Читать книгу The Historical Growth of the English Parish Church - A. Hamilton Thompson - Страница 3

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§ 1. The early history of the English parish church is obscure, owing to the fact that architectural remains of the earliest fabrics are somewhat scanty, and that their actual date still affords ground for dispute. The episcopal constitution of the Romano-British church is not fully known; but it is probable that, as in Gaul, every considerable centre of population possessed within its walls a church, which followed the ‘basilican’ arrangement common to the Christian churches of the Roman empire. But while, on the continent of Europe, the ecclesiastical history of the chief provincial capitals remained unbroken, and the great cathedrals of the middle ages rose upon sites which had been, from the establishment of Christianity in the empire, the centres of the religious life of Roman cities, the continuous history of church-building in England was broken by the relapse into heathenism which followed the victorious invasions of the Saxons. The history of church architecture begins again with the coming of St Augustine in 597 A.D. Of churches which may reasonably be said to have been built as an immediate result of his mission, there are several remains in Kent; and the famous church of St Martin at Canterbury is probably in large part the building which he and his companions used for their first services. There is more than one theory as to the original extent of the church; but there can be little doubt that the western part of the chancel, the south wall of which is built of Roman brick, is of Augustine’s time. Bede tells us that Augustine found an earlier church, built during the Roman occupation, on this site or on a site closely corresponding to it. It is safe to assume that he repaired this building, and spared all that he could of its materials. Apart from the Kentish churches there remains, on the remote part of the Essex coast, a building known as St Peter’s on the Wall, which appears to be connected architecturally with the Kentish group. Its history cannot be traced back earlier than about 653 A.D., when St Cedd was sent from Northumbria to preach to the East Saxons. One of his two chief missionary centres was the Roman city of Othona, then known as Ythanceaster, at the mouth of the Blackwater. Here he ordained and baptized: he also, says Bede, built churches in several places. St Peter’s on the Wall, now long disused, stands on the site of the eastern gateway of Othona, and is largely built of re-used Roman material. It presents difficulties of site and plan which forbid us to connect it positively with St Cedd; but there is a high probability that it is his church, while, in point of plan, it is too closely allied to the Kentish group to admit of a doubt as to its connexion with those churches. The actual way in which the connexion came about is, however, a difficult problem to solve.

§ 2. There is much uncertainty with regard to the chronology of pre-Conquest architecture in England. From the actual masonry of the buildings it is difficult to gather much information. Saxon builders shewed little architectural skill: their methods were unprogressive; and the chief criterion by which we may estimate any degree of progress in their work is found in their efforts to develop the ground plan of their churches. The course of architectural evolution between the coming of St Augustine and the Norman conquest suffered more than one serious check. The later part of the seventh century, the age of Wilfrid and archbishop Theodore, was an epoch during which ecclesiastical art flourished. It is now that we arrive at the beginning of the history of the parish church as distinguished from the monastic missionary settlement of early Saxon times. The churches which Augustine and his companions had founded at Canterbury and Rochester were churches of monasteries, established as missionary centres in a heathen kingdom. The work of evangelisation was carried on for a century afterwards by the agency of monastic communities. The churches of Benedict Biscop at Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, Wilfrid’s churches at Hexham and Ripon, the Mercian churches of Peterborough and Brixworth, were all churches of monks. But, as Christianity grew in the Saxon kingdoms, churches were naturally multiplied. Wilfrid himself was a large land-owner in Mercia, and may be credited with the building of churches upon his lands: the foundation of the monastery of Brixworth and the church of Barnack may be attributed to his influence. His example would be followed by others; and we shall not be far wrong if we look upon the private estate of Saxon times as identical with the early parish. Owners of large estates built churches upon their property; and undoubtedly the growth of church-building on private lands led to that organisation of the ecclesiastical system in England, which was the great work of Theodore’s episcopate. During this period, the church plan was founded upon a compromise; but continental influence, if modified by contact with Celtic traditions, was strong; and this influence came from Italy through the channel of the Gallican church.

§ 3. When Wilfrid died in 709 A.D., the age of religious and artistic activity was already passing. The power of Northumbria was declining; and the record of the next hundred years is one of quarrels between the various tribal kings of Britain. At the end of the eighth century the Northmen appeared on the Northumbrian coast. Significant features of their activity were the destruction of the church of Lindisfarne and the sack of the monastery at Wearmouth. During the next fifty years, while the kingdom of Wessex was rising to the front place in English affairs, the incursions of the Danes became more constant. In 851 A.D. a Danish army took up its winter quarters in England. From Thanet and Sheppey the Northmen extended their ravages over the whole east coast. The army which defeated the East Anglian levies at Thetford in 870 marked its progress across Mercia and East Anglia by the destruction of monasteries, chief among them the abbey of Peterborough. During the next hundred years, under the constant pressure of Danish invasion, little or no church-building can have been done; and it is likely that, for a long time before 870, little progress had been made. In 958 or 959 Edgar the Peaceable succeeded to the throne of Wessex and became master of the whole of England. During his reign, which lasted till 975, the great ecclesiastics who rose to influence at his court, Dunstan, Oswald and Ethelwold, busied themselves with the re-establishment of monasticism in England, and the rebuilding of churches. The activity of Oswald in Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, and at Ramsey in Huntingdonshire, of Ethelwold at Winchester, Ely and Peterborough, shews how widespread was the area of the destruction wrought by the Danes. This period of revival lasted until the beginning of the eleventh century. The Danish conquest under the heathen Swegen brought more destruction with it, and although Cnut restored the churches which his father had destroyed, it was probably not until the accession of Edward the Confessor in 1042 that another era of church-building began in earnest.

§ 4. During the religious revival under Dunstan and his fellow prelates, the reformers looked once more to the continent for inspiration. Gaul, however, was no longer a possible source. Between England and the French kingdom which was rising on the ruins of the Neustrian monarchy, lay the Danelaw of Gaul, the province of Normandy. Access to the old current of religious tradition, denied on that side, was unimpeded on the side of the Low Countries and Germany, where, along the Rhine, the Austrasian kingdom still pursued its existence under the powerful sway of the Saxon emperors who had superseded the house of Charles the Great. It was from monasteries in this district that the restoration of the religious life in England was most powerfully helped; and with such help, came inevitably architectural influence. If we are to look anywhere for the immediate origin of such well-known features of pre-Conquest architectural detail as “long-and-short” work or strip-work, it is to be found in the early religious buildings of the Rhine provinces. Their ultimate origin was, no doubt, Italian; but during this period, English building indicates no such close communication with original sources as existed during the period of Gallo-Roman influence. The era of German influence lasted but a short time, and examples of it, though familiar from the peculiar details of their masonry, are comparatively few. The builders of the period immediately preceding the Conquest seem to have been thrown more upon their own resources, and to have abandoned German details gradually in favour of a more simple fashion of building. Certain German features, however, which had been imperfectly developed during the period of revival, persisted in their work; and the closest parallels to the English towers of the eleventh century, so common in Lincolnshire and parts of Yorkshire, are to be seen in western Germany, and in that part of Italy where German influence was most powerful.

§ 5. The development of Norman architecture in England was due to the increasing skill in construction which followed the Conquest. For the building of the larger churches, foreign prelates relied on the help of Norman masons, trained in artistic methods far in advance of those which Saxon builders had learned to use. The great aisled churches of the monasteries, Durham, Winchester, Norwich, or Gloucester, planned and built under the superintendence of men who were in close touch with the contemporary art of Normandy, led the way, and provided patterns of architecture which could not fail to exercise an influence upon the smaller churches of the country. In the early parish churches of the Norman period, we cannot expect to find this influence strongly marked. Local masons had little opportunity of acquaintance with the more advanced craftsmanship of the Normans until some large cathedral or abbey church rose in their neighbourhood, and supplied them with a model. Even then their imitation would be rough and uncertain, until practice made perfect their first attempts. The model would also provide them with a plan far beyond the requirements of a parish church, where a single priest served a limited congregation. There was no need of the provision of a large quire or of a number of separate altars: the ritual necessaries were all of the simplest kind. The old plan therefore sufficed in most instances. It is in the masonry that we notice the earliest introduction of modifications and improvements. The thin Saxon walling gives place to more massive construction: walls composed of a rubble core with facings of dressed stone take the place of the rubble masonry with through-stone quoins and dressings of the later Saxon period. The recessing of the arch, with shafts in its jambs, becomes gradually understood: the beginnings of the practice were rough and unintelligent, and it was not without difficulty that the local builder learned the structural use of jamb-shafts as supporting and corresponding to the orders of the arch above. Our country churches supply many instances of this faltering treatment of new motives. Here and there it is possible to trace the direct influence of some large Norman building on the work of the country mason. At Branston, four miles south-east of Lincoln, the western tower of the church belongs to the class which is common in the neighbourhood—a class whose origin is earlier than the introduction of Norman influence. Its masonry has several characteristics of the type known as Saxon. But the high arch of its western doorway, and the small arcades which have been introduced, on either side of the doorway, in the face of the tower, shew very clearly that its builder had seen Norman work, and was attempting, roughly, but not without success, to copy it. Further, the arch of its doorway, and the tall shafts, with crocketed capitals, which support it, are beyond doubt closely imitated from the lower arches of the Norman west front of Lincoln minster. As the Norman church at Lincoln was consecrated in 1092, the tower at Branston can hardly be earlier than that date, and may be several years later. Such examples as this shew that there is still much to discover with regard to the chronology of the later Saxon architecture, and that the grasp of new methods by native builders was acquired very gradually.

§ 6. We know, from the indications with respect to certain counties supplied by Domesday Book, that in 1086 the number of parish churches in England corresponded closely to the number which existed until the comparatively modern sub-division of parishes. Domesday was not intended to be a directory or clergy list; and the return of the churches existing upon manors depended upon the view which its individual compilers took of their duties. We have seen that the earliest English churches were monastic centres of missionary influence, built on land granted by wealthy converts to Christianity. The revival at the end of the tenth century was also monastic. But, after the age of Dunstan, the monastic ideal suffered an eclipse. The parish churches of the later Saxon age, although many of them had been granted to, and remained the property of monasteries, were for the most part, if not entirely, served by secular priests who were under no monastic obligation. The parish was co-extensive, so far as we can tell, with the estate of the Saxon landlord: in most cases the church was his property, the appointment of the priest lay in his hands, and the church and its advowson passed to the Norman land-owner who superseded him.

§ 7. With the Norman conquest came a great revival of monastic life. The conquerors founded and heaped benefactions on new monasteries, or enlarged the possessions of Norman abbeys by granting them new estates in England. Many manors and more churches thus became the property of religious houses; and, where the property of a benefactor was widely scattered, a monastery might acquire a number of churches in many different counties. Thus the church of Kirkby in Malhamdale, in west Yorkshire, became the property of the abbey of West Dereham, in Norfolk; while a moiety of the tithes of Gisburn, in the same neighbourhood, belonged to the nuns of Stainfield, near Lincoln. These gifts, in the first instance, depended entirely on the free will of pious benefactors. The monasteries were naturally expected to present suitable priests to the churches; but this was left to their discretion. The logical result of these unconditional benefactions was that, as time went on, many churches were totally appropriated by monasteries: the income from the tithes, which should have served for the support of parish priests, was absorbed by the religious proprietors. Bishops recognised the evil; and towards the beginning of the thirteenth century steps were taken to check the control of monasteries over their subject churches. Archbishop Geoffrey Plantagenet in 1205 allowed the abbey of West Dereham to appropriate the fruits of the church of Kirkby in Malhamdale, but required them to reserve a stipend of ten marks yearly for a vicar. Such ordinations of vicarages became common within the next few years; and the great feature of the episcopate of Hugh of Wells, bishop of Lincoln 1209–35, was the provision of vicars, not monks, but secular priests with sufficient stipends, in the appropriated churches of his huge diocese. The monastery was usually allowed to take the greater tithes, i.e. the tithes of corn, for itself, the smaller tithes, or a sum in commutation of them, being reserved to the vicar. The study of episcopal registers shews that these provisions were sometimes evaded; and anyone who has made out lists of vicars of appropriated churches knows that frequently long gaps occur, in which it is probable that the monastery allowed the presentation to lapse unchecked; but the ordination of vicarages was in great measure a cure for the evil. However, during the thirteenth century, laymen still continued to present religious bodies with large gifts of property. The inroads which these benefactions began to make upon estates held in chief of the king were a menace to royal power. In order to provide a regular restraint upon the growth of ecclesiastical property, the statute of mortmain was passed in 1279. As a consequence of this measure, any man who wished to alienate land or churches to a religious corporation, was required to apply for royal letters patent. If it were found by inquisition that the property could be alienated without prejudice to the king or the lord from whom the fee was immediately held, the licence was granted; and, if a church formed part of the property, the religious corporation was allowed to appropriate it by the grant of a further licence, the ordination of a vicarage being left to the decree of the bishop. It need hardly be said that a very large number of churches remained all through the middle ages in the hands of private patrons, and that by no means all churches granted to monasteries were appropriated by them. Of the arrangements for these unappropriated rectories more will be said later. The connexion of the parish churches with the monasteries is of great importance, however, for our present purpose.

§ 8. As so many churches belonged to monasteries, it is constantly assumed that the monasteries, especially during Norman times, provided parish churches at their own expense. Thus the splendid series of churches in south Lincolnshire, on the road from Sutton Bridge to Spalding, is said, without historical foundation, to have been produced by rivalry in church-building between Croyland abbey and other monasteries. It is true that, as at Spalding in 1284, the religious house would probably contribute a certain amount to the building or rebuilding of an appropriated church, but that amount would be limited, and the parishioners would be left to provide the rest according to their means. When vicarages were ordained, the repair of the chancel, the rector’s peculiar property, was usually left to the monastery as rector; but we often find that a special stipulation was made by which part of the repairs even of this portion of the church devolved upon the vicar, and that sometimes his stipend was so arranged as to free the monastery of this obligation altogether. A monastery naturally regarded the fruits of a church as an addition to its own income. The most that could be expected of it would be that it would employ a reasonable part of the profits in keeping the fabric in order. If the monastery owned the manor as well as the advowson, it probably, and here and there unmistakably, did more for the fabric of the parish church. But these fabrics were in most cases existing when the monasteries took seisin of the advowsons of the churches in question. When appropriation followed, the enrichment of the monastery, not the enlargement of the building, was the end in view; and the plea made by the monastery in dealing with the bishop over appropriations, was invariably one of poverty. When a church, then, was rebuilt or enlarged, the money came for the most part from parishioners, the monastery supplying its proportion, not without a view to strict economy.

§ 9. Further, the builders were generally, it may be assumed, local masons. We have seen an indication of this at Branston, where the builder grafted imitative detail in a new style upon his own old-fashioned work. The splendid development of many twelfth century parish churches is no argument against their local origin. Architectural enthusiasm in the middle ages was a possession of the people generally: it was not confined to a limited and privileged body. The large monastery or cathedral churches in every neighbourhood were sources of inspiration to the builders of the parish churches: details were copied, and methods of construction were learned from them, and the structural progress which took place in them had a constant influence upon the architectural improvement of the less important buildings. Here and there, perhaps, a mason, who had taken part in the building of one of the greater churches, would be called into consultation for the design of a parish church; and this, as years went by, would become more common. It should be noted that in the middle ages the builder was not a mere instrument to carry out the designs of an architect. He himself, the master mason of the work, was the architect. His training lay, not in the draughtsmanship of an architect’s office, but in practical working with mallet and chisel. Thus, during at any rate the earlier part of the middle ages, design was in no small degree a matter of instinct. Architecture was a popular, democratic art, in which the instinctive faculties became trained to a high pitch. The individual mason was allowed free play for his talent; and the result was that constant variety of design and detail, that continual movement and progress, those forward steps or that conservative hesitation in the art of different districts, which are the eternal attraction of medieval architecture. One feature of the instinctive faculty of design in the builder was that he did much of his work by eye alone. He must have made some rough measurements for the setting out of his buildings; but he was not always provided with a plan or elevations. Even in our larger churches, his work was sometimes left to his own judgment. The western transept at Lincoln, for example, can hardly have been built with much forethought. Each set of masons employed upon it seems to have been left to its own devices: accurate spacing was entirely neglected, and the connexion between the different parts of the design was evidently a matter of guess-work, which led to curious irregularities in the elevation. In this striking instance, the builders were doubtless hampered by having to build their new transept round older buildings, which were not taken down until their work was well advanced; and the encumbered site alone may account for some bewilderment.

§ 10. Parish churches in England may be divided, for historical purposes, into four classes. (1) In some monastic churches, as in the Benedictine priory of Selby and the Augustinian priory of Bridlington, the parochial altar was in the nave of the church, west of the rood screen, and was served by a vicar or a curate, who was responsible for the spiritual welfare of the parish. (2) In collegiate churches a similar arrangement existed; but in the majority of such cases the dean or warden of the college was regarded as the parson of the parish, and had the cure of souls. (3) Of parish churches appropriated to monasteries, we have spoken already. (4) There remains the very large number of unappropriated parish churches, in which the rector or parson was directly responsible for the cure of souls. The duties of the rector were regarded in the middle ages with considerable latitude. Nothing was more usual than for a man of good family, or one whose clerkly talents made him a constant attendant on the king or the great officers of state, to obtain a number of benefices which provided him with a necessary income. Such parsons were naturally non-resident: as often as not, they had not proceeded to full orders. The Patent Rolls are full of grants of benefices to persons engaged in the work of the royal chancery or exchequer; while the papal registers in the Vatican library contain thousands of dispensations by which pluralists were enabled to hold several benefices at a time, to acquire benefices up to a stated value, or to defer their ordination to the priesthood. Popes and bishops alike kept a careful watch on the attempt to obtain additional benefices without licence; but it is quite obvious that little discrimination could be exercised, and that dispensations became matters of form, for which the applicant, backed by a request from the king or some magnate, made a payment in money. Pluralism was further increased by the pope’s claim to reserve certain benefices on a vacancy, and provide incumbents to them. This claim, which originally was intended to prevent patrons from keeping benefices vacant and appropriating their fruits, led to the enactment of the statute of provisors in 1351. Papal provisions, though nominally forbidden, were not stopped by this law, but became subject to regulation.

§ 11. To the medieval mind, the habit of a non-resident rector, holding several churches in plurality, was a matter of course, which cannot be judged by the moral standard of our own day. It must be regarded simply as a fact, not as an abuse. The rector was required to see that his churches were properly served, and probably, like his successors after the Reformation, he paid a curate to do his work in each of his churches. In some cases, like monastic impropriators, he made an arrangement by which a vicar was provided with a fixed stipend; and now and then a vicar was properly instituted by the bishop at his presentation. This was the regular course of procedure in parish churches attached to prebends in cathedral and collegiate churches, which were held for the most part by king’s clerks, and often by foreigners appointed by the pope. But it is clear that, where a man held ten or twelve churches at once, they might be served very irregularly. Again, no form of litigation in the middle ages was so common as that between two or more claimants of an advowson. The sub-division of the ownership of a manor might and did constantly lead to a dispute between rival patrons for the presentation to a living. Thus, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, the church of Adlingfleet in Yorkshire became the subject of a long law-suit between two separate patrons, the archbishop of York, and their presentees, which was protracted for nearly thirty years before the royal and papal courts. The candidates, all non-residents, strove to obstruct each other. In the parish itself they made attempts to defend their rights by force, and it is difficult to see how, during this period of strife, the cure of souls could have been adequately served. Churches appropriated to monasteries were more fortunate; for they, in most instances, had the advantage of a resident vicar, and the appropriation removed disputes as to the patronage.

§ 12. Pluralism and litigation, in themselves, had no noticeable effect on architectural development. But they led to a desire, on the part of the parishioners, for resident clergy with an endowment independent of the caprices of lay patrons. And this led to the establishment of chantry priests at the altars of churches, which had a powerful effect upon the architectural growth of the churches in which they served. Towards the end of the thirteenth century, and from that time to the Reformation, the foundation of chantries in parish churches became a common thing. Zeal for the foundation of monasteries had spent itself. Lay benefactors acquired the habit of alienating land, not to some religious house, but to one or more priests who, as a condition of the gift, should say mass daily at one of the altars of a parish church for the good estate of the giver and other persons named by him, and for their souls after death. These endowments of services were known as chantries, and were intended to continue for ever. Many chantries were founded in cathedral and monastery churches; but, as time went on, the church of the parish in which the benefactor lived was more and more frequently chosen as their site. That this had been always the custom is probable; but it was a custom which certainly was not universal until the later middle ages. From the time of the enactment of the statute of mortmain, we possess a series of royal licences for the foundation of chantries and gifts of land to chantry priests, which are invaluable in tracing the history of the English parish church. A chantry, however, is a service, not the building in which it is held. It might be founded at the high altar of a church, but more usually was connected with one of the lesser altars. It was natural, however, that a founder would be willing to do something for the repair of the part of the church in which his chantry was held. Repair took the form of enlargement and rebuilding; and while special chantry chapels were sometimes built as excrescences from the main body of the church, the usual building which was done in connexion with a chantry implied the widening or addition of an aisle.

§ 13. A good concrete example of this procedure is the church of Beckingham, five miles east of Newark-on-Trent, a building of various periods, but chiefly of the early part of the thirteenth century. The aisles of the nave are wide, and belong, in their present condition, to the fourteenth century. At the end of each are distinct indications of the former presence of an altar. The parson of Beckingham in the second quarter of the fourteenth century was Thomas Sibthorpe, a man of some substance, and one of the royal clerks. His benefactions to the church of his native village of Sibthorpe and to Beckingham involved him in some litigation, ample records of which are to be found in the Patent Rolls. In 1332 he obtained a licence to found a chantry in the chapel of St Mary, in the north part of Beckingham church, and by the end of 1347, he built the chapel of St Anne, on the south side of the church. Both the existing chapels agree with one another in date; and we may safely infer that Sibthorpe probably widened, and certainly rebuilt both the aisles between 1332 and 1347. He evidently intended his chapel of St Mary to be of some importance, as the chantry priest was called the warden, and was probably intended to be the head of a small college, such as existed at Sibthorpe. Of a chantry in the chapel of St Anne we know nothing: Sibthorpe endowed two candles to be burned there at certain times. An interesting feature of this fourteenth century rebuilding is that the north and south doorways, both of late twelfth century work, were removed to the new walls.

§ 14. The growth of chantry foundations formed the most remarkable feature of the lay activity of the later middle ages, and is treated in the next chapter with a view to its influence on architectural progress. We may sum up the influence of the historical facts already indicated upon the fabric of the parish church in the following conclusions: (1) The origin of the parish church was the spiritual need of the private estate. (2) The lord of the manor was the founder and provided the fabric. (3) The work of the fabric was entrusted to local masons. (4) In the division of expense, the rector became responsible for the chancel and the altar from which he received his dues. (5) The parishioners were responsible for the fabric of the nave. (6) In churches appropriated to monasteries, the chancel was the only part of the fabric for which the monastery was responsible, and a part of its responsibility was usually laid upon the vicar. (7) Where the monastery was lord of the manor, it would take its share of the building and up-keep of the church with the other parishioners. We shall see in a later chapter some concrete instances of manorial and monastic influence at work upon the structure of the church.