If you spend enough time in (most) Cambridge colleges, you’ll likely be met with stained glass at some point. Whether it be from a chapel, a dining hall, or even a JCR room, the glow of stained glass is a truly omnipresent force within this university. But what is the effect of this force upon us impressionable, zealous students? Do stained glass heraldic badges and founders fill us up with patriotic fervour, leading us to proclaim that we would take up arms for our colleges if a college civil war broke out? Or do they induce disdain within us, provoking muttered remarks about “dead white men” or “William Dowsing [Puritan iconoclast] was right”?
"The vivid glass is simultaneously egalitarian and divisive"
Stained glass lends itself particularly well as a medium for answering these questions, for it is such a versatile and visually arresting art form. Its glow immediately grabs one’s attention when entering a dining hall, particularly during a sunny brunch sesh. It can display figures, coats of arms, and inscriptions like portraiture, sculpture, and woodwork, with the additional benefit of being the part of a room our eyes seek out first: the window. The building is a foreign entity, while the outside world is our natural, original habitat; windows, then, provide confirmation that we are not being kidnapped from that habitat. All the more potent, therefore, are the messages stained glass communicates.
If we are to find any answers, however, we ought to throw some light on the original function(s) of stained glass within medieval England, let alone the University. This was tripartite: to uphold the social hierarchy, to beautify the space, and of course to aid devotion to God and the saints. The glorious medieval stained glass of All Saints’, York, illustrates this triad perfectly. From lauding local noblewomen and their heraldry to highlighting biblical narratives of didactic interest, such as Matthew’s “Great Assize” parable, the vivid glass is simultaneously egalitarian and divisive: local noblemen, like Nicholas Blackburn, are portrayed as superior and more pious, yet the biblical narratives and depictions of saints are accessible to all.
"This uneasy dual aim hints at a broader dilemma in contemporary Cambridge life: can the ‘traditional’ and the ‘modern’ be easily reconciled?"
A similar thematic tension runs through stained glass in collegiate Cambridge, with one crucial difference: to what extent does stained glass appropriately honour our benefactors while continuing to uphold the identity of our colleges in the present day? This uneasy dual aim hints at a broader dilemma in contemporary Cambridge life: can the ‘traditional’ and the ‘modern’ be easily reconciled? For most Cambridge colleges, of course, collegiate identity is deeply embedded in the spirit of its distant benefactors. This spirit, if you’ll pardon the pun, is a literal one: as well as providing a stellar education to its students, these colleges (save Newnham, Medwards, Hughes Hall, and Wolfson) are statutorily obligated to make their college a place of religious instruction. Accordingly, much of these colleges’ stained glass blends the ‘secular’ and the ‘sacred’ together. In so doing, they commemorate one of the original purposes of this university, as well as the people who made that so.
There is no superior example of this blending than the stained glass of King’s College Chapel. When one enters King’s College Chapel, it is almost a foregone conclusion that one will leave with a slightly sore neck. It is impossible, or at least very testing, not to gawk at the mesmerising early sixteenth-century (excluding the West Window, which is Victorian) stained glass scenes, featuring narratives from the Old and New Testaments. If one cranes one’s neck even higher, remaining careful not to get whiplash, one will find a colourful arrangement of badges, crests, initials, and symbols.
From Tudor roses and royal arms of England to “HA” initials, celebrating the marriage of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, this iconography vehemently celebrates the College’s royal origins. But it does so while being dominated, almost upheld, by the religious narratives below it. This duality is, of course, an artificial (and anachronistic) one. King Henry VI, who founded King’s and commissioned the construction of the Chapel, would certainly not have viewed his patronage of it as a secular act. Rather, it was a means whereby Henry could ensure the reduction of the time his soul spent in Purgatory after his death.
If this duality is non-existent in medieval and early modern stained glass, it became more overt during the nineteenth century. Of course, religious identities and heritages continued to be stressed. In fact, much of the stained glass one finds around collegiate Cambridge is Victorian and achieves this. The glass of Emmanuel College Chapel, installed in 1884, rehearses a remarkably unsectarian history of the Church of England, while nonetheless commemorating its former Puritan students: such figures as the Catholic martyr Saint John Fisher appear in close proximity to such Puritan figures as John Harvard and Richard Whichcote. While an impassioned Camfessor dismissed them as “boring stained glass windows of Protestant men” (arguably not an entirely accurate assessment), the glass provides an intriguing insight into late Victorian ecclesiastical – and collegiate – commemoration. And due to its location, it does not feel overly antiquated – for now, at least.
"It boasts its legacy, immortalising the College’s history of academic excellence for posterity"
But it is in such secular spaces as dining halls that Victorian stained glass mediates collegiate identity in a slightly different way. Let us take the glass of the Hall of Christ’s College as an example. Unlike other dining halls (save maybe Peterhouse), Christ’s Hall possesses a vast array of figures, rather than just puny coats of arms. Implemented in the large bay window between 1882 and 1899, it displays a vast array of individuals associated with the College over the centuries. From John Milton and Charles Darwin to Lady Margaret Beaufort and Saint John Fisher, the window is a fully-fledged shrine to the pre-1900 history of Christ’s. It boasts its legacy, immortalising the College’s history of academic excellence for posterity.
Stained glass’ newfound ability to immortalise, however, has not proven to be particularly immortal. Amidst the Black Lives Matter-induced iconoclasm of Summer 2020, Gonville and Caius College understandably decided to remove a stained glass panel from its Hall. By way of a 7×7 Latin square and inscription, it commemorated R.A. Fisher (1890–1962), an accomplished statistician. But he was also Founder of the University of Cambridge Eugenics Society, of which King’s alum John Maynard Keynes was also a member.
Whatever your opinion on this, it is clear that, like portraiture, stained glass is becoming an increasingly contested site of collegiate identity. This is a fascinating historical development; it speaks to our growing interest in how art does or does not represent who we are, or who we want to be. That stained glass has proven to be a site upon which this interest grows is a testament to its importance and potency as an art form – within and without the University. However it fares in collegiate settings in years to come, its outward glimmer will always force us to look within and, crucially, back.
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