Gothic choir stalls

Dear friends,

Within our Fraternity, we are currently 21 brothers and 5 novices and postulants, praying several hours a day in our conventual church (Mass, Divine Office, mental prayer, Rosary).

To share this beautiful initiative with you, we are publishing the first part of an interview with Mr. Anthony Delarue, the architect behind the design.

If you would like to support the funding of these choir stalls, please visit www.chemere.org/don (donations can be made by credit card, check, or bank transfer).

Wishing you a prayerful and grace-filled Holy Week.
— The friars of the Fraternity of Saint Vincent Ferrer

Mr Delarue, the Fraternité called on you to design the choirstalls for its church. Could you tell us a little about yourself, your background and your experience in church design?

As for most people, we do not alone control the direction of our lives, and much of what we do is accidental, or perhaps we should say providential. As a student nearly half a century ago I was always out of step with the prevailing modernism, (which started as a force for evil, based upon a humanist philosophy, and within a generation descended into an empty and derivative aestheticism), and thanks to a scholarship and the enlightenment (in the other sense!) of my professors was able to spend six months in Italy, in Florence and Rome. A breath of fresh air! In Florence I studied and fell in love with the Renaissance, a love which has never left me, and which encourages my appreciation of your very fine church - which in its commendable simplicity embodies the spirit of true classicism.  In Rome I studied the Orders (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian) through antiquity - such a tragedy that this is not taught to every architect, even if they then wish to branch out to other styles.  As with out Faith, how can one grow if one has no roots? Our feet must always be planted in the soil of the past.

Upon qualifying, I spent a few years in an office learning how to build (something they don't bother to teach you in a school of architecture), and then founded my own practice.  At dinner one evening with friends I met a delightful priest who had just taken over a small parish, and who went on to become one of my closest friends.  A week later he asked me to come and look at his church, and over the next few years I restored and ornamented it in a classical manner. It became a little shrine of tradition and a breeding ground for vocations. One thing let to another, as it does especially with the clergy, and within a few years well over half my work was restoration and improvement of churches.

I think in France it is well known that the English clergy are conservative, indeed many traditional,  and my early career followed immediately upon the destructions of the aftermath of the Vatican Council when many lovely churches (all English Catholics churches are 19th or 20th century) had been “reordered” (what a silly term - there is “order”, which comes from God, and “disorder”. anything between is a distraction!), so disastrously, and I had much work to put things back to allow more dignified celebration of the liturgy, and to reinstate decoration which had been swept aways in the iconoclasm.  Within a few years I had the honour of building my first church, in a village just outside London, in a brick style with combine the principles of the Renaissance and the brick structures of ancient Rome. It is a style with I think lends itself well to modern churches, simple and dignified, and inexpensive to construct.

What were your main inspirations for designing these stalls? How do they fit in with both our liturgical life and the architecture of the church?

What a great privilege, and so unexpected, to be asked to work on this wonderful church - another turn of Providence - having met you present prior at dinner at the Seminary at Wigratzbad. So many good things start at the table, that domestic reflection of the Heavenly banquet!

When I first came to visit at Chémeré I was struck by the great simplicity and nobility of the architecture. It is profoundly Catholic and indeed, in this gaunt dignity extremely Dominican - one thinks immediately of the great volume of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. With the help of your architects, you have succeeded in achieving the numinous, the sacred atmosphere, which is a necessity for a place of prayer, this earthly beauty which is a glimpse of Heaven. It is both a joy, and very easy, to build upon this firm foundation.

The church building in its architectural divisions, the nave, the crossing or arch into the choir, and the choir and sanctuary symbolise the division of Holy Mother Church into Her three parts, the Church militant, here on earth, the Church suffering, the souls in Purgatory, and the Church Triumphant, the saints in Heaven.

Why is this so important here in respect of the stalls?

Because a religious church, be it an abbey or priory, or capitular church, has another dimension compared to parish church. It is not only the place where the Faithful come to meet God, but also has its daily and continuous life of prayer of its community, the beating heart, in a very real and physical sense, as the chant of the daily Offices moving from side to side of the church, is truly the pumping the blood though the valves of the Church’s heart. And thus the most normal place within the building (and certainly in the days of Christendom) is in the centre between nave and alter, in the bosom of the church.

So even here in this large open volume, we see that although the architecture of thew walls and roof does not make it immediately evident, the placing of the church is not some accident or utilitarian convenience, but determined by the supernatural purpose of the building.  So it is my role to make this evident.

We are truly blessed by Herr Rémy Insam’s magnificent retable, its gilding luminous in the rising sun, than which no better representation of the Heavenly Banquet could be imagined. So, as all things must be in harmony, each part of the body in its correct place and form, this has informed the design of the choir stalls. The delicate gilded gothic of the altar becomes a more sombre and contained form, in ungilded oak, and in contained within the lower part of the church, not soaring up as the pinnacles of the retable, as it is not the souls in purgatory which have yet reached Heaven, nor the choir of Friars, but the prayer rising from their Offices which soar up into the roof, mingling with the incense from the altar, as a offering pleasing to God.

But this is a Dominican church, of the Order of Preachers, and the special charism of the Order is its didactic charism. For this reason the nave is large, so that the Faithful may come, not only to assist in prayer as they might in an abbey or cathedral, but also to hear, and thus at the division between nave and choir stands the pulpit, where the life of prayer of the Friars flowers into the teaching of the Church. But the very first and foremost teaching of the Church is the Holy Gospel, and so (as in the “pulpitum”, the jubé of the middle ages), on solemn days the Gospel is proclaimed from the pulpit.

In this particular church, in a community dedicated to St Vincent Ferrer it seems fitting that he should be represented holding up the pulpit, upon the wings which legend records of his miraculous preaching, and whom the piety of his contemporaries in the Middle Ages called the "Angel of Judgement”. So that the Friars are seen to be the channel through which the Church transmits the teaching of tradition and of the doctors to the Church Militant - Ecclesia docens.

What stage has the project reached at the moment, and what are the next steps leading up to their installation?

There is a great deal more work to be done!

I have completed the main designs, that is to say, in discussion with the Friars, the arrangement of the stalls, and the principal details of the gothic carvings, which will all be worked by hand in local oak, from the forests of Western France.  Thanks to Frère Vincent (a fellow Briton!) we have constructed models of the stall to test for convenience and comfort. It must not be forgotten that the Friars spend more time in the their choir stall than then in any other place during the day, perhaps even their beds! Sometimes people say one should copy the stalls of a great mediaeval church - but they were made for men of a very different size! There is also a difference in posture between the Dominicans and the monks, which governs the precise construction of the stalls.

With members of the community we have toured several joinery workshops, and seen some truly wonderful skills and living traditions, and have now received prices from five workshops, allowing us to progress the work to the appointment of artisans.

Now follows the detailed development of the design and methods of construction between their draughtsmen and myself - every single piece of carving is drawn up at full size, and the selection of the timber to be used, and the finished and waxes with which it is treated. It is important particularly in this sort of work to remember that we are constructing for generations to come, so everything must be durable for many centuries. No plywood or impermanent glues can be used which will degrade in time.

Finally, would you like to send a message to our readers?

Your readers are, as we here, counter cultural, or they would surely not be reading this letter! This project is not a folly, nor it is a theme park. We do not chose traditional styles because of some aesthetic whimsy, but because we wish to bring the Beauty of holiness, of which both Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis in their various letters to artists have written so movingly, to Christ’s Faithful, that is to the readers of this interview. And this work is for them! As we have said earlier, the life of the Order of Preachers is connected in a very special charism with the Faithful, and so, through the principle of the “economy of Salvation”, the Faithful have their proper role to play which is just as important as that of the Friars, as also indeed of my own. People often say to me how lovely it must be to create beautiful thing - but I create nothing - without the hands of the craftsmen and artisans my work is useless, a tinkling cymbal. And just so with you, the Faithful, you are not spectators or recipients of our work, but collaborators in the enterprise of bring God’s Truth to a reality in our age, in this deeply troubled world. Never before in my now long career have I encountered such enthusiasm among my friends for my work. Both in France and Britain people often ask how it is progressing, and I know several have already committed to very great generosity to bring this to a reality. We are truly grateful to them !