Church Furnishings Research Articles

Más allá del Pacífico. Piezas de Oriente en los templos de Cundinamarca, Boyacá y Santander (Colombia)

The article presents the research on oriental elements of church furnishing, which constitute the heritage of missionary and evangelization churches (iglesiasdoctrineras) in New Granada of the early 17th century. Thanks to extensive archival sources stored in Archivo General de la Nación de Colombia (Colombia, Bogota) as well as Archivo General de Indias (Spain, Seville) it is possible to demonstrate the existence of numerous objects of oriental origins. Oriental objects came to the area of Tierra Firmevia a sea route connecting Seville with territories belonging to the Spanish crown in America (Carrera de Indias), which was used yearly by an Indian fleet, and owing to a transpacific route connecting Spanish dominions in Asia with territories of New Spain. The latter route was called Galeón de Manila, Nao de China or Galeón de Acapulco. Twice a year, ships chose it to travel across the Pacific, ensuring communication between Spanish East Indies and American dominions of the crown. Oriental products and objects spread over the area of New Granada. Some of them became furnishing elements of modest missionary churches situated far from big colonial cities. Among the most important objects, one may find silk textiles, but there are also other objects (particularly fabric) of diverse character, whose presence in researched temples is confirmed by archival sources.

Review: Die Kirchen der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter 1050–1300, vol. 2, S. Giovanni in Laterano, by Peter Cornelius Claussen

Peter Cornelius Claussen ; Die Kirchen der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter 1050––1300, vol. 2, S. Giovanni in Laterano ; Corpus Cosmatorum II, 2; Forschungen zur Kunstgeschichte und christlichen Archaaologie 21, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2008, 431 pp., 255 b/w illus. €€ 105 (cloth), ISBN 9783515090735 This is obviously an important work in progress. Imposing German enterprises such as this one and Die Kirchen von Siena, emanating from the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence,1 tend to encounter large immovable objects such as the cathedral of Siena, which slow the majestic progress of publication. Here it is the cathedral of Rome, San Giovanni in Laterano, which occupies almost the whole volume, with the exception of a densely argued section by Darko Senekovic on San Giovanni in Fonte, the Lateran Baptistery (355––93). The present volume begins not with the Lateran itself but with a section adding to and commenting on the first volume of the corpus, published in 2002, which covered Sant'Adriano to Santa Francesca Romana, and providing additional information on the signatures of Cosmati masons as a supplement to Claussen's Magistri Doctissimi Romani of 1987.2 This information could surely have been more appropriately located at the back of the present volume, for it confers a provisional and at times defensive tone to the beginning of what, it must immediately be said, is an impressive achievement. This is a substantial book on an important episode in the architectural and decorative history of one of Christendom's greatest monuments, Constantine's Basilica Salvatoris . It is arguable whether the medieval period is by any means the defining episode in its architectural history, and it is immediately striking how much of the surviving graphic evidence stems from the preparations for Borromini's thorough-going remodeling of 1646––50. From another viewpoint it is a book that continues a long bibliographical sequence. After the pioneering monograph of Philippe Lauer, understanding of the basilica was fundamentally revised in the fifth volume of Richard Krautheimer's Corpus Basilicarum Christianarum Romae .3 Krautheimer's magisterial analysis was very largely confined to the architectural framework, and church furnishing and liturgical …

Literacy After Iconoclasm in the English Reformation

Believing that the destruction of church imagery was necessary to the amendment of Christian life, the religious reformers in sixteenth-century England aimed to change minds as well as church furnishings. Image worship was to be replaced by reading, and learning from pictures and statues was to be replaced by learning to read the English Bible. Literacy, however, isn't easy, even now. Taking up the issues of iconoclasm and literacy from the perspective of recent research in cognitive neuroscience, this essay explores the reformers' misunderstandings about how people could or couldn't reform their spiritual lives, and suggests a new view of why changing minds wasn't as easy as the reformers had hoped, and why stripping the churches of their rood screens, burning or hiding statues of saints, overpainting narrative wall murals, and replacing stained glass with plain windows turned out to be easier than producing Bible readers.

Pictures and Popery: Art and Religion in England, 1660–1760 (review)

Pictures and Popery: Art and Religion in England, 1660-1760. By Clare Haynes. (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Company. 2006. Pp. xii, 185. $99.95.) This excellent, accessibly written, and carefully evidenced study addresses the intriguing and long-neglected issue of religious and (in a deliberately more limited way) sculpture in England after the Reformation. The received notion has always been that antipapist iconoclasm and widely disseminated propaganda against imagery in Protestant churches, along with well-publicized laments from artists about the lack of native patronage for religious paintings, meant that there was indeed no pictorial work to speak of in churches in this period. The fact that wealthy and educated aristocrats who had undertaken the Grand Tour bought works of religious art by Italian artists has been explained by invoking the prevailing aesthetic hierarchy that-following the model taught by the French Academy and adopted in England-placed painting (i.e., subjects inspiring moral virtue whether from classical history or the Bible) as far superior to other genres. Few have asked what, in fact, the owners of these paintings-whether situated in private chapels or in grand saloons-understood these paintings to signify or how they reconciled their imagery with the dictates of Protestant teaching. Moreover, anyone who regularly explores English cathedrals and parish churches can see for themselves a remarkable number of religious paintings from this period survive, not to mention stained glass and other church furnishings. Furthermore exhibition catalogues of the Royal Academy in London (founded in 1768-outside this book's chronological limits) furnish many more examples of religious art than might popularly have been supposed. Haynes draws out the complexities and nuances of these issues. Her proposition that religion in England was not all of the plainness of Puritanism, the fervor and political dominance of which tends to overshadow our understanding of this period, provides the premise for chapters that deal specifically with Grand Tour education, the interpretation of Catholic pictures in England with particular reference to Raphael's cartoons (commissioned by Pope Leo X and purchased by Charles I-now on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum from the Royal Collection), the collecting of Catholic pictures with particular attention to Holkham Hall and Horace Walpole's sermon of 1752, and the dispute over the positioning of an image of St. …

Architectural Accessions to the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland 2006

T h i s s e l e c t i v e annual summary of architect-related additions to the collections of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (rcahms) is intended to highlight the availability of key source material as it enters the public domain. This collaboration of the Society and rcahms began with Architectural Heritage X, which in turn followed on from the list provided in Rebecca M. Bailey’s Scottish Architects’ papers: a source book (Rutland Press, 1996). The arrangement follows that set out in the rcahms publication A Guide to the Collections (1991), which describes acquisitions between 1941 and 1991. Further collections of general interest to researchers should also be noted: nadfas Records of Church Furnishings for Rhu and Shandon (Accession Number: 2006/81) and Canongate Church, Edinburgh (Accession Number: 2006/172); a bound volume of pamphlets recording the debate regarding the work of the Edinburgh Improvements Commission (Accession Number: 2006/116); a large collection of 35mm colour transparencies depicting Scottish industrial and non-industrial sites taken by the late Mr Eric Watt, 1970s – c.2003 (Accession Number: 2006/128); Walter MacFarlane & Co., Illustrated Catalogue of MacFarlane’s Castings, 2 volumes, c.1905 (Accession Number: 2006/137). A comprehensive list of architectural and archaeological accessions to rcahms is published at the end of every government financial year (April – March) in the Annual Review, available from rcahms. While some of the collections have not yet been catalogued, all are available by appointment with Veronica Fraser.

Tussen Bugenhagen en Borromaeus: De paradox van de conserverende Reformatie Between Bugenhagen en Borromaeus: The Paradox of the Conserving Reformation

The aim of this article is to provide a survey of the vicissitudes of medieval church furnishings in Western Europe. Most furnishings have been conserved in the Protestant countries of northern Europe. The richest are Lutheran churches, followed by Anglican ones. Even in Calvinist churches, here and there medieval pieces may be encountered. The wealth of such furnishings in Protestant churches contrasts with their relative scarcity in Roman Catholic ones, from which most medieval furniture has been replaced over the centuries. This is the contrast between the conservative Lutheran Bugenhagen and the Catholic renewer Borromaeus.

Ft. Pontchartrain at Detroit: A Guide to the Daily Lives of Fur Trade and Military Personnel, Settlers, and Missionaries at French Posts (review)

Reviewed by: Ft. Pontchartrain at Detroit: A Guide to the Daily Lives of Fur Trade and Military Personnel, Settlers, and Missionaries at French Posts Dale Standen Ft. Pontchartrain at Detroit: A Guide to the Daily Lives of Fur Trade and Military Personnel, Settlers, and Missionaries at French Posts. 2 vols. Timothy J. Kent. Ossineke: Silver Fox Enterprises, 2001. Pp. 1147, illus. $195.00 Those familiar with Timothy Kent's previous works, notably Birchbark Canoes of the Fur Trade (two volumes) and Tahquamenon Tales, will know what to expect in this further work. Genealogist, enthusiast of fur-trade material culture, living history time-traveller, amateur historian, and self-publisher, Timothy Kent has ballooned his knowledge of French fur-trade material culture into two fat volumes of 1150 double-columned, 8.5 x 11 pages. Ft. Pontchartrain suffers from the weaknesses of an amateur, self-published project devoid of editorial criticism and discipline. Even so, this compendium, although less satisfying than his Birchbark Canoes, contains something of value and can be consulted with profit by amateur and professional alike. Kent proclaims the bias of a living history enthusiast at the outset: to focus upon 'the small, mundane aspects of ... events, rather than broad, sweeping overviews,' in the conviction that 'such minor details of past lives are the most interesting ones to later generations, making the study of history alive, vibrant, and relevant to those living today.' This is fair warning to expect little interpretive awareness of what it all may mean. The division into two volumes follows no obvious thematic rationale: the second simply carries on when the first gets too large. The first fifty pages of volume 1 are an introduction and historical overview before entering the chapters on categories of daily life and material culture in the Great Lakes region, or pays d'en haut: canoe transportation; foodways; hunting and warfare; buildings, hardware, and furnishings; church furnishings, vestments, and activities of missionaries; woodworking, metalworking, and masonry; farming and gardening; clothing; sewing, laundry, and cleaning; grooming and medicine; recreation; and trade and commerce. Volume 2 also contains thirty-one appendices in ninety pages, a bibliography of references cited, and an index. Each chapter is provided with profuse endnotes. Kent's documentary sources are for the most part published ones. Among these the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections is very evident, supplemented with occasional references to relevant archival collections in Michigan, Ontario, and Quebec. Genealogical research on his own ancestors looms large in the archival sources and is interjected frequently throughout the text and appendices, an indication, perhaps, of the nucleus of Kent's indefatigable pursuit, especially since we are advised of the future appearance of twenty ancestral biographies. As one [End Page 813] would expect, Kent draws heavily upon archaeological reports and secondary archaeological studies. There is some appropriate historical scholarship evident in the bibliography and notes, although there are some worrisome omissions, such as Gratien Allaire on éngagés and voyageurs; Guy Frégault on fur trade companies; José Igartua on Montreal merchants; Yves Zoltvany on Philippe de Rigaud de Vaudreuil and the founding of Detroit. Such omissions, and elementary errors such as reference to François de Beauharnois instead of his brother, Charles, as governor of New France after 1726, are not reassuring of accuracy or of familiarity with historical scholarship. Incomplete and irregular citation format renders the work difficult to use. Archival and printed primary sources are not segregated in the bibliography. Archival citations in endnotes frequently lack complete provenance, such as fonds, series, and folio or page numbers. The same is true for the documents reproduced in the appendices and illustrations. The text is amply supported with maps, plans, and illustrations and drawings of artifacts. Although the quality of reproductions is not the highest, they serve the purpose. Readers in search of the minutiae of French fur-trade daily life in the Great Lakes region will find much of interest in Ft. Pontchartrain. Since it won't be read in one sitting, the tedium of unedited prose and needless repetition may not be as off-putting as the volumes' consequent high price. Kent is best when describing what he evidently loves the most: the things of daily...

Architectural Accessions to the National Monuments Record of Scotland 2001

This selective annual summary ofarchitect-related additions to the collections of the National Monuments Record of Scotland (nmrs) is intended to highlight the availability of key source material as it enters the public domain. This collaboration of the Society and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments ofScotland (rcahms) began with Architectural Heritage X, which in turn followed on from the list provided in Rebecca M. Bailey's Scottish Architects' Papers: a source book (Rutland Press, 1996). The arrangement follows that set out in the nmrs publication A Guide to the Collections (1991), which describes acquisitions between 1941 and 1991. Four collections of general interest to researchers should also be noted, all of which contain unpublished information: the files of the Buildings of Scotland Research Unit covering Argyll and Bute (Accession Number: 20011150); nadfas Records of Church Furnishings for the Church of the Holy Rude, Stirling (Accession Number: 20011101) and the Church of the Good Shepherd, Edinburgh (Accession Number: 20011201); a photographic collection relating to the research work on garden buildings by Dr Scott Cooper (Accession Number: 20011198) and further files relating to the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes (Accession Number: 20011200). The summary includes collections acquired by the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (rias) which are held in the nmrs, as well as material that has come to the nmrs through the Scottish Architects' Papers Preservation Project (sappp). A comprehensive list of architectural and archaeological accessions to the nmrs is published at the end of every government financial year (April—March) in the rcahms Annual Review that is available from the nmrs. While some of the collections listed have not yet been catalogued, all are available by appointment with Veronica Steele.

The Churches in England from Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II (review)

While it is unusual to list the individual volumes of a set, in this case it is justified by the fact that each volume is designed to stand as an independent work. This obviously creates some repetition, but on such a vast canvas it is hardly noticed. The author explains his opening date with the proposition, "It was only during the Elizabethan era that England was truly converted to Protestantism." With such a beginning the author is provided with almost equal time periods marked by the "Glorious Revolution" and the opening shot of the Oxford Movement. The narration of events runs easily and pleasantly (James II "had numerous mistresses who, although fewer than Charles', were reportedly uglier," while the Duke of Monmouth was "Good-looking, athletic, dashing and brainless"). There is considerable attention given to historiography in each segment. There is minimal attention given to civil history and Parliamentary action beyond what is specifically religious, but a great deal of attention is given to the more recent studies of local sources. One issue that might be of special interest here is Roman Catholic continuity, i.e., unbroken loyalty from before Henry VIII to the Emancipation of 1829. Throughout, the author reflects on the distinction between "Catholic" and "Papist" in much the way many modern writers divided "German" from "Nazi." The reader of American history will reflect on the question of Catholic loyalty in local elections and on the antiquated rhetoric of Bob Jones University. The Catholic continuity is further confused by the Puritans who forced Anglicans to live like recusants in the homes of backwoods gentry. "Orders were issued for the reversal of recent radical changes in church furnishing, which included most notably an abandonment of the railing of altars." The Interregnum ended, Charles II became king, and on his deathbed a Catholic. "As the Anglican clergy were ushered out of the bedchamber, a toothless, shabby old man, John Huddleston, carrying a stole and an oil-bottle, was hurrid in through a side-door from the ante-chamber in which he had long been kept waiting."

A Chapel of St. Paul at Caesarea Maritima? The Inscriptions

Several Greek inscriptions, accompanying large crosses of the crux gemmata type, were painted on fragments of plaster found among the debris of the second storey of Building I, one of several warehouses in Area KK. The texts included sacred formulas and quotations from the Church Fathers. An eulogia of St. Paul was also found here, as well as many marble fragments of church furnishing. It is suggested that the inscriptions and crosses decorated the walls of a private chapel, possibly dedicated to St. Paul. Though fragments of four epitaphs were also found in Area KK, the writer believes that their presence here was not connected to the chapel, and the latter was not used for burial.

The Importation into England of Church Furniture from the Continent of Europe from the Later Middle Ages to the Present Day

The importation into England of church furnishings of most kinds has been going on since the early Middle Ages. The focus of this study is on wooden furnishings and the early 19th century, when a specific group of patrons scoured mainly France and the Low Countries for the furniture that had been prised from churches, as a direct and indirect result of the French Revolution. The taste for such material was fuelled by a Romantic enthusiasm, although ironically much of it was in the Baroque style. The historical setting for this nostalgic explosion in interest is briefly sketched, as well as an account of its development into the early 20th century.

Liturgical Installations in the Roman Province of Dalmatia

The development of the early Christian architecture and liturgical installations, subject to changes in the course of time, can be followed in Salona, the capital of the Roman province of Dalmatia in which Christianity and organized work of Christian communities started as early as in the 3rd century. Strong influences of the metropolis were reflected upon urban centers and rural settings. A significant number of the excavated church buildings was equipped with church furnishings typical of the Mediterranean basin.

:Ronsard: Etude historique et litteraire. Vol. 5: Un Brasier sous la cendre

Graham Parry, The Arts of the Anglican Counter-Reformation: Glory, Laud and Honour, Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 2005, pp. xii + 207, hb. £45.00, ISBN: 1843832089This book has to be judged at two levels. For the general and non-expert reader it is a fair, well-written and attractively-illustrated introduction to the topic, though some of us might quibble about the atrocious pun in the sub-title and question the extent to which the high church movement of the early seventeenth century really was a 'counter-Reformation'. For the more expert scholar it is a sad disappointment and this is a pity, since there is a good deal more to be researched and published about the grassroots response to the episcopal initiatives of the 1620s and 1630s. Graham Parry looks at church building and furnishing (five chapters), contemporary devotional literature (two chapters), church music and the role of antiquaries in promoting romantic visions of a pre-Reformation heritage (one chapter each). The last four chapters are undoubtedly the best since they cover those areas where Graham Parry, Professor of English at York University, has the greatest expertise. Whilst he tries to weld these elements together with the architectural and liturgical ones to provide a 'seamless robe' of high church belief and practice there is little doubt that the robustness of his thesis is challenged by the defects of the first five chapters. These suffer from no really new source material being used, some major omissions in the secondary works consulted, and a serious lack of contextualisation.Parry treats the seventeenth-century high church movement as if it was a purely English phenomenon led largely by a few bishops. There is no mention of Ireland, Scotland and Wales yet the movement (if it was one in the classic sense) cannot be understood without being seen in a British context. Whilst there is no doubt that there was much opposition to the ceremonial initiatives, though the vociferousness of the opposition probably exaggerated its true extent, it is at least arguable that without the attempt (by Scottish bishops) to impose the Laudian agenda on Scotland the religious fall-out of the 1640s might have been more modest, and the campaign for a limited episcopacy successful. Parry also sees this high church revival as something that was confined to the period between about 1615 and 1645. There is, however, growing evidence that, at the grassroots, opposition to Puritanism, and its attack on the Book of Common Prayer, was beginning to drive people, with or without an episcopal lead, into a greater appreciation of ceremonial. Where Parry is at his most misleading is in giving the impression that, with the execution of Laud and the abolition of episcopacy, the high church revival was a spent force after 1645. In fact, of course, as we now know from the work of John Spurr (not cited) and others, there was far more residual Anglican liturgical practice during the interregnum than had been realised and, although the 1662 religious settlement tried to be as comprehensive as possible, its failure to reconcile all the Puritans was to lead to a high church triumph by the 1670s. …

De decoratie van de Lutherse kerk te Gouda in de zeventiende eeuw

De decoratie van de Lutherse kerk te Gouda in de zeventiende eeuw

THE OBSERVANT FRANCISCAN PROVINCE IN SCOTLAND

The Observant Franciscans were a breakaway family of Franciscans who separated from the parent Conventual order in the hope of showing a more convincing model of religious life. Several problems connected with the setting up of a Scottish province have been overlooked by historians of the religious orders in Scotland. One is the nature of the personnel in its earliest days in the mid-fifteenth century, whether learned or unlearned and whether mainly Scots or largely from the Low Countries. Another is the authority to be ascribed to Friar John Hay's chronicle of the Scots Observant province, a large subject which, however, invites preliminary investigation.' A third is the status in the province of Friar William of Touris, author of The Contemplacioun ofSynnaris.2 A fourth is the extent of Dutch and Flemish influence on church furnishings and architecture brought about by the presence of artists and craftsmen among their laybrothers, and the encouragement of the development of a national consciousness that the presence of foreign friars might have stimulated. Lastly, our native records never quite make clear when a province in the fullest sense could be said to exist and as such to be governed by provincial ministers.

Church Furnishings: A NadfasGuide. By PatriciaDireztay

Church Furnishings: A N<scp>adfas</scp>G<scp>uide</scp>. By P<scp>atricia</scp>D<scp>ireztay</scp>

Some aesthetic principles in the use of colour in Anglo-Saxon art

In a paper in Anglo-Saxon England 3 N. F. Barley has drawn attention to the richness of Anglo-Saxon colour vocabulary, which, he suggests, emphasized the light–dark axis of colour perception to a greater degree than does our own, in which hue is differentiated and then qualified adjectivally, pale, dark, etc. It is interesting to examine actual Anglo-Saxon artifacts with his observations in mind. The main sources for our knowledge of the Anglo-Saxons' use of colour are the illuminated manuscripts of which the earliest surviving are of the seventh century. We have only one small fragment of wall-painting, the recently discovered mural at Winchester datable to c. 900. There is a considerable amount of metal-work and jewellery, of which the Sutton Hoo find, a seventh-century burial hoard, is the most spectacular, and there are some embroideries of the early tenth century found in the tomb of St Cuthbert, now at Durham. There are also literary descriptions of works of art, especially church furnishings. The paucity of surviving material and the lack of descriptions of identifiable objects are obvious disadvantages. In addition there has to be considered the extent to which the use of colour changed and developed over the period c. 650–1050. In this paper some examples of manuscript illumination will be discussed.

Fashions in Church Furnishings, 1840-1940. Peter F. Anson

<i>Fashions in Church Furnishings, 1840-1940</i>. Peter F. Anson

Reviews of Book: REVIEWS OF BOOKS: Fashions in Church Furnishings 1840-1940, Liturgy and Architecture

Reviews of Book: REVIEWS OF BOOKS: Fashions in Church Furnishings 1840-1940, Liturgy and Architecture

Book Review: Fashions in Church Furnishings, 1840–1940. By Peter F. Anson. Faith Press, 1960. 50s.; The Use of Lights in Christian Worship. By D. R. Dendy. Alcuin Club Collections, No. XLI. S.P.C.K. 1959. 30s

Book Review: <scp>Fashions in Church Furnishings</scp>, 1840–1940. By Peter F. Anson. Faith Press, 1960. 50s.; <scp>The Use of Lights in Christian Worship</scp>. By D. R. Dendy. Alcuin Club Collections, No. XLI. S.P.C.K. 1959. 30s