Religious Function: Cathedral, Monestary, and Shrine | Durham Cathedral | Briefing | Professor Stalley

Early Architecture in Irreland & Romanesque Architecture in England

Click images to enlarge.

Religious Functions: Cathedral, Monastery, and Shrine | Durham Cathedral and Anglo-Norman Romanesque
Professor Roger Stalley

Durham Cathedral had three distinct but overlapping functions; it served (a) as a cathedral, the seat of the bishop; it was also (b) the church of the Benedictine monks who administered and ran the cathedral; finally, (c) it housed the shrine of St. Cuthbert, the most celebrated saint of the north of England.

Whereas the bishop had his residence in the fortified castle to the north of the cathedral, the monks resided in the communal buildings arranged around the cloister to the south. Very little of the Romanesque work survives in this area. The chapter house, constructed c. 1133-40, was reconstructed in 1892 on Romanesque lines. Two doorways in the cathedral, one at each end of the nave, gave direct access into the cloister walks.

The chief functions of the cathedral were concentrated in the eastern limb of the building. This is where the bishop's throne or 'cathedra' was situated, and where the bishop would sit on major occasions. This part of the church also contained the stalls of the monks, whose task it was to conduct the offices, the worship offered in a monastic community at regular intervals throughout the day. The stalls were separated from the rest of the church by various screens.

In the 1150s a sculptured stone screen, fragments of which survive, was constructed at the east end of the nave. During the daily 'offices', the monks themselves would have been scarcely visible to the lay congregation in the nave. Women were not permitted in the main body of the church, an issue which Bishop Le Puiset attempted to resolve. The addition of the Galilee chapel c. 1175 was, according to contemporary accounts, expressly designed for women, who, not having access to the 'secret places of the saints' did at least 'have some consolation from contemplating them'. The great Romanesque monument at Durham was designed as a male preserve.

The Shrine of St. Cuthbert
The principal focus of the cathedral lay beyond the choir stalls at the very east end of the cathedral: here was situated the high altar, behind which lay the shrine of St Cuthbert. It is known that the reliquary-coffin was raised above the ground on nine columns, so that it was visible above the high altar. The exact location of the shrine within the apse has been identified by marks on the original stone floor. Underneath the shrine there was space for pilgrims to pray.

Although it is commonly assumed that pilgrims were given every encouragement to visit the shrines of major saints like that of St. Cuthbert, there is not much evidence that this was the intention in 1093. There is no indication that the community at Durham went out of their way to encourage popular pilgrimage before the middle years of the twelfth century, and the layout of the choir was not ideally designed to receive throngs of visitors. While lay visitors might catch a glimpse of the shrine from the nave, access to it could only be achieved by entering the monks' choir and venturing behind the high altar. The need to improve access was almost certainly one of the motives for enlarging the church in the thirteenth century through the construction of the 'Chapel of the Nine Altars'.

While the east end of Durham followed the plan of many Benedictine houses in England and Normandy, it was not designed as a 'pilgrimage church'. In contrast to other major cathedrals—Worcester, Canterbury and Winchester, for example—no crypt was included as a location for additional altars (though the sloping ground at the east end allowed plenty of scope for one), nor was the building furnished with an ambulatory, which would have permitted better access to the main shrine.

[It has been argued (Fernie, 1993) that a 'furniture' ambulatory might have been created through the placing of a screen across the choir in the final bay before the apse, allowing pilgrims to reach the shrine from the aisles; there is, however, no archaeological evidence for this arrangement, which would have separated the monks choir and the high altar from the shrine, which is known to have been located within the apse].

When Bishop William approved the plan of the cathedral in 1093, the accommodation of pilgrims was not apparently a major consideration. Nonetheless, there is little doubt that a desire to honour St. Cuthbert in the most spectacular way possible was one of the motives behind the grandiose nature of the design.

The Benedictine community at Durham was dissolved in 1539, at the time of the Reformation of the English Church under Henry VIII. The reliquary-shrine was subsequently destroyed and the wooden coffin with the saint's bones was buried within the church.

England, Durham Cathedral, Chapter house

England, Durham Cathedral, Nave looking toward the east

England, Durham Cathedral, Galilee Chapel