Fig. 50. “Canute’s knee-bone,” Canewdon church, Essex. The other objects are: (1) an iron-bound church chest; (2) a carved panel (c. A.D. 1410), probably part of a screen; (3) a cylindrical alms box, 8½´´ high and 12´´ in circumference, turned out of a solid piece of wood.
disappeared—no one knows where. There is an entry in the parish register, dated A.D. 1711, which refers to a certain “Ribbe Bone”—a portion of the skeleton of St Christopher. The Rev. C. R. Hardy, vicar of Canewdon, informs me that a later writer alludes to the “knee-cap of a Dane,” which was kept locked up in the church chest and shown to visitors. The two bones alluded to can scarcely be identical, and the facts show how rapidly a secondary myth can arise, when there is, as will at once be shown, a tributary tradition to support it. This tradition asserts that on the hill overlooking the village a battle was fought with the Danes. Professor Freeman, who closely investigated matters on the spot, came to the conclusion that the topographical details harmonized well with the description of Assandun, and that it was here that Canute met Edmund Ironsides in conflict (A.D. 1016). By the way, we notice that Canute’s nephew, Sweyn, was presented with the manor of which Canewdon forms a part. Freeman further considered that the place-name Canewdon may preserve the name of the Danish conqueror[475]. The Rev. E. W. Heygate has also suggested that Canewdon signifies “Cnut’s Down[476].” In these days, however, when etymology is based on research work, the conjectures of a past generation must be approached with suspicion. The Domesday spelling Carenduna, occurring only seventy years after the battle, and the later forms Carendun, Cannedon, Canvedon, Canudon, seem practically decisive against the proposed derivation. Title-deeds of the sixteenth century have Canudon; and the parish register of 1636, Canewdon. Mr F. W. Reader, whose reputation as an archaeologist and scientific observer is well-established, found, upon inquiry, that the pronunciation of the village name was Cańewdon, and that it is only in modern times that the accentuation of the second syllable has gained ground. Mr Hardy says that the pronunciations are equally common. This fact also tells somewhat against the popular derivation. On the whole, it seems probable that folk-memory may be fairly sound on the question of the battle, and even of Canute’s share therein, but that the suggested etymology is incorrect, and is an afterthought due to the currency of the “knee-bone” myth.
In truth, wherever we meet with these curious legacies of bones, fossils, or other objects, there we also find what Sir Thomas Browne called “fallacious enlargements.” The cathedral of St Bertrand-de-Comminges, in the French department of Haute-Garonne, possesses a stuffed crocodile. Legend says that the relic was brought thither by a Crusader, but one may doubt the story. A goose feather, kept in a recess fashioned in a pillar of Pewsey church, Wiltshire, and carefully screened by a little door of glass, was once thought, so the inscription informs us, to be a feather of the wing of the angel Gabriel. At East Wellow, near Romsey, Hampshire, an old flint-lock gun is seen attached to a beam in the chancel, and local tradition has an explanation to offer, though it is probably not the correct one. Those who are fond of such quaint trifles can find other examples[477] of symbolism and superstition. The widespread custom of suspending eggs in churches is symbolical rather than superstitious, though it has given rise to considerable debate. In Spanish churches the eggs chosen are chiefly those of the goose; and they are usually placed near statues[478]. Elsewhere, however, ostrich eggs are in favour, and especially is this the case in Mohammedan mosques, where they are hung from the ceiling. At home we have our Easter or Pasque eggs, with which many customs and much folk-lore are associated. Durandus, ever-ready to supply some strained and mystical interpretation, will have it that the ostrich eggs denote the “cherishing mercy of God[479].” Present-day writers, with a greater knowledge of comparative customs, recognize in the “world-egg” the great emblem of life, resurrection, and restoration[480]. But into this spacious field we must not now enter.
Some of the objects bequeathed to the twentieth century are not quite so free from superstition as is the ostrich egg. At Laniscat, Pont Croix, Kerdreuff, and one or two other places in Brittany, there may still be seen, in the church, “wheels of fortune.” These are large wheels with spokes; to the outside of the rim bells are attached. As the wheel is turned, the bells ring. There are boxes for the reception of money, and when the sufferer from some malady has placed his money in the box, he pulls the rope to make the bells clang. These wheels, as Mr Baring-Gould and others have pointed out, have a long pedigree[481]. They go back, first to the Roman worship of the goddess Fortuna, and finally, perhaps, to sun-worship. Among the Gaulish tribes, the wheel represented the protection afforded by the solar deity; in tombs, it was perhaps emblematic of restoration of life and vigour. The wheel, held by a god, is also found on Romano-Gaulish statues. In Christian art we meet with our wheel windows, symbolical, it is believed, of the Sun of Righteousness.
After having seen the “wheels of fortune,” one is but little impressed by the spectacle of small models of sailing vessels which may be seen suspended in the churches of the smaller seaport towns of Normandy and Brittany. These models symbolize in a pleasing manner the idea of the Church’s protection of mariners. In Belgium, votive offerings of silver horses are met with; they are the gifts of persons whose horses have recovered from some disease, or perhaps from the effects of the “evil eye.” These customs are probably of modern date, and, therefore, not directly traceable to heathen times.
It is doubtful whether we could find preserved, in churches on British soil, pagan vestiges exactly comparable with the solar wheel. In early art it is otherwise, as our architecture and ritual abundantly testify. With respect to actual relics, many a parish church shelters some object, quaint or grotesque, which had its origin in no sentiment of a purely Christian character. When superstition waned, these heirlooms, either from oversight, or, more probably, by tacit consent, were often allowed to remain within the sacred building, for the idea of the church as the house of the people never completely died away. The church continued to be the receptacle for these curious relics, and few folk were found to deny the fitness of the custom.
One by one, tiny fragments of testimony accumulate, attesting such a survival and continuance of folk-memory as few men of to-day have suspected. From the mass of facts there emerges the truth of the twofold purpose of Mediaeval church architecture—the religious and the social. Some writers have attempted to interpret the evidence on the principle that, as the ecclesiastical power diminished, the secular increased, and that the sway of custom was brought about by encroachments from the one side or the other alternately. Certainly, the problem must be surveyed from that point of view, yet it appears to me that such an outlook is only partial. For instance—to mention one objection only—at the period when clerical power was in its heyday, the church fabric appears also to have been most used for social purposes, and this fact seems to stand quite apart from the disorderly tendencies observable in times of irreligion and desecration. Whichever power, clerical or lay, chanced to be uppermost, the parochial customs, as a whole, until within the last few centuries, seem to have been fairly, though not entirely, uniform; and when external causes, whether political or economical, produced a balance of forces, the right to use the church for secondary purposes does not seem to have been seriously challenged. For the strength of the earlier faiths long continued to lie in the recognized union of political, social, and religious interests. There was no gulf fixed between the conceptions of the religious and the secular commonwealth. “Such a distinction,” says Kauffmann, “is foreign to ancient modes of thought[482].” And of the tenacity of thought and the persistency of custom we have had ample proof.
CHAPTER V
THE ORIENTATION OF CHURCHES
Orientation, as the word is commonly understood nowadays, may be described as the principle, and practice, according to which a sacred building or other object is set in an East-to-West line. In speaking of a Christian church, there is implied further that the altar is normally placed at the Eastern end of the building. The word “orientate,” it is hardly necessary to say, comes primarily from the Latin oriri, to rise, the reference being, of course, to the sun. To get one’s bearings with respect to the East was therefore naturally called “orientation.” There is a more general signification when the word is employed scientifically: thus, the crystals in a mass of rock may be orientated, and not necessarily to the East. There is also a broader usage of the term, mostly of literary interest, which merely conveys the sense of determination of one’s position, physically or mentally, so that even theories and opinions may be orientated, honestly or disingenuously, by their advocates. Under this definition, moreover, a building may be orientated, and yet the chief part need not face the geographical East. But it has been conjectured that there was also a Mediaeval Latin word, orientare, which specifically meant “to set towards the East,” and thus arose the fuller and more precise connotation familiar to the modern antiquary[483]. From the Mediaeval term we get our verb “to orientate,” which, like the briefer and more usual term, “to orient,” implies the setting out of a church East to West, with the altar towards the East of the edifice. Merely premising that there is an orientation of graves as well as of buildings, we will proceed to consider the case of churches only.
The most heedless observer must have noticed the main facts. The choir or chancel of a cathedral or parish church faces East, while the nave runs towards the West. The exceptions form a trifling minority. Casting about for an explanation of these exceptions, it will be found that the buildings which infringe the rule are usually modern, or that the exigencies of space permitted no alternative, or that there has been a spirit of opposition manifested of set purpose. Let us first notice a few examples where the rule is broken. The small, modern church of Well, Lincolnshire, is indeed built East and West, but the altar is situated at the West end. Eastville church, in the same county, runs North and South, its altar being towards the South[484]. St Mary Major, Exeter, which lies to the West of the cathedral, is alined North-East and South-West, but the alteration was probably made in 1866, when the church was rebuilt. The original building was of Norman date[485], and would scarcely be out of line. St Paul’s, Covent Garden, built by Inigo Jones in 1633, and rebuilt at the close of the eighteenth century, has its axis about 30° North of the East-to-West line, but the altar stands at what must be called the “East” end of the church. St John’s, Chatham, another church which transgresses the principle, was erected in the years immediately preceding the Oxford Movement, at a time when the practice of orientation had grown lax[486]. Several Georgian churches in the Paddington and Marylebone districts are out of line, while, strange to tell, a Primitive Methodist Chapel in Seymour Place, hard by, is properly orientated[487]. The fact is noticeable, since the custom is not widely observed by Nonconformists. Camden church, Peckham, is built askew, but that is doubtless owing to its founders having consisted of a coalition of Nonconformists and dissatisfied churchmen from the mother parish of Camberwell. In the Georgian era, as is well known, there was general slackness: fonts were often placed in the North and South aisles, ornaments were neglected, brasses stolen, documents mislaid and misused. To this period of slovenly treatment can be traced the anomalous alinement of St George’s, Bloomsbury. The Eastern recess having proved too small to receive an altarpiece which had been presented by the Duke of Bedford, the main axis of the church was, as it were, turned through an angle of 90°, and it is now arranged almost North and South, the original chancel being represented by a baptistery[488].