The secrets of a great cathedral

_This book, “The Secrets of a Great Cathedral,” is, after a fashion, the sequel to the Dean’s “Handbook to Gloucester Cathedral,” although it has no special reference to, no rea...

The rare Catacomb pictures give it little or no support--In the very ancient Christian sarcophagi no prominent place is given to the Virgin Mary--Even in the ninth and tenth cen...

Theodoric was a great builder. We possess still his magnificent Arian Church of S. Apollinare Nuovo, which was originally called S. Martin; it was known as “de Coelo Aureo” beca...

As time went on, a yet more systematic course of destruction in middle and northern France, and even in the southern districts, must be chronicled in the _Gesta Romanorum_--the...

With the coming of Duke William the Conqueror, this Norman school of Romanesque passed into England, where, as we have seen, under peculiar circumstances of advantage, the Norma...

The early French Gothic masters in the craft looked upon the building of churches as the most serious of arts, and, as it has been well expressed, the churches they planned were...

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 Crus...

_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 sometim...

Thus direct communication with the sacred vault of the tomb itself existed by means of the narrow opening or passage through the lower chamber above mentioned, by means of which...

One general plan, with occasional modifications, seems usually to have been adopted in the great Cloisters of the Western Church on the Continent as in England. In the Cloisters...

[3] A word or two explanatory of the term “entablature” will be useful for those who are not familiar with architectural terminology. The term belongs to the Renaissance period;...

[25] A detailed description of the “Memoria” of Anacletus and the tomb or crypt of S. Peter, the “mother” of all the crypts since constructed, will be found in the following cha...