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What is chiefly remarkable here is the carved oak of the reredoses and pulpit. The English in 1422 took the town of St. Cyprien and besieged the abbey, which was a veritable citadel where the inhabitants in the last resort found shelter. A French force coming, however, to the relief of the people, the English, who were probably not very numerous, deemed it prudent to retire.
Inside the chapels are as usual overloaded with huge reredoses of heavily carved and gilt wood, but the original pulpit still survives, a most beautiful example of the finest late Gothic carving. It consists of four sides of an octagon, and stands on ribs which curve outwards from a central shaft.
'The what? said Frank King. It was clear that, however Mr. Tom had altered, he had not chosen to improve his manner of speech. 'Oh, High Church and reredoses, said the irreverent youth. 'Silver embroideries, don't you know, and visiting the poor, and catching all sorts of confounded infection. And then I suppose she'll end by marrying that curate that's always about the house.
They have recognized the errors of their paganism and the truths of the Christian religion; and they possess good and well-built churches and monasteries of wood with their reredoses and beautiful ornaments, and all the utensils, crosses, candlesticks, and chalices of silver and gold. Many devotions are offered, and there are many confraternities.
In the north transept and in one of the chapels there still stand great stone reredoses once much gilt, but now all broken and dusty and almost hidden behind the diligences and cabs with which the church is filled.
Such traces as one sees in the chapels of the Oxford Movement, in the shape of paltry stained glass, starved reredoses, modern Gothic woodwork, would be purely deplorable from the artistic point of view, if they did not possess a historical interest.
The pulpit was erected in 1891, the figures being carved by Harry Hems of Exeter, who has done so much wood and stone carving in restored reredoses and screens in various churches. The #Organ# stands under the westernmost arch of the choir on the north side.
In the discharge signed by João de Ruão in 1549 reredoses are spoken of as worked by him. There is nothing in the document to show whether these are the three great pieces of sculpture in the cloisters each of which must once have been meant for a reredos.
The whole surface has been covered with exquisite arabesques like those below the reredoses in the cloister at Santa Cruz, but they have now almost entirely perished. Above the entablature a second story rises forming a sort of portico.
The church is beautifully kept, and contains some very interesting old reredoses and altars with carving in alabaster. The one modern altar in the Lady Chapel is composed entirely of silver!
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