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Hawksmoor's London Churches Reviewed by Fr. Robert L. Woodbury |
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Hawksmoor's London Churches By Pierre De La Ruffiniere Du Prey University of Chicago Press, 2000 179 pages, $37.50. |
In 1711, the ninth year of the reign of Queen Anne, the British Parliament established a commission for the building of fifty new churches in London and its burgeoning suburbs. It was an act that united the Church of England and the disparate ideologies of the Tory and Whig parties behind what must have seemed at the time a single ecclesiastical banner.
Twelve churches were eventually built, six of those by Nicholas Hawksmoor: St. Alphege, Greenwich; St. Anne, Limehouse; Christ Church, Spitalfields; St. George-in-the-East; St. George, Bloomsbury; St. Mary, Woolnoth. Each of these churches is deeply influenced by the classical tradition in architecture, but taken together they possess a distinctiveness and individuality separate from the other churches of the day. Pierre de la Ruffiniere du Prey explores the reason for this uniqueness in Hawksmoor’s London Churches: Architecture and Theology. This little volume of less than 200 pages is nonetheless rich in text and illustration. A scholarly work, it introduces the reader not only to Hawksmoor and his churches but to Hawksmoor’s world, a world where architecture, faith, and tradition formed an unbroken continuum.
Hawksmoor was an apprentice of Sir Christopher Wren and learned from him a love of history. Together they shared a passion for the wonders of antiquity and the great monuments of the Judeo-Christian tradition. A large body of contemporary writing on the Temple at Jerusalem most assuredly had a bearing on Hawksmoor’s approach to architecture, an example being the altar at St. Mary’s, Woolnoth with its twisted Solomonic columns supporting a stunning wooden baldachino in the manner of Bernini. At St. George’s, Bloomsbury, the stepped pyramidal spire surmounting a miniature classical temple is a lighthearted excursion into fantasy inspired by Pliny’s description of the great mausoleum at Halicarnassus.
The early eighteenth century produced a host of Anglican Divines whose writings underlay the commission’s search for an “ ideal” Anglican church. These writings—which cite Eusebius, Josephus, and Gregory of Nazianzus among others—not only explored what the theologians understood to be the prototypical period of “primitive” Christianity (i.e. the fourth century) but Old Testament roots reaching back to the Temple at Jerusalem. That Hawksmoor, himself a commissioner, was familiar with these writings is evidenced by the marginalia in certain of his plans and elevations. Matters of east-west orientation, the hierarchical arrangement of churches, the appropriate manner of baptism, the number of steps to the altar, the proper design of pews were all part of this body of writing that appealed in Anglican fashion to Scripture, Tradition, and Reason.
Hawksmoor lived at a time when, to paraphrase G. K. Chesterton, past generations were extended the franchise. In architecture this required comprehensive knowledge of all the past had to offer. Du Prey reminds us that for Hawksmoor this meant an organic relationship between the classical of ancient Greece and Rome, the Byzantine, Romanesque and Gothic. Hawksmoor, astonishingly, saw it all flowing into each other. And, writes Du Prey, “Hawksmoor’s interpretation of history as a continuum may not be all that garbled.” He describes how the architect “as smoothly as he could ... created a transition from Christ Church’s classical Serliana entrance portico to the pointed obelisk-spire on top. He succeeded largely because of his repetitive use of the round-headed arches that carried the double meaning of Roman or Romanesque. Up above, the whole composition bursts forth in a Gothic flourish.”
In imitation of the early Christians’ need to adapt and re-interpret architecture in a joyful and at times almost mirthful response to the Gospel, Hawksmoor’s periodic deviations from the classical canon “combined this almost playful freedom to explore solution after solution with a serious mission to infuse architecture with theological meaning.” It must be kept in mind, however, that Hawksmoor’s occasional departure from the canon could be accomplished successfully only because he so thoroughly understood it.
In a period marked by architectural successionism, theological and liturgical relativism, and the de-sacralization of Christian experience, Du Prey gives us an opportunity to understand the synthesis of influences that must again guide our efforts to give to church architecture the visual language of heaven. We glimpse a brief but paradigmatic period in the history of the English Church which represented a rare conjunction in the history of architecture. Du Prey writes: “On the one hand there was Hawksmoor, an architect of genius, historically-minded but also progressive; on the other, the learned body of his clients who fervently believed in the relevance of the purer faith of the early Christians and who enabled those theological aspirations to be translated into stone.… Each church he produced was different, as befitted its physical location and the social status of its parishioners, yet all partook of what he saw as the unity of the classical and Judeo-Christian traditions. Charting his course astutely, he avoided the shoals created by the commissions’ stipulations, on which a less resourceful architect might have foundered. Those stipulations,” Du Prey concludes, “far from hampering Hawksmoor’s artistry, served as the springboard for some of the most inspired churches ever designed in the British lsles.”
Du Prey introduces us to a gifted architect who knew how to capture spiritual and emotional forces which transcend time and place to satisfy the senses and enlighten the soul. This is a book that quickens the spirit and gives voice to those who would rediscover that manner and language of sacred architecture that grows organically from the continuity of Holy Tradition and the finest works of the past.
Fr. Robert Woodbury is Director of Pastoral Care at Saint John’s Home of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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