The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments / A Translation of the First Book of the Rationale Divinorum Officiorum

by Guillaume Durand

[Transcriber's notes:]
This work is derived from files on the Internet Archive:
http://archive.org/details/symbolismofchurc00dura
Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book.
The honorific "Mr" is without a following period in the original. The period has been inserted in this transcription.
[End Transcriber's notes.]

THE SYMBOLISM
OF
Churches and Church Ornaments

A TRANSLATION OF THE FIRST BOOK OF THE
Rationale Divinorum Officiorum

WRITTEN BY
WILLIAM DURANDUS
SOMETIME BISHOP OF MENDE
WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY AND NOTES
BY
THE REV. JOHN MASON NEALE, B.A.
AND
THE REV. BENJAMIN WEBB, B.A.
OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

New York
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
743 AND 745 BROADWAY
1893

DEDICATED TO
THE CAMBRIDGE CAMDEN SOCIETY
BY
TWO OF ITS FOUNDERS

{vii}

PREFACE

The interest which has lately been displayed, as on all subjects connected with Ecclesiology, so more especially on the symbolical bearing of Church Architecture, has led us to imagine that a translation of the most valuable work on Symbolism which the middle ages can furnish, might not, at the present time, be unacceptable to churchmen.

Written, however, at a period when Christian Architecture had not attained its full glory, it necessarily leaves untouched many arrangements of similar tendency, subsequently adopted; addressed to those who had not yet learnt to doubt everything not formally proved, it assumes many points which may now seem to require confirmation: and composed for the use of a clergy habituated to a most figurative ritual, it passes over much as well known, which is now forgotten or neglected. On these accounts we have considered it necessary to prefix an Essay on the subject; in which we have endeavoured to prove that Catholic Architecture must necessarily be symbolical; to answer the more common objections to the system; and to elucidate it by reference to actual examples, and notices of the figurative arrangements of our own churches. We have also added notes, where any obscurity seemed {viii} to require explanation; and we have, both in them and in the Appendix, thrown together such passages from Martene, Beleth, S. Isidore of Seville, Hugo de S. Victore, and other writers, as tended to explain and to enforce the remarks of Durandus.