GALILEE

An appendage of some of our large churches is traditionally known by this name, and is supposed to be connected with some purposes of discipline, and to have borrowed its name from the words of the angel at the sepulchre to the women, “Go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee, there shall ye see him, as he said unto you.” (Mark xvi. 7.) The churches where a Galilee occurs are Durham, Lincoln, and Ely; but they have little in common except the name. That at Ely agrees with that at Durham in being at the west end of the church, but it differs in being to all appearance a mere porch of entrance, while that at Durham is a spacious building with five aisles and three altars; and, so far from its use being as a porch of entrance, the great west entrance was actually closed in the fifteenth century, while the Galilee in all probability retained its original use. That at Lincoln is at the south-west corner of the south transept; it is cruciform in plan, and has over it another chamber of the like size, once apparently arranged as a court of judicature, which favours the idea that the Galilee had some connexion with discipline. This was certainly the case at Durham, for there the consistory court has been held from time immemorial: and there Cardinal Langton erected a font for the children of persons who were excommunicate. But this was nearly 300 years after the building of the Galilee, which was certainly erected by Hugh Pudsey in the twelfth century, that women, who were allowed to proceed but a short distance into that particular church, might have a place where they might frequent the Divine ordinances; and this in itself had something of the nature of discipline. It may be worth noticing in addition, that all the three Galilees still remaining were erected between the middle of the twelfth and the middle of the thirteenth century.