reorganisation and destruction of irish catholic churches
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Franz Christian Gau
Architect and archæologist, b. at Cologne, 15 June, 1790; d. at Paris, January, 1854. In 1809 he entered the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and in 1815 visited Italy and Sicily. In 1817 he went to Nubia, and while there he made drawings and measurements of all the more important monuments of that country, his ambition being to produce a work which should supplement the great work of the French expedition in Egypt. The result of his labours appeared in a folio volume (Stuttgart and Paris, 1822), entitled “Antiquitiés de la Nubie ou monuments inédits des bords du Nil, situés entre la premiére et la seconde cataracte, dessinés et mesurés in 1819”. It consists of sixty-eight plates, of plans, sections, and views, and has been received as an authority. His next publication was the completion of Mazois’s work on the ruins of Pompeii. In 1825 Gau was naturalized as a French citizen, and later became architect to the city of Paris. He directed the restoration of the churches of Sain-Julien-le-Pauvre, and Saint-Séverin, and built the great prison of La Roquette, etc. With his name also is associated the revival of Gothic architecture in Paris — he having designed and commenced, in 1846, the erection of the church of Sainte-Clotilde, the first modern church erected in the capital in that style. Illness compelled him to relinquish the care of supervising the work, and he died before its completion
(Catholic Encyclopedia)
St. Julien-le-Pauvre, Paris
This picture of the interior of St. Julien-le-Pauvre in Paris shows the liturgical dispositions used by the Greek Melkites. Clearly, there is not much room here for “communal” worship but it does not seem to bother anyone that the altar is not only in the Chancel but completely invisible to the congregation except for those occasions during the Mass when the doors are opened.
The following illustrate how the an altar is view by Russian Orthodox Christians
The Iconostasis of the Chapel of the Glorious Resurrection, Moscow
The Cathedral of the Annunciation, Moscow
The Rila Monastery in Bulgaria
The Nicolai Cathedral, St. Petersburg
St Peter and St Paul, St. Petersburg
What a stunning building Denver is.
One aspect of St. Colmans that really lets it down I think is the ambo/altar table – it’s quite ugly don’t you think?
It barely fits into context at all; solid, heavy, cumbersome, basic, and ever so faintly naff in that garish white marble in contrast to the muted tones of its surroundings and the tokenistic ‘gothic pointy bits.’
Is it later that the rest of the sanctuary? Looks like a 1920s piece…
Graham,
this is a piece of plywood placed in the sanctuary in the 1970s. In a sense, it is the root of all evils in Cobh. Nobody wants it and everybody agrees that something better is needed. Few, however, think that in replacing it the whole floor should be dug uot and atomized – just as Professor O’Neill did with Peter Turnerelli’s High ALtar in the Pro- Cathedral.
Ah…
Well for what it’s worth that’s some very convincing ‘marblising’ going on there. That explains a lot so.
Do you have a pre-70s image Praxiteles – there was a c1900 one posted before but it could be anywhere.Re the Immaculate Conception, Denver try this link
# 605 has the picture from 1912 which I suspect was taken by Fr. Francis Brown, SJ
There is another coulured one taken recently with the timber thing remooved. It ois in the thread so I shall have a look to wsee where.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York
James Renwick (1853-1889)
St Patrick’s Cathedral, New York
The ground plan of St. Patrick’s showing the altar rail traversing the nave and both transcepts, as in Cobh.
In 2002, Cardinal Egan of New York ordered the Jesuits who staff the historic St. Ignatius Church in Manhattan (below) to halt a proposed “renovation” of the Church which would have removed the Communion rail and moved the altar into the nave, among other changes in a $3M project.
Although the Jesuits’ proposed ‘renovation’ had received the approval of the archdiocesan officials, Cardinal Egan stepped in and stopped the work.
In a letter to the priest of the parish, Rev. Walter F. Modrys, dated March 6th 2002, he rejected the sanctuary proposal, saying it was unwarranted and harmful to the Church’s tradition.
Oh, to have such a church leader in Ireland.
St. James’ , Spanish Place, London
Edward Goldie (1890)
Length of Church 195 ft; Width of Church 92 ft; Height of Church 67 ft; Seating capacity 2,000
An interesting feature of Goldie’s church is the altar rail which spans the nave and both transcepts – just as at Cobh, although in the Spanish Place church the communion passage behind the rail is gated at the Chancel.
An interesting feature of Goldie’s church is the altar rail which spans the nave and both transcepts – just as at Cobh, although in the Spanish Place church the communion passage behind the rail is gated at the Chancel.
An observation that I would make aboult this configuration of altar rail, from an architectural perspective, is that in a church with multiple altars this feature visually and symbolically unites all the altars within the building and strengthens the reality of the unicity of all altars. The rail as extension of altar and banqueting table is thus emphasized in express contrast to the idea of the rail as a barrier of exclusion and this is further underwritten by the use of the hausling cloth.
To remove the rail in Cobh would then, in a sense, set up the other side altars in opposition to the main one (if the new one looks like an altar that is…).
The altar rail as ‘unjust barrier’ is false consciousness.
More Stateside reorderings:
1. The cathedral in Altoona
2. Cathedral Church of the Incarnation, Nashville, Tennessee
3. Cathedral of St John the Baptist, Charleston
4. Cathedral of St Joseph, Buffalo.If anyone has better quality pics of these in either before or after conditions then I would love to have them.
The first image here is meant to be in my previous post and is a lamentably poor image of St Joseph’s Cathedral, Buffalo.
The other images are of the cathedral of St Peter’s, Marquette, Michigan. I think one doesn’t need to be an architectural dectective to work out what’s gone on here, don’t all cathedras have gradines?
For how long have altar rails been in use? Where do they have their origins? When did they stop being regularly installed – indeed were they ever installed in small churches in Ireland?
(thanks for the Cobh picture Gianlorenzo)
O’Connell in ‘Church Building & Furnishing’ traces the development of the rail from cancelli, but that the latter were merely barriers rather than a kneeling place for communion. He says that, in England, the rail as we now know it came in in the 15th/16th Centuries. However he groundlessly infers that the absence of rails prior to this demonstrates that the normal posture for receiving communion was to stand. I gather that there is evidence in illuminated MSS that in the sarum use of the Roman Rite the hausling cloth was stretched across the sanctuary by two servers so as to catch any falling particles of the sacred species whilst the people knelt to receive.
Rails certainly are not and never have been required by church law, as far as I understand. The rail primarily makes it easier and more comfortable for the people to kneel, to contemplate the eucharist prior to reception and to make an act of thanksgiving thereafter.
O’Connell is correct in traacing the origin of the altar rail to the cancelli of the Roman Basilicas. However, altar rails, in Catholic Churches since the Council of Trent (1547-1562) have a dual purpose: that of providing a convenient place to receive Holy Communion, and the original purpose of hierarchially demarkating the Chancel (reserved for the Sacred Ministers) from the nave. This latter purpose is still shared by the Latin western Church and all of the Oriental Churches of whatever Rite (Byzantines, Melchites, Copts, Malancharese, Malabarese etc.). The positioning of altar rails in churches is still recommended in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, third edition, published in 2000.
The immediate origin of the distincion between nave and chancel is to be found in the Christian Basilicas of the 4th. century. These were the first Christian Churhes and took as the model for the distinction the “Cancelli” or rails that divided the law courts from the rest of the Roman pagan basilica. In the pagan Basilica, the notary of the courts sat at the gate of the rails and received the pleas to be passed on to the magistrates who sat in judgment behind the Cancelli, in the apsis of the pagan basilica. This official became known as the “chancellarius” which is the origin of the medieval and modern political office of chancellor.
When Christianity was legalized in the Roman empire and began to build its first churches, to mark the theological distinctions between the clergy and laity, the model of the cancelli of the pagan basilica was taken over. It haoever, was used to express a distinction already used in the first house churches of Rome. It is likely that the hierarchical distinction traces its origin to the Temple in Jerusalem – about which we read in the Books of Exodus, Deutoronomy and Leviticus in the Old Testament. The influence of these texts on church building can be seen for example in the dimensions of the SIxtine Chapel in Rome and in the Papal Chapel at Avignon which reproduce the dimensions of the Temple in Jerusalem.
In the Middle ages, the cancelli developed in the Western Church into the famous Rood Screens which carried figures of the Cross and of Our Lady and St. John. They also had galleries from which antiphons and readings were sung or read (e.g. the French term “jubé” coming from the liturgical expression “Jube Domine benedicere” which is asked by the deacon of the priest before he preaches the Gospel).. The rood screen was provided practoically to every christian church. Eamonn Duffy gives an interesting account of their destruction in England during the Reformation in his book “The Stripping of the Altars”. The Council of Trent decreed that the Rood screens should be simplified to a less elaborate structure over which the altar was visible – hence the modern altar rail to which was added the function of receiving Holy Communion. Perviously, the communicants received Holy Communion at the gate of the Rood Screen, a hausling cloth being held by two clerics. All of these elements were passed over to the new altar rails which must be regarded as a continuation of the Rood screen.
In the Eastern Churches, the original cancelli developed into the iconostasis. On the gates of the sanctuary, icons were exposed. These further developed into the elaborate structures we know to-day which completely screen all sight of the altar and which cut access to the altar for all but those clergy destined for its service. This was unaffected by Trent and continues. It is the Eastern counterpart of the altar rail and of the medieval western Rood Screen.
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