London
George Newnes, Limited
Southampton Street, Strand
1900
Printed by
Hazell, Watson, and Viney, Ld.,
London and Aylesbury.
Introduction.
[Illustration: SOUTHWELL CHOIR SCREEN.]
The following pages are an attempt to make the study of the English
cathedrals more interesting. Every ancient building has a life-history of
its own, and should be studied biographically. But open a guide-book, or
visit the different portions of a cathedral (Winchester, for example,)
in the regulation order, and what you read of or see will probably be,
first, what was done in the nave in the latter part of the fourteenth
and in the fifteenth century; then the work done in the crossing in the
twelfth century; then work done in the transepts in the eleventh century;
then the work in the choir in the first half of the fourteenth century;
then the work done in the retro-choir early in the thirteenth century;
finally, sixteenth-century work in the Lady chapel. To the reader this
hop, skip, and jump method—if it deserves to be called a method—is
simply maddening. For the visitor it has one merit, and one merit only:
it saves his legs. I do not propose to save the visitor’s legs; I must
candidly confess that the biographical method of studying a cathedral
involves a certain amount of marching and countermarching. But I venture
to hope that there are some visitors who will not be deterred by a little
additional bodily fatigue from studying the cathedrals aright. With what
horror a reader would study a biography of the Great Duke which commenced
with the Peninsular War, then described his school-days at Eton, followed
these up by the battle of Waterloo, digressed into a description of his
childhood and ancestry, described his career as a Tory Prime Minister,
and wound up with his campaigns in India! Yet that is how the English
cathedrals are studied.
[Illustration: SOUTHWELL CHOIR.]
But it is not sufficient to study the different parts of a cathedral in
chronological order. It would be a dull biography of a man, and a dull
history of a people, which put events correctly in chronological order,
but did not point out the causal connection between them. It is just when
we reach this point that the real interest begins. It does not interest
one much to hear that an acquaintance whom we saw in London in the spring
is now in the Australian bush: it does interest one when one hears that
he had to leave the country because three months ago he was detected
cheating at cards. So, in a cathedral, it is not enough to know that such
a vault was put up or such a row of windows inserted in the fifteenth
century. We want to know why the cathedral people constructed the vault
or the windows just then; also, why they were not satisfied with what
was there before; also, what was there before. And with the latter
query comes in a fine field of action for what I believe is called the
“constructive imagination.”
On the motives which influenced mediæval builders I have laid
considerable stress throughout the book, simply because, if it has
occurred at all to writers to ask why such and such a change was made,
the answer usually has been—I quote from an article on one of the
cathedrals—“simply a desire for what was thought a far superior kind of
beauty led to the alteration of this work”: _i.e._, the Gothic builders
were æsthetic dilettanti, striving after prettiness for prettiness’ sake;
on a level with painters and poets and musicians. Now, some changes were
due, I admit, to æsthetic considerations simply: _e.g._, the substitution
of the present choir for the former Transitional choir at York; so also
one of every pair of towers at the west end of a cathedral; and every
spire in the country.
[Illustration: SOUTHWELL CHAPTER-HOUSE.]
But the more the history of the cathedrals is studied, the more clearly
it will be seen that the great majority of the alterations in the
structure were forced on the ecclesiastical authorities of the day by
practical considerations.
The monastery was large, as at Canterbury, and the church the seat of an
archbishop; Lanfranc’s short choir had to be replaced by a longer one.
Saint-worship increased; pilgrimages increased; pilgrims came in
thousands and tens of thousands. They could not be accommodated in the
crypts as before: room had to be found on the floor of the choir for
shrines transferred from the crypt; and aisles had to be constructed
round the shrines, that there might be a free passage, and no dangerous
block in the stream of pilgrims. For the local Saint—the St. Thomas of
Canterbury, the St. Hugh of Lincoln—accommodation on a vast scale had to
be provided. But beside the local saints, there were the great saints of
the Church; for them special chapels, with altars, had to be provided,
either in a new eastern transept or in aisles added to the central
transept. There was, moreover, especially in the first half of the
thirteenth century, a great outburst of Mariolatry. For these reasons,
then—what we may call ritualistic reasons—vast eastern extensions were
made in nearly every cathedral.
But the original Norman cathedrals were not only small and inconvenient
to the east, but they were throughout very badly lighted; a very
large amount of history, as I have tried to point out in speaking of
Gloucester, Hereford, and Norwich, consists of attempts to improve the
lighting of the cathedral. Sometimes, indeed, the improvement took the
shape of total destruction of the old gloomy church, and its replacement
by a brilliantly illuminated successor, as at York. Connected with this
was the mania for an increased acreage of stained glass—an æsthetic
motive which, however, had its practical side; the stained glass
justifying itself to the monks and canons as providing a series of
lessons in Scripture history or Church history.
Many changes were due to damage from fire or storm, or to jerry-building.
The clerestory of Norwich had to be rebuilt because it had been crushed
by the fall of the spire. The Norwich monks were driven to fireproof the
whole church, because fires in 1463 and 1509 showed them the necessity of
it, by burning down successively the wooden roofs, first of the nave and
choir, then of the transept. I am sure that if our documentary evidence
were not so deplorably incomplete, we should find that very many other
alterations were due to the effect of fire and tempest: in which case
the list of æsthetic changes would be yet further cut down—_e.g._, we
might find after all that York choir had to be rebuilt for some purely
matter-of-fact reason.
Add to these causes the frequent collapses due to mediæval
jerry-building, both Norman and Gothic. Many central towers
collapsed—_e.g._, at Winchester, Ripon, Wells, Ely, Peterborough,
Lincoln; and doubtless there were collapses of many others, of which we
have no record. Hence, for example, the fourteenth-century choir of Ely.
Whole sections of a cathedral tumbled down—_e.g._, in St. Alban’s nave.
The early masonry was but skin-deep; inside the thin casing of masonry
the core of piers and walls alike had crumbled into powder; foundations
were insufficient, or were simply omitted. The object was, but too often,
not to build soundly, but to build a bigger church than the rival over
the way, and to hurry it up as quickly as possible. Hence the shocking
building done by the Peterborough people in their rivalry with Ely.
A considerable amount of space has been devoted to what is called the
ichnography of the cathedrals—their ground-plans. It has not been
possible to insert plans in the book; it seemed hardly desirable to do
so. The _Builder_ has published valuable plans, on a large scale, of all
the cathedrals; they can be obtained separately, with the accompanying
letterpress and illustrations. The student should never visit a cathedral
without one of these plans. (I may add that he should always have a
binocular to study the detail, much of which—_e.g._, the bosses—is quite
out of the reach of the unaided eye.)
As regards the nomenclature of the parts of a cathedral, it may be useful
to mention that the high altar is to the east; and that, facing the east,
the visitor has the south transept and south aisles on his right, and
the north transept and north aisles on his left hand. Standing at the
altar or the choir-screen, and looking down the nave to the great doors,
he has the north transept and north aisle of the nave on his right, and
the south transept and south aisle of the nave on his left.
[Illustration: SOUTHWELL CHAPTER-HOUSE.]
The western limb of the cathedral is called the nave. The term “choir”
is sometimes loosely applied to the whole of the eastern limb. Strictly
it applies just to that part of the church where the stalls are; and
that part, as in St. Alban’s and Norwich, need not necessarily be in the
eastern limb at all, but in the crossing and in the easternmost bays of
the nave.
In a cathedral with a fully-developed plan,—_e.g._, St. Alban’s or
Winchester—the following ritualistic divisions will be met with in
passing from west to east:—(1) The nave; (2) the choir; (3) the
sanctuary; (4) the retro-choir, containing (_a_) processional aisle,
(_b_) Saint’s chapel, (_c_) ante-chapel or vestibule to the Lady chapel;
(5) Lady chapel. Sometimes these ritualistic divisions correspond with
the architectural divisions of the church; sometimes they do not: _e.g._,
the ritualistic divisions of the eastern limbs of York and Lincoln were
not shown in the structure, but merely marked off by screens, most of
which have been destroyed.
Much time and trouble have been spent in the endeavour to correct the
current chronology of the cathedrals. The subject is a difficult one;
suffice it to say that I have relied rather on architectural than on
documentary evidence. “In the earlier days of archæological study the
tendency was to discredit the former and to accept the latter; in these
days the results of strict analytical investigation and comparison of
the minor details of the buildings of the Middle Ages dispose us to
place much more reliance upon this species of internal evidence than
on even the most unequivocal assertions of ecclesiastical historians.”
The inductive reasoning based on the former is safer than the possibly
hearsay or downright mendacious testimony of the latter. In all cases,
however, where I have departed from an accepted chronology, I have given
my reasons: _e.g._, in the chapters on Hereford and Wells.
As a rule, I have refrained from describing architectural detail. The
visitor to the cathedral does not need the description; the reader does
not need it, if he has an illustration before him; if he has not, no
amount of verbiage will make clear to him what, for instance, a bay of
the Angel triforium of Lincoln is like.
[Illustration: SOUTHWELL CHAPTER-HOUSE.]
On the other hand, I have ventured on perilous ground in attempting to
criticise design. Where the old builders seem to me to have done bad
design, I have not scrupled to say so. Indiscriminate admiration of old
work is as bad as indiscriminate censure of new work: both are fatal to
the training of a right perceptive faculty. The student of design must
compare and weigh and judge; he must not be misled by local enthusiasm
to put St. Hugh’s choir at Lincoln on the level of Ely presbytery, or
York nave on the level of that of Exeter. I may add that I have laid more
stress than, perhaps, is usual, on proportion, as a leading factor in
architectural effect.
I have followed the convenient custom of ascribing the design of
different parts of the cathedrals to various bishops and abbots and
priors. Such names, however, are merely convenient chronological
fixtures, not intended to signify that the dignitaries of the church
personally designed and erected them, but simply that they were in office
when the work was done.
On the vexed question of architect _v._ master-mason, I may say that,
just as I find it easier to believe in one Homer than in many Homers, so,
in contemplating such a poem in stone as the west front of Peterborough
or the retro-choir of Wells, I find it easier to believe in one inspired
architect than in a crowd of inspired clerks of the works.
I have gratefully to acknowledge my obligations to the “Cathedral
Handbooks” of Mr. John Murray, and to the _Builder_ series of cathedrals;
and to the brilliant word-painting of Mrs. Van Rensselaer in her
“Handbook of Twelve English Cathedrals.”
All the English cathedrals have been studied on the spot; but I had the
misfortune to lose the whole of my notes and the greater part of the
completed MS., so that the work must be less accurate than I had hoped.
Complete accuracy, however, is impossible in dealing with a subject so
vast. It is impossible even to know a single cathedral. As has been
finely said by Mr. Fergusson: “Not only is there built into a mediæval
cathedral the accumulated thought of all the men who had occupied
themselves with building during the preceding centuries, but you have
the dream and aspiration of the bishop, abbot, or clergy for whom it
was designed; the master-mason’s skilled construction; the work of the
carver, the painter, the glazier, the host of men who, each in his own
craft, knew all that had been done before them, and had spent their
lives in struggling to surpass the works of their forefathers. It is more
than this: there is not one shaft, one moulding, one carving, not one
chisel-mark in such a building, that was not designed specially for the
place where it is found, and which was not the best that the experience
of the age could invent for the purposes to which it is applied; nothing
was borrowed; and nothing that was designed for one purpose was used for
another. A thought or a motive peeps out through every joint; you may
wander in such a building for weeks or for months together, and never
know it all.”
[Illustration: SOUTHWELL CHAPTER-HOUSE.]
I trust that this attempt to open the way to understand and enjoy
more fully the highest achievement of the English race in any branch
of art—our mediæval architecture—may be helpful not only to English
students, but to our American cousins also, who—so the vergers assure
me—are the best-informed and most appreciative visitors to our cathedrals.
_The initials which appear at the foot of the various illustrations
indicate the names of the photographers whose negatives have been used.
Thus:—B. and S.B. = S. B. Bolas & Co.; B. & Co. = J. Bulbeck & Co.; P. =
The Photochrom Co.; W. = F. Wetherman & Co., Ltd.; R. = Rock Bros., Ltd.;
A.F. = Mr. Arnold Fairbairns._