Cambridge Camden Society
The Cambridge Camden Society held tremendous influence in the architectural and ecclesiastical worlds because of the success of this argument: that the corruption and ugliness of the 19th century could be escaped by the earnest attempt to recapture the piety and beauty of the Middle Ages.
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.
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.
"[2] The Ecclesiologists earnestly believed that medieval men were "more spiritually-minded and less worldly-minded"[3] than were those of the modern world and that it was their duty to help return England to its former piety.
The amount of knowledge obtained from travellers' visits to and careful measurements of long-forgotten parish churches was immense and led to the publication of A Few Hints on the Practical Study of Ecclesiological Antiquities.
Thus the Cambridge Camden Society amassed an enormous amount of information about medieval parish churches and came to be seen as an authority on religious architecture.
The motive for these extraordinarily scrutinising investigations was the society's unshakeable belief that man could regain the piety of the Middle Ages by carefully reconstructing them.
The newsletter reviewed over one thousand churches in its twenty-year span and never hesitated to lambast both a building and its architect for anything inconsistent with its view of the "middle pointed" (i.e.
Although A. W. N. Pugin was by any standard a pioneer of the Gothic revival and had aesthetic tastes very close to those of the Cambridge Camden Society, he was unequivocally condemned for his Roman Catholicism.
Although the Cambridge Camden Society claimed to be solely concerned with architecture, its criticism and praise of designers was often based as much on their personal convictions as it was on Gothic correctness.
The Ecclesiologist was also the vehicle by which the Cambridge Camden Society launched its two most important campaigns, the abolition of pews and the reintroduction of chancels to churches.
"[12] At first, the society had a hard time convincing builders to incorporate chancel areas because, since Anglican clergy were no longer separated from the congregation by an altar, there was no real purpose for the expensive addition.
The problem was solved, however, when Walter Hook and John Jebb, clergymen at Leeds and Hereford, respectively, proposed that chancels be used for lay choirs.
Members of the society also published books such as the Hierugia Anglicana, which sought to prove that medieval Catholic ritual had lived on in the Anglican Church past the Reformation and was therefore a proper way to offer worship.
In this book, Neale and Webb sought to prove that absolutely every architectural element of the medieval church building was religiously symbolic and represented Christian piety and thought well above that of the 19th century.
Historian James F. White states that "even buildings built in contemporary styles, with few exceptions, use the liturgical arrangement developed over a century ago by the Cambridge Camden Society.
