In this second part, John Young describes the capitals - the carvings a the top of the pillars. The pillars in the nave are over 20 feet high and over 11 feet in circumference.

The abounding variety of detail observed in the flooring has been matched in the designs of all the Capitals, large and small, outside and inside the Cathedral.

A Capital might be described as the head, or the crowning member, of a column or pillar, and generally it is found giving support to superimposed arches.

In the portions of the Cathedral so far completed there are approximately ninety-eight columns of all sizes, ranging from the giant ones in the Nave, twenty feet high and over eleven feet in circumference, to the tiny ones in the Baptistry.

A dose examination of the Capitals of all these columns will reveal that they are infinite in their variety and charm, in as much as not one is exactly similar to another.

Not to the architect of St Anne's is Ruskin's scathing denunciation applicable:

"You know how fond modern architects, like foolish modern politicians, are of their equalities and similarities; how necessary they think it that each part of a building should be like every other part. Now Nature abhors equality and similitude, just as much as foolish men love them."

In order to demonstrate and emphasise the close affinity existing between the Cathedral and every aspect and exertion of human life, the Capital of each column in the Nave is carved with a series of designs typifying a particular pursuit or an occupation of man.

Just above each Capital there is a bust caned from the corbel which serves as a stop to the hood (or upper) moulding of the arches. These ten Corbels portray nine eminent dignitaries of the Irish Church, ancient and modern, and a famous Irish woman hymn-writer.

The Capital of each RESPOND is carved to represent one of the Cardinal Virtues, which, according to Greek philosophy, are four in number:

Courage, Justice, Temperance, and Wisdom.

The Responds are the half columns attached to the East and West walls of the Nave, and supporting the arches at the extremities of the two arcades. An arcade is a range of arches supported on columns.

The Respond Corbels are carved to represent the four Archangels:

Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, and Uriel, described in the Bible as chief among angels.

So, starting at the West End with the Respond of Courage, the details of the carvings may be delineated as follows:-

(i) COURAGE
"Be strong and of a good courage."

Carved close against the wall is a Celtic Chieftain, armed with a spear, and the Celtic ornamentation of the Respond is relieved by a circle framing the figure of a warrior. A Sword, carved on the column and outlined in gold, recalls Christ's enigmatical words: "I came not to send peace, but a sword.' (Matthew 10. 34).

Corbel: GABRIEL, the Angel of the Annunciation, who was sent from God to Mary, with the glad tidings that her Child was to be called the Son of God.

The lily, the emblem of purity, was the symbol of Gabriel, and so he is carved here with "The lily ...... blossoming in stone."

(I ) SCIENCE
"Science moves, but slowly, slowly,
Creeping on from point to point."
(Tennyson)

This Capital depicts the progress of Science as revealed in the careers of four famous scientists who span a period of over twenty centuries.

NW ARCHIMEDES (circa 287-212 B.C.) The most eminent mathematician of antiquity, and a scientist of great distinction who invented numerous mechanical contrivances and founded the science of Hydrostatics. He is here shown with his best-known invention, the geometrical compass.

SW ROGER BACON (1214-1294). One of the greatest pioneers in science and philosophy is carved in his Friar's habit, with retort and test-tube. His genius and scholarship shone like a star in the night of the thirteenth century, but he was perforce the powerless and unpopular victim of the prejudices of that early era. He is said to have invented gunpowder (doubted by some modern authorities), to have set the Thames on fire (whence the popular phrase), to have constructed a telescope and a magnifying glass, and to have devised a rectified calendar. "An Englishman worth telling the world about."

SE SIR ISAAC NEWTON (1642-1727). The great English natural philosopher, who is seen with his traditional apple, the sight of which, falling in his garden, first directed his research towards the attraction of the earth, and culminated in his discovery of the law of universal gravitation.

NE LORD KELVIN (1824-1907). The most renowned physicist of his time, who in the threefold capacity of visionary, philosopher, and scientist, was an inspiration to the whole world of science. He was born in Belfast, and at the age of twenty-two was appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy at Glasgow University, a post he held for 53 years. His work covered every branch of physical science, and a full list of his inventions would be a voluminous document. His most popular achievement, however, was the Transatlantic cable, a circuit of 3,700 miles linking Europe and America. He is carved holding one of his many electrical inventions - a galvanometer.

Corbel: GEORGE BERKELEY (1684-1753). Bishop of Cloyne. Pre-eminent as a philosopher, and a zealous worker for the welfare of his people, to him was attributed "every virtue under heaven" (Pope). He was the friend of Swift, Addison, and Steele, and Boswell has recorded Doctor Johnson's opinion: "Berkeley was a profound scholar, as well as a man of fine imagination." Bishop Berkeley's writings on philosophy represent a notable addition to this branch of learning, and it has been said that "in the abundance and appositeness of his examples he excels all philosophers except Plato" (Joad).

On the North West SPUR at the base of the column is carved the first recorded servant of Science - the Dove which returned to the Ark with "an olive leaf pluckt off" in its mouth, whereby Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.

(ii) INDUSTRY

Designed with particular reference to the Linen Industry, and coherently illustrating the various phases from field to market-place.

South: A man pulling flax in the traditional method employed before the advent of mechanical aids.

West: A woman seated at a Spinning Wheel making threads from the flax fibre.

North: A woman at a Loom weaving the threads (or yarn) into a fabric.

East: A scene in a typical Irish market-place, at which the bolt of finished linen is proffered for sale. It is interesting to reflect that this type of transaction was a daily routine on this very site between 1754 and 1774. During this period of twenty years, Belfast's second Linen Hall stood on the site now occupied by the Cathedral, and was used for the transaction of business in connexion with Belfast's flourishing linen trade. The Linen Hall was established "to give all imaginable encouragement for promoting that Valuable Branch of Trade" and in the expectation that it would "give great Encouragement to such Persons as bring Cloths to said place to sell of good Breadths." This Linen Hall was demolished to provide a site for the building of St Anne's Parish Church, which in its turn was replaced by the Cathedral.

Corbel: HENRY STEWART O'HARA (1843-1923). Founder of the Cathedral and its first Dean—later Bishop of Cashel. More perhaps than to any other individual the existence of the Cathedral may be ascribed to his devotion and zeal. He is carved with his hand resting on a small-scale model of his dream cathedral, half concealed and incomplete, a fragment of the glorious whole he did not live to see. He is here perpetuated in sculptured stone, not as one who claimed to rival Berkeley in accuracy of thought, or Salmon in clearness of exposition; not as having King's gift of statesmanship, or Jeremy Taylor's ready pen, but simply as the man whose brain conceived the Cathedral, and whose valiant persistence succeeded in transforming his vision into a reality.

(iii) HEALING
"For of the Most High cometh healing."

The Healing Art as depicted in the pages of the New Testament:

South: The story of Jesus curing the man sick of the palsy.

West: The parable of the Good Samaritan and his succouring of the man who fell among thieves.
(In addition to the two men are to be seen the jar of oil and the ass.)

North: St Luke, the Beloved Physician and the one Gentile among the New Testament writers, is seated at a writing desk, penning the words of his Gospel.

East: Christ restoring sight to the blind man, on whose face is the poignant look of the sightless.

Corbel: ARCHBISHOP WILLIAM KING (1650-1729). States man and Divine, who was born in County Antrim of Scottish lineage. In 1688, when Dean of St Patrick's, Dublin, he was imprisoned for espousing the cause of William of Orange, and was only released after the Battle of the Boyne. On the Sunday after the victory the erstwhile prisoner preached in his own Cathedral before the new Monarch, and a few months afterwards was translated to the See of Derry.

The prolonged siege had wrought untold misery in his Episcopal City and Diocese. Fire had swept the county, churches and houses were in ruins, the land was desolate, and all around was an air of privation and suffering. With diligence and energy he gradually restored order from chaos, and after thirteen years in Derry was made Archbishop of Dublin in 1703. Here disorders of other kinds awaited his firm hand - ecclesiastical in discipline, inertness in Church affairs, and irregularities everywhere. Baseness and corruption were almost commonplaces. There was, further more, the grave problem of Church extension to meet the needs of a rapidly growing population. For the remaining twenty-seven years of his life he grappled successfully with all these difficulties: new churches were built, old ones repaired, and parishes were endowed - often at King's own expense.

His theological writings were widely read in the world of learning, and above all he had the love and respect of his clergy and people. Archbishop King's name is perpetuated in the Chair of Divinity in Trinity College, Dublin, which his zeal for religious education led him to endow, and from which the future clergy of the Irish Church are still taught.

(IV) AGRICULTURE
"Who sows a field, or trains a flower
Or plants a tree, is more than all." (Whittier)

Seedtime and Harvest is the keynote of this Capital, which in four stages expresses the annual cycle "to give and preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth." This, the first Capital to be carved in the Nave, is an interesting example of Celtic Romanesque ornament, and it will be observed that its pictorialisation is almost subservient to its decorative features, which in their abstract quality are in contrast to the many foliated examples which abound outside and inside the Cathedral.

West: The ploughing in progress.
Note the hind legs of the beast.

South: Sowing the seed.

East: The reaper at work with his hook.

North: Threshing the grain.

Corbel: GEORGE SALMON (1819-1904). Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, who gained equal renown in two widely contrasted spheres - theology and mathematics. As well as being one of the greatest creative mathematicians of the nineteenth century, his profound intellect was dedicated to the service of the Church of Ireland as a teacher of her teachers for over forty years. His enlivening lectures and the "unanswerable logic" of his theological works, coupled with his administrative ability and natural goodness, all tend to mark him as one of the greatest in the long succession of distinguished men who have been Provosts of Trinity College, Dublin. Continental authorities were loath to be convinced that two scholars of the same name did not exist, one the mathematician and the other the theologian. It was once said of Salmon, with perhaps pardonable exaggeration, that "he knew more of everything than any one of us knows of anything."

(V) MUSIC
"Music, the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of Heaven we have below.” (Addison)

This Art, the Handmaid of Religion, is represented by an angel at each of the four corners of the Capital:

One angel is playing on an Organ (NW), another is playing an Irish Harp (SE) and a third has a stringed instrument like a Violin (NE).

The fourth angel is a Singer (SW), and underneath is a musical scroll, on which are carved the actual notes of the first line of the hymn tune "St Ann." This has a two-fold significance, for in addition to bearing the same name as the Cathedral, this tune is invariably associated with the lovely hymn which has been described as Ulster's second National Anthem, "O God our help in ages past."

Extending round the four sides of the Capital are the triumphant closing words of the Book of Psalms: "Praise God in his Holiness; let everything that hath breath praise the Lord."

Corbel: JEREMY TAYLOR (1613-1667). Bishop of Down and Connor and Dromore, to which See he was elevated at the Restoration in 1660, after having suffered imprisonment during the Protectorate for his political and religious views. At the unusually early age of 21 he was preaching in St Paul's Cathedral, and his outstanding ability and eloquence excited the florid comment that "He made his hearers take him for some young angel newly descended from the Realms of Glory."

He was essentially a scholar, and as such, according to Archbishop Laud, better fitted for contemplation than for the active duties of his calling. His rhetoric and imagination were magnificent, and of him it was said that "no writer of English prose can rival the majestic harmony of his style." His mode of expression was marvelously eloquent, almost too opulent in gorgeous fancy, and perhaps too crowded with imagery and beautiful language for modern taste. Many of his pages are glowing with colour and music and imagination.

This "Shakespeare of Divines" is here carved holding his devotional book "Holy Living," written in 1650, and destined to exert an immeasurable influence on John Wesley.

(ii) THE RESPOND OF JUSTICE

The figure of Moses the Law-giver holding the Tables of the Law (the Ten Commandments), and underneath, engraved on the column, is the text "Mercy and Truth are met together" - a reminder that "earthly power doth then show likest God's when Mercy seasons Justice."

Corbel: The association of Justice with this north-eastern pier of the Nave is carried further by the corbel being carved to represent the Archangel Michael complete with sword and lifted scales. To Michael was ascribed, in medieval symbology, the task of weighing the souls of those who were being judged.

The carving of this Respond was executed in 1927, and these digits are cunningly rendered, in monogram fashion, on one of the Spurs.

The lofty central arch, soaring to a height of seventy-eight feet, divides the Nave from the Choir, and at each end is carved the figure of an Angel - one holding the Book of Life (South), and the other a Chalice (North). Embodied in the Capitals are a Lamb and a Fish (North), and a Celtic Cross (South)

(iii) THE RESPOND OF TEMPERANCE (unfinished) Crossing to the South side and commencing at the East, adjacent to the Organ in its present temporary position, there is the Respond of Temperance. As this Capital will not be carved until the Organ has been removed to the North Transept, an opportunity is thus afforded to observe the nature and shape of the stones from which all the other Nave Capitals were sculptured.

Corbel: The Archangel Raphael, variously called "the Messenger of God" and "The Guardian Angel," kindly in expression and carrying a pilgrim's staff and gourd.

(Vl) THEOLOGY
"Give me beauty in the inward soul, and may the
outward and the inward ever be as one." (Socrates)

NW ST ATHANASIUS (293-373 A.D.). Bishop of Alexandria and the "Father of Orthodoxy." A man of great intellectual powers and heroic character, he was exiled for many years on religious grounds, but eventually triumphed, and during the last seven years of his life continued his episcopal labours without further interruption. "The Creed (commonly called) of Saint Athanasius" in the Book of Common Prayer, is the well-known Confession of Faith associated with his name, although it was not apparently composed by him.

NE ST AUGUSTINE (354-430). One of the greatest and best known of the early Christian leaders, whose work has probably had a more profound influence than that of any other individual theologian of primitive times. Not to be confused with the other saint of the same name, who almost two centuries later landed in England, and by his settlement at Canterbury marked the beginning of the Christian era in Britain.

Note: As the facial outlines of these two Saints are unknown, St Athanasius has been carved in the likeness of Primate D'Arcy, and St Augustine in the likeness of Dean Brett. By this happy circumstance there have been preserved for future generations the features of two notable divines, one a Primate who in learning and intellect was the most illustrious Irish Churchman of his time; the other a beloved Dean, whose life and work contributed much to the decorative enrichment of St Anne's at one of the formative periods in its history.

SE THOMAS CRANMER (1489-1556). Archbishop of Canterbury (consecrated 1533) whose great claim to fame is as the compiler of the first Book of Common Prayer (1549), and the instigator of the free dissemination of the Scriptures in the tongue of the people. One of the foremost Churchmen in England responsible for the Reformation, he was a man of much personal timidity, mild and cautious, who, how ever, "as soon as he took his pen in his hand in the freedom of his own study, was like a man inspired" (Trevelyan). His last years were clouded by Queen Mary's persecution of the Protestant religion, and, imprisoned and threatened, six times did his fearful nature hesitate and recant his faith in the presence of a terrible death by burning at the stake. He so died in the end, true to Protestantism, with the offending right hand which had signed the recantations held steadily in the fiercest of the flames, until it was consumed.

SW RICHARD HOOKER (1553-1600). "That humble man to whose memory princes and the most learned of this nation have paid a reverence at the mention of his name" (Izaak Walton). An English theologian whose admirable writings are regarded as masterpieces of theological reasoning and eloquence. In quaint and dignified language the author of "The Compleat Angler" has related the story of "him that hath a lasting monument in his own books." In his most famous work, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Hooker enquires into the nature of law in general, and examines the sources from which it derives its binding force. This formidable undertaking resulted in a treatise which is alike remarkable for the dignity and grace of its language, the severe precision of its argument, and the profound knowledge and philosophical insight displayed by the writer. These qualities are observable in the following quotation:

"Of Law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world: all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power."

Corbel: JAMES USSHER (1581-1656). Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. Described by Doctor Johnson as "the great luminary of the Irish Church, and a greater no Church could boast of, at least in modern times" (Boswell).

Described also by an acidulated and cynical contemporary as "a godly man although a bishop," his gentle soul and scholarly intellect were ill-adapted to the tasks of grappling with abuses in the Church or with combating stagnation. His researches amongst unpublished manuscripts laid foundations on which succeeding generations of scholars were to build, and his writings are still recognised in modern times as of primary value. In an age of contending sects and conflicting doctrines his star burned so brightly that "all parties had confidence in his character and marvelled at his learning." One contemporary man of letters, John Selden, succinctly sized him as "a man of the highest piety, of singular judgment, miraculously learned, and born for the advancement of serious scholarship."

On the SPURS at the base of this column are carved: A Rose (SW) Thistle (NE) Shamrock (NW) and Ivy (SE).

(Vll) SHIPBUILDING
"in a stately ship,
On the breast of the River of Time."

Descriptive of Belfast's major industry and vividly portraying the progress of Shipping from ancient to modern times.

East: The Ark of Noah surmounted by a Rainbow, the token of this everlasting Covenant between God and Man.

North: A Norse Galley manned by seven of these unwelcome sea-rovers who all too frequently visited our shores in primitive times. Sea-monsters lurk in each corner.

West: An old-time wooden sailing-ship, "its voyage closed and done," is being towed to the ship-breakers' yard for demolition.

South: A modern oil-burning ship, prototype of so many that have been built on the Lagan.

A curious touch is that on two of the corners are tiny busts of two former Prime Ministers of England, David Lloyd George (North-East) and Herbert Henry Asquith (North-West).

Corbel: THOMAS PERCY (1729-1811). Bishop of Dromore. The Corbel rests on the book with which his name will always be associated - Reliques of Ancient Poetry. This volume is reputed to have laid the foundations of the Romantic School of Poets, and to have had an immense influence on the development of English literature in the century following its publication. The first word of the title can be seen engraved directly underneath the corbel, indicating that the book is a secular one. He was one of the founders of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, and the friend of many of the eminent literary men of his age, including Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, and Samuel Johnson. The omniscient Dr Johnson described Percy as "a man out of whose company I never go without having learned something." The name of Percy is frequently referred to in Boswell's "Life of Johnson."

The SPURS at the base of this Pillar are all carved in the shape of ship's accessories resting on seaweed of various species:

SW A Compass showing true North, and thus providing a perpetual reminder that the Cathedral is not exactly orientated.

NW A Rope tied with a sailor's knot

NE A Steering Wheel or Helm

SE An Anchor.