Treasures of All Saints: All Saints' Episcopal Church

This material is written in thanksgiving for over seventeen years of ministry at All Saints' and in loving memory of all those who have over the years given of their time, talent and treasure to continue the heritage of our particular beauty of worship.

This guide is not intended to be an exhaustive catalogue of the art in All Saints' Church, but a tour guide to direct your footsteps and help you understand the significance of what you are seeing.

The first part of this material is a walking tour around the entire perimeter of the church of all the stained glass. The tour begins at the north west corner of the nave, as marked on the diagram, with the Moses window and ends at the rose window, dedicated to St. Paul, in the west wall of the church. While the best view of this window is from the floor of the nave, please feel free to go up into the balcony to see the details.

The second part is a tour of the chancel tiles and altar rail medallions. The tour of the tiles begins at the top of the chancel steps, left hand side, and continues in a serpentine fashion (as shown in the other diagram on the other side of this page) to the foot of the left end of the altar rail, where the tour of the medallions begins.

The third part is an explanation of the reredos, which is the carved wooden screen behind the holy table. Please read the guide carefully, since, unlike the other parts, the order is determined by the chronological sequence of the Church Fathers rather than by the contiguous order of their depictions.

The fourth part contains a description of the organ, a list of memorials and the bibliography.

All of the nave windows are designed and made by Charles J. Connick Associates of Boston in a manner that is traditionally medieval. They hark back to the thirteenth century, a period in which most people could not read and had to rely on pictures to learn Bible stories. Churches abounded in stained glass and sculpture which told the story of redemption, and even the walls were painted with such scenes. In the stylized and vital art of the Middle Ages people learned of the towering figures of the Old and New Testaments.

The tradition of placing the patriarchs and prophets who prepared the way for Christ on the north side of a church and the Apostles who witnessed to him on the south side is observed in the arrangement of the windows at All Saints'. The four Evangelists are honored on the south (parking lot) side and the prophets on the north (Pike St.) side of the nave. The tour begins, as indicated, at the north west corner of the nave with the Moses window. As you proceed east toward the chancel, there are windows for Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Isaiah, three of the four Major Prophets.

The figures and medallions in these north aisle lancet (a long, narrow opening ending in a pointed arch) windows are designed in silvery fields of foliated grisaille, a type of enrichment that was developed and made famous by the stained glass masters of the thirteenth century. Large areas of clear panes are painted with an unobtrusive pattern of foliage in black or brown enamel. It admits more light, and it lends an airy kind of beauty to the windows in which it is employed. Enriching the borders of each of the three lancets of which each of the aisle windows are composed is a grapevine motif - the glassman's way of relating the theme of John 15 of the vine and the branches:

I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.

The center lancet of his window portrays him as the law-giver and shows him bearing the most familiar of all of his traditional symbols, the tablets of the Ten Commandments. The rays of light which stream up on either side of his serrated nimbus are suggestive of the horns with which early painters and sculptors commonly represented him, acting on a mistranslation of St. Jerome. The rays refer to the brightness of his face after he had seen God face to face on Mount Sinai (Exodus 34:29). The symbol at the bottom of the center lancet refers to an episode in Numbers 21:4-9 in which the Israelites were punished for their faithlessness by snakes which bit and killed many of the people. When the Israelites repented and sought Moses' help, God told him to make a serpent of brass and fasten it upon a pole so that everyone who looked on it might live. Jesus referred to this story in John 3:14-15.

The medallion in the left lancet depicts, as do all the left medallions in these north windows, the call of the person honored in the window. God appeared to Moses in a bush which was burning with fire and yet was not consumed while he was tending his father-in-law's sheep (Exodus 3:lff). Following the eastern custom of removing one's shoes in the presence of God, Moses is barefoot. God was calling him to lead his chosen people out of bondage from Egypt. The medallion on the right portrays the actual moment when Moses received the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai.

Ezekiel was a priest deported to Babylon with the rest of the Jewish leaders in 598 BC. Before 586 he preached a message of judgment and doom. After 586 he focused on hope and salvation. The source of his hope is not in any of the political powers of his day, but in God's own nature and purpose. The temple is destroyed, but God is not bound by a temple and has moved into exile with his people. The sins of the past will not keep the present generation from choosing life and salvation.

His figure dominates the central lancet where he holds a torch, the symbol of religious zeal and enlightenment. No emblem could be more fitting for him because, during the hopelessly dark period of the Babylonian Captivity, it was he who emphasized the importance of keeping the Law as being the essential identity of Israel rather than temple worship and being a territorial nation. By stressing the law and the personal responsibility of each individual (Chapter 18), he was able to establish, within an alien empire, a congregation bound to the idea of its survival as a spiritual community regardless of what its political fate might be. At the bottom of this center lancet is his traditional symbol of the Gateway, recalling that in his writings he often speaks of the "gate" in connection with the City of God.

The medallion in the left lancet depicts his vision of the winged creatures (the same ones in Revelation and used as the symbols of the four Evangelists) when God called him to be a prophet (Chapters 1-3). In the medallion at the right he is shown receiving the scroll with words of "lamentation and mourning and woe,� which he ate and which tasted to him "as sweet as honey" (2:8-3:3).

Jeremiah preached from 627-586 BC, the longest career of any of the prophets. Over so long a time, his message changed as world events changed and called forth new understandings of the work of God. It was a time of trouble for Judah and Jerusalem, ending with the destruction of the city and the temple. Jeremiah continued the great themes of the earlier prophets, calling for true piety, social justice, and loyalty to God rather than trust in military alliances. His teaching deepened the idea of repentance, and he introduced the vision of a new covenant written on the heart. After 598, he began to preach of hope and new beginnings following a time of punishment.

The broken chain which he holds in his right hand is symbolic of the ancestral thought which he was forced to shatter before he could bring in that new consciousness of God which is uniquely his:

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt .... I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people (31:31-33).

A man of profound intelligence and world-wide vision, Jeremiah saw clearly that the inevitable doom which awaited his people was the result of their own blindness in seeking safety, not in righteousness, but in foreign alliances, the worship of idols, and lip-service worship of God. He saw that nothing short of a radical spiritual cleansing could bring real safety to his people. This was the unpatriotic "word of God" to which the scroll in his left hand refers, and which caused him to become a "man of strife and contention" (15:10). At the bottom of this center lancet is his traditional symbol, the starry scepter, perhaps because of his teaching of the possibility of a direct knowledge of God:

When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord (29:13-14).

Jeremiah's direct personal call is depicted in the medallion in the left lancet by the Lord touching his mouth. (1:9) The medallion in the right lancet deals with his vision of the almond tree (1:11,12):

The word of the Lord came to me, saying, "Jeremiah, what do you see?" And I said, "I see a branch of an almond tree." Then the Lord said to me, "You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it."

The words for "almond" and watching" in Hebrew sound alike: a typical prophetic pun meaning that God is aware of His people's actions and will judge them.

Isaiah of Jerusalem was a counselor of kings from 740-701 BC. During this time, there were two major crises - the war with Syria in 734 and the Assyrian threats from 734-701. Isaiah saw those events as expressions of God's rule over the nations. The cause of the wars, he said, is social injustice. God is working out punishment for his people in the international arena. Some of the best known passages in this book are those dealing with the longing for a Messiah and Isaiah's description of his own call. The latter part of the book is a collection of great hymns and poems about the hope of restoration at the end of the Exile. Included in the hymns are four about the Servant of God, who suffers for the sake of Israel, and upon whom Jesus modeled his ministry. In the central lancet he holds a scroll with the words, The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose" (35:1), expressing his confidence in the ultimate fulfillment of God's purposes.

At the bottom of the central lancet is his traditional symbol, the saw. It refers to the legend that he met his death by being sawn in two and also to his rhetorical question in 10:15, "Shall the axe vaunt itself over the one who wields it, or the saw magnify itself against the one who handles it?" The "saw" refers to Assyria, who felt that because of its military might, it was omnipotent. But to Isaiah, Assyria was merely an instrument in the hand of God which He was using to accomplish His divine purpose in punishing Israel. He says this of Cyrus, the Assyrian king in 45:4-6:

For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name; I surname you, though you do not know me. I am the Lord, and there is no other; besides me there is no god. I arm you, though you do not know me, so that they may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is no one besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other.

This is the high point of Hebrew monotheism in seeing the God of Israel as the God of the entire universe, rather than merely as a tribal god.

The medallion in the right lancet symbolizes Isaiah's prophecy of the coming of the Christ Child (11:1-2) and the medallion in the left refers to Isaiah's call in Chapter 6:

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on the throne...Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings.. And I said, "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips"...Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: "Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed"...Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I; send me!"

Just to the right of the Isaiah window is the Baptistery. The upper left hand panel shows the symbol of our Lord's baptism, the escallop shell with water descending from it. The dove, which is shown above, is the symbol of the Holy Spirit which descended on Jesus, empowering him for the ministry ahead of Him. The anchor cross, in the lower part of the panel, refers to the absolute surety of salvation we have through our appropriation of Jesus' resurrection in Baptism: "We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul" ( Hebrews 6:19).

A baptismal font filled with water is shown in the upper right hand panel. Above the font the dove of the Holy Spirit is portrayed. The monogram of the first two Greek letters of "Christ," chi (X) and rho (P), are shown in the lower part of the panel.

Two types of Christian service are represented in this upper window at the north (Pike St.) side of the sanctuary by Martha and Mary, the sisters of Bethany. Martha, on the right lancet, symbolizes active work and Mary, on the left lancet, contemplative prayer and meditation:

Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her." (Luke 10:38-40)

The figures of our Lord on the cross flanked by John and his mother were traditionally placed on a beam which spanned the archway between the nave and chancel. This "rood" beam was a depiction of the Word from the cross: "Mother, behold your son; son, behold your mother." This scene is portrayed in the window in the east wall above the holy table. Our Lord is shown in his resurrection life, right hand lifted in blessing. From his three-rayed nimbus, which signifies divinity and is used only with a Person of the Trinity, emanate rays of light.

St. Mary faces our Lord on the left. Enriching the nimbus about her head are five Epiphany, or five-pointed, stars of Jacob. The prophecy of Numbers 24:17, "A star shall come out of Jacob," was fulfilled by the star which directed the Magi to the infant Jesus. Directly above Mary's head is her symbol, the vase of pure white lilies. Scattered in the blue field about her is her monogram, A on M (Ave Maria), literally "Hail Mary."

St. John faces our Lord on the right. He holds the usual pen and book which symbolize the Evangelists. Directly above his head is his unique symbol, the eagle, and the field about him is enriched with his initial, J.

All three figures are portrayed in richly ornamented canopies, the glassman's way of suggesting a carved niche. The outer borders of the canopies are designated in the same grapevine motif as in the prophets' windows. In the predella below our Lord, the angel at the empty tomb is represented. Facing him from the predella beneath Mary are the three women who had "brought spices, so that they might go and anoint him." (Mark 16:1) In the predella below John are John and Peter who, when they heard from Mary Magdalene that the tomb was empty, ran together to the sepulcher (John 20:1-10).

All of the tracery members which form the upper part of the window are enriched with the roses of divine love. Above St. Mary is the Tower of David, reminiscent of the Annunciation when Gabriel told Mary that God would give her son "the throne of his ancestor David" (Luke 1:32). The IHC and XPC monograms above our Lord refer to the first three Greek letters (iota, eta, sigma) of Jesus and the first three Greek letters (chi, rho, sigma) of Christ, respectively. Above St. John are the chalice and serpent, recalling his miraculous deliverance from the poisoned draught.

This window, located by the Burt entrance, and reached by going through the hallway door by the pulpit, is an adaptation of the well known painting by George Frederick Watts which, in turn, had as its inspiration the equally well known poem of "Sir Galahad" by Alfred Tennyson. It was installed to honor the Sir Galahad youth movement at All Saints'. Sir Galahad is shown clad in armor and the flowing robe which medieval knights wore. He stands in contemplation with his sword at rest while his charger waits nearby.

Below him is the symbol of the Holy Grail veiled in white samite, a heavy silk material interwoven with gold. The Grail emits rays of light, symbolic of truth, surrounded by flames of divine zeal. The third and fourth lines of Tennyson's poem have been used for the inscription:

The tour continues with the Matthew window at the south east corner of the nave. As you proceed west toward the Narthex, there are windows for Mark, Luke and John, the other of the four Evangelists. In the central lancet of this window, Matthew is represented holding a book and pen, marking him as one of the four Evangelists. Inscribed on the cover is his traditional symbol, the winged man. A money bag is shown at the bottom of the central lancet, referring to his prior calling as a tax collector. Despised because of his collaboration with the Romans, he was a most unlikely candidate for discipleship, as were all the Apostles:

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are (1 Cor. 1:27-29).

The medallion in the right lancet shows his call by Jesus while working at the tax office and his immediate and unconditional response to this unexpected and inexplicable summons (Matthew 9:9). The medallion in the left lancet portrays him translating his Gospel into the languages of the countries he visited.

We thank you, heavenly Father, for the witness of your apostle and evangelist Matthew to the Gospel of your Son our Savior; and we pray that, after his example, we may with ready wills and hearts obey the calling of our Lord to follow him; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

St. Mark is depicted in the central lancet holding the book and pen of an Evangelist. Below him at the bottom of the lancet is his traditional symbol.

The medallion in the right lancet relates the story of his missionary journey with Barnabas following Barnabas' estrangement from Paul (Acts 15:39). Jerusalem is symbolized at the top of the medallion as the seat of authority for bonafide missionaries, and to which they returned to report.

The medallion in the left lancet deals with a previous visit to Cyprus, St. Barnabas' home country. On that occasion Paul and Barnabas had taken Mark along to assist them, and Mark is shown preaching the good news in the synagogue at Salamis (Acts 13:5).

Almighty God, by the hand of Mark the evangelist you have given to your Church the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God: We thank you for this witness, and pray that we may be firmly grounded in its truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

St. Luke is portrayed in the central lancet with a caduceus, the symbol of medicine, referring to the tradition that he was a physician. The winged ox, his usual symbol, is at the bottom of the central lancet. He is shown as a painter in the medallion in the right lancet. According to legend, he painted portraits of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, which converted many people. Luke is also the supreme artist with words, since his Gospel alone contains the traditional and beloved nativity narrative and many of the best known parables, including the Parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. In the medallion in the left lancet he is shown visiting Paul, his companion of many missionary journeys, while Paul was imprisoned.

Almighty God, who inspired your servant Luke the physician to set forth in the Gospel the love and healing power of your Son: Graciously continue in your Church this love and power to heal, to the praise and glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

John is shown in the central lancet bearing his sign, the chalice and serpent. According to tradition, he was condemned to death by the Emperor Domitian by being ordered to drink a cup of poison. However, when John took the cup the poison departed from it in the form of a serpent which fell dead at his feet. Below him at the bottom of the central lancet is his traditional symbol, the eagle.

The medallion in the left lancet shows him as a young man writing his Gospel with its sublime language and imagery. The medallion in the right lancet shows him as an old man on the Isle of Patmos writing down his visions in Revelation.

Shed upon your Church, O Lord, the brightness of your light, that we, being illumined by the teaching of your apostle and evangelist John, may so walk in the light of your truth, that at length we may attain to the fullness of eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

This window, found in the Narthex at the west wall of the church, depicts five Christian virtues. In the center are Love, flanked by Faith and Hope, the classic three "theological" virtues as found in 1 Corinthians 13.

The messenger of Truth holds an open book upon which is inscribed Jesus' words in John 8:32, 'The truth shall make you free." Truth's symbol, rays of light descending from the clouds, appears in the lower left hand side of this panel.

The Cross, symbol of faith, appears in the upper right hand corner of the second panel, to which the blue robed messenger's face is uplifted. The dove in the left center of the section is symbolic of peace, purity and the creative power of God through the Holy Spirit. It is reminiscent of our Lord's baptism when he was empowered for ministry: "the Spirit descended from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him"(John 1:32)

The center panel is enriched by on either side at the top by a rose of divine love. The birds at their nest suggest God's loving care and protection, bringing to mind Jesus' words in Matthew 6:26, "Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of much more value than they?"

The heavenly messenger contemplates hope's symbol, the anchor, which appears in the upper left corner of this panel. An anchor is a symbol of steadfastness and constancy; the anchor in Christian art symbolizes the absolute surety of God's salvation through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. As indicated in the notes for the Baptistery, this symbol comes from Hebrews 6:19.

In the extreme right panel, the scales are the symbol for justice. They are held by a young woman with a blindfold over her eyes; justice is impartial in her decisions. It recalls Peter's words in Acts 10:34, "I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him."

The great rose window at the upper part (at the balcony level) of the west or back wall of the church is devoted to the life of St. Paul, the man whom God called to be the apostle to the Gentiles and transform Christianity from a sect of Judaism to a separate, new world wide faith.

The first of the lancets at the bottom of the window, beginning at the left, portrays Paul's conversion. The man who had so zealously persecuted the Christian Church, after his vision on the road to Damascus, became one of the greatest leaders of the Church in all history (Acts 9:1-9). The second lancet shows him preaching in Athens, as described in Acts 17:22ff:

Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in very way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands...

St. Paul's figure, clothed in ruby and white, is shown in the central lancet. He holds the Sword of the Spirit point down, symbolizing the instrument of his martyrdom. In many windows he is shown holding it point up as a symbol of his militant preaching.

The fourth lancet relates one of the episodes which occurred during his voyage to Rome where he was being sent as a prisoner to have his case tried before Caesar, to which he was entitled as a Roman citizen. On the way the ship was caught in a violent storm and for many days was so pounded that all hope was abandoned. However, Paul had a vision in which an angel told him that "You must stand before the emperor; and indeed, God has granted safety to all who are sailing with you" (Acts 27:24). Paul assumed leadership, and even though they were shipwrecked at Malta, no one was hurt. The fifth lancet portrays St. Paul in Rome "proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance" (Acts 28:31). His imprisonment was of a very mild form, and he was permitted to live in his own house with freedom of movement.

Continuing clockwise around the rose, Paul is shown healing the man who could not walk; an act which almost cost him his life (Acts 14:8-20). In the next circle he is depicted restoring Eutychus, a young man who had fallen out of a window, to life (Acts 20:7-12). The following circle portrays an incident which occurred when Paul was shipwrecked on

Malta

, as indicated in the fourth lancet window. While he was there, he lodged at the home of Publius, whose father he healed.

The next circle relates his conversion of

Lydia

, a well-to-do business woman who sold dyes at Phillipi (Acts 16:14-15). In the following circle, another episode during the shipwreck on

Malta

is shown, as related in Acts 28:1-6:

The natives showed us unusual kindness. Since it had begun to rain and was cold, they kindled a fire and welcomed all of us around it. Paul had gathered a bundle of brushwood and was putting it on the fire, when a viper, driven out by the heat, fastened itself on his hand. When the natives saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, "This man must be a murderer; though he has escaped from the sea, justice has not allowed him to live." He, however, shook off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm. They were expecting him to swell up or drop dead, but after they had waited a long time and saw that nothing unusual had happened to him, they changed their minds and began to say that he was a god.

The next circle depicts Paul defending himself before King Agrippa who, after he had listened to Paul's earnest story of his conversion, convictions and missionary work, said cynically, "Are you so quickly persuading me to become a Christian?" (Acts 26:28) In the following circle Paul and Silas are shown being beaten at Phillipi before they were thrown into prison. Their crime was casting out the spirit of divination from a slave girl, whose owners were enraged at the loss of income from her fortunetelling! The last circle shows Paul preaching at the synagogue at Antioch where he was at first well received but later persecuted (Acts 13:14-52).

In the center of the rose is Paul's symbol, the open Bible with the words "Spiritus Gladius" inscribed, and behind the Bible a sword. Paul spoke of the Word of God as "the sword of the spirit." Surrounding this symbol are twelve flames, indicating his twelve Epistles. Between the circles of the rose are five-pointed stars of heavenly steadfastness. In the two outer tracery members of the window other traditional symbols of Paul are found. The cross shield of faith appears in the tracery member on the left; the three fountains symbolizing his martyrdom on the right. The two circles below the rose portray angels of praise (with the trumpet) and prayer (with the censor). Enriching the lancet windows are white lilies of purity.

O God, by the preaching of your apostle Paul you have caused the light of the Gospel to shine throughout the world: Grant, we pray, that we, having his wonderful conversion in remembrance, may show ourselves thankful to you by following his holy teaching; through Jesus Christ our c. Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

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