20 December 2023

Eucharistic Window

In my last Anglican church, S Thomas's in Oxford, there is a 'Eucharistic Window', put into the church by the great fifty-years-a-vicar-here Canon Thomas Chamberlain. It teaches the doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice by having, at the bottom, a priest facing versus orientem vested in alb and chasuble lifting up a chalice to the level of the Pierced Heart of the corpus on the altar crucifix portrayed in the window. On each side are saints, male and female, local and national, kneeling in adoration. Above is the Lamb of God from the Book of Revelation, blood flowing from His Most Sacred Heart into a chalice, with a selection of the four-and-twenty elders worshipping on each side.

This not only inculcates the desirability of versus orientem, vestments, and altars with crucifixes and candles (things all of which were dangerous innovations in Fr Chamberlain's time), but the unity of the Eucharistic Sacrifice with the Sacrifice of the Lamb at the heavely altar. Not surprisingly, it became the object of a law suit.

In Steeple Aston church, there is a later (between 1896 and 1918) window by Eden working exactly the same theme. At the top is the Lamb of God; lower, the Redeemer ('He ever liveth to make intercession for us'); at the bottom a priest saying Mass at an altar with an open Missal (the crucifixion scene on the left page suggesting that he is just starting Te igitur being slightly subverted by the conjoined thumbs and forefingers). Other tableaux show 'righteous Abel' sacrificing, and Melchizedek; demonstrating a devotion to the Canon Romanus. This window is at least a generation later than the one in S Thomas's (1860), and shows the same teaching transposed into the more 'Roman' idiom of the later Anglican Catholic generation. I suspect that Rector Brown had seen Canon Chamberlain's window. Incidentally, there is another 'Eucharistic Window', of 1888, in Bicester church. Less 'advanced' than Chamberlain's or Brown's, it shows the rector, indeed versus orientem and accompanied by servers, but still wearing an Oxford MA hood. (Tradition has it that Chamberlain smuggled the first chasuble into the usage of S Thomas's by gradually lengthening his MA hood until it had metamorphosed into a red chasuble.)

Fr Brown at Steeple Aston probably also got hassled about his churchmanship. As late as World War II, his successor was accused of being an enemy agent and of deliberately subverting the blackout regulations ... by keeping a light burning before the Blessed Sacrament!

(Any readers know any more Eucharistic windows?)

13 comments:

  1. Father, are there any details on the judgement on the law suit regarding the window against your predecessor?

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    1. I too am interested to know the outcome of the lawsuit.

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  2. I recall many years ago reading a paperback novel about some very "extreme" ordinands and this centred around both St Stephen's House and St Thomas's. Alas I cannot remember the title of the book but it was as amusing a read as some of these posts! I enjoyed my visit to Mass at St Thomas's a couple of Wednesdays ago and greatly aprpeciated the very warm welcome you gave me afterwards. Who was the Celebrant at Mass?

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  3. Ah, those "unguarded hours;" but you might also read Compton Mackenzie's trilogy ...

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  4. My grandfather at Uffculme, Devon in the 1930s was accused of 'going over to Rome' for putting the choir into surplices. The church now looks like a 1960s 'living room', complete with sofas, but there is a fine Tractarian stone altar with the Agnus Dei on it, behind the wonderful 15th century screen.

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  5. Fr any place on the internet these windows may be seen?

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  6. Fr do you know if the windows are available anywhere on the internet?

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  7. Go to Mautby in Norfolk. There you will find a window depicting Saint Thomas Aquinas saying Mass, and Saint Clare holing a monstrance. Illustrated at http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/mautby/mautby.htm

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  8. Here is the interior of Steeple Aston
    https://www.google.com/local/place/fid/0x4876d9807fd9cd97:0x287cd350eb5b28dc/photosphere?iu=https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/p/AF1QipOtWIgpEcxB9rHmZuq8OPoS14ehfb-06AjMLSLK%3Dw160-h106-k-no-pi-0-ya76.14285-ro-0-fo100&ik=CAoSLEFGMVFpcE90V0lncEVjeEI5ckhtWnVxOE9Qb1MxNGVoZmItMDZBak1MU0xL
    Turn right (right arrow) to face the window in question, which is not behind the high altar but in what I take to be a Blessed Sacrament chapel. Do we know what Lady Frances Page and her husband Sir Francis would have thought of this?

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  9. In these dire times the example of these men dedicated to truth is encouraging

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  10. @Simon Cotton
    Comparing https://www.exploringnorfolkchurches.org/church/st-peter-st-pauls-mautby/#gallery-2
    with your own photograph of Mautby's sanctuary, it would appear that the tabernacle has been converted to a flower-stand!

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  11. @ John F H H,
    If you look at Simon Knott's description of Mautby church (see the URL I cite), you will see how the appearance of Mautby church has changed over the time that he has been visiting,

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  12. About 20 years when visiting in the area near Preston I went to Sunday Mass at a small Catholic Church in a somewhat rural area.

    There was a coloured glass window of the priest-martyr William Harcourt (aka ?) dressed in cassock, surplice, and stole holding a ciborium presenting the Blessed Sacrament for Holy Communion. I took a 35 mm slide picture which turned out fairly well. Still have it. Had it professionally copied and gave it to my grandson, William.

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