medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
---- Frank Morgret <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Certainly, the later medieval western practice was that the altar was at the
> east end of the church.
Yes, but the question was about the earlier medieval western practice :-)
> Avista did a truly magnificent presentation about ten years ago at K'zoo on
> how to lay out the plans for a church on the ground. To make sure about the
> altar really being at the east end, a stake roughly a metre long was driven
> absolutely vertically, as determined by a plumb bob, into the ground.
> Measurements of its shadow were marked on the ground over a period of several
> days. The shortest shadow would, of course, be to the north (true, not
> magnetic) of the stake. Once north was determined, east was determined using
> a 3-4-5 right triangle made of twine.
They could have done this, of course, but there is no evidence that they ever did.
For a start, very few English medieval churches are exactly oriented to, er, the orient! So the alternative hypothesis has arisen of east being taken from sunrise on either the patronal festival or the date of dedication of the church.
> Most of the oldest Roman Catholic churches built along the St. Lawrence
> River in Québec seem to have followed this rule. Inside the walls of ville
> de Québec, about the only street that runs truly north and south is Rue Ste-
> Famille, the street on which the basilica is built.
This may be an example of the perversity of the Québecois: in Europe, scant attention was paid by the Roman Catholic church to the question of orientation - it wasn't considered necessary to point to the east at all. The post-Reformation Church of England, however, paid great attention to exact orientation, with the suggestion of advanced scientific techniques being employed for the laying out 18th-century London churches.
John Briggs
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