St. John's Church, or St. John's Episcopal Church, founded in 1786, is an historic Episcopal church located at 101 South Prospect Street in the South Prospect Street Historic District of Hagerstown, Maryland. It is the seat of Saint John's Parish, Diocese of Maryland, which covers most of Washington County, Maryland.
Though it is the mother church of Saint John's Parish in the lower Cumberland valley, Saint John's Church Hagerstown is also one of the many daughter churches of Broad Creek Church of Piscataway Parish. The current physical church is the fourth since establishment of the “Chapel in the Woods” (1747) [1] as a chapel of ease for All Saints Church (1742) in Frederick, Maryland. Services began in 1744, and four decades later the congregation erected a brick church on Mulberry Street in Hagerstown, the site of which is still maintained as the church cemetery. The General Assembly of Maryland separated the congregation from All Saints’ Frederick in 1786, creating a new “Frederick Parish” named for Frederick Calvert, last proprietor of Maryland. In 1797, Bishop John Thomas Claggett consecrated the sanctuary and in 1806, the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland renamed the parish after Saint John the Evangelist.
Saint John's rector in the late Federal period was the Rev. Thomas P. Irving, one of the foremost Greek and Latin scholars of that period. Native to Somerset County, Maryland, Irving attended Princeton College and thereafter supported himself as a teacher as well as minister. He was headmaster at New Bern Academy and later, the Hagerstown Academy, the educational mission of which is carried on by Saint James School. Bishop William White ordained him as a priest. [2] The mission of advancing learning in Hagerstown has been integral to the work of Saint John's Church. The Rev. George Lemmon conducted weekly lectures through to 1827. [3] In 1842, Saint John's rector Theodore Benedict Lyman served as the Bishop's agent in identifying and purchasing the grounds for Saint James School. [4]
A second church was built in the Federal style at the corner of Jonathan (now Summit) and Antietam Streets in 1823, and consecrated by the second bishop of Maryland. During the American Civil War (1861-1865), Saint John's Church was attended by a large number of Southern sympathizers. However, its Rector, Rev. Henry Edwards, was decidedly pro-Union and served as the U.S. Hospital Chaplain at Hagerstown from Nov. 13, 1862 through March 5, 1863, in the aftermath of the battle of Antietam. On the Sunday before that battle, he preached from Saint John's pulpit before a congregation of Confederate officers and soldiers, yet lifted up a prayer for Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States. On another occasion, Rev. Edwards did the same before “the whole of Longstreet’s division.” [5]
 | This section needs additional citations for verification .(March 2012) |
The present church building, built in 1872, was an American adaptation of the Oxford Movement in sanctuary design. Other features included coursed rows of rough-hewn blue limestone with stringcourses, sills and lintels of brownstone, stained-glass Gothic windows; and a bell tower with a stone steeple. Two heavy oak doors, painted red, are covered with elaborate scrolled pattern in bronze reminiscent of the Lichfield Cathedral in England. The foyer at the tower's base is decorated in the Arts & Crafts style, the ceiling have sixty small six-point stars cut into the ceiling and illuminated from above. [6] In December 1871, a fire in the town's business district destroyed the Federalist style sanctuary built in 1832 at the corner of Jonathan and Antietam Streets. The initial sanctuary space was sparsely, but tastefully, accommodated.
In 1899, Mollie Magill Rosenberg, a former communicant, donated a high Gothic Altar and associated supporting pieces, [7] including a reredos. An identical matching set was installed at Grace Episcopal Church (Galveston, Texas), [8] the Magill-Rosenberg family's home church, by Silas McBee. [9]
Easter Sunday 1899, Saint John's dedicated the High Altar and continued a 60-year journey transforming the Sanctuary from the colonial Neo-classical style to a style embracing England's Oxford Movement and the return to medieval forms. The transformation later continued, most notably through the replacement of the original windows with stained-glass designs depicting the life of Christ, chronologically, more or less. The donor, Mollie Magill Rosenberg, was spouse to Col. Henry Rosenberg, C.S.A. Henry served as Switzerland's consul to Texas after 1869. Mrs. Rosenberg attended the Columbian Exposition in 1893, where the High Altar and its Reredos were on display in the Swiss Pavilion. Like the Oxford Movement, the Columbian Exposition highlighted revival, rather than progressive, movements in the arts and architecture. Abrupt changes in peoples’ lives during industrialization were thought to be ameliorated by antiquarian and, allegedly, more ‘authentic’ forms.
The High Altar and Reredos are metaphors for Christ as the Word Incarnate. Saint John's wrought iron rood screen separates the Sanctuary from the Apex and Congregation. The Reredos is a scaled-down model of a larger more elaborate medieval gothic Rood Screen. The bronze relief at the center sits in what would have been the passageway from the Apex to the Sanctuary (through which the communicants would have witnessed the consecration of the Host). Above, a crossbridge (see the miniature passageway and small windows running laterally below the gables) connects what would have been the cathedral's north and south transepts. Such crossbridges allowed non-celebrating clergy to move about the cathedral on business, unseen, while Mass was said below. So while the Reredos is a reredos, it is also a model of a Rood Screen.
Separating the Reredos from the High Altar is a Sanctus ribbon from the 1559 B.C.P., drawing on Isaiah 6:3 but lacking the Benedictus found in the 1549 B.C.P. Sanctus, derived from Matthew 21:9. The Sanctus is followed by Psalm 50:5, the call to be judged for the acts of one's life, before the Throne of God.
The High Altar's base features a triptych of two Old Testament events laying foundations for Christ's priesthood. They flank a third central panel depicting the Last Supper at which Christ instituted the Holy Eucharist. The Old Testament carvings both concern Abraham: The Binding of Isaac Upon an Altar to God, Genesis 22:1-24 (left side) and the Blessing of Abraham by the High Priest Melchizedek of Salem Following the Battle of the Kings, Genesis 14:17-20 (right side). The Last Supper, John 13-21 (center), was carved from a print of the mural by Leonardo da Vinci for dining room wall of the monastery Santa Maria delle Grazie (Milan, Italy). Between the triptych's three panel carvings, the Swiss woodcarvers made an artistic pun, using as pillars supporting the Altar itself three Church fathers–Peter (Rome ), John (Antioch) and James (Jerusalem) – identified by a fourth Apostle, the roving Paul as “pillars” of the Church. See Galatians 2:9. Peter holds the keys to Church; Paul holds the decapitating sword; John carries the New Testament to which he contributed; and James is supported by the cudgel of his martyrdom.
Christ and Saint John are depicted three times in the combined High Altar and Reredos: Church patron and the Christ served by the Church numbered in the Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. The “three theme” runs throughout the work, as in the trefoils – representative of the Holy Trinity – in peaked gables. The Last Supper forms the south arm of a Greek Cross. The Reredos itself provides the east, west and north arms. The center of the cross is the bronze relief of the Nativity and the Crucifixion. Note the Star of Bethlehem, centerline. This Star is often used to mark the moment of equipoise at which the human Jesus received divine aspect, becoming of the Trinity. Angels stand at either side of the bronze relief: one with arms crossed and the other with hands in prayer. Across the Greek Cross's arms are the four Gospel authors, saints Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. John holds the chalice poisoned to kill him at Ephesus, alluding to its miraculous purification during which he exorcised the Serpent. The other three Gospel writers hold quills and tablets, the tools of their craft.
In Eastern Christianity, an iconostasis is a wall of icons and religious paintings, separating the nave from the sanctuary in a church. Iconostasis also refers to a portable icon stand that can be placed anywhere within a church. The iconostasis evolved from the Byzantine templon, a process complete by the 15th century.
Antonio Salviati was an Italian glass manufacturer and founder of the Salviati family firm.
The Divine Service is a title given to the Eucharistic liturgy as used in the various Lutheran churches. It has its roots in the Pre-Tridentine Mass as revised by Martin Luther in his Formula missae of 1523 and his Deutsche Messe of 1526. It was further developed through the Kirchenordnungen of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that followed in Luther's tradition.
The Church of the Ascension and Saint Agnes is an Episcopal church building located at 1215 Massachusetts Avenue in Northwest Washington, D.C., US. The current structure built in 1874 as the Church of the Ascension was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. In the late 1940s, the Church of the Ascension merged with the nearby St. Agnes Episcopal Church and adopted its present name, under which it has continued as an active parish in the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.
Christ Church, also known as Christ Church New Haven, is an Episcopal parish church at 70 Broadway in New Haven, Connecticut. Christ Church follows an Anglo-Catholic style of worship and has a strong focus on urban ministry. The parish began as an offshoot from New Haven's Trinity Church, the central Episcopal church on New Haven's town green.
St John the Divine, Kennington, is an Anglican church in London. The parish of Kennington is within the Anglican Diocese of Southwark. The church was designed by the architect George Edmund Street in the Decorated Gothic style, and was built between 1871 and 1874. Today it is a grade I listed building.
Saint Clement's Church is an historic Anglo-Catholic parish in Logan Square, Center City, Philadelphia. It is part of the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. The church, designed by architect John Notman, was built in 1856. It originally incorporated a spire more than 200 feet (61 m) tall; this was found to be too heavy for the foundation and was removed in 1869. In 1929, the church building, which includes the parish house and rectory, and weighs 5000 tons, was lifted onto steel rollers and moved forty feet west to allow for the widening of 20th Street. On November 20, 1970, Saint Clement's Church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Saint Augustine's, Kilburn, is a Church of England church in the area of Kilburn, in North London, United Kingdom. Because of its large size and ornate architecture, it is sometimes affectionately referred to as "the Cathedral of North London", although the church is not a cathedral in any official sense.
Calvary Episcopal Church is a parish of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The parish was founded in 1855.
St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Church, more commonly called Old St. Paul's Church today, is a historic Episcopal church located at 233 North Charles Street at the southeast corner with East Saratoga Street, in Baltimore, Maryland, near "Cathedral Hill" on the northern edge of the downtown central business district to the south and the Mount Vernon-Belevedere cultural/historic neighborhood to the north. It was founded in 1692 as the parish church for the "Patapsco Parish", one of the "original 30 parishes" of the old Church of England in colonial Maryland.
The Cathedral of Saint Patrick and Saint Colman or Newry Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral located in Newry, Northern Ireland. It acts as the seat of the Bishop of Dromore, and the Mother church of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Dromore. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, over 200,000 people visited the cathedral each year.
St. James Episcopal Church is a historic Episcopal church in the historic district of Wilmington, North Carolina. The church is part of the Episcopal Diocese of East Carolina and is the oldest church in the city of Wilmington. It is a contributing building in the Wilmington Historic District.
John Poyntz Tyler, described "as a great preacher and pastor to people" was the fourth Episcopal Bishop of North Dakota and served from 1914 until weeks before his death.
Christ Cathedral is the cathedral church for the Episcopal Diocese of Western Kansas. It is located in Salina, Kansas, United States, and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 2010.
Mount Calvary Church is a Catholic parish located in the Seton Hill neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland. The church was founded in 1842 as a mission congregation within the Episcopal Church and is now a community within the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter of the Catholic Church.
Trinity Episcopal Cathedral is an Episcopal cathedral located in Trenton, New Jersey, United States. It is the seat of the Diocese of New Jersey.
All Saints Church, or All Saints Episcopal Church, founded in 1742, is a historic Episcopal church now located at 106 West Church Street in the Historic District of Frederick, Maryland. It is the seat of All Saints Parish, Diocese of Maryland, which covers most of Frederick County, Maryland and once covered most of Western Maryland.
The Church of St. John the Evangelist is a parish of the Roman Catholic Church in the City of Orange Township, Essex County, New Jersey, within the Archdiocese of Newark. It is noted for its Gothic Revival style church (building), a prominent local landmark located at 94 Ridge Street.
Grace & St. Peter's Church is an Anglo-Catholic Episcopal parish in the city of Baltimore, in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. The congregation is the product of the 1912 amalgamation of two earlier parishes, St. Peter's Church and Grace Church. Its building, constructed in Brownstone, is an elaborate example of English Gothic Revival architecture dating from 1852. Today, Grace & St. Peter's is distinguished by its Anglo-Catholic liturgy and professional choir. From 1940 to 2020, it was also home to the Wilkes School at Grace & St. Peter's, an Episcopal day school which closed in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 1552 Book of Common Prayer, also called the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI, was the second version of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) and contained the official liturgy of the Church of England from November 1552 until July 1553. The first Book of Common Prayer was issued in 1549 as part of the English Reformation, but Protestants criticised it for being too similar to traditional Roman Catholic services. The 1552 prayer book was revised to be explicitly Reformed in its theology.
