A. W. Pugin – a Different View

Augustus Welby Pugin
Designer of the British Houses of Parliament
The Victorian Quest for a Liturgical Architecture
by Christabel Powell
(The Edwin Mellon Press, Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter 2006)

Rosemary Hill’s elegantly produced and written 2007 biography God’s Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain successfully made the case for Pugin as architect, artist and designer. (See my review on this website, link) Yet, her presentation of Pugin left a feeling of incompleteness. She portrays Pugin as eccentric, irrational and belligerent, his work unmotivated. Pugin’s personality, as depicted by Hill, captures our attention – but, like one of the more extreme characters in Dickens’ novels, he and his ideas, although entertaining, seem hardly relevant for any purpose today.

Christabel Powell remedies that deficiency in Augustus Welby Pugin …The Victorian Quest for a Liturgical Architecture. The format of this book is far less polished than that of Hill’s biography – more like that of a private printing. The price demanded is formidable: $129.95. The author’s style tends to the academic. Yet, Powell succeeds in creating a far more credible portrait of Pugin the thinker. She concentrates not so much on the art of Pugin but on his intellectual development as evidenced in his written works and correspondence.

Pugin’s art rested on impressive intellectual foundations – especially on his continued study on the relation among architecture, symbolism and liturgy. His reading was prodigious – almost unimaginable in this age of superficiality: historians of medieval and reformation times, works on architecture from all ages, church fathers and original manuscripts. Indeed, given Pugin’s intense study of original sources, Powell thinks that he can be considered a pioneer of the historical-critical method in England!

Pugin made his views on art, religion and economics known in a series of plainspoken treatises –sometimes combined with very effective illustrations. English Catholics were a small minority in an often extremely hostile environment, yet Pugin did not engage in noncommittal “dialogue” but confronted issues head on. That did not endear him to Protestants or his more timid fellow Catholics. Pugin, however, never aimed to win a popularity contest in the eyes of public opinion.

Pugin came to the understanding that ecclesiastical architecture must reflect the liturgy. He declared contemporary neoclassical architecture to be unsuitable for the Christian religion because the temples it copied had had another cultic purpose, their decoration comprised of symbols vested with non-Christian meanings. The Christian architecture of the Middle ages was similar everywhere because it reflected the same cult. Indeed, Pugin’s ideas ranged beyond his beloved Gothic – he was by no means purely a Gothic revivalist. For Pugin, the true liturgy had brought forth a true architecture in earlier ages as well – and an architecture inspired by the Faith could even make use of modern industrial technology.

This liturgical focus of Pugin is most evident in the famous dispute over rood screens. Pugin’s championing of the screen was neither mere antiquarianism nor eccentricity but the product of deep reflection on the nature of liturgy backed by extensive historical research. As in her treatment of Pugin’s other writings, one of the author’s main achievements is a summary of the sources Pugin drew upon for his magnum opus on this topic. Starting with the Early Christian and Byzantine eras, Pugin argued for the existence from earliest times of a barrier between the “sanctuary” and the rest of the church. He specifically clashed with the “Oratorian” arrangement of a simplified sanctuary designed to make the entire liturgy visible to the faithful.

This, of course, stirred lively controversy at the time. Powell makes the case for Pugin as a “liberal ultramontane” as opposed to the strict Ultramontanes who favored more Italianate architectural approaches. The “Ultramontane” rigorists fought fiercely for a church architecture that was simple, direct and open to the gaze of the faithful. Contrary to claims that the 19th century romantics or liberal Catholics were the forerunners of 20th century Catholic progressivism, it was in fact the Ultramontane wing of the church that started developing ideas leading to the “liturgical movement “ in art and liturgy and, ultimately, to Vatican II.

Newman, of course, was an Oratorian and ended up a definite adversary of Pugin on the issue of “skreens” (as he called them). Moreover, Newman had a distinct liking for the Italianate architecture that Pugin despised. Powell’s book has the merit of analyzing in detail Pugin’s correspondence with Newman and showing how their originally cordial relations deteriorated. The failure of the Tractarian movement’s initial promise of a general return of the Church of England to Catholicism was a great tragedy for Pugin.
Powell’s study clears up other issues and controversies regarding Pugin, his ideas and art – almost all of which had been resolved to Pugin’s detriment in other works.

There are some aspects of this book, however, that would have benefited from further clarification. The title raises expectations of a renewed discussion of Pugin’s role in building the Houses of Parliament that fails to materialize. I would have appreciated more direct illustrations of the influence of Pugin’s ideas on his existing architecture. The author at certain points weaves in and out of the views of Pugin, his sources, subsequent authorities and the modern scholarly consensus in a way I found difficult to follow.

These are, however, quibbles in view of the author’s overall achievement. This work is a major step forward in understanding the objective intellectual and spiritual basis of Pugin’s art. I would commend it to any student of Pugin, liturgical architecture or 19th century English Catholicism.