The Jesuits were responsible for some of the most significant new church buildings in England in the first half of the nineteenth century. St Peter’s Church at Stonyhurst (1832–5), St Ignatius’s Church in Preston (1833–6), St Francis Xavier’s Church in Liverpool (1844–8), Farm Steet Church in Mayfair (1844–9), and St Walburge’s Church in Preston (1850–4) are some of their better-known commissions.Footnote 1 In some cases, they commissioned leading Catholic architects to design and build their new churches. In other cases, the Jesuits designed their buildings without the assistance of a lay architect, and were sometimes to be found at site as clerks of works and even as labourers on their projects. Although the number of churches was not large, given their significance to local landscapes, and to the national Catholic revival after Emancipation, their contribution is an important one. The Jesuits emerged as noteworthy contributors to developments in English church architecture and particularly to the development of architectural style in Catholic church-building. Jesuit commissions were often featured prominently in the Catholic press, and also in the architectural and wider cultural press of the day.Footnote 2
As patrons, and sometimes as priest-architects, the English Jesuits demonstrated a remarkable and wide-ranging understanding of the architectural design and building process. This article explores how the English Jesuits of the first half of the nineteenth century ‘learned’ their architecture. It considers the curricula and progress of their academic studies and priestly formation. It also considers the provenance, development, catalogues, metadata, and shelving of their primary scholarly and cultural resource, the three House Libraries at Stonyhurst: the Square Library, the Arundell Library, and the Bay Library, each of which has a unique history and development. The libraries are considered with frequent reference to the large body of archival material pertaining to their architectural commissions, including the correspondence and personal papers of relevant Jesuits.
By considering the architectural literature in the Jesuit libraries and the reading and educational history of the boys and men who became Jesuit patrons and priest-architects, it is possible to highlight the wide range of sources and styles that made for the evolution of an eclectic and adaptive style, one that responded to and influenced the progress of Catholic church architecture. This article identifies the architectural holdings of the House Libraries at Stonyhurst and the context of their acquisition for what this metadata can teach us about how the Jesuits ‘learned their architecture’. It analyses the state of the libraries as regards architectural practice, tastes, and fashions, and identifies Jesuit awareness of debates and developments in architecture about questions of style. Study of the English Jesuits’ House Libraries can break new ground in this area. As has been shown in other Jesuit contexts, metadata such as edition and author information, inscriptions, marginalia, notations, subject classification, shelving systems, and the presence of duplicate copies of core texts can shed light on the use of the House Libraries.Footnote 3 When combined with the evidence of the buildings themselves, with surviving plans, drawings, schedules of work and other architectural records, and when considered with the Jesuits’ own writings and correspondence on their building, we are better able to understand the nature and extent of the Jesuits’ engagement with architecture.
Other important primary sources include the British Jesuits’ in-house journal, Letters and Notices (hereafter LLNN), first published in 1863. This contains obituaries for several of the relevant Jesuits, as well as accounts of the design and construction, or of the anniversaries and centenaries, of relevant churches. In addition to the British Jesuit Archives, Archivum Britannicum Societatis Iesu (hereafter ABSI), the Stonyhurst College Archives (hereafter SCA) contains archives and collections of national and international importance in the field of Jesuit studies. The ABSI and SCA retains drawings, plans, financial records, correspondence, and other archival sources for the design and construction of a large number of Jesuit churches. In addition, the SCA also holds the relevant library records and metadata for the English Jesuits’ House Libraries. The archives and libraries of the relevant Catholic dioceses, such as Liverpool, of major architectural collections, such as at the RIBA, the Talbot Library at Liverpool Hope University and of individual churches, also contain important primary sources.
Using this evidence, this article argues that the Jesuits nurtured an architectural culture within their order which was distinctive.Footnote 4 This culture made it possible for them to be active participants in architecture. For example, they studied Applied Mathematics as part of their academic studies and priestly formation. This ‘applied’, or ‘mixed’ mathematics included topics such as mechanics, land measuring, surveying, building and drawing, bookkeeping, coordination of trades, and quantity surveying. Their ancillary studies of history and art equipped them to engage with questions of taste and style. Texts common across Jesuit houses and missions, therefore, often sit alongside volumes relevant at a local level.Footnote 5
Prior to the construction of Farm Street Church and the move of the Jesuit curia to Mayfair, Stonyhurst effectively functioned as the headquarters for the Jesuits in England. Ensconced within its own estate in the Hodder Valley of Lancashire, Stonyhurst was a community ‘set apart’, and it evolved a large degree of self-sufficiency as regards the daily living of its large and diverse community. Stonyhurst served variously as the Jesuits’ principal house, as host to their English novitiate and as their centre for priestly formation.Footnote 6 It was (and remains) the Jesuits’ main English boarding school for lay pupils. It was also at this time the main mission centre for the large rural Catholic community of the surrounding district.
With no easy access to major towns or cities, the Stonyhurst House Libraries were by necessity the central, foundational reference for the Jesuits’ studies, collecting of books, and wider extra-curricular reading. The libraries needed to be responsive to the diverse needs and interests of this large, complex community. The House Libraries needed to function as a resource which could assist the Jesuits in their understanding of building and of architecture: they were constantly building new churches, associated residences and school buildings during this period. Knowledge gained during Jesuit studies and formation, combined with access to the printed word and to illustrations, had sustained Jesuit building activity in missionary territories since their first days, and the nineteenth century English Mission was no exception.Footnote 7 Frederick Turner S.J. (1910–2001) wrote of the House Libraries that they were ‘essentially a scholars’ library … a symbol of scholarship, of advanced study and research.’Footnote 8 For a Catholic priest, especially in a missionary context such as England prior to the Restoration of the Hierarchy in 1850, to build was core to their vocation and apostolic work.Footnote 9
This article takes in developments from the passing of the first Catholic Relief Act of 1791 until the 1850s.Footnote 10 The surviving catalogues relating to the House Libraries at Stoneyhurst are dated from c.1810 and continue into the 1850s, and so broadly correspond. It is important to look back to the c.1810 catalogue and then to later nineteenth-century catalogues because the Jesuits who engaged in church building in the first half of the nineteenth century mostly completed their studies and formation over the full span of this period. Their use of the libraries for their studies and formation dates back further than their actual buildings. The main Jesuit churches which are referred to in this article were either underway or had been completed by the middle of the nineteenth century, so books acquired prior to and during the first half of the century are relevant.
During this period, the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 relieved Catholics of many of the substantial remaining civil and political disabilities imposed by Penal Laws in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, including the few remaining restrictions on Catholic church building.Footnote 11 The 1850 Restoration of the Hierarchy in England and Wales marked another turning point in Catholic culture and community history, one which John Bossy argued marked the end of a particular form of ‘English’ Catholic nonconformity.Footnote 12 The 1850s was also a decade of great change more broadly. The Great Exhibition of 1851 marked a high point in what has come to be understood as ‘mid-Victorian’ art and architecture, and some of the first intimations of the ‘High Victorian’. The death of A. W. N. Pugin (1812–52) brought an end to his very personal contribution to the era. Pugin’s greatest Catholic patron, John Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury (1791–1852), died in the same year.
The English Jesuits’ own historical tradition is largely silent on the architecture of their church building during this period. Notably, the twentieth century Jesuit-historians Bernard Basset S.J. (1909–88) and Francis Edwards S.J. (1922–2006) wrote little on Jesuit architecture, focusing instead on institutional and community history.Footnote 13 Basset famously wrote, mistakenly, that the English Jesuits of the period ‘were not fussy about style’.Footnote 14 In our own time, the most significant scholarly publication on an English Jesuit church of this period was commissioned by an outside donor rather than by the Jesuit Province.Footnote 15
Active Participants in Architectural Developments
To compile an exhaustive list of Jesuits and each of their architectural or building-related works lies outside the scope of this article. So too does an in-depth look at the architectural works associated with any single Jesuit, or the history of any particular Jesuit church, although both are interesting areas for potential future research. However, the deep and varied engagement of the Province, and of some individual Jesuits, with architecture during this period might be elucidated through some key examples. For example, at Stonyhurst no fewer than five Jesuits are referenced in correspondence on the design and architectural style of St Peter’s Church, and archival sources attest to their involvement in measuring, planning, design, and debates over style. Surviving correspondence shows the Jesuits considering the merits of Neoclassical versus Gothic design, forms of vaulting, the internal disposition of architectural elements, even, in a Neoclassical design, the merits of freestanding pillars versus engaged pilasters.Footnote 16 During the design and construction of St Ignatius’s Church in Preston, the architect Joseph John Scoles (1798–1863) corresponded with the Jesuits on the design of the high altar, the sanctuary railing, the lectern, holy water ‘pots’, and much else besides.Footnote 17
Randal Lythgoe S.J. (1796–1873) was a pupil at Stonyhurst (1808–12) and also entered the Jesuits as a novice at Hodder (1812–14). Much of his early education, therefore, drew upon the books in the Jesuits’ libraries during those years. Lythgoe was Provincial of the English Jesuits from 1841 to 1848, and during that time he corresponded on architectural matters with several of the most notable Catholic architectural patrons and taste makers of the period. Correspondents included John Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury on the design of Farm Street Church, and Ambrose Phillipps de Lisle (1809–78) on Pugin’s designs for alterations to the chapel at Grace Dieu.Footnote 18 He also knew and corresponded with the leading Catholic architects of the day, notably A. W. N. Pugin, J. J. Scoles and Joseph Aloysius Hansom (1803–82).Footnote 19
Lythgoe’s correspondence with Shrewsbury concerning the commission for Farm Steet Church is particularly illuminating. Shrewsbury lobbied the Jesuits to award this commission to Pugin, which Lythgoe successfully resisted—a brave position to take with the most influential lay Catholic donor in England at that time. Lythgoe’s familiarity with Pugin, and with his architectural practice, is clear from the correspondence:
Personally, I should not have had an objection but the church had been partly promised to Scoles and then there are many who object to Mr Pugin, that he is expensive and that he will not allow any competition. I know it is more convenient for him to employ one Builder but people generally do not like it.Footnote 20
Stonyhurst was one of the most significant and influential institutions in English Catholic culture at this time. It was an integral part of what Mark Bence-Jones has called the ‘cousinhood’ of the English Catholic gentry and aristocracy—alma mater to many of the leading Catholics of the day, school to many of their children, and destination for those with a vocation to Jesuit priesthood. The Jesuits, as a result, were often part of Catholic circles animated by building and architecture.Footnote 21 The 16th Earl of Shrewsbury was an alumnus of Stonyhurst, as was James Everard, 10th Lord Arundell of Wardour (1785–1834). The Jesuits’ favoured architect in the first half of the century, J. J. Scoles, sent his sons to Stonyhurst, one of whom, Ignatius Scoles (1834–96) himself became an architect and a Jesuit. George J. Wigley (1825–66), an alumnus of Stonyhurst and later a pupil of J. J. Scoles, prepared the first English translation of St Charles Borromeo’s Instructiones Fabricae Ecclesiasticae et Supellectilis Ecclesiasticae (1577).Footnote 22
The education and career of Francis West S.J. (1782–1852) is particularly worth of note. He was a pupil at Stonyhurst (1796–1801) as well as a Gentleman/Lay Philosopher at Stonyhurst (1801–3). The Gentlemen Philosophers were a university substitute senior form – a privileged group of students who followed a course of graduate studies for one or two years following their normal schooling.Footnote 23 They were largely drawn from the British Catholic gentry, with an important admixture of European aristocracy. As a prospectus of 1847 reveals, they had access to the Arundell Library, and the observatory, and were also ‘made acquainted with the History of the Fine Arts and instructed in some of the more ornamental branches of education.’Footnote 24 West joined the Jesuits thereafter. His novitiate was at Stonyhurst (1803–5). Unusually, his Jesuit Philosophate and Theologate, and possibly also his Tertianship, were undertaken at Stonyhurst (1805–11).Footnote 25 The pattern books, builder’s directories, and architectural histories in the Jesuits’ House Libraries were, therefore, his central architectural resource.
Having spent so much of his life at Stonyhurst and in its House Libraries, West had clearly gained a formidable knowledge and aptitude for architecture. As we shall see, the surviving catalogues contain ‘Mathematics’ sections brimming with practical, useful books of applied mathematics, such as texts focused on Mechanics, Land Measuring, Surveying, Building, and Drawing, Bookkeeping, Coordination of Trades, and Quantity Surveying. West designed and built the new seminary building at Stonyhurst in 1828 without the assistance of a lay architect. This building is now Stonyhurst’s preparatory school, St Mary’s Hall. Brother-historian Henry Foley S.J. recorded his ‘considerable architectural taste’ and noted that he ‘planned’ the seminary and ‘laid out its garden.’Footnote 26 The Stonyhurst Magazine recorded that he supervised the building in person, instead of employing a contractor.Footnote 27
Francis West’s education and experience made him a well-qualified choice to be clerk of works during the construction of St Francis Xavier’s Church in Liverpool (1844–8). He was appointed to this role by the Jesuit Provincial, much to the frustration of the lay architect, J. J. Scoles.Footnote 28 West’s hands-on approach, in choosing and ordering materials, and in directly supervising construction, reduced Scoles’s direct authority on the building site. West was involved in all conceivable ways, and a contemporary ‘pen-picture’ survives: ‘He rises up before me as I first saw him, in 1847, trim yet powered by lime dust, and summoned down from the duties of builder to hear the confessions of two priests.’Footnote 29
Finally, Richard Vaughan S.J. (1826-99)’s work is to be noted. Stonyhurst’s ‘New Wing’ of 1855–6 was designed by Vaughan, a Stonyhurst alumnus and priest-architect. Vaughan is reported to have designed this major new building at Stonyhurst without the assistance of a professional architect.Footnote 30 Vaughan also designed the Jesuit Church of the Sacred Heart in Edinburgh (1859–60), apparently without the direct assistance of a lay architect. He was also engaged in a number of other projects for the Jesuits in Britain, including an unexecuted design for the school buildings at St Francis Xavier’s College in Liverpool.
Architecture and Catholic Emancipation
The passing of the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829 removed the prohibition on Catholic churches with ‘steeple or bell’. The use of the word ‘church’ became more prevalent amongst English Catholics, including for places of worship previously described as chapels. After 1829 Catholics were free to make an English church look like an English church and, by and large, they did.Footnote 31 Cardinal Wiseman declared at the opening of Pugin’s St Mary’s Derby (1837–39) that Pugin had achieved ‘the decided transition from chapel to church architecture amongst us’.Footnote 32 The Jesuits moved quickly to exercise their new rights of aesthetic emancipation: the soaring 117ft spire crowning the Jesuit church of St Ignatius in Preston was the first Catholic church spire built following the Catholic Relief Act. Its construction marked an important moment in the history of English Catholic church-building.Footnote 33 By the 1840s new Catholic churches were occasionally the largest and most ambitious buildings for miles around, sometimes surpassing the efforts of the Church of England in terms of size, scale, budget, and imagination. St Walburge’s Church in Preston, designed by J.A. Hansom, was built between 1850 and 1854. Its tower was added in c.1857 and the spire was added to the tower in 1867. The spire rises to 309ft, making it the highest parish church spire of any church in England, exceeded in height only by the cathedral spires of Norwich and Salisbury.
Roman and Jesuit Curial Guidance on Architecture and Church Style
The Catholic Church in England in the nineteenth century was subject to the supervision of Congregation de Propaganda Fide. It was classified by the Church as mission territory and, until 1850, administered by vicars apostolic directly answerable to Rome.Footnote 34 During this period, therefore, Catholic church-building plans—at least in theory—were supposed to be subject to approval by Propaganda Fide. Propaganda Fide issued directives on church planning, arrangement, and ritual, but relatively few directives on ‘style’ or ‘architecture’, per se. Seán O’Reilly has argued that, given the limited directives on these matters, the Catholic Church in the nineteenth century still depended upon, and used as its touchstone, St Charles Borromeo’s Instructiones Fabricae Ecclesiasticae et Supellectilis Ecclesiasticae (1577). He observed that ‘the Roman Catholic tradition in Victorian church arrangements may be interpreted as the formal application of a developed architectural philosophy which refers to Borromeo and to Rome, and which is radically different from Anglo-Catholicism or from that of Pugin.’Footnote 35 O’Reilly argues that the ‘Roman Church possessed one guide of exceptional importance’ when it came to Tridentine church architecture, and that was Borromeo.Footnote 36
The copy of Borromeo’s text contained in the House Libraries at Stonyhurst is a first edition of the first English language translation. The translator was George J. Wigley, a Stonyhurst alumnus, who also gifted the copy to the library. Within the Bay Library it is shelved with ‘Letters Concerning the Council of Trent’ (Undated) as well as Pallavicini’s Concilii Tridentini Historia (P. Joa Bap. Giattino S.J., Ant. 1677, 3 vols). That the House Libraries’ copy of Wigley’s translation was shelved with other primary and secondary texts concerning the Council of Trent, rather than with books of more secular or general architectural interest, is not unexpected. At its heart, Borromeo’s text concerns the canons of the Council, specifically the relationship of Catholic liturgy and ecclesiology to church architecture.Footnote 37 Borromeo’s attempts to translate these principles into concrete liturgical and architectural guidelines were a central point of reference for Catholic priests on this topic up until the Second Vatican Council.
Borromeo assumed that the Catholic priest is intimately involved in the design of his church—exterior architecture, internal elevations and planning, decoration, fixtures and fittings. Wigley’s 1857 introduction is also clear on the centrality of the priest to church architecture in his own time. He noted that Borromeo was the text which enabled and compelled the clergy to ‘give proper instruction to the professional directors of Ecclesiastical buildings, who for questions of arrangement must, in all cases, consult with their employers.’Footnote 38 Seán O’Reilly claims that Wigley’s intention was to provide a platform within the Italianising wing of the Catholic Church for the rejection of Pugin’s particularly personal re-imaging of English Catholicism, dismissing ‘a medieval revival … more Anglican than Roman.’Footnote 39
At the Jesuit-specific level, neither the Jesuit Formula Instituti (1540), nor the Constitutions (1588), nor the Ratio Studiorum (1599, revised 1832) were prescriptive as to a ‘Jesuit style’ in architecture.Footnote 40 In architectural matters there was guidance for church planning and arrangement, but no codification regarding style: each Mission or Province was trusted to build ‘in sympathy with time and place’ and to find ‘the plan best suited to it.’Footnote 41 Concepts such as cultural accommodation and acculturation were particularly well understood by the Jesuits.Footnote 42 English Jesuit churches were, therefore, built in a plurality of styles, for the nineteenth century was an era of plurality of choice. As J. Mordaunt Crook has observed, ‘Architects and clients in our period were faced with a choice—in many cases a multiple choice—between alternative styles and systems of design. Their dilemma was the dilemma of style’.Footnote 43 As a result, the English Jesuits built in Neoclassical, Renaissance, Gothic Revival, Italianate, and composite styles. Interestingly they rarely built in full-blooded Continental, Catholic-Reformation Baroque – long associated in English minds with foreignness, antithetical to national feeling and to the nation state.Footnote 44
How the English Jesuits Learned their Architecture: Jesuit Studies and Formation
How did what the Jesuits refer to as their studies and formation prepare them to be active participants in architecture? What can the study of their libraries teach us? How did they apply architectural knowledge? Fundamental was the education they received, which referenced the framework of the Jesuits’ Ratio Studiorum. Whilst the implementation of the Ratio was inconsistent in England prior to Emancipation, historians agree that it remained at least a guide for the Province. The Ratio, considered to be in its definitive early modern form by 1599, laid out an educational programme that, for its time, was remarkably broad. In its lower department, the studia inferiora, pupils studied a curriculum based on the classical tradition of the Trivium—grammar, logic, and rhetoric—a curriculum rooted in a firm grasp of classical languages. It combined those studies with ‘accessories’, such as history, literature, antiquities, and geography.Footnote 45
In priestly formation, attention was given to philosophy, physics, and mathematics in a programme of study called ‘The Philosophate’. Mathematics as understood in the early modern period included both theoretical and applied mathematics: this is significant, because applied mathematics embraced subjects such as surveying, measuring, mapping, building, and engineering. After the Philosophate, the Jesuits moved onto the years of study called the Theologate, noting, of course, that theology was also pervasive in all that was taught prior to the Theologate years.Footnote 46 Audrey Price has emphasised the connection between Jesuit ‘Mathematics and Mission’ and in particular the study of the practical, applied branches of mathematics.Footnote 47 Price observes that the Jesuits valued mathematics, in part because ‘they could not ignore the necessity of the engineering skills’ within ‘the diverse needs of the Society’s missionary goals.’Footnote 48 Garry Brown has also undertaken in-depth research regarding the Jesuits’ study of what he calls ‘mixed mathematics’, highlighting these studies as both practical and necessary.Footnote 49 Anthony Gerbino’s research on Catholic priest-architects and their use of applied mathematics also makes this clear.Footnote 50
The educational framework of early modern Catholic Reformation religious orders such as the Jesuits, the Barnabites, and the Theatines, gave them a distinctive ability to be active participants in architecture.Footnote 51 Given that their educational frameworks largely endured into the Victorian era, we encounter the phenomenon of an early modern Catholic religious order operating with early modern characteristics into the ‘modern’ age. The increasing separation of architect, surveyor, and builder in secular architecture in the nineteenth century was not the case in the early modern educational framework of the Jesuits.Footnote 52 This adds a further layer of distinctiveness and difference to the standard narrative of transition in architectural taste, and from patronage to professionalism in architecture, which often attends histories of nineteenth-century architecture.Footnote 53
Catholic secular clergy in England also received instruction in Catholic art, antiquities, and architecture during their seminary studies. At the Oscott seminary, A. W. N. Pugin was appointed Professor of Ecclesiastical Antiquities, and he was a frequent presence there from 1837–44. David Frazer Lewis, author of the most recent monograph on Pugin, argues that this gave Pugin ‘both authority and a platform for propagating his ideas.’Footnote 54 According to Rosemary Hill, ‘his intention was to train up a generation of priests to understand the art and liturgy of the English Catholic Church – as he himself understood it.’Footnote 55 Roderick O’Donnell argues that ‘Pugin realised that he had to convert the mission clergy and the students in the seminaries to his views. The wider public he propagandised through his books.’Footnote 56 O’Donnell further notes that the architectural commissions that Pugin received for buildings at all three of England’s secular seminaries (Oscott, Ware, and Ushaw) were also didactic, and ‘of great tactical importance to Pugin since he realised that the training of the parish clergy would be the key to the acceptance of his stylistic and liturgical views.’Footnote 57 Pugin considered himself ‘a builder-up of men’s minds and ideas as well as material edifices.’Footnote 58 Pugin undertook a series of lectures at Oscott from 1838–9, later using them as the basis for a number of articles in the Dublin Review in 1841 and 1842. Afterwards, with further revisions, this material formed the basis of Pugin’s The Present State of Ecclesiastical Architecture in England (1843).Footnote 59 The situation was different at Stonyhurst, as will become clear. What was shared, however, was an understanding of the importance of architecture, of style, and of identity as expressed through architectural style.
The Three House Libraries
The three House Libraries at Stonyhurst are the Square Library, the Arundell Library, and the Bay Library. Together they contain an estimated 40,000 volumes.Footnote 60 There is no published history or overall catalogue of the libraries as a whole, although there are a number of articles which consider a single aspect or theme of the libraries and their story, notably a series of articles in the Stonyhurst Magazine, commencing in 1902.Footnote 61 There is, however, no published research at all on the House Libraries’ architectural holdings.
The Square Library contains the surviving theological collection from the English Jesuits’ time in exile at St Omers, Bruges, and Liège, with at least three hundred texts from the St Omers library. The library includes texts on divinity, the lives of the saints, Church history, particularly Jesuitica and English Catholic history, Jesuit missionary texts and works by theologians such as Aquinas, Augustine and Anselm. There is little of direct relevance to church building in this Library.
The Arundell Library houses the Arundell Bequest, a specifically collected and curated library bequeathed to Stonyhurst by James Everard, 10th Lord Arundell of Wardour upon his death in 1834. The Bequest arrived at Stonyhurst in 1837. It was, in theory, available for use from that time, although it is not certain when the books were placed on open shelving. A prospectus of 1847 tells us that the lay ‘Gentlemen Philosophers’ at the College had access to the Arundell Library and were also ‘made acquainted with the History of the Fine Arts and instructed in some of the more ornamental branches of education.’Footnote 62 It was not until several years later that the New Wing designed by Richard Vaughan S.J. was completed, and a large part of this new building was specifically designed to contain the Arundell Library. The Arundell Bequest was the largest library accession ever settled on Stonyhurst. This fine collection of around 5,000 volumes includes a First Folio of Shakespeare and many rare, early printed and ‘black letter’ books, in addition to numerous seventeenth century Catholic texts.Footnote 63 The room, a long gallery, also houses a considerable number of books in addition to the original bequest. Books belonging to the Arundell Bequest are denoted in ‘The Catalogue of the Arundell Library at Stonyhurst’ with the letter ‘A’.Footnote 64
The Bay Library is a Humanities library, distributed around separate ‘bays’ set aside for the use of individuals for private study. It has always been a working library, with new publications constantly added and interspersed among books dating back to the sixteenth century. There is no surviving catalogue for the Bay Library from the first half of the nineteenth century.Footnote 65 The list of books and associated metadata referred to in this article has, accordingly, been compiled by the author. This library’s architectural holdings are extensive and, as we shall see, the Bay Library contains many of the architectural books acquired by the Jesuits which were not part of the Arundell Bequest.
Surviving Catalogues
Whilst there are three physical libraries, there are four main library catalogues relevant to our period – and they may be grouped in pairs. The first two are from 1810: the ‘Catalogue of the Great Library of Stonyhurst College, by F.C. Brook’Footnote 66 and the ‘Catalogus Ex Libris Coll – Stonyhurst. Anno 1810. Relictis a Revd C. Forrester in cubiculo Capellani de Wardour’.Footnote 67 These catalogues record much of the Jesuits’ library contents as at that date. The second ‘pair’ of catalogues relate to the Arundell Bequest. The earliest of these is ‘Lord Arundell’s Catalogue – Order and Catalogue of the Books in the Library of Lord Arundell, Wardour, as found Feb 18, 1828.’Footnote 68 The second is simply entitled ‘The Catalogue of the Arundell Library at Stonyhurst’ and this catalogue records the final Bequest as received by Stonyhurst.Footnote 69 The Bay Library lacks a catalogue from the first half of the nineteenth century. It is, however, brimming with up-to-date architectural titles.
‘Catalogue of the Great Library of Stonyhurst College, by F.C. Brook’
The earliest of Stonyhurst’s catalogues bears the title of ‘Catalogue of the Great Library of Stonyhurst College, by F.C. Brook.’ A later spine label by a different hand adds a date attribution of ‘c.1810?’Footnote 70 If correctly dated, then this catalogue was produced in the year during which ownership and title of the Stonyhurst Estate was granted to the Jesuits by their greatest English benefactor, Thomas Weld of Lulworth (1750–1810). It is thus likely to be an inventory and a stock take, perhaps the first of its kind since the Jesuits came to England from Liège in 1794. This catalogue is important because it constitutes the main surviving record of the books from which the Jesuits—including figures important to this survey such as Randall Lythgoe S.J. and Francis West S.J.—were able to ‘learn architecture’ prior to 1810.
The catalogue is organised by subject area. The holdings in the ‘Mathematics’ and ‘Arts’ sections demonstrate how practical this early Jesuit library was. The Jesuits owned a remarkable number of illustrated books concerned with, or touching upon, relevant branches of applied mathematics, art, and architecture. At least fifty books fall under this heading. They are mostly instructional, practical books. Of note, the catalogue includes applied mathematics texts such as Langley’s Practical Geometry (London: 1729), Benjamin Talbot’s The New Art of Land Measuring (Wolverhampton: 1779), William Markham’s A General Introduction to Trade and Business: Or, The Young Merchant’s and Tradesman’s Magazine (London: 1739). The Arts section, smaller than the Mathematics section, also contained notably practical books. Claude Perrault’s A Treatise on the 5 Orders of Columns in Architecture (London: 1708) is present in an English edition translated by John James (ca.1673–1746), a well-known London architect himself. Also present is a 1734 London printing of Salmon’s Palladio Londinensis: Or, the London Art of Building, to which is annexed the Builder’s Dictionary, or an Alphabetical Explanation of Terms. There is also a 1738 copy of Palladio’s Architectura (place of printing not recorded). Stonyhurst holds two copies of this, the other being the 1693 edition found in the Bay Library and originally belonging to Nicholas Shireburn.
The 1810 ‘Ex Libris’ Catalogue
The second relevant catalogue is a record of some of the English Jesuits’ books which were not held at Stonyhurst. It is also dated 1810 and has a printed label on its cover of ‘Ex Libris Coll–Stonyhurst. 1810.’ There are only a small number of books relevant to mathematics, for example texts by Aristotle, Euclid, Christopher Clavius S.J., and Athanasius Kircher S.J. There are few books addressing architecture. One isolated, inter-disciplinary exception is L’Art de fortifier, de défendre et d’attaquer les places by priest-mathematician Claude François Milliet Dechales S.J. (1621–78). There is no other metadata pertaining to place of publication or indeed title or author for many of the volumes listed in this brief catalogue.
‘Lord Arundell’s Catalogue – Order and Catalogue of the Books in the Library of Lord Arundell, Wardour, as found Feb 18, 1828’
This is a ‘work-in-progress’ catalogue from 1828 for the library which Lord Arundell was collecting for Stonyhurst. Lord Arundell was educated at Stonyhurst and ‘remained a warm friend ever after.’Footnote 71 This catalogue records the progress of a library specifically collected for the use of the Jesuits and the community at Stonyhurst. Arundell commissioned agents to compile a reference library of great distinction. There are many architectural books listed in Arundell’s 1828 inventory which are not part of the collection at Stonyhurst. There may be several reasons for this. The ‘Arundell Library’ was a work-in-progress at his death in 1834, and it did not complete its journey to Stonyhurst until 1837. Over that period Lord Arundell’s executors were engaged in separating his personal goods—and his library compiled for Stonyhurst—from the books and other assets which belonged to his estate. Lady Arundell was closely involved in this process throughout, as letters testify, fighting to fulfil her husband’s wishes and to ensure the bequest made it to Stonyhurst.Footnote 72 This catalogue, and that of the final bequest, can teach us much about what Lord Arundell expected the Jesuits to require, and what he believed they would, or should, value. The catalogue contains the titles and number of volumes; no author, publication dates, or other data is given. A count of 3,814 books is recorded. The catalogue is mapped to the floorplan of Arundell’s library in situ at New Wardour Castle, with shelving arranged into ‘divisions’. For example, Church Histories, Bibles, National Histories, the Gentleman’s Magazine, Painters, Lives of Artists, Jacobite history, Dalrymple’s Memorials, Peerages, the Gunpowder Plot, and the Popish Plot, in that order, make up what is labelled as the ‘First Division’ of the library.
Relevant volumes (transcribed here with the partial metadata entered in the catalogue) include: ‘Plans and Elevations of Houses’, ‘Soane’s Plans and Elevations’, ‘Adam’s Ruins’, ‘Inigo Jones’ Designs’, ‘Paine’s Architecture’, and ‘Adam’s Architecture’. These volumes do not appear in the final Arundell Bequest. There is a copy of ‘Chambers’ Civil Architecture’, ‘Orders d’Architecture’, ‘The Regular Architect’ and ‘Edificus de Rome’, ‘Lectures on Architecture’, ‘Architecture by Palladio’, ‘Markham on Architecture’, ‘Systems of Architecture’, ‘Architecture Improved’, the Builders Magazine, ‘Gentlemen’s Seats’, ‘Buck’s Antiquities’, ‘Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire’, a five-volume series of the ‘Monasticon Anglicanum’ and Milner’s ‘History of Winchester’.
The collection is far more weighted to the Classical than to the Gothic in 1828—as was the taste of the English in general in the 1820s. The evolution of the bequest is clear when reviewing the final ‘Catalogue of the Arundell Library at Stonyhurst’, for the Gothic Revival features much more prominently in that catalogue. This suggests that Arundell and the Jesuits were early adopters of Gothic, and that their taste developed over the period 1828–34.
The profusion of journals and periodicals in the late-Georgian and Victorian eras was central to the transmission and development of architectural knowledge and taste.Footnote 73 Established and widely read secular cultural journals such as the Gentleman’s Magazine (from 1731) were influential in terms of architectural taste-making. This magazine was of central importance to the development of antiquarianism, architectural taste, and enthusiasm for the Gothic Revival. It is, therefore, significant that the library catalogues at Stonyhurst record the presence, complete with index, of volumes 1–68 of the magazine, spanning 1731–86. It was an essential companion for the isolated Jesuit community at Stonyhurst, a link with the cultural trends of the nation.
‘The Catalogue of the Arundell Library at Stonyhurst’
This undated catalogue has a date attribution of 1850–80.Footnote 74 It is a record of the books actually received in the Arundell Bequest: these are marked ‘A.’ in the catalogue. Several books relevant to architecture were later added by the Jesuits, for example Owen Jones’s The Grammar of Ornament (London: 1856), an addition which supports the archivist’s date range for the catalogue. A new Victorian wing was built in 1855–6 to complete the front quadrangle of the College and to house the bequest; the catalogue may be a record of that first open shelving.
The final bequest indicates that interest in the Gothic Revival had increased markedly between 1828 and Lord Arundell’s death in 1834. This catalogue includes many of the books which contributed to the tastes that formed the Gothic Revival from the 1830s–60s. This was the period of the Jesuits’ greatest building efforts, when they commissioned St Peter’s Church at Stonyhurst, St Francis Xavier’s Church in Liverpool, Farm Steet Church in Mayfair, St Walburge’s Church in Preston and many more besides. Books of Gothic Revival interest outnumber Classical or Italianate volumes by this time. The catalogues and contents of the House Libraries indicate that the Jesuits were not ‘late’ or ‘slow’ to this development, as was claimed later by Bernard Basset S.J., but that they were early-adopters and key taste-makers in this regard.Footnote 75
Charles Eastlake’s (1793–1865) A History of the Gothic Revival, first published in 1872, is regarded as the seminal coterminous work of the early and mid-Victorian Gothic Revival in architecture.Footnote 76 In it, Eastlake recorded his views on those books, tracts, lectures, speeches, and other studies which he judged most influential on the development of the Gothic Revival in English architecture. By cross-referencing Eastlake with the Jesuits’ holdings in the House Libraries at Stonyhurst, we find a correlation and record of the Jesuits’ awareness of, and engagement with, architectural development. First editions of many of the seminal texts of the Gothic Revival occupy the shelves of the House Libraries, and cross reference between the extant catalogues of the House Libraries and the books cited by Charles Eastlake demonstrates the extent of Jesuit engagement with the cultural, artistic, and architectural tastes of the times. Conversely, cross reference to Eastlake identifies areas of Gothic Revival literature and polemic with which the Jesuits seemingly did not engage. Most notable by their absence are the core texts of the Gothic Revival in Anglican church-building, and specifically of the Anglican Ecclesiological movement.Footnote 77
A striking number of the texts identified by Eastlake as seminal to the development of the Gothic Revival taste in England are counted in the Arundell Library, and very often they are first editions. For example, William Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum (first edn 1655, Stonyhurst copy 1673), Antiquities of Warwickshire (Stonyhurst first edn of 1656), History of St Paul’s (Stonyhurst first edn of 1658), Horace Walpole’s Catalogue of Engravers and Catalogue of Painters (first edn 1763, Stonyhurst copy 1765), Francis Grose’s The Antiquities of England and Wales (first edn 1772, Stonyhurst copy date n.a.), and Bishop John Milner’s History of Winchester (first edn 1798, Stonyhurst copy date n.a.). William Dodsworth’s Salisbury Cathedral (Stonyhurst first edn of 1814) is present, as are five volumes of John Britton’s Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain (published from 1804–26, Stonyhurst volumes dated from 1807) and Beauties of Wiltshire (published from 1801–25, Stonyhurst copy dated 1825). John Preston Neale’s Seats of the Nobility and Views of Churches in Great Britain (Stonyhurst first edn of 1818), Edward Blore’s Monumental Remains (Stonyhurst first edn of 1826), and Joseph Nash’s Architecture of the Middle Ages (Stonyhurst first edn of 1838) are also in the Arundell Library, although these were added subsequent to the original bequest.
Several equally important early Gothic Revival tastemakers who are not credited by Eastlake also made it into Arundell’s collection. Notable among them is John Aubrey (1626–97). His Antiquities of Surrey (first published in 1718 and present in a 1719 edition at Stonyhurst), as well as his Collections for Wiltshire and Lives of Eminent Men, are present. Eastlake perhaps did not appreciate the importance of Aubrey; the architectural historian and lexicographer Howard Colvin (1919–2007) argued that credit should go to John Aubrey ‘for being the first to think historically about Medieval English architecture.’Footnote 78 Just as the Jesuits had a 1787 copy of Burke’s On the Sublime and the Beautiful in their 1810 catalogue, so too had Arundell added his own 1810 imprint of same. An 1807 copy of John Carter’s Architecture of England is also present, a book of direct relevance to the career of the Catholic architect J. J. Scoles: we know that John Carter revised Scoles’s detailed drawings during his apprenticeship to Joseph Ireland (1812–19).Footnote 79
Arundell and the Jesuits’ taste for the Gothic is also evidenced in the literature section of the bequest: the library includes Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley Novels (59 volumes), despite Scott’s anti-Catholic – though pro-Emancipation – personal views. The Arundell Library also contains a volume of Tracts by the Society of Antiquarians, published 1787, and thirteen volumes of Quarterly Journal of Science and the Arts spanning the years 1816–22. Magazine subscriptions and first editions on art and architecture are evidence of the Jesuits’ engagement with popular culture. In addition, the catalogue lists a number of the defining ‘canonical’ texts of European architectural history. The Arundell Library includes a 1694 imprint of Carlo Fontana’s Il Tempio Vaticano as well as two eighteenth-century copies of the Jesuit brother Andrea Pozzo’s Perspectiva Pictorum et Architectorum (editions from 1741 and 1784). The duplicates of Pozzo are significant, as they indicate that multiple copies were judged useful. Neither the Fontana or the Pozzo are marked ‘A.’ in the catalogue. This likely signifies that the Jesuits acquired these volumes for themselves, deciding that they would be of use for their reading community.
The Bay Library and the Stonyhurst House Libraries after 1837
The Bay Library picks up where the Arundell Library left off, moving into the 1840s and into the mid-Victorian period with a clear focus on the Gothic Revival. It houses most of the books relevant to building and architecture which were not settled on the Jesuits as part of the Arundell Bequest. A full survey of those architectural books in the Bay Library which were published during or before 1863 has been published in full elsewhere.Footnote 80 The Jesuits’ acquisitions and accessions after 1830 demonstrate a clear stylistic enthusiasm for, and scholarly engagement with, the Gothic Revival. In the Bay Library, with its near comprehensive collection of the set texts of the Gothic Revival, the interest, taste, and fashion of the Jesuits from Emancipation until the end of our period are made clear. Books concerned with the history of, and advancement of, the Gothic Revival outnumber new texts on the Classical Revival, or on the modern Italianate, by a factor of five to one. The extensive collection of major works by both A. C. Pugin (1762–1832) and his son A. W. N. Pugin, mostly first editions, is further evidence of this.Footnote 81 Foundational texts of the Gothic Revival that were missing from the Arundell Bequest, for example Thomas Rickman’s An Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of Architecture in England from the Conquest to the Reformation, have been acquired by the Jesuits and shelved alongside the Pugins. Interestingly, the Bay Library contains an 1835 edition of Rickman rather than the 1817 edition, and this is inscribed as having been given to them in 1836. The backfilling of important texts is conscious and deliberate—many of the volumes cited as seminal texts by Eastlake in 1872 which were not part of the Arundell Bequest are contained in the Bay Library, as indeed is a first edition of Eastlake.Footnote 82
In the absence of a definitive catalogue or other evidence, one plausible interpretation would be that volumes printed into the 1850s were potentially in the House Libraries at that time. Many are first editions and/or were acquired by subscription and several of these editions in the Bay Library were given by, or signed by, the author. With obvious caution and disclaimers (as it cannot be shown), it is plausible to argue that such books are likely to have been acquired in relative proximity to their publication.
A review of the relevant editions in the Bay Library reveals a remarkably ‘English’ architectural library for its time. Quite apart from helpful entries shelved in the sections on History, especially European, British, Irish, and English Local History, there is a dedicated Architecture section. This section is a scholarly bibliography of the early- and mid-Victoria eras. There is a first edition from 1747 of Batty Langley’s Gothic Architecture as well as Bishop Milner’s Essays on Gothic Architecture, a third edition from 1808. There are three copies of Bishop Milner’s A Treatise on the Ecclesiastical Architecture of England, During the Middle Ages, two first editions and one third edition. Duplicates are significant: they indicate that the volumes were expected to enjoy frequent use and competing demand, and most likely that volumes in duplicate would be available for lending and use outside the library itself. There is a copy of Essai sur L’Architecture, Nouvelle Edition (Paris: 1755) by the abbé Marc-Antoine Laugier S.J. (1713–69). John Summerson noted the major influence on John Soane of this French Jesuit priest and architectural theorist, noting that Soane drew heavily on Laugier’s written work in his lectures at the Royal Academy. Summerson called Laugier ‘perhaps the first modern architectural philosopher’.Footnote 83 Frank Jenkins regarded Laugier as Soane’s ‘chief mentor in theoretical matters.’Footnote 84 Most recently, David Watkin positioned Laugier as ‘the principle theoretical influence’ on Soane, and as one of his architectural ‘heroes’.Footnote 85
Soane and others also drew heavily on the work of the Italian Jesuit Br Andrea Pozzo (1642–1709) and on his Perspectiva Pictorum et Architectorum. Pozzo’s Perspectiva was first published in Rome in two volumes (1693 and 1700, respectively). It was recognised immediately as extremely useful to practising artists and architects, and translated from its original Latin into Italian, French, English, Chinese and several other languages; it first appeared in English in 1707. The catalogue of the Royal Academy Library records their copy as acquired in 1802.Footnote 86 In the Bay Library there are two copies of Pozzo’s Perspectiva, both in Latin, printed in 1741 and 1784—the first printed more than sixty years prior to the copy in the library of the Royal Academy. Pozzo was also much used by non-Catholic builders and architects. His work was valued for its practicality and reliability. For example, there is clear evidence that Pozzo and his work was used by architects of Welsh Nonconformist chapels, including the Welsh Nonconformist intellectual and self-taught artist Ellis Owen Ellis (1813–61), who depicted himself in a self-portrait of 1860 holding Pozzo’s Perspectiva.Footnote 87
The Bay Library contains an early copy of J. Storer and H. S. Storer’s An Education of the Principles of English Architecture, Usually Denominated Gothic, published in 1831. There are two copies of what became known as Bowles’s Jesuit Perspective, a text originally written by a French Jesuit, Jean Dubreuil S.J., translated into English by E. Chambers as Practical Perspectives: or, an Easy Method or presenting Natural Objects, According to the Rules of Art. A copy of William Whewell’s Architectural Notes on German Churches with remarks on the Origins of Gothic Architecture (1830) is evidence of the Jesuits’ engagement with Gothic Revival outside of England.Footnote 88
Six of A. C. Pugin’s works are present, including Specimens of Gothic Architecture selected from various Ancient Edifices in England from 1821 and A. C. Pugin and John Le Keux’s Specimens of the Architectural Antiquities of Normandy, a first edition from 1827. At Scoles’ Jesuit Church of St Ignatius in Preston, the west-end door is recessed in a two-centred Tudor arch with inner and outer moulding and a crocketed ogee crest. It is likely that the design draws upon both medieval precedent and also illustrations in architectural publications. James Jago has proposed that the design of the west door at St Ignatius’s Church owes a direct debt to A. C. Pugin, and that Scoles and/or the Jesuits took for its model a doorway from Dean’s Yard at Westminster Abbey which had appeared on Plate 67 of Auguste Pugin’s Specimens of Gothic Architecture.Footnote 89
There are also several works by A. W. N. Pugin in the library. There is a first edition of Contrasts (1836) as well as a first edition of An Apology for A Work Entitled ‘Contrasts’ (1837), and a copy of The Present State of Ecclesiastical Architecture in England, Article the First, From the Dublin Review, no. 20 (1841). There is a first edition of The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841). It is notable that there are four copies of this particular book on the shelves in the Bay Library. Such a number of duplicates is rare in the context of the House Libraries—we may, therefore, posit that this volume was used for teaching and study, for reference, and for taking away. The three additional copies are all editions of 1853. There is a first edition of An Apology for The Revival of Christian Architecture in England (1843) and also of A Treatise on Chancel Screens and Rood Lofts (1851). There are various of Pugin volumes on ironwork, gold and silver, ornament, costume, and timber houses, though when these works were acquired is unclear.
The Jesuits generally tended to avoid engaging Pugin and architects from his circle when commissioning their new churches. Instead, they preferred to engage non-Puginesque figures such as J. J. Scoles and J. A Hansom. Given the Jesuits’ preference for these architects, it is noteworthy that the libraries contained so many works by Pugin, including the book which summarised his Oscott lectures, Present State (1843). The presence of these books indicates the Jesuits’ awareness of Catholic architectural fashion and taste, including where different from the taste expressed in their own commissions. Charles Eastlake was scathing of much of the ‘modern Gothic’ of the Catholic Church, especially post-Pugin. He railed against the ‘demand for cheap and showy buildings’ and ‘tawdry superficial style’.Footnote 90 He may well have considered a number of Jesuit churches in this judgement. However, where he commented on Jesuit churches it was on those of the first half of the century, and they were mostly singled out for praise: for example, he counted St Peter’s Church at Stonyhurst and St Ignatius’s Church at Preston worthy of inclusion in his gazetteer of influential church designs. He also considered Farm Street one of the ‘model works’ of the period, and judged the Church of St Francis Xavier in Liverpool to be ‘a very creditable work for its day’.Footnote 91
As demonstrated above, the collection of architectural texts in the House Libraries is not random—cross reference to Eastlake and to the tracts of the times makes this clear. Whereas the Bay Library is largely silent on the Classical Revival and on the Italianate, it is extensive on the Gothic Revival in architecture: it is, therefore, highly opinionated in what it includes and what it excludes. The exclusions from the collections of the Stonyhurst libraries are worth considering, in particular what might be missing from the Bay Library. There is almost nothing from the Anglican Ecclesiologists or the Tractarians. There are no volumes of the Ecclesiologist journal, for example. There is nothing on Commissioners’ Churches, nothing of note on Anglican churches or their furnishings, or on Nonconformity. There is a notable lack of records in the ABSI of the Jesuits corresponding in letters on Anglican church building. This tends to confirm Roderick O’Donnell’s observation that ‘where Catholic architecture can in some sense be seen as parallel with Anglican, this was almost always the fortuitous result of quite different pressures … Catholic developments responded not to Anglican influences but to Catholic needs and arguments.’Footnote 92 Eastlake observed something similar when he considered that the Catholic Church’s relationship with, identification with, and adoption of the Gothic Revival in church architecture faced influences and obstacles distinct from those experienced in the Church of England.Footnote 93
Concluding Observations
The English Jesuits of the first half of the nineteenth century considered building a practical apostolate which was core to their vocations, and essential to their pastoral mission. The House Libraries at Stonyhurst were their central, foundational scholarly resource, in architecture as in so much else. A study of the House Libraries reveal that the Jesuits were engaged in studying books relevant to building and to architecture at least from their corporate return to England from St Omers in the 1794. The libraries and their holdings evolved over time to reflect their diverse and changing needs and tastes. This article identifies for the first time the evolution within the House Libraries of a Georgian focus on Neoclassical architectural texts and buildings towards a thorough and rigorous Victorian engagement with the core texts of the nineteenth century Gothic Revival in English architecture. By analysing the architectural literature in the Jesuit libraries and the reading and educational history of the boys and men who became Jesuit patrons and priest-architects, this article has highlighted the wide range of sources and styles that made for the evolution of an eclectic and adaptive style, one that responded to and influenced the progress of Catholic church architecture in England.
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