Part 19

Where there was a parish service in the nave of a conventual church, the nave was more or less completely shut off from the choir. The parish altar then would stand, as first mentioned in the case of Bolton, against the east wall of the nave, and consequently there would be a parish rood-screen and rood-loft still farther down the nave, so as to cut off a chancel, so to speak, for the parish service. At _Freiston Priory_ (although this eastern separating wall of the nave is modern, the choir having perished), the altar is approximately in the position of the people’s altar, and the staircase to the rood-loft, and the traces of the rood-screen (which exists in a neighbouring parish church—that of _Fishtoft_), show that three bays of the nave were cut off by it. Almost exactly the same arrangement exists at Dunster, where the choir was ordered, in 1499, to be used exclusively by the monks, and the nave to be appropriated to the parishioners. A coëval rood-screen extends across the nave, cutting off two eastern bays, with a rood-stair in the south aisle, showing its present position to be the original one.

At Edington Priory Church, Wiltshire, a new altar has been erected in the position of the original parish one against the screen. At Westminster Abbey the choir runs far into the nave (cutting off the five eastern bays), and is separated from it by a high and deep screen of which the inner stonework dates from the thirteenth century, but the fronting is modern. One bay west was the rood-screen; below it, on the floor of the nave, was the Jesus altar, at which mass was said in presence of the people. Above, in the rood-loft, was a second Jesus altar, from which, on certain days, the Epistles and Gospels were read.

Also, as everywhere in churches before the Reformation, there were altars in connection with the rood-screens and rood-lofts. For instance, in 1400, Lady Johanna, late wife of Sir Donald de Hesilrigg, bequeaths “To the convent of the house of Gysburgh, in Clyveland, one vestment of camaca to serve in the pulpit there, and one chalice of silver gilt.” At _Grantham_ Parish Church, where there was a stone rood-screen, we know, from a mention in the Patent Rolls, that there was an altar in the rood-loft. In York Minster there was an altar in the loft before the image of the Saviour, on the south side of the church, for two chaplains, founded in 1475-6 by Richard Andrew, Dean of York.[101] In the same place an inventory is given, of the date 1543, of the belongings of the “altar of the name of Jhesu in the rudde loft.”

At Norwich Cathedral the pulpitum still exists as the organ loft (with a staircase north and south from central passage to loft), between the twelfth piers of the nave (from the west end), the space between these and the eleventh is taken up by the Chapel of Our Lady of Pity—the ante-choir. Between the eleventh piers is Bishop Le Hart’s screen, with central door and an altar on either side, that on the north dedicated to St. William, that on the south to St. Mary. Further west, between the tenth piers, was probably a wooden screen, and either on this or above Bishop Le Hart’s screen the rood would be placed.

An early screen at St. Albans, built by Abbot Richard, 1097-1119, is described as a wall of stone finished with a wooden capping, the altar being raised in the centre towards the nave. The present screen, called St. Cuthbert’s, cuts off three bays of the nave westwards of the lantern. In the centre is the altar of the Holy Cross, with a door on each side opening into the choir eastwards. If the rood-beam and figures were not supported by the screen, they must have been probably westwards of it (_eastwards_ in Murray’s _Cathedrals_), and supported by their own screen perhaps.

The only instance in _Lincolnshire_ of a screen of the kind just described exists in _Crowland Abbey_. Here the north aisle of the nave seems to have been used for the parish church (as it is now) from early times, but the arrangement in the nave is the same as that mentioned above, though I know of no remains of any eastern screen having been discovered. The splendid western Norman arch of the central tower is screened across below by a solid wall, pierced by two side doors, and on the west side there is a space betwixt them for the altar. Also, on this side, there is a band of panelling of sunk quatrefoils, extending right across the screen a little above the doors (a wooden reredos and panelling probably filling up the plain portions of this wall); while the eastern face of the screen is ornamented with a panelled band of quatrefoils alternating with shields, and the rest of the surface is covered with panelled tracery of Perpendicular date. The doorways on this side are four-centred, with square-headed mouldings above, the spandrils being filled in with foliage. This screen most likely was built by William de _Croyland_, who was master of the works from 1392 to 1417. In 1539, probably the whole arch was built up solid, with a square-headed two-light window in the middle, so as to allow the nave to be used as the parish church when the choir and the rest of the abbey was pulled down. The roof of the nave fell in about 1688, after which the north aisle would again be used as the parish church. It is interesting to recall the fact that at Leominster a new north aisle was built to serve as the parish church, and so also at Blyth.

This central position of the altar, with a doorway on either side, was a general arrangement in the Jubés of Germany, of which Pugin’s plates of those in Münster Cathedral, the Domkirche and the Hospital, Lübeck, the Dom at Hildersheim, and that at Gelnhausen may serve as specimens. G. E. Street gave a sketch of a choir-screen with central altar on its western front, and a door in either side, at Zamora Cathedral (_Gothic Architecture in Spain_, p. 92). And a rood-screen at Wechelburg, Saxony, with crucifix, SS. Mary and John, central western altar, and side doors, is figured in Fergusson’s _Handbook of Architecture_, vol. ii. p. 583.

In all Norman cathedrals, probably, the choir extended westwards across the transepts into the structural nave. Consequently in any later erection of screens to mark the entrance into the choir, this ancient line of demarcation would be followed. The late Professor Willis remarks of the screen already alluded to at Canterbury, as described by Gervase, “that it may have remained, though in an altered form, to the Reformation. One of Winchelsey’s statutes (dated 1298) expressly commands that the two small doors under the great loft between the body of the church and the choir, which are near the altar under the Great Cross, shall remain.” Thus also at Chichester, Bishop Arundel’s Oratory (which was pulled down in 1859) stood across the western arch of the central tower. At Winchester, the rood-screen was in the second bay of the nave. At St. Albans, St. Cuthbert’s altar-screen is three bays down the nave, and at Norwich Bishop Le Hart’s screen (when complete with a vaulted extension westwards, and a screen still farther, whereon the rood-beam would be placed) takes in three bays of the nave. At Westminster four bays, at Gloucester one bay, were included in the choir: at Peterborough the organ-screen enclosed the first bay of the nave, and there was a second screen as at Norwich, one bay farther west. The choir of the monks at Ely extended westwards beyond the central tower, and after that had fallen, beyond the octagon to the second pier of the nave. At Furness Abbey the pulpitum doubtless occupied a bay between the third pair of piers in the nave. At _Crowland_, as has been stated above, the existing stone screen is across the western side of the lantern. All these, except Chichester, belonged to the Benedictine Order. At Kirkstall Abbey, a Cistercian house, the plan, as it existed in the twelfth century, shows the extension of the choir into two bays of the nave, and at Roche Abbey, also Cistercian, there are traces of the rood-screen, three bays down the nave (with central door and two side altars), no other screen being found save a wooden one in the same line across the north aisle.

In several of the cathedrals on the “old foundation” there is only one screen which—as abroad—has served for rood-screens, the rood either being on or above it. _Lincoln_, York, Ripon, Wells, and Southwell are all furnished with screens of this kind, which have no trace of altars on their western front. I am rather doubtful whether there may not have been altars on each side of the western doorway of the screen at Southwell.

At _Lincoln_ the solid stone screen stretches across the entrance to the choir between the eastern piers of the central crossing, being thus in length about 42 feet and in depth from east to west about 12 feet 6 inches. Its height from the floor of the nave to the top of the parapet is 17 feet. The western front of the screen consists of a central canopied archway having four recessed tabernacles with rich ogee canopied arches, grained continuously on each side, separated by detached buttressed piers. The wall behind is covered with diaper work, and subdivided by a shelf enriched with leafage below. There are still remains of colour and gilding. Three steps lead up to the doorway, from which a passage, with flat ceiling and skeleton vaulting (reminding one of similar work in the screen at Southwell) gives entrance into the choir. On the left, _i.e._ on the north side of this passage, opening by double doors, which have some excellent examples of original ironwork upon them, is a broad staircase leading to the loft above. Just at the entrance to the staircase is the door, on the west side, of a dark recess with an aumbry. The staircase has also a flat ceiling and skeleton rib-vaulting, and has, on emerging above, a corbel table charmingly carved with rich foliage, forming a kind of edge to the hatchway, on three sides. On the south, or right-hand side, of the central passage is a small room, with solid vaulting, lighted by a square window looking into the south choir aisle, guarded by the original iron bars.

On the south side also of the screen, there is a second stair leading to the loft, formed in the thickness of the screen wall of the first bay of the south choir aisle, lighted by a pierced quatrefoil, and approached by a small ogee-headed archway, to be reached by a short step-ladder. This, it has been stated, was for the use of the custodian of the choir, and from its smallness could never have been used by priests arrayed in canonicals. The eastern side of the screen is formed by the return stalls, and over the entrance there is a projection of half polygonal shape, and of much the same date as the choir-stalls themselves. It is noteworthy that the eastern doorway in the stone screen has a deep moulding running round the arch, with traces of colour as a finishing touch, evidently intended to be seen, before the woodwork of the stalls was placed in front of it. I may here mention that the date of the stone screen has been generally considered to be about 1320, and that of John of Welbourn’s choir-stalls about 1380. This projection is coved, and some of the ribs run down to the doorway, but it is curiously and mainly supported by horizontal beams running westward from the projection for half their length over the floor of the loft, and being bolted through that floor at their western ends. Four uprights pass downwards from the floor of the projection, two of them to the floor of the choir, which two are stopped by responds at each side of the stone archway. On reaching the loft, there is a broad seat of stone extending the whole length of the loft on the western side, above that a broad band of elegant diaper-work, surmounted by a parapet pierced with trefoils alternately erect and inverted, and finished with a battlemented cresting.

The eastern face of the screen is guarded by a coped wall of about the same height as that just mentioned, _i.e._ about 4 feet. In the middle, for about 8 feet, this wall is cut away down to the level of the floor of the projection over the eastern doorway, in order to give access to that floor. As already mentioned, the joists of this floor (the floor-boarding probably only dates from 1826) lead backwards, _i.e._ westwards, over a beam laid in the wall north and south, and in their completed state would form a half octagonal platform. On each side of the break in the parapet wall were found, in the course of the alterations in the organ and organ case (in 1897-98), three stone steps. They are broken across, and removed towards the middle of the space, but they have evidently formed part of a half octagon, as the stone floor of the loft within this mark, made by completing the figure, is of a different colour to that outside. These steps, then, have obviously led up to the complete polygon, half within the projection and half westwards of it, over the floor of the loft. These fragmentary steps were noticed to have been much worn with use. The interior of the projection, apparently, is original work, and it is interesting to find in Wild’s plate, published in 1819 before the changes in the organ, that it is boarded round and finished with a plain moulding. J. J. Smith, the late clerk of the works at the Minster, was satisfied that there was a desk running round the inside of this projection.

Canon Christopher Wordsworth, in the Introduction to the second part of the _Lincoln Cathedral Statutes_, says that there was a rood altar (Sanctæ Crucis) under the lantern, either on the screen over the door, or before the entrance of the choir. He also adds, “there was, _circa_ 1520-1536, a ‘Jhesus Mass,’ but whether this involved a special Jesus altar I cannot say.” And again, “Holy Rood or altar of St. Cross, which may have stood on the choir-screen.” An altar with this title appears to have existed in the time of Matthew Paris, _circa_ 1250, as he says that Remigius was buried in front of it; “in prospectu altaris Sanctæ Crucis” are Giraldus Cambrensis’ own words. Therefore, as the Minster was partly used as the Parish Church of St. Mary Magdalene, on whose site it was built, and a presbyter was deputed by the Dean and Chapter to minister sacraments and sacramentals to the parishioners, “in certo loco ipsius ecclesiæ Cathedralis,” till Oliver Sutton erected the church on its present site in Exchequer Gate, it is probable that there was a Jesus altar for parochial purposes and a rood-screen across the western piers of the lantern, or even farther west in the nave. In this connection, the description of the rood-screen at the entrance to the choir given in the _Metrical Life of St. Hugh_, will be of much interest. It was almost certainly written between the years 1220 and 1235:—

“_De crucifixo, et tabulâ aureâ in introitu chori._

Introitumque chori majestas aurea pingit; Et proprie propriâ crucifixus imagine Christi Exprimitur, vitæque suæ progressus ad unguem Insinuatur ibi. Nec solum crux vel imago Immo columnarum sex, lignorumque duorum Ampla superficies, obrizo fulgurat auro.”

On which my friend, the late Precentor Venables, remarked, “The meaning is not free from obscurity, but we see that the rood-screen consisted of six pillars—three, we may suppose, either side the entrance to the choir—supporting two beams, on which stood the crucifix, the whole being gilt.”

This, then, may have been the screen on which the rood stood. Abroad, as can be seen at the present day (_e.g._ at Louvain St. Pierre), it frequently stands upon the screen itself. In other cases it may be supported by a beam above the screen. At Canterbury Cathedral, in Lanfranc’s time, we learn from Gervase that “above the loft, and placed across the church, was the beam which sustained the great cross, two cherubim, and the images of St. Mary and St. John the Apostle.” In later times it probably stood on the existing arch (built by Prior Goldstone II. about 1495 to 1517) inserted under the western arch of the central tower. At Exeter Cathedral the rood stood on a separate bar of iron, high above the screen, and was erected in 1324, after the screen was finished. The rests for it, cut out of the narrow arches on either side, were brought into view recently. At Nuremberg the same arrangement prevails, or prevailed. At Winchester Cathedral the second easternmost bay of the nave from the chancel-screen was occupied by a rood-loft, on which stood the “magna crux cum duabus imaginibus sc. Mariæ et Johannis et illas cum trabe vestitas auro et argento copiose,” &c., made and set up by Bishop Stigand, who was buried at Winchester in 1069. At Glastonbury Abbey we read of William de Taunton, Abbot (1322-1335), making the “front of the choir, with the curious stone images, where the crucifix stood.” Also at St. Edmondsbury, in the earliest part of the thirteenth century, Hugh the Sacrist “pulpitum in ecclesiæ ædificavit, magna cruce erecta,” showing the close connection between the rood and the loft. At Worcester Cathedral there are stone brackets for the rood-beam on the western pillars of the lantern, 28 feet from the floor of the nave. There seem to be no traces of rood or rood-beam in _Lincoln Minster_.

In the Hereford Consuetudines, one of the duties of the Thesaurarius was to keep three lamps burning day and night, one of which was “in pulpito ante crucem.” The same officer was ordered in the Liber Niger of _Lincoln_, “Minutam etiam candelam invenire in choro et in pulpito et alibi in ecclesia quandocumque necesse fuerit,” the Eastern use differing from the Western on the score of economy! There seems to be no reasonable doubt that the pulpitum and platform already described was the one from which the Gospel and Epistle were read or intoned, and other portions of the pre-Reformation services sung or said. Dr. Hopkins[102] says: “For the accommodation of the singing monks there was a projecting gallery or pulpit, as it was sometimes termed, standing out from the centre of the east front of the rood-loft, near to the organ.” The author of The Rites of Durham speaks of “the pair of organs over the Quire dore” in the eastern screen. No doubt there were variations in what was read, sung, or chanted from the rood-loft in different dioceses and different cathedrals. According to Wild, at High Mass, as soon as the reading of the Epistle by the sub-deacon was ended (at the altar, we may presume) the deacon, leaving the altar, preceded by the crucifix and taper-bearers, and holding the book of the Gospels conspicuously elevated in his hands, walked slowly and processionally along the south side of the choir (while the choristers sang the _graduale_) to the steps leading to the rood-loft, where, being arrived and kneeling under the great crucifix usually erected there, he addressed the bishop or priest in these words, “Jube, Domine, benedicere,” to which the officiating clergyman answered, “Evangelium Domini Nostri Jesu Christi,” or some other benediction. And then the deacon would read the Gospel from the rood-loft and would return to the altar. From this custom, especially in France, the gallery over the screen obtained the name of Jubé. The Liber Niger, or Statutes of _Lincoln Cathedral_, have the following directions for this use:—

“Vnde incepto _Jube domine benedicere_ none leccionis dabit ille benediccionem qui propinquior fuerit dignitate. et iste modus seruetur omni tempore nisi ita sit quod omnes canonici sint absentes. tunc suus clericus incipiet _Jube_ et cetera et ipsemet lector dicat benediccionem. Deinde leget” (p. 372).

Also we find the following references to the use of the rood-loft:—

“_Gloria_, ergo incepto; Eat principalis subdiaconus in pulpitum per dexteram partem chori subdiacono (secundario) librum portante precedente, Vnde si contingat leccionem aliquam precedere sicut in natali Domini siue in septimana Pentecostes iiijᵒʳ temporum; secundus subdiaconus leget, et sacerdos cum suis ministris dicet _epistolam_. et _Gradale_ et _Alleluia_ et _Sequenciam_ et hijs dictis eat ad suum sedile et ibi dicet oraciones. Lecta epistola in pulpito recedet subdiaconus principalis ex sinistra parte chori socio suo prenotato precedente et librum portante,” &c. (p. 377).

The following passage has against it in the margin:—

“_De modo eundi ad euangelium in magno pulpito._ Et preparent se omnes ministri altaris ad eundum pro euangelio lecturo scilicet iij diaconi et iij subdiaconi Principalibus diacono et subdiacono textus portantibus et ij turiferarij et ij ceroferarij et ij clerici pueri ferentes cruces et hij omnes per chorum exeant Set in eundo ad euangelium diaconi ire debent ex parte dextra chori precedentibus vno turiferario et ceroferario et vna cruce et subdiaconi ex sinistra precedentibus vno thuriferario et ceroferario cum cruce, Vnde incepto evangelio stabunt coram diaconis subdiaconi omnes et clerici cruces portantes principali subdiacono portante textum ante pectus Lecto evangelio ibunt ad altare modo contrario quia diaconi ibunt ex parte sinistra et subdiaconi ex parte dextra. Vnde semper quando aliquis vel aliqui venient in pulpitum magnum ad legendum euangelium siue epistolam siue exposicionem; venient in dextra et recedant in sinistra et dabit sacerdoti euangelium ad osculandum,” &c. (p. 379).

Again—

“Completorium pulsatur” in a given way. “Vnde sciendum quod quando iij cantant ad lectrinam in choro siue in magno pulpito.... Nota quod quandocumque canonicus leget siue cantet in magno pulpito siue in choro sequetur eum ministrando vicarius siue clericus in habitu nigro nisi chorus capis induatur sericis” (p. 382).

Later, _i.e._ in 1236, there are directions for the choir to face the altar whilst the Gospel is being read at the altar, we may presume, for the next sentence runs thus: “Et dum legitur in pulpito debet chorus se convertere ad lectorem euangelij donec euangelium perlegatur.”

There seems to be little doubt that the principal organ (if the church possessed more than one) was frequently placed on the rood-loft, or “pulpitum,” and the smaller one in the choir. There was an organ as late as Hollar’s time over the “Den” in the fourth bay of the north side of the choir at _Lincoln_. By the extracts already quoted from The Rites of Durham, there was evidently one pair of organs (meaning one complete organ) on the north side of the choir, and another pair on the pulpitum there, and from Henry VI.’s “owne avyse” we learn that it was expressly ordered that the Eton College rood-loft should likewise serve as an organ-gallery. Among the many interesting items in the accounts of _Louth_ steeple, dating from 1501-1518, is this:—

“For setting up the Flemish organ in the rood-loft by four days xx_d._”