The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments: A Translation of the First Book of the Rationale Divinorum OfficiorumDurand, Guillaume
Religion
The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments: A Translation of the First Book of the Rationale Divinorum Officiorum
Durand, Guillaume
Christian art and symbolism; Church architecture
Afterwards he sprinkled the mercy-seat and the altar with blood, and
then he went out to the people, and washed his vestments in the
evening. These were types of old, but they have ceased since the
things signified thereby have come. But thus the former temple doth
denote the present church; the Holy of Holies, heaven; the high
priest, Christ; the blood, His Passion; the coals, His love; the
thurible. His flesh; the burning incense, prayers of sweet savour; the
altar, the hosts of heaven; the ark, Christ in His humanity; the
mercy-seat, God the Father; the two cherubims, the twain Testaments,
the which do look towards each other because the two do agree; the
vestments which be washed, mankind. Wherefore consider what things
were done of old, and what things Christ hath done, and then see how
the minister of the Church doth represent the same in the office of
the Mass. By the ark also is signified the humility of Christ, from
which through his mercy all good hath come unto us' (Durandus, Book
IV, Preface 13, 14).
In the next section the same subject is further illustrated, though
without reference to the immediate subject of this appendix, the
necessity of the division of every church into a chancel and nave.
The reader may consult a most interesting series of chapters in Hugo
de Sancto Victore (Tituli ii-viii, Ex. Misc. II, Lib. IV) upon this
subject: the passages are far too long for insertion here.
The _absolute necessity_ of this twofold division is a point which it
is more than painful at this time to have to prove. It is only within
the last two centuries that our own or any branch of the Church
Catholic has dared to depart from an usage which, if any, has
universality, antiquity, and consent on its side, and of whose
authority was never any doubt in the Church. {177} For some of the
arguments which have been adduced in the present controversy we must
refer to the publications of the Cambridge Camden Society, and
particularly the _Ecclesiologist_. There is nothing more wanted than a
careful treatise on the subject which shall in a compendious form put
this and several points depending upon it, such as orientation itself,
and praying towards the east, in a clear light.
APPENDIX B
ORIENTATION
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