In “Church Going”, the greatest poem about church-crawling ever written, Philip Larkin completely nailed architecture addicts like me. Wondering who would be the last to visit churches if Christianity ever died in Britain, he asks whether it be “one of the crew that tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were? Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique”.
I know what a rood-loft is – I thrill at the sight of one. I tap, I jot; I lust for church fittings. I interviewed the late Hugh Hefner 12 years ago, and I’m more excited about a Cotswolds wool church I’ve just seen in Northleach than I was chatting to Hef’s three pneumatic girlfriends, Holly, Bridget and Kendra. Still, after 30 years’ obsessive church-crawling, there are lots of things I don’t know about the inside of a church. Take this new book, The Brass Eagle Lecterns of England, by Marcus van der Meulen.
I knew that eagle lecterns were inspired by St John the Evangelist, whose symbol is an eagle. Because his Gospel begins, “In the beginning was the word,” it made sense to incorporate his eagle symbol into a lectern.
I also knew that the pelican – used for lecterns, too – was a symbol for Christ’s sacrifice, thanks to the altruistic story of it pecking its own breast to produce blood for its young.
There my knowledge about eagle lecterns ended. Van der Meulen’s book filled the enormous gap. Eagle lecterns were also popular because the mythical, double-headed eagle represented Christ’s twin nature, as human and divine; as King of Heaven and Earth.
As so often, Christian iconography has a classical foundation, too: the Greeks saw the eagle as a transformation of Zeus, king of the gods; the Romans used the eagle, wings outspread, as a symbol for victory.
Van der Meulen carefully follows the ups and downs of the eagle lectern in England through the centuries. The first mention of one dates from the 10th century. There was an extraordinary boom in brass eagle lecterns in the late 15th and early 16th centuries – 40 of the metal birds in this slim, illuminating volume date from that period alone. In the medieval church, the eagle looked east, towards the altar, as the priest, too, turned away from the congregation; these days, the eagle normally turns round to face the congregation, as does the priest.
The eagle had a tricky time after the Reformation. From 1538, the English Bible had to be displayed for consultation in the nave of the church. Quite often, the eagle lectern was snatched from the chancel and placed closer to the congregation for this purpose. But sometimes the brass eagle wasn’t seen as appropriate, as in Westminster Abbey, where the two lecterns were sold as “monuments to idolatry and superstition”.
There was a brief revival of the brass eagle in the early Stuart period. Then came the Puritan cleansing and the Civil War, when many lecterns were chucked away and others hidden from Oliver Cromwell’s troops.
The Gothic Revival, the Oxford Movement and the Cambridge Camden Society inspired the Victorian beautification of the church – and the return of the eagle, manufactured in industrial quantities in the 19th century. Many examples you see today in church are Victorian, inspired in style by those 15th and 16th century predecessors.
In other words, the flight of the brass eagle lectern has tracked the path of the Church (both Catholic and Protestant) and the country – through relative medieval serenity, followed by extreme disruption in the Reformation and the Civil War, towards Victorian prosperity and revival.
And what about today? Well, there are still plenty of brass eagle lecterns around in the churches where I hunt, “randy for antique”, at the weekends.
For how much longer? Who knows? Still, the eagle isn’t quite yet ready to fly the coop.
The Brass Eagle Lecterns of England by Marcus van der Meulen is published by Amberley Publishing (£14.99)
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