[Transcriber's notes:] This work is derived from files on the Internet Archive: http://archive.org/details/symbolismofchurc00dura Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book. The honorific "Mr" is without a following period in the original. The period has been inserted in this transcription. [End Transcriber's notes.] THE SYMBOLISM OF _Churches and Church Ornaments_ A TRANSLATION OF THE FIRST BOOK OF THE _Rationale Divinorum Officiorum_ WRITTEN BY WILLIAM DURANDUS SOMETIME BISHOP OF MENDE _WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY AND NOTES_ BY THE REV. JOHN MASON NEALE, B.A. AND THE REV. BENJAMIN WEBB, B.A. OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE _New York_ CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 743 AND 745 BROADWAY 1893 DEDICATED TO THE CAMBRIDGE CAMDEN SOCIETY BY TWO OF ITS FOUNDERS {vii} PREFACE The interest which has lately been displayed, as on all subjects connected with Ecclesiology, so more especially on the symbolical bearing of Church Architecture, has led us to imagine that a translation of the most valuable work on Symbolism which the middle ages can furnish, might not, at the present time, be unacceptable to churchmen. Written, however, at a period when Christian Architecture had not attained its full glory, it necessarily leaves untouched many arrangements of similar tendency, subsequently adopted; addressed to those who had not yet learnt to doubt everything not formally proved, it assumes many points which may now seem to require confirmation: and composed for the use of a clergy habituated to a most figurative ritual, it passes over much as well known, which is now forgotten or neglected. On these accounts we have considered it necessary to prefix an Essay on the subject; in which we have endeavoured to prove that Catholic Architecture must necessarily be symbolical; to answer the more common objections to the system; and to elucidate it by reference to actual examples, and notices of the figurative arrangements of our own churches. We have also added notes, where any obscurity seemed {viii} to require explanation; and we have, both in them and in the Appendix, thrown together such passages from Martene, Beleth, S. Isidore of Seville, Hugo de S. Victore, and other writers, as tended to explain and to enforce the remarks of Durandus. With reference to the author himself, but little is known; and that little has been told before.