselves that scoffed on Calvary's mount were not more bitter in their scorn than the New Gospellers, who uttered loud shouts and cries as they beheld the object of their sacrilegious vengeance. The sound of hollow blows echoes through the church, the lower door is forced: ascending footsteps are heard on the staircase; then the rebounding tread of heavy feet on the loft itself, torches appear—axes gleam—heavy blows fall thick; some cleave, some pierce, some shout, and with one great crash it totters and falls—images, cross—all lie a ruin on the ancient pavement. The work of destruction now proceeds: some wrench the extended limbs from the sculptured cross; broken and dismembered, the sacred image of the Redeemer is dragged down the nave; while others deface and cleave the evangelistic symbols, tossing the fragments in wild derision; some curse, some spit, some foam, others exclaim, "Into the fire with it!" and a glare of light striking through the western window, showed that the suggestion had been followed; it crackled in the garth, and now the mangled images are piled on the roaring mass, while furious cries, "Away with it! Destroy it utterly!" break through the stillness of the night, and scare the affrighted parishioners, who behold this horrible spectacle from their gabled residences. Nearly three hundred years have elapsed, and the rood was again raised in glory in this very city, and the cry "Away with it!" was again heard. Came it from the blaspheming Jews? No. Came it from the bitter Calvinists? No. Came it from the incarnate fiends? No. It proceeded from a modern Catholic ambonoclast!!!!

THE PAGAN AMBONOCLAST.

Louis de Chantal was born in France, of noble parents, about the middle of the eighteenth century; being a younger brother, he was destined from his earliest years to the ecclesiastical state, but on arriving at a maturer age, his tastes and inclinations were so adverse to the sacred functions, that he proceeded no further than receiving the tonsure, which enabled him to hold the rich ecclesiastical preferment in the gift of his family, and entitled him to the appellation of Monsieur l'Abbé de Chantal. He soon became commendatory abbot of two once great religious establishments, then languishing under a sad decay of zeal and discipline consequent on the loss of a regular head. The great object of commendatory abbots was to keep the number of religious to the lowest possible amount, in order to profit the more by the revenues, which they diverted to their own private benefit and luxury. At Conques the decay of the temporal kept pace with that of the spiritual; the buildings which, for the most part, had been erected during the glorious period of S. Louis, were falling fast to ruin. The regular portions, now much too large for the habitations of the few religious that remained, exhibited the desolate appearance of neglect and emptiness. Verdure luxuriated in the untrodden courts, and sprung up even in the very cloister, whose vaults had long ceased to echo the regulated tread and solemn chaunt of the ancient Benedictines. It was evident that essential repairs could not long be postponed, and a bull issued by the Pope a few years previous, requiring the conventual buildings of France to be substantially repaired out of the revenues, was still in force. The matter was, however, deferred for a short time, as our young abbé was about to proceed on his travels to the more classic ground of Italy, at that period ignorantly regarded as the great repository and source of all art and taste. The noble mediæval cathedrals of France were considered by Monsieur de Chantal as so many specimens of ancient barbarism, but the extravagancies of Bernini and the distortions of Le Pautre were splendid achievements in his eyes. It may be readily conceived what class of objects arrested his attention in his travels: his enthusiasm on arriving at the Eternal City was boundless—he almost believed that the heathen mythology was revived, and that he was in the presence of those divinities whose exploits had been the study of his early youth. The splendid galleries of voluptuous art, where the metamorphoses and amatory combats of Ovid were depicted to the life. The marble goddesses in shady groves, and sporting tritons cooling the air in high and sparkling jets—the obelisks, the sarcophagi, the endless treasures of classic art. Then even the churches, they were scarcely to be distinguished from the exquisite taste of the heathens themselves. Thinly draperied saints were borne into paradise by hovering Cupids. Voluptuous female statues reclined on the sarcophagi of bishops and ecclesiastics,—herculean martyrs writhed like dying gladiators, while naked angels held aloft the victor's crown. Our abbé was ravished with astonishment and delight as the eager cicerone drew him from one far-famed object to another, each more wonderful than the last. In his perambulations he occasionally passed some venerable looking sanctuaries, but the usual exclamation of the guide, eh, una porcheria, was quite sufficient to repress any desire of examining them; and in a word, he returned from Italy like most of the ecclesiastics of that period, with a thorough contempt for the ancient traditions of church architecture, and a determination to Italianize, as far as possible, in any work with which he might be connected. The time had now arrived when the repairs of the abbey of Conques could be no longer delayed, and accompanied by an architect of the Souflot style, with a thickly curled wig reaching half-way down his shoulders, he one morning started from his hotel at Paris, and proceeded thither. Although only a few leagues distant, the bad roads so delayed their progress, that it was late in the afternoon when they attained the top of the descent that led down into the valley where the abbey was situated. A little to the eastward of the scattered houses which formed the village, and small but characteristic church, stood the then lofty and irregular abbatial buildings. High above the rest rose the long grey mass of the church, surmounted by a high leaden roof, whitened with age. A forest of pinnacles surrounded the apse, while buttress and arc buttant continued in regular succession to surround the vast fabric. At the western end were two towers, but the southern one alone had been carried up to its intended height, the other had received a temporary roof, when raised a few feet above the nave; the abbacy shortly after fell into commendam, and it rose no higher. A small but elegant leaded spire was placed at the intersection of the nave and transept, but it was evidently a substitute for some far grander design in the way of a centre lantern, as might be divined by the rising of angle masonry left incomplete.

A dense mass of wood covered the opposite hill with a deep green, while the warm tints of a westerning sun relieved each turret and pinnacle in a glowing hue on the verdant background. A rapid descent soon brought the abbé and his companion to the gates, which were opened with some difficulty to admit the equipage within the first court; such vehicles were utterly unknown when these buildings were raised, and further progress was impossible except on foot. The abbé then alighted, and was received with much external respect by the few religious who remained the occupants of a monastery, where more than a hundred sons of S. Benedict had kept the rule together in older and better times.

The next morning the architect waited on Monsieur de Chantal in his chamber, "Monseigneur," he exclaimed, "j'ai parcouru les bâtimens;—rien de plus gothique, de plus mauvais; point de règles, point de principes; ces gens-là ils n'ont jamais connu le beau; il faut tout démonter, tout démolir." This proposition, however well it might accord with the tastes of the commendatory abbot, was by no means agreeable to his intentions, as the proposed demolition and rebuilding would cost a considerable sum, which he thought might be as well expended on some new gardens attached to his hotel at Paris, and he therefore, on a personal inspection, considerably modified the sweeping intentions of his architect, and confined his operations to indispensable repairs and the erection of some new offices. These points arranged, he proceeded at once to the inspection of the church. On entering by the western cloister door, the venerable fabric appeared nearly in its original state: the nave was divided into nine bays with light clustered shafts, the centre one of each running quite up to receive the groin; the triforium was divided into compartments corresponding to the mullions of the clerestory windows, and filled with imagery and devices in painted glass. The upper windows contained the image of a saint in every light, under a high canopy of rich design. The lower windows of the aisles had been altered in the fifteenth century, the tracery was more elaborately ramified and the glass exhibited a higher degree of pictorial skill, though inferior in severity and style to the more ancient glazing.

The ribs of the groining were richly painted at the intersections, with images in relief on every boss. The pavement was irregularly studded with incised slabs of benefactors, who were permitted to repose beneath the floor of that edifice to whose support and glory they had contributed while living. But the most striking object that presented itself to the sight, was a most elaborate jubé or rood loft, extending completely across the entrance to the choir. Eight slender shafts sustained seven arches, richly crocketted on the labels, with images of angels in sexfoils, filling up the spandrils. Between every arch and over the shafts, was an image standing on a corbel under a projecting tabernacle; immediately over them were sixteen arched and canopied recesses, each containing, in high relief, a mystery of our Lord's life and passion, most artificially wrought in stone, and heightened with gilding and colours, and over all, in the midst, was a great rood rising almost to the vault of the church, with most cunning work of leaves and foliage running up and about it, and sprouting forth at its extremities, and on it an image of our Lord as it were a king with a diadem on his head, and a long tunic, all gilt, reaching down to his feet, with the borders set with crystals, and on either side an image of our Blessed Lady and S. John, and two cherubims with images of gold. This rood, which was held in singular veneration by neighbouring inhabitants, and by them commonly termed Le Bon Dieu de Conques, found but little favour in the eyes of our refined abbé; "Il faut démonter cette vieillerie-là," said he, turning to the architect. "Ah, mon Dieu, oui," was the ready answer, "ça fera du bien; on peut y mettre une grillage en fer, comme à S. Denis."[20] —"C'est une bonne idée!" cried Monsieur de Chantal, "et je la ferai exécuter." It is probable that, in carrying out this barbarous and sacrilegious intention, the abbé meant to improve the church!! Brought up in the principles of error and paganism, to him nothing was beautiful that did not savour of classic art. It is probable that he really meant well, as far as so debased a mind could mean well; let us hope his ignorance obtained his final pardon, and that he was permitted to expiate in his doleful end this terrible deed of destruction. The religious of Conques mourned most bitterly over the demolition of the ancient jubé. Men who live a religious life are naturally adverse to change: the removal of an image, a picture, an object on which they have been accustomed to look with devotion, is to them an irreparable loss, and great were the wailings of the little community when they learned their abbé's decision; remonstrance was, however, useless against such superior power, and the demolition of the whole was finally decided. But its destruction was not deplored by the religious only,—the inhabitants of Conques, a simple-minded but devout race, had, for many generations, regarded this ancient and edifying imagery with singular veneration. From their early years, succeeding fathers had taught their little ones that the great king upon the cross was the son of the king of kings, who expired on the rood to save them, and there was his blessed mother weeping at his side, and the beloved disciple to whose care she was committed; and below all were wonderful mysteries shown, from the salutation of the angel to the painful bearing of the cross to Calvary. All these and much more were set forth and most artificially, and great was the lamentation of the good people of Conques when they heard that it was to be no more seen.

Impatient to begin his improvements, the abbé procured some workmen to commence the demolition before his return to Paris. Among those who presented themselves was a young man of great athletic powers, but of a sinister and scornful countenance, and who appeared to proceed in the task of destruction with singular alacrity and energy. Several men with ropes and ladders had now ascended the upper part of the rood, while the young man before mentioned stood at the foot, and alternately applied a crow and axe to cut away the mortice in which the base rested and prise it out. Before the men above had the ropes properly fast to lower all, by a tremendous effort he forced the foot from its socket, and the cross, inclining to the Gospel side, fell over, carrying away the image of the Blessed Virgin in descent, and the whole mass lay broken on the pavement. The movement was so sudden that it startled the abbé, who was standing near the man, and a feeling of dread seemed to appal the other workmen as they gazed on the fallen rood, but the face of the youth was flushed with ill-concealed exultation, which the abbé remarked, and attributed at the time to his successful display of strength; but it came from a far deeper feeling, as he afterwards discerned to his own destruction.