A Treatise on Chancel Screens and Rood Lofts: Their Antiquity, Use, and Symbolic SignificationPugin, Augustus Welby Northmore
History
A Treatise on Chancel Screens and Rood Lofts: Their Antiquity, Use, and Symbolic Signification
Pugin, Augustus Welby Northmore
Screens (Church decoration)
The custom of screening off these side chapels was universal. We find
them in Italy at a very early period (see Bologna), and many beautiful
pointed examples, both in wood and stone, exist in Germany, France, and
England; they are subsequently found of every date and style. In the
eighteenth century they were usually constructed with elaborate
wrought-iron-work, and in our time of a simple form in the same
material; but the principle still remains in every part of Christendom,
excepting some of the most modern Italian churches, where all tradition
seems to have been lost, or abandoned by their artists and architects.
This account of screens in Germany and Flanders is necessarily very
incomplete; but it is sufficient to illustrate the intention of the
work, and anything like a complete list would be both too voluminous and
tedious to the reader.
Chancel screens appear to be very general in the old timber churches of
Norway, and I have figured one in the church of Urnes, near Bergen,
which is exceedingly interesting; and though it is by no means easy to
affix dates to these rude productions, there is every reason to suppose
this to be a work of considerable antiquity. This church is now used for
Lutheran worship, but, like every ancient edifice erected for Catholic
rites, it bears indelible evidence of the enclosure of the chancel and
the erection of the rood.
[11] I have been informed, from good authority, that one of the churches
in Amsterdam has preserved its brass screen-work, but I am not able to
supply the name.
[12] The screen across the Bootmakers' Chapel, in the north transept of
this church, is of a great antiquity, probably of the middle of the
fourteenth century. It is executed entirely in oak, most beautifully
carved; and skilfully framed in the rails of the doors are bas-reliefs
of angels bearing the cognizance of the confraternity of bootmakers, at
whose cost this chapel was erected and founded. There are other oak
screens in the south transept of a later date,—fifteenth century, and
the choir and lateral chapels are all arched, with marble screens,
filled with perforated brass-work.
[Plate V:
_Rood Screen of the Marienkirche, Lubeck._
_Rood Loft, Cathedral, Munster._]
[Plate VI:
_Screen in the Dom Kirke, Lubeck._
_Screen & Rood Loft, Hospital, Lubeck._]
[Plate VII:
_Screen & rood Loft Dom, Hildesheim._
_Rood Loft Sᵗ Katherine's church, Lubeck._]
[Plate VIII:
_Choir; Gelnhausen._
_Choir; Sᵗ Elisabeth's Church at Marburg._]
[Plate IX:
_Screen at Oberwesel._
_Plan of the Jubé. Cathedral, Metz._
_Plan of the Jubé. Cathedral, Toul._
_Screen of Sᵗ Nicholas church, Lorraine._]
[Plate X:
_From an Old Picture by Peter Neefs._
_The Rood Screen, Cathedral, Antwerp. 17 Century._
_One of the Altars, erected against the nave Pillars, with its Brass
Screen work._]
ON SCREENS IN FRANCE.
CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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