Theology and Threshold: The Rood Screen at St Cyprian's, Clarence Gate, London
Channel: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
Date: 2017-04-03

In 1851, A. W. N. Pugin published an influential treatise on rood screens, intending in his irrepressible polemical style to create further Gothic Revival momentum for inserting these iconographically complex and liturgically vital elements into Roman Catholic and Anglican churches throughout Britain and its empire. In the decades that followed, debates regarding ritual, aesthetics, materials, and Eucharistic theology surrounded the design, presence, and indeed absence of these screens. 

This short film explores the screens’ meanings and histories in situ, charts shifts in theology and style as each architect offered innovative views through delicate latticework of stone, paint, and wood towards the Christian sacred epicentre of the Incarnation and the sacrifice of the Eucharist.

Presented by Ayla Lepine