Front matter

This is companion to the preceding volume— “The Dean’s Handbook to Gloucester Cathedral.”

Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna.

Circa

A.D.

440.

THE SECRETS OF A GREAT CATHEDRAL

BY THE VERY REV. H. D. M. SPENCE-JONES, M.A., D.D.

Dean of Gloucester Professor of Ancient History in the Royal Academy

LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. 1914

All rights reserved

This book, “The Secrets of a Great Cathedral,” is, after a fashion, the sequel to the Dean’s “Handbook to Gloucester Cathedral,” although it has no special reference to, no real connection with the former work.

These “Secrets” belong to no one solitary pile, but are the heritage of the many Cathedrals, at once the glory and the riddle of Catholic Europe. Still, references to one pile—Gloucester, the loved home of the writer of the book—will be found constantly to crop up and appear unexpectedly in the following pages.

Like King Charles the First in the “Memorial” of the immortal Mr. Dick in Dickens’ “David Copperfield,” so is Gloucester ever straying into the “Cathedrals” of the “Secrets.” Its haunting memory will not be kept out.

The reader must forgive, and perhaps forget, the writer’s fancy, and—quietly read on.