It lies beyond the scope of our subject to discuss the development of the choir-screen, from the curtains once hung before the altar to the broad and solid gateways of carved stone, built beneath the chancel arch, or even further west. Eventually these became a universal feature in church architecture; of wood usually in parish churches, of stone in the larger collegiate churches, in abbeys, and in cathedrals. Fine examples exist in England; at York, Lincoln, Exeter, Wells, Canterbury, Bristol, Southwell, Ripon, Christchurch (Hampshire), Tattershall (Lincolnshire), and elsewhere; but the parish churches, which had timber screens, have naturally not been successful in preserving for us so many examples as we have of the more solid erections, though we have, even of them, many of which we may be proud.
When complete these screens had a broad gallery or loft at the top, access to which was obtained by a winding stair at one, or sometimes at each, end. In several places, as at Lavenham (Suffolk), S. Martin’s, Stamford (Lincolnshire), Wells (Norfolk), and Long Melford (Suffolk), the external turret which contained this stair still remains; in other cases, as at Alford in Lincolnshire, a massive pillar was pierced to find room for the steps.
Each side of this gallery was protected by a balustrade, and on the western side, fronting the nave, stood the rood, a crucifix often of life-size, or even larger, the cross being decorated with the apocalyptical emblems of the evangelists at the four extremities, and richly painted; a tree of life and glory to us, though to the Redeemer a tree of shame and death. On either hand stood figures of the Madonna and of S. John the Divine, and sometimes beneath the cross a smaller effigy of the patron saint of the church was placed. On great festivals a multitude of lights blazed along the rood-loft, which, with all its accessories, became the most impressive object in the church.
A few examples of early rood-screens, with or without the loft, may be quoted. A wooden screen, surmounted by a cross, was erected at Tyre by Paulinus, and a stone one, said to date from the fourth century, still stands at Tepekerman; and a third has been preserved from the time of Justinian in the church of S. Catherine, on Mount Sinai. The Church of the Apostles, Constantinople, had a screen of brass gilt, and S. Sophia’s a jewelled one, which was copied at Novgorod, Kieff, and elsewhere in the East, in the eleventh century.
The uses to which these elevated platforms were put were many and various. Those portions of the more solemn services which it was specially desired that the people should all hear were often declaimed from their summits. At High Mass the Gospel was read thence, a custom which survived in France until the great Revolution. Public notice of the Church’s feasts and fasts was given from the loft, and there the lessons were read. Down to the time of the introduction of pulpits at about the thirteenth century, sermons were preached there. The fine screen, referred to above, in Tattershall Church is corbelled out into a pulpit, and has desks for books designed in the stone balustrade. On occasions of special solemnity antiphons were sung and prayers said there, such as the Gradual and Alleluia, the Prophecies before the Epistle at the Christmas Midnight Mass, and the Passion on Palm Sunday and Good Friday. At Constantinople the Emperors were crowned in the rood-loft, as also were the French Kings till the time of Charles X. in the cathedral at Rheims. Altars were sometimes erected on these screens, and generally one or more was set against their western face.
In England certain roods obtained special celebrity, and became the objects of pilgrimage from all parts of the country; and in some cases the temptation to attract the people at almost any cost proved too much for the ecclesiastics in charge of them, and led to practices which, if truly reported, no one would wish to defend. Such was the Rood of Grace at Boxley Abbey. Archbishop Warham, in a report on the monastic houses, presented to King Henry in 1512, pleads for the preservation of this abbey because the place is “so much sought for from all parts of the realm visiting the Rood of Grace.” The foundation was, nevertheless, condemned, and its revenues were granted in the thirty-second year of Henry VIII. to Sir Thomas Wyat. In dismantling the abbey church, the movements of the figure on the rood which, it is alleged, were ascribed to a miracle, were found to be controlled by concealed machinery. “When plucking down the images of the Monastery of Boxley,” writes the commissioner Jeffrey Chambers to Thomas Cromwell, “I found in the image of the Rood of Grace ... certain engines and old wires and sticks.” The whole affair was carried off, and on Sunday, February 24th, 1538, was exhibited to the people at S. Paul’s Cross by Hilsey, Bishop of Rochester, after his sermon. It is only fair to add that it has been claimed that this mechanism was not employed for deception, but that the figure was intended for use in miracle plays. It is a partial support of this view that no one seems to have proceeded against either in the ecclesiastical or the civil courts in connection with the matter, which must surely have been the case had the charge of deception been sincerely made and actually believed.
Other famous roods were the “Rood of Winchester and the very cross at Ludlow,” there was also a noted one at S. Saviour’s, Bermondsey, and another at Chester. The last-named, however, was not in the church, but on the spot called from it the Roodee, or Roodeye. It was here that the football was annually presented to the Mayor for the Easter game at Chester. At Durham was preserved the “Black Rood of Scotland,” a silver crucifix which was blackened by the smoke of the innumerable tapers burnt before it, after it was placed in the northern cathedral.
Charges such as that made concerning the Rood at Boxley were, whether true or false, only too readily welcomed as an excuse for an attack on all roods at the Reformation. That one case in special seems, indeed, to have been made the most of in the controversy. Calfhill refers to it in his answer, published in 1565, to Martial’s book in defence of the Cross; and Peterson, Finch, and Partridge, all English Protestants in correspondence with Geneva, allude to it in their letters.
A general destruction of roods took place in the autumn of 1547, when Heylin tells us “the image of Christ, best known by the name of the rood, together with the images of Mary and John, and all other images in the church of S. Paul, London, were taken down, as also in all other churches in London.” At All Hallows, Staining, the loft itself was pulled down, and the “roodloft hangings” sold for 12s. in 1550.
Under Queen Mary the work of destruction was of course stayed, and in some cases the damage was even repaired. Thus, at the church just named, a new crucifix was purchased in 1554 at the cost of £6 3s., and the parishoners of S. Pancras, Soper Lane, were warned in October, 1555, that their rood, with all its figures, was to be reinstated by Candlemas. The parish accounts of S. Helen’s, Abingdon, for the same year, contain several entries concerning a similar restoration:—