Chapter X: CURVILINEAR.—In 1320 died good Bishop Dalderby. He was worshipped as

a saint, though Rome refused his canonisation. His remains were placed in a silver shrine on the west side of the south transept: some of the pedestals of it may be seen there still. Miracles were wrought at his shrine; and from the offerings the gable of this transept was in all probability reconstructed, including the “Bishop’s Eye,” which is as strong constructionally as it is beautiful. The lovely pierced parapet of this transept should be noticed, and the fine window in the gable. The parapet was carried westward all along the south side of the nave and across the west front; and handsome pinnacles were erected, with niches once peopled with statues.

Now also was erected the choir-screen, of charming design, very similar to that of the west side of Southwell screen.

A little later are the screen of the choir boys’ vestry in the south choir aisle, diapered with lilies; and in the north-east of the Angel choir, St. Catharine’s shrine, and the Burghersh monuments. The period closes with the charming ogee doorways and arcading at the west end of the nave.

XI. The PERPENDICULAR period commences with the choir-stalls, so much eulogised by Pugin; and, but little later, the miserable statues of English kings over the west door, and the west windows of the nave and its aisles. The western towers were also raised to their present height, and all three towers were vaulted. All this work belongs to the last forty years of the fourteenth century.

The west front now consists of an oblong area of Early Norman work, which is decorated above by a Late Norman arcade of semicircular intersecting arches, and midway by a row of Late Norman sculptured plaques, and by the Perpendicular niches with the kings: the windows are also Perpendicular; but the central doorway is Late Norman and the side doorways Transitional. The central arch of the Early Norman work has been replaced by a pointed one; and the whole of the Early Norman work is surrounded by Lancet work, which in turn is crested with a Curvilinear parapet. The lower stages of the towers are Late Norman; the upper stages Early Perpendicular. The west front has been constantly censured for hiding the western towers, “like prisoners looking over the bars of their cage.” But any one who has seen the western towers of St. Stephen’s, Caen, will recognise that, but for the west front, the Lincoln towers would look top-heavy.

XII. To the fifteenth century belong the battlemented parapet of the Galilee porch; Bishop Fleming’s chantry; the screens of the chapels in the north and south transept; and Bishop Russell’s chantry.

XIII. In TUDOR days was built Bishop Longland’s chantry (1521-1547), the niches of which have Renaissance detail. The three chantries are so low that they do not interfere with the main lines of the cathedral; and, being low, give scale to it.

XIV. The date of the brass Eagle is 1667. In 1674 Wren built the Library in the Cloister. The brass chandelier is of 1698. The supporting arches of the western towers were inserted in 1727.

The Cathedral Church of St. Paul, London.

From Lincoln and Lichfield to St. Paul’s, the transition is vast and abrupt. It is a transition from the archaic, mediæval, feudal world to modern England. Mediæval religion, mediæval art is dead—killed by the printed book. Mediæval architecture also succumbs before the printed book. The master-masons of the old cathedrals, whose very names for the most part are unknown, give place to architects of European fame—men who read books, write books, and work to book. The mediæval architect was a builder and nothing else. The Renaissance architect was first of all a scholar, and secondly an artist; and only incidentally an architect. He learnt the art of architectural design, not in the builder’s yard, but by preference at the goldsmith’s bench. From jewellery he turned with equal facility to painting and sculpture, to civil engineering or to the art of fortification, to water-colours, to stage mechanism, to landscape gardening, to poetry, politics or diplomacy. Among the men of this versatile genius Christopher Wren holds a worthy place. He proceeded to Oxford at the early age of fourteen; and obtained a fellowship at All Souls’. Physical science and astronomy were his first love. At the age of twenty-five “he was known in scientific circles all over Europe,” and was Professor of Astronomy. He wrote on comets, and gnomonicks, and diplographic pens. In his twenty-ninth year he was honoured with the degrees of D.C.L. and LL.D. at Oxford and Cambridge. He helped to found the Royal Society, and was twice its President. He was even a Member of the House of Commons in two Parliaments. In his thirty-first year he turned his attention to architecture—attracted, no doubt, largely by the physical and mathematical problems involved. Two years later he set out to the Continent to see for himself the great works of the Revival of Classical Architecture. Unfortunately he went no farther than Paris: those masterpieces of the Renaissance, Brunelleschi’s dome at Florence, Michael Angelo’s dome at Rome, he was fated never to see. For the rest of a life unusually prolonged he was to be occupied in imitating models which he had never seen. The result is perhaps not to be regretted. He left behind him not the close copy of Italian Renaissance work which we might have had, under more favourable circumstances, from Inigo Jones, but an English Renaissance style of marked individuality and originality, and therefore of great interest. He had to think out all his problems—problems of construction and problems of planning—for himself.

Wren, like his employers, the citizens of the City of London was a sound Protestant; and when he was commissioned to rebuild St. Paul’s after the Great Fire, his intention was to give London a Protestant cathedral. He was less concerned to provide processional aisles and altared chapels than a vast unencumbered central area for preaching. The new cathedral was to be a gigantic preaching-house. To provide the vast central area demanded, the narrow crossing beneath the central tower of a Gothic cathedral was abandoned. Instead of a central tower he resolved to employ a dome—the only form of roof which would cover so vast a span. One mediæval cathedral in England, and one only, had such a crossing. It was the superb cathedral of Ely, where Wren’s uncle was Bishop. But it was no doubt of St. Peter’s, Rome, that Wren was thinking, rather than of Ely. Just as St. Peter’s, Rome, had been built to rival and surpass the Florence Duomo, so Wren designed that his own new cathedral should be an improvement on St. Peter’s, Rome. In the supports of his dome he chose to follow the unhappy precedents of Florence and Ely rather than the nobler type of St. Peter’s and Santa Sophia; he blocked up his central area with eight piers, instead of poising his dome on four supports, as in the metropolitan cathedrals of the East and West.

In Wren’s favourite design, as shown in the model still preserved in the cathedral, the dome was to be abutted to the west by an aisleless vestibule or nave, itself crowned by a minor dome; while to the north, east, and south, it was intended to give it the support of a surrounding ring of domical chapels, opening into the central area by a series of fairy-like vistas and ever-changing contrasts of light and shadow. But the Anglican clergy rose in revolt at the position assigned to them in the cathedral—a position contrary to any precedent of the Anglican Church; and refused to sit in a ring all round the central area beneath the dome. On the other hand, the Court party, almost openly expecting, and with good reason, the restoration of the old religion, wanted an aisled nave with room for the pageantry of processions and with provision of chapels for the saint-worship soon to be restored. Romanisers and Anglicans alike united to condemn a plan which failed to provide for the ritualistic needs of either. Wren had to start again; and London had to put up with a Renaissance cathedral which in plan is as mediæval as that of Ely, with aisled nave, aisled choir, aisled transepts, and even with a western transept, as again at Ely. St. Paul’s then, is primarily, an aisled (_i.e._ a basilican) church, with, incidentally, a dome thrown in. And therein lies the fault of the design. Internally, the church predominates over the dome. Unless you stand beneath or almost beneath the dome, you can hardly see that a dome is there at all. Narrow nave, narrower aisles, the multiplied obstructive masses of the various piers, hide the dome away from view. Rightly designed, a great central dome ought to be all in all; everything should lead up to it; everything should be suppressed that does not lend it strength or grace. Its thrusts are great, and cannot be resisted by the piers of aisles, unless the piers are positive mountains of masonry; aisles, then, should be omitted. The dome should rest on four arches, and their thrusts should be resisted by the solid walls of the unaisled nave and choir and the two transepts. And these four great limbs of the church should be kept short, to give the dome full value.

Again, just as the central dome dictates the plan of the church, so it should dictate the form of the vaulted roof. There were three types of vault at Wren’s disposal. One was the intersecting vault, a second the domical vault, a third the waggon or tunnel vault. The first is altogether out of harmony with a central dome, though Wren has employed it in some of his City churches. What he adopted was the second: he vaulted the nave with a row of four domes, the choir with a row of three. Thus, it might be thought, with seven domes leading up to a central dome, Wren had secured harmony and success. It is not so. Nothing can be more distressing to the eye than to follow the up and down line of the little domes till it suddenly plunges into the central abyss. The only tolerable form of vault in connection with a central dome is the tunnel vault, as it is employed in St. Peter’s, Rome; or, still better, in S. Annunziata, Genoa. Such a tunnel vault, however, should start direct from the cornice, and not, as at St. Paul’s, from a meaningless attic interposed between cornice and vault.

As it stands, in the internal elevation of the cathedral Wren has given us a hybrid design. It reminds one of Gothic, for there is a travesty of a clerestory; it is Classic, for beneath is a gigantic Order. Wren has hesitated between two opinions. He might have given us a three-storied interior—pier-arcade, triforium and clerestory—of course with Classical detail, as is done with charming effect in the noble cathedral at Pavia; or a one-storied interior, as at St. Peter’s. As his patrons insisted on having aisles, he might well have adopted the former alternative, and have presented us with what might have been very beautiful—a Classical triforium. If he wanted the majesty of the single gigantic Order of St. Peter’s, he should have omitted the attic, run up the Order twenty feet higher, and lighted the nave by lunettes cut through a tunnel vault. As it is, the miserable attic is of no value in itself, and at the same time diminishes the importance of the pier arcade. However, as we have seen, Wren is not responsible at all for the plan, and only partially for the proportions of the interior of St. Paul’s. He has not given us of his best, because the world of his day would not have it. Most of the defects that one laments are absent from his earlier and favourite design: _e.g._, the ugly subsidiary arches under the oblique arches of the octagon of the dome, and the bad lighting of the dome itself.

Externally everything is different. No ritual, Anglican or other, interfered. Wren had free play: all his success and any faults are his own. What it fails to do internally the great dome does externally with colossal success: it dominates everything—not only the church, but London. Every part of the vast building gathers up into the all-compelling unity of the central dome. Inside, St. Paul’s is all church; outside, it is all dome. Into this exterior has grown in concrete embodiment all Wren’s aspirations: his aspirations for grandeur, massiveness, and power; for monumental stability, for unity, for harmony, for symmetry and proportion, for beauty of curve and line. St. Paul’s has none of the airy lightness of Salisbury and Lincoln; it possesses in compensation the rock-hewn solidity and majesty of Durham. In Lincoln and Salisbury, and in Exeter and York, the windows are counted by hundreds; along the flanks of St. Paul’s windows are few and far apart, and they are confined to the aisles; the great screen-wall above rises sheer like a precipice, almost unbroken by an opening. Simple and grand, too, is the handling of the masses. At the re-entering angles of the transepts square masses project to form a stable platform for the mighty dome; towers project to the flanks of the western bays of the nave, giving breadth and dignity to the main façade. Otherwise the design is symmetry itself. Everything is in the “grand manner.” Perhaps the side-elevation is a little monotonous, and the western chapels block off the towers at their spring, but they were forced on Wren against his better judgment: internally the nave gains greatly; externally they are a mistake. One would perhaps have liked also that the screen-wall of the side aisles of the choir and transepts, instead of ending square, should have circled round in one vast majestic sweep, in harmony with the curving dome above, after the fashion of the fine cathedral of Como. The flatness, moreover, of the side-elevations gives but little room for play of light and shade. There are none of the pits of darkness that lurk between the buttresses and transepts of Beverley or Lincoln. Only in the recessed west front and behind the colonnade of the dome the shadows brood. Nature, however, or rather London smoke, has given St. Paul’s a chiaroscuro of its own—not to be washed off, as has been foolishly proposed, by Vandal fire-engines. Where the rain lashes the building, especially its angles and projections, the good Portland stone is white and clean; where sheltered by projecting cornices it is black as Erebus.

Externally, it is a building of two stories. Wren designed it originally for one story, but was unable to get big enough blocks of stone to carry a single gigantic Order, as at St. Peter’s, up to the cornice; for which we may be thankful. The façade also is composed of two Orders of columns, and they are necessarily comparatively small columns. But all appearance of weakness is admirably removed by arranging them in couples; indeed, one would be sorry to have instead of this noble design Wren’s own one-story façade as shown in his model,—still more to have that of Inigo Jones.

The harmony, too, of the noble design is delightful. The two stories of the columns of the façade become two stories of pilasters on the flanks of the nave; at the ends of the transepts they sweep round into lovely semicircular colonnades; colonnades form the central stages of the western steeples; the drum of the dome is encircled by a superb colonnade; the dome itself culminates in a colonnaded lantern. See, too, how the lantern, domical above and colonnaded below, sums up the composition of the dome beneath; and how the western steeples prepare the eye for the transition from the rectilinear colonnades of the great façade to the swelling curve of the dome,—itself reproduced in the north and south circular porches and in the apsidal choir. St. Paul’s is “a house at one with itself.”

It is true that the dead wall from aisle windows to cornice is perhaps the “most unmitigated building sham upon the face of the earth.” It has absolutely nothing to do at all except to hide away some flying-buttresses—the very ugliest eye ever saw—which Sir Christopher might well be reluctant to expose to the jeers of the man in the street. It is true, too, that there is built up in this dead wall enough good stone to construct half a dozen parish churches. It has been urged that it was built to weight the foot of each flying-buttress after the manner of a Gothic pinnacle. But not even a Gothic baby would have provided continuous abutment for intermittent thrusts. The dead wall may perhaps be defended on artistic, but certainly not on constructional grounds.

In the dome, Wren had three conflicting ideals to realise: (1) to make the dome so lofty that it should be visible externally from base to summit; (2) to make it so low internally that it should range with the vaulting of nave, choir, and transepts; (3) to finish it with a stone lantern as lofty and heavy as an ordinary church spire. At St. Peter’s the dome externally squats down so low that from most directions one must walk a mile away to get a complete view of it; the internal dome is so lofty as to be invisible from most parts of the church; the lantern is much smaller and lighter than is required by so mighty a dome; and is in a condition of very unstable equilibrium, badly supported, cracked, and tied together in all directions. All these difficulties Wren triumphantly disposed of; nevertheless, for his triumph he has received little but censure and abuse. He made two domes; and brought the inner dome, which is of brick (see diagram), far lower than the outer one—though not low enough. Secondly, he mounted the outer dome, which is of wood covered with lead, on a lofty colonnaded drum, visible of all men even from the narrow street below. Thirdly, between the two domes (see diagram) he built a cone of brick, and on this cone he poised the lantern—which is as heavy as an ordinary church-spire—in perfect security. If the outer dome were removed—_e.g._, if it were burnt, as it may some day, being of wood—the lantern would still stand perfectly safe on its conical support. In the dome of St. Paul’s Wren’s engineering capacities culminate. But it is more than a piece of engineering. No tower, no spire, no group of towers or spires, impresses itself on the imagination like the dome of St. Paul’s. Lincoln and Salisbury, Lichfield and Durham, retire before the claims of this overwhelming younger pile,

“whose sky-like dome
Hath typified by reach of daring art
Infinity’s embrace.”

The Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, Norwich.

The ancient kingdom of East Anglia was converted to Christianity by a Burgundian monk, Felix, who became the first bishop of East Anglia—the diocese, as usual, being coextensive with the kingdom—and fixed his see at Dunwich in 630. The see was subdivided by the Archbishop Theodore, the great organiser of the English Church, in 669. It was again reunited, and the cathedral was at Elmham, till the bishop migrated in 1070 to Thetford, and in 1094 to Norwich.

The present cathedral was commenced in 1096 by Herbert de Losinga, who is usually described as a Lorrainer. He is recorded to have finished the whole cathedral before his death in 1119 as far as the altar of the Holy Cross, which would stand in front of the choir-screen. His successor finished the nave and west front, and carried up the central tower (1121-1145). The plan is that of Gloucester and Leominster; the rudiments of it appear in the ancient church at Bethlehem and in St. Sepulchre at Jerusalem. There was an enormously long aisled nave of fourteen bays, aisleless transepts of three bays, an aisled presbytery of five bays, a semicircular apse, a processional aisle or ambulatory encircling the apse, and three segmental chapels radiating from the ambulatory; also eastern apses to the transepts. All this remains, except the easternmost apsidal chapel, which was replaced in the thirteenth century by an oblong Lady chapel, itself pulled down in the sixteenth century; and the apse of the south transept, which was replaced by an oblong chapel in the thirteenth century.

The history of Norwich cathedral, therefore, differs _toto cœlo_ from that of every other English cathedral, except that of Gloucester. With the exception that both Gloucester and Norwich ultimately increased the dimensions of their eastern Lady chapels, no eastward extensions of any moment took place. This was not because the Norfolk people were more conservative than other people, or, in a remote corner of England, were behind the times; but because the plan of the Norwich cathedral was convenient for mediæval ritual, and the plan of the other cathedrals was not. Other cathedrals had to build a processional aisle at the back of the High Altar; at Norwich it was there already. Other cathedrals had to throw out eastern transepts to provide chapels for the great saints of the Church, St. James, St. John, St. Peter and the rest; Norwich cathedral from the first had five apsidal chapels. Other cathedrals had a local saint of the first water, and had to build a special saint’s chapel or feretory for his shrine: Canterbury for St. Thomas, Chester for St. Werburgh, Durham for St. Cuthbert, Ely for St. Audrey, Hereford for St. Ethelbert, Lichfield for St. Chad, Lincoln for St. Hugh, Oxford for St. Frideswide, Rochester for St. William, St. Albans for St. Alban, Winchester for St. Swithin, Worcester for St. Wolfstan. Norwich had no local saint of any great repute, except a poor little boy who was alleged to have been crucified by the Jews. Nor, again, did sacerdotalism much affect the growth of Norwich cathedral. The nave was so vast that, even when the monks had appropriated five bays of it for their ritual choir, as they did at first, there still remained nine bays for processions, and for the laity to worship at the nave-altar of the Holy Cross. There was no need to crowd the stalls into the eastern limb of the church as the Canterbury monks had to do because of the shortness of their Norman nave. It is true that, later on, the Norwich monks moved eastward a little, placing their sixty stalls under the tower and in the two easternmost bays of the nave, where they are at present; but this was probably done merely to get better light, partly from the lantern-tower above, partly from the enlarged windows of the transepts. The original position of the choir is marked by the cylindrical piers, the fifth from the tower; by a hole in the vault, inside a boss, from which hung down a light or a censer; and by the corbelling of the eastern vaulting-shafts to leave room for the stalls.

With these exceptions, the history of the cathedral mainly reduces itself to three sets of building operations: first, repairs necessitated by fire or storm; secondly, attempts to improve the lighting of the building; and, thirdly, to make it fireproof.

Taking these works in the above order, we first have to note the mischief done by fire and storm. In 1297 the tower seems to have had a wooden spire. This was blown down in 1361; and, falling eastward, damaged the clerestory of the Norman presbytery. Both the spire and clerestory had to be rebuilt; and in rebuilding the clerestory the monks took the opportunity to remedy what was the gravest defect in all the Norman cathedrals—viz., their extreme darkness. Now, it happened that, only some ten years before, the magnificent clerestory of Gloucester presbytery had been built; and the report of the brilliant illumination and gorgeous glass of this grand work was bruited, no doubt, all over England by pilgrims returning from the shrine of the murdered Edward II. at Gloucester. Therefore, just as at Gloucester, they determined to raise the new presbytery higher than the nave—they raised it ten feet—and to make the clerestory practically a continuous sheet of glass. In one thing, fortunately, they did not copy Gloucester, as Edington did in Winchester nave—which is of the same date as the Norwich work—they did not think it necessary to discard altogether the beautiful flowing tracery of the Curvilinear period; and so here, as in many Norfolk churches, we find inserted, side by side, at the same time, Curvilinear and Perpendicular windows. Another charming feature of Curvilinear work was the ogee niche, such as those of the arcade of Ely Lady chapel. These niches, too, were utilised at Norwich cleverly and beautifully, being used instead of corbels to support the ribs of the roof. This fourteenth-century roof seems to have been one of wood.

But, earlier than this, a determined attempt had been made to get rid of the darkness of the nave by inserting (1315-1360) a range of windows with flowing tracery all along the north aisle of the nave. In the Perpendicular period (1360-1485) the monks took the same course as at Ely: they raised the triforium walls, closed the external windows of the triforium, flattened the roof of the triforium, and thus managed to get in a range of tall windows, each of four lights, in the hope that the light from them might find its way into the nave across the triforium; and that the more easily as the openings of the inner arcade of the triforium were not obstructed by central shafts. The result is extraordinary, as seen from the garth. The south side of the cathedral, instead of the usual three or four stories, seems six stories high. First there are the openings of the cloister; then the upper story of the cloister; then the blind arcade of the triforium; then the Norman triforium windows; then the Perpendicular ditto; then the Norman clerestory.

Even this was insufficient. The eastern bays of the nave, where the stalls were placed, and where, most of all, light was needed, were the darkest of all, being obstructed by the stalls and by the cloister roof. So in the exterior of the two easternmost bays of the nave the Perpendicular triforium windows and the Norman clerestory windows were thrown into one, to give as much light as possible to the stalls below. For the same reason large Perpendicular windows were inserted in the transepts. Several of these, however, have recently been replaced by Norman windows: “genuine Perpendicular by sham Norman.” In the middle of the south aisle of the nave Bishop Nix (1501-1536) built himself a gorgeous chantry, to light which he inserted two large windows, high up so as to clear the cloister roof. Large square-headed windows were inserted in the triforium of the presbytery also; and an enormous Perpendicular window was inserted in the west front, still further to light the nave. These measures were fairly successful in nave and transept; but, fortunately for us, less successful than in the presbytery.

Now we come to the measures taken to make the building fireproof. These took the form of costly stone vaults, and they seem to have been undertaken by the monks most reluctantly. All the high vaults are the direct outcome of some great fire, and but for the fire they would not have been undertaken. There were conflagrations in 1170 and 1271, and in the fearful riots of 1272 the cathedral was set on fire by the citizens. Still, when the presbytery was repaired in 1362, it seems to have been roofed again in wood. In 1463 the wooden spire was struck by lightning, and set fire to the roofs both of nave and presbytery. At last the monks had to bestir themselves. To secure the spire against fire they rebuilt it in stone instead of wood; and, to make the nave and presbytery fireproof, they made up their minds to vault both in stone. Between 1463 and 1472 Bishop Lyhart put up over the nave the present magnificent lierne vault, and at his death bequeathed two thousand marks to his successor to continue the work. Bishop Goldwell vaulted the presbytery between 1472 and 1499. It seems to have been very difficult to get the funds for this costly work. Bishop Goldwell, however, was a personal friend of the Pope, who had consecrated him with his own hands; and he had not much difficulty in persuading the Pope to grant a perpetual indulgence in the terms that “all who came to the cathedral on Trinity Sunday and Lady Day, and made an offering towards the fabric, should be entitled to an indulgence of twelve years and forty days.” The transepts had still wooden roofs. It required another fire—in 1509—in which these roofs were consumed, to compel the monks to complete the vaulting of the cathedral. This was done in the time of Bishop Nix. At the end of four hundred years Norwich cathedral was at length fireproof.

And did they do nothing merely for prettiness’ sake? Well, here, as at Gloucester, they set to work to do what was quite unnecessary—to harmonise the Norman ground-story of the presbytery with the clerestory of 1631. By one of those marvellous pieces of engineering, of which the mediæval architects were so fond—we saw a conspicuous example at Carlisle—while retaining the Norman triforium and the Perpendicular clerestory above, they managed to remodel the Norman piers on either side of the presbytery, and to take out the semicircular arches bodily and replace them by the fashionable arch of the period—a depressed four-centered arch. This was done by Bishop Goldwell—no doubt before he put up the vault above (_c._ 1475).

The only other great work was the rebuilding of the cloisters, also forced on the monks by a great fire—that of 1272. This work was executed exceedingly slowly, the window tracery ranging from Geometrical, through Curvilinear, to Perpendicular work.

One word more about the superb interior. It is hardly too much to say that the interior of this cathedral—but second-rate in point of dimensions—is unequalled in all England. One reason is that it is vaulted throughout. Ely, Peterborough St. Albans, Rochester, Romsey, Waltham, Southwell—with their paltry wooden ceilings—are not to be compared for a moment with Norwich. Gloucester and Chichester naves are vaulted, but the vaults are too slight and flimsy for the stern and massive work below. Durham vault is strong and satisfactory. But the lierne vault of Norwich is a far more glorious crown and finish than the rude work of Durham. It might be thought that the richness and magnificence of the lierne vault of Norwich would be out of harmony with the simplicity and heaviness of Norman piers and triforium and clerestory. It is not so. A tower, like that of Magdalen College, Oxford, may be ever so plain below, and yet terminate fitly with a glorious coronal of battlements, parapet and pinnacles. So it is with this interior.

Its rivals are to be found in Winchester and Tewkesbury. But at Winchester the vaults of nave and presbytery are cut in two by the unvaulted transept. Norwich and Tewkesbury are vaulted everywhere—from east to west and from north to south. And in both, the vaults being uniform in character, and not changing character half-way as at Gloucester, weld together the spreading limbs of the church into a marvellous unity.

But there is another fine feature about the interior of Norwich, as in that of Gloucester: it is the striking contrast of light and shade, of shadowy nave and brilliant choir. Hereford presents us with the reverse effect—bright nave and gloomy choir. Both effects are dramatic; both, doubtless, are unintentional. If they had known how, or could have afforded it, the Hereford people would have flooded their choir with sunshine, Norwich and Gloucester their naves. The mediæval builders wanted none of these dramatic contrasts of light and shade; they were always working to get rid of the dim religious light that nowadays we venerate; they would have liked their churches lighted thoroughly well throughout. What they wanted was the light, uniformly good, of Lichfield and Exeter: or Salisbury, bright and gay as a ball-room.

But the most subtle and most important element in the beauty of the interior of Norwich is to be found in its proportions. The nave is of an immense length, but it is very narrow. York, Canterbury, Lincoln, Durham, all have naves far too short for their breadth. And what is more important still is the ratio of the height of Norwich nave to its span. In most English cathedrals it is 2 to 1; but in Norwich nave the ratio rises to 2⁴⁄₇, and in the presbytery it is 3 to 1. In Norwich presbytery, then, we have just those proportions which we find in the great Gothic cathedrals of France, but in England hardly anywhere except in Westminster Abbey. People admire Norwich presbytery and Westminster presbytery for the same reason, and, no doubt, in most cases, without knowing what the reason is.

One thing more remains to be said in praise of Norwich, as of Gloucester. It is that all the glory of the church is concentrated at one spot, and that the most important spot in the church. It is in approaching the high altar that vaults and clerestory soar aloft, that loveliest vistas open out into ambulatory and chapels, while the noble windows above fill all with light and atmosphere. “I would back it,” says Dean Goulburn, “against any similar effect in almost any cathedral in Christendom.”

The Cathedral Church of Christ, Oxford.

“About the year of our Lord 727, there lived in Oxford a Saxon prince named Didan, who had an only child, Frideswide (‘bond of peace’). Seeing that he had large possessions and inheritances, and that she was likely to enjoy most of them after his decease, Frideswide told her father that he could not do better than bestow them upon some religious fabric where she and her spiritual sisters might spend their days in prayers and in singing psalms and hymns to God. Wherefore the good old man built a church, and committed it wholly to the use of his daughter, purposely to exercise her devotion therein; and other edifices adjoining to the church, to serve as lodging-rooms for Frideswide and twelve virgins of noble extraction. There she became famous for her piety and for those excellent parts that nature had endowed her withal; and Algar, King of Leicester, became her adorer by way of marriage. Finding that he could not prevail with her by all the entreaties and gifts imaginable, he departed home, but sent to her ambassadors with this special and sovereign caution, that if she did not concede, to watch their opportunity and carry her away by force. Frideswide was inexorable. Wherefore at the dawning of the day the ambassadors clambered the fences of the house, and by degrees approaching her private lodging, promised to themselves nothing but surety of their prize. But she, awakening suddenly and discovering them, and finding it vain to make an escape, being so closely besieged, fervently prayed to the Almighty that He would preserve her from the violence of those wicked persons, and that He would show some special token of revenge upon them for this their bold attempt. Wherefore the ambassadors were miraculously struck blind, and like madmen ran headlong yelling about the city. But Algar was filled with rage, and intended for Oxford, breathing out nothing but fire and sword. Which thing being told to Frideswide in a dream, with her sisters the nuns Katherine and Cicely, she fled to the riverside, where there awaited her a young man with a beautiful countenance and clothed in white, who, mitigating their fear with pleasant speech, rowed them up the river to a wood ten miles distant. There the nuns sheltered in a hut, which ivy and other sprouts quickly overgrew, hiding them from sight of man. Three years Frideswide lived in Benton wood, when she came back to Binsey and afterwards to Oxford, in which place this maiden, having gained the triumph of her virginity, worked many miracles; and when her days were over and her Spouse called her, she there died.” Such is the account of her which Anthony-a-Wood drew from William of Malmesbury and Prior Philip of Oxford, both of whom unfortunately lived long after the events which they narrate.

I. In the east walls of the north choir-aisle and the Lady chapel three small rude arches have recently been found, and outside, in the gardens, the foundations of the walls of three apses. Hence it has been concluded that we have here the eastern termination of Frideswide’s eighth-century church. It may be so, but the central arch seems very small for the chancel-arch of an aisled church. It is indeed a foot wider than the chancel-arch of the Saxon church at Bradford-on-Avon, but that tiny church has no aisles. Moreover, if the side-arches led into aisles, they would be likely to be of the same height, whereas the southern arch is considerably the higher of the two.

II. At some later period—perhaps in the eighth or ninth century—the foundation was converted into one of secular canons, married priests taking the place of the nuns (cf. Ely). The secular canons themselves in turn gave way to monks, and these in 1111 to regular canons—_i.e._, canons living in monastic fashion under the rule (_regula_) of St. Augustine, as at Bristol, Ripon, and Carlisle.

The first business, probably, of the secular canons was to house themselves—_i.e._, to build themselves the usual cloister, with its appanages of chapter-house, refectory, dormitory, etc. Of the chapter-house which they built, _c._ 1125, the doorway still remains.

In 1004 King Ethelred had rebuilt the Saxon church; and probably it was found possible to put this church into such repair as would allow the services to be held in it for the time being. At any rate, it was not till 1158 that they commenced the present cathedral, which they finished in 1180, leaving not a stone standing of Ethelred’s cathedral. Of the theory that the present cathedral is in the main the one built in 1004, I would prefer to say nothing, had it not been adopted in a recent history of the cathedral; suffice to say that, like the sister theory that Waltham Abbey was built in 1060, it is an absolute impossibility. The hands of the archæological clock cannot be turned 160 years back in this preposterous fashion.

The twelfth-century church was very remarkable in plan. Not only had it an aisled nave and an aisled choir, but it had the architectural luxury, unparalleled in our Norman architecture except in the vast churches of Winchester and Ely, of eastern and western aisles to its transepts. The site, however, was cramped to the south, and so the southern transept was shorter than the northern one; moreover, this short transept later on lost its west aisle, which was lopped off to allow the cloister to be extended. For the same reason—lack of room—the slype, or vaulted passage, which in all monastic institutions connected the cloister with the cemetery, instead of being built between the transept and the cloister, was built inside the church, as at Hexham, curtailing still further the floor area of the north transept. It was therefore because the church was so cramped to the south, that the other transept was given aisles on both sides. Instead of an eastern aisle, the south transept had merely a square chapel projecting eastward.

But the canons wanted also a Lady chapel, for the church seems to have been dedicated originally to the Holy Trinity, St. Mary and St. Frideswide. The normal position of a Lady chapel was to the east of the sanctuary. But here also the canons were cramped; for quite close to the east end of the church ran the city wall. To get in a Lady chapel, therefore, they had to build an additional aisle north of the north aisle of the choir. This was three bays long. It was probably walled off from the transept, but opened into the north choir-aisle by three Norman arches, reconstructed later on. The same arrangement is found at Ripon. There was also a short chapel projecting eastward from the northernmost bay of the east aisle of the north transept.

The east end, as at Rochester and Ripon, was square. The present east end is a fine composition by Scott, more or less conjectural. The work commenced, as usual, at the east, as is shown by the gradual improvement westward in the design of the capitals. The evidence of the vaulting, too, points in the same direction. In the choir-aisle the ribs are massive and heavy; in the western aisle of the north transept they are lighter; in the south aisle of the nave they are pointed and filleted.

The transepts are narrower than the nave and choir; the tower, therefore, is oblong, and, as at Bolton Priory, its narrow sides have pointed arches: semicircular arches would have been too low. The faces of the piers of the towers are flat, because the stalls of the canons were placed against them and in the eastern bays of the nave, leaving the whole eastern limb as sanctuary.

The clerestory walls are only 41½ feet high; therefore, to have adopted the usual Norman design—viz., triforium on the top of pier-arcade—would have made the interior look very squat: so, instead of building the triforium above the pier-arcade, it was built beneath it. The lofty pier-arches, thus gained, add greatly to the apparent height and dignity of the interior. The lower arches, however, which carry the vault of the aisle behind, are corbelled into the piers in very clumsy fashion. The design is not original; it was worked out at Romsey in a single bay of the nave, but, being thought ugly, was promptly abandoned. It is worked out more successfully in Dunstable Priory church and Jedburgh Abbey. The clerestory windows of the nave would be built not much before 1180; naturally, therefore, they are pointed. The capitals of all the twelfth-century work are full of interest. Indeed, Transitional capitals—each an experiment, and all differing—partly conventional, partly naturalistic, with a dash of Classic—are to me much more interesting than any of the Gothic capitals, except perhaps the naturalistic capitals of the later Geometrical period. There is a great sameness about the foliated capitals of the Early English, Curvilinear, and Perpendicular periods. I need hardly say that no one of these capitals came from Ethelred’s church.

The whole church is exceedingly interesting. It fills a niche in the history of English architecture all by itself. It is not the plain and austere Transitional work of the Cistercians. On the other hand, it has not yet the lightness and grace of Ripon; still less the charm of Canterbury choir, Chichester presbytery, Wells and Abbey Dore—Gothic in all but name. In spite of its foliated capitals, in spite of a pointed arch here and there, it is a Romanesque design; yet not so Romanesque as Fountains, Kirkstall, Furness.

III. In the LANCET period (1190-1245) the works went on apace. An upper stage was added to the tower, and on that the spire was built—the first large stone spire in England. It is a Broach spire: _i.e._, the cardinal sides of the spire are built right out to the eaves, so that there is no parapet. On the other hand, instead of having broaches at the angle, it has pinnacles. Moreover, to bring down the thrusts more vertically, heavy dormer-windows are inserted at the foot of each of the cardinal sides of the spire: altogether a very logical and scientific piece of engineering, much more common in the early spires of Northern France than in England.

The chapter-house also was rebuilt (_c._ 1240); rectangular, to fit the cloister. Also, the canons rebuilt both the Lady chapel and the adjoining transeptal chapel. Lancet work will be seen in all the piers on the south side of the Lady chapel, and in the second and third piers from the west, on its north side. The cult of the Virgin, much fostered by the Pope, Innocent III., was at its height in the thirteenth century. The Lady chapels of Bristol, Hereford, Salisbury, Winchester and Norwich were contemporaries of that of Oxford.

IV. To the latter half of the GEOMETRICAL period belong the fragments of the pedestal of St. Frideswide’s shrine, which has beautiful naturalistic foliage like that of the contemporary pedestal of St. Thomas of Hereford, A.D. 1289. Some twenty years later is the fine canopied tomb of Prior Sutton.

V. In the CURVILINEAR period (1315-1360) the eastern chapel of the north transept was pulled down, and in its place was built a chapel of four bays, with four side windows of singularly beautiful tracery, and all different. They contain fourteenth-century glass, which should be compared with that in St. Lucy’s chapel and in Merton College chapel. The bosses are very beautiful: one of them has a representation of the water-lilies of the adjacent Cherwell. Hard by is the tomb of Lady Montacute, who gave the canons about half the Christ Church meadows to found a chantry. The chapel goes by various names: St. Katharine’s chapel, the Latin chapel, and the Divinity chapel. It contains good poppy-heads of Cardinal Wolsey’s time.

About the same time the eastern chapel of the south transept—St. Lucy’s chapel—was enlarged. The tracery of its east window starts in an unusual fashion below the spring of the arch.

Also the Norman windows were replaced here and there by large windows with flowing tracery, to improve the lighting of the church.

VI. There is little to show for the long Perpendicular period (1360-1485), except the insertion of a few large Perpendicular windows, and the so-called “Watching-chamber,” the lower part of which is the tomb of a merchant and his wife, the upper part probably, the chantry belonging to it, _c._ 1480.

VII. In the Tudor period, however, the canons were exceedingly busy. They set to work to make the whole church fireproof by covering choir, transepts, and nave with stone vaults. The choir vault is rather overdone with prettinesses. It is a copy—and an inferior one—of the massive vault of the Divinity School, which was completed _c._ 1478. Canon Zouch, who died in 1503, left money to proceed with the vault of the north transept, beneath which is his tomb. Only a small portion of this was completed. In the clerestory of the nave also corbels were inserted to support a stone vault; but the resources of the canons seem to have failed, and the rest of the church received roofs of wood. Another considerable work was the rebuilding of the cloisters.

VIII. Finally, the whole establishment was granted in 1524 to Cardinal Wolsey, who pulled down the three western bays of the nave, as obstructing his new quadrangle: one bay has been recently rebuilt.

IX. In 1542 Henry VIII. founded the new diocese of Oxford. Till 1546 the seat of the bishopric was at Osney Abbey. On the suppression of the abbey it was transferred to Wolsey’s confiscated foundation; and the ancient Priory church became a cathedral, while at the same time it is the chapel of the college of Christ Church. There is an interesting contemporary window in the south choir aisle, showing the first bishop of Oxford, King, with Osney Abbey on one side. The “merry Christ Church bells” came from the tower shown in this window.

X. At the entrance to the Great Hall is the last bit of good Gothic done in England, a sort of chapter-house in fan-tracery.

XI. The cathedral possesses a charming Jacobean pulpit, and a large amount of fine Flemish glass of the seventeenth century—all of it taken out and stowed away in some lumber-room at a recent restoration, except one window at the west end of the north aisle of the nave, in order to insert some sham mediæval windows.

XII. There are also five windows from designs by Sir Edward Burne-Jones—three of them of great beauty; good windows by Clayton and Bell in the end walls of the transepts; and a charming reredos by Mr. Bodley, who also has the credit of the bell tower.

The Cathedral Church of St. Peter, Peterborough.

St. Augustine landed in Kent A.D. 597. In the next year Peada and Wolfhere, successive kings of Mercia, founded a monastery at Peterborough, then called Medeshamstead (“the homestead in the meadow”), and consecrated the church in the names of St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Andrew. Then said King Wulfhere with a loud voice: “This day do I freely give to St. Peter and to the abbot and to the monks of this monastery these lands and waters and meres and fens and weirs; neither shall tribute or tax be taken therefrom. Moreover I do make this monastery free, that it be subject to Rome alone; and I will that all who may not be able to journey to Rome should repair hither to St. Peter.” This consecration took place in 664. In 870 this, the first church, was destroyed by the Danes. It was not fully rebuilt till 972. Abbot Elsinus (1006-1055) collected many curios: pieces of the swaddling clothes, of the manger of the cross, and of the sepulchre of Christ; of the garments of the Virgin, of Aaron’s rod, a bone of one of the Innocents, bits of St. John the Baptist, St. Peter, and St. Paul, the body of St. Florentinus, for which he gave 100 lbs. of silver, and, most precious of all, the incorruptible arm of the Northumbrian king, Oswald, believed by half the population of England to be an effectual cure for diseases which defied the material power of drugs. Here is Bede’s account of it: “When Oswald was once sitting at dinner with Bishop Aidan, on the holy day of Easter, and a silver dish of dainties was before him, the servant, whom he had appointed to relieve the poor, came in on a sudden, and told the king that a great multitude of needy persons were sitting in the streets begging alms of the king. He immediately ordered the meat set before him to be carried to the poor, and the dish also to be cut in pieces and divided among them. At which sight the Bishop laid hold of the King’s right hand, and said, ‘May this hand never perish,’ which fell out according to his prayer; for his arm and hand being cut off from his body, when he was slain in battle, remain entire and incorrupted to this day, and are kept in a silver case as revered relics in St. Peter’s church in the royal city.” Even King Stephen came to see it; and, what is more, remitted to the monks forty marks which they owed him. Benedict was a monk at Canterbury when Becket was murdered; and when he became Abbot of Peterborough in 1177, he brought with him the slabs of the pavement which were stained with the blood of the martyr, fragments of his shirt and surplice, and two vases of his blood. So that the monastery was called “Peterborough the Proud,” and waxed rich and mighty, and church and close were holy ground, and all pilgrims, even though of royal blood, put off their shoes before passing through the western gateway of the close.

I. The second Saxon church of 972 seems to have lasted till 1116, when it was destroyed by fire, and the present church, the third, was commenced. The foundations of part of this Saxon cathedral have been recently disinterred beneath the present south transept. It was cruciform, with a square east end. The east limb was 23 feet each way; the transept was 88 feet long. Its walls were under three feet thick, so that it cannot have been intended for a vault. There is no proof that the nave was ever built.

II. In 1116 the Saxon cathedral was seriously injured by a great fire, and next year Abbot John of Sais (Seez) commenced the present Norman cathedral. In 1140 the monks entered on the new choir, which was now complete, together with the eastern aisles and eastern wall of the transepts. It is possible that the monks patched up the damaged Saxon church sufficiently to allow service to be held in it from 1116 to 1140.

When they entered into their new Norman choir, the first thing they did, probably, was to pull down the choir and transept of the Saxon church, and on the site to erect the rest of the present south transept.

Then they built the rest of the north transept. It will be noticed that it is superior in design to the south transept, its windows are splayed, and their ornamentation of later character. This north transept is illustrated by M. Viollet-le-Duc as a specially fine example of English Romanesque.

Next would be built the remaining piers and arches of the crossing, and a low lantern tower of one story only. But the western piers would not stand without abutment, and so a certain amount of the eastern bays of the nave must have been built at the same time. This comprised two bays of the triforium, for the tympana of the two eastern bays of the triforium have rude ornaments not found elsewhere in the nave. Below, it probably comprised four piers and four arches, for the four eastern piers on the north side have different bases from those to the west.

Hitherto the north wall of the Saxon nave, if built, may have been retained to shut in the cloister on the north. Now it would be pulled down and replaced by the wall of the present south aisle of the nave. Then would come the wall of the north aisle, and finally the pier-arcade and triforium, but not yet the clerestory of the nave. The nave was to be in plan precisely like that of Durham: it was to be a short nave; the central aisle to have eight bays; the side aisles were to have only seven bays, the end of each aisle being occupied by a tower, as at Durham. The ground stories of these towers now form the third bays from the west on either side of the nave. It will be noticed that the third piers from the west are exceptionally massive and strong, and that in this bay the aisle-walls are thickened. The wide arches of these bays were intended to open up the towers into the nave.

But the towers were not built. The Ely monks over the way were building a nave with no less than twelve bays, and with a western transept as well. The Peterborough monks would not like to be outdone by Ely; so they determined also to have a long nave and a western transept as well. They built only ten bays to the twelve of Ely; on the other hand, their nave, excluding western transept, was 211 feet long, while that of Ely was only 208 feet. About the same time, or probably a little earlier, the clerestory of the nave—in which pointed arches occur—was built. All this work may be assigned to Abbot Benedict (1175-1193), who is said by Swapham and John to have built the whole nave as far as—but not including—the present west front. The statements of Swapham, however, must be wrong here. He was still living _c._ 1240; so that he was only a boy when the nave was finished. He may possibly in his boyhood have seen the clerestory of the nave built, and, in writing half a century after, have thought that Benedict who built the clerestory, had built the triforium and ground-story also. But the documentary evidence at Peterborough must be received with the utmost scepticism. All that we know for certain is that the choir and the eastern portions of the central transepts were built between 1118 and 1140; and that the central transept, central tower, nave and western transept were built between 1140 and 1190.