Light of the world

Summary.  Jesus said he was the light of the world, and divine illumination has shaped Christian worship, art, and architecture for nearly two millennia. Baptism occurred at Eastertime in a new Spring light. Early Gospels contained glistening gold and silver and called illuminated texts. Gothic architecture embraced windows that flooded churches with light, especially around the altar, reinforcing the symbolism of Christ as the source of spiritual radiance.

Jesus said, “I am the light of the world: he that follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life”.[1] Light is a symbol for holiness, wisdom, grace, hope, and divine revelation, whereas darkness is associated with evil, sin, and despair.

AI Candlemas procession for blessing of candles on February 2.

     There is no evidence for ceremonial light in Christian worship during its first two or three centuries, which is unsurprising since it had to be a secretive religion and kept in the dark.[2] There were Christian gatherings hidden away in catacombs and for this purpose small terra-cotta lamps, plain or decorated with Christian symbols, were used, as attested by numerous archaeological discoveries.

 

St Paul’s catacomb in Malta where an agape meal was held on a stone table close to tombs. The tombs had wall niches which would have held an oil or fat burning lamp. Christian signs were scratched on the walls and the one shown is thought to have been 4th or 5th century. It could be a trident and symbolising the Trinity.

 

AI gen. secretive eucharist in a catacomb 3rd-century.

     Early baptised Christians were described as being ‘illumined’ and Easter was the time for this transformative event. The apostle Paul wrote: “For it is impossible to restore again to repentance, those who have been enlightened”. [3] In modern translations the word inluminati becomes enlightened and it has been questioned whether a light was physically present at baptism. Some think those baptised were given a lighted taper in the way a candle is given today.

When the Romans accepted Christianity as their religion in the 4th-century new well-lit churches were built. A 4th-century inventory of items in the church of Cirta, in Algeria, listed 7 silver lamps, two chandeliers, 7 small brass candelabra with lamps and 11 lamps with chains. Lamps were beginning to be used in large churches in the early 4th-century.[4]  Constantine I gave to the Archbasilica of the St John Lateran Church, Rome, two sets of seven 10 ft bronze candelabra with as many as 120 dolphin-shaped branches, each supporting one or more lamps.[5] When Constantine's body lay in state, lighted candles on golden stands surrounded him.

     Sometime after 630, a dramatic change in furnishing the church occurred in Britain.  Rough timber oratories changed into rectangular stone churches with glazed windows. Books were illustrated and pages painted with vivid pigments.  Singing and playing music was encouraged. If God was the light of the world, then the church would reflect his illumination. It contrasted with dark pagan temples. Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury and Biship of Sherborne, described the church of St Mary built by Bugga in a poem, 689–709, which gives an insight into a late 7th-century church. It was described as rectangular, lofty and with 12 altars. It glowed within with gentle light, presumably from oil lamps or bee’s wax candles. It had glass windows. The altar cloth glistened with gold twisted threads. A gold chalice had jewels attached and the paten was silver. A main cross was burnished gold and silver and had jewels attached. A metal censer embossed on all sides hung down by chains and through openings, it let out the smell of frankincense.

AI gen. Bugga’s church of St Mary, late 7th-century.

AI gen. Venerable Bede writing the first reliable English History published 731. It would have been written in a cloister cell                                                                    with much window light.

 

          Eighth century Gospel books, such as St Chad’s Gospels, were illuminated, that is, decoration included gold or silver, or other bright, luminous colours.[6] Illumination could be richly coloured and decorated lettering, elaborate tracery in the text, margins, or borders, and other ornamental or pictorial features. They had painted pages to illustrate symbolically parts of the Bible. Some hold such texts must have gold and silver pigments which can reflect the light to justify being illuminated.

An illuminated page of the St Chad’s Gospels.

The timing of church events was important in the 7th-century. The Synod of Whitby settled the dating of Easter. It was established at the Spring Equinox, falling on the 19, 20 or 21 March when the length of day equalled the length of night. At the first full moon that followed, the 24 hours for that day was filled with full moonlight and full sunlight (assuming no clouds) and thus light had overcome darkness. Easter was then the first Sunday to follow. This calculation, Computus, emphasised Jesus’s word.

Having strong light in a church was essential for Gothic architecture. Large windows let in much light, especially shining on the altar. This has been traced to the centrality of the eucharist. See the post, ‘Lady Chapel’.

 

AI gen showing illumination of altar with communion vessels.

 Transepts had their narrow lancet windows replaced with wider compound windows with fine tracery. The triangular windows near the roof of the nave brought much light into the upper clerestory. Opening up the dark inner church, choir and presbytery in Lichfield’s cathedral by George Gilbert Scott in the 1850s by removing plaster between the columns and taking down the wall by the crossing was part of this move to enhance lighting the cathedral.

This illumination of the altar might also explain why churches usually face eastwards. The rising morning sun shines through the east windows and gives, like God, a new dawn. This would be even more evocative at Easter.

     The use of ceremonial candles was either reduced, or totally abolished with Reformation. The Victorian Revival restored two candles on the altar during the Eucharist and two candles either side of someone reading the Gospels. Today visitors frequently light a candle.

Choir stalls with candles and overhead electric lighting.

High altar candle. Candles on the altar did not occur before the 12th-century.

 

Candles lit for remembering Ukraine

Paschal candle lit either in the late Saturday or early Easter Sunday morning service. It is also used for lighting baptismal candles.

  

1] NRSV John 8 v 12.

[2] The ceremonial use of light occurs in the Jewish, Zoroastrian and Hindu rites and customs. Jewish temples can have an eternal lamp. Certain religions have fire-worship.

[3] NRSV Hebrews 6 v 4.

[4] Recorded in the Liber Pontificalis. Volume 1 173–6. Also called the book of the popes.

[5] Ibid, 173–6.

[6] Gold or silver has not been found in St Chad’s Gospels, but that does not mean it never had the bright metals. Overuse of the book could have dislodged any metal attached to the vellum.

Higgins and Hacket, rebuilders

Summary. Precentor William Higgins and Bishop John Hacket oversaw the rebuilding of the cathedral after the devastation of the Civil War from1660. It was a major enterprise backed by the king.

          Three sieges of the Close, including a heavy bombardment, in the Civil War, 1643-6, left the cathedral wrecked. Cromwell’s parliament wanted it demolished. Harwood wrote, ‘the whole of the building reduced almost to a ruin.’[1] Two priests, both Royalists, resisted attempts to complete the demolition and with the restoration of the monarchy, 1660, supervised reconstruction. They were Precentor William Higgins and Bishop John Hacket.

AI generated image of the cathedral in 1646.

William Higgins, born in London, was educated at Christ Church, Oxford and held livings at Henstridge, Almondbury, Cheselbourne and was rector of Stoke on Tern, Shropshire, before becoming a canon of Lichfield Cathedral in 1633, and precentor in 1636.[2] In 1642, he fought for the Royalists at Edgehill and was taken prisoner and imprisoned at Coventry for three months. His release came with paying a sum of money.[3] At some point in the 1640s he removed St Chad’s gospels and arranged for its safe keeping. He admitted to having the gospels on 15 August 1658. He stayed within the Close during the third siege and was taken prisoner when the Close surrendered in 1646. The priests by now had scattered and the cathedral was without any leadership. On his release Higgins became a teacher in Shropshire, but this reduced him to penury.[4] 

Letter claiming he had looked after Chad’s gospels.   

AI generated image of William Higgins holding St Chad’s Gospels.

At the Restoration of the Monarchy, 1660, the rebuilding of the cathedral began under the supervision of Higgins and later in February 1661 with the help of dean William Paul. Paul was only the dean for two years, 1661-3, before being elevated to Bishop of Oxford, but he must have contributed to the preparation for rebuilding, as well as the clearance of the Close.

In September 1660, Higgins became president of the chapter and reformed it with much disagreement on who should be appointed. Services restarted in the chapterhouse and vestry, 1660. Savage wrote, ‘practically alone (Higgins) preserved a continuity of the cathedral’.[5] In 1664, he had to cope with a new dean who was disliked by all. Higgins died in 1666, aged 66, half way through the rebuilding.

Procession to the Chapter House on 16 June 1660 after the restoration of the monarchy. A roundel in the presbytery floor. A diary records “The Clerks Vicars of the cathedral had entered the chapter-house, and there said service; and this, with the vestry, was the only place in the church that had a roof to shelter, them.”

 John Hacket (Halket), 1592–1670 was Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, 1661–1670. He has been described as ‘another founder of the cathedral’.[6]  He was born in St Martin-in-the-Fields, London and educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. His father was a prosperous tailor in London.

AI gen. rendition of the statue of John Hacket from west front. He is holding the Book of Common Prayer which he used all his life.

    

He was ordained in London in 1618, aged 26 and gained a D.D. in 1628. He preached to James I in 1623 and again in 1624;[7] being made a Prebend of Lincoln Cathedral in 1623. Between 1631 and 1661, he was archdeacon of Bedford. In 1641, Hacket was asked to speak to parliament against a bill forwarded by Puritans to abolish bishops, deans and cathedral chapters. He gave reasons for the existence of cathedrals, their clergy and all who work in them causing the bill to be delayed for a month. A year later he was made a residentiary canon of St Pauls. In 1642, he was imprisoned for failing to pay money to Parliament and a year later the Parliamentarians accused him of ‘superstition, covetousness, sending money to the king and aversion to the Covenant’. Whereupon he retired to his rectory at Cheam having no more to do with the Civil War.[8] After the Civil War and the Commonwealth he became chaplain to Charles II. In 1660 he frequently preached before Charles II, sometimes occupying the pulpit at St. Paul’s. That year he was offered the bishopric of Gloucester but refused it, and then on the recommendation of Charles II accepted the see at Lichfield with all the difficulty of rebuilding “that most ruined cathedral, city and diocese to his prudent circumspection and government.” He was consecrated Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry on 22 December 1661, aged 69. Taking on this project for the next 8 years must have seemed daunting, and can only be explained by the king imploring him.

 

                   Bishop Hacket painting in Trinity College, Cambridge.                      

  

Near life-size effigy of Hacket on a marble table monument located in the South Choir aisle. The bishop is holding the Book of Common Prayer and a crozier. His eldest son, Andrew, erected the effigy to his father’s memory.

Hacket gained a reputation for learning, perseverance and determination and was widely known for his strong Royalist sympathies, but he came to Lichfield in mental turmoil.[9] The Civil War had caused him much anguish and sorrow and he had retired to rural Cheam claiming he would never again enter London after the execution of the king. William Harvey, a fellow Royalist who had been physician to James I, described Hacket as wanting to depart the world after the execution of Charles and death of clergy. His time was spent in prayer and study and the isolation made him a ‘sickly old man.’ Harvey told him to take exercises and gave him curatives for his despondency. Leaving his rectory sanctuary and restoring the cathedral after its Civil War desecration was for him never going to be easy.

Hacket seated at the bench planning the restoration of the cathedral. Note the figure at the front of the bench holding the working drawings. Also the loss of the middle spire.

He arrived at the cathedral two years into its restoration. By then precentor Higgins, a reinstituted Chapter, a new Dean and other local notables had initiated much of the early planning and clearance of the site from 1660–1.[10] Hacket arrived in August 1662 and was immediately preoccupied with building a house in the Close, spending £1000 of his own money.[11] He returned again in October. He gave a silver-gilt communion service, two chalices, two flagons and a paten, for facilitating Eucharist.

Communion service given to the cathedral by Hacket, 1662. Made by Daniel Rutty and engraved with the cathedral arms, with one piece made by an unknown silversmith.

From 1663, Hacket and the Chapter had a quarrelsome relationship with the Dean, who he described as siding with ‘Puritans’ (Nonconformists) in the town.[12] He visited Lichfield in August 1668 to see the work being done. The restored cathedral, after eight years of considerable work, was rededicated by Hacket on Christmas Eve 1669, followed by a feast for three days.[13] Hacket paid for a statue of Charles II to be placed high on the west front.[14] For some, he was the builder of a new cathedral,[15] but evidence for his close involvement in its material reconstruction is lacking. Instead, Hacket’s great contribution was the raising of finance and before he died, he claimed to have raised £15,000 (equivalent to £1.5 million).[16] In his last year he preached again to the king. When close to death he heard a new bell chiming in the south-west tower; described by one writer as his passing bell. He died in October 1670. Hacket’s sermons for which he was most noted were published in 1675.[17]

      

Hacket grave marker at the end of the south aisle.

AI rendition of Hacket’s cathedra, the middle stall. It was adapted for use by judges in the Consistory Court, 1814. The Court from late 17th-century to 1830 was mostly concerned with arbitration for intractable disputes of a predominantly rural nature.[18]

         

Chairs believed to be from Hacket’s restoration of the interior of the cathedral.

   

    It is supposed that Hacket brought his friend Sir Christopher Wren to help with the rebuilding, but there is little evidence he did any more than be consulted.

AI gen. rendition of statue of Christopher Wren on the east end

Harwood gave a long list of all who contributed to pay for the rebuild.[19] He also wrote, ‘In the space of eight years it was restored to its former beauty and magnificence.’[20]

---

[1] T. Harwood, The history and antiquities of the church and city of Lichfield. (London: 1806), 50

[2] J. Foster (ed), Hieron-Horridge', in Alumni Oxonienses 1500-1714, (Oxford, 1891), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/alumni-oxon/1500-1714/pp706-747 .

[3] H. E. Savage, ‘Reconstruction after the Commonwealth. Unpub. article in Lichfield Cathedral library (1918).

[4] M W Greenslade and R B Pugh (ed), 'House of secular canons - Lichfield cathedral: From the Reformation to the 20th century', in A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 3. (London, 1970), 166-199. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/staffs/vol3/pp166-199  .

[5] H, Savage, (1918), 18. See note 3.

[6]. T. Harwood, (1806), 155. See note 1,

[7] Hacket in his study time composed the Latin comedy called Loyola, which was twice performed before James I. It satirised church groups outside of mainstream Church of England.

[8] There is a story of Hacket preaching from the unauthorised Book of Common Prayer when a soldier entered his church and presented a pistol at his breast and ordered him to stop. Hacket replied that he would do what became a divine, let the other do what became a soldier; and continued with his service. It has not been possible to find the origin of this story, or which church it occurred in; there are variations.

[9] T. Plume, An account of the life and death of the Right Reverend Father in God, John Hacket, late Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, foreword to A century of Sermons, (London: 1675)

[10] H. E. Savage, (1918). See note 3.

[11] T. Harwood, (1806), 66. See note 1.

[12] The bishop was driven to excommunicate the Dean openly in the church.

[13] M. W. Greenslade, ‘Lichfield: From the Reformation to c.1800', in A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 14, Lichfield, (London, 1990), 14-24. 

[14] T. Harwood (1806), 72. See note 1.

[15] M. W. Greenslade and R. B. Pugh, (London, 1970), 166-199. See note 4.

[16] Ibid. £1683 12s was said to have come directly from Hacket.

[17] See https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A43515.0001.001?view=toc for a list of the sermons.

[18] A. Tarver, The Consistory Court of the Diocese of Lichfield and Coventry and its work, 1680-1830. Unpub. thesis, University of Warwick. (1998) 

[19] T. Harwood (1806) 59-65. Contributors were from across the county. The Archbishop of Canterbury gave £200 and the Duke and Duchess of York each gave £100. The Dean and Chapter raised £445 in 1661 and £186 in1668. The Close raised £18 and the magistrates of Lichfield £14. It is presumed most of the benefactors were Royalist in sympathy.

[20] Ibid 65.