George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers

by George Edmund Street

Under the whole of the choir is a crypt entered from the transept, and in the angles between the transepts and the choir are towers, the lower stages of which are open to the transepts and form chapels, whose altars stand in small apsidal projections on the east face of the tower. A door on either side of the sanctuary leads by a staircase in the thickness of the wall to rooms above the chapels in the tower. The entrance to the choir is through the old rood-screen by doors on either side of the altar, and by doors in the parcloses, reached by long flights of steps in the transepts. The nave is divided into three groining bays, each bay subdivided and having two arches into the aisles. The western choir has one bay and a five-sided apse. On either side of it is a narrow passage leading to staircases which lead to rooms above some chapels, which have now to be mentioned. They form the base of towers at the west end of the aisles, but project considerably beyond them: only one of these towers has been built; the other is carried up and finished externally as though it was a transept, and produces at first some confusion when seen from the exterior. These tower chapels are very curious. That on the south side has a circular central shaft, decreasing in size to the capital, and the vaulting has four ribs springing from corbels in the angles of the chapel in a semicircular arch to the cap of the column, and there are no other ribs. In the east wall is a small semicircular recess, in which still stands the original altar with a double footpace. The north tower chapel is almost exactly like the other, save that it has a polygonal central shaft, and the recess for the altar is rectangular. Both chapels are lighted with small round-headed windows in their western faces. From this description it will be seen that the ground-plan of this church is so curiously alike at its eastern and western ends, as to be somewhat confusing at first.

And now to describe this most interesting church in detail. The eastern choir-screen is most remarkable. It has admirably carved capitals, and its three western arches (which are semicircular) rest on delicate clusters of shafts. The original doorways still remain, and in front of them steps, arranged in semicircles radiating from the centre of the door, which lead up into the choir. No doubt an altar once stood under this screen, but this has been destroyed in order to convert it into a pew! The front of the screen too is so much obscured by a modern gallery, and by the reredos of the Lutheran altar, that it is impossible to say how it was finished: there seemed to be traces of a vesica with sculpture just over the centre arch. Entering the choir by this screen, one finds all the old arrangements undisturbed. Between the two western doors there are three stalls with canopies, and on either side against the stone parcloses eleven stalls and ten subsellae. In the midst stand three ancient, heavy square desks for office books, and upon these five most magnificent books, well bound and of astonishing size, still maintain their old place. They are all manuscript on vellum, and two of them have very large illuminations of subjects, and foliage of very admirable and bold character. I never saw such magnificent books on their own proper desks,—never, I think any of such grand size anywhere. The stalls are not particularly good, and are of late date, with immense finials, of a kind I had met before at Halberstadt. A rise of several steps divides the choir from the first bay of the sanctuary, which is long and without furniture, save some late stalls, which do not seem to have any business where they are placed. This bay of the choir terminates the transitional work, which is carried throughout the whole church, with the exception of the eastern apse and the western choir. It is of the earliest pointed, very simple and bold in all its details; the piers looking rather like Romanesque in their section and capitals, carved in the most admirable manner. The foliage is all disposed in circles, being regular and geometrical and invariably kept severely and carefully to a regular outline; it is an example of the very perfection of that kind of conventional foliage, of which some of the early capitals at Venice are such admirable specimens, and I think in no way inferior to them. The groining throughout is very simple, with diagonal and transverse ribs. The eastern apse is an addition in most admirable middle-pointed, and (save the upper stages of the towers) the latest work in the whole fabric. The section of the groining shafts is particularly elaborate and good; corbels of foliage inferior to the rest of the carving throughout the church supported figures under canopies at a height of about eight feet from the floor, but the figures are all gone. A very bold string runs round the apse at this point under a passage-way in the wall, which is reached by a staircase between the choir and the tower-chapel apses. The windows are of three lights, and have good geometrical tracery, and the apse is well groined with boldly moulded ribs, the boss in the centre being four ivy leaves. In the sanctuary stand four oak sedilia of the thirteenth century, with open arcaded backs and carved ends, the carving peculiar, but the whole a very remarkable work and very perfect. The chapels in the towers on either side of the choir are not in the old state, one being used for rubbish, and the other as a vestry: above the former a room in the tower is used as a receptacle for hardware! Perhaps the Prediger deals in it! The crypt under the choir is very perfect and fine. We had an illumination of it, and consequently a careful examination. The capitals are all carved, and the arches all semicircular. It is divided by shafts, some of which are clustered, into three spaces in width, and in the length there are two bays under the choir, then a solid wall with a doorway, and then five bays, and an apse of three bays. The old altar still remains.

In the transepts there is little to notice, save that there is an old altar in each. The well-like effect of these German transepts, in which the choir is continued across with heavy stone parcloses of great height, is most unpleasant. In this case the parcloses are no less than 16 feet high from the floor of the transept; and, owing to the great elevation of the choir, the floor of the crypt is only 4 ft. 6 in. lower than the transept floor.

No one, going into the nave of the church as now arranged, would believe that he was in a church of more than very mediocre interest. Between all the columns are small tenements, painted white, carefully roofed in and glazed, and papered with whatever paper the fancy and good taste of their several proprietors suggest. In front of these are rows of pews, arranged longitudinally, and all painted white; and as the aisles are by this arrangement practically lost to the church, galleries are built in them, to supply the created want.[78] A white wooden screen behind the Lutheran altar conceals the eastern rood-screen; whilst another white wooden partition, out of the centre of which projects the pulpit, serves also to conceal the rood-screen of the western choir. The whole arrangement is, in short, just the most judicious that could possibly be imagined for the entire annihilation of the architectural effect of the interior.

This western choir-screen is certainly the most striking I have ever seen even in this land of screens. No description can, however, do justice to its exquisite beauty, dependent as this is, to a great extent, on the exceeding originality and beauty of the foliage, which is all varied, and all executed from natural models. The doorway is double, and rather narrow; the doors of iron, cross-framed; and they form the only openings in the screen, the rest being quite solid, arcaded on the eastern side, and on the western (that is, on the inside, or choir side), remarkable chiefly for the exquisite open staircases on each side of the door leading to the loft. On the eastern side, against the doorway, are a Crucifix and SS. Mary and John; but these seemed to be of later date than the door. The figure of our Lord seated in the tympanum above is no doubt original; it is very curious, being partly painted, partly carved, and reminded me of an early picture, managed in the same way, which I saw in the gallery at Berlin. Above the arcading, on either side of the doorway, are a series of subjects, the execution of which (with the exception of the two last, which are not original) is marvellously good. They are, beginning at the south—the Last Supper, the Betrayal, ditto (S. Peter smiting Malchus), the Denial of S. Peter, our Lord before Pilate, the Scourging, Bearing the Cross. The open staircases on the western side of the screen are remarkable for the beauty of the succession of detached shafts, with finely carved capitals, which support them.

There are no fittings in this western choir save the altar, the mensa of which is 8 ft. 5 in. long, by 5 ft. 11 in. wide, and 3 ft. 8 in. high; and this faces west, as all the altars throughout the church do: so showing its back (in the centre of which is the usual closet) to any one entering through the door of the screen from the nave. It has a double footpace. The detail of this choir is earlier and bolder than that of the eastern choir; the windows of two lights, with very bold monials, and circles sexfoiled, with soffit cusping in the head. The groining-shafts are good; and, as in the other choir, there is a very bold string under a passage-way in front of the windows, at about 8 feet from the floor. The windows do not fill up the whole width of the bays, and on each side have small open arches, which add very much to the richness of the whole effect. Against the groining-shafts are figures, very well sculptured, and standing under canopies of very varied design, finished at the top with what seem like models of churches. Some of the windows retain some exquisite stained glass. The mouldings throughout this apse are exactly like those of the screen, and the foliage was evidently carved by the same hand,—that of as great a master in his day as was the artist who carved the early capitals in the nave. I think I have now described the whole of the interior.

On the exterior there is a large cloister (partly ruined) on the south of the nave; half of this is pointed, the other half late Romanesque. It opens into the church with a small round-arched door, in the third bay from the west; and on its east side into a large kind of porch or narthex, south of the south transept, from which there is a particularly grand doorway, with five shafts in each jamb, into the transept. This porch is groined in two bays, and communicates with other buildings to the south, one of which seems, by its apse and pointed windows, to have been a chapel. These old buildings group picturesquely with the east end of the church. The southern was not, however, the only cloister; the good men of Naumburg seem to have been specially fond of duplicates, and as they had two choirs, two rood-screens, and two towers at each end, so they thought right to have two cloisters. The northern cloister seems to have tallied in size with the southern; but all that now remains of it are the groining-ribs against the north wall, and the springers of the groining throughout. The base-mould of the western tower is continued all along this north wall, and the groining springs from corbels; all which makes it look as though it were a subsequent addition: but its arches are nevertheless round, whilst, as we have seen, pointed arches are used throughout the main arcade. There are two doors from this destroyed cloister into the church—one into the north aisle, the other into the north transept.

The western apse is remarkable, on the exterior, for the excessively beautiful carving of its cornices; these are varied in every bay, and, I think, the best I have ever seen. They are of that exquisite imitation of natural foliage, springing upwards, and filling a large hollow with its ramifications, which commends itself to my mind as the most perfect type of cornice foliage. There is a somewhat similar carved string under the windows, equally good, but much more simple. The buttresses finish at the top with delicate pinnacles.

At the east end the detail is also good, the windows being well moulded, and the buttresses finished with good simple niches and figures. The apsidal projections on the eastern face of the towers finish with pyramidal stone roofs against the towers, at a low elevation.

The north-west tower is late, and has open turrets at its angles, beginning at the second stage; it is picturesque, but not very good. The upper stages of the eastern towers are also octangular, but without pinnacles; and what ornament they have is of a very late kind, and not effective.