is unknown, it is not of great antiquity, but probably belongs to the
mediæval period. That the Triforium of the great Anglo-Norman piles was
used in pre-Reformation times in the ritual of the Church apparently
for processions and the like, is clear from the several chapels
which lead out of it, and from the easy access to it by fairly broad
staircases on either side.
But such an occasional use is not by any means sufficient to account
for the presence of so important an adjunct in the planning of the
church.
Now what is the true story of its existence in so many of our great
churches?
And first, as to the derivation and meaning of the word “Triforium.”
Some scholars think it can be traced to the post-classical term
“transforare,” to pierce through. Here, for instance, it is said to
have pierced through the wall. “Opus triforiatum” was applied to
perforated work of various kinds, such as in lock plates, etc.
It is, however, something more than a passage in the thickness of the
wall which the above derivation, if it be adopted, would seem to
suggest. But it has a history which is very generally unknown.
The true secret of the Triforium is as follows: Far back in the annals
of Christianity we know that generally in the churches built by
Justinian in the sixth century in Constantinople, Thessalonica, and
in other populous centres, a large and separate place was arranged
for the women worshippers. In important churches such as the Church
of the Holy Apostles and the Basilica of S. Sophia at Constantinople,
a great gallery was constructed, exclusively for women; this gallery
was reached by stairs leading from the narthex (the narthex was a long
porch or ante-church, extending all across the west front). Where
there was no narthex, or gallery, the women were still separated; they
then sat on one side of the nave and the men on the other. The women’s
gallery was usually known as the gynæconitis or matronium. It can be
seen still, a very prominent object in the desecrated Mosque of S.
Sophia. This women’s gallery, so universal and so important a feature
in the greater churches of the East, became in time the Triforium, so
marked an arrangement in the Norman-Romanesque churches of England.[20]
The women’s gallery in its original purpose belonged exclusively to the
East, where the sexes were separated.
In the West, no such custom prevailed. In the West, as a rule, there
was no separation of the sexes. The custom of the Latin Church adopted
no such separation.
This fact is curiously confirmed in the planning of the churches of
the West; no women’s gallery, or Triforium (to use the later coined
word), save perhaps occasionally in a very diminutive form, appears in
the abbeys and churches of Aquitaine, Provence, or Auvergne. The same
may be said generally of the churches in all the southern and central
provinces of Gaul (France).
Of these Western churches, where as a rule we rarely find an important
“Triforium,” a notable exception may be quoted in the celebrated
Palace-chapel of Aix-la-Chapelle, now the cathedral. But this was
erected by Charlemagne and largely designed after S. Vitale at Ravenna,
a church in great part modelled under Byzantine influences.
A still more notable exception is the vast Cathedral of Tournai
with its Romanesque Nave. It has the very large Triforium of the
Norman-Romanesque churches; and above it, again, there is a little
gallery.
The same absence of the Triforium feature is observable in Italy,
save where the building was erected under Byzantine or Eastern
influences--as S. Mark’s, Venice, which is to some extent a copy of S.
Vitale at Ravenna. S. Vitale largely followed the plan of SS. Sergius
and Bacchus built at Constantinople by Justinian before the erection of
S. Sophia. There is another striking tradition connected with S. Mark’s
at Venice, which relates how this magnificent church was a copy of the
Emperor Justinian’s vanished Church of the Holy Apostles, which was
designed to act as the Mausoleum of the Byzantine Emperors.
This Constantinopolitan Basilica of “the Apostles” certainly contained
great galleries for women worshippers, probably similar to those still
existing in S. Sophia.
* * * * *
[Illustration: The Triforium of Gloucester Cathedral, looking into the
Choir. XI, XII, XIV Centuries.]
But among the important Western churches, strangely enough, when we
come to the Anglo-Norman Romanesque abbeys and cathedrals of the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Triforium gallery, so exclusively
an Eastern feature, reappears; indeed a great Triforium is positively
a characteristic feature in Norman-Romanesque work in England--the
Cathedrals of Ely, Peterborough, Norwich, Southwell, Winchester,
Durham, and the Triforium of the famous Choir of Gloucester, may be
cited as conspicuous examples.
It is hard to explain this striking reappearance of a great Triforium
gallery. It is absolutely, as far as we can see, of no possible use,
for, different to the East, as we have observed, in the West the
sexes are not separated in divine worship; and a gallery for women,
therefore, was never required.
What was in the mind here of the great Anglo-Norman builders of the
eleventh and twelfth centuries when they arranged a Triforium gallery
in their churches is really unknown to us. Was is simply a graceful
and striking ornamental architectural device, to enhance the beauty of
the interior of these great churches? This it undoubtedly does. Was it
any way connected with the visits of pilgrims, so notable a practice
in these centuries? Was it in some way intended to multiply the
interest of their visit, by providing them with a larger and far more
extended procession round and about the church? Something of this kind
possibly may account for the strange reappearance of a great Triforium
gallery in buildings, for the most part resorted to by great crowds of
pilgrims, when the original purpose of a Triforium no longer existed.
That the growing passion for pilgrimage was considered in the planning
of these vast Anglo-Norman abbeys and minsters is indisputable, for
we find in the design of important abbeys such as Gloucester a large
ambulatory or processional aisle, introduced as a prominent feature
in these great churches. Such an aisle was doubtless designed for
the convenience of pilgrims who frequently thronged these piles.
The Triforium gallery possibly, then, was introduced in view of
these crowds of pilgrims. We cannot, however, at all pronounce for
a certainty that this was the main reason for its introduction in
the North and West--quite an unaccustomed feature, but which at once
strikes the eye in the Anglo-Norman minsters.
It is an unexplained difficulty, and must be left with these
interesting but scarcely satisfactory suggestions.
* * * * *
To sum up: When the great Triforium of an Anglo-Norman cathedral
is wondered at, and the question is asked, When was this striking
portion of the church first designed, and what was the original purpose
which it was intended to serve; and to what uses was it ever put? the
inquirer must be told at once to carry his thoughts back to the age
of the Emperor Justinian, perhaps somewhat earlier, when the great
churches of Constantinople and Salonica were planned and built, when
in the planning of these churches a great gallery was designed for the
_exclusive use_ of the women worshippers. It was in such a gallery, at
S. Sophia, where the Empress Theodora sat and listened when Chrysostom
preached, and denounced with his fiery eloquence the vices of the court
and society of his age.
This was undoubtedly the origin of the Triforium in Eastern churches
which now excites the wonder of the inquirer as to what purpose it
was designed and used for. Then the inquirer must be reminded that in
the West and North--in Gaul and Italy, indeed throughout the Latin
Church--where, different to the Eastern Church, no separation of the
sexes was contemplated--no Triforium gallery was, as a rule, planned.
It is true that in the important Anglo-Norman cathedrals and abbeys
this ancient oriental feature again made its appearance.
But for what special purpose that great school of Norman-Romanesque
builders again brought back this striking feature when they planned
their mighty piles, will probably for ever remain an undiscovered
secret.
* * * * *
On the unexplained secret of the reappearance of the Triforium gallery
in certain of the great mediæval churches of the West, notably in the
Anglo-Norman Romanesque piles of the eleventh and twelfth centuries--a
very remarkable suggestion appears in Mr. Edward Hutton’s eloquent work
on Ravenna.
He is describing the great Romanesque Basilica of S. Apollinare Nuovo,
the work of Theodoric, the Ostro-Gothic king.
The Mosaics, probably in large part the work of the artists of
Justinian, are of an extraordinary and exceptional beauty. They
represent upon both sides, through the whole length of the nave, as
it were, two long processions of saints--on the one side a procession
of Martyrs--some twenty-five figures (men), SS. Clement, Sixtus,
Laurence, Cyprian, etc.; on the other side a procession of Virgin
Martyrs--Pelagia, Agatha, Eulalia, Cecilia, etc., some twenty-one
figures. Mr. Edward Hutton writes here “that there is nothing in
Christendom to compare with these Mosaics; they are unique, and, as I
like to think, in their wonderful significance are the key to a mystery
which has for long remained unsolved.
“For these long processions of saints, representing that great crowd of
witnesses, of which S. Paul speaks, stand there above the arcade and
under the clerestory where in a Gothic church the triforium is set. But
the triforium is the one inexplicable and seemingly useless feature of
a Gothic building. It seems to us, in our ignorance of the mind of the
Middle Age, of what it took for granted, to be there simply for the
sake of beauty, to have no use at all.
“But what if this church in Ravenna, the work indeed of a very
different school and time, but springing out of the same spiritual
tradition, should hold the key?
“What if the triforium of a Gothic church should have been built as it
were for a great crowd of witnesses--the invisible witnesses of the
Everlasting Sacrifice, the Sacrifice of Calvary, the Sacrifice of the
Mass?
“It is not only in the presence of the living, devout or half
indifferent, that that great Sacrifice is offered through the
world, yesterday, to-day and for ever, but be sure in the midst of
the chivalry of heaven, a multitude that no man can number, none the
less real because invisible, among whom one day we too are to be
numbered--not for the living only, but for the whole Church men offer
that Sacrifice, _pro redemptione animarum suarum, pro spe salutis et
incolumitatis suæ--Memento etiam Domine, famulorum famularumque tuarum
qui nos præcesserunt cum signo fidei et dormiunt in somno pacis_....
Here in S. Apollinare, at any rate, for ever they await the renewal of
that moment.
“Those marvellous figures that appear in ghostly procession upon the
walls of S. Apollinare in Ravenna are really indescribable; they
must be seen, if the lovely significance of their beauty is to be
understood. What can one say of them?”
* * * * *
Mr. Hutton alludes to the Triforium of a _Gothic_ church, but this
unexplained and strange feature of the Triforium in the West reappeared
in the great early Anglo-Norman Romanesque piles--in the Choir of
Gloucester and in many others.
The _Gothic_ churches, where such a Triforium exists, have simply
copied their Anglo-Norman predecessors.
The author of this work by no means must be thought to endorse the
above singular explanation of the “secret” of the Triforium which so
strangely reappeared in certain of the churches of the West. But he
judged it fitting to quote here the striking and remarkable words of
the author of _Ravenna_. He cannot, however, recall any quotation from
a mediæval writer in support of the theory in question. It is to him a
perfectly novel thought--a thought at once strange and haunting--and
here as an interesting and novel suggestion he must leave it.
[Illustration: S. APOLLINARE NUOVO, RAVENNA.
Circa A.D. 519.]
THE LADY CHAPEL
The date of the first appearance in the Eastern Church of the mediæval
estimate of the Virgin Mother is uncertain. In the Latin or Western
Church the development of Mariolatry, as it has been termed, was
somewhat slower than in Eastern Christianity, but, as we shall see, it
became eventually even more accentuated in the West than in the East.
All signs of this exalted estimate of the Virgin Mary are notoriously
absent in the New Testament books, and when a new feeling as to the
position of the blessed Virgin appeared in the oldest liturgies of the
Church, it was of a nature widely different from the mediæval estimate
of Mary. To take a well-known example. In the very ancient liturgy of
S. John Chrysostom, still in use in the Eastern Church, the Virgin Mary
is prayed for. In this venerable liturgy we read: “We offer unto Thee
(God the Father) this reasonable service for the faithful dead, our
forefathers, patriarchs, prophets, apostles ... martyrs and confessors,
but especially for our most holy, immaculate and blessed Lady the
Mother of God and ever Virgin, Mary.”
This most ancient liturgy, in the form we now find it, has without
doubt been altered and added to since the days of Chrysostom in the
latter years of the fourth century, but certainly not in the direction
of lowering the position of the Virgin, a position which in the
teaching of the Eastern Church grew more and more definitely exalted
as the ages passed, till such a place of eminence was ascribed to her,
that no loftier one, _outside the blessed Trinity_, is conceivable.
Similar testimony is given in the ancient liturgies of SS. Basil,
Gregory Nazianzus, and Cyril.
Very exalted indeed was the estimation in which the Virgin Mary was
held in the Eastern Church as early as in the first half of the sixth
century, when in the great building age of the Emperor Justinian many
noble churches arose, dedicated to the “Mother of God.” In the seventh
century the Emperor Heraclius blazoned the Virgin Mary on his banner
of war. To the tutelar protection of the Virgin, Constantinople looked
against the Saracens.
In the Western or Latin Church, as we have said, the development of
Mariolatry was somewhat slower, still as early as the time of Gregory
the Great, early in the seventh century, the honour paid to the Virgin
Mother in Christian worship became more and more accentuated.
The state and influence of the blessed dead, at a comparatively early
period, occupied the minds of Christian teachers. Such glorified human
beings after a time began to be looked upon as powerful intercessors
at the Throne of Grace for those still on earth. As S. Bernard of
Clairvaux expresses it, “They who have come out of great tribulation,
shall they not recognise those who still continue in it?”
Gradually the numbers of these glorified Saints became multiplied and
even well-nigh deified. These blessed ones having been human, were
conceived as still endowed with human sympathies, and were looked upon
as more accessible to human prayer and supplication than the three
co-eternal Persons of the Trinity in their unapproachable solitude
and awful majesty. In a way, these glorified Saints intercepted the
worship of the ever blessed Trinity, and to them, rather than _through_
them, in time prayer was addressed.
High above this host of Saints was seated the Queen of Heaven, for to
this strange position, dating certainly from the days of Gregory the
Great in the West, the Virgin was gradually raised.
Still it was not until the eve of the wonderful awakening of Church
life in the West, toward the close of the eleventh century, that the
cult of the Virgin attained the strange prominence which it maintained
all through the later Middle Ages. Very lofty indeed was the place
ascribed to the Virgin Mother, but something yet was needed, however,
in the form of a great popular movement to introduce into the every-day
life of the people this strange cult which so powerfully influenced the
Christianity of the Middle Ages.
This great impulse was given by the Crusades, those marvellous
religious wars which took so mighty a hold of the popular imagination
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It came about in this fashion.
Chivalry, at least the religious aspect which chivalry assumed in all
its acts, language and ceremonies, may be said to have been the result
of the Crusades, for before the Crusades, chivalry, if it existed at
all, appears to have had no special reference to religion. But war was
now sanctified by religion, and men were taught that the noblest end to
which they could dedicate their lives was the rescue of the Redeemer’s
sepulchre at Jerusalem from the hands of the infidel conquerors, the
disciples of the false prophet Mahommed.
The inescapable duty of a Christian knight was self-devotion for
others, especially for the defenceless and weak; thus courtesy to and
protection of the weaker sex became the imperative duty, as well as the
privilege of knighthood. “The love of God and the ladies was enjoined
as the paramount duties in the teaching of chivalry. Thus was formed
that strange amalgam of religious and military feeling which was formed
around women in the age of chivalry which was, in fact, the age of the
Crusades, and which no succeeding change of habit or belief has wholly
destroyed.”[21]
“There was one Lady of whom, high above and beyond all, every knight
was the vowed servant, the Virgin Mother of that blessed Saviour,” the
rescue of whose sacred sepulchre was the primary object of the Crusades.
Thus the adoration of the Virgin, long inculcated by theologians,
became popularised among the Crusaders of varied ranks and orders, and
through them, among all Western peoples who, during the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, supplied the vast armies of the Cross; and this
popular devotion to the Virgin continued to grow through the Middle
Ages, till it influenced and coloured Christian worship in all the
countries of Western Christendom.
“And so it came to pass that religious chivalry, that strange outcome
of the Crusades, seemed to array the Christian world as the Church
militant of the Virgin, and it was to her that the knight looked
especially for success in battle. From the soldier to the people was
but a little step, and very soon this sentiment of adoration became
universal. The Redeemer passed gradually into a more remote and
awful Godhead; the Virgin Mary seemed a nearer, a more familiar and
sympathetic object of adoration.”
Soon every cathedral and abbey, every important church had its “Mary”
Chapel. Hymns were written and everywhere sang in her honour. Liturgies
in which her name was the principal feature were introduced. Manuals of
private and of public devotion, in which the name of Mary the Mother of
the Lord was conspicuous above every name, were copied and recopied in
every monastic Scriptorium or Cloister. A new and startling theological
adoration was thus generally added to all popular Christian teaching.
“The incommunicable attributes of the Godhead were even assigned to
Mary. She was positively represented as sitting between the Cherubim
and Seraphim, as commanding by her maternal influence, if not by her
authority, her Eternal Son. The idea of the ‘Queen of Heaven’ became
a familiar one in popular theology.” This new devotion was largely
called into being, as we have shown, by the influence of the Crusades,
and showed the mighty hold it had obtained over the popular mind in
the erection and lavish adornment of those often splendid and costly
shrines known as the Lady Chapels, of which the splendid annexe at
the east end of Gloucester Cathedral is a conspicuous and well-known
example. This Lady Chapel may even be cited as the crowning instance
of this outward and visible sign of the strange novel cult, as we
might venture to term it. The Lady Chapel of Gloucester was one of the
_last_ great examples of these new additions to the great churches of
the mediæval period, for the years which witnessed its completion were
the years which historians consider closed the long and many-coloured
story of the Middle Ages.
* * * * *
We resume our sketch of the progress of the Cult of the Virgin.
In the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Mariolatry
received another vast impulse through the teaching of the great and
popular mendicant orders of S. Francis and S. Dominic. One of the most
interesting chapters in mediæval Church history is filled with the
story of the “coming” of the new orders of mendicant Friars, among
whom the Franciscan and Dominican were by far the most numerous and
influential. Widespread was the influence exercised by these Friars
over the masses of the people.
And in the teaching of both these great communities the Virgin Mary
occupied a peculiar and lofty position. Exalted as was the position
claimed by the Franciscans for Mary; if possible the Dominicans
professed a yet greater devotion to the blessed Virgin, whom the
disciples of Dominic even were pleased to regard as the special
protectress of their famous Order. According to a well-loved tradition
of their schools, it was Mary herself who revealed to S. Dominic that
form of prayer known as the “Rosary” which from the years 1212-1215
became alike among rich and poor the popular badge of Catholic
devotion--“The ‘Rosary,’ that curious and novel form of prayer, with
the refrain ‘Ave Maria’ (Hail, Mary) repeated again and again. A
prayer which has maintained in Roman Catholic countries its wonderful
popularity down to our own days and times, and which perhaps has
done more to perpetuate the popular cult of her whom Roman Catholic
teachers, with an insistence pathetic as it is historically baseless,
love to term the ‘Queen of Heaven’ than all the rhapsodies of mystics,
or learned treatises of doctors or authoritative pronouncements of the
See of Rome.”
But this novel form of Christian dogma, with its ever-multiplying
developments, it must be confessed, excited even in the hearts of some
of the most ardent devotees of the New Cult, now and again qualms
and hesitations--for instance, Bernard of Clairvaux in the middle of
the twelfth century--the glory of the Cistercian Order, one of the
most influential and loved monks that ever lived, whilst professing
the deepest tenderness towards, and affection and admiration for
the Mother of his Lord, wrote in a spirit of indignant remonstrance
against the doctrine of the “Immaculate conception of the Virgin” which
in the twelfth century had already been suggested for acceptation.
“Are we more instructed,” wrote S. Bernard, “or more devout than the
fathers?... It is perilous presumption in us, when their prudence in
such things is exceeded. The Royal Virgin needs no fictitious honours.”
Aquinas, Peter Lombard, Albertus Magnus, Bonaventura, denied this
doctrine, or at least hesitated before adopting it.[22]
* * * * *
The testimony of _Art_ to this strange development in Christian
doctrine is striking and instructive. Art, it must be remembered, is
ever the expression of popular opinion. Outside the Catacomb pictures
which here are indeed few in number and very simple, and give no
support whatever to the lofty mediæval conceptions of Mary;[23] the
earliest representations of the Virgin are found in ancient Christian
sarcophaguses; there the Virgin, when she is represented at all,
occupies a place less prominent than that given to the Apostles. A
conspicuous position is only accorded to her in the Western Church,
towards the eighth and ninth centuries, when the Crucifixion began to
be a popular subject in the design of ornamentation. The Virgin is
depicted in these scenes at the foot of the Cross on the right side, S.
John occupying a similar place on the left.