CHAPTER XII.

FABRIC AND FURNITURE OF CHURCHES, AND OFFICIAL COSTUME OF PRIESTS.

It is not necessary to describe the churches of mediæval England, for happily they still exist of all periods and styles, from the rude Saxon church built of split oak or chestnut trunks, at Greenstead, in Essex, down to the noble perpendicular churches of the close of the fifteenth century.

We may, however, make two remarks upon them. First, the comparative magnitude and sublimity of the churches was far greater in the times when they were built. The contrast between the village church and the cots of the peasantry around it, and even the small, lowly, half-timber manor house in its neighbourhood; the contrast between the town churches and the narrow streets of timber houses; still more the contrast between the great cathedrals and monastic churches and all the habitations of men; fills us with admiration of the splendid genius of the men who designed them, and the large-minded devotion of the men who caused them to be built.

The second remark which we have to make is that, though we have the old churches, they are, for the most part, stripped of all their ancient decorations and furnishing; and that it requires some ecclesiological knowledge and some power of imagination to realize their ancient beauty. If we want to replace before the mind’s eye the sort of church in which a fourteenth or fifteenth century rector or vicar said the Divine service continually, we shall have the advantage of finding the church still existing, perhaps with very little alteration in its general architectural outline; but we shall have to imagine the walls covered with fresco painting of Old and New Testament story; the windows filled with gem-like glass; the chancel screens and the rood loft with its sacred figures; the chantry chapels; the altar tombs with effigies of knight and lady; the lights twinkling before altar, rood and statue.

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We shall see from the Constitution of Archbishop Gray, quoted below, that the parishioners were, by ancient custom, liable for the maintenance and repair of the body and tower of their church; the fifth of the “extravagants” of Stratford, Archbishop of York (1342),[183] records that this was done by means of a proportionate tax on the estates and farms of the parish. From the records of bishops’ Visitations, we learn, further, that the bishops exercised greater power in the matter of church building in old times than they do now. They had not only the power to require that the church should be kept in good repair, but that, where necessary, it should be enlarged. Thus, Bishop Stapledon (1309) orders the parishioners of Ilfracombe, since the church is not capable of holding all the parishioners, to enlarge it by lengthening the body of the church by 24 feet at least, and adding two aisles, within two years, under a penalty of £40.[184]

At a Visitation of Sturton parish church, in 1314, in the time of the same bishop, it was returned that, in addition to defects in the furniture, the church is too small (_strictus_) and dark; the nave of the church likewise. Therefore, “the lord bishop enjoins the rectors, vicar, and parishioners, that they cause the said defects to be made good, according to what belongs to them severally, before the next feast of St. Michael, under penalty of £20 to the fabric of the [cathedral] Church of Exeter; except the construction of the new chancel and the enlargement of the church, and they to be done before St. Michael day twelve-month.”[185]

From the thirteenth century we have full information of the furniture and utensils, vestments, and books which the canons required to be provided in every church for the performance of Divine service and the ministration of the offices of the Church. Walter Gray, Archbishop of York, c. 1250, made a constitution which we subjoin; and similar lists occur from time to time, for both provinces, in visitation inquiries, inventories and constitutions;[186] _e.g._ in the Constitutions of Robert of Winchelsea, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1305.

Since much altercation has arisen between some of the rectors and vicars and their parishioners about the various ecclesiastical ornaments as to what it belonged to the rectors or their vicars to provide and maintain and what to the parishioners, we ordain and appoint that the parishioners provide a chalice, missal, the principal vestment of the church, viz. a chasuble, white albe, amice, stole, maniple, zone, with three towels, a corporal, and other decent vestments for the deacon and sub-deacon, according to the means of the parishioners and of the church, together with a principal silk cope for chief festivals, and with two others for the rulers of the choir in the foresaid festivals, a processional cross and another smaller cross for the dead, and a bier for the dead, a vase for holy water, an osculatory, a candlestick for the Paschal candle, a thurible, a lantern with a bell, a Lent veil, two candlesticks for the taper bearers; of books, a Legendary, Antiphonary, Gradual, Psalter, Topiary, Ordinale, Missal, Manual; a frontal to the great altar, three surplices, a suitable pyx for the “Corpus Christi,” a banner for the Rogations, great bells with their ropes, a holy font with fastening, a chrismatory, images in the church, and the principal image in the church of the person to whom the church is dedicated, the repair of books and vestments so often as they require repair; and in addition to all the aforesaid things a light in the church, the repair of the nave of the church, with its bell-tower, internally and externally, viz. with glass windows, with the enclosure of the cemetery, with other things belonging to the nave of the church, and other things which by custom belong to the parishioners. To the rectors or vicars belong all other things according to various ordinances, viz. the principal chancel with its repairs both in walls and roofs and glass windows belonging to the same, with desks and forms and other ornaments suitable, so that with the prophet they may be able to sing, “Lord, I have loved the honour of Thy house,” etc. As to the manse of the rectory and its repair, and other things which are not written in this book, let the rectors or vicars know that they may be compelled by the ordinary of the place, to do according to this constitution and others in this case provided.[187]

This is the formal catalogue of the minimum which the law required the parson and the parishioners to provide and maintain. But people were not satisfied with doing only what they were obliged to do. A considerable number of inventories exist of the treasures which had gradually accumulated as the gifts of pious benefactors to the cathedrals and churches: shrines, reliquaries, statues, crosses, mitres, pastoral staves, lamps and candlesticks, chalices, patens, pyxes, paxes, censers, processional crosses of gold and silver, often set with precious stones; altar cloths, hangings, palls,[188] vestments of the costliest fabrics, many of them embroidered, and often ornamented with precious stones. When we add the paintings of stained and sculptured marble, and carved woodwork of the fabric, and the monuments with their recumbent statues, and call to mind that the best art of the period was devoted to these works, we recognize that the churches of the country were treasures of art. Even the humblest village churches often possessed noble tombs of the local lords, and their gifts of ornaments of costly material and fine workmanship.

If we wish to see our priests as they ministered in church, it will be necessary to describe the vestments which were worn by them in those days.[189]

It is a little doubtful what they wore at the very beginning of our English Church history. The British bishops, no doubt, from early times down to the sixth century, wore the white tunic with long sleeves, which from its general colour was called the albe. The bishops and priests of the Celtic school who clung to the old usages were probably still wearing the pallium when Augustine came to Kent. But about that time the pallium was being superseded by a newer vestment called the planeta or chasuble, a circle of linen or other material with a hole in the middle through which the head was passed, so that the garment fell in folds all round the person. Very likely Augustine and the Continental school of clergy wore this new garment, and it would be adopted by the Celtic school when they accepted the Continental usages. The chasuble continued to be worn at the altar down to the end of the Middle Ages with a slight modification in shape; the voluminous folds in which it was gathered over the arms, when the hands were in use, were practically inconvenient, and so the circle came to be contracted into an oval, and then the ends of the oval were shaped to a point.

The orarium, which afterwards came to be called the stole, was originally a prayer-veil worn over the head by the priests and people of heathen Rome when they attended a sacrifice. It had an embroidered border which fell round the neck and shoulders. In course of time the veil was narrowed to its embroidered border, and was lengthened into a kind of scarf, worn over the shoulders and hanging down in front. A deacon wore the stole over one shoulder.

In early times the priest and deacon bore a napkin, called the fanon or maniple, over the left arm, with which to wipe the edge of the chalice; but this also was in time reduced to a strip of embroidered material.

The amice was a linen hood worn with the chasuble, placed over the head while the chasuble was put on, and then thrown back; so that it was seen only like a loose fold of linen round the neck.

The dalmatic was another upper garment, in form like a wide short tunic slit up at the sides, with short wide sleeves; and about the tenth century it became the distinctive upper vestment of the deacon. A little later the sub-deacon wore a tunicle, which was a scantier dalmatic.

We often find “a suit of vestments” mentioned in inventories and wills, and in several places it is defined in detail as a chasuble, two tunicles, three albes, and three amices, the vestments needed by the celebrant, his deacon, and sub-deacon; the chasuble and tunicles would be of the same material, colour, and style of ornamentation.

The cope was simply a cloak. The shape in which we first find it as an ecclesiastical vestment was an exact semicircle, usually with an ornamented border along the straight side, which, when worn, fell down in two lines of embroidery in front. It was originally a protection from the weather, as indicated by its name “Pluviale,” and by the hood, which is so integral a part of the original idea of the garment, that for centuries a flat triangular piece of ornamental work was sewn at the back of the cope, to represent this hood. It first appears as a clerical vestment about the end of the ninth century, and was worn in processions and in choir.

The surplice is the most modern of the clerical vestments. The fashion, introduced about the eleventh century, of having the tunic lined with fur, was found very comfortable by the clergy in their long services in cold churches; but the strait, girded albe looked ungraceful over it, and so the albe was enlarged into a surplice, to be worn in all minor offices over the furred robe, as its name, _superpelliceum_, indicates, while the albe continued to be used in the Eucharistic Service.

The shape of the surplice differs much in different examples. We give some illustrations in which it will be seen that the surplice of a canon is long and ample, while that of a clerk is little wider than an albe, but has wide sleeves and is not girded. In an inventory of the goods of St. Peter, Cornhill, at the time of the Reformation, we find “gathered surplices” for the “curate,” and “plain surplices” for the choir.[190]

Canons in choir wore over the surplice a short furred cope or cape, called an amyss, with a fur-lined hood attached, of curious shape, as shown in several of our illustrations. Bishops wore the whole series of vestments with the addition of mitre, jewelled gloves and shoes, and carried a pastoral staff.

The furniture of the churches and the vestments of its ministers were of very different degrees of beauty and cost--from altar vessels of simple silver of rude country make up to vessels of gold fashioned by great artists and enriched with jewels; from a simple linen chasuble up to copes and chasubles of cloth of gold, enriched with embroidery of high artistic merit and adorned with gems.

After these dry technicalities, we have only to illustrate the vestments as they appeared in actual use by some pictures from illuminated manuscripts and other sources, with a few explanatory notes where they seem to be necessary. Once granted that some distinctive dress is becoming and desirable for the clergy in their ministrations, and the rest is mere matter of taste. There is nothing mysterious about the mediæval vestments. They were all at first (except the Orarium) ordinary articles of everyday apparel, worn by clergy and laity alike. But it has always been thought right that the clergy should not be in too great haste to follow new fashions, and so they went on wearing fashions till they were obsolete; moreover, some of these copes and planetas were costly vestments given by kings and great men expressly to be worn in Divine service, and had been worn by saints, and had come to have venerable associations, and no one wished to discard them; and so they came to be distinctive and venerable.

Imaginative people soon invented a symbolical meaning for the various vestments, and other imaginative people varied the symbolism from time to time. St. Isidore of Seville, in the sixth century, saw in the white colour of the albe a symbol of the purity which becomes the clerical character, and that was so obvious and simple, that it continued to be the recognized meaning all through the ages. Of the chasuble, St. Germanus of Constantinople, in the eighth century, says it is a symbol of our Lord’s humility; Amalarius of Metz, in the ninth century, says it means good works; and Alcuin, in the tenth century, takes it to signify charity, because it covers all the other vestments as charity excels all other virtues. Later writers made the dalmatic, because it is in the shape of a cross, signify the Passion of our Lord; the stole, the yoke of Christ; and so forth.[191]

There is a fashion in clerical vestments as well as in the clothes of the laity; the forms of the cope, chasuble, etc., at different times are sufficiently shown in our illustrations to make description unnecessary. We may make the one remark, that whereas the cope and chasuble of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are of pliant material and skilful fashion, and fall in graceful folds, the like vestments in the sixteenth century came to be made of stiff material unskilfully shaped; in the seventeenth century the chasuble has its sides entirely cut away, of necessity, because the arms were unable to act under the weight and rigidity of the material, while the back and front hang down like boards cut into the shape of a violoncello.[192]

It will be convenient to introduce here, from the monumental brass of Bishop Goodrich, 1554 A.D., an example of late date, in which the vestments are very clearly drawn, and briefly to enumerate them. The albe reaches to the feet, the piece of embroidery upon it being one of five such pieces, in front and back at the feet, on the wrists, and on the breast, symbolizing the “five wounds” of our Lord. Over that may be seen the lower part of the sub-deacon’s tunicle; over that the ends of the stole; then the dalmatic; and over all the chasuble. The embroidered vestment round the shoulders is probably the “rationale,” an ornament rich with gold and jewels, worn by some bishops in this country. The plain fillet round the neck is the linen amice. The jewelled mitre and the pastoral staff need no description. The hands are covered with gloves of gauntlet shape, and the tassel with which the wrist terminates will be evident to careful observation. The maniple will be seen hanging over the left wrist. The book held in the right hand is probably the Bible, and the seal dependent from the same hand is the badge of this bishop’s civil office of Lord Chancellor.