The churches of this ancient city have preserved all their internal
fittings as perfectly as those of Nuremberg, although the Catholic rites
have ceased within them for nearly three centuries. The minutest
ornaments remain intact, and but very trifling additions or alterations
have been made in the original arrangement; accordingly, we find
splendid examples of screens, which I have figured in the adjoining
plates.
The first is in the Dom or cathedral. It originally consisted of three
moulded arches, springing from slender quatrefoil shafts, supporting an
open gallery. The choir was entered by two doors under the side arches,
while an altar was erected in the centre compartment, and this
arrangement is almost universal in the German screens, reversing the
custom of France and England, of placing the entrance in the centre,
with two lateral altars. This screen received a considerable quantity of
enrichment in the way of imagery and tabernacle-work in the fifteenth
century; the original arches are probably as old as the early part of
the thirteenth. In Lutheran times, a clock has been added on the epistle
side of this screen, which completely destroys its symmetry and
appearance.
Two bays westward of this is a gigantic rood, on a beam, described under
rood beams.
Each lateral chapel is enclosed by open screens, most artificially
wrought in brass, and of great variety of design.
The next most important screen at Lubeck is in the Marienkirche. This
screen consists of five bays, or compartments, with crocketed labels and
images in the spandrels; the masonry is of the fourteenth century, but
the upper panels, containing images and paintings, are not older than
the fifteenth. As this was always a parochial church, the arches are all
open, and filled with light brass-work. I examined them most carefully,
and they evidently had been open according to the original design, nor
were there any marks of altars ever standing under them as at _the
cathedral_. The whole choir of this church, as well as the side chapels,
are enclosed with light and beautiful brass screens, and a very
elaborate screen of carved oak, surmounted by open bratishing, and
basins for tapers, divides off the Lady chapel.
The Katherinen Kirche contains a most beautiful rood screen of very
original design.
The church belonged formerly to religious, and the choir is raised some
eighteen or twenty feet above the level of the church floor, supported
by three ranges of vaulting resting on dwarf marble pillars, and forming
a sort of above-ground crypt. Immediately over the front of these
arches, rises the rood loft, fronted by carved panels, most beautifully
painted with sacred images, and terminated in a very bold floriated
bratishing of admirable execution; in the centre is the great rood, with
the Evangelists in floriated quatrefoils, and the attendant images of
our Blessed Lady and St. John, on octagonal pedestals. At the eastern
end of the lower church is an enclosed choir, divided off by three light
metal screens from the parishioners, so the religious and people had
distinct altars, and were entirely separated in the same church—a most
singular and beautiful arrangement.
The great Hospital is constructed like a church, with beds and chambers,
open at top, under three vast roofs, covering a nave and aisles. The
entrance to this is like a fore choir or antechapel, and dedicated for
divine worship. It contains no less than five altars, three of which are
under the arches of three screens, the stonework of which is probably
the oldest in Lubeck, and to which I should assign the date of the
middle of the thirteenth century. The upper part of the loft, consisting
of carved panels and paintings, is a work of the fifteenth century.
It is worthy of remark that, although the Lutheran religion has
exclusively prevailed in this city for several centuries, many of the
branches set up to burn tapers in front of the images in this and other
churches bear the date of 1664, and even later.
St. James's church contains several wooden screens of a remarkably early
date. They are certainly not later than the middle of the thirteenth
century, and are most exquisitely carved with heads of saints,
stringcourses, bratishing, images of doctors and evangelists in
quatrefoils, and in style of art corresponding to the early work in
Wells cathedral.
As this treatise is devoted to the subject of screens, I have confined
my remarks to them, but I must add that I consider the churches of
Lubeck to be the most interesting, as regards fittings and details, of
any ecclesiastical buildings remaining in Europe. There are examples of
metal-work, early painting, and wood-carving, of the thirteenth,
fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, and the finest monumental brass in
the world, most probably by the same artist as produced the famous one
at St. Alban's, but much larger and more elaborate.