See Harry de Windt,Through the Gold Fields of Alaska to Bering Strait(1898); Dittmar, “Über die Koriaken u. ihnen nahe verwandten Tchouktchen,” inBul. Acad. Sc.(St Petersburg), xii. p. 99; Hooper,Ten Months among the Tents of the Tuski; W.H. Dall,Contributions to North American Ethnology, vol. i. (1877).
See Harry de Windt,Through the Gold Fields of Alaska to Bering Strait(1898); Dittmar, “Über die Koriaken u. ihnen nahe verwandten Tchouktchen,” inBul. Acad. Sc.(St Petersburg), xii. p. 99; Hooper,Ten Months among the Tents of the Tuski; W.H. Dall,Contributions to North American Ethnology, vol. i. (1877).
CHULALONGKORN, PHRA PARAMINDR MAHA(1853-1910), king of Siam, eldest son of King Maha Mongkut, was born on the 21st of September 1853. His full signature, used in all important state documents, consists of twenty-seven names, but it is by the first four that he is usually known. Educated in his childhood by English teachers, he acquired a good knowledge of the English language and of Western culture. But his surroundings were purely oriental, and his boyhood was spent, according to custom, in a Buddhist monastery. He succeeded to the throne on the death of his father, 1st October 1868, and was crowned on the 11th of November following, a ceremony marked by the innovation of permitting the presence of Europeans. Until his majority in 1873 the government was carried on by a regent, the young king retiring to a Buddhist monastery, and later making a tour through India and the Dutch East Indies, an undertaking until then without precedent among the potentates of eastern Asia. He had no sooner taken the reins of power than he gave evidence of his recognition of the importance of modern culture by abolishing slavery in Siam. He simplified court etiquette, no longer demanding, for example, that his subjects should approach him on hands and knees. Still more important, in view of the numerous races and creeds included among his subjects, was the proclamation of liberty of conscience. This was followed by the erection of schools and hospitals, the construction of roads and railways, and the further development of the army and fleet which his father had initiated. To him Siam is indebted for its standard coinage, its postal and telegraph service, and for the policing, sanitation and electric-lighting of Bangkok. Several of his sons, including the crown prince, were educated in England, and in the summer of 1897 he himself visited England, arriving at Portsmouth in his yacht on the 29th of July. On the 4th of August he was received by Queen Victoria at Osborne. After a tour in Great Britain he proceeded to Berlin, Brussels, and the Hague and Paris. (See alsoSiam.)
CHUMBI VALLEY, a valley connecting Tibet (q.v.) with the frontier of British India. Lying on the southern slopes of the Himalayas at an altitude of about 9500 ft. above the sea, the valley is wedged in between Bhutan and Sikkim, and does not belong geographically but only politically to Tibet. This was the route by which the British mission of 1904 advanced. Before the date of that expedition the valley had acquired a reputation for beauty and fertility, which was subsequently found to be only comparative in relation to the barrenness of the rest of the Tibetan frontier. The summer months, though not hot, are relaxing and enervating.
CHUNAR, orChunarghur, a town and ancient fortress of India, in the district of Mirzapur, in the United Provinces, situated on the south bank of the Ganges. Pop. (1901) 9926. The fort occupies a conspicuous site on the summit of an abrupt rock which commands the river. It was at one time a place of great strength, and still contains a magazine, and is fortified with batteries. In the old citadel on the height, the remains of a Hindu palace with some interesting carvings indicate the former importance of the place. The town, which consists of one or two straggling streets, contains a handsome English church. Chunar is first mentioned in the 16th century, when in possession of Sing Joanpore. In 1530 it became the residence of Shere Shah the Afghan, and forty-five years later was recovered by the emperor Akbar after sustaining a siege of six months. It fell into thehands of the English under General Carnac in 1763 after a prolonged resistance which caused considerable loss to the assailants. A treaty with the nawab of Oudh was signed here by Warren Hastings on behalf of the East India Company in September 1781.
CHUNCHO, a tribe of South American Indians, living in the forests east of Cuzco, central Peru. They are a fierce and savage people who have preserved their independence. They are said to be akin to their neighbours the Antis. They dwell in communal houses, and live chiefly by hunting. Chuncho has also been used to describe one of three aboriginal stocks of Peru, the others being Quichua and Aymara.
CH‘UNGK‘ING, a city in the province of Szech‘uen, China, on the left bank of the Yangtsze, at its point of junction with the Kialing, in 29° 33′ N., and 107° 2′ E. It is surrounded by a crenelated stone wall, which is 5 m. in circumference and is pierced by nine gates. It is the commercial centre for the trade, not only of Szech’uen, but of all south-western China. The one highway between Szech’uen and the eastern provinces is the Yangtsze river route, as owing to the mountainous nature of the intervening country land transit is almost impracticable. The import trade brought up by large junks from Ich‘ang, and consisting of cotton cloth, yarn, metals and foreign manufactures, centres here, and is distributed by a class of smaller vessels up the various rivers of the provinces. Native produce, such as yellow silk, white wax, hides, rhubarb, musk and opium, is here collected and repacked for conveyance to Hankow, Shanghai or other parts of the empire. The city was opened to foreign trade by convention with the British government in 1891, with the proviso, however, that foreign steamers should not be at liberty to trade there until Chinese-owned steamers had succeeded in ascending the river. This restriction was abolished by the Japanese treaty of 1895, which declared Ch‘ungk‘ing open on the same terms as other ports. After that date the problem of steam navigation on the section of the river between Ich‘ang and Ch’ungk’ing occupied attention. By 1907 a small steamer had been navigated up the rapids, but it remained a question how far steam navigation could be made a practical success. The trade was carried on by native craft, hauled up against the strength of the current in the worst places by a line of trackers on the bank. The great rise in the river during the summer months, at Ch’ungk’ing ordinarily 70 ft. and occasionally as much as 96 ft., added to the difficulties. The population of Ch’ungk’ing, including the city of Kiangpei on the opposite bank of the Kialing river, is about 300,000. The foreign residents are very few. In 1898 the value of the trade passing through the maritime customs was £2,614,000, and in 1904 £4,214,568, of which imports counted for £2,644,777 and exports for £1,569,791.
CHUPATTY, an Anglo-Indian term for an unleavened cake of bread. The word represents the Hindustanichapati, and is applied to the usual form of native bread, the staple food of upper India. The chupatty is generally made of coarse wheaten flour, patted flat with the hand, and baked upon a griddle. In the troubled times that preceded the mutiny of 1857 chupatties were circulated from village to village throughout India, apparently as a token of discontent.
CHUPRIYA(sometimes writtenTiupriia; CroatianCuprÿa), the capital of the Morava department of Servia, on the railway from Belgrade to Nish, and on the right bank of the Morava, which is navigable up to this point by small sailing-vessels. Pop. (1900) about 6000. Some of the finest Servian cattle are bred in the neighbouring lowlands, and the town has a considerable trade in plums and other farm-produce. A light railway, leading to several important collieries, runs for 13 m. through the beech-forests and mountains on the east. Cloth is woven at Parachin, 5 m. S.; and Yagodina, 8 m. W. by N., is an important market town. Among the foothills of the Golubinye Range, 7 m. E.N.E., is the 14th-century Ravanitsa monastery, with a ruined fort and an old church—their walls and frescoes pitted by Turkish bullets. There is a legend that here the Servian tsar Lazar (1374-1389) was visited by an angel, who bade him choose between an earthly and a heavenly crown. In accordance with his choice, Lazar fell fighting at Kossovo, and was buried at Ravanitsa; his body being afterwards transferred, through fear of the Turks, to another Ravanitsa, in eastern Slavonia. His crucifix is treasured among the monastic archives, which also contain a charter signed by Peter the Great of Russia (1672-1725). Manasia (Manasiya), the still more celebrated foundation of Stephen, the son and successor of Lazar, lies 12 m. N. of Ravanitsa. Built in a cleft among the hills which line the river Resava, an affluent of the Morava, this monastery is enclosed in a fortress, whose square towers, and curtain without loopholes or battlements, remain largely intact. Within the curtain stand the monastic buildings, a large garden and a cruciform chapel, with many curious old stone carvings, half hidden beneath whitewash. Numerous gifts from the Russian court, such as gospels lettered in gold and silver relief, or jewelled crucifixes, are preserved on the spot; but the valuable library was removed, in the 15th century, to Mount Athos.
CHUQUISACA, a department of S.E. Bolivia, bounded N. by Cochabamba and Santa Cruz, E. by Santa Cruz and Brazil, S. by Tarija, and W. by Potosi. It lies partly upon the eastern plateau of Bolivia and partly upon the great plains of the upper La Plata basin; area, 26,418 sq. m. The Pilcomayo, a large tributary of the Paraguay, crosses N.W. to S.E. the western part of the department. The climate of the lowlands is hot, humid and unhealthy, but that of the plateau is salubrious, though subject to greater extremes in temperature and rainfall. The seasons are sharply divided into wet and dry, the eastern plains becoming great lagoons during the wet season, and parched deserts during the dry. The mineral resources are important, but are less developed than those of Potosi and Oruro. Grazing is the principal industry of the plains, and cattle, sheep, goats and llamas are raised and cereals grown in the fertile valleys of the plateau. Three rough highways connect the department with its neighbours on the N. and W., and pack animals are the common means of transporting merchandise. The population was estimated at 204,434 m 1900, and is largely composed of Indians andmestizos. The plateau Indians are generally Aymaras, but on the eastern plains there are considerable settlements of partly civilized Chiriguanos, of Guarani origin. The department is divided into four provinces, the greater part of the lowlands being unsettled and without effective political organization. Its principal towns are Sucré, Camargo, Padilla and Yotala.
CHURCH, FREDERICK EDWIN(1826-1900), American landscape painter, was born at Hartford, Connecticut, on the 4th of May 1826. He was a pupil of Thomas Cole at Catskill, New York, where his first pictures were painted. Developing unusual technical dexterity, Church from the beginning sought for his themes such marvels of nature as Niagara Falls, the Andes, and tropical forests—he visited South America in 1853 and 1857,—volcanoes in eruption, and icebergs, the beauties of which he portrayed with great skill in the management of light, colour, and the phenomena of rainbow, mist and sunset, rendering these plausible and effective. In their time these paintings awoke the wildest admiration and sold for extravagant prices, collectors in the United States and in Europe eagerly seeking them, though their vogue has now passed away. In 1849 Church was made a member of the National Academy of Design. His “Great Fall at Niagara” (1857) is in the Corcoran Art Gallery, Washington, D.C., and a large “Twilight” is in the Walters Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland. Among his other canvases are “Andes of Ecuador” (1855), “Heart of the Andes” (1859), “Cotopaxi” (1862), “Jerusalem” (1870), and “Morning in the Tropics” (1877). He died on the 7th of April 1900, at his house on the Hudson river above New York City, where he had lived and worked for many years. He was the most prominent member of the so-called “Hudson River School” of American artists.
CHURCH, GEORGE EARL(1835-1910), American geographer, was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on the 7th of December 1835. He was educated as a civil engineer, and was early engaged on the Hoosac Tunnel. In 1858 he joined an exploring expedition to South America. During the American Civil War heserved (1862-1865) in the Army of the Potomac, rising to the command of a brigade and the rank of colonel; and in 1866-1867 he was war correspondent of theNew York Heraldin Mexico. He explored the Amazon (1868-1879), and gradually became the leading authority on that region of South America, being appointed United States commissioner to report on Ecuador in 1880, and visiting Costa Rica in 1895 to report on its debt and railways. He wrote extensively on South and Central American geography, and became a vice-president of the Royal Geographical Society (London), and in 1898 president of the geographical section of the British Association.
CHURCH, SIR RICHARD(1784-1873), British military officer and general in the Greek army, was the son of a Quaker, Matthew Church of Cork. He was born in 1784, and at the age of sixteen ran away from home and enlisted in the army. For this violation of its principles he was disowned by the Society of Friends, but his father bought him a commission, dated the 3rd of July 1800, in the 13th (Somersetshire) Light Infantry. He served in the demonstration against Ferrol, and in the expedition to Egypt under Sir Ralph Abercromby in 1801. After the expulsion of the French from Egypt he returned home, but came back to the Mediterranean in 1805 among the troops sent to defend the island of Sicily. He accompanied the expedition which landed in Calabria, and fought a successful battle against the French at Maida on the 6th of July 1806. Church was present on this occasion as captain of a recently raised company of Corsican Rangers. His zeal attracted the notice of his superiors, and he had begun to show his capacity for managing and drilling foreign levies. His Corsicans formed part of the garrison of Capri from October 1806 till the island was taken by an expedition directed against it by Murat, in September 1808, at the very beginning of his reign as king of Naples. Church, who had distinguished himself in the defence, returned to Malta after the capitulation.
In the summer of 1809 he sailed with the expedition sent to occupy the Ionian Islands. Here he increased the reputation he had already gained by forming a Greek regiment in English pay. It included many of the men who were afterwards among the leaders of the Greeks in the War of Independence. Church commanded this regiment at the taking of Santa Maura, on which occasion his left arm was shattered by a bullet. During his slow recovery he travelled in northern Greece, and Macedonia, and to Constantinople. In the years of the fall of Napoleon (1813 and 1814) he was present as English military representative with the Austrian troops until the campaign which terminated in the expulsion of Murat from Naples. He drew up a report on the Ionian Islands for the congress of Vienna, in which he argued in support, not only of the retention of the islands under the British flag, but of the permanent occupation by Great Britain of Parga and of other formerly Venetian coast towns on the mainland, then in the possession of Ali Pasha of Iannina. The peace and the disbanding of his Greek regiment left him without employment, though his reputation was high at the war office, and his services were recognized by the grant of a companionship of the Bath. In 1817 he entered the service of King Ferdinand of Naples as lieutenant-general, with a commission to suppress the brigandage then rampant in Apulia. Ample powers were given him, and he attained a full measure of success. In 1820 he was appointed governor of Palermo and commander-in-chief of the troops in Sicily. The revolution which broke out in that year led to the termination of his services in Naples. He escaped from violence in Sicily with some difficulty. At Naples he was imprisoned and put on his trial by the government, but was acquitted and released in January 1821; and King George IV. conferred on him a knight commandership of the Hanoverian order.
The rising of the Greeks against the Turks, which began at this time, had his full sympathy from the first. But for some years he had to act only as the friend of the insurgents in England. In 1827 he took the honourable but unfortunate step of accepting the commandership-in-chief of the Greek army. At the point of anarchy and indiscipline to which they had now fallen, the Greeks could no longer form an efficient army, and could look for salvation only to foreign intervention. Sir Richard Church, who landed in March, was sworn “archistrategos” on the 15th of April 1827. But he could not secure loyal co-operation or obedience. The rout of his army in an attempt to relieve the acropolis of Athens, then besieged by the Turks, proved that it was incapable of conducting regular operations. The acropolis capitulated, and Sir Richard turned to partisan warfare in western Greece. Here his activity had beneficial results, for it led to a rectification in 1832, in a sense favourable to Greece, of the frontier drawn by the powers in 1830 (see hisObservations on an Eligible Line of Frontier for Greece, London, 1830). Church had, however, surrendered his commission, as a protest against the unfriendly government of Capo d’Istria, on the 25th of August 1829. He lived for the rest of his life in Greece, was created general of the army in 1854, and died at Athens on the 30th of March 1873. Sir Richard Church married in 1826 Elizabeth Augusta Wilmot-Horton, who survived him till 1878.
SeeSir Richard Church, by Stanley Lane Poole (London, 1890);Sir Richard Church in Italy and Greece, by E.M. Church (Edinburgh, 1895), based on family papers (an Italian version,Brigantaggio e società segrete nelle Puglie, 1817-1828, executed under the direction of Carlo Lacaita, appeared at Florence in 1899). The MS. Correspondence and Papers of Sir Richard Church, in 29 vols., now in the British Museum (Add. MSS. 36543-36571), contain invaluable material for the history of the War of Greek Independence, including a narrative of the war during Church’s tenure of the command, which corrects many errors in the published accounts and successfully vindicates Church’s reputation against the strictures of Finlay, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, and other historians of the war (seeCam. Mod. Hist.x. p. 804).
SeeSir Richard Church, by Stanley Lane Poole (London, 1890);Sir Richard Church in Italy and Greece, by E.M. Church (Edinburgh, 1895), based on family papers (an Italian version,Brigantaggio e società segrete nelle Puglie, 1817-1828, executed under the direction of Carlo Lacaita, appeared at Florence in 1899). The MS. Correspondence and Papers of Sir Richard Church, in 29 vols., now in the British Museum (Add. MSS. 36543-36571), contain invaluable material for the history of the War of Greek Independence, including a narrative of the war during Church’s tenure of the command, which corrects many errors in the published accounts and successfully vindicates Church’s reputation against the strictures of Finlay, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, and other historians of the war (seeCam. Mod. Hist.x. p. 804).
(D. H.)
CHURCH, RICHARD WILLIAM(1815-1890), English divine, son of John Dearman Church, brother of Sir Richard Church (q.v.), a merchant, was born at Lisbon on the 25th of April 1815, his early years being mostly spent at Florence. After his father’s death in 1828 he was sent to a school of a pronounced evangelical type at Redlands, Bristol, and went in 1833 to Wadham College, Oxford, then an evangelical college. He took first-class honours in 1836, and in 1838 was elected fellow of Oriel. One of his contemporaries, Richard Mitchell, commenting on this election, said: “There is such a moral beauty about Church that they could not help taking him.” He was appointed tutor of Oriel in 1839, and was ordained the same year. He was an intimate friend of J.H. Newman at this period, and closely allied to the Tractarian party. In 1841 No. 90 ofTracts for the Timesappeared, and Church resigned his tutorship. In 1844-1845 he was junior proctor, and in that capacity, in concert with his senior colleague, vetoed a proposal to censure Tract 90 publicly. In 1846 Church, with others, startedThe Guardiannewspaper, and he was an early contributor toThe Saturday Review. In 1850 he became engaged to Miss H.F. Bennett, of a Somersetshire family, a niece of George Moberly, bishop of Salisbury. After again holding the tutorship of Oriel, he accepted in 1852 the small living of Whatley in Somersetshire, near Frome, and was married in the following year. He was a diligent parish priest and a serious student, and contributed largely to current literature. In 1869 he refused a canonry at Worcester, but in 1871 he accepted, most reluctantly (calling it “a sacrificeen pure perte”), the deanery of St Paul’s, to which he was nominated by W.E. Gladstone.
His task as dean was a complicated one. It was (1) the restoration of the cathedral; (2) the adjustment of the question of the cathedral revenues with the Ecclesiastical Commissioners; (3) the reorganization of a conservative cathedral staff with anomalous vested rights. He described the intention of his appointment to be “that St Paul’s should waken up from its long slumber.” The first year that he spent at St Paul’s was, writes one of his friends, one of “misery” for a man who loved study and quiet and the country, and hated official pomp and financial business and ceremonious appearances. But he performed his difficult and uncongenial task with almost incredible success, and is said never to have made an enemy or a mistake. The dean was distinguished for uniting in a singular degree the virtues of austerity and sympathy. He was pre-eminently endowed with the faculty of judgment, characterized by Canon Scott Holland as the gift of “high and fine and saneand robust decision.” Though of unimpressive stature, he had a strong magnetic influence over all brought into contact with him, and though of a naturally gentle temperament, he never hesitated to express censure if he was convinced it was deserved. In the pulpit the voice of the dean was deliberately monotonous, and he employed no adventitious gesture. He may be described as a High Churchman, but of an essentially rational type, and with an enthusiasm for religious liberty that made it impossible for him to sympathize with any unbalanced or inconsiderate demands for deference to authority. He said of the Church of England that there was “no more glorious church in Christendom than this inconsistent English Church.” The dean often meditated resigning his office, though his reputation as an ecclesiastical statesman stood so high that he was regarded in 1882 as a possible successor to Archbishop Tait. But his health and mode of life made it out of the question. In 1888 his only son died; his own health declined, and he appeared for the last time in public at the funeral of Canon Liddon in 1890, dying on 9th December 1890, at Dover. He was buried at Whatley.
The dean’s chief published works are aLife of St Anselm(1870), the lives ofSpenser(1879) andBacon(1884) in Macmillan’s “Men of Letters” series, anEssay on Dante(1878),The Oxford Movement(1891), together with many other volumes of essays and sermons. A collection of his journalistic articles was published in 1897 asOccasional Papers. In these writings he exhibits a great grasp of principles, an accurate mastery of detail, and the same fusion of intelligent sympathy and dispassionate judgment that appeared in his handling of business. His style is lucid, and has the charm of austerity. He stated that he had never studied styleper se, but that he had acquired it by the exercise of translation from classical languages; that he watched against the temptation of using unreal and fine words; that he employed care in his choice of verbs rather than in his use of adjectives; and that he fought against self-indulgence in writing just as he did in daily life. His sermons have the same quality of self-restraint. His private letters are fresh and simple, and contain many unaffected epigrams; in writing of religious subjects he resolutely avoided dogmatism without ever sacrificing precision. The dean was a man of genius, whose moral stainlessness and instinctive fire were indicated rather than revealed by his writings.
SeeLife and Letters of Dean Church, by his daughter, M.C. Church (1895); memoir by H.C. Beeching inDict. Nat. Biog.; and D.C. Lathbury,Dean Church(1907).
SeeLife and Letters of Dean Church, by his daughter, M.C. Church (1895); memoir by H.C. Beeching inDict. Nat. Biog.; and D.C. Lathbury,Dean Church(1907).
(A. C. BE.)
CHURCH(according to most authorities derived from the Gr.κυριακὸν [δῶμα], “the Lord’s [house],” and common to many Teutonic, Slavonic and other languages under various forms—Scottishkirk, Ger.Kirche, Swed.kirka, Dan.kirke, Russ.tserkov, Bulg.cerkova, Czechcirkev, Finn,kirkko, &c), a word originally applied to the building used for Christian worship, and subsequently extended to the Christian community (ecclesia) itself. Similarly the Greek wordecclesia(ἐκκλησία), “assembly,” was very early transferred from the community to the building, and is used in both senses, especially in the modern Romance and Celtic languages (e.g.Fr.église, Welsheglwys, &c).
(1)Church Architecture.—From the strictly architectural point of view the subject of church building, including the development of the various styles and the essential features of the construction and arrangement of churches, is dealt with elsewhere (seeArchitecture;Abbey;Basilica). It is, however, impossible to understand the development of church architecture without realizing its intimate connexion with that of the doctrine, organization and ritual of the Christian Church as a religious community, and a brief sketch of this connexion may be given here by way of introduction to the more technical treatment of the subject. In general it may be said of church architecture, more truly than of any other, that artistically it is “frozen music.” It is true that at all times churches have been put to secular uses; in periods of unrest, as among the Nestorian Christians now, they were sometimes built to serve at need as fortresses; their towers were used for beacons, their naves for meetings on secular affairs. But as a rule, and especially in the great periods of church architecture, their builders were untrammelled by any utilitarian considerations; they built for the glory of God, for their own glory perhaps, in honour of the saints; and their work, where it survives, is (as it were) a petrification of their beliefs and ideals. This is, of course, more true of the middle ages than of the times that preceded and followed them; the Church under the Roman empire hardly as yet realized the possibilities of “sermons in stones,” and took over, with little change, the model of the secular and religious buildings of pagan Rome; the Renaissance, essentially a neo-pagan movement, introduced disturbing factors from outside, and, though developing a style very characteristic of the age that produced it, started that archaeological movement which has tended in modern times to substitute mere imitations of old models for any attempt to express in church architecture the religious spirit of the age.
The earliest type of Christian Church, out of which the others developed, was the basilica. The Church, emerging in the 4th century into imperial favour, and established as part of the organization of the Roman empire, simply adopted that type of secular official building which she found convenient for her purposes. The clergy, now Roman officials, vested in the robes of the civil dignitaries (seeVestments), took their seats in the apse of the basilica where the magistrates were wont to sit, in front of them the holy table, facing the congregation. Thecancelli, the lattice or bar, which in the civil tribunal had divided the court from the litigants and the public, now served to separate clergy and laity. This arrangement still survives in some of the ancient churches of Rome; it has been revived in many Protestant places of worship. It symbolized principally an official distinction; but with the theocratizing of the empire in the East and its decay in the West the accentuation of the mystic powers of the clergy led to a more complete separation from the laity, a tendency which left its mark on the arrangements of the churches. In the East thecancelli, under the influence possibly of the ritual of the Jewish temple, developed into theiconostasis, the screen of holy pictures, behind the closed doors of which the supreme act of the eucharistic mystery is hidden from the lay people. In the West the high altar was moved to the east end (thepresbyterium) with a space before it for the assisting deacons andsubdeacons (the chancel proper) railed off as a spot peculiarly holy (now usually called the sanctuary); between this and the nave, where the laity were, was the choir, with seats for the clergy on either side. The whole of this space (sanctuary and choir) came to be known as the “chancel.” This was divided from the nave, sometimes by an arch forming part of the structure of the building, sometimes by a screen, or by steps, sometimes by all three (seeChancel). The division of churches into chancel and nave, the outcome of the sacramental and sacerdotal spirit of the Catholic Church, may be taken as generally typical of church construction in the medieval West, though there were exceptions,e.g.the round churches of the Templars. There were, however, further changes, the result partly of doctrinal developments, partly of that passion for symbolism which by the 13th century had completed the evolution of the Catholic ritual. Transepts were added, to give to the ground-plan of the building the figure of the cross. The insistence on the unique efficacy of the sacrifice of the altar led to the multiplication of masses, and so of altars, which were placed in the transepts or aisles or in chapels, dedicated to the saints whose relics they enshrined. The chief of these subsidiary chapels, that of the Blessed Virgin (or Lady chapel), behind the high altar, was often of large size. Finally, for the convenience of processions, the nave and chancel aisles were carried round behind the high altar as ambulatories.
The Romanesque churches, still reminiscent of antique models, had preserved all the simplicity of the ancient basilicas with much more than their grandeur; but the taste for religious symbolism which culminated in the 13th century, and the imaginative genius of the northern peoples, transformed them into the marvellous dreams in stone of the “Gothic” period. Churches now became, in form and decoration, epitomes of the Christian scheme of salvation as the middle ages understood it.In the plan of the buildings and their decoration everything still remained subordinate to the high altar; but though on this and its surroundings ornament was most lavishly expended, the churches—wherever wealth permitted—were covered within and without with sculpture or painting: scenes from the Old and New Testaments, from the lives of saints, even from every-day life; figures of the Almighty, of Christ, of the Virgin Mother, of apostles, saints, confessors; pictures of the joys of heaven and the torments of hell; and outside, grimacing from every angle, demons and goblins, amusing enough to us but terrible to the age that set them there, visible embodiments of the evil spirits driven from within the sacred building by the efficacy of the holy rites. In considering the origins of medieval churches, moreover, it must be borne in mind that as a general rule their builders were not actuated by the motives usual in modern times, at least among Protestants. The size of churches was not determined by the needs of population but by the piety and wealth of the founders; and the same applies to their number. Often they were founded as acts of propitiation of the Almighty or of the saints, and the greater their size and splendour the more effective they were held to be for their purpose. Local rivalry, too, played a large part, one wealthy abbey building “against” another, much in the same way as modern business houses endeavour to outshine each other in the magnificence of their buildings. Of all the mixed motives that went to the evolution of church architecture in the middle ages, this rivalry in ostentation was probably the most fertile in the creation of new forms. A volume might be written on the economic effects of this locking up of vast capital in unproductive buildings. In Catholic countries (notably in Ireland) great churches are still built out of the savings of a poverty-stricken peasantry; and from this point of view the destruction of churches in the 16th century was probably a benefit to the world. This, however, is a consideration altogether alien to the Christian spirit, the aspiration of which is to lay up treasures not on earth but in heaven.
The Reformation was a fateful epoch in the history of church architecture. The substitution of the Bible for the Mass destroyed theraison d’êtreof churches as the middle ages had made them. Pictures and stories, carved or painted, seemed no longer necessary now that the open Bible was in the hands of the common people; they had been too often prostituted, moreover, to idolatrous uses,—and “idolatry” was the worst of blasphemies to the re-discoverers of the Old Testament. Save in some parts of Germany, where the influence of Luther saved the churches from wreck, an iconoclastic wave spread over the greater part of Western Europe, wherever the “new religion” prevailed; everywhere churches were cleared of images and reduced to the state of those described by William Harrison in hisDescription of England(1570), only the “pictures in glass” being suffered in some cases to survive for a while “by reason of the extreme cost of replacing them.” The structures of the churches, however, remained; and these, even in countries which departed furthest from the Catholic system, served in some measure to keep its tradition alive. Protestantism has, indeed, produced a distinctive church architecture,i.e.the conventicle type, favoured more especially by the so-called “Free Churches.” Its distinctive features are pulpit and auditorium, and it is symbolical of the complete equality of ministers and congregation. In general, however, Protestant builders have been content to preserve or to adapt the traditional models. It would be interesting in this connexion to trace the reverse effect of church architecture upon church doctrine. In England, for instance, the chancels were for the most part disused after the Reformation (see Harrison, op. cit.), but presently they came into use again, and on the Catholic revival in the Church of England in the 19th century it is certain that the medieval churches exercised an influence by giving a sense of fitness, which might otherwise have been lacking, to the restoration of medieval ritual. A similar tendency has of late years been displayed in the Established Church of Scotland.
Churches, as the outcome of the organization of the Catholic Church, are divided into classes as “cathedral,” “conventual” and “collegiate,” “parochial” and “district” churches. It must be noted, however, that the term cathedral (q.v.), ecclesiastically applicable to any church which happens to be a bishop’s see, architecturally connotes a certain size and dignity, and is sometimes applied to churches which have never been, or have long ceased to be, bishop’s seats.
(W. A. P.)
(2)The Religious Community.—In the sense of Christian community (ecclesia) the word “Church” is applied in a narrow sense to any one of the numerous separate organizations into which Christendom is divided (e.g.Roman Catholic Church, Orthodox Eastern Church, Church of England, Evangelical [Lutheran] Church)—these are dealt with under their several headings—and in a comprehensive sense (with which we are now concerned) to the general body of all those “who profess and call themselves Christians.” Religion, according to the old definition, is the bond which binds the soul of man to God.1It begins as the relation of a tribe to its God. Personal religious conviction grows out of the tribal (corporate) religious bond. But the social instinct is strong. Men owning the same religious convictions will naturally draw together into some sort of association. Using the word religion to cover all the imperfect ways in which men have felt after God, we note that in every case men have found the need alike of a teacher and of fellowship. Thus the idea of a church as “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. iii. 15) corresponds to some of the primary needs of man. Even at Stonehenge, the oldest relic of prehistoric religion in England, where we picture in imagination the worship of the rising sun, nature worship degraded to a horrible depth by human sacrifice, we find struggling for expression the idea of a corporate religious life. From all the lower levels where superstition and cruelty reign, from the depths of fear inspired by fetichism, we look on to the higher level of Judaism as the progressive religion of the old world. This does not mean that we shut our eyes to the ideals of Greek philosophers, with whom morality was constantly outgrowing religion. “The vision of an ideal state which the master-mind of Plato contemplated, but thought too good ever to become true in actual realization, is full of aspirations which the Christian Church claims to satisfy. The problems of the relations of the life of the State and the life of the individual, which Aristotle ever suggests and never solves, are problems with which the Christian Church has at least attempted to deal.”2
From the beginning of the history of the Jewish race the idea that the world is a kingdom under the rule of God began to find expression. The conception of Israel as “a kingdom of priests and an holy nation” (Exod. xix. 6) bore witness to it. The idea of kingship from the first was that of a ruler representing God. As time went on and even the dynasty of David failed in the persons of unworthy representatives to maintain this ideal, both psalmists and prophets taught the people to look beyond the earthly kingdom to the spiritual kingdom of which it was a type. But even Isaiah tended to think of the spiritual life and worship of the nation as a department of political organization only, controlled by the king and his princes. It was reserved for Jeremiah, in the darkest days of his life, to build up the ideal of a spiritual society which should weld Israel together, to proclaim a new covenant (xxxi. 31-34) which Jehovah would make with Israel when representatives of the previously exiled ten tribes should return with the exiles of Judah. This prophecy is instinct with the growing sense of the personal responsibility of individual men brought into communion with God. The religion of Israel from this time of the captivity ceased to be a merely national religion connected with particular forms of sacrifice in a particular land. The synagogues which traced their origin to the time of Ezekiel, when the sacrificial cultus was impossible, extended this ideal yet further. During the centuries preceding the birth of Christ there grew up an apocalyptic literature which regarded as a primary truth the conception of akingdom of righteousness ruled over by a present God. The preaching of John the Baptist was thus in sympathy with the ideals of his generation, though the sternness of the repentance which he set forth as the necessary preparation for entrance into the new kingdom of heaven, which was to be made visible on earth, was not less repugnant to the men of his day than of later times. Christ’s own teaching and that of his disciples began with the proclamation of the kingdom of God (or of heaven) (Luke iv. 43, viii. 1, ix. 2; Matt. x. 7). That he intended it to find outward expression in a visible society appears from the careful way in which he trained the apostles to become leaders hereafter, crowning that work by the institution of the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist. “It was not from accident or for convenience that Christ formed a society.”3His parables even more than his sermons reveal the principles of his endeavour. But he seldom used the wordecclesia, church, which became the universal designation of his society.
All the more emphatic is Christ’s use of the termecclesiaupon the distinct advance in faith made by the apostles when St Peter as their spokesman confessed him to be “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. xvi. 16). Instantly came the reply, “I say unto thee, that thou artPetros(rockman), and on thisPetra(rock) I will build myecclesia(church); and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” On the rock of a human character, ennobled by faith in his divine Sonship, he could raise the church of the future, which should be at the same time continuous with the old, new in spiritual power, one in worship and in work.
To the Jew the wordecclesiaas used in the Septuagint suggested the assembly of the congregation of Israel. To a Greek it suggested the assembly of freeborn citizens in a city state. Without ceasing to be the congregation of Jehovah, it would claim for itself all the hopes of an ideal state over which Greek philosophers had sighed in vain.
Opinions differ upon the question whether the apostles were chosen as representatives of theecclesiato be founded (Hort) or as men fitted to become its duly authorized teachers and leaders from the beginning (Stone). But as Mr Stone well puts it, “It would not be a necessary inference [from Dr Hort’s opinion] that there ought to be no ministry in the Christian Church.”4
At first the church was limited to the Christian believers in the city of Jerusalem, then by persecution their company was broken up, and, since those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word, the conception was enlarged to include all “of the way” (Acts ix. 2) in the Holy Land. A new epoch began from the return of St Paul and St Barnabas to Antioch after their first missionary journey, when they called together the church and narrated their experiences, and told how “God had opened to the Gentiles the door of faith” (Acts xiv. 27). Hitherto the term Church had been “ideally conterminous” with the Jewish Church. Now it was to contain members who had never in any sense belonged to the Jewish Church. Thus the way was opened for new developments and for illimitable extension. St Paul, in his address to the elders at Ephesus (Acts xx. 28), adapted the words of Ps. lxxiv. 2, “Remember thy congregation, which thou hast purchased of old,” claiming for the Christianecclesiathe title of God’s ancientecclesia. But he never, however fiercely opposed by Judaizers, set a newecclesiaof Christ in opposition to the old. We wait, however, for the Epistles of his captivity at Rome to find the full meaning of the idea of the church dawning upon his imagination. “Here at least, for the first time in the Acts and Epistles, we have theecclesiaspoken of in the sense of the one universalecclesia, and it comes more from the theological than from the historical side;i.e.less from the actual circumstances of the actual Christian communities than from a development of thoughts respecting the place and office of the Son of God: his headship was felt to involve the unity of all those who were united to him.”5Similar development of the idea of the oneecclesiaas including all members of all localecclesiaedoes not lead St Paul to regard membership of the universal church as invisible.
But the mere history of the wordecclesiadoes not exhaust the subject. We must take into account not only the idea of the visibleactualchurch, but also the ideal pictured by St Paul in the metaphors of the Body (Rom. xii. 5), the Temple (1 Cor. iii. 10-15) and the Bride of Christ (2 Cor. xi. 2). The actual church is always falling short of its profession; but its successive reformations witness to the strength of its longing after the beauty of holiness.
Membership in the actual church is acquired through baptism “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost” (Matt, xxviii. 19). The references in the New Testament to baptism “in the name of Jesus” (or the Lord Jesus) (Acts ii. 38, viii. 16. x. 48, xix. 5; Rom. vi. 3; Gal. iii. 27), which are by some critics taken to refer to a primitive Christological baptismal formula, seem to refer to the confession made by the baptized, or to the new relationship into which they are brought as “members of Christ.”6Candidates for baptism were exhorted to prepare for it by repentance and faith (Acts ii. 38). The laying on of hands (Heb. vi. 2), in the rite called in later times confirmation, followed baptism (Acts viii. 17). In the modern Greek Church it is administered by priests with oil which has been consecrated by the bishop, in the Roman Church by the bishop himself. Such use of the chrism can be traced from the 2nd century. The Anglican Church retains only the Biblical symbolism of “the blessing of the hand.” Presbyterians and other Protestant churches have abandoned the use, except the Lutherans. We need not here trace the history of Christian worship, in daily services (Acts ii. 46), or on the Lord’s Day (Acts xx. 7), meeting for the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. xi. 17-34), or for mutual edification in prayer, praise and prophecy (1 Cor. xiv.). These things represent the ideal of Christendom. In the words of an eminent Roman Catholic scholar, Monsignor Duchesne, “Faith unites, theology often separates.” It must be our task to summarize the leading ideas of the church in which all Christians are agreed.
(a) The first is certainly fellowship with Christ and with the brethren. The early Christians earnestly believed that their life was “hidden with Christ in God” (Col. iii. 3), and found in their union with Christ the lasting and strongest motive of love to the brethren. Such fellowship is attributed by St Paul pre-eminently to the work of the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. xiii. 14). Its strength is shown in England in the growing readiness of the different religious bodies to co-operate in movements for the purifying of public morality and for the better observance of Sunday.
(b) The second is unity. We have seen how St. Paul was led on to grasp the conception of one church universal manifested in all the local churches. Its unity is not purely accidental in that individuals have been forced to act together under pressure of chance circumstances. Nor is the ideal of unity adopted simply because experience teaches that “union is strength.” Nor is it even based on the philosophical conception of the incompleteness of the individual life. As Dr Sanday finely says, “If the church is in something more than mere metaphor the Body of Christ, if there is circulating through it a continual flow and return of spiritual forces, derived directly from him, if the Spirit which animates the Body is one, then the Body itself also must be in essence one. It has its centre not on earth but in heavenly places, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God.”7
(c) Thirdly, there is no question that the Lord intended the one fellowship of his saints to bea visible fellowship. The idea of an invisible church has only commended itself in dark hours when men despaired of unity even as an ideal. The view of Zwingli and Calvin in the 16th century was not by any means acceptable to other reformers. Luther distinguished between the Spiritual Church, which he identified with the Communion of Saints, and the Corporeal Church, the outward marks of which are Baptism, Sacrament and Gospel. But he regarded themas different aspects of the same church, and Melanchthon was even more explicit.8As the saint purified in heaven is he who struggled with his sins on earth, so is the church triumphant one with the church militant. In Dr Lindsay’s words, “it is one of the privileges of faith, when strengthened by hope and by love, to see the glorious ideal in the somewhat poor material reality. It was thus that St Paul saw the universal Church of Christ made visible in the Christian community of Corinth.”9
But it is at this point that we come to the dividing line which has been drawn by different conceptions of catholicity. Dr Lindsay goes on to argue that all insistence on the principle of historical continuity, whether urged by members of the Anglican or the Roman Catholic Church, as upholders of episcopacy, is a deliberate return to the principle of Judaism, which declared that no one who was outside the circle of the “circumcised,” no matter how strong his faith nor how the fruits of the Spirit were manifest in his life and deeds, could plead “the security of the Divine Covenant.” Without entering into controversy it must suffice to point out that, from the point of view of all episcopal churches, the ministry of the bishops succeeding the ministry of the apostles, however it came to pass, was for fifteen centuries accepted as the pledge of unity. This principle, however, of continuity in ministry, belongs to a different department of Christian thought from the sacrament of baptism, which really corresponds to the Jewish rites of admission to the covenant. And it has been an established principle of the undivided church since the 3rd century, the bishop of Rome in this case upholding against St Cyprian the view which subsequent generations have ratified as Catholic truth, that baptism by whomsoever administered is valid if water is used with the right words. From this point, alas, divergence begins.
(d) The fourth element is authority. Probably all Christians can agree in the statement that the Christian democracy is also a theocracy, that Christ is the source of all authority. There are three passages in the Gospel which claim notice: (i.) the promise to St Peter (Matt. xvi. 18f), as spokesman for the apostles, of the key of the household of God, of power to admit and exclude; (ii.) the promise (Matt. xviii. 15-20) probably given to the Twelve, regarding offences against the peace of the society, advocating exclusion only when brotherly appeals had failed; (iii.) the commission of the wholeecclesiaor of the Christian ministry (John xx. 22, 23). Again the root difference between the Presbyterian and Episcopalian conceptions of the church comes to light. Is the authority of the church manifested in the decisions which a local church arrives at by a majority of votes, or in the decisions of apostles and prophets after taking counsel, of the episcopate in later times, ratified by common consent of Christendom? As has been well said, “the church is primarily a witness—the strength of its authority lies in the many sides from which the witness comes.” It witnesses to the Divine Life of Christ as a power of the present and of the future as of the past, ministered in the Word and sacraments.
(e) The church is a sacerdotal society. St Paul delighted to represent it as the “ideal Israel,” and St John echoes the thought in the words of praise (Rev. i. 5, 6), “Unto him that hath loved us ... and made us to be a kingdom, and priests unto his God and Father.” This idea of the priesthood of the whole church has three elements—the divine element, the human element and self-sacrifice. The promise that Christians should be temples of the living God has been fulfilled. As Dr Milligan has said very well, “It is not only in things to which we commonly confine the word miracle that the Divine appears. It may appear not less in the whole tone and spirit of the Church’s life, in the varied Christian virtues of her members, in the general character of their Christian work, and in the grace received by them in the Christian sacraments. When that life is exhibited, as it ought to be, in its distinctively heavenly character, it bears witness to the presence of a power in Christian men which no mere recollection of a past example, however heroic or beautiful, can supply. The difficulties of exhibiting and maintaining it are probably far greater now than they were in the apostolic age; and as nothing but a present divine support can enable us to overcome these, so, when they are overcome, a testimony is given to the fact that God is with us.”10
But this life is to be a human life still, to be in touch with all that is noble and of good report in art and literature, keenly interested in all the discoveries of science, active in all movements of social progress. It cannot, however, be denied that to live such a life, divine in its powers and human in its sympathies, demands daily and hourly self-sacrifice. As the author of theImitation of Christput it long ago, “There is no living in love without pain.” The thought of self-sacrifice has been emphasized from the earliest times in the liturgies. By a true instinct the early Christian writers called widows and orphans the altar of God on which the sacrifices of almsgiving are offered up.11Such works of charity, however, represent only one of the channels by which self-sacrifice is ministered, to which all prayers and thanksgiving and instruction of psalms, prophecy and preaching contribute. Thus in the Eucharist the offering of the church is made one with the offering of the Great High Priest.12
All this represents an ideal. It suggests in a modern form the perpetual paradox of the Christian life: we are what we are to be. The church is the divine society in which all other religious associations are eventually to find their home. The prayer, “Thy kingdom come,” embraces all spiritual forces which make for righteousness. They were acknowledged in Christ’s words, “He that is not against you is for you” (Luke ix. 50). But the divisions of Christendom testify to the harm done by undue insistence on the claims of the individual to gain scope to extend the kingdom in his own way. As in a choir all the resources of an individual voice are used to strengthen the general effect, so must the individual lose his life that he may find it, witnessing by his share in the common service of the church to the ultimate unity of knowledge and harmony of truth.