Fig. 35. St Martha’s chapel, near Guildford, Surrey. The present cruciform building is a restoration (1848) of the supposed “Pilgrims’ Church,” which had fallen into a ruinous condition. The view is taken from the South, a little to the East of Chilworth station. The Tillingbourne stream is seen in the foreground.
Leaving the tower, we come next to the nave of the church, and approach an attractive study—one that has exercised the minds of many observers. Why should the size of the nave be often so utterly disproportionate to the congregation which it has to accommodate? Has the population changed inversely to such an extent since the church was built? One might rashly deem the riddle solved by a reference to acts enforcing conformity in religion, or to the half-truth that “all persons went to church in those days.” On rare occasions, perchance, the inhabitants did all go to church, at least those who were neither infantile nor bed-ridden. But these explanations are idle. Churches may be found, which, even if we allow that every adult in the village was a regular churchgoer, could never at any time have been quite filled at a purely religious service.
Various answers have been given to the troublesome query. At Thaxted, in Essex, in whose church, as the natives say, all the parishioners might comfortably be put to bed, the excess of accommodation is thought to be explainable on the assumption that the builders provided for a growing population. The general facts, however, are strongly against this notion. William Cobbett, who will be admitted as a careful observer, though his conclusions were frequently hasty, exemplified both his strength and his weakness in discussing this subject. Over and over again, in his Rural Rides, and his History of the Protestant Reformation, he calls attention to churches, which, in his day, would hold three or four times the total number of the inhabitants in the respective parishes. From these facts, he deduces that the land in Mediaeval times supported a greater number of folk, and that the villages were larger and much more densely populated. Other writers, favoured with greater opportunities than were available to Cobbett, have, nevertheless, been betrayed into the same error. But the population theory is now so generally discredited, that it is unnecessary to rebut it directly by an appeal to the estimated populations of the country during each successive century. Besides, an estimated census of the population during the Edwardian period, for instance, can never be more than approximate, and may itself cause more controversy than the theory which it is warranted to disprove.
The seemingly obvious answer to the puzzle of spacious churches is, as so often happens, incorrect. The best refutation, perhaps, is afforded by general principles, and by certain ascertained facts. These principles and facts are bound up with what has been briefly called “the social theory of Mediaeval Christianity.” What this theory implies will shortly appear. From a slightly different point of view, the inordinate size of the nave directs us to a period when secular and sacred departments of parish life were more closely blended than they are to-day. Before developing this idea, however, we must pause, else we shall find another hypothesis barring our way.
This latest hypothesis, and one which will command greatest attention because of the high reputation of its advocates, might best be termed “the devotional theory.” It may thus be stated: a large Mediaeval church was not necessarily built for a large congregation, but it was, first of all, a monument, freely raised, as a permanent expression of duty and devotion to the Divine Father. Mr Francis Bond, who propounds this theory, is dealing primarily with Westminster Abbey, but, from the context, it seems clear that he supports a wider application. Here is an Abbey church, a huge building, over 500 feet in length, and 100 feet in height; yet it was erected, as documentary evidence proves, for a congregation which was normally under sixty[315]. “It seems hardly conceivable,” remarks Mr Bond, “that it could have been planned and built for pigmy man who walks beneath; it seems not built for mortal man by mortal men; man is overpowered by his own work[316].” No, this vastness had another purpose besides that of the accommodation of worshippers—it was man’s tribute to the Unseen, his attempt to symbolize the Eternal and the Infinite. For, indeed, at the Great Sacrament, “the priest of the church officiated, congregation or no congregation,” and in the village church all the choir that could be got together, as a rule, consisted of the parish priest and the parish clerk[317]. A congregation of two: yet, as Thorold Rogers observes, “it is certain that villages with fewer than fifty or a hundred inhabitants possessed edifices which would hold a congregation of five, or even ten times that number[318].”
Does the “devotional theory” furnish a full explanation of the difficulty? As befits one who has learned many valuable lessons when a student under Mr Bond, and who has almost unqualified admiration for his teaching, I criticize the theory with some misgiving. Yet, though Mr Bond’s solution is probably correct, in the main, with respect to our cathedrals, minsters, and abbey churches, it seems quite unsatisfactory for hundreds of parish churches. All thoughtful students must, indeed, admit that the aesthetic and devotional aspect of church architecture—its grandeur, its freedom, its wealth of what was choicest in design and ornament, its sculpture, painting, stained glass, and mosaic work—cannot be eliminated when considering the question of size. These details are parts of a whole. Again, the daily service, constantly observed until the Reformation, and, as recent investigation has shown, probably never wholly discarded since that event[319], was a duty undertaken, we may readily admit, irrespective of the number of worshippers. The building was as magnificent and costly as wealth or self-denial could make it. The resplendent vestments, the solemn liturgy, and the beautiful music were the best that the age could produce. So, too, the very vastness of the structure was a token that the founders performed their work in no niggardly spirit of economy or time-saving:
“They dreamed not of a perishable home,
Who thus could build.”
It must be understood that, with respect to the populace, this description is largely theoretical. In practice, such lofty sentiments would be confined to picked leaders and their devoted adherents. Even with these churchmen, ideals were often degraded, and always unattainable. Of the people in general, it may be said that beneath a veneer of religion there existed an amorphous mass of heathenism. The monks and parish clergy of remote districts were not merely the pioneers of religion, but they represented the outposts of civilization amid a population of semi-barbarians. But, in architecture, it was the leaders who counted.
In spite of all these considerations, the argument from devotion appears to be insufficient to meet the case, unless—an improbable event—the secular uses of the nave, which are about to be described, were the results of afterthought. Rightly to understand the problem, we must constantly recollect two staple facts: first, that the early churchmen were ever ready to adopt a compromise, and, secondly, that, especially during the Mediaeval period, there existed a close relationship between the secular and the religious aspects of social life. So many pieces of evidence have to be colligated to explain the working of these two principles, that it is difficult to make a beginning. But, since the question of compromise has already been dealt with in Chapter I., we may chiefly confine ourselves to the second point. On the whole, a start may best be made by reviewing the meetings, other than those strictly concerned with worship, which were held of old time in churches. Some of these meetings must have comprised far more able-bodied men than were ever collected together for a strictly religious celebration. In fact, a particular church may have had to shelter not only the inhabitants of the parish, but also the dwellers in several outlying parishes and hamlets. What business was it that gathered these folk together?
When discussing pagan sites, we found that open-air courts, whether territorial, or composed of members of a free community, commonly met near some prominent landmark, natural or artificial ([p. 34] supra). Of these objects, megalithic monuments—particularly menhirs and stone-circles—were much favoured. The stone-circles, as we saw, were in later days gradually abandoned, and the members of the community assembled in the churches. We should reasonably expect to discover evidence of overlapping of custom, and this is what we actually find. For, at a date when gatherings on mounds and within cromlechs are still sporadically recorded, we find frequent references to courts held in churches. Thus, during the Saxon period, trial by ordeal, which was deemed a religious transaction, was conducted by the priests in the parish church[320]. So early as A.D. 973, says Sir G. L. Gomme, a gemōt was held in St Paul’s, London, while in A.D. 1293 a court met in Norham church, Northumberland[321]. The County Court, a very ancient body, presided over by the sheriff, was held in the Sheriff’s Court, or the Manor Court, but, if these were not convenient, the members assembled in the open air, or in the church[322]. The Welsh laws of the ninth and tenth centuries frequently refer to churches as courts of justice[323]. Relics, it was declared, were unnecessary at trials held in churches, for the church was the place of relics.