Published
in Medieval English Studies (The Medieval English Studies Association
of Korea) Vol. 9 No. 1 (June 2001) pages 155 - 188
I
am grateful to Professor Michael Alexander (who lives in Wells and
serves as a guide in the Cathedral) for pointing out a number of
inaccuracies in the original text. The online text below has been
corrected according to his indications.
The
way in which space is defined, contained, directed and mastered in a building
has long been recognized as a paradigm for a great variety of human activities,
so that music, literature, scientific systems, gardens and landscapes,
paintings, and the multiple heavens of many religious cosmologies all have
acquired their “architectonics.” It is hardly a new idea to suggest that
memory and the interpretation of meaning are only possible when patterns
have been established that impose a form of systematic, “semiotic” order,
an architecture. Without such formal patterns, without organized systems,
nothing relates to anything, nothing “stands up.” Such patterns are at
times too simply perceived as essentially aesthetic affairs, intended primarily
to please the eye or senses, as in music or landscape gardening. Yet it
requires little thought to realize that there is much more to be said.
Buildings
are built for a variety of reasons; the outer form and interior layout,
as well as the materials employed and style of applied ornamentation, all
invite the analytic observer to “read” carefully. There are clearly a
variety of very different readings possible of a work, be it of literature
or of architecture, whether it be examined in itself or in terms of its
mechanics, or its social and historic contexts. The same work was not perceived
in the same way, not evoked in the same terms, not “understood” with
the same frameworks in every century. The mechanical engineer explaining
why a building does not fall down has a very different tale to tell from
the historian commenting on the society that built it and neither can explain
what makes people find a given building beautiful.
In
the case of buildings that survive from a distant past, readings become
more complex since the meaning which the builders perceived as they were
erecting them, and the signifiers which guided early responses, will most
probably not have survived intact the passage of centuries. New perceptions,
new evaluations, other sensitivities will have affected not only responses
to what exists but also the way what existed has been preserved and transformed,
and is today perceived. Revolutions and disasters will also have left very
visible erasures.
The
adjective “Gothic” was originally applied to buildings of the medieval
period in the sense of “barbaric” or even “savage” because the codes
of meaning dictating their forms and appearance had been lost during the
multiple changes of the 16th and 17th centuries. The great variety of forms
employed and the absence of a dominant symmetry or obvious mathematical
concord had become deeply disturbing, threatening even. Where there was
no perceivable system or order, the very bases of society were threatened
since without system there could be no authorized hierarchy of meanings.
It
is hard to say why the medieval skill in reading diversity should have
so abruptly vanished, why meaning came to be recognized only through the
simplest of regular patterns. Classicism later yielded to Romanticism,
with its rediscovery of the perverse, the unique, the irregular, the multiple,
and the ambiguous. It is hardly surprising that this permitted a re-assimilation
of the medieval, although the Romantic way of reading medieval relics would
surely have “meant” little or nothing to medieval minds.
A
recent study of the way very different kinds of text are combined in medieval
manuscripts, and in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (by Carter Revard
in Medium Aevum Vol. LXIX No. 2 (2000) pages 261-78), has drawn new attention
to the diversity of the contents of many medieval books, suggesting that
the “anthology” typified in England by the Auchinleck Manuscript should
not be seen as a haphazard miscellany or omnium-gatherum, in which
one reader would enjoy
Sir Orfeo, another the Life of St. Catherine,
and yet another a scatological fabliau, each ignoring the other contents.
Instead, it is suggested, the medieval reader moved easily and happily
between such very diverse material and the contrasts enabled a more complex
reading of each work than would have been possible if the different kinds
of work had been contained in separate volumes.
Great
diversity in close proximity was, it might seem, a distinctive characteristic
of many aspects of medieval life and thought; it is therefore hardly surprising
that the mechanical oversimplifications of Scholasticism were supremely
challenged by Cusanus (Nicolas of Cusa) in his recognition that meaning
(and therefore truth) could best be found and formulated by what he termed
coincidentia oppositorum (coincidence of contraries), a form of
language often known as “paradox.” An affirmation of interpretation or
value is not negated but (we might say) “nuanced” or deepened by being
set in close proximity with what seems a far different and virtually opposite
affirmation. Equally, if not necessarily similarly, the “Knight’s Tale”
gains deeper meaning by being directly followed in the Canterbury Tales
by the “Miller’s Tale.” The Harley Lyrics contain secular songs and
religious songs in very close proximity; today we usually distinguish strongly
between the two and are at a loss to “explain” the apparent combinations.
There is every likelihood that the medieval compilers knew exactly what
they were doing and why. Contradictions did not, perhaps, constitute a
stumbling-block for them; contrasts at every level were a means of coming
closer to a proximity of truth or of fuller meaning.
It
could be argued that a similar architectonics of enriching difference may
be perceived in the great architectural complexes that make up many English
cathedrals. A particularly remarkable example of this can be found in the
cathedral at Wells (Somerset). This cathedral begins to intrigue its “readers”
by the way in which its very existence challenges most expectations. Its
location is not a socially significant urban centre; neither is the site
one hallowed by particular religious associations. No martyrs died here,
no great saint lived here. The fundamental questions, “Why was this built?
Why was this built in this way? Why was this built here?” are rendered
more cogent by the lack of any obvious answers. The scale of the buildings
is never overpowering and it is perhaps this touch of humility that makes
Wells so popular. In many ways it and Southwell
are the most domestic and humanly attractive medieval cathedrals. Yet it
was one of England’s most senior dioceses for centuries. Power was located
here, where today day-tourists run.
The
complex set of medieval buildings that exists at Wells perhaps first invites
close study by the way it has not been much affected by the processes of
later history. The city of Wells still only counts about 10,000 inhabitants,
which is of course far higher than its medieval population, but much closer
to it than most other cathedral cities are to theirs. The cathedral has
only a quite small “green” rather than the large, gentrified “close”
found at Salisbury. Yet in his A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great
Britain (1724 - 6), Daniel Defoe could write: “This is a neat, clean
city, and the clergy, in particular, live very handsomely. Here are no
less than seven-and-twenty prebends, and nineteen canons, belonging to
this church, beside a dean, a chancellor, a precentor, and three archdeacons;
a number which very few cathedrals in England have, beside this.” This
is reflected in the presence beside the Cathedral of the deanery and various
prebendal houses.
The
site contains the foundations of the Saxon church beneath the present
Cloisters, with the present cathedral to the north-east of it,
the present Cathedral,
which is the space requiring the most complex reading with, on the outside,
the towers and the great West
Front
conceived as a screen covered with sculpture and, inside, the
usual nave, transepts, quire, and a later Lady Chapel at the east end,
the Chapter House raised on an undercroft to the north, a Cloister to
the
south. In addition, the site includes a moated Bishop’s Palace a few
yards
south of the cloister, and to the north of the Chapter House a
collection of
medieval houses (remodeled later), that was designed to be, and in part
still is, the home of the Vicars Choral (the adult choir members). This
Vicars' Close has been said to be the oldest planned street in Europe,
although it should probably be seen as a variety of quadrangle. At the
bottom of the Close is a stairway which leads to the Dining Hall. That
is linked to the Cathedral by a covered bridge that arrives at the head
of the stairway leading to the Chapter House.
Such
a complex structure of buildings proposes a variety of potential narratives
for interpretation, intrinsic and extrinsic. The initial tale, chronological,
is mainly learned from documentary sources and represents the simplest
way of reading the site. The fact of there being a settlement at Wells
is perhaps best explained by the around 2,500 gallons an hour of water
rising in the three springs now within the confines of the Bishop’s Palace,
and that give the place its name. They would certainly have been considered
mysterious, perhaps even sacred; they also offered a regular source of
driving power to water mills. As a place of habitation, Wells is surely
ancient; Roman remains have been found.
The
histories say that the first church at Wells is believed to have been built
by King Ina of the West Saxons between 695 and 707, beside the three springs,
and dedicated to St. Andrew. St. Andrew’s church was a “secular” church,
not a monastery, with a small group of priests living there as a college
of canons. It only became a cathedral in 909, when the see of Wells was
formed. Following the death of Bishop Asser, the former diocese of Sherborne
was divided into three parts: Sherborne (for Dorset), Wells (for Somerset),
and Crediton (for Devon) and the first Bishop of Wells, Helm (Athelm? Helhelm?
the records differ), was appointed by King Edward the Elder. During the
following century no less than four bishops were transferred from Wells
to Canterbury. The church at Wells seems to have been very poor; the last
Saxon Bishop Giso built new accommodation for the resident canons and increased
their income by obtaining new grants of land from both Edward the Confessor
and William the Conqueror.
However,
in 1088 the bishop’s throne (cathedra) was transferred from Wells
to Bath on the nomination, by William Rufus, of the first Norman Bishop
of the diocese, John De Vilula (John of Tours), after the death of Bishop
Giso. On receiving the title to Bath Abbey and its lands at that time,
he assumed the title Bishop of Bath, and the church at Wells seems to have
fallen into decay. Robert of Lewes, his successor (1136-1166), is said
to have repaired damaged buildings in Wells and he perhaps even began a
Norman?style building before Bishop Reginald de Bohun (Bishop of Bath 1174-91)
pulled down the old Cathedral and began building the current one around
1180, or perhaps even before that.
Essentially,
after 1088 there was a sharp conflict between the monks at Bath and the
canons of Wells as to which had the right to elect the bishop. The canons
waged a campaign designed to persuade the Pope to restore the privilege
to Wells and it was agreed at the time of Robert of Lewes that they and
the monks of Bath should elect the new bishop together, and that there
should be a cathedra in both churches. It was an odd situation,
for the bishops continued to use the title “Bishop of Bath,” while erecting
a much more magnificent cathedral church at Wells. Thus Jocelin Troteman
de Welles (bishop 1206-42), himself a native of Wells, was known as Bishop
of Bath and Glastonbury until 1219, when he gave up all claim to Glastonbury
and styled himself Bishop of Bath. But though he omitted Wells from his
title, he continued the rebuilding of the cathedral -- most probably he
was responsible for the West Front -- increased the number of canons from
thirty-five to fifty, and founded a grammar school. When he died, the monks
at Bath broke the agreement and alone elected one of their number to be
bishop. This nomination was approved by the king and the pope but Wells
protested and Pope
Innocent IV finally reaffirmed, in 1245, that the election should be held
alternately in either city, that the bishop should have a throne in both
churches, and should be styled Bishop "of Bath and Wells". This date marks
the definite restoration of full cathedral status to Wells; the election
arrangement continued until the Reformation, when the monastery at Bath
was dissolved, and the subsequent occupants of the see have retained the
double title until today.
Presumably
the original quire was the first portion of the new church to be built
but it was later extended and much remodeled, virtually rebuilt. The transepts,
the six eastern bays of the nave, and the north porch were completed step
by step: the Choir 1175-84; the Transepts 1184-1205; the Eastern Nave 1205-10.
The main building, without any towers as yet, was probably completed by
1239 when the church was consecrated.
Early
in the 14th century, work began on the Chapter House, which is unusual
in being raised on an undercroft for no obvious reason. This required a
stone stairway to be built to give access from inside the Cathedral, and
its branching sweep of curving, worn steps is one of the most famous beauties
of Wells. The Chapter House was complete by 1319 at the latest and even
before that year work had begun on an octagonal Lady Chapel, apparently
conceived at first as a separate building standing to the east of the chancel.
In the 1330s, however, before building had gone very far, it was decided
to build a new presbytery (sanctuary) occupying the ground between the
old choir and the new Lady Chapel and organically linked to the latter.
The new presbytery, like all the new work, was richly ornate and crowned
with highly decorative vaulting.
This
meant that a considerable open space was created behind the new High Altar,
a retrochoir which in many cathedrals was occupied by the shrine of a saint.
The income deriving from pilgrims drawn by such shrines was considerable
and Wells may have intended the space to be occupied by the shrine of Bishop
della Marchia, who had died in 1302 and whose canonization was actively
canvassed. However, the cause did not succeed and Wells, having been built
as a cathedral without a cathedra, now found itself with a shrine-less
retrochoir.
The
masons of Wells must have been very busy, for by 1321 the cathedral’s
central tower had risen to full height, resting on the crossing pillars
built over a century before. Clearly the pillars had not been expected
to bear such a heavy burden, or perhaps the demolition of the original
chancel destabilized the mechanics of the building. The western pillars
under the
tower soon began to show signs of sinking and in 1338 the masons began
to insert “strainer arches” (also called “scissor arches”) inside the
southern, western, and northern arches of the crossing to prevent the
tower
from collapsing. This was completed by 1348 and may have replaced some
earlier supporting structures. The severely functional design of the
inserted arches,
each sustaining a corresponding inverted arch, with hollowed circles of
stone at the intersections to reduce the total weight, provokes very
different
reactions. Some admire, some deplore, but at least they have kept the
tower
standing.
At
the same time, work must have been advancing to the north, where the
houses
for the Vicars Choral were being constructed. Their Hall was completed
in 1348, although the stone bridge now linking it to the Chapter House
stairway only dates from the mid-16th century. The Black Death may have
caused a short interruption in the building projects, but in 1365 a new
stage began, with the slow construction of the two western towers that
had been intended in the original design, the ornate sculptured screen
wrapping round their extended base. The work was slow; it seems to have
taken seventy years to complete. Almost as soon as the rather austere
western
towers were complete (they have never had pinnacles) an ambitious
program
was undertaken in about 1440 to remodel the now stable central tower in
a much more ornate style, with multiple pinnacles, elaborate traceries,
parapets, statues. This was the prompted by the need to repair damage
caused when the spire originally crowning the tower burned down. Inside
the cathedral, a fan vault was inserted above
the crossing at the same time, as if to show how sure they were of the
building’s stability.
Bishop
Bekynton (1443 - 1465) was a good bishop, a distinguished diplomat and
a prolific builder. It was he who built all four gateways still in use,
houses along the market place, almshouses for the poor and a complete
water system for the city, piped underground from the wells in his
palace garden. He even left money in his will to heighten the chimneys
in Vicars' Close so that the smoke from winter fires could be carried
far into the sky and not affect the men's voices. The virtual
rebuilding of the original 13th-century Cloister to the south side in
1508 brought the
building history to a close. There was no monastery here, unlike at
Gloucester,
and the cloister was largely ornamental. It also protected processions
that might be called to emerge from the cathedral then return to it; it
therefore follows the normal pattern for secular cathedrals, and does
not
run along the wall of the church. unlike Salisbury, which was built
imitating
the monastic structures of Westminster Abbey.
One
originality, that the city of Wells shares with Southwell, lies in the
fact that the dignity associated with being a cathedral city was not accompanied
by a corresponding economic and social development of the town. These two
cathedral cities have been left behind in the process of industrialization,
and have never become major centers of commerce, or of wealth, or population.
At the start of the 20th century, the population of Wells was
only 4000.
The
most intriguing aspect of Wells, perhaps to be explained simply by the
date of its construction, is its intensely innovative position in architectural
history. The choir and transepts were complete, as noted above, by the
end of the 12th century, the nave by 1210, yet there is no trace anywhere
at Wells of a semicircular “romanesque” arch. Every arch, arcade, and
window is pointed. The story of the pointed arch (the hallmark of “Gothic”
architecture) probably begins at Saint Denis, just north of Paris, around
1150, then develops in Notre Dame de Paris, where building began in 1163.
It came to England when the choir of Canterbury Cathedral burned down in
1174 and had to be rebuilt, only a year after the canonization of Thomas
a Becket. William of Sens introduced the early French Gothic style in all
its solid heaviness, with round or octagonal pillars, corinthian-style
capitals, and sexpartite vaults, in his rebuilding which was complete by
1185.
The
pointed arch had arrived in England, then, only a few years before building
began at Wells. But if we attempt to “read” the architecture of the transepts
and nave of Wells Cathedral, we find ourselves confronted with a language
totally different from the French style imported to Canterbury, one that
is intensely innovative. It is in a way hard to realize just how radical
the change is, because when we see Wells we are reminded of Lincoln, Salisbury,
and Southwell. But Wells came first.
Until
now, our reading of Wells Cathedral has been very strongly chronological,
historical, and documentary, not to say “academic.” Yet for most people,
such a reading is secondary both in time (it is usually developed after
a visit) and in importance (one’s personal responses count for more).
In any direct experience of such a constructed space, as in the reading
of any text, the eyes play a major role. Looking in this case cannot be
separated from walking; our experience of Wells must be itinerant, mobile;
the method of reading a building while walking around within it and outside
it involves a process of peregrination and circumambulation. In the course
of this pilgrimage, the eyes supply the changing images that the mind is
invited to make sense of, to interpret and respond to, to “understand.”
Now
is perhaps the moment to suggest that modern ways of seeing and reading
may not be sufficiently sophisticated to deal adequately with the experience
of a space such as Wells Cathedral. The beginning and end of most peoples’
readings of buildings as well as of landscapes, and of books, is innocently
aesthetic, very superficial in fact. In the best cases, it hardly goes
beyond exclamations of “How lovely / pretty / beautiful!” and out come
the cameras. Modernity has made tourists of us all and there is almost
no way of circumventing the fact.
It
is usually, then, as visiting tourists that people approach the medieval
gate known in typically picturesque English fashion as “Penniless Porch,”
that gives access to the Green to the west of the Cathedral. Outside is
a very English scene of a High Street with shops, the modern version of
a street market, and the resources required by the heritage industry. At
this point we already experience a pattern that is going to become familiar.
The upper portions of the Cathedral are visible before us, but the direct
view at street level is blocked by the row of buildings surrounding the
Green. As we pass through the narrow gate, what was hidden becomes visible.
Each of these acts of passage, or penetration, leads on to further patterns
of concealment and discovery.
Familiarity
breeds thoughtlessness, and it is probably easier to realize certain dimensions
of this area of experience from a distance than when actually on the spot.
The structure facing the visitor across the very English grass of the Green
is vested with the dignity of age and possesses a definite ‘thusness.’
It is not often that visitors stop in their tracks and demand to know what
that great mass of stone is doing there, why it was built, why it remains
and is being restored at great cost, why it has that shape, those towers,
that ornamentation, what it signifies. Yet these are the questions we have
to ask if we hope to arrive at any kind of deeper understanding. Perhaps,
though, the tourists are wise; it is not sure that we can provide answers
worthy of the questions. Gawping, gazing, admiring, and wondering may suffice
as a reading in themselves.
The
great spread of the West Front of Wells is certainly designed to
stimulate
questions about meaning. There is nothing like it anywhere else, in
England
or elsewhere. Lincoln Cathedral offers the nearest parallel. Far wider
than the building behind it, 147 feet wide, it has niches for 340
statues
of which 150 were life-size or larger (some accounts offer higher
figures: 500 niches, 200 surviving ststues). Inevitably, the iconoclasm
of previous
centuries has wrought a certain havoc on the lower levels, where empty
niches predominate, but still more than half the original total remain.
Recently a few that were suffering from advanced age have been replaced
by copies and the topmost figure of Christ in Majesty that was badly
smashed
by gunfire during Monmouth’s rebellion in 1685 was replaced in 1986 by
a modern statue, with decorative twirls (symbolic of cherubim)
occupying the place once occupied
by John the Baptist and the Virgin.
The
architecturally aware, and all trained structuralists, will take note of
the very strong formal structure that characterizes the West Front and
analyze its main features. They will note that vertically the front is
divided into three sections -- the central section rising to the very ornate
central gable, and the two lateral sections that culminate in the towers.
Each section is strongly marked by, but not contained within, two boldly
projecting buttresses. Dominating the vertical design, however, is the
horizontal division into three zones, stressed by the two very powerful
“string courses” ? the lowest stage has a strong foundation of plain
stone interrupted only by the three doors, the two side doors being strikingly
insignificant; above that stands a single row of arcades with boldly projecting
gables; the second zone holds the three central lancet windows and the
corresponding plain stone surfaces sustaining the towers. Rising up each
of the buttresses and between the central windows is a set of two gabled
niches under a third gable. Beneath the upper string course runs an uninterrupted
arcade containing intricately carved scenes. Above, the central gable is
strongly framed by the two very plain towers, the south tower in particular
stressing the contrast by not having the ornate canopied niches the adorn
the buttresses of the north tower.
What
emerges from this? First, that the design of the West Front must have been
the subject of very particular attention; second, that it is unlike most
other European cathedrals’ west front in being almost completely unrelated
to the profile of the nave and aisles extending behind it. The design declares
that this facade is important in itself and should be read carefully. It
is not just a wall keeping out the rain. The fact that the entire surface
was originally brightly painted only stresses the significance the builders
attached to it. But what was that significance? When the work was complete,
who would have been able to read it fully? Would its meaning and message
have been evident to anyone? Should we apply a kind of symbolic meaning
to the multiple threes and talk about the Trinity? Should we compare the
symmetry of the design to that of classical architecture? or of the facade
of Notre Dame de Paris? What reading would emerge from that? Perhaps the
design should be compared to that of Bulgug-sa and seen as an image of
hierarchical, cosmic order?
At
this point in a visit, a child tends to raise awkward questions: “Who
are all those people and what are they meant to be doing up there?” Precisely.
It is all very well to talk about parallels with Chartres Cathedral, and
make disparaging comparisons of the relatively inferior skill of the English
sculptors, as some aestheticizing critics do. A more important question
is what this system of signs signifies today, if anything ? and can we
really say what it was intended to signify originally? The unfortunate
parent or guide will have to spend some time in the library, where it may
well appear that experts disagree about the identity of many figures and
therefore about the precise overall patterns intended.
Not
that all is obscure. At the foundation level we find, especially around
the corner to the north, surviving statues of the Church’s foundation
? Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles. In the central region
we find the saints of the “Church Militant” -- to the north, martyrs
and to the south confessors. Among the martyrs are kings and virgins; the
confessors seem to be mostly bishops and abbots; all high class people,
we note. In the frieze running along the top of the central section we
see the dead being raised for the Last Judgment. Christ thrones in glory
at the top, above the now glorified Apostles, representing the final glory
of the “Church Triumphant.”
However,
it is easier to say that than to say why such a complex (and costly) design
was found necessary. What or who was it for? More broadly, it is very difficult
to find precise explanations as to why a cathedral has to be built as such
a huge stone edifice with elaborate towers and transepts, beyond the obvious
fact that there was an inherited Europe-wide convention of considerable
antiquity to that effect. Equally obviously, in the Middle Ages, only churches
and castles were built like that, so that we cannot exclude considerations
of power, privilege, money and class from our reading. The specifically
religious reading, that might also be proposed here, had better come at
the end of the discussion.
If
we remain at the secular level, it is important to remember that the whole
building history of Wells can only be explained by a constant and increasing
supply of money. The summary of local history so far offered has failed
to account for that. We need to recall that by the 14th century Wells was
the largest town in Somerset. It had a substantial textile industry based
on wool from the sheep of the Mendip Hills looming above it. Already in
the 11th century, the Doomsday book records the Bishop as having
extensive estates throughout Somerset. In 1201 the first royal charter
was granted by King John, awarding Wells the status of a free borough.
The Cathedral and Bishops Palace lay outside the borough, in an independant
area known as St Andrews Liberty. Even while the canons were still completing
work on the Cathedral, just down the road the citizens of Wells were able
to erect their own parish church of St. Cuthbert’s by 1430, the largest
parish church in Somerset. Wells Cathedral can be seen as one of the largest
of the “wool churches,” those many large church buildings scattered across
the western and eastern Midlands where wool made fortunes in the 14th
and 15th centuries.
We
have so far remained on the outside of the building. Like other English
cathedrals, the west front does not invite entry, for even the central
door is not very large, the lateral doors are tiny, and everything suggests
that these doors were not usually open. Instead, the main approach seems
to have been through the north porch. Only solemn processions of dignitaries
on special occasions would have made the dramatic passage through the west
front’s central door directly into the nave. Visitors now may gain access
through one of the side doors and so share that privileged experience of
sudden penetration and passage. The first glimpse of a great building is
always a powerful experience. The nave of Wells now stands revealed, behind
the complexities of the highly symbolic west front.
It
is possible to read the nave of Wells as one of the great pioneering experiments
in architectural design; the piers are a rich cluster of twenty-four shafts,
with capitals in what was to become a typically English form, known as
“stiff-leaf.” Above them, the steeply pointed arches continue with the
same complex moulding as the piers below. Then comes a surprise. Above
the tops of the arches runs an uninterrupted horizontal line of stone,
on which the triforium stands. Nothing connects the rapid rhythm of the
triforium’s row of narrow arches inside arches to that of the much bolder
arcade below, or interrupts the flow of the arches along the nave. Above
them, the windows of the clerestory and the springing ribs of the vault
reassert the slower rhythm found at ground level. Thus in the nave at Wells
we already find the predominance of horizontal over vertical that was to
characterize almost all English Gothic design: not upward but forward is
the message this nave gives.
This
first “experiential” reading is made more complex, however, by the chronological
history. The strong eastward, horizontal drive of the nave’s language
leads the visitor’s eye straight into the “eyes” formed by the circular
elements of the scissor arches. This was not part of the original plan,
of course, for those were only added much later. Yet even if they were
not there, the eye would be stopped at the crossing by the solid screen
enclosing the choir, on top of which there is now a massive organ. Like
almost all English cathedrals, and unlike those of France, Wells was not
built on an open plan providing a clear vista through from the west door
to the High Altar. Instead, the nave serves to guide the eye to a double
perspective. At ground level, the rood screen prevents any glimpse of the
space beyond, while at clerestory level the vista is unbroken and the vaults
of the choir can be seen, as well as the tracery of the east window, reminding
us that the tale is only partially interrupted, that the essential is there,
waiting to be discovered.
In
the present form of the Cathedral, this double experience, with the choir
hidden and revealed at the same time, is accentuated by the fact that what
lies beyond the crossing has been rebuilt and expanded in a far more ornate
and sophisticated style. The motion proposed by the nave is a straight
line from west to east. Once at the crossing, vistas open up to south and
north into the transepts but these vistas, as in many cathedrals, are somehow
disquieting because each transept is organized with an east-west orientation,
with altars along the east walls, and the north-south space has little
or no significance.
Once
past the crossing, however, the division of space becomes more complex.
Here social and sacral roles come into play. The right to pass through
the doors of the screen would have originally been limited and usually
still is. Those with official roles take that route and experience that
dramatic transition into a reserved, privileged space, their gaze now rising
to the High Altar where they find the earlier divided perspective repeated
in an amplified form, for above the altar an arcade opens to a view of
the Lady Chapel’s east window. Above that again is a row of canopied niches
with statues, a kind of elevated reredos. Finally, above that again spreads
the magnificent east window, its tracery echoing that of the Lady Chapel’s
east window seen below it, filling the whole space beneath the vault, which
is of great complexity.
The
east window, which has retained its original stained glass, repeats the
challenge of the west front. It is the challenge involved in reading any
complex structure of religious iconography. Those with a guide book are
given the information that this is a “Jesse window” though probably few
today understand the significance of the term. Like the west front, this
window is an affirmation of the meaning of history. At the lowest level
lies Jesse, the father of King David, the ancestor of Jesus. Out of his
loins grows a tree (we still speak of genealogical “trees”) bearing various
other members of the family, and with Christ as the ultimate signifier
of the entire pattern as the central figure of the whole design. Yet most
visitors will probably prefer the guide-book’s alternative name ? “the
Golden Window” ? for then they need only observe the general effect of
the light shining through the ancient glass, react admiringly, and pass
on without trying to read the deeper messages.
The
choir and presbytery are the liturgical heart of the Cathedral, and therefore
form the central point around which its structure radiates. That is expressed
in the way the High Altar with the wall behind it prevents further physical
progress eastward. The choir can be entered most meaningfully through the
rood screen; but pilgrims and tourists are usually obliged to pass
along the north choir aisle, viewing the Chapter House undercroft, going
up the stairway into the Chapter House, then on to the Lady Chapel, and
back down the south choir aisle, out into the cloisters.
The
large, elaborately ornamented Chapter House is a conventional feature of
medieval English cathedrals; that of Wells is much admired for the branching
stairway leading up to it, and for the way the vault springs like a stone
palm-tree from the central pillar. Yet here too, meaning remains elusive.
Obviously this is a very uncomfortable place for business meetings; yet
in a secular church run by canons, that is the main function of a chapter
house, which really only makes sense in a monastery, as the room where
the entire community gathers every day to hear lectures and organize its
life. Perhaps the splendour of the Wells Chapter House, and others too,
has something to do with asserting the power and dignity of the canons
who, when it was built, were the electors of the bishop in a quite real
sense, as we have seen. Today, such spaces have virtually no function;
they are simply there, to be visited.
Likewise the Lady Chapel. Devotion to the Virgin Mary is not strong today, even in the Catholic Church; for those who run a big Cathedral, it is often useful to have a smaller space for daily services but that was not its original destination. The Lady Chapel at Wells is a lovely building, a remarkable piece of architecture, but from our point of view it is above all remarkable for the way the stained glass in most of its huge windows has become a paradigm of the loss of original meaning that this paper explores. The windows seem originally all to have contained figures of saints under tall canopies but at a sad point point in its history, the 14th-century glass forming the figures of saints was smashed by iconoclastic puritans. Early in the 20th century, Dean Armitage Robinson tried to reassemble the masses of fragments discovered by digging outside, but most had to be composed into a completely haphazard design. The kaleidoscopic effect is extraordinarily beautiful, and very strange, with recognizable fragments of human figures scattered here and there. In such a case, the original signs have effectively lost their form, but without a corresponding loss of visual beauty. Only the glass of the east window has been replaced by a 19th-century design.
The
architectural spaces of the cathedral’s interior give way to another exterior
experience in the three-sided cloister; here the style is of the 15th
century, the straight lines of the perpendicular tracery and rather mathematical
design of the vaulting are a strong contrast with the much more luscious
ornamentation of the interior and even of the central tower seen from the
southern walk of the cloister. Such a cloister provokes less questions
than the other spaces, perhaps because it has less ambition to be a significant
space. It seems clearly designed to serve as a covered walkway and a spot
for quiet lingering; then as now. Which is nice.
The
narrative has thus far concentrated on the big picture, the articulation
of the large spaces, the main divisions of the building. Another narrative
lies within the spaces, however, one written in often minute detail and
in many ways even more intriguing because difficult to organize into broad
patterns. Wells, like several other English Cathedrals of which Southwell
is the most obvious example, is full of small-scale sculptures inviting
the visitor to start out on a game of hide-and-seek ? figures of all kinds
can be discovered hiding in the leaves of capitals, serving as corbels,
interrupting string-courses, ornamenting canopies and tabernacle work.
As if that were not enough, concealed on the undersides of the hinged wooden
seats of the choir are a full set of “misericords” ? ledges on which
to perch while supposedly standing, carved like corbels with a variety
of scenes and forms, often clearly comic and perhaps in some cases satirical.
The question posed by this invasion of vitality ? the forms may be human,
animal, monstrous, angelic, regal, or comic, they are mostly grinning ?
is the same as that posed by the similar ornaments found in the margins
and illuminations of certain manuscripts: why did the artists bother? It
seems most unlikely that Wells Cathedral was built with the modern tourist
in mind! .
In
the North Transept, the joy of visiting children of all ages, the Cathedral
boasts of the oldest working clock face in England ? the clock was made
in about 1390. The original clock mechanism is still working, too, but
not in Wells; it was taken to the Science Museum in London and replaced
in the late 19th century. Hourly, a figure of a bearded man in red (Jack
Blandiver) sitting above and to the right of the clock, rings the clock's
bells with hands hammering and feet kicking. A mini-castle is immediately
over the dial. Four mounted knights come out. Two move to the left, the
other two to the right. They revolve and at each revolution one knight
is knocked backwards on his horse. This happens several times before the
tournament is over for another quarter of an hour. Again, questions arise:
What is that doing in a Cathedral? Beyond the folklore and the toy-town
aspect, what message about time are the very complex system of dials and
the mechanical figures giving? They are clearly destined for something
far more complex than indicating when to begin a service. And what message
about wealth or prestige would the installation of such an extraordinary
machine have given?
Yet
another narrative could be written on the basis of the sculptures associated
with the cathedral’s splendid array of tombs, with rotting cadavers, alabaster
reliefs, recumbent statues, and in the Cloisters the many memorial tablets
tidied away from the nave in the early 19th century. In particular,
arranged around the choir aisles is a series of rather archaic and curiously
shallow stone sarcophagi. The modern tourist has guide-books and elegant
signs to explain that these contain the bones of the Saxon bishops, exhumed
from the earlier church and given this place of honor in the rebuilt choir.
The nearest parallel would be the bones of the kings of Wessex placed in
chests along the top of the stone parclose screen around the sanctuary
in Winchester Cathedral. Medieval pilgrims would perhaps have understood
their presence as an affirmation of historic continuity, perhaps even as
a form of anti-Norman memorial.
The
readings given privileged position so far have been broadly historical
and chronological. A building such as Wells can be read chronologically
quite easily, even without documentation, thanks to the great stylistic
differences it offers. The nave is obviously very early “Early English”
while the eastern sections exhibit all the characteristics of 14th-century
“Decorated” style, moving toward “Perpendicular” in the presbytery
and obviously quite late Perpendicular in the cloister. The scale of the
building, although it is in many ways more “homely” and less blatantly
“imposing” than Salisbury or Lincoln, is bound to invite readings which
locate it in structures of economic power and social privilege. These are
secular readings. Equally secular are readings which result in purely aesthetic
responses, admiring or criticizing the architectural effects on the basis
of their aesthetic effect.
The
reading that has been given almost no thought so far is the one related
to the building’s “sacred” identity. This is, after all, a church. At
one level, its functionality is clearly related to the religious activities
taking place within it. We have seen the way in which, structurally, stylistically,
and aesthetically, the choir and presbytery form the heart of the building,
the core of its structure, toward which everything leads and around which
everything turns. The nave is nothing more than a big signpost and this
is made clearer by an awareness that the nave in the Middle Ages would
not have had chairs and was not designed to hold large crowds of worshipers.
The general public would probably not have had much access to the cathedrals.
Their naves, we know, were mostly used for solemn processions by the clergy
and their substitutes, the vicars choral.
The
dimensions of a cathedral, even one as intimate as Wells, relates it in
modern minds with the aesthetics of the “sublime”. Wells is even found
lacking by some on account of its modest proportions and largely horizontal
stress. A cathedral is expected to “soar” in part because the vertical
dimension is associated with spiritual “uplift,” the aspiration of the
human heart toward the heavenly realms located mythologically “above.”
The heart-lifting dimension of cathedral architecture is particularly associated
in the English mind with the sound of choirboys’ voices. Any reading of
Wells Cathedral would be incomplete without consideration of it as a framework
for the human activity that it was originally designed to contain, sung
worship.
The
formal liturgies of the Middle Ages cannot now be reconstructed, except
in the imagination. They were obviously a continuation of the intensely
visual aspects this itinerary has made us aware of. The bright colours
of the painted West front and the original interior decoration culminated
in the once vividly painted choir and sanctuary, where stained glass, paintings,
jewelled statues and reliquaries, formed the background for the coloured
vestments, lamps and candles, and jewelled vessels used at the daily High
Mass. That has been replaced by the more sober rites of the Church of England.
The
time at which the Cathedral comes closest to offering its essential message
now is probably during the almost daily celebration of Choral Evensong
when the full choir sings. That is not intended to be a concert, even though
those present are expected only to listen, not join in the singing, and
some will surely attend with the same inner attitude as when attending
a concert, only this one is free, and with no applause. The need for the
choir to earn its keep by making CDs and giving concerts tends to blur
the boundaries but the difference remains.
The
entire architectural complex takes on a new dimension when it is no longer
experienced in terms of light and vista, but in terms of resonance and
echo. What echoes in a cathedral’s spaces are words related to a very
particular message, the Christian Gospel. When the Cathedral is visited
at other times, what echoes are footsteps, the voices of guides, and, by
the imagination, memories of history. During the times when it is a frame
for sung worship, it becomes the building it was first intended to be;
other readings may be made, but none comes as close to the essence, touching
even many non-believers. The challenge at this point is the same as that
posed in discussions of how to read specifically religious poetry in a
pluralistic world.
The
Christian reading of Wells Cathedral is best made in the winter months,
when visitors are rare. Apart from the officiants and choir, there may
well be almost nobody present, at a service to the beauty of which obviously
great care has been paid. The pragmatic may even try to calculate the cost
of maintaining a school to supply the boys, of paying the organist, lighting
the building, housing and paying the clergy. For what? To make five visitors
happy? Obviously not. The verger would assure anyone who asked that the
service would be sung even if no one were present, since the singing is
not a concert for human listeners to enjoy or admire. It is the formal
expression of the Church’s response to God’s love ? praise. Even if the
choir-members are not very religious, they are being employed to sing to
the glory of God.
Likewise
the building. It can be read in very secular ways, in functional or mechanical
ways, or viewed in purely aesthetic terms but in the end no such attempts
to come to terms with all its complexities can fully satisfy. It was built
to point toward and to celebrate God. Wells Cathedral is a very beautiful
and uniquely well-preserved medieval construction. It can be enjoyed and
admired, it can be criticized for being too small or too much restored,
but to questions about why it was built and is still being preserved at
such huge cost, no rational answers about its beauty, or about ecclesiastical
privileges, or national heritage really satisfy, such criteria do not furnish
adequate readings. It might be that the original, unknown, builders and
planners could not have replied fully either. But surely they would have
tried to explain that the outcome of their work was destined to be a sign
sufficient unto itself, in Latin sacramentum. Signs are designed
to be read, and to point to realities cot contained within them. But for
that their language has to be known. The architectonics of Wells Cathedral
point toward a meaning that cannot be fully expressed in terms of functionality,
or even of aesthetic beauty.
One
final set of traces, and readings, remains. One tourist-destined home page
has this to say of the Green in front of the Cathedral :
adjacent
to the west front of the Cathedral this large and peaceful lawn is mainly
used as a picnic area, although during the summer months charity fairs
and country dancing festivals are held here. Over the years it has fulfilled
many functions including being used as a burial ground, a fact which is
apparent during dry summers when the outlines of hundreds of graves can
be seen in the grass. As well as being a perfect spot to stop and relax
whilst in Wells, it provides access to the Old Deanery and the Wells Museum
from the town centre. (http://home.clara.net/r.l.collins/sights/
)
Modern
life goes on, with picnics and fairs and festivals, and tourism. Yet in
the summer heat, even the grass begins to tell an older and more disturbing
tale. Like the Cathedral, the ground on which it stands is inscribed with
hidden signs demanding memory. The picnic sandwiches are eaten on top of
graves, the remains of the dead lie silent below, forgotten until the traces
emerge in the withering grass. They provoke more questions: who they were,
when they lived, how they died, who wept for them. What then of our own
mortality? The architectonics of Wells Cathedral do not in themselves provide
any answers to any questions. They serve rather, like the literary and
other texts we try to read, to raise questions about meaning and memories,
questions to which there are no simple right answers. But up above, almost
certainly unheeded and unread by the picnickers, the building speaks in
its own language of stone. Along the top of the central section of the
West Front runs an uninterrupted frieze, depicting the ultimate Christian
hope, the Resurrection of the Dead.
That
may be the unifying key to the building’s language. The past is past,
the message goes, but will be future; death is grim but death will be undone;
death will indeed die, the praises of God are everlasting. The Cathedral
was always a place where the dead were buried and commemorated, but every
visitor notices how cheerful the impression made by every aspect of the
building is. Its beauty is not simply an aesthetic quality, it is a celebration
of life, not onlyof life in art and nature and now, but of life’s eternity
in heaven.
Bibliography
Clifton-Taylor,
Alec. The Cathedrals of England. London: Thames and Hudson. 1986.
Carruthers,
Mary J.. The Book of Memory : A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture
(Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature). 1993.
Carruthers,
Mary J.. The Craft of Thought : Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making
of Images, 400-1200 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, No 34).
2000.
A
very full “preliminary bibliography” of printed studies of Wells Cathedral
is available at
http://vrcoll.fa.pitt.edu/medart/image/England/wells/Wells-Bibliography.html
The
following sites provide many pictures of and in some cases textual information
about Wells and the Cathedral.
http://home.clara.net/r.l.collins/sights/
http://www.thecityofwells.co.uk/
http://www2.prestel.co.uk/magor/photographs_of_medieval_sites.htm
http://www.theheritagetrail.co.uk/cathedrals/wells_cathedral.htm
http://vrcoll.fa.pitt.edu/medart/image/England/wells/main-Wells.html
http://www.wells-uk.com/local_history.html
http://www.wellscity.co.uk/wells%20cath%20page.htm
http://www.racine.ra.it/ungaretti/gothic/contents.htm
http://www.faculty.de.gcsu.edu/~rviau/wells.html
http://www.somerset.gov.uk/archives/parish/ph/phwells.htm
The
following page is a full description, with many pictures, of the Wells
choir misericords
http://home.clara.net/drericwebb/docs/wells/wells-key-ill.htm
The
following page allows one to add the original colors to a drawing of the
centre of the West Front
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/cathedral/colour/game.html
Abstract
Toward
a Medieval Architectonics: Reading Wells Cathedral
An,
Sonjae
Wells
Cathedral is the most complete of England’s medieval cathedrals. The articulation
of its different parts in time and space forms a kind of complex text that
can be read in a variety of ways. In similar ways, the multiple contents
of medieval manuscript miscellanies and anthologies, and The Canterbury
Tales, can be better read in relation with one another. An initial
reading of the building recomposes the historical narrative of its origins,
with different portions being built in different centuries in different
styles, within a particular social context. A second level of reading is
mainly aesthetic, that made by the attentive tourist. A final reading considers
the building as a specifically Christian work intended to communicate a
Christian meaning.
국문초록
중세의 체계론을 인하여:
웰스대성당의
해석
안 선재
웰스 대성당은 중세 영국의 성당 중에서 가장 완벽하다. 시간과 공간 안에서 성당의 여러 부분의 조합은 다양한 방법으로 읽힐 수 있는 복잡한 텍스트를 형성한다. 비슷한 식으로, 중세의 필사 시문집이나 캔터베리 테일즈등의 다양한 내용은 서로 관련지어 읽을 때 더 깊게 이해 할 수 있다. 웰스 대성당에 대한 첫 번째 해석은 다른 형식으로 다른 세기에 세워진 다른 부분들로 그 특별한 사회적 맥락 안에서 그 유례에 대한 역사적 담화를 재구성한다. 두 번째 해석은 주로 미적인 것인데, 그것은 주의 깊은 여행자에 의해서 이루어진다. 최종적으로 웰스 대성당은 특별히 기독교적 의미를 전달하려는 기독교적 작품으로 해석된다.
