read the whole in the original for the sake of seeing its general spirit and bearing. The description of the details is of great interest. The arrangement of the porticoes, &c. is of course quite adapted to the wants of the Church in that age: it is fair to own that the chief entrance appears to have faced the East in this church. Mention is made also of seats in order for the Bishops and Presbyters, and of the Altar in the midst: the whole being encompassed with wooden network, exquisitely worked, in order to be made inaccessible to the multitude.* Further ont we read that Paulinus rebuilt his church "such as he had been taught from the delineation of the holy oracles." And again, "More wonderful than wonders are the archetypes, and the intelligent and godlike prototypes and patterns (of earthly church building); namely, I say, the renewing of the divine and reasonable building in the soul"; assuming that material churches are but copies from some heavenly type. Again, a passage, in which the ruined fabrick and the persecuted Church are mixed up, speaks of the Church as "having been made after the image of GOD,"§ and more to the same effect. The symbolical prophecy of the "fair edification" of the Gentile Church || is quoted as being almost literally fulfilled in the Tyrian church, and is still further symbolized by the Panegyrist. The four-square atrium is said to set forth the four Gospels of the scripture.** The whole arrangement of the church is symbolised at much length, as setting forth the different divisions of the laity and the states of the faithful with respect to advance in holiness. The great portico symbolized GOD the FATHER: the side porticoes the other Two Persons of the MOST HOLY TRINITY. The seats represented the souls of the faithful, upon which, as on the Day of Pentecost, the cloven tongues would descend and sit upon each of them. "The revered and great and only altar, what could this be but the spotlessness of soul and holiness of holies of the common Priest of us all?”* Once more, the parallel between the spiritual and material Churches being continued, the WORD, the Great Demiurgus of all things, is said to have Himself made upon earth a copy of the heavenly pattern which is the Church of the Firstborn written in heaven, Jerusalem that is above, Sion the Mount of GOD, and the city of the living GOD. It appears then that throughout this description a symbolical meaning is found attached to the material church : and this not far-fetched or now first fancifully imagined; but appealing, as it seems, to what the auditors would be prepared to grant, and admitted by the historian without a comment, as one specimen of a class. We have before remarked that every notice of the particular distribution of a Church for the reception of the different classes of Christians, may be taken as an argument on our side: for if it can be shewn that the form of churches was not arbitrary, but was adapted to certain peculiar wants, it must be granted that there was some particular law of design, and that law connected with Ritual; and then, as before pointed out, this arrangement becomes itself symbolical, and that intentionally. We shall only refer here to a passage quoted by Bingham,† in which S. Gregory Thaumaturgus describes the places in church assigned respectively to the five degrees of Penitents. Mede argues for the existence of churches in the * Euseb. H. E., x., 65. + Greg. Nyssen, iii, 567. Discourse of Churches, Folio Edn., p. 333. first three centuries, from the Universal custom of praying towards the East, the necessity of providing distinct places for the Penitents, Hearers, Catechumens, and Faithful, and from the patterns of the Jewish proseuche and synagogues. But all these arguments seem to tell as much for some particular form of churches as for their existence that is they prove that the earliest churches were designed on rules which, even if not intentionally symbolical (though we have shewn that many were so), became by a natural process intentional among later churchbuilders. So also with respect to the great division into Nave and Sanctuary by a screen of some sort: concerning which the passages that might be cited from ancient writers would be innumerable. We shall only give one quoted by Father Thiers from a Poem of S. Gregory of Nazianzum, in which the balustrade or roodscreen is said to be "between two worlds, the one immovable, the other changeful; the one of gods (or heaven) the other of mortals (or earth); that is to say, between the Choir and the Nave, between the Clergy and the Laity." We have attempted to prove then that the earliest Christian churches were designed, or described, symbolically: by showing that there was a reason for their shape, whether oblong, cruciform, or circular; for their main division into Choir and Nave, and their sub-division for the Penitents: for their orientation; and even to some extent for their minor internal arrangements: and that some type or pattern of a church was universally recognized.* It would * Much stress is laid by some on the acknowledged Basilican origin of Churches as an argument against the principle here contended for. But we find a great authority on the Antiquities of Christian Rome deciding differently. "There seems to be in the building of churches, as in the mosaicks, and other works of art of the old Christian times in Rome, one constant type in which the art of building could show little freedom or variety."Beschreibung der Stadt Rom. Basiliken. Vol. i. p. 430. require more reading than we can boast of to give a catena of writers who have asserted the symbolism of churches. But if the point has been in any way proved for the first four centuries, enough will have been done: since from that period we can trace from existing edifices the gradual relinquishment of the peculiar Basilican plan, and general adoption of the Latin Cross, or oblong, in the West, while the East consistently retained the Greek Cross. We observe it stated that Mr. E. Sharpe, in a paper read before the Cambridge Camden Society, (not yet published by them,) described the gradual "typical additions" to the Basilican ground plan. Indeed symbolism, to any extent, once made known, must have become a rule and precedent to later Church architects. S. Isidore, of Seville, incidentally mentions many symbolical arrangements: they will be found in the notes to the text of the Rationale. Many pieces of symbolism are to be found incidentally in the Decretum of Gratian. In mentioning Durandus himself, it seems proper to anticipate an objection which may occur to some readers. The authority, it may be said, of that writer must be very small who can give such absurd derivations as cemeterium from cime, altare from alta res, allegory from allon and gore. But it must be remembered, firstly, that in the thirteenth century, Greek was a language almost unknown in Europe: next that our author nowhere professes an acquaintance with it: further, that the science of derivation was hardly understood till within the last few years : and lastly, that Cicero's authority led Durandus into some errors; for instance, his derivation of templum from tectum amplum. One proof of the reality of Durandus's principles we must not fail to notice. It is the express allusion which * Ecclesiologist, vol.i. p. 120. he makes to, and the graphical description which he gives of, that which we know to have been the style of architecture employed in his time. The tie beams, the deeply splayed windows, the interior shafts, all prove that we are engaged with a writer of Early English date. It is very remarkable, that Durandus, S. Isidore, Beleth, and the rest, seem to quote from some Canons of church symbolism, now unknown to us. Their words are often, even where they are not very connected nor intelligible, the same. One example may suffice. "In that this rod," says Hugh of S. Victor, "is placed above the Cross, it is shewn that the words of scripture be consummated and confirmed by the Cross: whence our LORD said in His Passion, 'IT IS FINISHED.' And His Title was indelibly written over Him." (p. 200.) "In that the iron rod," says Durandus, "is placed above the Cross, on the summit of the church, it signifieth that Holy Scripture is now consummated and confirmed. Whence saith our LORD in His Passion, IT IS FINISHED,' and that Title is written indelibly over Him. (p. 28.) The following, by way of another instance, is the symbolical* description of a church, written on a fly-leaf, at the beginning of a MS. "Psalterium Glossatum," in the public library at Boulogne, though formerly in that of S. Bertin's Abbey, at S. Omer. The text is either of the tenth or eleventh century; but it will be seen that the words of Durandus, writing at so great a distance of time and place, are, nearly the same in some passages. Fundamentum ipsius Cameræ est Fides. Latitudo ejus est Caritas. Longitudo ejus est Perseverantia. British Magazine, 1843, p. 393. |