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Gothic Sign, Protestant Realia: Templars, Ecclesiologists and the Round Churches at Cambridge and London
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Extract
The Gothic Revival moved forward in step with advances in medieval archaeology and history, the one feeding off the other and back again. As this process unfolded, historical understanding enabled the association of forms with ideas. For example, some Victorian architects favoured the Decorated style because a connection could be drawn between it and the power of the English state in its early maturity. Reasoning by analogy, this style could thus be seen as the model for a modern Gothic architecture appropriate to a new, dynamic age. However, the meaning of forms was rarely fixed. That this was the case is illustrated by the restoration at exactly the same time, the early 1840s, of two medieval churches, both typological copies of the same building, the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Though similar in their round plans, the intentions of those promoting each project were very different. The first, the Temple Church in London, was an essentially secular project; by contrast, the Round Church in Cambridge was restored for theological reasons. In different ways, these two projects also reflected contemporary ideas about Palestine and its archaeology.
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References
Notes
1 See Wasserstein, Bernard, Divided Jerusalem. The Struggle for the Holy City (London, 2001), pp. x–xiii Google Scholar et passim, and as cited below.
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22 The Temple Church in London, ed. David Lewer and Robert Dark (London, 1997), pp. 54-61.
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56 Anon. [Cambridge Camden Society Subcommittee for the Restoration, possibly Thomas Thorp], The Church of the Holy Sepulchre or the Round Church, Cambridge (Cambridge, [December] 1842), pp. 7-8.
57 See Miele, ‘Church Militant’, pp. 257-94 (pp. 267-73). The evidence for Pearson’s involvement is his drawings, held in a private collection and inspected by the author in 1996. Anthony Quiney very kindly advised on their then location. Their whereabouts at the time of writing are not known.
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60 Ibid., pp. 12-15.
61 The Ecclesiologist, 6, n.s. 1 (June 1846), pp. 209-16.
62 This view was made by G. F. Weston of Christ’s College and records the removed stone altar table.
63 Oxford, Bodleian MS Eng. Misc. e. 406, Diary of Benjamin Webb, 30 March 1844: ‘Pugin sent his design for CCS sigilium’. This was reported in the Camden Society Reports for 11 May 1844, p. 31, which notes that the Committee of the Society had taken ‘steps to procure a “sigilium”, “device” or “badge” for publication in the Annual Report. See pp. 184-85, ‘Sigilium Societatis Camdeniae Cantabrigiensis. A. S. MDCCCXXXIX. The Society has cemented its corporate existence by the adoption of a new and beautiful seal. This, whether viewed as a work of art or in a religious aspect, possesses so much merit that we think some account of it will be generally accepted. Set in the shape of a vesica piscis, it shows saints in a tabernacle arrangement, with the Ss. George and Etheldreda flanking the Virgin and Child, and beside them St John the Evangelist (associated in Christian symbolism with architecture) and St Luke (associated with painting). It bears the line from Psalm lxxxiii, 1, “quam dilecta”, in a banner held aloft by an angel.’ The seal itself was published in The Ecclesiologist, 3 (September 1844), pp. 184-85. See also The Gentleman’s Magazine, 23 (March 1845), p. 291, and The English Review, 1 (1844), pp. 221-22.
64 See Rose, Elliot, ‘The Stone Table in the Round Church and the Crisis of the Cambridge Camden Society’, Victorian Studies, 10 (1966-67), pp. 119–44 Google Scholar. For contemporary coverage, see The Times, 7 August 1844, and in 1845 1 January, 1, 10, 13, 15, 17 and 18 February, 18 and 28 April, and 2 May. The British Magazine for 1844 and 1845 covered the controversy and subsequent dissolution of the Society from a Broad Church perspective. Afterwards, Thomas Thorp published his own version in A Statement of Particulars Connected with the Restoration of the Round Church (Cambridge and London, 1845).
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