Читать книгу Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - C. H. B. Quennell - Страница 4

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Norwich Cathedral stands on the site of no earlier church: it is to-day, in its plan and the general bulk of its detail, as characteristically Norman as when left finished by the hand of Eborard, the second bishop of Norwich.

The church was founded by Herbert de Losinga, the first bishop, as the cathedral priory of the Benedictine monastery in Norwich (a sketch of its constitution at this period will be found in the Notes on the Diocese); the foundation-stone was laid in 1096 on a piece of land called Cowholme—meaning a pasture surrounded by water—and the church was dedicated to the Holy Trinity.

It may be of interest to the tourist and student to review briefly what sort and manner of man Herbert the founder was; what had been his environment prior to his appointment as the first bishop of Norwich; and what the causes were which had as their effect the building of the cathedral.

The characteristics of the cathedral are—its long nave, which is typical of the Norman church; its glorious apsidal termination, encircled by a procession path, which recalls the plan of a French cathedral; and the form of this, with the remains of its old bishops' chair centrally placed, and with the westward position, of the throne at Torcello and other Italian churches, of the basilican type of plan.

Herbert, surnamed de Losinga, transferred the see from Thetford to Norwich in 1094, and it is from this period that the history of the cathedral may be said to commence.

Herbert was a prelate of a type that in the early days helped to build up the Church and give her stability. His nature must have been curiously complex; on the one hand, a man of action and with great capability of administration, often justifying his means by the end he had in view, and not being debarred from realising his schemes by any delicate scruples, he yet, on the other hand, presents in his letters a chastened spirituality that is not compatible with the methods he pursued when thinking only of the temporal advantages which might accrue on any certain line of action. But it may be said that his letters appear to date from the later period of his life, and after he had founded the cathedral as an expiation of that sin of simony he appears to have so deeply repented.

Yet in the earlier period, which we shall note, he was emphatically the man of action, the typical administrator, who, mixing freely in the political life of the times, was strengthening the position of the Church, and gradually leading her up to that position, which she ultimately gained, of Arbitress of Kings and Empires.

He had also a morbid belief in the power of money—he probably would have agreed that "every man has his price," and his simoniacal dealings with William Rufus, which procured his preferment to Norwich, afford evidence of this weak trait in his character.

Herbert's birthplace is disputed, and, as Dean Goulburn remarked, this is but natural: a man so justly celebrated would not, or, rather, historians will not be content with one; so that though he cannot rival Homer in that seven cities desired to be accredited each as his birthplace, yet Herbert falls not far short, and this fact alone will perhaps give some idea of his popularity during his life, and the interest then aroused which has lasted down to our own times. From a small pamphlet issued by the dean and chapter in 1896, and containing extracts from the Registrum Primum, we learn that "In primis Ecclesiam prefatam fundavit piae memoriae Herbertus Episcopus, qui Normanniae in pago Oximensi natus." First Herbert, the bishop, of pious memory, who was born in Normandy, in the district of Oximin (or Exmes).

This seems very credible, and the old monkish chronicler who was responsible for the Registrum Primum and its rugged Latin, may have had authentic proof of the truth of his assertion. The manuscript dates from the thirteenth century, and no considerable period, historically considered, had then passed since Herbert had been one of the prime movers of the religious and political life of the day.

Blomefield, the antiquary, attributed to him a Suffolk extraction, and then again spoke of his Norman descent: thus agreeing in some measure with the Registrum Primum. And again, another idea is that he was born in the hundred of Hoxne, where he possessed property, and his father before him.

Herbert had, we know, received his education in Normandy, and had taken his vows at, and ultimately had risen to be prior of, the Abbey of Fécamp in Normandy; and it was while vigorously administering this office that he received an invitation from William Rufus to come to England, being offered as an inducement the appointment of Abbot of Ramsey.

And no doubt from this period the spiritual side of his duties must of necessity have been somewhat neglected. From the position of prior of Fécamp, his circle of power limited to the neighbourhood of his priory, and his duties rounded by the due observance of the rules of his order, he was given at once the administration of what was one of the richest abbeys in England, and attained at once the power of a great feudal lord. He was Sewer to William Rufus as well, an office endowed with fees and perquisites, and so to Herbert came the temptation of accumulating wealth for his own ambitious ends. It was not, however, the sin of a small man: he introduced no personal element into his greed, but rather thought of his party and his Church, although, of necessity, an environment so purely temporal told on the spiritual side of his character. It might be best to connect the links of the East Anglian bishoprics here, although in the notes on the diocese the matter is gone into at more length.

Herbert de Losinga was the first bishop of Norwich, to which town the see was transferred in compliance with a decree of Lanfranc's Synod, held in 1075, that all sees should be fixed at the principal towns in their dioceses.

Felix was the first bishop of East Anglia, and fixed his see at Dunwich in 630.

The see was divided by Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 669 into those of Elmham and Dunwich; and these again were united under Wildred in 870, and the see fixed at Elmham, and where it remained till 1070, when Herfast, a chaplain of William the Conqueror's, moved his see to Thetford.

Now, about this time, when Herbert was abbot of Ramsey and Sewer to William Rufus, the see of Thetford was vacant, and Herbert gave the king to understand that if he was appointed to the vacant bishopric, and his father made Abbot of Winchester, he was willing and able to pay for such preferment a sum of £1900: a part of his accumulated savings, no doubt, and a very large amount for that time.

William II. made these appointments, and the sum mentioned was paid into the royal treasury; but the bishop found that he had attained his end at a cost other than he had reckoned on; public opinion in those days was quite as powerful a force as it is now, though the channels along which its force could be felt and its strength find expression were limited. Indignation was rife, and monkish versifiers and chroniclers protested in lines more or less uncomplimentary, and more or less forcible, their loathing of such sin of simony.

Now it is probable that, in expiation of this transgression, Herbert came to build Norwich Cathedral. It is certain that he almost at once repented. In after years, in his letters, he says, "I entered on mine office disgracefully, but by the help of God's grace I shall pass out of it with credit."

In Dean Goulburn's admirable monograph on the cathedral many of Herbert's letters are given, and these alone would go to stamp him as a wonderful man. His conscience was awakened by the popular outcry against his sin of simony, he plunged into his new duties at Thetford with ardour in the vain hope of distraction, but failed to find that consolation he had hoped to; and so about 1093 he determined on a visit to Rome to tender his resignation and confess his sin to Pope Urban. He journeyed to Rome and was kindly received, and the absolution he desired readily granted. The Pope was glad to see an English bishop come to him for advice, and in granting him absolution he strengthened considerably his claim to be regarded as head of the English Church.

This lengthy preamble may seem somewhat unjustifiable, but if we are to study any building aright, and if we are to interpret in any measure its meaning and symbolism, it cannot wholly be done on any line of abstract aestheticism or archaeological instinct, however intuitive it may be: we must in some measure think of the builders of old times and of the influences which with them produced its inception and have left it to come down the ages to us.

It is interesting to note that Herbert's early French training influenced him in the planning of the beautiful eastern termination to his cathedral, and the grand sweep of the procession path. Similar apsidal terminations, of slightly later date, once existed at Ely, and still remain in a modified form at Peterborough.

The old tribunal arrangement of presbyters' seats with the central bishop's throne facing west, which was part of Herbert's first plan, no doubt may safely be accredited to the influence of his journey to Rome, and where he may have become familiar with what was the usual basilican arrangement.

Herbert returned to England, penitent and forgiven for his sin, and it is probable that the Pope had laid on him, as a penance, an injunction to build churches and found religious houses, and that with the remainder of his wealth he determined to transfer the see from Thetford to Norwich and to build in the latter place his cathedral church. It would also have been in compliance with the decree of Lanfranc's Synod. The see was transferred on the 9th of April 1094, and Herbert was consecrated on the same day by Thomas, Archbishop of York.

Norwich was then an important town; in the Middle Ages it ranked as the second city in the kingdom. Its prosperity was chiefly due to its large trade in wool. It is a moot point whether the town was ever a settlement of the Romans, no traces of such occupation having ever been discovered. The castle mound, no doubt, formed some part of the earthworks of an earlier stronghold. The word Norwich is probably of Norse origin, meaning the north village or the village on the North Creek ("wic"—i.e. a creek). The city stood on a tidal bay in 1004, in which year the Danes under Sweyn completely devastated and ruined the town in revenge for the massacre of their countrymen by Aethelred the Unready two years before. So that the history of the town of Norwich, as we now know it, may be said to have started directly after this.

The foundation-stone of the cathedral was laid in 1096; and upon it, according to the Registrum Primum, the following inscription is said to have been placed:—"In nomine patris et filii et spiritus Sancti Amen Ego Herbertus Episcopus apposui istum lapidem." (In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen, I, Herbert the Bishop, have placed this stone.)

It was the custom of the Norman builders to start building from the easternmost part of the church, as the more sacred part of the structure, and then build westwards; so that probably this foundation-stone, for which diligent search has been made in vain, was in the eastmost wall of the original Norman Lady Chapel—in fact, the Registrum Primum describes how Herbert began the work "where is now the chapel of the Blessed Mary." This chapel was demolished to make way for the beautiful thirteenth-century Lady Chapel which Dean Gardiner destroyed.

The thirteenth-century builders of the Lady Chapel may have used Herbert's foundation-stone in their walling; Dean Lefroy quite lately, while repairing parts of the tower and east end, came across pieces of stone with beautiful "dog-tooth" ornament upon them, which had been used to repair the masonry that, it was evident, at one time had formed part of the thirteenth-century Lady Chapel. This must be so, since in no other part of the building save the arches now remaining in the extreme eastern wall of the procession path, which at one time gave access to the Lady Chapel, does such ornament occur.

It is probable, and the more generally accredited supposition, that Herbert built the presbytery with its encircling procession path and the original trefoil of Norman chapel radiating therefrom;—the choir and transepts with the two chapels projecting eastwards and the first two bays of the nave. Harrod advances a theory that he completely finished the whole of the cathedral church, as well as the offices for the housing of the sixty monks who were placed therein, in 1101.

He also built the episcopal palace on the north side of the cathedral, of which some parts remain to this day incorporated with work of a later period; he seems to have founded and built other churches in Norwich and Yarmouth. He died on the 22nd of July 1119, in the twenty-ninth year of his episcopate, and was buried before the high altar in his own cathedral church.

The Cathedral in the Seventeenth Century.

Bishop Eborard, who succeeded in 1121, is credited with having finished the nave from the point where Herbert had left it. The evidence which goes to support this theory is taken from the Registrum Primum. "Moreover, the same Herbert completed the church of Norwich in his own time, as I have learned from the account of old people, but have not found in writing, as far as the altar of the Holy Cross, which is now called the altar of St. William. He also built all the episcopal dwelling-house, except the great hall." The altar referred to was on the north side of choir screen.

Herbert also provided the base for the tower only, probably up to the roof level; the remainder, up to the parapet, was finished about the time of Henry I., but at that earlier period it was without the stone spire which now adds dignity to the cathedral from any point of view.

The roofs at this time were generally of a flat wooden construction throughout (similar to that of Peterborough Cathedral), and probably decorated with lozenges, flowers, and symbolical devices. When recently, under Dean Lefroy, the whitewash and paint were cleaned off from the stonework, many indications have been found of a most beautiful scheme of colour decoration.

Though we, in this part, are following up the history of the cathedral structure, yet it may be interesting to note that it was during the episcopate of Bishop Eborard that the boy saint, St. William of Norwich, was said to have been martyred. He was the son of country folk who gained a living by agriculture. During his life he worked many miracles, and by his death gave Norwich a share of his glory. It is related that he was tortured by the Jews, and on the spot where they were discovered secretly burying him, in Thorpe Wood, a chapel was erected called the Chapel of St. William in the Wood. Very little now remains of this structure, but the site can still be traced. The altar before referred to was set up to his memory in Norwich Cathedral, on the north side of the screen leading into the ante-choir.

Bishop Eborard resigned the see, or was deposed in 1145, and retired to the abbey of Fontenay, Mont-Bard, Côte d'Or, in the South of France. He had re-enforced a mandate of Herbert's that the clergy of the diocese should contribute to the fund in aid of the fabric.

During the episcopate of Eborard's successor, Bishop William de Turbe, the cathedral appears neither to have gained or suffered until, about 1169 or 1170, a fire broke out in the monastic buildings; the fire-extinguishing appliances in those days, if indeed there were any at all, could not prevent it spreading to the cathedral. It is generally believed that the original Norman Lady Chapel was also well destroyed.

Bishop William de Turbe, although an old man at the time (he died in 1174), is said to have taken a vow that he would not go from within twelve leucas of the cathedral, unless compelled by the direst necessity, until the ravages of the flames had been repaired. He is reported to have seated himself at the door of the cathedral, and to have begged alms for this purpose from the worshippers. The work of reparation was carried on by his successor, John of Oxford, who may also be said to have completely finished Herbert's cathedral. He provided the furniture of the church, the vestments, books and ornaments, and, probably, entirely re-modelled the monastic buildings. He is also said to have built the Infirmary, of which now only three piers remain, to the south of the cloisters.

In the years following, various works were doubtless carried on, but it is not until the time of Walter de Suffield, about 1250, that anything important in the way of structural alteration was effected. The fire of 1169 had in part or whole destroyed the original Norman Lady Chapel, and Bishop de Turbe had restored the same in some measure. But the cultus of the Blessed Virgin in the interval had gathered strength wonderfully; chapels dedicated to her naturally became important, and Bishop Suffield determined to pull down the old Norman work and rebuild a chapel in the Early English style then prevalent. Dean Goulburn, in his work on the cathedral, estimated the size of the later chapel at 90 feet long by 30 feet wide, and these dimensions are shown plotted in dotted lines on the plan in this book. This is longer and narrower than the size given in previous conjectures, but Dean Goulburn had the opportunity of inspecting the foundations of the chapel, which, with those of the still earlier one, lie buried but a few feet below the surface in a garden to the east of the cathedral. In the same place, and over the entrance arches remaining, the height and lines of the later roof can be seen still plainly marked on the stonework. These entrance arches are beautifully moulded and decorated on the inside with the "dog-tooth" ornament—a decoration peculiar to the Early English style.

The theological reaction which followed close on this movement led to the neglect of the chapel, and obviated the necessity of maintaining it as a place of worship. It had probably greatly decayed; that Dean Gardiner (1573–89), no longer needing it for services, was tempted to pull it down, as a cheaper expedient than keeping it in repair.

In 1271 Norwich was visited by a terrific thunderstorm, when the tower was struck by lightning. The damage, however, was not great, as, fortunately, the excessive rains which followed quenched the fire that had been kindled. This incident, however, was the precursor of one of the stormiest periods in the history of the city and its cathedral church. Roger de Skerning occupied the episcopal chair, and the prior was one William de Brunham, a man of fierce and truculent disposition. An outbreak of hostilities between the citizens on the one hand and the monks on the other, was brought about by his arbitrary assumption of power; the bishop throughout, ostensibly preferring the safer game of a somewhat anomalous position of neutrality, is nevertheless believed to have covertly sanctioned his proceedings.

A fair was held in Tombland—to the west of the precincts—annually on Trinity Sunday, and by right of ancient custom the priors reaped large revenues by the imposition of tolls on the sales. Tombland, derived from Tomeland, a vacant space, had originally formed part of the estate bequeathed by Herbert, the founder, to the monks; the boundaries in course of time had become matters of controversy, and it is probable that the citizens felt the imposition of these tolls and dues to be a real and serious grievance. A riot broke out and the monks were driven within their gates. Had the prior at this juncture chosen to act peacefully, it is probable that history would contain no record of the sacrilege that followed. He, however, decided to resist force by force, and carefully generaled his monks, disposing them at the various strategic points of his domain. At the same time he sent to Yarmouth for mercenaries—these arrived and the tables were turned; the prior's forces sallied forth from the gates and robbed and pillaged the town.

The citizens, roused to a pitch of madness, drove them and the soldiers back again within the walls of the monastery; the bishop, instead of acting as peacemaker, appears to have preserved his position of neutrality and quietly stopped in his palace. There was a short interval of truce, but it only served as a breath to fan the flames; the citizens besieged the cathedral precincts, and by the means probably of slings succeeded in hurling combustible materials into the buildings, with a result that the whole of the monastery and the cathedral itself was soon in flames. It seems to be an established fact that the prior had placed men in the tower to shoot at the citizens, and it is conjectured that they, and not the citizens, were the cause of the outbreak here.

The only part of the cathedral that escaped was the Lady Chapel; the rest was gutted, vestments and ornaments were carried off, and the monks for the most part slain.

So ended the first part of this lamentable chapter in the history of Norwich. A sentence of excommunication was passed on the city, and King Henry hastened to Norwich to preside at the trial of the prisoners.

The accounts which have come down to us are as varied as might be expected, the chroniclers of the one party, of course, blaming the other side; it seems, however, to have been proved "that, after all, the church was burnt by that accursed prior"; but many of the citizens were hung, drawn and quartered, and the city had to pay in all 3000 marks towards repairing the church and monastical buildings, and to provide a gold pyx, weighing ten pounds, of gold; the monks in their turn had to make new gates and entrances into the precincts. The St. Ethelbert's Gate-house was part of the work imposed on the monks; it is of early Decorated character and was erected probably early in the fourteenth century.

Bishop Roger de Skerning had died in retirement on the 22nd of January 1277, and in the meantime the work of reparation had proceeded with such vigour that on Advent Sunday 1278 his successor, Bishop Middleton, was inaugurated with great state; Edward I. and his Queen with the Bishops of London, Hereford, and Waterford being present. He does not seem to have done much in the way of building, though the work of reparation was carried on; he died in 1287, and it was left to his successor, Bishop Ralph de Walpole, to begin the work of rebuilding the cloisters. The original Norman cloisters, which had endured until the time of the great fire in 1272, were probably of wood. It was determined to rebuild them in stone in the prevailing style. The cloisters are described in more detail in the notes on the interior of the cathedral, so that it will be sufficient to state here that their building spread over a period of one hundred and thirty-three years, and that they were finished during the episcopate of Bishop Alnwick.