The dean’s chief published works are a Life of St Anselm (1870), the lives of Spenser (1879) and Bacon (1884) in Macmillan’s “Men of Letters” series, an Essay on Dante (1878), The Oxford Movement (1891), together with many other volumes of essays and sermons. A collection of his journalistic articles was published in 1897 as Occasional Papers. In these writings he exhibits a great grasp of principles, an accurate mastery of detail, and the same fusion of intelligent sympathy and dispassionate judgment that appeared in his handling of business. His style is lucid, and has the charm of austerity. He stated that he had never studied style per se, but that he had acquired it by the exercise of translation from classical languages; that he watched against the temptation of using unreal and fine words; that he employed care in his choice of verbs rather than in his use of adjectives; and that he fought against self-indulgence in writing just as he did in daily life. His sermons have the same quality of self-restraint. His private letters are fresh and simple, and contain many unaffected epigrams; in writing of religious subjects he resolutely avoided dogmatism without ever sacrificing precision. The dean was a man of genius, whose moral stainlessness and instinctive fire were indicated rather than revealed by his writings.
See Life and Letters of Dean Church, by his daughter, M.C. Church (1895); memoir by H.C. Beeching in Dict. Nat. Biog.; and D.C. Lathbury, Dean Church (1907).
(A. C. BE.)
CHURCH (according to most authorities derived from the Gr. κυριακὸν [δῶμα], “the Lord’s [house],” and common to many Teutonic, Slavonic and other languages under various forms—Scottish kirk, Ger. Kirche, Swed. kirka, Dan. kirke, Russ. tserkov, Bulg. cerkova, Czech cirkev, Finn, kirkko, &c), a word originally applied to the building used for Christian worship, and subsequently extended to the Christian community (ecclesia) itself. Similarly the Greek word ecclesia (ἐκκλησία), “assembly,” was very early transferred from the community to the building, and is used in both senses, especially in the modern Romance and Celtic languages (e.g. Fr. église, Welsh eglwys, &c).
(1) Church Architecture.—From the strictly architectural point of view the subject of church building, including the development of the various styles and the essential features of the construction and arrangement of churches, is dealt with elsewhere (see [Architecture]; [Abbey]; [Basilica]). It is, however, impossible to understand the development of church architecture without realizing its intimate connexion with that of the doctrine, organization and ritual of the Christian Church as a religious community, and a brief sketch of this connexion may be given here by way of introduction to the more technical treatment of the subject. In general it may be said of church architecture, more truly than of any other, that artistically it is “frozen music.” It is true that at all times churches have been put to secular uses; in periods of unrest, as among the Nestorian Christians now, they were sometimes built to serve at need as fortresses; their towers were used for beacons, their naves for meetings on secular affairs. But as a rule, and especially in the great periods of church architecture, their builders were untrammelled by any utilitarian considerations; they built for the glory of God, for their own glory perhaps, in honour of the saints; and their work, where it survives, is (as it were) a petrification of their beliefs and ideals. This is, of course, more true of the middle ages than of the times that preceded and followed them; the Church under the Roman empire hardly as yet realized the possibilities of “sermons in stones,” and took over, with little change, the model of the secular and religious buildings of pagan Rome; the Renaissance, essentially a neo-pagan movement, introduced disturbing factors from outside, and, though developing a style very characteristic of the age that produced it, started that archaeological movement which has tended in modern times to substitute mere imitations of old models for any attempt to express in church architecture the religious spirit of the age.
The earliest type of Christian Church, out of which the others developed, was the basilica. The Church, emerging in the 4th century into imperial favour, and established as part of the organization of the Roman empire, simply adopted that type of secular official building which she found convenient for her purposes. The clergy, now Roman officials, vested in the robes of the civil dignitaries (see [Vestments]), took their seats in the apse of the basilica where the magistrates were wont to sit, in front of them the holy table, facing the congregation. The cancelli, the lattice or bar, which in the civil tribunal had divided the court from the litigants and the public, now served to separate clergy and laity. This arrangement still survives in some of the ancient churches of Rome; it has been revived in many Protestant places of worship. It symbolized principally an official distinction; but with the theocratizing of the empire in the East and its decay in the West the accentuation of the mystic powers of the clergy led to a more complete separation from the laity, a tendency which left its mark on the arrangements of the churches. In the East the cancelli, under the influence possibly of the ritual of the Jewish temple, developed into the iconostasis, the screen of holy pictures, behind the closed doors of which the supreme act of the eucharistic mystery is hidden from the lay people. In the West the high altar was moved to the east end (the presbyterium) with a space before it for the assisting deacons andsubdeacons (the chancel proper) railed off as a spot peculiarly holy (now usually called the sanctuary); between this and the nave, where the laity were, was the choir, with seats for the clergy on either side. The whole of this space (sanctuary and choir) came to be known as the “chancel.” This was divided from the nave, sometimes by an arch forming part of the structure of the building, sometimes by a screen, or by steps, sometimes by all three (see [Chancel]). The division of churches into chancel and nave, the outcome of the sacramental and sacerdotal spirit of the Catholic Church, may be taken as generally typical of church construction in the medieval West, though there were exceptions, e.g. the round churches of the Templars. There were, however, further changes, the result partly of doctrinal developments, partly of that passion for symbolism which by the 13th century had completed the evolution of the Catholic ritual. Transepts were added, to give to the ground-plan of the building the figure of the cross. The insistence on the unique efficacy of the sacrifice of the altar led to the multiplication of masses, and so of altars, which were placed in the transepts or aisles or in chapels, dedicated to the saints whose relics they enshrined. The chief of these subsidiary chapels, that of the Blessed Virgin (or Lady chapel), behind the high altar, was often of large size. Finally, for the convenience of processions, the nave and chancel aisles were carried round behind the high altar as ambulatories.
The Romanesque churches, still reminiscent of antique models, had preserved all the simplicity of the ancient basilicas with much more than their grandeur; but the taste for religious symbolism which culminated in the 13th century, and the imaginative genius of the northern peoples, transformed them into the marvellous dreams in stone of the “Gothic” period. Churches now became, in form and decoration, epitomes of the Christian scheme of salvation as the middle ages understood it. In the plan of the buildings and their decoration everything still remained subordinate to the high altar; but though on this and its surroundings ornament was most lavishly expended, the churches—wherever wealth permitted—were covered within and without with sculpture or painting: scenes from the Old and New Testaments, from the lives of saints, even from every-day life; figures of the Almighty, of Christ, of the Virgin Mother, of apostles, saints, confessors; pictures of the joys of heaven and the torments of hell; and outside, grimacing from every angle, demons and goblins, amusing enough to us but terrible to the age that set them there, visible embodiments of the evil spirits driven from within the sacred building by the efficacy of the holy rites. In considering the origins of medieval churches, moreover, it must be borne in mind that as a general rule their builders were not actuated by the motives usual in modern times, at least among Protestants. The size of churches was not determined by the needs of population but by the piety and wealth of the founders; and the same applies to their number. Often they were founded as acts of propitiation of the Almighty or of the saints, and the greater their size and splendour the more effective they were held to be for their purpose. Local rivalry, too, played a large part, one wealthy abbey building “against” another, much in the same way as modern business houses endeavour to outshine each other in the magnificence of their buildings. Of all the mixed motives that went to the evolution of church architecture in the middle ages, this rivalry in ostentation was probably the most fertile in the creation of new forms. A volume might be written on the economic effects of this locking up of vast capital in unproductive buildings. In Catholic countries (notably in Ireland) great churches are still built out of the savings of a poverty-stricken peasantry; and from this point of view the destruction of churches in the 16th century was probably a benefit to the world. This, however, is a consideration altogether alien to the Christian spirit, the aspiration of which is to lay up treasures not on earth but in heaven.
The Reformation was a fateful epoch in the history of church architecture. The substitution of the Bible for the Mass destroyed the raison d’être of churches as the middle ages had made them. Pictures and stories, carved or painted, seemed no longer necessary now that the open Bible was in the hands of the common people; they had been too often prostituted, moreover, to idolatrous uses,—and “idolatry” was the worst of blasphemies to the re-discoverers of the Old Testament. Save in some parts of Germany, where the influence of Luther saved the churches from wreck, an iconoclastic wave spread over the greater part of Western Europe, wherever the “new religion” prevailed; everywhere churches were cleared of images and reduced to the state of those described by William Harrison in his Description of England (1570), only the “pictures in glass” being suffered in some cases to survive for a while “by reason of the extreme cost of replacing them.” The structures of the churches, however, remained; and these, even in countries which departed furthest from the Catholic system, served in some measure to keep its tradition alive. Protestantism has, indeed, produced a distinctive church architecture, i.e. the conventicle type, favoured more especially by the so-called “Free Churches.” Its distinctive features are pulpit and auditorium, and it is symbolical of the complete equality of ministers and congregation. In general, however, Protestant builders have been content to preserve or to adapt the traditional models. It would be interesting in this connexion to trace the reverse effect of church architecture upon church doctrine. In England, for instance, the chancels were for the most part disused after the Reformation (see Harrison, op. cit.), but presently they came into use again, and on the Catholic revival in the Church of England in the 19th century it is certain that the medieval churches exercised an influence by giving a sense of fitness, which might otherwise have been lacking, to the restoration of medieval ritual. A similar tendency has of late years been displayed in the Established Church of Scotland.
Churches, as the outcome of the organization of the Catholic Church, are divided into classes as “cathedral,” “conventual” and “collegiate,” “parochial” and “district” churches. It must be noted, however, that the term cathedral (q.v.), ecclesiastically applicable to any church which happens to be a bishop’s see, architecturally connotes a certain size and dignity, and is sometimes applied to churches which have never been, or have long ceased to be, bishop’s seats.