Praxiteles

The Baptistery of Canterbury Cathedral which must have had some influence on the external Baptistery in Cork.

As a matter of interest, would anyone have any idea of what might be causing that awful pink streak to rise into the portland stone dressing of the Baptistery wall? It is especially noticeable on the right hand side of the middle picture. I am not sure that its cause by dampness as it is a relatively recent arrival on the scene. The unfortunate thing is taht the problem is causing the Portland Stone to pulverise and crumble. As you can see, the problem is advancing steadily towards the central medallion on the wall depicting the Baptism of Our Lord in the Jordan.

Looking at tyhe picture again, I notice that the brass stopper for the gate has been gauged out of the step.

St.Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh, Co. Cork – The Baptistery

The Bsptistery of St. Colman’s Cathedral is an integrated or internal Baptistery. Externally, it has no archiotectural definition. It is located in the ground floor of the North Tower of West Facade. It can be accessed directly from the exterior. An unshuttered door way leads to the nave of the Cathedral from teh Baptistery.

The Baptistery was designed by G.C. Ashlin. Drawings and specification both for the wainscotting and for the font are extant.

The font is a large octagonal font in Carrara marble executed by Luigi Tommasi of Carrara. It is covered by a monumental brass hood in the form of a Tempietto – reminiscent of that in Rahael’s Marriage of the Virgin or Perugino’s Tradimento dellle Chiavi c. 1481 with its Temple of Solomon in the background based on the Florentine Baptistery. The brass hood was made by Kane’s of Dublin.

The walls of the Baptietry are covered in diapering depicting fish – the reference being to the porfession of faith implicit in the Greek word for fish IXThUS. This is an extremenly ancient formula and already found in the catacombs of the 3rd century. The letters were deemed to atnd for: IESUS CHRISTOS THEOU HUIOU SOTER – or Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Saviour.

The glass by Mayer of Munich depicts the Baptism of Our Lord in the Jordan, and the St. Patrick baptizing the daughters of the High King of Ireland – an example of the parallel iconography running right through the entire iconographic scheme of the Cathedral.

Ubfortunately, the Baptistery was abandoned in the 1970s/1980 and basically reduced to to store room for rubbish and other impedimenta. During this period, the Sacrament of Baptism was, most incoungruously, administered in the Sacred Heart Chapel in the sanctuary area. It was administered in a stainless steel pan encased in wood. The situation improved for a shortw hile in the 1990s when Bapysims resumed in the original Baptistery. Unfortunately, they have now reverted to the Sanctuary again, this tiome at the central gates of the altar rail using the same old stainmless steel pan .and some none too clean items of cloth. Clearly, any sense of the importance of the Sacrament has long sense disappeared from the consciuosness of the CObh clergy who habitually go through the motions of the amateur theatricals in the Sanctuary. We have seen enough from our tour of Baptisteries to underatand whay this is just a complete liturgical aberration.

In more recent time, someone in the Cloyne HACK and on the famous Steering committee must have been reading a version of the American “Green Book” which came up with the bright idea of planking Baptismal fonts immediately inside the front doors of churches and using them as holy water stoops when not used as Baptisteries. This of course requires stripping them of their monumental and symbolic covers. It seems that as early as 2002, the vandals in CObh had ghatched the idea of dismanteling the Baptistery and moving the font to a position inside the front door – where a “gathering space” was to be created. Fortunately, even the over-holidayed Town architect Denis Deasey realized taht this was too much and refused to sanction a Declaration to carry out the work without a Planning Application. In teh meantime, the Baptistery has been subjected to an applaing spate of depradation and attack. Praxiteles believes taht the idea is to make it “unteneable” to reatore. Some anti-damp product has been put on the walls and it has turned the Portland Stone from white to pink. The cover of the font has been left hjanging from its lever – so taht eventually the lever would come loose from the wall. Two of the colonettes from the railing around the font have disappeared -one, it seems was smashed by some rude mechanic while another was simply stolen. The whole space has been littered with rubbish and junk-

One cannot help thinking that this reflects not only an Angriff against the Baptistery itself, but perhaps even against the Sacrament by which one enters the Church – and that would reflect a rather perturbed theological and psychological state in the HACK, the Steering Committee, and those who have day to day responsibility for the running of CObh Cathedral.

Some background on the Scarament of Baptism

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02258b.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostles’_Creed

@ake wrote:

Another church closing in Limerick! The city is littered with closed down churches, all of them very fine buildings.

Are we surprised? Would it be too much for Mary Immaculate to keep it going?

St. Mary’s Cathedral, Killarney, Baptistery

The Baptistery in St. Mary’s Cathedral is an attatched chapel located on the North side of the nave, a solution also wmployed by JJ. McCarthy at St. Macartan’s, Monaghan.

The Cathedral was begun in 1842

The Baptistery appears to be dedicated to St. John the Baptist and contains a large tracery window of thee lights depicting the Baptism of Our Lord in the Jordan.

Of all the Baptisteries that have been surveyed this (at least in its fairly recent guise) is singular for some liturgical genius has seen fit to put a SECOND font in the Baptistery -so much for St. Paul and his “one faith, one Baptism, one Lord and Saviour”. This is represents the apotheosis of a completely UNTHOLOGICAL approach to a Baptistery and make no sense whatsoever.

The original font has long lost its symbolic monumental cover.

Something positive can be said of the Baptistery. It is one of the few parts of the Cathedral to have survived the wreckage of 1972-1973. It still retains its plastered walls and its stencils. The floor also appears to have retained it Minton encaustic tiles on the floors. It seems that the wreckers decided that the Baptistery -and presumably the Sacrament of Baptism -was of no significance to the “sheep-herd” space being prepared int the main body of the Cathedral.

@samuel j wrote:

Vat is right..might look nice as a feature in a Dermot Gavin Garden but here….awful.

And what in gods name is the carry on on the wall with the Kamikaze Dove….

Well, I cannot say for sure. The official “Pravda” style commentary refers to this and the other interjecta as “A release of creative energy”. Why that is so, I could not say. I am inclined to think that it migt be something else….

As to subject, well, at a guess (and I stress that its only a guess) it might be vague reference to the Ruach Elohim of the Book of Genesis -God’s creative Spirit….but then, the spirit of the genre is such that it could be anything as fugurative art is now multivalent.

Pravda tells us that the artis is one Frances Biggs -who apparently plays the fiddle with the RTS orchestra. Pravda also tells us in relation to Clogher Cathedral: “From day one, Frances won the respect of the bishop by insisting that the Blessed Sacrament area should take the shape of a contemplative space and should not be encumbered by any conventional ecclesiastical bric-à-brac”. “Her recommendation paid off”” Pravda continues to assure us.

Pravda then very kindly tells us how we are to appreciate them; “The tapesteries in the cathedral , which are the joint work of Frances Biggs and weaver Terry Dunne, must be among the foremost of madern tapesteries, with their incredible merging and mixing ofstrikingly beautiful colours”.

Praxiteles must investigate the prevalence of moths in and around Monaghan town. They could immeasurably improved the internal aspect of St. Macartan’s in the luscious stillness of the night!!

Tuam Cathedral

It is difficult to ascertain where the Sacrament of Baptism is administered in Tuam Cathedral, at present. The follwoing, which is taken from the Wikipedia article on Tuam Cathedral, well serves to illustrate the theological and architectural muddle hanging over the liturgical advisors and architects of two successive waves of vandalism to the Tuam Baptistery:

The initial reordering of the chancel and sanctuary took place in 1969 at the very end of the episcopate of Archbishop Walsh (1940-1969). The Italianate baldachino over the high altar, the two transept altars, the pulpit and the communion rails were removed. The marble high altar (designed, with the baldachino and the tabernacle, by Leonardi of Rome) was moved to a dais at the centre of the crossing, and the baptistery was transferred to the shallow chancel at the rear. A new bishop’s throne by the local craftsman Al O’Dea was installed. The Blessed Sacrament was reserved in a new aumbry in the ease wall of the south transept, facing the south nave aisle. The aumbry, of gilt brass, was set in a slab of salmon-pink marble with a border of fluted grey granite.

Further reordering took place in early 1992. The entire cathedral was repainted and rewired, and the sanctuary area reordered. A new wooden screen with chevron patterning was erected behind the altar, turning the truncated chancel into a sacristy. O’Connor’s great east window in now partly obscured by the screen. A new dais of limestone was created, to provide a focus for the new barrel-shaped granite altar. The Blessed Sacrament is now reserved in a gilt brass tabernacle which now rests on a free-standing cylindrical granite plinth. The structure is now sheltered by a wooden baldachino.

Firstly, an aumbry is basically a cupboard which is usually, though not laways, located in the sanctuary and is used to conserved the Holy Oils. In Tuam, the Blessed Sacrament gets reserved in an oil cupboard.

Secondly, a Tabernacle is used to reserve the Blesseed Sacrament. It is nice to see that the liturgists in Tuam have at least come to realize that much.

Thirdly, a chancel is used to house the Sanctuary and Altar of a church. Our tour of primitive Baptisteries should make it patently obvious why placing a baptistery in a chancel is a theological absurdity and a liturgical nightmare. It is somewhat encouraging to see that the liturgists have,to some degree, come to see that a chancel is no place for a Baptistery -though, replacing it with a acristy is hardly progress.

But, where is the Baptistery presently located in Tuam Cathedral? And, perhaps more interestingly, where was it originally placed and how was it decorated etc?

Renewal of the Sacrament of Baptism in Thurles Cathedral took the form of abandoing the External Baptistery which became a repository for various bits and pieces of rubblish and eventually a store house.

The positioning of a new Baptismal Font inside teh Cathedral, near to the altar exhibits all of the problematic principles underlying much of the so called “reordering” and “renewal” iof Irish churches. Prime among these is a nearly complete absence of theological thinking: if Baptism is the means by which people enter the Church, then waht are we doing with a Baptistery taht is not only already within the church but practically an annex to the sanctuary? Cleraly, the theological genius responsible for the Thurles “adaptation” did not or does not seem to realize that primitively all the non-Baptized were require to leave the nave before the Offertory of the Mass began.

Then, we have the problem of the Thurles font. Evidently. it connectsnot ihn the slightest with the Christian tradition of Baptismal fonts -of which we have seen many examples from all the main areas of the early Church- and reflects non of the rich symbolic, theological, artistic, and iconographical concerns of the Church’s tradition and understanding of Baptism. Indeed, the Gestalt of the Thurles font is more suggestive of paganism and some deeply unChristian contexts.

Those concerns are intensified by the gaping exposure of the Holy Oils -a totally farcical and voyeuristic feature fo the Thurles arrangement.

Bearing in mind the tradition of building Baptisteries that was well established by the 5th century and the theological principles underlying that tradition, the Thurles effort is just wrong on practically every point. Rather than contributig to a renewal (or renewed understanding) of the Sacrament of Baptism is exhibits a complete trivilialization of teh Sacrament and its reduction to the absurd banal.

In all, this is a television setting designed to satisfy gawkers and conveys little sense of Christian rite and next to nothing of an architectural or artistic expression of the significance of the Sacrament of Baptism.

@ake wrote:

Limerick]5956[/ATTACH]
laugh or cry?

might as well just laugh.

Is this the Franciscan Church in Limerick?

The colour scheme is just appalling!!