George Herbert and the architecture of Anglican worship

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2002 by Davidson, Clifford

tinctions, while for him the former excludes the more strictly "Reformed" religion of Calvin's followers in Scotland, Switzerland, Holland, and France who jettisoned the liturgy which Cranmer's Prayer Book had saved for England. The term "catholic" for Herbert and others of his time meant a religion in touch with the church fathers, especially St. Augustine, whose doctrine of divine grace had also been the core of Luther's thought, but it also signified a religious practice that drew its substance from the canonical hours, the mass (but not as sacrifice, and not involving transubstantiation), and even from Eastern Orthodoxy.3 While not a Laudian, Herbert also cannot be reduced to the Calvinism that Daniel W Doerksen, for example, has recently attributed to him.4

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been simulated by full leather body stockings.7 There is, however, no reason to see "The British Church" as specifically Laudian, since what the poet celebrates about Anglicanism is its stripping away of the superstition which he saw in Roman rites at the same time that the iconoclasm and rejection of the liturgy in Reformed worship are eschewed.

tolerant and in politics on the side of peaceableness. "As a churchman, he belonged to no party," George Watson has commented,15 but, at least in these earlier poems, written when he was in his late twenties and before Charles I came to the throne, he could be quite passionate about the need for an ordered liturgical experience if people are not to descend to a Hobbesian state of nastiness and brutishness.16

Walton's description of Herbert's practices at Bemerton, in spite of his romanticizing of the record, is probably reasonably accurate in that it presents a clergyman concerned to attend to the canonical hours daily as established by the Church of England in the morning and afternoon and to celebrate the feasts, including Christmas, the Circumcision, Epiphany, Candlemas, the Annunciation, Holy Week, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, and other holy days, established in the calendar (see Works, pp. 234-239). Herbert also recommends giving careful attention to the appropriate gestures in worship; his parishioners were to be instructed to kneel, bow, and stand at the appointed places in the liturgy, which is depicted as the epitome of order-- an ideal that, we suspect, could not always be perfectly achieved in the actual physical circumstances in the churches at Bemerton and Fugglestone.

of Common Prayer following communion,26 which Herbert understood as somehow involving the real presence of the deity in the elements of bread and wine (see "The H. Communion" in the Williams manuscript, omitted from The Temple) and thus suggesting the interpenetration of time and eternity. Positioned at the end of "The Church," the song of the angels indicates that "Love (III)" should likewise be understood as a poem about an earthly experience that also participates in eternal realities, both the cyclic (monthly) participation in the eucharist and the linear ending of all history in bliss. Spatially, the traditional location of the one was in the chancel or choir of the church, and the other was indeed beyond space, in eternity, which implies the transcendence of both time and space.

"The Crosse" is generally accepted as referring to Herbert's appointment as a prebendary of Leighton Bromswold, since the other churches-Bemerton and Fugglestone-that he would later sense after his ordination as a priest were not cruciform; Leighton Bromswold has transepts (each approximately 18 by 20 feet) in addition to chancel (46 feet in length) and nave (58 feet in length).30 His installation as prebend of Leighton Ecclesia occurred July 5, 1626, by proxy, at Lincoln Cathedral. His duties did not necessitate residency.31 However, he took a keen interest in the church, dedicated to St. Mary, where he determined to use his wealth and influence "[t]o set [Christ's] honour up, as our designe" ("The Crosse," line 6). This project was apparently suggested to him by his friend Nicholas Ferrar.32 Walton reports in his life of Herbert that upon his appointment "the greatest part of the Parish Church was faln down, and that of it which stood, was so decayed, so little, and so useles, that the Parishioners could not meet to perform their Duty to God in publick prayer and praises."33 Instead, they had "to use my lord duke's great hall for their prayers and preachings," for, "though there had been gotten a brief for the repairing of it, the cost estimates to be at the least two thousand pounds and collections yet made, the money, not being above [blank] could in no way help the matter."34 When, with financial assistance also from members of his family and his friends, Herbert took up the project of "Re-edification,"

useful, might agree like Brethren, and have an equal honour and estimation.35

Such appreciation for the church and its fabric would have been seen as extremely unusual for a prebend or indeed for any clergyman at this time-a time when very little church building was being done. It has been suggested that the church at Leighton Bromswold may have been the largest church rebuilt during the early or middle part of the seventeenth century in England, a period notorious for neglect of church buildings (see fig. 1).36 Traditionally the chancel had been the concern of the clergy, and the maintenance of the nave had been the responsibility of parishioners. Herbert's energies went into the whole church, the nave and transepts as well as the chancel. As John Ferrar reported in his biography of his brother Nicholas, "a handsome and uniform and, as the country termed it, a fine neat church was erected, inside and outside finished, not only to the parishioners' own comfort and joy, but to the admiration of all men how such a structure should be raised and brought to pass by Mr. Herbert."37

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George Herbert and the architecture of Anglican worship

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2002 by Davidson, Clifford

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