[RRR 13.2 (2011) 275–306]
doi:10.1558/rrr.v13i2.275
RRR (print) ISSN 1462-2459
RRR (online) ISSN 1743-1727
The Architectural Expression of Primitive Christianity:
William Beveridge and the Temple of Solomon
Peter Doll
Norwich Cathedral
Canonlibarian@cathedral.org.uk
Abstract
On the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, a resurgent religious identity in church and state was informed by identifying the English nation
with the biblical Israel, and the worship and buildings of the Church of
England with those of the Temple in Jerusalem. The dedication of the
Church of St Peter, Cornhill (rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666 and
designed by Christopher Wren) in 1681 by the Revd William Beveridge
was an expression of the Church of England’s confidence in its identity
with the ‘primitive Church,’ and as the Church of a chosen and favoured
people.
Keywords
architecture, temple, Old Testament, Jerusalem, Restoration, High Church,
William Beveridge, Church of St Peter in Cornhill
In 1942, the architectural historian, Richard Krautheimer, published a
ground-breaking essay entitled ‘Introduction to an “Iconography of Mediaeval Architecture”.’1 In it he remarked that since the Renaissance it had
become customary to consider architecture primarily in the light of its function, construction and design rather than in terms of what a building might
‘mean’ to those who built it. Krautheimer pointed out that to take such an
approach in regard to medieval architecture would be singularly misguided.
1.
Richard Krautheimer, ‘Introduction to an “Iconography of Mediaeval Architecture”,’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942): 1–33.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2012, Unit S3, Kelham House, 3 Lancaster Street, Sheffield S3 8AF
276 J Peter Doll
Medieval sources did not stress the design of a building or its construction;
rather they presented an interest in the symbolic and liturgical significance of
buildings. In the medieval mind, when one made a copy of some significant
architectural element, or replicated particular dimensions or proportions of a
holy place in another location, then one incorporated the essential presence
of the original place or the saint associated with it. Many architectural features themselves were understood effectively as relics in their own right. One
example is the use that was made in some Western churches of the dimensions and form of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site of the tomb of
Christ and of his resurrection, the holiest place in the Christian world. It was
understood as the functional equivalent of the Jewish Temple, as the place of
the abiding presence of the Lord among his people. To translate those forms
into other contexts was convey to those places the holiness of the original site.
Krautheimer suggested that by the Renaissance, architects had finished
thinking in symbolic and liturgical terms and turned to function, construction, and design. In seventeenth-century England, however, the older ways
of thinking were alive and well; not only among architects like Christopher Wren (1632–1723) and Nicholas Hawksmoor (1662?–1736), but also
among biblical scholars, theologians, and even the natural philosopher and
mathematician, Isaac Newton (1642–1727). In the late-seventeenth century,
what most moderns see in retrospect as the nursery of modern science and
rationality was in fact a time when medieval and modern understandings
of theology and natural philosophy overlapped and coexisted in scholars
like Wren and Newton. Alongside his studies in mathematics and physics,
Newton engaged equally passionately with alchemy, ancient religion, and
prophecy. The shape, form, and dimensions of the Temple were as important
for him as for any medieval architect. ‘For Newton, the form and geometry
of the Temple’ were the keys to unlock ‘the mysteries of God.’2 Theological and architectural interest in the Temple was only part of a widespread,
seventeenth-century ‘obsession’ with its relation to Jewish history, because the
English understood their land to be the ‘new Israel.’3
2.
William J. Hamblin and David Rolph Seely, Solomon’s Temple: Myth and History
(London: Thames & Hudson, 2007), 165–166. See, also: Gale E. Christianson,
Isaac Newton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 144; and Stephen Snobelen,
‘“The Mystery of this Restitution of all things”: Isaac Newton on the Return of
the Jews,’ in The Milleniarian Turn: Millenarian Contexts of Science, Politics, and
Everyday Anglo-American Life in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. James
E. Force and Richard H. Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publisher, 2001),
95–118.
3.
Achsah Guibbory, Christian Identity, Jews and Israel in Seventeenth-Century England
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The Architectural Expression of Primitive Christianity J 277
The Great Fire of London of 1666 destroyed most of the city’s medieval
parish churches. However, tragedy was turned into an unprecedented opportunity to rebuild churches according to contemporary understandings of
‘primitive Christianity.’ This rebuilding would reflect the political and theological confidence of the re-established Church, simultaneously looking back
to God’s chosen people of Israel (with whom the English identified themselves), but also proudly reflecting the latest European architectural fashions.
The 27 November 1681 saw the opening of the Church of St Peter, Cornhill,
in London, rebuilt by Christopher Wren after the destruction of the previous
building in the Great Fire. Wren was himself heir to a High Church clerical
family (his father, Christopher Wren, was dean of Windsor, his uncle Matthew, bishop of Ely) and was, both as a natural philosopher and as an architect, deeply committed to primitive Christianity in the Church and its buildings.4 At the service, the rector, the Revd Dr William Beveridge (bap. 1637,
d.1708), preached a sermon celebrating the great occasion. In his opening
words he compared the rebuilding of St Peter’s with the repair of the Temple
of Jerusalem in 166 BCE by Judas Maccabaeus after it had been laid waste by
the Seleucid kingdom under Antiochus IV Epiphanes. In this way he linked
Jewish history with both the restoration of the British monarchy and the
restoration of the City’s churches after the Great Fire.
We of this parish have cause to be transported with joy and gladness, and to
spend this day in praising … God, for that our church, which hath lain waste
for above five times three years, is now at last rebuilt and fitted again for His
worship and service. For what the altar and Temple were unto the Jews then,
the same will our church be unto us now. … Was the Temple a house of
prayer to them? So is this church to us.
Beveridge focussed on the form of the church building and, in particular, on
why it had a chancel and chancel screen when so many of the churches built
in London since the Great Fire did not:
The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper being the highest mystery in all our
religion, as representing the death of the Son of God to us, hence that place
where this Sacrament is administered was always made and reputed the high(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 20.
4.
On the high churchmanship of his father, see Louise Durning and Clare Tilbury,
‘“Looking unto Jesus”: Image and Belief in a Seventeenth-Century Chancel,’
Journal of Ecclesiastical History 60 (3), (2009): 490–513. For the younger Wren’s
deep attachment to the cult of the Royal Martyr Charles I, see R.A. Bedard, ‘Wren’s
Mausoleum for Charles I and the cult of the Royal Martyr,’ Architectural History 27
(1984): 36–47.
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278 J Peter Doll
est place in the church. And therefore, also, it was wont to be separated from
the rest of the church by a screen or partition of network, in Latin cancelli,
and that so generally, that from thence the place itself is called the ‘Chancel.’
… I mention it at present, only because some perhaps may wonder why this
should be observed in our church rather than in all the other churches which
have lately been built in this city. Whereas they should rather wonder, why it
was not observed in all others as well as this. For, besides our obligations to
conform, as much as may be, to the practice of the universal Church, and to
avoid novelty and singularity in all things relating to the worship of God, it
cannot be easily imagined that the Catholick Church, in all ages and places,
for thirteen or fourteen hundred years together, should observe such a custom
as this, except there were great reasons for it.
… It may be sufficient to observe at present, that the Chancel in our Christian churches was always looked upon as answerable to the Holy of Holies in
the Temple; which, you know, was separated from the sanctuary or body of
the Temple, by the command of God Himself.5
Like the holy of holies in the Temple, the chancel in the Anglican Church is
here understood as a place of the divine presence, a meeting place between
heaven and earth articulated by the chancel screen and by the iconography
of the reredos.
Beveridge is of particular interest here because he was recognized as among
the leading ‘primitive’ Anglicans. He was the intellectual heir of those ‘avantgarde’ conformists and Laudian churchmen who articulated the identity of
the Church of England by reference to the primitive Church of the Fathers.
This process of self-definition grew yet more intense during the Commonwealth and Restoration.6 As the preface to his collected works notes: ‘the
confusion and disputes of these troubled times’ turned him to the study of
the Church of antiquity for the clarification of fundamental truths and also
of practical piety. A gifted scholar and linguist, in 1672 he published the
Synodikon, a definitive edition of the canons of the early Church. He was a
model parish priest for twenty years in Ealing and at St Peter’s, providing a
constant round of daily services and weekly communions, forming religious
societies for sacred study and prayer, and exercising a vigorous discipline.
5.
William Beveridge, ‘The Excellence and Usefulness of the Common Prayer: Preached
at the Opening of the Parish Church of St Peter’s, Cornhill, the 27th of November 1681,’ in The Theological Works of William Beveridge, 12 vols (Oxford: J.H.
Parker,1842–1846), VI, 388.
6.
This patristic rationale is most fully explored in Jean-Louis Quantin, The Church of
England and Christian Antiquity: The Construction of a Confessional Identity in the
17th Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
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The Architectural Expression of Primitive Christianity J 279
Beveridge’s ministrations earned him the title of ‘the great reviver and restorer
of primitive piety’ whose ultimate standard was the teaching of the universal
Church according to the principles of its primitive ages.7
His sermon at the opening of the church highlights two crucial aspects of
primitive Christianity as understood at the time: the example of the early
Church in its teaching and practice; but, also the origins of the first covenant
with the Jews and, in particular, the worship of the Temple of Jerusalem. Like
the theologians of the early Church, seventeenth-century Christians understood the Hebrew Scriptures as prefiguring the New Testament typologically
and allegorically. Because both the puritans and high churchmen wanted
to claim fidelity to the primitive Church to legitimate their own positions,
each necessarily read the Scriptures through the lenses of their contemporary
ecclesiological and political priorities. These patristic and Temple emphases would have a decisive impact not only on Anglican liturgy, but also on
the architectural setting of that liturgy in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century churches designed by Wren, Hawksmoor, and others. While Anglican
churches of this period have usually been dismissed as mere preaching boxes,8
architectural historians are increasingly recognizing that theological reference
to Christian and Jewish antiquity was also mirrored in the preoccupations
and designs of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century architects.9 Within the
wider design of the church, the reredos, with its symbols of divine presence,
links the chancel with the holy of holies in the Temple; and, the chancel
7.
Beveridge, Works, I, preface.
8.
For examples of this fallacy from distinguished architectural historians, see James
Stevens Curl, Georgian Architecture (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1993); John
Summerson, Georgian London (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1962), 97.
9.
For a ground-breaking work in this area, see Pierre de la Ruffinière du Prey,
Hawksmoor’s London Churches: Architecture and Theology (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2000). See, also Vaughan Hart, Nicholas Hawksmoor: Rebuilding Ancient Wonders (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002). For a focus
on the architectural setting of Anglican worship, see Nigel Yates, Buildings, Faith,
and Worship. The Liturgical Arrangement of Anglican Churches 1600–1900 (Oxford,
Clarendon, 1991); and G.W.O. Addleshaw and Frederick Etchells, The Architectural
Setting of Anglican Worship. An Inquiry into the Arrangements for Public Worship in
the Church of England from the Reformation to the Present Day (London: Faber and
Faber, 1948). For a more extensive treatment of many of the themes in this essay, see
Peter Doll, After the Primitive Christians: The Eighteenth-Century Anglican Eucharist
in its Architectural Setting (Cambridge: Grove Books, 1997); and, Peter Doll, ‘“The
Reverence of God’s House”: The Temple of Solomon and the Architectural Setting
for the “Unbloody Sacrifice”’, in Anglicanism and Orthodoxy 300 Years after the ‘Greek
College’ in Oxford, edited by Peter M. Doll (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2005), 193–223.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2012
280 J Peter Doll
screen is a striking symbol not only of conscious continuity from the veil of
the Temple to the screens of the primitive Church to those of the restoration
Church of England, but also of the theology of sacrifice which links all three.
Temple theology
Before focusing on the particular currents in architecture and theology that
helped bring about the chancel screen and reredos, it is worth considering the
importance of contemporary Temple theology in a broader context.10 This
preoccupation with the Temple was in no way a new phenomenon but one
in continuity with medieval precedent. The study of the Temple was not a
purely religious phenomenon. Few people at that time assumed that church
and state were separable realms of human existence, but that they were rather
two sides of the same coin: two interdependent aspects of the same society. In his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, the pioneer, avant-garde conformist
Richard Hooker (1554–1600) denied the puritan dualism between grace and
nature: ‘If grace and nature were fundamentally in harmony it follows that
the church, the institution concerned with the propagation of grace, could
be fused with the state, the institution intended to cater for humanity’s natural needs.’11 The assumed link between the two carried on into the Restoration period. Indeed, Jacqueline Rose has asserted that ‘the position of English monarchs as supreme governors of the Church of England profoundly
affected early modern politics and religion.’12 Here, it may be argued that, the
Temple was as important as a model for civic planning as it was for church
design; for it was a means of articulating the relationship between Church
and state. Finally, the study of the Temple was of universal significance. Not
only was it not particular to any part of the Church, it was a concern shared
10. It is important to note that in most cases references to the Temple were general and
abstract. Here the archetype of the Temple stood in place of all particular forms;
whether one spoke of the Tent of Meeting, or of the Temple of Solomon, or that of
Herod, or that of Ezekiel, or that of the Revelation to John, or the Holy Sepulchre,
or even of the Dome of the Rock, the significance of all of them was understood
as being the essentially the same. The doyenne of present-day Temple studies is
Margaret Barker. For links between the Temple and the early Church, see Margaret
Barker, Temple Theology (London: SPCK, 2004); and Margaret Barker, The Great
High Priest (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2003).
11. John Gascoigne, ‘Church and State Unified: Hooker’s Rationale for the English
Post-Reformation Order,’ Journal of Religious History 21 (1), (1997): 23–34, 27.
12. Jacqueline Rose, Godly Kingship in Restoration England (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2011). For a discussion of early Anglican ideas about the harmony
between church and state, see Sarah Mortimer’s essay in this volume.
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The Architectural Expression of Primitive Christianity J 281
with Jewish and Islamic scholars, though the focus here is only on its Christian and in small part its Jewish manifestations.
Europeans exploring the ‘New World’ of the Americas interpreted their
experience in the context of their relationship with biblical history and eschatology. They used the Temple as a model for community life and as a sign of
both their conviction and their participation in the working out of God’s
will. Both Catholics and Protestants claimed to be the true heirs of the biblical Israel. Spanish Catholics, for example, exploited the Temple tradition in
a wide variety of contexts. Christopher Columbus desired to discover new
wealth in order to finance a crusade to liberate Jerusalem and to rebuild the
Temple there in preparation for the eschatological fulfilment of God’s plan.
Spanish Franciscan friars in Mexico, conscious of their order’s historical
responsibility for the holy places in the Holy Land, saw the conquest and
colonization of the New World as the conquest of a New Canaan. The plan of
the royal palace and monastery of El Escorial (1563–1584), which was based
on the ground plan of the ancient Temple at Jerusalem, expressed Philip II’s
self-identification with Solomon. The Spanish Laws of the Indies of 1573
designated a model of civic planning based on the vision of Ezekiel (chapter
40) as interpreted by the Franciscan Nicholas of Lyra (d.1349) in his commentaries on Ezekiel: square plans with chapel and fountains in the centre of
each quadrant; a central plaza with a great temple-cathedral in the place of
the temple altar, pointing to Christ as the sacrifice of God. Monumental gateways were flanked by spiral Solomonic columns named Jachin and Boaz [1
Kgs. 7:21]. The Temple tradition gave the Catholic Church in New Spain a
model and a raison d’être, affirming in the face of Protestant claims of unique
fidelity to the Bible the Catholic Church’s own assertion of identity as God’s
chosen instrument of revelation to the Gentiles.13
This typological approach to community planning was far from being
exclusively the province of Roman Catholics. The English puritan founders of
the New Haven Colony also used Ezekiel’s vision as a divinely ordained pattern of settlement for God’s chosen people. Unlike puritans in England who
rejected the Temple model of the church building as ‘popish,’14 New England
puritans embraced the Temple as an archetype. For the likes of John Davenport (bap. 1597, d.1670), colonial settlement provided the opportunity to
rebuild the Church, copying the original paradise in ‘full and exact conform13. See Jaime Lara, City, Temple, Stage. Eschatological Architecture and Liturgical Theatrics
in New Spain (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), ch. 4;
Hamblin and Seely, Solomon’s Temple, 174–175.
14. Guibbory, Christian Identity, 56–74.
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282 J Peter Doll
ity [to] heavenly rules and patterns.’15 Drawing visual inspiration from the
Temple studies of the Spaniards Juan Bautista Villalpando and Hector Prado
(authors of a monumental three-volume work In Ezechielem explanationes et
apparatus urbis ac templis Hierosolymitani commentariis et imaginibus illustratus [Rome, 1605]), Davenport and his followers laid out their heavenly city
in the form of nine perfectly square blocks, with the centre square left open
as a common, with the Temple at its centre.16 This meeting house was built
in 1639 to recreate the structure of the Tabernacle in the wilderness in placement, materials, and size, and like the Temple of Ezekiel its doorway faced
east, so that ‘The glory of the Lord came into the house by the way of the gate
whose prospect is toward the east’ (Ezek. 43.4).17 Like the Franciscan friars in
New Spain, these puritans in New England believed that the Temple was the
only true foundation for the Christian commonwealth.
The Temple tradition in the seventeenth century thus retained a unique
power and significance in the Christian mind. It symbolically stood as it did
in ancient Israel as the image of a sacred commonwealth, a civil polity with
the presence of God at its heart. Within the context of conflicting denominational and national claims to the continuing identity with Israel and the
Temple, it comes as little surprise that the Church of England should make
its own claim and that Temple imagery should be found at the very heart of
its church buildings. The particular foci of interest here, the chancel screen
and the reredos, in the seventeenth century were typically associated with
the holy table or altar. The origins of this link are to be found in the church
orders of Queen Elizabeth of October 1561. In them, the queen was trying
to undo the iconoclastic damage done during the reign of Edward VI, to
return to the ceremonial situation of 1549 and, with regard to images, to the
situation at the end of Henry VIII’s reign. Subsequent English puritans vigorously resisted any association of Christian worship with that of the Temple,
identifying Temple worship with the superstition and ceremonies that had
15. Letter of Davenport to Lady Vere, 28 September 1639, in Letters of John Davenport,
Puritan Divine, edited by Isabel Calder (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1937), 82.
16. For the link between the plan of New Haven and Villalpando, see John Archer,
‘Puritan Town Planning in New Haven,’ Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 34 (2), (1975): 140–149.
17. Vincent Scully, ‘Yale in New Haven: An Introduction,’ Yale in New Haven: Architecture and Urbanism, ed. Vincent Scully, Catherine Lynn, Erik Vogt, and Paul
Goldberger (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 2004), 11–13; and Erik Vogt, ‘A
New Heaven & and New Earth: The Origin and Meaning of the Nine Square Plan,’
in Yale in New Haven, ed. Scully et al., 36–51.
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The Architectural Expression of Primitive Christianity J 283
fatally flawed the worship of the Catholic Church. Elizabeth’s orders insisted
on retaining those elements that linked the worship of the Church with that
of the Temple. They specified that chancel screens should be retained and that
the communion table should be placed altarwise at the east end except during
the celebration of the communion, when it would be arranged tablewise east
and west in the body of the chancel. In addition, ‘the tables’ of the Decalogue
should ‘be fixed upon the wall over the said communion board.’18
Elizabeth was largely unsuccessful in her desire to reconnect the holy table
with the altarwise position. Church communities resisted moving the table
back and forth, and it tended to remain in the body of the chancel. The Canons of 1604 repeated the injunction for the tables of the commandments to be
fixed to the east wall, but there was no longer any mention of the Communion table being there; instead, rather optimistically, it was the place ‘where the
people may best see and read the same.’ The detaching of the Decalogue from
its association with the holy table was symptomatic of the extreme hostility
towards religious imagery in churches during Elizabeth’s reign. Fincham and
Tyacke have argued, however, that Elizabeth’s rearguard action in defence of
such imagery enabled the emergence of a group of progressive clergy committed to greater ceremonialism in worship.19 From the turn of the century
there was a growing movement for the beautification of churches. Richard
Hooker was in the vanguard of this movement. Where puritans decried the
continuity between the ceremonial worship of the Temple and of the Christian Church, Hooker rejoiced. In his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity he began to
articulate and make explicit the assumptions that underlay the association of
the Temple with the Church, of the Decalogue with the altar. Addressing the
concerns of the Puritans with whom he contended, Hooker wrote:
[They have] a fancy … against the fashion of our churches, as being framed
according to the pattern of the Jewish temple. … So far forth as our churches
and their temple have one end, what should let but that they may lawfully
have one form?
Just as the Temple had different precincts for different purposes, so in the
church it was right that there should be a separate chancel in which priest and
18. Kenneth Fincham and Nicholas Tyacke, Altars Restored: The Changing Face of
English Religious Worship, 1547–c.1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007),
39–40.
19. Fincham and Tyacke, Altars Restored, 74. For the development of this avant-garde,
see Graham Perry, The Arts of the Anglican Counter-Reformation: Glory, Laud and
Honour (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006).
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284 J Peter Doll
people gather for the Eucharist:
Our churches are places provided that the people might there assemble themselves in due and decent manner, according to their several degrees and order.
Which thing being common unto us with Jews, we have in this respect our
churches divided by certain partitions … there being in ours … but one partition, the cause whereof at the first (as it seemeth) was, that as many as were
capable of the holy mysteries might there assemble themselves….20
For Hooker, it was only right that Christian churches should imitate the
Temple not only in structure but also in ‘the majesty and holiness of the
place, where God is worshipped.’21
This renewal of confidence in the decoration of churches and in their relationship to the Temple is reflected in a contemporary surviving commandment board in the chapel of Archbishop Whitgift’s hospital at Croydon from
around 1601.22 This depicts Moses and Aaron holding the tablets of the Law
with a cloudy glory (the pillar of cloud being the image of God’s presence
with his people in the wilderness), or Shekinah, and the Tetragrammaton
inscribed in the midst. This is a type of altarpiece, sometimes just with the
commandments, sometimes with the Lord’s Prayer and Creed in addition,
sometimes with Moses and Aaron, that would become increasingly common
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so that it eventually did come to
be a standard fitting as envisaged in the orders of 1561.
An appreciation of the contemporary understanding of the power of the
Temple and the significance of architectural links with it, reminds us that these
commandment boards are far from being evidence of an arid legalism that
many have hitherto associated with the Church of England, particularly in the
eighteenth century. So what are these altarpieces actually saying? To answer this
question we need to look at the contemporary understanding of the Eucharist,
for making the Decalogue an altarpiece is placing it deliberately in that context.
Christ at the altar of the eternal Temple
The Church of England’s eucharistic doctrine which developed (on the foundation of Cranmer’s Prayer Books of 1549 and 1552) in the seventeenth
20. Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Bk v, ch. 14, in The Works of that
Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker, ed. John Keble (Oxford: Clarendon, 1865), II, 51–52.
21. Hooker, Works, V, xiv, 2, 53.
22. Stephen Porter and Adam White, ‘John Colt and the Charterhouse Chapel,’ Architectural History 44 (2001): 228–236.
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The Architectural Expression of Primitive Christianity J 285
century looked to the early Church for its doctrines of eucharistic presence,
consecration, and sacrifice and for the model of its worship. Taking their cue
from Archbishop Cranmer’s references in his preface to the Prayer Book to
the ‘godly and decent order of the most ancient fathers’ and ‘to the mind and
purpose of the old fathers,’23 subsequent theologians took eucharistic theology in directions distant from Cranmer’s own. Although he was well read in
the Fathers, Cranmer, like most Reformation theologians, cited them when
they supported his view. He established no school of ‘Cranmerians.’24 Elizabethan theologians worked in a different political and theological climate
than Cranmer did; they came under the influences of Calvin and Beza and,
caught between attacks from Roman Catholics and dissenting puritans, they
articulated an understanding of the Church of England between the two.
Some adhered to the more obviously Reformed rite of 1552, while others,
perceiving in it the influence of the Eastern Church, preferred that of 1549
with its explicit epiklesis, the invocation of the Holy Spirit on the elements
of bread and wine. This latter tendency, which Bryan Spinks has called a
‘Reformed Patristic’ theology, was at the heart of the emerging High Church
tradition.25 How the Church of England interpreted the Eucharist thus came
to be at variance with, if not in contradiction to, the ‘Cranmerian’ liturgy.26
Historians have often distinguished puritans and high churchmen by associating the former primarily with the Word and preaching and the latter with
sacramental religion. Arnold Hunt has rightly argued that this is a false dichot23. John E. Booty, ed., The Book of Common Prayer 1559. The Elizabethan Prayer Book
(Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1976), 14, 16.
24. On Cranmer’s theology, see Gordon P. Jeanes, Signs of God’s Promise: Thomas Cranmer’s
Sacramental Theology and the Book of Common Prayer (London: T & T Clark, 2008).
25. Bryan D. Spinks, Sacraments, Ceremonies, and the Stuart Divines: Sacramental Theology
and Liturgy in England and Scotland, 1603–1662 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 69–112.
26. For other works summarising the development of Anglican eucharistic doctrine,
see Darwell Stone, A History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (2 vols; London:
Longmans, 1909), II; C.W. Dugmore, Eucharistic Doctrine in England from Hooker
to Waterland (London: S.P.C.K., 1942); Edward P. Echlin, The Anglican Eucharist
in Ecumenical Perspective. Doctrine and Rite from Cranmer to Seabury (New York:
Seabury Press, 1968); Richard Sharp, ‘New Perspectives on the High Church Tradition: Historical Background 1730–1831,’ in Tradition Renewed: Oxford Movement
Conference Papers, ed. Geoffrey Rowell (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1986),
4–23; Byron D. Stuhlman, Eucharistic Celebration 1789–1989 (New York: Church
Hymnal Corporation, 1988); Kenneth Stevenson, Covenant of Grace Renewed. A
Vision of the Eucharist in the Seventeenth Century (London: Darton, Longman &
Todd, 1994).
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286 J Peter Doll
omy.27 Puritan and high churchman alike held both preaching and the sacrament of the Eucharist in high regard. Even when their beliefs about the Eucharist coincided, however, they were divided by the kind of language they chose
to use to express those beliefs. Reformed patristic theologians like Lancelot
Andrewes (1555–1626), Joseph Mede (1586–1638), William Laud (1573–
1645), John Overall (bap. 1561, d. 1619), Herbert Thorndike (bap. 1597?,
d.1672), and Jeremy Taylor (bap. 1613, d.1667) chose to use the language
of ‘altar’ and ‘sacrifice’ and ‘oblation’ drawn from their typological interpretation of Temple worship and from the Fathers and the liturgies of the Eastern
Church, but puritans rejected it because this was also the language of Roman
Catholicism.28 The full title of the work which summed up the thought of the
patristic school, The Unbloody Sacrifice (1704) by John Johnson of Cranbrook,
conveys precisely the points in contention: The Unbloody Sacrifice, and Altar,
Unvailed and Supported, in which the nature of the Eucharist is explained according to the sentiments of the Christian Church in the four first centuries; Proving,
That the Eucharist is a proper material Sacrifice, That it is both Eucharistic and
propitiatory, That it is to be offered by proper officers, That the Oblation is to be
made on a proper Altar, That it is properly consumed by manducation.29
While the two schools disagreed about the nature of the sacrifice, each
upheld Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist. Ideas about the ‘reality’ of the
presence have tended to be ambiguous because of the different ways in which
‘real’ may be understood. To the early Reformers ‘real’ was understood in a
narrowly philosophical sense. Thus when the ‘Black Rubric’ was restored and
revised in 1662, ‘real’ was replaced with ‘corporal.’ Through the influence of
Calvin and the Swiss theologians who followed him, however, real presence
came to be understood in the broader sense of ‘true’ by both puritan and high
Anglican alike. Calvin ‘strove earnestly to guard against an expression of eucharistic doctrine which seemed to reduce Christ’s presence to a merely subjective
reality dependent on the faith of the communicant.’30 Christ is truly present in
the sacrament, but not corporeally or carnally. Thus real presence was affirmed,
but as a mystery the manner of which cannot be precisely defined.
The doctrine of sacrifice, like that of presence, had long been a matter of
controversy. The Anglican condemnation of the Roman sacrifice of masses as
27. Arnold Hunt, ‘The Lord’s Supper in Early Modern England,’ Past & Present 161
(1998): 39–83.
28. Guibbory, Christian Identity, ch. 2.
29. The Theological Works of the Rev. John Johnson, 2 vols (Oxford: John Henry Parker,
1847), I.
30. Stuhlman, Eucharistic Celebration, 12.
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The Architectural Expression of Primitive Christianity J 287
‘blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits’, as written in the thirty-first of the
Articles of Religion, arose from the reformers’ desire to avoid any notion of an
independent sacrifice in each eucharistic oblation. Reformed patristic theologians turned to the Epistle to the Hebrews to express an understanding of the
Church’s sacrifice united to that of Christ in heaven. Jeremy Taylor, the Restoration Bishop of Down and Connor, used the Christology of Hebrews 9 and
10 to describe Christ as high priest after the order of Melchizedek pleading his
sacrifice in the heavenly sanctuary even as the priest pleads it in the Church’s
Eucharist. His doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice is given full visual expression in
the frontispiece to the 1720 edition of Charles Wheatly’s Rational Illustration
of the Book of Common Prayer (first edition, 1710), the standard Prayer Book
commentary in the eighteenth century. Thus Taylor writes:
The church being the image of heaven, the priest, the minister of Christ; the
holy table being the copy of the celestial altar, and the eternal sacrifice of the
lamb slain from the beginning of the world being always the same; it bleeds
no more after the finishing of it on the cross, but it is wonderfully represented
in heaven, and graciously represented here; by Christ’s action there, by his
commandment here.31
In Wheatly’s image, (see Figure 1 next page) the Church on earth, represented by a congregation kneeling in a chancel and its priest at the altar in
the celebration of the Eucharist, is shown as the temporal manifestation of
the heavenly reality of Christ at the altar of the eternal Temple. Christ the
great high priest in the presence of the cherubim offers at the heavenly altar
his oblation of himself to the Father even as the Church on earth participates
in the offering of the Eucharist. Heaven and earth are united in one.
Those concerned to emphasize the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist also
stressed the significance of the oblation of the elements, the offering back to
God what he has already given them, that he might transform them. Effortlessly blending images of the old and new covenants, Johnson spoke of the
bread and wine as that ‘upon which God, at the prayers of the Priests and
people, sends down His peculiar spiritual benediction, by which it becomes a
Sacrifice of a sweet-smelling savour, as being therefore fully consecrated into
the spiritual Body and Blood of Christ, and therefore fit wherewith to propitiate the Divine mercy.’32 The prayer of oblation which followed the words of
institution in the 1549 Prayer Book by 1552 had been dislocated and become
31. Jeremy Taylor, The Worthy Communicant (1660), cited in Dugmore, Eucharistic Doctrine, 102.
32. Johnson, Works, I, 304–305.
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288 J Peter Doll
Figure 1.
Charles Wheatly, Rational Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacrements, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, According
to the Use of the Church of England... (3rd ed. London: Printed for A. Bettesworth,
W. and J. Inny, and C. Rivington, 1720), frontispiece. © British Library Board:
General Reference Collection 471.e.3. The facsimile is from Eighteenth Century
Collections Online (ECCO), 0E. © 2011 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc.
Reproduced by permission. www.cengage.com/permissions.
a post-Communion prayer. This caused much distress to sacrificially-minded
Anglicans. Lancelot Andrewes privately recited his own prayer of oblation
from Eastern sources.33 Wheatly appeals to the example of Bishop John Overall (1560–1619), whose practice it was to use the prayer of oblation ‘between
the Consecration and Administering, even when it was otherwise order’d by
33. Stuhlman, Eucharistic Celebration, 23–25.
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The Architectural Expression of Primitive Christianity J 289
the publick Liturgy.’34
Following this primitive understanding of oblation, it was appropriate
that from the Reformation until the nineteenth century, Anglicans should,
after the manner of the early Church, move the liturgical action from the
nave through the chancel screen to the sanctuary. In such circumstances, the
screen comes to represent in a visible form the invisible meeting place of
earth and heaven. After the manner of the ancient Syrian Christians, all the
communicants accompanied the priest from the focus around the ambo or
reading desk to ‘draw near with faith’ and gather around the altar. As Wheatly
describes it, following the exhortation, ‘THE Feast being now ready, and the
Guests prepar’d with due instruction, the Priest (who is the Steward of those
Mysteries) invites them to draw near; thereby putting them in mind, that
they are now invited into Christ’s more special presence, to sit down with him
at his own Table.’35 In his encyclopedic survey of the early Church, Origines
Ecclesiasticæ (1708–1722), Joseph Bingham (bap. 1668, d.1723) explicitly
links this movement within the structure of the early Eucharist to Anglican
practice by calling the missa catechumenorum ‘the Ante–Communion Service
on the Lord’s Day’ held in the nave, and the missa fidelium the ‘Communion
Service’ celebrated at the altar.36 As the modern liturgical historian, Horton
Davies, has commented: ‘Moving to the chancel for the Communion service
seemed to give the Sacrament a special sacredness, which has been strongly
emphasized through most of Anglican history; the chancel screen helped to
separate the liturgy of the catechumens from the liturgy of the faithful, thus
imparting to the climax of worship a sense of deep mystery.’37
Approaching the altar in unity
In St Peter’s, Cornhill (as in many other churches) the royal coat of arms was
placed on top of the screen (the practice of which had been inaugurated during the reign of Henry VIII). It is important not to see the arms as a symbol
of mere Erastianism, of the dominance of the Church by the state, or of the
34. Charles Wheatly, A Rational Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer of the Church
of England (London, 1722), 313 This was also the practice of Overall’s chaplain,
John Cosin, amongst others; see Stevenson, Covenant of Grace, 94.
35. Wheatly, Rational Illustration, 299–300.
36. Joseph Bingham, Origines ecclesiasticæ. The Antiquities of the Christian Church
(1708–1722), Bk xiv, ch. 5, § xii–xiii, and bk xv, ch. 3, §v: taken from the 1850
edition, vol. 2, 742–743, 769.
37. Horton Davies, Worship and Theology in England. From Cranmer to Hooker
1534–1603 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), 365.
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290 J Peter Doll
requirement to partake of the sacrament as a qualification for full citizenship and office, but as evidence of the close, symbiotic relationship between
Church and state with its precedent in ancient Israel and its Temple. The
royal supremacy indicated no power external to the Church; the king was no
purely secular person but what was known to the seventeenth century as a
‘spiritual person,’ anointed and clothed in a dalmatic at his coronation and
therefore, though not ordained, capable of jurisdiction in spiritual matters.38
Bringing together the imagery of the screen and the reredos, the liturgical and
architectural historians, George Addleshaw and Frederick Etchells, elucidate
how these elements express the central assumptions of the age:
When the royal arms, the Commandments, the Belief, and the Lord’s Prayer
with explanatory sentences from scripture were all painted on the tympanum, and perhaps too the letters IHS at the top, the whole scheme spoke to
the parishioners of the duties incumbent upon them as members both of an
earthly and a heavenly city.39
The association of the royal arms with the altar was not confined to England.
The French liturgist, Jean-Baptiste Le Brun des Marettes (1651–1731), writing a liturgical travel diary under the name of the Sieur de Moleon, reveals the
association of the royal arms with the bishop’s throne behind the high altar
in the cathedral at Lyons.40 The Gallican understanding of the relationship
between Church and state was closely analogous to the Anglican, and they
shared a commitment to the priority of diocesan episcopacy against papal
incursions. Gallican liturgists and theologians, like Anglican, were deeply
influenced by patristic precedent. The Gallican churchmen of the Church of
France also saw the witness of the Fathers of the early Churchas the fortress
of the true Catholic tradition against the fashions of Tridentine Rome, which
sought to do away with local liturgies and customs. Gallicans were well aware
of the Anglican contribution to their common patristic concerns.41 A com38. For a contemporary expression of this relationship, see John Godolphin, Repertorium Canonicum: or, an Abridgment of the Ecclesiastical Laws of this Realm, Consistent
with the Temporal (3rd ed.; London, 1687), 9.
39. Addleshaw and Etchells, Architectural Setting, 101–104.
40. Addleshaw and Etchells, Architectural Setting, 151–153.
41. On the relationship between Gallicanism and Anglicanism, see George Every, The
High Church Party 1688–1718 (London: S.P.C.K., 1956), ch. 1; Owen Chadwick, From Bossuet to Newman. The Idea of Doctrinal Development (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1957), 13–16, 52–60; and Peter M. Doll, Revolution,
Religion, and National Identity: Imperial Anglicanism in British North America
1745–1795 (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associ-
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The Architectural Expression of Primitive Christianity J 291
mon line of Anglican and Gallican thinking is revealed in contemporary attitudes to chancel screens. In many of the ancient churches and cathedrals, the
medieval screen, or jubé, was being removed amidst the general enthusiasm
for baroque furnishings. The focus on the high altar, preferably with a marble-columned ciborium or baldacchino, meant that many ancient furnishings
and tombs were being swept away. The principle of the screen did not disappear, however. John McManners recalls: ‘In some places the medieval work
was replaced with a more delicately constructed barrier, one which broke up
the view without obliterating it—a grille of ironwork in acanthus designs at
Rieux, a row of Ionic pillars at Sens.’ At Rouen the old screen was replaced
by a new colonnade ‘consisting of six marble shafts of antique workmanship,
plundered long ago from the ruins of Leptis Magna in North Africa.’42 Even
some new churches built in the classical style in Paris, such as St Eustache, St
Roch, and St Sulpice, were built with chancel screens, combining traditional
gothic church planning with classical details.
Gallican theologians wrote spirited defences of the place of choir screens in
church as a riposte to the Counter-Reformation fashion for shallow chancels
and for the church as a theatre of the Mass. Jean-Baptiste Thiers published his
Dissertations sur les jubés in 1688. Le Brun des Marettes wrote in his Voyage
liturgique de France of 1718, ‘There is no higher act in the Christian religion
than the Sacrifice of the mass; the greater portion of the other sacraments,
and nearly all the offices and ceremonies of the church, are only the means
or the preparation to celebrate or participate in it worthily.’43 This being the
case, it was only natural that the place where the holy sacrifice was offered
up should be set apart and railed off to enhance the people’s reverence for
the sacrifice. As with the link between town planning in New Spain and
New England, so with these common features and emphases in Gallican and
Anglican churches, theologies based on the Temple and patristic theology
enabled such expressions of a common culture across the Reformation divide.
Touching on the relationship between Church and state in another way, one
churchman and traveler to Greece and the Levant, George Wheler (1650–
1723), went so far as to suggest that the division of the service between the
liturgies of Word and sacrament might be an effective way to reintegrate into
the Church of England ‘Penitents & those Dissenting on grounds of Disciated University Presses, 2000), 22–29.
42. John McManners, Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France. Vol. I: The Clerical
Establishment and its Social Ramifications (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 442.
43. Quoted in Augustus Welby Pugin, A Treatise on Chancel Screens and Rood Lofts:
Their Antiquity, Use and Symbolic Signification (London, 1851), 3.
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292 J Peter Doll
pline & Form of Worship’ who would be willing to hear the scriptures and
sermons. Wheler argued that cathedrals and churches could be rearranged
on a primitive pattern to serve such a ministry, with the pulpit moved to
the place of the throne behind the altar, the clergy within the sanctuary, the
faithful (segregated by sex) within the choir, and the dissenters in the aisles.44
High churchmen remained convinced that faithful adherence to primitive
tradition remained the best and only way of uniting the Church.
The fulfillment of sacrifices
When it is understood how important doctrines of sacrifice and presence
were in the celebration of the Eucharist, this gives a strong clue to what elements in the reredos might mean. In the Temple, the tablets of the Law were
kept within the ark of the covenant in the holy of holies; this reminder of the
old covenant is an entirely appropriate symbol to associate with the altar and
the new covenant in Christ’s blood.45 The altar is the new mercy-seat for the
divine presence in the Eucharist.
The usual elements of the reredos correspond to the setting in the Temple.
Above the tablets the cherubim typically face one another as they did on the
Ark that contained the tablets of the law. Above them is the sacred monogram
associated with the holy name of God, signifying his invisible presence on his
cherub throne. In some cases the IHS signifies the sacred name of Jesus, but
just as often the Tetragrammaton was used, typically with the image of the
Shekinah in the form of a sunburst or glory. This points once again to God’s
abiding presence among his people in church as in Temple. The common
presence in the reredos of the carved flowers, fruit, and wheat point to the
tradition of the Temple as the restoration of the garden of paradise.46
As noted already, Moses and Aaron were so frequently present that one
writer referred to them ‘as the two faithful prophets ever attendant on our
altars.’47 They can be understood as a reminder of state and Church, of mag44. George Wheler, An Account of the Churches, or Places of Assembly, of the Primitive
Christians; From the Churches of Tyre, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, Described by
Eusebius... (London, 1689), 110–115.
45. See David H. Chaundy-Smith, ‘The Moral Shecinah: The Social Theology of Chancel Decoration in Seventeenth-Century London,’ Anglican and Episcopal History 69
(2), (2000): 193–210.
46. Margaret Barker, The Gate of Heaven (London: S.P.C.K., 1991), 27.
47. For the popularity of this theme in Restoration England, see John Spurr, The
Restoration Church of England 1646–1689 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1991), 48, 59–60.
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The Architectural Expression of Primitive Christianity J 293
istracy and ministry, but they also fit in well with eucharistic themes. When
Moses met with the Lord, his own face shone with the glory of God. He was
the bearer of the Lord’s presence, and Aaron was the original high priest and
sacrificial minister.
These elements are brought together magnificently in the work of Joseph
Mede, the leading English Hebrew scholar in the first half of the seventeenth century. In his discourse, Churches (1638), Mede affirmed the present
Church’s dependence on the worship of the old and new covenants: ‘Because
[the early Christians] had before their eyes an example and pattern in the
Proseuchais and Synagogues of the Iews, from whom their Religion had its
beginning … Who can beleeve, that such a pattern should not invite the
Christian to an imitation of the same?’48 Mede’s sermon on ‘The Reverence of
God’s House’ (1638) insists that God’s presence with his people is as real in
church as it was in the Temple. He speaks of the Old Testament sacrifices as
memorials, rites of remembrance ‘whereby the Name of God was commemorated or recorded, and his Covenant with men renewed and testified.’ Mede
insisted on the continuing significance of the Jewish witness:
You will say, What is all this to us, now in the time of the Gospell? I answer,
Yes. For did not Christ ordaine the holy Eucharist to be the Memoriall of his
Name in the New Testament? … And what if I should affirme, that Christ
is as much present here, as the Lord was upon the Mercy–seat between the
Cherubins? Why should not then the Place of this Memoriall under the
Gospell have some semblable sanctitie to that, where the Name of God was
recorded in the Law?
In a word, all those sacred Memorialls of the Jewish Temple are both comprehended and excelled in this One of the Christians, the Sacrifices, Shewbread,
and Ark of the Covenant; Christ’s Bodie and Bloud in the Eucharist being all
these unto us in the New Testament, agreeably to that of the Apostle, [Rom.
3:25]. “God hath set forth Iesus Christ to be our ἱλαστέριoν through faith in
his bloud”, that is, our Propitiatory or Mercy seat.49
The Christian Eucharist is the fulfilment of the Old Testament sacrifices, and
God is present to his people in the sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood just
as he was enthroned in his glory upon the Ark of the Covenant. ‘Where his
memoriall is, there His ‫ שכינה‬SHECINAH or Δόξα is.’50
48. Joseph Mede, Churches, that is, Appropriate Places for Christian Worship; both in, and
ever since the Apostles Times (London, 1638), 55.
49. Joseph Mede, The Reverence of God’s House: A Sermon preached at St. Maries in Cambridge, before the Universitie on St Matthies day. Anno 1635/6 (London, 1638), 9–11.
50. Mede, The Reverence of God’s House, 15.
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294 J Peter Doll
Mede goes even further, arguing that the shekinah or presence of God is
not confined to the sacrament. Just as he was present in the burning bush
and at Bethel, so God is present wherever his ‘traine or retinue is, where the
heavenly Guard, the blessed Angels keep their sacred station and rende–vous.’
As the Temple was decorated with cherubim with their faces turned toward
the Mercy-seat and as the Jews continued this practice in their modern synagogues, so Christians from St Paul [1 Cor. 11:10] onwards have acknowledged the presence of the angels in the place of assembly, their eyes turned
to the Mercy-seat or altar. Whether or not the sacrament is present, Mede
assures his listeners that the Lord is in their churches, and that these buildings
are fitly called God’s house.51
Mede’s reference to the practice of synagogues raises one of the most intriguing
facets of the Christian use of Temple imagery, that is, how similar in appearance
churches and synagogues of this period are. There is in London a synagogue of
1701 at Bevis Marks, contemporaneous with Wren’s work.52 What is striking is
not only the similarity of appearance, but how often comparable architectural
elements bear similar if not identical meanings. The bema at Bevis Marks is in
the midst of the congregation, just as the reading desk and pulpit typically was
in Anglican churches. In the early Church, as in the contemporary synagogue,
the ambo, the focus of the liturgy of the word, was often in the middle of the
nave. The ambo performed the same function as the reading-desk, as Bingham pointed out: ‘The Ambo itself was what we now call the Reading-Desk, a
Place made on Purpose for the Readers and Singers, and such of the clergy as
ministered in the first Service, called Missa Catechumenorum.’53 Beveridge, in
his collection of patristic canons, Synodikon, includes ground plans of ancient
eastern churches, Ichnographia templorum orientalium, based on textual evidence from authors like Simeon of Thessalonica, the fifteenth-century Byzantine ecclesiologist (see Figure 3). Of the ambo, Beveridge writes that from the
first it was placed in the midst of the church, opposite the altar and before the
doors of the sanctuary.54 Even where there was no chancel screen, the reading51. Mede, The Reverence of God’s House, 18–34. On the altar, see Joseph Mede, The
Name Altar, or ΘΥΣΙΑΣΤΗΡΙΟΝ, anciently given to the Holy Table (London, 1637).
52. Richard D. Barnett and Abraham Levy, The Bevis Marks Synagogue (London, 1970).
53. Bingham, Orig. eccles., bk viii, ch. 5, § iv.
54. ‘Hunc autem, et de eo prius aliqua delibimus, in medio Ecclesiæ interspeciosas
& sanctas fores, & altari oppositum esse.’ His illustration is, ‘fidem facit Symeon
Thessalonicensis dicens, ὁ ἀμβον προ της θυρας του μνηματοϛ ἱσταται, Ambon è
conspectu parte bematis statuitur’; cited in William Beveridge, Συνοδικον, sive pandectæ canonum ss. apostolorum, et conciliorum ab Ecclesia græca receptorum (Oxford,
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The Architectural Expression of Primitive Christianity J 295
desk could be an effective means of separating nave and chancel.
The Ark at Bevis Marks takes a form very near to that of an Anglican reredos with the classical entablatures and the tables of the commandments and
carvings of foliage. Like the altar, the ark points to the abiding presence of
the Lord in the midst of his people, though here the locus of the presence is
in the scrolls of the Torah rather than in the sacrifice of the new covenant.
Bevis Marks even has its own painting of Moses and Aaron which formerly
was in the synagogue but has now been moved to the vestry. How synagogues
and churches might have influenced one another or what contemporaries
thought about these similarities is a significant potential area for study. A
writer on churches in a small book called De templis of 1638, argued that
Christians need not ‘fear … to build a Christian church so like Solomon’s
Temple’ out of worry that it would resemble a synagogue.55 Bevis Marks is far
from the only such example. The American colonial architect, Peter Harrison
(1716–1775), built both the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island
(1759) and King’s Chapel in Boston, Massachusetts (1749) in similar forms.
With only a little adaptation the roles of synagogue and church could easily
have been switched.
During the Commonwealth, Temple studies proceeded apace. John Lightfoot (1602–1675) was indefatigable in his determination to extract every
available crumb of information about the Temple, particularly that of Herod,
recording information about the function and the dimension of all its spaces.
He published two major studies: The Temple Service as It Stood in the Days
of our Saviour (1649) and The Temple as It Stood in the Days of our Saviour
(1650). Unlike Mede, Lightfoot avoided making direct comparisons between
the functions of the Temple and of the Church. In addition to his own work,
Lightfoot contributed to the compilation of Bryan Walton’s Biblia sacra polyglotta (1653–1657), the major achievement of English Bible scholarship during the Interregnum. This Bible included a compilation of ten plans of the
Temple drawn from the works of Villalpando and other Continental scholars. Lightfoot’s voracious efforts to have the last word in Temple scholarship
reflects the widespread hunger and belief that acquiring the secrets of the
Temple would provide an important key to the knowledge of God to be
found in the Scriptures.
1672), II, Annotationes, 73.
55. R.T., De Templis (London, 1638), 22, 158, 201.
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296 J Peter Doll
Figure 2.
The Holy Bible Containing the Books of the Old & New Testaments. 2 vols (Cambridge: John Field … Illustrated with Chorographical Sculps. By J. Ogilby, 1660),
I, 450451: Temple image. By kind permission of Norwich Cathedral Library.
The Temple restored
The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 coincided with a renewal of confidence on the part of the Church of England. Its deprivation and persecution under the Commonwealth had renewed its confidence in its episcopal
identity. The splendor of the restored monarchy and the renewal of church
life and church buildings were reflected in the publication of the so-called
‘Restoration Bible’ by John Field in 1660. This edition was lavishly illustrated
with large folio copperplate prints, but the two double page plates by Wenceslaus Hollar (1607–1677) of the Temple exceeded in magnificence every
other illustration in the volume (for the first, see Figure 2). The overwhelming scale of his breathtaking perspective reflected the renewed confidence of
the Church in relation to the state and the significant place the Temple had
within its self-understanding.
The Great Fire of London and the subsequent rebuilding provided the ideal
opportunity to express that confidence in the city churches rebuilt under the
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The Architectural Expression of Primitive Christianity J 297
supervision of Christopher Wren. Wren knew all about the attempted restitutions of the Temple. In his own writings, included among the Parentalia published by his son in 1750, he traced the history of buildings through the Bible
and through the works of Josephus, and he devised his own theories about
the architectural forms and orders used by ancient builders. He knew Villalpando’s work, dismissing the Spaniard’s use of the Corinthian order on his
restituted Temple as ‘mere fancy’ and maintaining that the Israelites would
have used the ‘Tyrian’ order. Wren probably met Rabbi Jacob Judah Leon
(1603–post-1675), nicknamed ‘Templo,’ a travelling scholar who came to
London in 1674 with his own model of the Temple of Solomon, which corrected what he regarded as the errors of Villalpando.56 The technical aspects
of the construction of the Temple preoccupied Wren particularly. He tried
to calculate how King Solomon deployed the prodigious number of men
and beasts in raising the costly stones, and ‘reckoned that Solomon had used
music to provide a rhythm for activating winches or capstans.’ The building
of the Temple was as real to Wren as any of the buildings that he was engaged
to construct.57 For the Church, its triumphs both over the disaster of its abolition under the commonwealth and over the destruction of the great fire
seemed to echo the recovery of Israel from defeat and destruction.
The scholarship of men like Wren and Beveridge drew together the diverse
fields of biblical and patristic theology, and architectural history, theory, and
practice into a form that expressed in stone, brick, and wood the intellectual,
spiritual, and political priorities of their own time. They took the common,
Christian European vocabularies of patristic theology and Temple architecture and gave them a distinctively English expression. The chancel and screen
of St Peter’s Cornhill encapsulates an English and Anglican self-understanding
that articulates their understanding of sacred place and their identity as a people chosen by God under a sacral monarchy, an understanding that stretches
back to Solomon’s Temple through the patristic and medieval church and to
their own time. Their witness proved to be widely influential.
While Beveridge and his fellow ‘primitive’ Anglicans were determined that
their own church should be accountable to the universal witness of the wider
Church, they were also conscious of the need to justify their own ecclesiological standpoint vis-à-vis both nonconformity and Roman Catholicism. The
Anglican appeal to the primitive witness, with its immense erudition and
56. Du Prey cites a letter introducing Leon from Constantijn Huygens to Wren, see
Hawksmoor’s London Churches, 19.
57. Du Prey, Hawksmoor’s London Churches, 16–20.
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298 J Peter Doll
Figure 3.
William Beveridge, Ichnographia Templorum Veterum (Oxonii: E Theatro Sheldoniano Sumptibus Guilielmi Wells & Roberti Scott, 1672), plate fragment.
© British Library Board: General Reference Collection Harl.5929[449]. Image
published with permission of ProQuest. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission.
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The Architectural Expression of Primitive Christianity J 299
weight of scholarship was valuable in its own right, but it was also a means
of distinguishing itself against ecclesiastical rivals in both the national and
the international arena. Beveridge’s Synodikon, like his pastoral practice, was
intended both to establish the fidelity of the Church of England to primitive practice and also to encourage Anglicans to deepen their fidelity to that
witness. His ideal plan for an early Church is insistent on the place of altar,
screen, ambo, and font in ways congruent with contemporary Anglican practice (see, Figure 3). This was a significant image, recycled both at home and
abroad: in Wheatly’s Rational Illustration and Joseph Bingham’s monumental
Origines Ecclesiasticae, as well as in Peter Schelstrate’s Sacrum Antiochenum
concilium… (Antwerp, 1681).
The plan was also a challenge to extend the Church of England’s imitation
of antiquity. Beveridge’s school and university friend, William Cave (1637–
1713), author of the popularly orientated Primitive Christianity (published
in the same year as the Synodikon, 1671, when he became incumbent of the
church of All-Hallows-the-Great), chose to have built a screen in imitation of
Beveridge’s at St Peter’s.
The commission to build fifty new churches for London after 1711 drew
heavily on Wren and Beveridge. In advising the commission, the nonjuror,
George Hickes (1642–1715), relied on the plans of ancient basilicas in Beveridge’s Synodikon and copied in Bingham’s subsequent Origines ecclesiasticae
for the design and the liturgical arrangements of the new churches. Nicholas
Hawksmoor used these same plans in his proposed design for a site in Bethnal
Green, a church which the commissioners in the end did not build. Tellingly,
he entitled the design ‘The Basilica after the Primitive Christians’ with reference to the ‘purest times of Christianity’ in the fourth century.58 It is a plan
clearly in tune with the ecclesiological preoccupations of his time, part historical reconstruction and part ideal model. Important features of this plan found
their way not only into all Hawksmoor’s subsequent churches, but also those
of Thomas Archer (1668/9–1743) and James Gibbs (1682–1754), whose
St Martin-in-the-Fields was particularly important; Gavin Stamp has called it
‘one of the most influential and imitated buildings in architectural history.’59
The screened chancel with its altarpiece at St Peter, Cornhill, emerges as a
fully worked-out exemplar of the theological, civic, and architectural priorities of the time. Other churches throughout the city of London and through58. See Du Prey, Hawksmoor’s London Churches, 61–70; Hart, Nicholas Hawksmoor, 140–142.
59. Gavin Stamp, ‘Church Architecture,’ in Architecture of the British Empire, ed. Robert
Fermor-Hesketh (London: Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1986), 149.
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300 J Peter Doll
Figure 4.
Thomas Comber, Short Discourses upon the Whole Common Prayer, Designed to
Inform the Judgment and Excite the Devotion of such as Daily Use the Same. (2nd ed.
London: Samuel Roycroft, 1688), frontispiece. By kind permission of Norwich
Cathedral Library.
out the Church of England would have been provided with some or all of the
elements found here. The railed-in altar, which had been such a bone of contention under Archbishop Laud, had by 1700 become the standard pattern
in the church. In addition, the presence of the Temple in the visual culture of
the Church of England was reinforced through illustrations in popular works
of devotion. The famous frontispieces to Wheatly’s Rational Illustration are
packed with theological and architectural significance, but there were other
noteworthy printed images too. The first comes from the 1688 edition of
Thomas Comber’s Short Discourses upon the Whole Common Prayer (first published in 1684). The image (see Figure 4) is a remarkable conflation of Anglican and Temple images. A congregation prays devoutly as a priest, vested in a
voluminous surplice and academic hood offers the sacrifice of a clean heart to
God at a stone altar raised up many steps and with a fire burning on its top,
angels hovering around , and the sunburst glory labeled ‘Shecinah’ above, lest
one be in any doubt about what is portrayed. This imagery would later be
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The Architectural Expression of Primitive Christianity J 301
expressed verbally by Charles Wesley in his hymn (1762):
O thou who camest from above,
The pure celestial fire to impart,
Kindle a flame of sacred love
On the mean altar of my heart.
There let it for thy glory burn
With inextinguishable blaze,
And trembling to its source return
In humble prayer, and fervent praise.
The other image is the frontispiece from the 1711 edition of The Divine
Banquet (see, Figure 5). It reminds us, as does the Wheatly illustration, that
for the Eucharist the ministry of the Word was in the nave of the church,
where the congregation gathered around the triple-decker pulpit, like the
bema in the Synagogue, or like the ambo in the early Church. At the ‘Draw
near with faith,’ the communicants would move to join the priest in the
chancel and gather around the altar there, the body of Christ receiving what
they are. Even this practice has its origins in the Temple. Then the Day of
Atonement was the one day in the year when the high priest would go into
the holy of holies bearing the blood of sacrifice to effect atonement between
God and his people. Since the death of Jesus had torn the veil of the Temple,
God had opened the way to heaven through him. The whole people of God
became a priestly people, and the Anglican practice of all the communicants
going with the priest through the chancel screen into the holy of holies of the
church to celebrate the Eucharist is a powerful reflection of this fact. Here
again are the tables of the commandments and the flaming hearts and the
hovering angels indicating God’s presence on his Mercy-seat.
Conclusion
The screened chancel and the Commandments reredos reflect all this rich
heritage of architectural elements acting as relics, of the translation of the
Temple into every local church, of the ongoing understanding of the presence of God in the midst of his people and of eucharistic oblation and of
participation in the one sacrifice of the cross. They speak of a continuity of
architectural and theological understanding, of the enduring value of a mystical tradition even in the midst of a mathematical and scientific revolution.
The setting for the altar in St Peter’s, Cornhill, reflected the conviction of
Anglican primitive churchmen that the Church of England was accountable
to more than its own post-Reformation history and tradition. The Church of
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302 J Peter Doll
Figure 5.
The Divine Banquet: or Sacramental Devotions… (London: imprint z. Isham and
R.P.D. Henric, printed for N. Crouch, 1711), frontispiece. © Harry Ransom
Center, The University of Texas at Austin. The facsimile is from Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), 0E. © 2011 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning,
Inc. Reproduced by permission. www.cengage.com/permissions.
England was accountable for its faith to the universal Church in the age of its
primitive purity and proximity to the age of the Apostles and martyrs. That
patristic piety was itself formed by a conviction of the utter dependence of
the new covenant of the Christians on the first covenant of the Jews and the
continuity of its worship with that of the Temple. The screened chancel with
its altar and reredos was a powerful symbol of that lineage stretching back
beyond the basilicas of the primitive Christians back to the very veil of the
Temple that had been torn in two by the death of Christ.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2012
The Architectural Expression of Primitive Christianity J 303
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