Choir Stalls Research Articles

Judaic Imagery on Medieval Choir Stalls

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III. Abbot Berkyng's Tapestries and Matthew Paris's Life of St Edward the Confessor

According to John Flete, the fifteenth-century historian of Westminster Abbey, Abbot Richard de Berkyng (d. 1246) bequeathed to the Abbey two curtains or dorsalia which he had procured for the choir, depicting the story of the Saviour and St Edward. Nothing is known about the appearance of these textiles; but they were presumably of fine quality, befitting the patronage of a Treasurer of England, and were evidently intended to hang in the choir stalls. There they remained until after the Dissolution. According to a sixteenth-century commentary with transcriptions of the original texts in the hangings by Robert Hare, discovered by M. R. James (Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, MS 391 [611], they were of ‘faire arras worke’, and so were tapestries rather than embroideries; they were also described as ‘wrought in the cloth of Arras’ by Weever in 1631. They hung in the church until 1644, whence they were removed to the chamber of the House of Commons in the Palace; according to Brayley ‘a large remnant’ of the scene of the Circumcision was still preserved in the Jerusalem Chamber at the Abbey in the early nineteenth century. The tapestries were one of the most extensive recorded instances of English thirteenth-century textile production. They provide evidence too for a genre of monastic choir decoration analogous to the lost Old Testament narratives in the choir at Bury St Edmund's and the typological pictures formerly adorning the choir-stalls of Peterborough Abbey. Moreover, they anticipate the mixture of purely narrative material in the surviving fourteenth-century paintings above the dossals of the choir stalls of Cologne Cathedral, and especially the tapestries depicting the lives of St Piat and St Eleutherius from the choir of Tournai Cathedral, Arras work dated 1402.

On Re‐reading Goldman

I’m sitting next to Evelyn, in the choir stalls of the hospital chapel. Evelyn, who has been a patient in this hospital for at least twenty-five of her fifty years, is singing away lustily with the rest of us. But the words she is singing are quite different from the ones I’m singing. So different in fact that I can’t make them out at all. But, no matter; ‘God is his own interpreter, and He will make it plain’, the rest of us sing.In Religious thinking from Childhood to Adolescence, Ronald Goldman says that ‘some religious experiences are so profound and personal and mysterious that it is doubtful if they are communicable at all, except through the emotional language of the arts’. In Evelyn’s case, it is simple enough. She can’t read. She is simply feeling religious emotions and singing religious words in a religious way; the result is, she sounds just like the six-year-old child quoted by Goldman: ‘Thy deliberately Faith I full,Faith against almighty worship God,And Faith all unto you,Faith against thy holy prayer’.In fact, Evelyn is perfectly capable of what Goldman would consider to be ‘adult’ religious thinking, and I know this because I’m preparing her for Confirmation in a few weeks’ time. In the meantime, not understanding the words of Cowper’s hymn is certainly not stopping her from undergoing a genuinely religious experience. In fact, she is worshipping more completely and wholeheartedly than we are. She is more totally involved in an experience of Divinity. Although they are opaque to us, the words she is using fit her experience exactly. The parallel with glossolalia is obvious.

Jan Gossaert van Mabuse as Designer of Choir Stalls for Utrecht Cathedral

Jan Gossaert van Mabuse as Designer of Choir Stalls for Utrecht Cathedral

VI.—The Twelfth-Century Design Sources of the Worcester Cathedral Misericords

Misericords are a humble form of sculpture which has not attracted much attention from the erudite, either in the middle ages or today. Except when the seats of the choir stalls were tipped up, so that the misericords should spare their occupants the fatigue of standing through long services, these carvings were hidden and it does not seem to have been considered necessary that their subjects should conform to a consistent scheme of iconography. Lack of imagination, or of skill, might lead to a whole set of misericords being carved from a single decorativepattern as at North Marston (Bucks.), but where figure subjects were used it is very rare to find a consistent theme. The outstanding exception occurs at Ripple (Worcs.), where the misericords represent a complete set of ‘Labours of the Months’ presumably copied from the calendar decorations of some fine psalter. On most choir stalls we find a random selection of subjects, few of which are directly religious. Scenes from medieval romances, or subjects from the Bestiary;illustrations of sermonexempla, genre subjects, and meaningless grotesques form the major part of these designs, while a few carvings apparently express aliterary or symbolical allusion which now evades interpretation. Too little attention has been paid to the problem of how these relatively uneducated craftsmen came to have such a wide range of subjects. Did they originate their own designs, or, if they did not, what models were given to them to copy? Unfortunately misericords are not often studied by those who have the wide knowledge of other fields of medieval art which is needed to identify some of the carvers' models, for the interchange of designs between artists working in different media was an accepted practice in the middle ages. It is the purpose of this paper to show that medieval woodcarvers did copy designs from other media and the identification of their models can sometimes yield evidence which is not available from other sources.

The Choir Stalls of Lincoln Minster. By M. D. Anderson, F.S.A. Pp. 51, including 41 pis. The Friends of Lincoln Cathedral, 1951. 5s.

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Notes: (2) Two Choir Stalls of oak and part of a painted wooden Panel from Lincluden Collegiate Church, Kirkcudbrightshire

Notes: (2) Two Choir Stalls of oak and part of a painted wooden Panel from Lincluden Collegiate Church, Kirkcudbrightshire

The Meeting at Fallsington

8 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS* HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION THE MEETING AT FALLSINGTON * Here in Fallsington there is no great cathedral; No dusky aisle approaches a dim altar. Only soft aisles of green lie StM beneath the oaks. Here is no pale stained radiance of tinted glass: Only the sunlight breaks in green and gold and patterned amber Through the fretted canopy of leaves. There is no shadowed nave and transept cruciform: No rich carved choir stalls, no censers swinging, No lofty echo of the many-throated organ— Naught save the dusk and light of eve and early dawning, Naught save the breath laid on the air by ripening seasons, Naught save the choirs where wild birds sing; and for a holier music, Only the deep reverberations awakened in the heart By memory of names made sacred by the lives Of those who bore them. Nay, this is no mighty house builded with hands: Rather the house is very humble, brown the stone, The lintel low, the threshold worn. Yet by these signs, a shrine imperishable, serene, And bound about with all the shining beauty of the spirit. Cherish it. It was builded with a struggle more than that of hands, By those who have redeemed with meekness and with faith The Quaker name, the Quaker thought from old contumely and strict oppression. They have bequeathed the name, now full of honor, by their lives; They have bequeathed this meeting place, exquisite, fair. No man can say how deeply it is hallowed. Hid in each separate heart there lies the answer— For as the spirit builds, so can the spirit break. No word can speak the immeasurable depth of consecration That life upon life has poured into this place. Let each man quicken to his heritage And have the ears to hear, The eyes to see this meeting. —Sara G. Edgerton 1 Read at the 250th anniversary celebration at Fallsington. The Hicksite Meeting House at Fallsington Built in 1789. The Orthodox Meeting House at Fallsington Built in 1841. ...

The Choir Stalls, Winchester Cathedral

(1927). The Choir Stalls, Winchester Cathedral. Archaeological Journal: Vol. 84, No. 1, pp. 125-126.

The Choir Stalls, Winchester Cathedral

The Choir Stalls, Winchester Cathedral

The Choir Stalls Of Lincoln Cathedral

The Choir Stalls Of Lincoln Cathedral