Cambridge Camden Society - Sources and Inspiration

Sources and Inspiration

The society's "ecclesiology" was an idea about both architecture and worship, inspired by the associationism of the Gothic revival and reform movements within the Anglican Church. Beginning as far back as Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill, Gothic architecture was used to associate a building with certain attractive aspects of the Middle Ages. For the early revivalists, this attractiveness was the picturesque quality of the architecture. However, the Middle Ages had always had a strong association with religious piety. The Anglican Church of the early 19th century was a languishing body, filled with corruption among the clergy and a lack of respect among the parishioners.

When, in 1833 John Henry Newman began the Oxford Movement, or Tractarianism, a renewal of theology, ecclesiology, sacraments, and liturgical practices within the Anglican Church, all of the pieces were in place for the inception of the Cambridge Camden Society. Its founders, John Mason Neale, Alexander Hope, and Benjamin Webb, formed the society with the belief that by using Church reform in conjunction with piety of Gothic architecture, England could recapture the religious perfection of the Middle Ages. Their idealism is clear in one of the society's early letters: "We know that Catholick ethics gave rise to Catholick architecture; may we not hope that, by a kind of reversed process, association with Catholick architecture will give rise to Catholick ethics?"¹ The Ecclesiologists earnestly believed that medieval men were "more spiritually-minded and less worldly-minded"¹ than were those of the modern world and that it was their duty to help return England to its former piety.

Read more about this topic:  Cambridge Camden Society

Famous quotes containing the words sources and/or inspiration:

    I count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into which other men rise with labor and difficulty; he has but to open his eyes to see things in a true light, and in large relations; whilst they must make painful corrections, and keep a vigilant eye on many sources of error.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Poets should be lawgivers; that is, the boldest lyric inspiration should not chide and insult, but should announce and lead, the civil code, and the day’s work. But now the two things seem irreconcilably parted.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)