First, some terminology.
The actual altar is the base. Its
top, or table, is called the mensa. The shelves at the back which look like steps
are called the retable. The wooden screen behind the altar, some much
more elaborate than others, some lacking one completely, is a reredos.
This last is sometimes confused with a rood screen, which is a wooden
panel screening off the nave from the chancel, but with ample opening for the
congregation to see what is going on.
These get their name from the cross, or rood, at the center top.
High altar of Christ Church
The Daughters of the King donated Christ Church’s first high
altar, the one it used in the chapel in the Lewis Shepherd house and later
after the new building opened 12 April 1908.
In 1913, St. John the Evangelist in Toledo, Ohio, gifted
Christ Church with what was for us a new high altar, and the Guild installed it
at no cost to the parish in time for Easter that year, as reported by the
wardens that Easter Monday.
(High altar, Christ Church, Weeks after Epiphany, 2015)
Around the same time that Fr. Robertson was communicating
with Ralph Adams Cram in the 1920’s about plans for the renovation of the
interior, parishioners started a fund for an even bigger altar than that
received from St. John’s. In the end,
however, widening of that altar was incorporated into the plans drafted by Cram
(and modified by local contractor Louis Bull) instead. Careful examination will render obvious which
part of the altar is original.
In addition to the widening, the first reredos donated to
the original building by Mrs. Mary Walker and Mrs. E. C. Johnson fell victim to
the renovation, along with the original retable.
The altar stone in its mensa was gifted to the parish in
late 1944 or later.
Lady Chapel altar
(Lady Chapel altar, Christ Church, Weeks after Epiphany, 2015)
In the photographs from the Nativity Pageant of 1952 hanging
on the wall of the working sacristy, the altar appears to be an entirely
different model, but it is indeed the same.
Originally, the altar in the Lady Chapel had a retable (the shelves on
back that look like steps) like the high altar.
(Lady Chapel, Christ Church, Altar of Repose, 1942)
The retable was removed at the behest of the then current rector in 1989.
Side altars
In the original Christ Church nave opened on 12 April 1908,
there were no side chapels off the chancel.
Creating them was part of Cram’s suggested renovations, of which the
altars and their tabernacles were part.
According to archive records, the altar on the Epistle side is
officially the Altar of St. Joseph and the altar on the Gospel side is the
Altar of St. Mary the Virgin.
(St. Joseph altar, Christ Church, Weeks after Epiphany, 2015)
(St. Mary's altar, Christ Church, Weeks after Epiphany, 2015)
St. John the Evangelist, Toledo, Ohio
Founded in 1863 as a mission of Trinity Church in Toledo,
with Fr. Nathaniel R. High as its first rector.
Upon his death in 1884, the parish called Fr. Charles DeGarmo of the
Diocese of Pennsylvania. The liturgical
and physical make-up of St. John’s almost immediately took a turn toward the
Anglo-Catholic. Fr. Degarmo instituted
sung Mass, had a rood screen put in between the chancel and the sanctuary, hung
a rather large and graphic crucifix above the high altar, used six candles
rather than the simple two, and, horror of horrors, placed a side altar on one
side of the chancel dedicated to the Virgin Mary.
These High Church (Anglo-Catholic) practices brought Fr.
DeGarmo and St. John the Evangelist into direct conflict with the rest of the
diocese, which was intensely Low Church (Evangelical, or Calvinistic), along
with its very Calvinist-oriented Ordinary, Bishop George Bedell. In 1887, Bishop Bedell and his council sent
the parish a letter admonishing Fr. DeGarmo for the changes at the parish since
his arrival and calling on him to recant.
(St. John the Evangelist, Toledo, Ohio)
One can only imagine the heads of that bishop and of those council
members exploding upon walking into Christ Church.
The vestry of St. John’s responded with a letter condemning
Bishop Bedell’s actions and having a copy published in the city’s main
newspaper, which proves the direction taken was not just the will of the rector
alonge. The conflict ended only when Fr.
DeGarmo accepted the call to a parish in the Diocese of Pennsylvania in 1888,
after which the parish found itself saddled with a more compliant priest.
In 1912, the parish’s attendance and membership had dwindled
to the point where it could barely keep its doors open. Its vestry voted to merge with another
struggling parish in Toledo, Calvary Episcopal, upon which the twain became St.
Alban’s Episcopal Church. Since the new
parish occupied the facilities of the former Calvary Episcopal, the vestments,
furnishings, font, candlesticks, and other accoutrements were sold off or
donated. With Christ Church in
Chattanooga having a reputation as the first Anglo-Catholic parish in the
South, it probably seemed natural to gift it with St. John’s high altar.
(Calvary/St. Alban's, Toledo, Ohio)
Information on St. John’s from Fr. Brian Wilbert, archivist
of the Diocese of Ohio and rector of Christ Church, Oberlin, Ohio.
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