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6
BCD Special Report on
Historic Churches
18th annual edition
of the most renowned 13th-century scholastics.
(Scholasticism was a method of theology and
philosophy disseminated in medieval European
universities – based on Aristotelian logic and
the works of the early Christian fathers, it placed
a strong emphasis on tradition and dogma.)
Bonaventura was famed as both a preacher
and teacher. The ostentatious knotting of his
cord, a hallmark of the order, and that of the
adjacent friar holding a cross and book, strongly
suggests that they were both Franciscans. This
would have been very unusual subject matter
for a parish church and it is conceivable that
the pulpit was removed at the Reformation
from the Franciscan friary in Dorchester.
Whether it was delivered in Anglo-Saxon,
Latin or English, under the 24th Canon of the
Edict of Arles (398 AD), it was enjoined that
anyone caught leaving the church during the
sermon would be excommunicated. According
to the Rites of Durham (discussed in more
detail in Allan Doig’s article on page 39) the
monastery’s monks were wont to preach from
one o’clock to three o’clock in the Galilee
Chapel, hardly challenging the stamina of
Soviet-era politicians but still demonstrating
a certain tenacity. In his A Werke for
Householders, first printed in 1530, the cleric and
theologian Richard Whitford was by no means
alone in stressing that attendance at preachings
A wooden pulpit’s rostrum was supported
by a continuous deep plinth, unless it was
stemmed or stood on narrow shafts. The
preacher’s access to the platform was most
often by means of a ladder, or occasionally a
staircase. Only a few of the access stairways
for even stone pulpits have survived and
most of the wooden staircases have perished,
apart from a rare example at East Hagbourne,
Berkshire. An intriguing approach to a rostrum
was provided by means of a wall staircase, as
sometimes employed in monastic refectories,
such as Weston-in-Gordano, Somerset. In
other cases, access was via the rood-loft
stair, as at Cold Ashton, Gloucestershire.
The internal wall staircase at Weston-
in-Gordano would have acted as a resonance
chamber to carry the reader’s voice across the
refectory dining space. We know from the
widespread use in the middle ages of resonance
passages beneath choir-stalls that, in an age
innocent of microphones and loud speakers,
the ability to enhance the carrying power of
the human voice was considered a necessity.
Unsurprisingly, the prehistoric wooden pulpit
illustrated in English manuscripts usually
shows a tester, a term of Middle English origin.
We can assume that a majority of surviving
wooden and stone pulpits were similarly
equipped. It hardly needs saying, that these
sometimes elaborate canopies would have
directed the sound of the priest’s voice down
to the congregation below. The wooden
canopy at Edlesborough, Buckinghamshire,
is not unlike an outsized font cover, with
its tiered and spired canopy and ‘starburst’
palmate tierceron vault *. It is, doubtless,
excessively elaborate even in comparison with
another rare, but prestigious survivor in the
North Cerney, Gloucestershire: detail of stone pulpit
showing lily carving (Photo: Hugh Harrison)
All Saints, Trull, Somerset: oak pulpit and slightly earlier rood screen, the pulpit richly carved with saintly figures
in canopied niches, angels above and tiny figures in the pilasters between (Photo: Jonathan Taylor)
was even more important than at the Mass.
During services the Gospel was usually
read from the pulpit, but the latter also fulfilled
another role as a vehicle for the promulgation
of current affairs. In this capacity, it was a
springboard for information about forthcoming
episcopal visitations and indulgences for
various good works, including the repair
and rebuilding of churches. The reading of
the Bede Roll from the pulpit every Sunday,
including the Bidding Prayer ‘for all sorts and
conditions of men’ and the benefactors to the
church, and the announcement of any new
names to be added to it, was both mandatory
and of great importance to the congregation.
This was usually the parish priest’s job, and
he received an annual fee for his trouble.
Manufactured either in wood or stone,
the late-medieval pulpit was always an eye-
catcher. It was usually octagonal or hexagonal
in form, brightly coloured in red, green and
blue, and often gilded, but the pulpit came in
many shapes and sizes. It usually had panelled
sides, often traceried*, incorporating painted
figures or sculptures of the evangelists,
Doctors of the Church and particular saints.
The deployment of niches, however, does not
invariably indicate an intention to fill them
with sculpture. At Halberton, Devon, they
were simply decorative, and lack any pedestals.