The Octagon
Forthview
Shipmate
A few months ago I heard a priest talk about the octagon or eight sided shape in Christian iconography. The day after the seventh day (Sabbath) is the commemoration of the Resurrection of Christ and the first day of the new covenant. Baptism is the first sacrament of the New Covenant and baptismal fonts in churches recall this in having either eight sides or being built upon eight columns. Over the last few weeks I have looked at baptismal fonts in six RC churches in my locality and found this to be the case. It is something which I have never thought about before.
What is the baptismal font in your church like ?
What is the baptismal font in your church like ?
Comments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Augustine's_Church,_Brookland
There’s a real Romney Marsh?? 😮
There certainly is. It even has its own breed of sheep - the lush pastures made good grazing and the salt blowing off the sea helps prevent the bacterial infections that cause foot rot on wet pastures, so prime sheep country.
It's a splendidly weird place, bookmarked at one end by a vast expanse of shingle peppered with wartime relics, a narrow-gauge railway, a lighthouse, and nuclear power stations.
It also has the isolated Fairfield church, though I can't see a pic of its font anywhere.
St Bats in the Belfry has a stone late Saxon/early Norman font shaped very mich like a flowerpot - round with tapering sides. It's in the tower, right between the ropes for bells 2 & 3, but presumably was once against a wall as one of the carved sets of decoration only goes two thirds of the way round, and gets simpler towards the end as if the mason was struggling to reach.
I wonder if the octagon was adopted later, maybe for example because it was a handy shape for showing the seven sacraments? Or just a theory to try to explain a preponderance of 8-sided fonts?
https://artandchristianity.org/ecclesiart-listings/velarde-tyson-smith-english-martyrs
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-the-interior-of-st-thomas-a-becket-church-on-romney-marsh-at-fairfield-112635430.html
The present Chapel was built in 1817 but I'm not sure how old the font is, it could be older.
(I feel similarly about the water added to wine for the Eucharist. The standard custom of mixing wine with water in the ancient Mediterranean world then had a devotional gloss put on it - either read as symbolising uniting humanity and divinity or reflecting the water and blood flowing from Jesus’ side at the crucifixion.)
Romney Marsh? Have you read Russell Thorndike's Dr Syn books? If not, there's a pleasure in store for you.
I’ve not read the books, but I have seen some of the TV series, The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. I did not know it was a real place.
There is also a major road junction in Budapest with the name (slightly different spelling): https://pestbuda.hu/gallery/2020 marc/oktogon.jpg
A circular font would be even easier to make (and you could equally attach some kind of devotional theology to it) and is easier to move into place.
Octagonal fonts start to appear sometime in the middle ages afaicr.
A neighbouring church has a circular wooden font. It was gifted to the church in 1930 in memory of their mother by the twelve of her children who survived to adulthood. A particularly apposite gift!
(Both Presbyterian churches.)
Wesley apparently thought it was the ideal shape.
I don't know whether I'm imagining this but I've heard there are octagonal church buildings in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The building is rectangular. The lantern in the roof is octagonal. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley's_New_Room#/media/File:New_Room.jpg
(Octagonal, with an entrance porch added on one of the eight sides.)
I was thinking of this one.
https://heptonstall.org/heptonstall-methodist-chapel/
I've been in both.
As far as I am aware the Heptonstall chapel was the first to be built with Methodist worship in mind. I might be wrong but I think the New Room had a previous life.
We went there for their Christmas Eve service this past December. Nice building, good priest. My husband had met him during his organ researches.
The CofS in Kelso is also octagonal, and larger than St. Margaret’s.
St Margaret's in Huntly is built in a somewhat Spanish style as it was donated by the family of Gordon's gin. Again I have never looked or thought about this before but I imagine that there are quite a few octagonal churches in Spain.
New Room originally built by John Wesley in 1739 and rebuilt to be twice the size in 1748. It had a later (rather than previous) life as a Welsh Calvinist Methodist Chapel (1808 - 1929).
I do not know what shape the original 1739 building had.