USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Great Barrington > St. James' Parish, Great Barrington, Massachusetts, 1762-1962 > Part 2
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The pulpit, reading desk, and clerk's desk in English churches were often fitted with candlesticks as well as shelves for sermon notes and for the folio Prayer Book and Bible used for the service. They also had seats for priest and clerk, and sometimes a wig stand. Over the pulpit there was usually a tester or sounding board, often a thing of beauty, topped with a decorative finial. The pulpit and often the reading desk as well was cov- ered with a large cushion decorated with tassels and a hanging or valance called a "pulpit cloth." Crimson was, perhaps, the favorite color, but there are examples of purple, blue, red, and even cloth-of-gold pulpit cloths in colonial churches.
There were two kinds of pews: box pews and the bench-like "slip pews" that have now become almost universal. Box pews were high and usually fitted with doors intended to protect the occupants from cold drafts in the unheated churches. The height of the pews helps to explain the popularity of the high pulpits even in small churches: the worshippers wished to see as well as hear the preacher, hence he had to be elevated. The presence of the galleries also made it desirable to have a high pulpit. Inside the box pews seats ran around the sides, presumably, so that foot- warmers could be conveniently placed in the center of each pew in winter. Also the fact that Anglican churches had three liturgical centers - font, altar, and pulpit - and that they seldom coincided, meant that in most churches the people faced one way for a baptism, another way for the Eucharist, and yet another way for the sermon. Slip pews or "forms" placed at the back of the church and in the galleries were regarded as less desir- able than box pews and were frequently assigned to servants, children, and strangers. They had narrow seats, straight backs, kneeling boards (instead of hassocks), and sometimes narrow wooden bookrests fastened to the pew in front. A great disadvantage was that they could not be effectively heated by a foot-warmer in winter.
The small size of colonial churches and the rapidity with which population increased put a premium on space and forced vestries to devise
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Rico
THE FIRST CHURCH OF THE PARISH, 1764-1833
An artist's conception, by Elisabeth Lawton Ridout, of the first Church of the Parish, built in 1764 and dedicated on Christmas Day. It was called Christ Church until about 1804, and St. James' Church thereafter. On October 18, 1823 it was consecrated with the latter name by Alexander Viets Griswold, third Bishop of Massachusetts. Modelled after Christ Church, Stratford, Connecticut, it was 40 by 50 feet with a porch and chancel projection that added 20 feet to its length. The steeple was 110 feet tall, surmounted by a gilded weath- ercock of copper. A ship's bell hung in the belfry, the first church bell in Great Barrington. The large windows were a notable feature, and gave rise to the name "The Glass House" by which it was sometimes called.
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means of enlarging the seating accommodations. This was done first by adding galleries, and then by building additions to the church. It was not uncommon two centuries ago to find the interior of a colonial Anglican church cluttered with high box pews and galleries on three sides. These, together, with a chancel screen or with a large three-decker structure gave the interior a very different character and feeling from our churches today. The west gallery both in England and the colonies was the favorite place for organs and for choirs. Organs were common in English cathedrals and abbeys in the Middle Ages and became more common in parish churches until the triumph of the Puritans under Oliver Cromwell, when there was a systematic destruction of church organs because the Puritans thought it wrong to use musical instruments in the services of the church. After the restoration in 1660 organs were again placed in English churches. By 1714 virtually all the churches and chapels in London had them and used them to accompany the singing of the Psalms and to play voluntaries as the peo- ple entered and left the church. Because of poverty American churches were slow to acquire organs, but after 1713 when King's Chapel, Boston obtained one, the number grew apace.
The font was one of the traditional ornaments of Anglican worship. One of the Canons of 1604 required that the font should be provided in every church and chapel and that it should "be set up in the ancient usual place," which is at the west end of the church near the door as a reminder that entrance into the Church was by Holy Baptism. This was generally done, but the smallness of colonial churches and the premium on space sometimes dictated a departure from ancient practice and led to the font being placed in the chancel rather than at the opposite end of the church.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century a common practice of the English Church was to move the table-form altar into the aisle of the chancel when the sacrament was to be celebrated and place it with its long axis east and west, the celebrant standing on the north side of it. Out of service time the holy table was required by the Canons of 1604 to be placed altar-wise at the east end. This was the result of a compromise reached under Queen Elizabeth I between the opposing views of Puritans and High Churchmen. So long as this remained the custom, altars had to be in table form and of wood so as to be portable. It was also inexpedient to have altar rails, for the entire chancel was the sanctuary. Under the vigorous leader- ship of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury 1633-44, this was forcibly abolished, and the more conventional medieval practice restored. Com- munion tables were thereafter permanently kept altar-wise at the east end of churches and railed in to force communicants to receive the sacrament kneeling and to protect the holy place from desecration by Puritans who, objecting to the idea that any material object could be holy, were reputed to cast up their churchwarden's accounts on the altar out of service time or to use it as a desk in the parish school on weekdays. The Laudian litur- gical reform met violent opposition in England and was lost during the Puritan ascendancy under Cromwell. But it enjoyed a complete victory after the restoration of Charles II and has ever since been the norm of An- glican worship. Altars permanently set up at the east end and no longer required to be portable, grew larger and heavier, and were once again built of stone. Durham Cathedral's new altar in 1617 was of marble. Worcester
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acquired a stone one in 1634. After 1660 they were increasingly common, although the earliest known example in this country is the stone altar of St. Paul's Chapel, New York, installed in 1788.
Another example of Laudian influence was the use of architectural settings to give honor and dignity to the altar: an exquisitely carved reredos or altar piece, special marble pavement in the sanctuary, and an ornamental canopy above it, or, at least, special treatment of the ceiling over the altar. The last two practices were used in contemporary Anglican churches in New York and Charleston. Smaller country churches were content to set off the altar with steps, a panelled dado around or behind the sanctuary, and simple, carved altar pieces.
Even if poverty or the lack of skilled craftsmen compelled colonial Anglicans to worship in modest churches in the American wilderness, no- thing prevented them from beautifying the altar and pulpit so as to give outward and visible honor to the Sacrament and the Word. No Anglican altar, whether of carved marble or a simple wooden table, could lawfully be left uncovered during service time. Canon Law, as revised in 1604, enshrining an unbroken custom of great antiquity, required that the altar be "covered in time of divine Service with a Carpet of Silke or other decent stuffe." This was the frontal which not only covered the top of the holy table but came down to the floor on all sides of it. In the seventeenth cen- tury it generally hung loose and full at the corners, and is now known as a Laudian or Jacobean frontal. In the eighteenth century this gradually gave way to the fitted variety, straight at the sides, which was more in keeping with the symmetry and regularity of Georgian style. These frontals were of the finest materials: silk, damask, velvet, with contrasting "panes" or orphreys and fringe of silver or gold. Many churches in the Mother Country preserved a simple color sequence, though a poor one. Red was used throughout most of the year except in Lent when black was substi- tuted. But we know that some colonial churches had hangings of green, some of purple, and at least one had a cloth-of-gold pulpit hanging as early as 1698. Black was also used for the Burial Office. A contemporary account of Bruton Parish Church, Williamsburg, in the Virginia Gazette, in 1770 on the occasion of the funeral of the royal governor, Lord Botetourt, said: "At the western gate the corpse was removed from the hearse, and, carried by eight bearers, the Gentlemen appointed supporting the pall, placed in the centre of the church, on a carpet of black. The altar, pulpit, and his Excellency's seat, were likewise hung with black."
Altar candlesticks, two of which were commonly found in English churches of the period, must have been rare in the colonies, for they do not appear in the vestry books that have survived. But colonial altars were probably decorated with almsbasins placed upright against the reredos in the middle of the altar (where we should place an altar cross today). This practice reflected the theological emphasis that the seventeenth-century English divines placed upon the "oblation," or offering of oneself along with the alms and the bread and wine to God in the Eucharist. Colonial altars were also enriched by beautifully-bound prayer books and richly- covered cushions on each end to hold the altar book before the Epistle and after the Gospel at Holy Communion.
Canon Law and Anglican custom sanctioned the use of simple but
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dignified ceremonial in worship. These ceremonies - especially the use of the sign of the cross in baptism and the ring in marriage - were severely attacked by the Puritans who opposed them as either corrupt or giving countenance to the idea that material objects are holy. The Church of Eng- land stood its ground on these two, but partially curtailed other ceremonies in a vain attempt to mollify the Non-conformists. But since moderation failed to keep them within the Church, the policy of selfrestraint was given up after the restoration of Charles II and the Church wholeheartedly re- vived and enjoyed such of its ancient ceremony as it considered did not tend to superstition or exemplify erroneous doctrine. For one thing, the Puritan custom of entering church with hats on was forbidden for men (but required for women). Another custom was "reverencing" (that is, bow- ing the head towards) the altar upon entering or leaving a church. Along with this was the practice of making a similar reverence at the mention of the Holy Name. The 1604 Canons ordered that when "the Lord IESUS shalbe mentioned, due and lowly reverence shall bee done by all persons present as it hath bene accustomed." Priests and people also turned to the east at the Creed and at the Gloria Patri (Glory be to the Father, etc.) after the Psalms and canticles at Matins and Evensong. At the Eucharist all sat for the liturgical Epistle, stood for the Gospel, and knelt to receive the sacrament. Sitting for prayers was regarded as an odious Puritan prac- tice forbidden by canon law which required "all manner of persons . . . reverently [to] kneele upon their knees when the General Confession, Letany, and other Prayers are read, and stand up at the saying of the Be- leefe," i.e. the Creed. All these outward ceremonies, the canons asserted, testify to the worshippers' "inward humilitie, Christian resolution, and due acknowledgement that the Lord Jesus Christ, the true and eternal Sonne of God, is the onely Saviour of the World, in whom alone all the Mercies, Graces, and Promises of God to mankinde for this life and the life to come are fully and wholly Comprised."
A word ought to be said about the keeping of Sunday in the co- lonial period, as this was a bone of contention between Anglicans and Puri- tans. The traditional view was that every Sunday was a great, Holy Day, the weekly remembrance of our Lord's Resurrection. In Anglican practice, therefore, it was a feast day, a day of rejoicing and recreation, after one had gone to church. The Puritans, on the other hand, influenced by the Old Testament Sabbath, believed in a solemn, joyless Sunday, and tried to force their views on others. Both James I in 1618 and Charles I in 1633 issued declarations forbidding local magistrates from debarring the people from lawful recreations on Sunday after church time. Sundays,, being feast days, were to refresh "the meaner sort who labour hard all the week" no less than to worship God. After the end of divine service, therefore, the king commanded that "our good people be not disturbed, letted [i.e. hin- dered ] or discouraged from any lawful recreation, such as dancing, either men or women; archery for men, leaping, vaulting, or any other such harm- less recreation, nor from having of May-games, Whitsun-ales, and Morris- dances; and the setting up of May-poles." Needless to say, this was dis- tasteful to the Puritans who in England chafed under Anglican doctrine supported by the crown, but who in New England had the upper hand themselves. Hence a colonial Sunday here was much more nearly what
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the Puritans thought it ought to be. Anglicans were never numerous enough in New England to defy convention openly. In Virginia where they were in the saddle, Sundays were observed in a much gayer fashion, so as to give rise among the evangelical dissenters to charges of worldliness and loose conduct levelled at Church of England folk because they thought it proper to dance, play cards, and race their horses on the Sabbath Day.
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If one were to step back, after the fashion of Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee, to the late colonial period and attend an Anglican church on a Sunday morning in the year of our Lord 1762, here is about what he would experience. As the intending worshipper arrived at the church, he would find a little group of parishioners gathered in the church- yard exchanging greetings and news while their servants or sons fastened the reins of the horses to nearby trees. From the belfry would sound the familiar tone of the bell being rung by the sexton as a signal that divine service was about to begin. If the people continued to dawdle, the church- warden or parish clerk might come out to summon them to enter.
The parish priest would arrive in his ordinary habit (or street attire) which consisted of a long cassock, sash, gown, tippet (or long, full, black scarf), and soft black Square Cap, or more likely, he may have substituted a black cocked hat for his canonical square cap and a black or grey coat for his priest's gown, in which case he would wear a shortened or tucked-up cassock so that he might more easily ride a horse. He would also wear a wig and "bands" - a soft, white, linen neckcloth (later starched to become the modern clerical collar) with two pendant tabs. This was worn by the clergy of all churches in the eighteenth century and also by members of other learned professions - lawyers, physicians, and schoolmasters. Though long since given up by the laity today (except English barristers and Scot- tish advocates), they have left their legacy to the secular world in the word "bandbox."
The parish priest would remove his hat, enter the church, and walk informally down the aisle, pausing perhaps to greet parishioners and inquire of ill relatives. Upon reaching the Rector's Pew, he would lay aside his gown and put on his surplice which was normally kept in an oak chest in the chancel. This linen garment was the principal Anglican vestment in colonial days. In the seventeenth century it was the object of Puritan wrath, and derisively called a "rag of Popery." In the eighteenth, when much of the rancor had subsided, the Congregationalists still disliked the surplice and half-humorously referred to it as a "Canterbury nightgown." Although unknown in the Eastern Orthodox Church, the surplice was universally used in the Western Latin Church. It was derived about one thou- sand years ago from the tight-fitting alb, by being cut full so that it might be worn over fur garments in the cold stone churches of the Mid- dle Ages, hence its name is derived from "super pellicaea," meaning "over- the-furs." From its earliest appearance until late in the nineteenth century the surplice was long and full, being made of twelve or more yards of material. In the late seventeenth century when the clergy took to wearing large wigs, the cut of the surplice was altered by being slit up the front and provided with buttons, so the priest could more easily put it on and
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take it off in the chancel in full view of the congregation without disarraying his wig. After the clergy gave up wigs in the early nineteenth century, the surplice gradually regained its historic form without front opening or but- tons. But it later fell before the practical necessity and the schemes of clerical tailors who have reduced an ancient and comely garment to the short, skimpy, "sausage skin" variety that we commonly see today.
Having put on his surplice and possibly also an academic hood and tippet, the priest now began Matins with a loud voice, which is the service known to modern Episcopalians as Morning Prayer. The Parish Clerk (or Lay Reader as we should call him today) also in cassock, bands, surplice, and wig, occupied a reading pew adjacent to and often just below the rector's pew, and led the congregational responses for the benefit of those who had no prayer book or could not read. If the church did not have an organ, the parish clerk usually "pitched" the tune for the Psalms.
As the Prayer Book has changed very little since that day, except for the substitution of prayers for the President rather than the King, the worshipper would detect almost no difference in the ritual (that is, the words used in the service), but he would be struck by the difference in ceremony (that is, the actions used in connection with worship) and in the music of the church. Only a few colonial churches had organs, and those few did not sing the hymns that are so familiar to us today. Hymns went out with the Reformation and did not return until the nineteenth century. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries music was used chiefly as a setting for the liturgy (especially the Psalms), for anthems, and for organ voluntaries. To facilitate the congregational singing of the Psalms, they were translated into metrical versions. The first such version in England was by Sternhold and Hopkins in 1562. They were of poor quality - Queen Elizabeth called them "Geneva jigs" - but they became dear to the hearts of generations of Church people. An example of this version is the Twenty- third Psalm:
The Lord is only my support, How can I then lack any thing In pastures green he feedeth me, And after leads me to the streams
Thou hast my table richly spread Thou hast my head with balm refresh'd, And finally while breath doth last, And in the house of God will I
and he that doth me feed: whereof I stand in need? where I do safely lie: which run most pleasantly.
in presence of my foe: my cup doth over flow. thy grace shall me defend: my life for ever spend.
Late in the seventeenth century, in 1696, a new version of the Psalms by King William's chaplain-in-ordinary, Nicholas Brady, and the poet laureate, Nahum Tate, appeared. This "New Version," as it was known, was greatly superior to the Sternhold-Hopkins translation. But the "Old Version" continued to be favored by the common folk and ran through several hundred editions, the last in the middle of the nineteenth century. During the eighteenth, Tate and Brady's version fought an uphill battle against its predecessor, only to succumb in due course to the rising tide of hymnody in the following century.
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Another notable difference would be the absence of a vested choir preceded by a crucifer, now so invariable a part of Anglican Sunday serv- ices. Until the late eighteenth century vested choirs were only to be found in cathedrals and college chapels, but not in English parish churches. The normal parish choir in colonial days was composed of men, women, and children who sat in their street clothes in the west gallery near the organ. Our modern practice is largely the result of the Tractarian Movement of the 1840's.
After Matins, the priest read the Litany, and then proceeded to the Ante-Communion (the portion of the Communion service that came before the confession and consecration). If there were to be no sacrament, he concluded the service at this point with the blessing. The Reformers of the sixteenth century had intended to make Holy Communion the prin- cipal service every Sunday, but this represented such a radical departure from the infrequent communion habits of the medieval people that it failed. The English practice was to require all communicants to receive the sacra- ments at least three times a year, of which Easter was to be one, and to encourage it more frequently. Most parish churches in the eighteenth cen- tury celebrated Holy Communion four, eight, or twelve times a year. Even when there was no celebration, the Sunday service was much longer than we are accustomed to, and included the selection from the Psalter and the Old and New Testament lessons from Matins as well as the liturgical Epistle and Gospel for the day.
After the blessing, the priest removed his surplice, put on his gown and possibly his hood - especially if he held a doctor of divinity degree from Oxford or Cambridge - and ascended the narrow stairs leading to the high, wine-glass pulpit so characteristic of the time. The sermon or "homily" was introduced not by the invocation so common today, but by the Bidding Prayer prescribed by the 55th of the Canons of 1604. This began: "Ye shall pray for Christ's holy Catholike Church," and went on to specify other objects of prayer - the king, the queen, other members of the royal family, the Privy Council, nobility, magistrates, and Commons of the realm, "all those which are departed out of this life in the Faith of Christ," and finally that "we may have grace to direct our lives after their good example," and "this life ended, wee may be made partakers with them of the glorious Resurrection in the life Everlasting." The Bidding Prayer always concluded with the Lord's Prayer said by all present.
The typical colonial sermon is unlikely to appeal to the modern churchman. It was generally very long, heavily freighted with quotations from Scripture and the early Fathers of the Church, and usually read verbatim from carefully prepared notes. The glorious good news of the Gospel was not lost, but it was heavily overlaid with scholarship. Our colonial ancestors had stronger stomachs than modern congregations for long and meaty sermons, and they would have been deeply offended if the preacher gave them nothing more than a fifteen-minute extemporaneous discourse that lacked the marks of profound learning and the "smell of the lamp," as they called late hours of study.
Three other differences would be noticed by the modern worshipper in a colonial church. The favorite modern practice of gathering and pre- senting alms at the altar at Morning Prayer was conspicuously lacking
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two centuries ago. Alms were received as part of the "offertory" in the Eucharist and every set of communion silver included an alms basin. But, apart from the Eucharist, it would not have occurred to a colonial priest to take up a collection (unless for some special purpose) or to present the alms at the altar during Matins. The Church was supported by tithes and by subscriptions. Apart from the ceremonial presentation of alms along with the oblations in Holy Communion, alms were rarely gathered in church except in the form of money put in the poor box with no liturgical or musi- cal accompaniment. The second difference was that flowers were not then used on the altar. Greens were employed to decorate the church at Christ- mas and flowers at Easter and other festivals, but they were hung about the walls in garlands, not placed in vases on the altar. In must be remem- bered that altars were then covered with rich frontals of silk and velvet and needed no flowers to beautify them. The use of plain and bare altars in the nineteenth century led people instinctively to correct the offence by putting flowers on them. The third difference is that brass and other in- ferior metals were not then used on Anglican altars. Communion plate was always of gold, silver-gilt, or sterling silver, the last being almost uni- versal in the colonies. Poor churches occasionally used pewter as a tem- porary makeshift, but in general before the Industrial Revolution anything less than pure silver was regarded as unworthy of a decent and proper worship of Almighty God.
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