What Is the Purpose Of . . .
WearyPilgrim
Shipmate Posts: 7
Question for all you Anglican types from this (somewhat) liturgically ignorant Congregationalist: What was the purpose of rood screens in the chancels of Anglican and Episcopal churches? I don't understand why the altar (or table), even with surrounding choir stalls, should be removed and made separate from the congregation.
Comments
At the Counter Reformation
No such centralised edict happened in Anglican or Lutheran churches, and I suspect they stayed simply out of an innate conservatism.
In the Church of England there was some move to install or reinstate them as part of the liturgical developments of the Anglo Catholic movement. Usually then they were constructed so as to mark the divide between chancel and nave, but not obstruct the view.
Don't see it much in Lutheran circles, though they may still be in medieval churches.
. . .
Sorry, that would be a rude screen.
I'll get me coat.
More seriously, Congregationalism often has the habit of deliberate transgressive approach to sacred space. It is in the language of Kim Knott Left Handed. I know on URC (former Congregational Church), where the communion table was deliberately brought into the body of the church for communion, other weeks it was on the platform at the front. Anglicanism has a much more straightforward right-handed way by which you demarcate the sacred from the profane, and the rood screen is one of those demarcators that is particularly favoured by Anglo-Catholics, who tend to be more fussy than your average CofE bod about these things.
I was URC and now am Anglo-Catholic. I am being rude about myself. One way is not right, and the other wrong; both have merits. I am more relaxed in Anglo-Catholicism as I am naturally highly eucharistic, and it is easy to mistake left-handedness for carelessness. True-Left-handedness is never careless but as deliberate and profound as True-Right-handedness, but it is harder to do.
The demarcating of where the boundaries are makes it clearer, which is what I mean by easier, although they are always being transgressed as part of worship. The thing that I dislike is when the assumption grows among those who look for the sacred in the profane that, therefore, everything is sacred. As my supervisor, Martin Stringer, said, "If everything is sacred, then nothing is sacred". The process of discernment is crucial in the left-handed approach.
You mean… congregationalism follows the left-hand path? :eek:
I’ll get me coat…
Generally in my experience “left-hand path” refers to explicitly black magic—that’s certainly one of the meanings for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-hand_path_and_right-hand_path
As for YHWH being a mere storm deity, we’ll have to disagree, of course, as in my understanding He’s the God of everything.
But it was really just an esoteric* pun.
* Also a pun in this instance
Ah, thank you for the clarification. (I’d still have to do some digging before I was convinced of that, myself, but I took it to mean YHWH was indeed a “mere” or even “fictional” god.)
In reality, a lot of "explanations" of things in Orthodoxy appear to be after-the-fact attempts to explain something that "we've always done" and the real reason was forgotten.
One thing it in effect does is separate the work of the clergy from the work of the laity. While the clergy are mumbling prayers over the bread and wine, the laity are singing hymns, most of which are scripture-based. A kind of, You do your work, and we'll do ours. Then when the doors are open and the priest (or deacon) brings out the chalice, the two courses converge.
But I expect that's rather fanciful.
The filigree upper part of the screen was added in Victorian times, replacing a more solid one. At Remembrance time poppies are entwined in it. (A similar screen creates a sort of semi-private area round the font near the entrance to the church.)
The chancel resembles a cathedral chancel in that it has misericords round three sides, ie including some with their backs to the nave. In front of them are choir stalls, not used for years as they have separated seats suited only to children. Nowadays there is no choir at all. Until about eight years ago, Evensong was held in the chancel every Sunday. Those choir members who attended did not robe or ‘perform’ in any way but mixed in with rest, and the singing was good. The atmosphere was an intimate one, well suited to the congregation of 12-20.
Sadly those days have gone and the chancel serves no particular purpose. A hideous reredos covers the stained glass window behind the high altar.
Most Anglo-catholics until recently attempted to follow the precepts of the Liturgical Movement, and hence the rood screen (if it existed) would be used as a sort of backdrop/reredos to the nave altar. The erstwhile high altar would be somewhat apologetically abandoned, or more imaginatively turned into the Blessed Sacrament chapel.
Originally I suppose, the rood screen would function in a similar way to the Orthodox iconostasis, even to being full of paintings/images/icons of saints. Several medieval versions still exist, particularly in East Anglia, and there are some beautiful 19th and early 20th century examples by architects such as Comper.
Obviously a number of RC churches will still have a communion rail and a few will still have a rood screen.
As has been mentioned earlier Anglican churches were not directly affected by the teachings of the Council of Trent,nor were German Lutheran churches and you will find rood screens often in old Anglican or German Lutheran churches as well as in Victorian Anglican churches which were consciously looking to the past.
That's a pretty big assumption, and uncalled for. Academic Biblical Studies frequently posit YHWH as a storm deity, because that's how he was percieved in the Ancient Near East in general. Christians who accept higher Biblical criticism are not lesser Christians, nor are academic Biblicists.
I don’t know what a “lesser” Christian would even be here; I don’t think God looks at us that way. We can be more right or about all kinds of things. I saw the phrase “incidentally, YHWH is also a storm deity” and I replied to what seemed to me to be the most obvious interpretation of that claim. I’m glad I was mistaken, but I’m still not convinced that “was first thought to be a pagan storm god and was later understood (presumably after Abraham’s experience) to be the Creator of All That Is” was the way it played out. Of course it’s entirely possible that what remnant of understanding there was of Him had been watered down over the millennia to where He was only thought of as a pagan-level storm god by then, too, I suppose.
But again, this was all just because of a silly little joke about “the left-hand path.”
Okay. Again, I was responding to the phrase itself, and that was what I thought the phrase meant.
Yes - let's draw a line under the tangent and return to the rood screen discussion, please. Thank you to everyone for your contributions and for conducting yourselves with courtesy.
Nenya - Ecclesiantics Host
True. But our choir these days is in the loft at the west end, and the French Gothic rood screen is of wrought iron filigree (I think that's the word), allowing an essentially unobstructed view of the sanctuary. In fact, it's quite easy to forget there's a rood screen except for the Rood at the top flanked by the BVM and St John. The screen has a gate that's kept open, except one weekday when cleaners apparently closed it and forgot, so daily Mass began with an impromptu gate-opening rite during which the rector informed the congregation, "We're not going Byzantine; someone just forgot to reopen the gate." I wonder if the gate used to be kept closed in the days of noncommunicating High Mass on Sundays (when only the celebrant received the Sacrament).
As I recall there is some debate about missal rubrics in the Sarum use that appear to describe the Gospel being chanted from atop the rood screen. Most screens that have access to the top are reached by a narrow stair not conducive to procession in vestments and this has led to some doubt about whether this is what is actually meant. Whether your childhood church has taken this description and assumed it was valid or has an independent history of this I couldn't guess.
Directly above the altar,above the reredos, there is the pulpit. This was to show that in the new Lutheran dispensation the Word of God was more important than the Sacraments.
Wikipaedia has an article of 'pulpit altars' with a number of pictures.
I don't know if the Gospel was read from the pulpit or in front of the altar.
It strikes me as the same idea in many older Scottish Presbyterian churches the pulpit is raised above the height of the Holy Table,possibly for the same reason.
I'm never quite sure whether the primary purpose of the high "box" pulpit was symbolic or simply to allow those in the gallery to hear better.
In English Non-Conformity, you did get the following arrangement: A pulpit central and accessed by steps and below it a communion table at floor level or slightly raised on a dais, often slightly fenced. My googling would suggest this was common in the 18th and 19th-century English Nonconformity. Unfortunately, the pictures are not easy to link to, but Google "nonconformist pulpit cent", and you will get pictures of the arrangement. Quite often, there was a balcony for members of the congregation that was higher than the pulpit. During my childhood, that was the arrangement in the church my father was minister of. These days, where such pulpits still exist, it is not uncommon for the entire service to be conducted from the communion table.
Um. I really doubt that, I've never seen anything in the primary (or secondary!) sources to suggest that, and if I had to guess, I'd say word and sacraments are placed on the same level. Do you have a citation (preferably primary source?)
As has been noted, the higher pulpit allows for better hearing.
One of the many arguments at the time of the Reformation was that the Catholics did not spend enough time preaching the Word and that this was why the pulpit was placed directly above the altar.
The website of the Lutheran church in Roehrsdorf, near Chemnitz in Saxony gives a fuller appreciation of what is meant by the 'Kanzelaltar'. Taking just a few words from this and putting them into English it explains that 'the Lutheran understanding is that the Sermon,where a Bible text is explained, is the central point of the Sunday service and that the pulpit should then be in the central point of the church.'
It is worth noting that certainly at the time of Luther there was little of the iconoclasm found in other Protestant communities - altars were left as they were and the Lord's Supper was regularly separated - baptismal fonts were brought close to the altar to emphasis the connection between baptism and communion and what is not known so much confessionals were left in place as private confession and absolution was not abolished.
Confirmation in a sense became more important as there was a determined effort to instruct the youth in catechesis.Confirmation could be administered more regularly because the local pastor was able to confirm rather than wait for an episcopal visitation.
Confession and Confirmation were no longer called sacrament but there were still important feature of church life.
Of course things changed quite a bit in German Lutheranism after the Thirty Years'War and the new importance of Prussian Calvinism in the Lutheran Church.