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STANBROOK

baldachinum over the highest row of seats was often very magnificent. Germany and France possess a large number of stalls that are masterpieces. These stalls are found on both sides of the choir in the churches of monasteries and collegiate foundations. The seats on the Epistle side are called chorus abbatis or prceposili, those on the Gospel side chorus prioris or decani. The last of the ascending rows has gener- ally a back wall crowned with artistic decorations. The back of each preceding row serves the succeeding one as a prayer-desk; the first row has a projection built in front of it for the same purpose. On feast days, for the sake of comfort and ornament, tapes-

Stanbrook Abbey, an abbey of Benedictine nuns, midway between Malvern and Worcester, England. The abbey and church are dedicated to Our Lady of Consolation, the title of theoriginal foundation at Cam- brai, Spanish Flanders, 1625, effected by the Benedic- tine iNIonks of the English Congregation, under whose immediate jurisdiction the community has always remained. Of the nine English ladies who began the foundation, Helen More (Dame Gertrude) was chief foundress because of the liberality of her father, Cres- acre More, great-grandson of Sir Thomas More; where- fore the community has special claims on the patron- age of this blessed martyr. The other ladies were:

tries were hung on the backs of the stalls, cushions Margaret Vavasour; Anne Morgan; Catherine Gas- laid on the seats, and rugs put under the feet. Orna- coigne; Grace and Anne More, cousins of Helen; mental designs or figures carved in the wood dec- Frances Watson; and two lay sisters, Marj' Hoskins orated both the front and rear faces of the high and Jane Martin. Dame Frances Gawen, one of three backs of all the stalls as well as the double arms that nuns lent by the Benedictines of Brussels to train the

were used both when standing and sitting. On the arms as well as in subordinate parts, especially on the misericordia or console — against which, after the seat had been turned uj), the cleric could sup- port himself while standing — it was not unusual to carve fan- tastic figures of ani- mals or grotesque devils. Choir-stalls of stone, which are always colder, occur but "rarely (for ex- ample, at Kaurini in Bohemia). Anioim the oldest still exist- ing examples of Got h- ic choir-stalls in France are those in the Church of Notre-Dame- de-la-Roche; especially rich in their ornamen- tation are those in the cathedrals at Amiens, Paris, Auch, and others. VioUet-le-Duc gives some beauti- ful examples in his " Dictionnaire de 1' Architecture", s. v. Slalles. Among examples in Belgium the Church of St. Gertrude at Louvain shows late Gothic choir-

Choir Stalls in the Church of S. Spibito, Florence

postulants, governed as abbess until the infant community was in a position to choose one from its own body, Dame CatherineGascoigne, abbess, 1629- 1676. Dom Augustine Baker, to whom their s]iiritual formation w a.-i entrusted, wrote at the Cambrai Ab- bey, for their use, spiritual treatises which give him ce- lebrity. In 1793 the French revolution- ists, seizing their house and property, conveyed the nuns, twenty-two in num- ber, to a prison in Compiegne. Here, consequent on hardship, four of them died, as also the Very Reverend Dom Augustine Walker, President of the Anglo-Benedictine Congrega- tion, who had been arrested in their priests' quar- ters. Subsequently they had as fellow-prisonera the CarmeUtes (since beatified), who were led thence to niartjTdom in Paris, July. 1794. Though

stalls with statuettes and twenty-eight rehefs por- a similar death awaited the Benedictines this was traying the life of Christ, of St. Augustine, and of averted by the downfall of Robespierre, their deliver- St. Gertrude. The most celebrated choir-stalls in ance from jail being effected only on 25 April, 1795. Germany are those in the Cathedral at L'lm; these Clad in worn-out secular attire left in the Compiegne are reproduced in all their details in Egle, "Der Dom prison by the Carmelite martjTs, they reached Eng- zu Ulm" (1872). There are eighty-nine seats ^\'ith land in utter destitution, but were charitably lodged gable hood-mouldings and pinnacles, on each seat in London for some days. Thence they proceeded to there are two rows of decorations, on the back and Lancashire, where the \'er>' Reverend Dr. Brewer, on the side, representing Christ as the anticipation of President of the Anglo-Benedictine Congregation, the heathen and the prediction of the prophets, and made over to them the Ladies' School belonging to the in addition there is delineated the founding of the Woolton mission under his care. New Covenant. The choir-stalls at Dordrecht, Hoi- In 1807 the community removed to Salford Hall, land, belong to the style of the Renaissance; they near Evesham, where bv the joint kindness of its represent on the back the triumph of the Church and ownier. Mrs. Stanford, and the life-heir. Robert Berk- of the Holy Sacraments; on the opposite side, the eley, Esq., of Spetchly. they lived free of rent, till triumphs of Charles V. There are superb creations able to purchase Stanbrook Hall, to which they re- of the same style in Italy, especially with inlaid work moved in 18.38. In 1S71 an entin>ly new monastic called tarsia, as at Assisi, Siena, Florence, and ^'enice structure W!is insvugurated by the consecration of the (cf. Kraus, "Geschichte der christl. Kunst", II, abbey-church, designed by Edward ^^'elby Pugin. 685). Modern times have made but few changes in The starting of this project was mainly attributable to the practical and artistic form that was fixed in an the zeal an(l energy of the then Virnrius monictlium,

Dom James Laurence Shepherd, the well-known trans- lator of Dom Gut'Taiiger's ".\nnee Liturgique". The rest of the ablx'v l)uil(ling. of which Mcs,srs. Cuthbert and Peter-Paul Pugin were the architects, wsus grad- uallv erected during the abbacv of Ladv Gertrude L. d'Aiirillac Dubois, d. 1897. The abbey, with its extensive grounds, is enclosed by the canonical wall

earlier era.

Besides the authors already meulioncd: Reitz, Dan Chorgesliilit desDomes zu Kdln (Dresden. 1S47) ; TscmarHKA, Der Stephansdom in Wien (Vienna, 1832). A comprehensive treatise is given by RiGGENBACn, ChorgrMUhl des Millelallers in Zeilschr. fur christl. Arch&ol. u. Kuji.lt, II: Mitteil. der k. k. Central-Kommis.non ru Wim, VIII (Vienna, 1865); Gailhabacd. .Architecture du V« au XVII' siicle el des aria qui en dipendertt (Paris, l.S.'iO-S).

Gbbbard Gietmann.