introduction
Stained glass has been used to make churches and cathedrals more beautiful since the eleventh century and is part of both the architecture and the decoration of the building.
It is the only form of art which is observed through refracted and not reflected light, so its appearance changes according to the time of day and the season of the year. In sunshine, it casts coloured light onto walls and floors.
When stained glass was first used in England, the interior of a church was not unadorned and decorated simply as is now usually the case, but full of colour. Pillars and arches were painted, and walls were covered with murals. The woodwork of screens, doors and roofs would have been carved and gilded.
The pictures in the stained glass windows were there to teach people facts about their faith in a memorable and spiritually uplifting fashion, at a time when the population was illiterate and the majority of people could not read the bible for themselves.
Light was seen as directly symbolising God. In the Old Testament light is always associated with good. The first verses of Genesis announce: “darkness was on the face of the deep, then God created the light, and God saw the light, that it was good”.
In the New Testament John, in his gospel, says of Jesus: “In him was life, and the life was the light of men” and “God is light and in him there is no darkness”.
In 597, Pope Gregory, who sent Augustine (considered a founder of the English Church) to England, justified the use of pictures in churches, saying: “For a picture is introduced into a church so that those who are ignorant of letters may at least read by looking at the walls what they cannot read in books”.
Early Glass history
In England, the earliest known glass dates about 80 AD, when glaziers came from France to work in monasteries in the north of England. Fragments found at these sites, along with the lead strips which held them in place, suggest that the glass may simply have been arranged as coloured mosaics.
Written evidence confirms the existence of coloured and decorated windows in churches and monasteries before the twelfth century.
When designs were made, the glass pieces were held together with grooved leaden strips of ‘H’ section, which played a very importance part in the early windows as they gave a strong black outline to the design.
Coloured glass was made by adding various metallic oxides to the crucibles in which the plain glass was melted, and the molten glass was then blown and shaped into sheets. When figures were made, the faces were painted on, and black was the only colour used for this.
As the architecture of the buildings changed, the use of the windows for stained glass was also adapted, and from the 13th to the 15th centuries, stained glass windows changed to complement successive architectural styles.
With the coming of the Renaissance in the late 15th century, there was a period of decline, with new ideas of realism and pictorialism. The spiritually uplifting effects of light streaming through coloured glass were no longer considered so relevant a part of religious worship
16th and 17th centuries
During the religious upheavals of the 16th century, many windows were destroyed on the orders of Henry VIII, as the pictures were considered to represent the power and rituals of the Catholic church. Because the monasteries had also been dissolved, the main sources of patronage for future work and repairs were lost.
During the reigns of Elizabeth I and Charles I, no destruction took place, but when Oliver Cromwell came to power under the Commonwealth, the House of Commons in 1643 ordered all religious stained glass to be smashed and so began the greatest deliberate onslaught on stained glass in its history. Journeys were undertaken by Cromwell’s men with the express purpose of stripping the churches of ornament and smashing the stained glass, and the windows of several great cathedrals were destroyed by his soldiers.
18th and 19th Centuries
Throughout the 18th century, stained glass was thought of in terms of translucent oil paintings and lead was rarely used to outline the design.
Then, in the 19th century, after 200 years of decline, there was a great revival in England, starting with the Church Building Act of 1818 to build new churches. The Victorians were keen to build new churches and restore old ones in a deliberately medieval style as part of the Gothic Revival movements.
This was the age of great urban growth and industrialisation, and it was believed that it was possible and necessary to reintroduce the devour Christianity ascribed in the Middle Ages.
The surviving products of medieval craftsmen were carefully restored and copied and stained glass was considered a vital part of this process, as well as being an architectural feature, it expressed medieval beliefs. So, this resulted in the happy effect that the forgotten methods of medieval glazing were rediscovered and revived.