AT LAST! Seeing St. Stephen’s east windows
Fig. 1 Chancel and reredos, 1917, St. Stephen’s
Framed within the marble reredos (altar screen) over the mosaic Last Supper are three clusters of stained-glass medallions that, we’re told, represent the life of our patron saint St. Stephen—yet we’ve never been able to see them.
Fig. 2 View of the chancel during services, 1923/1939
The backlighting that made them visible, added when the 1925 adjacent Community House (now housing the Lantern Theater) blocked the natural east light, has gradually failed, darkening the windows into mysterious presences within the filigreed stonework. Fig. 1 shows how we now see the church’s overarching story from the entrance to the chancel [for my account of Stephen’s meaning and mission for our church, check out How does St. Stephen speak for us? Part I and Part II].
Fig. 3
Originally, however, those three clusters beamed into the church above the altar, assemblages of radiant color framed by natural light in broader arched windows. Fig. 2, taken soon after the completion of the dramatic complex (commissioned by Anna Magee as a memorial to her sister Fanny), gives you an idea.
Fig. 3 illustrates what we saw in 2018 as the backlights failed.
I’ve always wondered, however, how visible were the individual medallions from the floor even in ideal light. They’re small, detailed, and set very high.
How does this luminous witness to the growth of the Church and the risen Christ’s affirmation of that witness function if we can’t see details?
Intent notwithstanding, today we’ve been offered a miracle: Our Digital Content Manager Rebecca Harris received photographs taken by a visitor, Brian Kutner, that allow us to study individual medallions possibly for the first time.
Here they are (Figs. 4-6), cropped for even closer focus, in the order seen when we face the altar, from left to right.
Studying individual medallions now, we can follow the story given by the then-rector Dr. Carl Grammer who publicized them upon the chancel’s completion (see the February 1918 issue of the Church News of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, in philadelphiastudies.org; the anonymous text adapts Dr. Grammer’s account in St. Stephen’s Parish News). And we can ponder their meaning for us.
Tiffany’s design, claims Dr. Grammer, is unique. The windows build a mostly non-sequential pictorial narrative of Stephen’s actions and words given in Acts, downward from the top of the left light (north) to the top of the right light (south) and concludes in the larger center light shaped like a cross to associate the Church’s first martyr Stephen with Christ.
The 13 medallions open with Stephen’s ordination as deacon and proceed below, according to Dr. Grammer, with Stephen’s “building up Christianity with his preaching.” Their order otherwise zigzags left and right to render Stephen’s teaching that draws the attention of the highest Jewish Council, the Sanhedrin, that is “falsely” told that Stephen is overthrowing Moses’ law. He is also accused of warning of the destruction of Solomon’s Temple, that handmade temple where, Stephen reminds them, God does not dwell, as the prophet asserted. The medallions further celebrate the ”brotherly love of the early Church” and the “great company of the priests” who left their own communities to follow Stephen and other Christian preachers. The center light represents Stephen’s vision of the risen Christ approving his witness as he argued before the Sanhedrin, his death by stoning (the center scene flanked by images of the mob to form the cross), and the converted Paul as Stephen’s energetic successor.
The Tiffany windows feature the beleaguered spread of the Word and the doctrinal history of the Church, especially its purity in adhering to Christianity’s ancient foundations, unlike other Jewish factions. Absent is Stephen’s role as the first deacon committed to community service. As such, these east windows complement the messages of other windows in the church which celebrate service.
Try to insert the revelations of these photographs into the now-dark windows seen here, virtually, and within the physical church if you can. Thank you, Brian and Rebecca!
I also invite you to revisit our website for its many evolving informative corners. Once again, thank you, Rebecca!
— Suzanne Glover Lindsay, St. Stephen’s historian and curator