Infinity’s embrace.”
The Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, Norwich.
FROM SOUTH-EAST.
The ancient kingdom of East Anglia was converted to Christianity by a Burgundian monk, Felix, who became the first bishop of East Anglia—the diocese, as usual, being coextensive with the kingdom—and fixed his see at Dunwich in 630. The see was subdivided by the Archbishop Theodore, the great organiser of the English Church, in 669. It was again reunited, and the cathedral was at Elmham, till the bishop migrated in 1070 to Thetford, and in 1094 to Norwich.
The present cathedral was commenced in 1096 by Herbert de Losinga, who is usually described as a Lorrainer. He is recorded to have finished the whole cathedral before his death in 1119 as far as the altar of the Holy Cross, which would stand in front of the choir-screen. His successor finished the nave and west front, and carried up the central tower (1121-1145). The plan is that of Gloucester and Leominster; the rudiments of it appear in the ancient church at Bethlehem and in St. Sepulchre at Jerusalem. There was an enormously long aisled nave of fourteen bays, aisleless transepts of three bays, an aisled presbytery of five bays, a semicircular apse, a processional aisle or ambulatory encircling the apse, and three segmental chapels radiating from the ambulatory; also eastern apses to the transepts. All this remains, except the easternmost apsidal chapel, which was replaced in the thirteenth century by an oblong Lady chapel, itself pulled down in the sixteenth century; and the apse of the south transept, which was replaced by an oblong chapel in the thirteenth century.
The history of Norwich cathedral, therefore, differs toto cœlo from that of every other English cathedral, except that of Gloucester. With the exception that both Gloucester and Norwich ultimately increased the dimensions of their eastern Lady chapels, no eastward extensions of any moment took place. This was not because the Norfolk people were more conservative than other people, or, in a remote corner of England, were behind the times; but because the plan of the Norwich cathedral was convenient for mediæval ritual, and the plan of the other cathedrals was not. Other cathedrals had to build a processional aisle at the back of the High Altar; at Norwich it was there already. Other cathedrals had to throw out eastern transepts to provide chapels for the great saints of the Church, St. James, St. John, St. Peter and the rest; Norwich cathedral from the first had five apsidal chapels. Other cathedrals had a local saint of the first water, and had to build a special saint’s chapel or feretory for his shrine: Canterbury for St. Thomas, Chester for St. Werburgh, Durham for St. Cuthbert, Ely for St. Audrey, Hereford for St. Ethelbert, Lichfield for St. Chad, Lincoln for St. Hugh, Oxford for St. Frideswide, Rochester for St. William, St. Albans for St. Alban, Winchester for St. Swithin, Worcester for St. Wolfstan. Norwich had no local saint of any great repute, except a poor little boy who was alleged to have been crucified by the Jews. Nor, again, did sacerdotalism much affect the growth of Norwich cathedral. The nave was so vast that, even when the monks had appropriated five bays of it for their ritual choir, as they did at first, there still remained nine bays for processions, and for the laity to worship at the nave-altar of the Holy Cross. There was no need to crowd the stalls into the eastern limb of the church as the Canterbury monks had to do because of the shortness of their Norman nave. It is true that, later on, the Norwich monks moved eastward a little, placing their sixty stalls under the tower and in the two easternmost bays of the nave, where they are at present; but this was probably done merely to get better light, partly from the lantern-tower above, partly from the enlarged windows of the transepts. The original position of the choir is marked by the cylindrical piers, the fifth from the tower; by a hole in the vault, inside a boss, from which hung down a light or a censer; and by the corbelling of the eastern vaulting-shafts to leave room for the stalls.
