Читать книгу English Cathedrals Illustrated - Francis Bond - Страница 10

Table of Contents

FROM NORTH-EAST.

Chichester cathedral, though one of the smallest, is to the student of mediæval architecture one of the most interesting and important of our Cathedrals. At Salisbury one or two styles of architectures are represented; at Canterbury two or three; at Chichester every single style is to be seen without a break from the eleventh to the sixteenth century. It is an epitome of English architectural history for 500 years. Early Norman, late Norman, late Transitional, early Lancet, late Lancet, early Geometrical, late Geometrical, Curvilinear, Perpendicular and Tudor work all appear in the structure side by side. We have many other heterogeneous and composite cathedrals, but nowhere, except perhaps at Hereford, can the whole sequence of the mediæval styles be read so well as at Chichester.

The last kingdom, says Canon Bright, that remained outside the Church, was that of the South Saxons, hemmed in by a thick line of well-nigh impenetrable forest, and so barbarous as to be at once ignorant of one of the simplest arts, and furious against the incoming of foreigners. It was reserved for the great Wilfrid, of Hexham, Ripon and York, in one of his exiles (611)—caused originally by the high-handed partition of his overlarge diocese of York—to do what no one as yet had done for these poor rude heathen—what some Irish monks had tried to do and had failed. They were desperate with famine; he taught them to fish in the sea; for he was as ready in homely crafts of this kind as in adorning churches or educating young nobles; and as Bede says, “by this kind act he turned their hearts to love him; and they began the more willingly to hope for heavenly blessings under his preaching, when by his assistance they had received earthly good.”

The first seat of the diocese was on the coast at Selsea; it was transferred to Chichester by Stigand in 1082, when other Norman prelates removed to fortified towns such as Lincoln, Exeter, and Norwich. In the south aisle of the choir are two Saxon slabs representing the meeting of Christ with Mary and Martha and the raising of Lazarus. The figures are the tall, emaciated, but dignified figures of archaic Byzantine art; their stature carefully proportionate to their importance; the slabs may well have come from Selsea. Stigand was followed by Gosfried, who for some unknown sin sought and obtained absolution from the Pope. The original document in lead may be seen in the library. “We, representing St. Peter, the chief of the Apostles, to whom God gave the power of binding and loosing, absolve thee, Bishop Godfrey, so far as thy accusation requests and the right of remission belongs to us. God the Redeemer be thy salvation and graciously forgive thee all thy sins. Amen. On the seventh of the Calends of April, on the festival of St. Firmin, bishop and martyr, died Godfrey, bishop of Chichester; it was then the fifth day of the moon.”

I. Norman.—Godfrey was succeeded in 1091 by Ralph, whose stone coffin, marked “Radulphus” may be seen in the Lady chapel. Godfrey built the present Norman cathedral, or at any rate enough of it to allow a consecration in 1108. Before his death in 1123, or soon after, the whole cathedral must have been complete except the west front, where only the two lower stories of the south-west tower are Norman. The voluted capital of eleventh-century Norman work—an attempt at Ionic—which appears also on the east side of Ely transept—occurs in the triforium of the choir. The work in the four eastern bays of the nave is a little later; the four western bays, in which the triforium is treated differently, were possibly not built till after the fire in 1114. The Norman Church had the same ground-plan as that of Norwich, commenced c. 1096, and Gloucester, commenced c. 1089. It had an aisled nave, aisleless transept with eastern apses, aisled choir, apse and ambulatory, and a chevet of three radiating chapels, of which the side chapels were semicircular, the central or eastern chapel oblong, as at Canterbury and Rochester. Externally, on the south wall of the choir, in the second bay from the east, may be seen traces of the curve of the wall of the ancient apse, and also a triforium window which originally was in the centre of one of the narrowed bays of the apse, but has now ceased to be central. In the chamber above the library the curve of the wall of the apse of the north transept is well seen. The piers, as in most eleventh-century work, are monstrously and unnecessarily heavy, and the arches constricted. It is rather a monotonous interior, with the same design from choir to west end. It is a pity that they did not give us a different and improved design in the nave, as was done at Tewkesbury and Gloucester. Matters have been made worse by the removal of a superb Perpendicular stone rood-screen, crowned, as at Exeter, by a Renaissance organ. The removal of this has impaired the general effect of the interior, much lessening the apparent length of the cathedral. As usual, only the aisles and apses of the Norman cathedral were vaulted; the aisles here, as at Southwell, are vaulted in oblong compartments. It was dedicated to St. Peter, and served by secular Canons, of whom in 1520 there were thirty-one. In the triforium of the choir were semicircular transverse arches, precisely as in the choir of Durham.

PRESBYTERY.

II. Late Transitional and Early Lancet, from the fire of 1186 to the consecration of 1199, when the cathedral was re-dedicated to the Holy Trinity. About 1180 some work was going on in the western part of the Lady chapel, but in a great fire in 1186 the roofs and fittings of the whole cathedral were burnt, and the clerestories were no doubt damaged by falling timbers. The destruction, however, was by no means so great as at Canterbury in the fire of 1182, and no such drastic process of rebuilding was necessary. Bishop Siegfried confined himself to four objects: (1) To fireproof the cathedral by covering it with a stone vault, provided with the necessary buttresses and flying-buttresses. And as the clerestory which had to support the vault was much damaged, its inner arcade had to be rebuilt. (2) To replace the apse and ambulatory and chevet by a rectangular retro-choir with square eastern chapels. (3) To replace the transeptal apses by similar chapels. (4) To get rid of some of the rough and heavy appearance of the ground-story of the whole church. He did not touch the triforium.

Siegfried probably commenced with the choir, which was most wanted. The masonry of the ground-story had probably been calcined by the roof-timbers blazing on the floor; the inner face of this was cased with good Caen stone. As at Canterbury, great use was made of Purbeck marble, in which were built angle-shafts and capitals to the piers, hood-moulds for the pier-arches, string-courses below and above the triforium, and arcading to the clerestory. In front of each pier a triple vaulting-shaft was run up, with a marble capital, supporting the new quadripartite vault. Externally, the clerestory wall was supported by flying-buttresses of heavy archaic type, similar to those of the choirs of Canterbury and Boxgrove. Later on, the same treatment was extended by Siegfried and his successors to the nave and transepts.

His next step was to remove the Norman apse and to build an aisled retro-choir of two bays. This is the architectural gem of the cathedral. The idea of it probably came from Hereford, where the retro-choir is a few years earlier. At Hereford, however, the retro-choir projects picturesquely, and forms an eastern transept. The central piers of the Chichester retro-choir are remarkably beautiful. They consist of a central column surrounded by four shafts very widely detached; column and shafts are of Purbeck marble. The capitals are Corinthianesque; their height is proportioned to the diameters of the column and shafts. This beautiful capital was reproduced a few years later by St. Hugh at Lincoln, and the pier at Boxgrove. The triforium is of quite exceptional beauty, as indeed is the whole design. Semicircular arches occur in the pier-arcade and triforium, and some of the abaci are square; otherwise the design is pure Gothic. Here, as at Abbey Dore, St. Thomas’, Portsmouth, Boxgrove, and Wells, we see the transition from the Transition to the “pure and undefiled Gothic” of St. Hugh’s choir at Lincoln. In these beautiful churches the ancient Romanesque style breathed its last.

The aisles of the new retro-choir were continued on either side of the first bay of the Norman Lady chapel, whose three bays had probably been remodelled before the fire in Transitional fashion. The capitals of the Lady chapel are of exceptional interest and importance, as showing experimental foliation which had not yet settled down into the conventional leafage of early Gothic. The apse also of the south transept was replaced by a square chapel; and that of the north transept by a double chapel, now used as a library, in the vaulting of which the Norman zigzag occurs.

III. A little later in the Lancet period was built (1199-1245) the lovely south porch, with small, exquisite mouldings, and charming foliated capitals and corbels. The difference between early Transitional, late Transitional, and Lancet foliation may be well seen by examining successively the capitals of the Lady chapel, the triforium of the retro-choir, and the south porch. The north porch is almost equally fine. The vaulting-ribs, square in section, show that the two porches both belong to the very first years of the thirteenth century. Rather later, the sacristy was built on to the south porch, with a massive vault supported by foliated corbels.

IV. In the Early Geometrical period (1245-1280) building still went on unremittently. The south-west tower was raised to its present height; the low Norman central tower was replaced by a higher one: it is curious that this tower is oblong on plan; the transept, contrary to custom, being wider than nave or choir. A pretty circular window, with cusped circles and tooth ornament, was inserted in the eastern gable of the retro-choir, and a fine Galilee porch was added to the west front, as at Ely.

But the great change that was destined to alter the whole character of the nave was the addition of chapels. In our parish churches it is common enough to find that pious and wealthy parishioners have been allowed to tack family chapels on to the aisles or nave. In Dorchester Priory Church there is a south aisle running the whole length of the church, made up of nothing but a series of chantry-chapels. This was common enough, too, in the French cathedrals—e.g., Paris and Amiens. But the naves of the English cathedrals were not as a rule tampered with in this way. At Chichester, however, there were built, one after another, four sets of chapels—of St. George and St. Clement on the south of the south aisle, and of St. Thomas, St. Anne, and St. Edmund on the north of the north aisle. The windows should be studied in the above order; they form quite an excellent object-lesson of the evolution of bar-tracery from plate-tracery, itself a derivative from such designs as that of the east window of the south transept chapel. When the chapels were completed, the Norman aisle-walls were pierced, and arches were inserted where Norman windows had been; and the Lancet buttresses, which had been added when the nave-vault was erected, now found themselves inside the church, buttressing piers instead of walls. The new windows on the south side were built so high that the vaulting of the chapels had to be tilted up to allow room for their heads; externally they were originally crowned with gables, the weatherings of which may be seen outside. In St. Thomas’ chapel is a charming example of a simple thirteenth-century reredos.

PRESBYTERY.

The addition of these outer aisles makes Chichester unique among the English cathedrals, though it may be paralleled in Elgin cathedral and many a parish church. Artistically, the contrast of the gloomy and heavy Norman nave with the lightness and brightness of the chapels behind is most delightful; the nave looks infinitely larger and more spacious than it is; it is never all seen at a glance like the empty nave of York, and is full of changing vistas and delightful perspectives. Accidentally, the thirteenth-century builders had hit on a new source of picturesqueness.

V. Late Geometrical.—Between 1288 and 1304 the Lady chapel was lengthened by two bays, and the end bay of the former chapel was re-vaulted. So that what we see is a Norman chapel transmogrified into a Transitional one, and that once more altered and extended. The new work was done just when people had tired of conventional foliage, and hurried into naturalism. The capitals are another object-lesson in Gothic foliation. The window-tracery, with long-lobed trefoils, occurs also in the beautiful chapel of the mediæval hospital, which should by all means be visited.

It may be asked, where did the Chichester people get the money for all these great works? It was from pilgrims. They had had the great luck to get a saint of their own, Bishop Richard. He was consecrated in 1245, died in 1253, was canonised in 1261.

VI. Curvilinear (1315-1360).—Next the Canons set themselves to work to improve the lighting of the cathedral, which was bad; all the windows, except those in the new chapels, being small single lights. A fine window of flowing tracery was inserted in the eastern chapel of the south choir aisle (now filled with admirable glass by Mr. Kempe). And the south wall of the transept was taken down altogether and rebuilt. Here is another fine circular window. Bishop Langton, who gave the money for this work, is buried below. The drainage, too, of the roofs was improved; gutters and parapets being substituted for dripping eaves. To this period, also, belong the stalls with ogee arches and compound cusping, and good misereres.

VII. In the Perpendicular period (1360-1485) the improvements in lighting were continued, the north wall of the transept being treated in similar fashion to that opposite. But settlements were the result, and a flying-buttress had to be added to steady the north wall. And at length the tower was crowned with a beautiful spire, not quite so slender and graceful as those of Salisbury and Louth; more on the lines of the Lichfield spires. An upper story and buttresses were added to the sacristy, and the Canons’ Gateway was built.

VIII. In the Tudor period an irregular three-sided cloister was built in a quite abnormal position encircling the south transept. The object of it was to provide a covered way to the cathedral for the Canons, as well as for the Vicars, whose Close is hard by. The central tower seems to have shown signs of weakness under the weight of the new spire; and so a detached Campanile was built, as at Salisbury. Bishop Sherborne built a grand stone screen (1508-1536) occupying the whole of the crossing, and containing chantries; much of it exists, in fragments, under the Campanile. To the time of Henry VII. belongs the Poultry Cross.

IX. In 1859 the central tower was found to be in danger, owing, it is said, to the removal of the Arundel screen. Underpinning was resorted to, but matters got worse. “At noon, on February 21st, 1861, the workmen were ordered out of the building, and the people living in the neighbouring houses were warned of their danger; about an hour and a half later the spire was seen to incline slightly to the south-west and then to sink perpendicularly through the roof. Thus was fulfilled literally the old Sussex saying:

“If Chichester Church Steeple fall,

In England there’s no king at all.”

In 1866 the tower and spire were rebuilt; the tower raised slightly so that the belfry windows might clear the roofs.