Sunday
No wonder architects have God complexes. So much of the act of designing and building is done to affect the way people think and feel. I visited 3 churches in 4 days in this amoral city, and will therefore make them my case in point.
Southwark Cathedral is the oldest one still standing in London. It’s a very communitarian church, full of plaques to local citizens and made from donations by them. It boasts a Shakespeare window, a Shakespeare statue, and a bunch of other references to the Bard, who did after all live in this parish for much of his life. Much of the original plasterwork remains, as do some of the stained glass sections of clerestory windows. It’s a quiet, busy church; it’s alive, and not a relic of past glories. It has a sober beige tone, against which the dilligent missionary-type ladies and gents of the parish carry out their duties industriously. It’s all very organized – there are leaflets handed to visitors telling them what and whom to pray for at which niche and corner. Of all three, this is the church that seems most real-time Christian to me. It exists for the people of the parish, to make their lives better through sermons and choirs and general praying. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have tourists come and pay politely for a look at the old rose-windows…
London’s Temple Church is, well, spooky. Dan Brown’s ubiquitous fiction has a hand in that, no doubt. But I will maintain that he knew what he was doing to choose this place as a setting. A small abbey, with a low slung entrance, set in a quiet, almost medieval courtyard, the Temple seems to have been around forever. The tiny antechamber has slime down its walls, hinting that it may not always have been this dry and cosy an entrance. You enter the nave broadside on, often upon rows of people patiently thumbing the holy bible in their modest pews. The people all look penitent, somehow. Perhaps for good reason, for as you go left towards a strange circular extension to the longish nave, you have effigies of fallen knights at your feet. ‘The Knights Templar’, a singularly lovely phrase describing the monastic order that formed the Temple Churches, written on many slabs and every column, reminds you that Christianity wasn’t always the civilized, white, benevolent faith it seems now. It has seen a lot of blood; an idea imprinted in your mind indelibly by the sculpted heads of the Knights on the circular walls of this extension. The face of each Knight is a study. At best broody, often grotesque and sometimes disfigured by the artist to an extent where it represents god knows what nameless horror. What do these tortured heads mean? Moste Interestyng to have glimpses of hell in a place of worship. Maybe it’s a kind of psychological incentive to be good - or else..? Intimate in scale, sweet to smell and horrific in imagery, the Temple church is an enigma to me.
St Paul’s Cathedral, the biggie of all English Churches, was rebuilt after the great fire around 1700. It’s a renaissance church with renaissance arched windows, no stained glass, nice roundy shapes, and carved soffits with geometrical patterns... As opposed to the tall pointy gothic atmosphere of the original chapter. Gothic churches are supposed to draw your eyes heavenwards, to the dark and gloomy recesses of the roof. The stained glass windows befuddle the light; all so that the devotee is always in awe of the divine. Wren’s church, however, is big, highly decorative, ceremonial, and essentially cold. A different sort of cold from the Popish excesses of the Vatican. St Paul’s seems empty. I have a love affair with the view of its blackening dome, seen from near or far, from my window or anywhere in the city. But the space within leaves me untouched. Not magical enough to inspire poetry or prose, and definitely not ecclesiastical. If anything, it seems to have been built that way to make people marvel at Wren’s abilities as an architect. Even the unearthly music from the organ choir, soulful in itself, can’t fill up the great empty spaces which Sir Christopher Wren had covered in intricate designs of pretty shapes and colour. Close your eyes and the music takes you, the ever-present bass is a sheet and the smaller chords wriggle like musical snakes within.
Southwark Cathedral is the oldest one still standing in London. It’s a very communitarian church, full of plaques to local citizens and made from donations by them. It boasts a Shakespeare window, a Shakespeare statue, and a bunch of other references to the Bard, who did after all live in this parish for much of his life. Much of the original plasterwork remains, as do some of the stained glass sections of clerestory windows. It’s a quiet, busy church; it’s alive, and not a relic of past glories. It has a sober beige tone, against which the dilligent missionary-type ladies and gents of the parish carry out their duties industriously. It’s all very organized – there are leaflets handed to visitors telling them what and whom to pray for at which niche and corner. Of all three, this is the church that seems most real-time Christian to me. It exists for the people of the parish, to make their lives better through sermons and choirs and general praying. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have tourists come and pay politely for a look at the old rose-windows…
London’s Temple Church is, well, spooky. Dan Brown’s ubiquitous fiction has a hand in that, no doubt. But I will maintain that he knew what he was doing to choose this place as a setting. A small abbey, with a low slung entrance, set in a quiet, almost medieval courtyard, the Temple seems to have been around forever. The tiny antechamber has slime down its walls, hinting that it may not always have been this dry and cosy an entrance. You enter the nave broadside on, often upon rows of people patiently thumbing the holy bible in their modest pews. The people all look penitent, somehow. Perhaps for good reason, for as you go left towards a strange circular extension to the longish nave, you have effigies of fallen knights at your feet. ‘The Knights Templar’, a singularly lovely phrase describing the monastic order that formed the Temple Churches, written on many slabs and every column, reminds you that Christianity wasn’t always the civilized, white, benevolent faith it seems now. It has seen a lot of blood; an idea imprinted in your mind indelibly by the sculpted heads of the Knights on the circular walls of this extension. The face of each Knight is a study. At best broody, often grotesque and sometimes disfigured by the artist to an extent where it represents god knows what nameless horror. What do these tortured heads mean? Moste Interestyng to have glimpses of hell in a place of worship. Maybe it’s a kind of psychological incentive to be good - or else..? Intimate in scale, sweet to smell and horrific in imagery, the Temple church is an enigma to me.
St Paul’s Cathedral, the biggie of all English Churches, was rebuilt after the great fire around 1700. It’s a renaissance church with renaissance arched windows, no stained glass, nice roundy shapes, and carved soffits with geometrical patterns... As opposed to the tall pointy gothic atmosphere of the original chapter. Gothic churches are supposed to draw your eyes heavenwards, to the dark and gloomy recesses of the roof. The stained glass windows befuddle the light; all so that the devotee is always in awe of the divine. Wren’s church, however, is big, highly decorative, ceremonial, and essentially cold. A different sort of cold from the Popish excesses of the Vatican. St Paul’s seems empty. I have a love affair with the view of its blackening dome, seen from near or far, from my window or anywhere in the city. But the space within leaves me untouched. Not magical enough to inspire poetry or prose, and definitely not ecclesiastical. If anything, it seems to have been built that way to make people marvel at Wren’s abilities as an architect. Even the unearthly music from the organ choir, soulful in itself, can’t fill up the great empty spaces which Sir Christopher Wren had covered in intricate designs of pretty shapes and colour. Close your eyes and the music takes you, the ever-present bass is a sheet and the smaller chords wriggle like musical snakes within.
Yet when you open your eyes, it’s a rainy evening in London and you have 5 pounds to spend on dinner, for once.
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