presentment of the Virgin. Dating from about the year 1140, Mary
becomes a prominent figure in sculpture and in painted glass; she now
appears commonly seated on a throne and wearing a crown, but ever
holding on her knees the infant Saviour. In her right hand she often
holds a sceptre. An aureole of glory surrounds her head and the head of
the Child Christ. No doubt this new fashion of representing Mary was
borrowed from the Greek and Byzantine pictures and sculptures, of which
a large number were brought from the East by returning Crusaders. Still
in these early representations, the Child Christ remains the principal
figure, and He is depicted on His mother’s knees in the attitude of
blessing with an outstretched little hand.
But a change even here is soon observable. In the thirteenth century,
save in a scene picturing the adoration of the Magi, the Virgin is
rarely depicted in a sitting posture with the Child Christ in her
arms. She now generally appears standing, crowned and triumphant; if
she holds the Child in her arms, it is simply to mark the source and
origin of the power and authority which she is evidently portrayed as
exercising. But emphatically in these thirteenth century and later
statues and glass pictures, she is the central figure, and to her,
not to the Divine Child, is adoration unmistakably offered and prayer
addressed. Very different indeed from the humble and grief-stricken
Mary of the seventh and eighth centuries kneeling with S. John at the
foot of the Cross, is the crowned and sceptred Queen of the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries; her head encircled with an aureole of glory,
accepting the devout homage of Christian worshippers, and listening to
their supplications addressed to her.
It is thus during the thirteenth and two following centuries, she
appears in unnumbered instances, alike in jewelled window as on the
carved porch of the house of God, unmistakably, as the popular hymns
and liturgies were everywhere teaching, “the Queen of Heaven.”
[Illustration: Annexe to Gloucester Cathedral--The Lady Chapel, XV
Century--showing the little South Transept and the square east end.]
_An Appendix on two remarkable Architectural Features in the Lady
Chapel of Gloucester._
In the Lady Chapel of Gloucester there are two remarkable features
which have, I believe, generally escaped attention. The stranger
standing on the grass lawn which forms the outside pavement of the
cathedral, perhaps notices that the east end of the great Lady Chapel
is _square_--rectangular; and looking down the pile perceives two small
transepts; then as the eye travels down the great building beyond the
Lady Chapel, it is again arrested by two more transepts of far greater
size.
There is a special interest in these peculiar features, especially
in the _square_ east end; they have a story of their own. The great
majority of the great English churches, it is well known, are not
apsidal, or circular at the east end, but _square_, and it would seem
that some very ancient tradition must be at the root of that striking
English feature. Now we have good reason to believe that the majority
of ancient British churches were so constructed. In Ireland a few
very ancient little churches or oratories are still with us; some of
these without doubt date from the fifth century, that is, from the
days when Ireland was first Christianised from Britain; they therefore
undoubtedly represent the type of church architecture common in Britain
before the coming and subsequent havoc of the North-folk invaders, in
the fifth and sixth centuries--the Saxon, the Engle and the Jute.
Without exception these very early little Irish churches, or oratories,
are _square-ended_, not apsidal or semi-circular ended. They evidently
represent an independent Christian tradition, something quite
different to the Basilican, especially Italian tradition of an apsidal
or semi-circular end. The conclusion then forced upon us is that
Christianity came originally to this Island from another centre than
Rome or Italy.
This square-ended form for churches, impressed upon Britain by
unknown missionaries, is of immemorial antiquity. The teaching has
never been forgotten, but has, through all the changing fortunes of
the Church in our Island, remained the English favourite form. We will
briefly trace its remarkable story.
The first period of the existence of the Church in Britain may be dated
roughly from some time in the second century, and may be said to have
lasted until the coming of the North-folk in the middle of the fifth
century. (The exact date of the first preaching of Christianity in
Britain is unknown.) Ireland received the faith from Britain somewhere
about A.D. 397, and judging from the invariable square east end form of
the early Irish churches, and oratories, we may assume that the British
churches (these have all[24] disappeared owing to the sweeping havoc of
the Northmen invaders), like their daughter Irish churches, must have
been, as a rule, square-ended.
There were, however, it is certain, some rare exceptions to this rule,
for when Christianity after A.D. 313 became the recognised religion
of the Empire, in some centres in Britain the churches of the Roman
colonists and officials were built on the Basilican mode of the great
capital of the Roman world, with apsidal or semi-circular sanctuaries.
An example of such an exception has been lately discovered in the
purely Roman city of Silchester (near Reading), built in the fourth
century especially for Roman provincials and officials. The little
Silchester church, as might have been expected, has an apsidal or
semi-circular end.
The second period of the Church in Britain may be dated from the
arrival of Augustine from Italy, A.D. 597, and may be roughly reckoned
as lasting until the coming of the Normans in A.D. 1066. Augustine and
his companion missionaries, as may have been expected, introduced the
Italian or Basilican type, but gradually we find the square end, as the
Saxon period wore on, again forcing its way into general use, the old
traditional type of church building somehow being deeply rooted in the
hearts of the dwellers in our Island.
The Norman conquest once more, after A.D. 1066, gave an artificial and
temporary victory to the Italian (Basilican) or apsidal-ended churches.
Westminster Abbey, which was a purely Norman church, built under Edward
the Confessor’s auspices--Gloucester, and other well-known famous
abbeys, were constructed with apsidal and semi-circular east ends.
But strangely enough, in spite of the all-powerful Norman influence,
nothing could eradicate the old taste for the primitive British type
of church, and when once the conquerors and the conquered began to be
welded into one people, the square end once more gradually superseded
its Roman apsidal rival. By the thirteenth century the victory of the
old square-ended type was pretty well complete, and it became par
excellence the special English form.
The well-known example of the “restored” Westminster Abbey, which with
its apse and striking chevet of chapels at the east end, and which
might justly be cited as an important contrary instance, is really
exceptional, that glorious abbey owing its Roman and Continental
form to the special circumstances under which it was restored and
rebuilt. The foreign influences to which Henry III, who mainly carried
out the new Westminster work was subjected, are purely responsible
here. Durham, on the other hand, where English influences were at
work, actually saw its Norman apse destroyed, A.D. 1236-1241, and the
beautiful creation known as the Nine Altars commenced. This Chapel of
the Nine Altars at the east end of Durham may be cited as the noblest
instance existing of a square-ended termination of a great English
abbey. A somewhat similar transformation was also effected in the
famous Priory Church of Lindisfarne, with its undying memories, hard by
Durham.
Among the great churches of England, either through original
construction, or through partial transformation or subsequent
additions, the following will be found to possess the square, or
rectangular east end, that peculiar form derived from the ancient
British type, adopted in the Island _before_ the coming of the
North-folk: York, Exeter, Worcester, Salisbury, Christ Church (Oxford),
Winchester, Hereford, Rochester, Lincoln, Ely, Chichester, Chester,
Carlisle, Bangor; and Old Sarum may be added to the list.
But, on the other hand, very few traces of this peculiarly English
(British) form, with its striking and interesting tradition handed down
from an immemorial antiquity, and bearing its voiceless testimony to
some original centre of Christianity, other than Rome or Italy, are
found in the great continental churches.
In the vast and populous province of the old Empire known as Gaul,
which includes modern France, the Low Countries, etc., among its
numerous splendid cathedrals and abbatial churches, only one can be
cited with a square-ended east end--the cathedral of Laon. To Laon
may be added the important church of Dol. Square-ended churches,
comparatively small and unimportant, are, however, not unfrequent in
the little country towns of the north of France and in the Burgundian
country. Are not these latter exceptions probably referable to an
undying memory of the influence of Columba, the great Irish (Celtic)
missionary, and his school?
The magnificent and stately mediæval cathedrals on the Continent of
Europe, different from their sister churches in England, are, as a
rule, characterised by the feature of a great apse, semi-circular or
polygonal, with a chevet of chapels.
In England, Gloucester Cathedral is one of the notable exceptions, in
this striking particular, to the general English type of square-ended
churches, with its eastern apse almost semi-circular, and its chevet of
chapels, of which there are three distinct storeys, one over the other,
containing in all nine chapels.
But in the year 1457, when Abbot Hanley was ruling in the important
Benedictine House of Gloucester, it was determined that a new and
superb Lady Chapel should be built as an “annexe” to the stately
abbey of Serlo and Aldred. But in the beautiful design for this new
and exquisite eastern annexe, the Benedictine architect determined to
give to his historic abbey that peculiar English feature which it had
hitherto lacked, viz. a square or rectangular termination.
Hence it came about, that in its last architectural transformation,
Gloucester has become square-ended, thus preserving in the mighty abbey
of the Severn Lands, the immemorial tradition of the square end, handed
down from the third century, and brought originally to this Island by
early Christian teachers from the East, _not_ from Italy and Rome.
Nor was the master-architect who designed the present Lady Chapel of
Gloucester content with only expressing this peculiar and most ancient
British type of church architecture upon his loved abbey. Hitherto S.
Peter’s Abbey had possessed but _one_ pair of transepts. The secondary
or eastern transepts were another feature peculiarly English. They are
found in the great piles of Canterbury, Lincoln, Salisbury, Beverley
and York, but _not_ in the great Houses of Prayer in France (Gaul).
One solitary Gallic instance can be cited in the vast abbey of Cluny
in Burgundy, now, alas, razed to the ground; Cluny, strangely enough,
possessed the English feature of the double transepts.
The architect of the new chapel of “our Lady” at Gloucester determined
that his abbey should henceforth boast too of this peculiar English
feature, and so wove into his beautiful design those two singular and
striking projections, usually described simply as Chauntry Chapels,
surmounted by minstrel galleries, but which are really _two little
transepts_.
A glance at the ground-plan of Gloucester Cathedral, as it now stands,
will show the accuracy of this apparently novel, and perhaps to some
students, startling deduction. So Gloucester, in its last and final
transformation in the fifteenth century, became possessed of _both_ the
special English architectural features--the square end, and the double
eastern transepts.
_The Churches or Oratories of “S. Gwithian” and “Perranzabuloe” on the
north coast of Cornwall._
Since writing the above little historical sketch of the utter
destruction of the ancient churches of Britain in the sixth century
by the North-folk--the Jute, the Saxon and the Engle--worshippers of
Odin and Thor--Mr. Lach Szyrma, the well-known Cornish scholar, has
called my attention to the curious but little-known remains of two most
ancient churches, or oratories, on the north coast of Cornwall, S.
Gwithian and Perranzabuloe; both dating from _circa_ A.D. 450. One of
them, “S. Gwithian,” perhaps slightly earlier.
In each of these, the _Sanctuary has a square ending_. These little
churches without doubt were the work of the old British community--and
apparently are the _only_ survivors of the British churches swept away
by the North-folk invaders.
Of these two churches or oratories, S. Gwithian was erected in a very
exposed situation, and the sand from the sea-shore is blown upon the
site in clouds; as much as a depth of five feet of sand will come up in
one night. It was covered up in this way at a very remote date.
This “lost” church was dug out of the sand, _circa_ A.D. 1830-1835.
Since then it has several times been partially uncovered, but it
has gradually been completely filled up again with sand. It is now
completely buried in the sand, and only a few stones of the west wall
are visible above ground.
The length of the Church of S. Gwithian is _circa_ fifty feet, and the
breadth _circa_ twenty feet. The walls are dry-built.
The building is _rectangular_ (square-ended), with a door on the south
side away from the sea.
* * * * *
[Illustration: Church of S. Gwythian, Cornwall--VI Century--as it
appeared in A.D. 1894, before it was again covered with sand.]
The church or oratory of Perranzabuloe (S. Peran in Sabulo; S. Peran
in the Sand) was only discovered _circa_ A.D. 1880. Its previous
existence was suspected owing to a very faint local tradition, when it
suddenly partly reappeared in consequence of a storm uncovering a small
portion of it, the sand mound which completely covered it being partly
swept away.
It had been buried in the sand at an unknown, but very early date,
yet the tradition of its existence lingered on through the centuries.
This church or oratory of Perranzabuloe is smaller than the church
of S. Gwithian above described. It is only about twenty-five feet
long by twelve and a half feet broad. The chancel at the east is
_square-ended_. The little building forms a perfect double square.
It is now accessible--and quite recent care has entirely covered the
ancient edifice with an enclosing building, leaving a passage all
round, between the old walls and the new wall which encircles it. The
present Vicar says: “It is a rather ugly arrangement, but it is the
best that could be done with the funds collected for the conservation
of the precious relic. At any rate,” its guardian says, “the old church
is now protected from wind and weather.”
This most ancient church is built of unhewn stones without mortar.
Attached to the east wall is a stone altar five feet three inches long
by two feet three inches wide. About eight inches above the altar is
a niche some twelve inches high by eight inches wide, in which most
probably was once placed the shrine of S. Peran.
The church or oratory of Perranzabuloe is in the midst of a stretch of
sand-dunes reaching from Perranporth to Newquay, on the north coast
of Cornwall, eight miles from Newquay, one and a half miles from
Perranporth.
The strange reappearance of these two most ancient British churches,
dating certainly from before the sixth century, apparently the solitary
survivors of the destroyed churches of the old inhabitants of Britain
_before_ the coming of the North-folk, bear out the theory above
advanced, that the British churches or oratories erected before the
disastrous conquest of the North-folk, like the Irish churches or
oratories which faithfully reproduced their peculiar architectural
features, were all square-ended churches.
THE CRYPT
_Of the principal terms used in this study on the Crypt._
_Crypt_ is derived from the Greek κρύπτειν to hide, to conceal.
_Confessio_--The Confession. The burial chamber or vault where lay the
remains of one who had “confessed” and borne witness to his Faith by
his blood. The “Confessio” is sometimes termed “Martyrium.” Sometimes
the word is used for the chamber immediately contiguous to the actual
vault of the tomb beneath it, as is the case in the Crypt of S. Peter
at Rome.
_Memoria._--The chamber or chapel erected over the “Confessio” or
burial place of the Martyrs--originally used for the gathering place
of the Faithful, pilgrims or others who came to visit and pray over
the grave of the Saint buried beneath. The first “Memoria” that we
are acquainted with was erected over the vault which held the body of
St. Peter. This “Memoria” was built by Anacletus,[25] the successor
of Linus; Anacletus is generally reckoned as third Bishop of Rome. It
served as a church for the faithful, in which the Eucharist could be
celebrated, and a small congregation gathered together. This Memoria
of Anacletus was erected shortly after A.D. 70. It is mentioned in
the _Liber Pontificalis_ under the record of Pope Anacletus in the
following words: “Memoriam beati Petri construit et composuit.”
The “Memoria” of Anacletus was no doubt referred to by the Presbyter
Caius in A.D. 210, who calls it the “Tropæum”--the visible monument
of the Apostle S. Peter. Tertullian also, as early as the end of the
second century, refers to it as an object of pilgrimage from all parts
of the world.
_Cubiculum._--This was a little burial chamber leading out of the
galleries of the Roman Catacombs. These “Cubicula” were hewn out of the
rock, generally at right angles to the gallery in which were cut the
countless niches each holding one or more corpses.
The “Cubiculum” was intended for the more conspicuous persons in the
Church, and especially for those who had through martyrdom, or through
any very distinguished work for the Church, merited this special
distinction after death; not a few of these “Cubicula” were occupied by
the bodies of the men and women who had witnessed a good confession by
shedding their blood for Christ’s sake. Many of these little chapels
which held the remains of such illustrious dead, became, as time went
on, places highly venerated by the congregation.
_Catacombs._--The modern name of “Catacombs,” now universally applied
to ancient underground Crypts where the dead were interred in the early
days of Christianity, and especially used for that vast network of
subterranean corridors filled by the Christian dead beneath the suburbs
of old Rome, was totally unknown to the original Christian communities
who hewed out of the solid rock this mighty cemetery of the Roman dead.
The term “Catacomb” is derived from the Greek words κατά κύμβη, the
latter word signifying “hollow” or valley.
The district on the Appian Way where the little basilica of S.
Sebastian now stands, was especially known as “ad catacumbas” or “the
Hollows.”
In the earlier part of the ninth century, the bodies of the more
prominent Saints and Martyrs were removed for security’s sake from
their original resting-places outside the walls of the city, to the
safer custody of the Roman churches within the city, and the once
famous subterranean cemeteries in the suburbs gradually ceased to be
objects of pilgrimage.
But the _one_ suburban cemetery of S. Sebastian, owing to the tradition
that the bodies of SS. Peter and Paul had reposed in the Crypt beneath
S. Sebastian for some years when persecution had rendered their
original resting-places insecure, ever remained an object of devout
pilgrimage.
This Crypt was known as “Cemeterium ad Catacumbas,” and on the
re-discovery of the great underground City of the Dead at Rome, late
in the sixteenth century, the popular name “ad Catacumbas” came to be
applied to all subterranean cemeteries, and especially to the great
cemeteries beneath the Roman suburbs.
But it must be borne in mind that, after all, this _universally_ used
appellation, when given to the subterranean cemeteries in general,
is a curious misnomer, and was unknown, in its present universal
signification, in ancient times.
* * * * *
Now it may be positively assumed that all Crypts are generally a memory
of, are reminiscent of the sacred and venerated burying-places of the
Martyrs and Saints of the age of persecution, notably of the Crypt of
S. Peter.
Thanks to the industry of a few modern scholars, the details of S.
Peter’s tomb on the Vatican Hill are fairly well known. The sacred
remains of the great Apostle and Martyr, ever venerated as the founder
of the Roman congregation, were originally laid in a little vault or
crypt on the Vatican Hill hard by the place of his martyrdom.
From the first, this spot was visited by pilgrims from many lands, an
ever-increasing number, but the place of interment was very small and
difficult of access. So Anacletus, traditionally the third Bishop of
the Church of Rome, in order to accommodate these numerous visitors
to the tomb, built directly over the vault where the Apostle’s body
rested, the little chapel known in history as the “Memoria” of
Anacletus.
Over this humble Chapel or “Memoria,” the first Christian Emperor
Constantine erected the lordly basilica generally known in history as
“Old S. Peter’s.” In the same age, or a very little later, various
other basilicas or churches were built directly over the “Cubicula”
or burial chambers leading out of the Catacomb galleries, where lay
the remains of the more prominent Saints and Martyrs interred in the
Catacombs of Rome.
In those far-back days, the grave of a Martyr was ever regarded with
the deepest reverence, and was constantly visited by pilgrim visitors.
No more appropriate spot, it was considered, could be chosen for
the celebration of divine service than the chamber which held the
Martyr’s grave; but these graves were sunk deep in the ground, and
the “Cubicula” of the Catacombs were utterly incapable of containing
the officiating clergy and the crowd of the faithful who would wish
to worship in these hallowed spots. It was generally considered in
the early Church that the remains of the Martyrs and Saints ought not
to be removed, for such a removal would be deemed an impious act;
never--so taught the teachers of the first age--must the sainted relics
of the dead Confessors be translated or disturbed.
To overcome this difficulty, the rock over and round the grave must
be cut away, and room must thus be gained as was sufficient for the
erection of a basilica or church, large or small, directly over the
Crypt or Cubiculum, which contained the Martyr’s tomb. The damage done
to such catacombs, thus cut away by the builders of these basilicas,
was incalculable; thousands of early Christian graves must have been
sacrificed for the preservation of the one grave specially selected for
peculiar honour.
This, Lanciani tells us, is the origin of the greatest Sanctuaries of
Christian Rome; such as the Churches of S. Paul on the Via Ostiensis,
S. Sebastian on the Via Appia, S. Petronilla on the Via Ardeatina, S.
Agnes on the Via Nomentana, S. Lorenzo on the Via Tiburtina; these and
other sacred historical structures owe their existence to the martyr’s
grave over which these churches were built, a grave which no human hand
was allowed to touch or to transfer to another and more convenient
place.
* * * * *