Rosslyn Chapel, formally known as the Collegiate Chapel of St Matthew, is a
15th-century chapel located at the village of Roslin, Midlothian, Scotland.
Rosslyn Chapel was founded on a small hill above Roslin Glen as a Catholic
collegiate church in the mid-15th century. The chapel was founded by
William Sinclair, 1st Earl of Caithness of the Scoto-Norman Sinclair family.
Rosslyn Chapel is the third Sinclair place of worship at Roslin, the first
being in Roslin Castle and the second in what is now Roslin Cemetery.
The purpose of the college was to celebrate the Divine Office throughout
the day and night and also to celebrate Holy Mass for all the faithful departed,
including the deceased members of the Sinclair family. During this period the
rich heritage of plainsong or polyphony would be used to enrich the singing of
the liturgy. An endowment was made that would pay for the upkeep of the priests
and choristers in perpetuity and they also had parochial responsibilities.
After the Scottish Reformation, Roman Catholic worship in the chapel was
brought to an end, although the Sinclair family continued to be Roman Catholics
until the early 18th century. From that time the chapel was closed to public
worship until 1861, when it was opened again as a place of worship according to
the rites of the Scottish Episcopal Church.
Since the late 1980s, the chapel has also featured in speculative theories
concerning a connection of Freemasonry, the Knights Templar, and the Holy Grail.
It was prominently featured in the 2003 bestseller The Da Vinci Code and its
2006 film adaptation. Rosslyn Chapel remains privately owned.
The current owner is Peter St Clair-Erskine, 7th Earl of Rosslyn.
Architecture The original plans for Rosslyn have
never been found or recorded, so it is open to speculation whether or not the
chapel was intended to be built in its current layout. Its architecture is
considered to be among the finest in Scotland.
Construction of the chapel began on 20 September 1456, although it has often
been recorded as 1446. The confusion over the building date comes from the
chapel's receiving its founding charter to build a collegiate chapel in 1446
from Rome. Sinclair did not start to build the chapel until he had built
houses for his craftsmen. Although the original building was to be
cruciform in shape, it was never completed. Only the choir was
constructed, with the retro-chapel, otherwise called the Lady chapel, built
on the much earlier crypt believed to form part of an earlier castle. The
foundations of the unbuilt nave and transepts stretching to a distance of 90
feet were recorded in the 19th century. The decorative carving was executed over
a forty-year period. After the founder's death, construction of the planned nave
and transepts was abandoned - either from lack of funds, lack of interest or
a change in liturgical fashion. The Lower Chapel should not be confused
with the burial vaults that lie underneath Rosslyn Chapel.
The chapel stands on fourteen pillars, which form an arcade of twelve pointed
arches on three sides of the nave. At the east end, a fourteenth pillar
between the penultimate pair form a three-pillared division between the nave
and the Lady chapel. The three pillars at the east end of the chapel are named,
from north to south: the Master Pillar, the Journeyman Pillar, and most
famously, the Apprentice Pillar. These names for the pillars date from the late
Georgian period — prior to this period they were called The Earl's Pillar, The
Shekinah and the Prince's pillar. = Apprentice pillar=
The "Apprentice Pillar", or "Prentice Pillar", gets its name from a legend
dating from the 18th century, involving the master mason in charge of the
stonework in the chapel and his young apprentice mason. According to the
legend, the master mason did not believe that the apprentice could perform the
complicated task of carving the column without seeing the original which formed
the inspiration for the design. The master mason travelled to see the
original himself, but upon his return was enraged to find that the upstart
apprentice had completed the column by himself. In a fit of jealous anger, the
master mason took his mallet and struck the apprentice on the head, killing him.
The legend concludes that as punishment for his crime, the master mason's face
was carved into the opposite corner to forever gaze upon his apprentice's
pillar. The pillar is also referred to as the
"Prince's Pillar" in An Account of the Chapel of Roslin.
On the architrave joining the pillar there is an inscription, Forte est vinum
fortior est rex fortiores sunt mulieres super omnia vincit veritas: "Wine is
strong, a king is stronger, women are stronger still, but truth conquers all".
Author Henning Klovekorn has proposed that the pillar is representative of one
of the roots of the Nordic Yggdrasil tree, prominent in Germanic and Norse
mythology. He compares the dragons at the base of the pillar to the dragons
found eating away at the base of the Yggdrasil root and, pointing out that at
the top of the pillar is carved tree foliage, argues that the Nordic/Viking
association is plausible considering the many auxiliary references in the chapel
to Celtic and Norse mythology. The general form of the pillar has been
related to a type described by the French architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc
as a "bunch of sausages." = Carvings=
Among Rosslyn's many intricate carvings are a sequence of 213 cubes or 'boxes'
protruding from pillars and arches with a selection of patterns on them. It is
unknown if these patterns have any particular meaning attached to them.
Many people have attempted to find information coded into them, but no
interpretation has yet proven conclusive. Unfortunately, many of these
'boxes' are not original, having been replaced in the 19th century after
erosion damage. One recent attempt to make sense of the
boxes has been to interpret them as a musical score. The motifs on the boxes
somewhat resemble geometric patterns seen in the study of cymatics. The
patterns are formed by placing powder upon a flat surface and vibrating the
surface at different frequencies. By matching these Chladni patterns with
musical notes corresponding to the same frequencies, the father-and-son team of
Thomas and Stuart Mitchell produced a tune which Stuart calls the Rosslyn
Motet. There are more than 110 carvings of
'Green Men' in and around the chapel. Green Men are carvings of human faces
with greenery all around them, often growing out of their mouths. They are
found in all areas of the chapel, with one example in the Lady Chapel, between
the two middle altars of the east wall. Other carvings represent plants,
including depictions of wheat, strawberries or lilies. The authors
Robert Lomas and Christopher Knight have hypothesized that some carvings in the
chapel represent ears of new world corn or maize, a plant which was unknown in
Europe at the time of the chapel's construction. Knight and Lomas view
these carvings as evidence supporting the idea that Henry I Sinclair, Earl of
Orkney, traveled to the Americas well before Columbus.
= Crypt= The chapel has been a burial place for
several generations of the Sinclairs; a crypt was once accessible from a
descending stair at the rear of the chapel. This crypt has been sealed shut
for many years, which may explain the recurrent legends that it is merely a
front to a more extensive subterranean vault containing the mummified head of
Jesus Christ, the Holy Grail, the treasure of the Templars, or the
original crown jewels of Scotland. In 1837, when the 2nd Earl of Rosslyn
died, his wish was to be buried in the original vault. Exhaustive searches over
the period of a week were made, but no entrance to the original vault was found
and he was buried beside his wife in the Lady Chapel.
= Rooftop pinnacle= The pinnacles on the rooftop have been
subject to interest during renovation work in 2010. Nesting jackdaws had made
the pinnacles unstable and as such had to be dismantled brick by brick
revealing the existence of a chamber specifically made by the stonemasons to
harbour bees. The hive, now abandoned, has been sent to local bee keepers to
identify. Restoration, conservation and tourism
The chapel's altars were destroyed in 1592, and the chapel was abandoned,
gradually falling into decay. In 1842 the chapel, now in a ruined and
overgrown state, was visited by Queen Victoria, who expressed a desire that it
should be preserved. Restoration work was carried out in 1862 by David Bryce
on behalf of James Alexander, 3rd Earl of Rosslyn. The chapel was re-dedicated
on 22 April 1862, and from this time, Sunday services were once again held,
now under the jurisdiction of the Scottish Episcopal Church, for the first
time in 270 years. The Rosslyn Chapel Trust was established
in 1995, with the purpose of overseeing its conservation and its opening as a
sightseeing destination. The chapel underwent an extensive programme of
conservation between 1997 and 2013. This included work to the roof, the stone,
the carvings, the stained glass and the organ. A steel canopy was erected over
the chapel roof for fourteen years. This was to prevent further rain damage to
the church and also to give it a chance to dry out properly. Three human
skeletons were found during the restoration. Major stonework repairs
were completed by the end of 2011. The last major scaffolding was removed in
August 2010. A new visitor centre opened in July
2011. The chapel's stained-glass windows and organ were fully restored. New
lighting and heating were installed. The expected cost of the restoration work is
around £13 million, with about £3.7 million being spent on the Visitor
Centre. Funding has come from various sources including Heritage Lottery Fund,
Historic Scotland and the environmental body, WREN. Actor Tom Hanks also made a
donation. Photography and video have been
forbidden in the chapel since 2008. The chapel sells commercially produced
photos in its shop. In 2006, historian Louise Yeoman criticised the Rosslyn
Chapel trust for "cashing in" on the popularity of the The Da Vinci Code,
against better knowledge. In the financial year of 2013-2014,
Rosslyn Chapel recorded 144,823 visitors, the highest number since
2007-2008, when, the number of visitors was close to 159,000.
In popular culture = Templar and Masonic connections=
The chapel became the subject of speculation regarding its supposed
connection with the Knights Templar or Freemasonry beginning in the 1980s.
The topic entered mainstream pop culture with Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code,
reinforced by the subsequent film of the same name, Numerous books were published
after 2003 to cater to the popular interest in supposed connections between
Rosslyn Chapel, Freemasonry, the Templars and the Holy Grail generated by
Brown's novel. The chapel, built 150 years after the dissolution of the
Knights Templar, supposedly has many Templar symbols, such as the "Two riders
on a single horse" that appear on the Seal of the Knights Templar. William
Sinclair 3rd Earl of Orkney, Baron of Roslin and 1st Earl of Caithness,
claimed by novelists to be a hereditary Grand Master of the Scottish
stonemasons, built Rosslyn Chapel. A later William Sinclair of Roslin became
the first Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Scotland and, subsequently,
several other members of the Sinclair family have held this position.
Robert L. D. Cooper, curator of the Grand Lodge of Scotland Museum and
Library, in 2003 published a 12th edition of the 1892 Illustrated Guide to
Rosslyn Chapel with the intention of countering the "nonsense published about
Rosslyn Chapel over the last 15 years or so". Cooper in 2006 also published
Rosslyn Hoax? in which he actively debunks this type of speculation at
length and in great detail. An example is the comparison of the Rosslyn myth of
the Apprentice Pillar with that of the allegorical references to Hiram Abiff in
Masonic ritual, and in the process he debunks any similarities between the
two. A minute comparison between the Rosslyn Myth and the Masonic allegory
can be found in a detailed tabular form in The Rosslyn Hoax?
Cooper further debunks other claims of a connection between carvings within
Rosslyn Chapel and Scottish Freemasonry. The suggestion that the Apprentice
Pillar is a physical reference to the Entered Apprentice degree of Scottish
Freemasonry logically led to the conclusion that the other two pillars
represented the Fellow of Craft degree and the Master Mason's degree. This
association of three pillars in the east part of Rosslyn Chapel with the three
degrees of Scottish Freemasonry is impossible, given the fact that the
third degree of Freemasonry was invented c.1720 - almost 300 years after Rosslyn
Chapel was founded. The claim that the layout of Rosslyn
Chapel echoes that of Solomon's Temple has been analysed by Mark Oxbrow and Ian
Robertson in their book, Rosslyn and the Grail:
Rosslyn Chapel bears no more resemblance to Solomon's or Herod's Temple than a
house brick does to a paperback book. If you superimpose the floor plans of
Rosslyn Chapel and either Solomon's or Herod's Temple, you will actually find
that they are not even remotely similar. Writers admit that the chapel is far
smaller than either of the temples. They freely scale the plans up or down in an
attempt to fit them together. What they actually find are no significant
similarities at all. [...] If you superimpose the floor plans of Rosslyn
Chapel and the East Quire of Glasgow Cathedral you will find a startling
match: the four walls of both buildings fit precisely. The East Quire of Glasgow
is larger than Rosslyn, but the designs of these two mediaeval Scottish
buildings are virtually identical. They both have the same number of windows and
the same number of pillars in the same configuration. [...] The similarity
between Rosslyn Chapel and Glasgow's East Quire is well established. Andrew
Kemp noted that 'the entire plan of this Chapel corresponds to a large extent
with the choir of Glasgow Cathedral' as far back as 1877 in the Proceedings of
the Society of Antiquaries. Many alternative history writers are well
aware of this but fail to mention it in their books.
As to a possible connection between the St. Clairs and the Knights Templar, the
family testified against the Templars when that Order was put on trial in
Edinburgh in 1309. Historian Dr. Louise Yeoman, along with other mediaeval
scholars, says the Knights Templar connection is false, and points out that
Rosslyn Chapel was built by William Sinclair so that Mass could be said for
the souls of his family. It is also claimed that other carvings
in the chapel reflect Masonic imagery, such as the way that hands are placed in
various figures. One carving may show a blindfolded man being led forward with a
noose around his neck — similar to the way a candidate is prepared for
initiation into Freemasonry. The carving has been eroded by time and pollution
and is difficult to make out clearly. The chapel was built in the 15th
century, and the earliest records of Freemasonic lodges date back only to the
late 16th and early 17th centuries. A more likely explanation however is that
the Masonic imagery was added at a later date. This may have taken place in the
1860s when James St Clair-Erskine, 3rd Earl of Rosslyn instructed Edinburgh
architect David Bryce, a known Freemason, to undertake restoration work
on areas of the church including many of the carvings.
= Alternative histories= Alternative histories involving Rosslyn
Chapel and the Sinclairs have been published by Andrew Sinclair and Timothy
Wallace-Murphy arguing links with the Knights Templar and the supposed
descendants of Jesus Christ. The books in particular by Timothy Wallace-Murphy
Rex Deus: The True Mystery of Rennes-le-Château And The Dynasty of
Jesus and Custodians Of Truth: The Continuance Of Rex Deus have focused on
the hypothetical Jesus bloodline with the Sinclairs and Rosslyn Chapel.
On the ABC documentary Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci, aired on 3 November 2003,
Niven Sinclair hinted that the descendants of Jesus Christ existed
within the Sinclair families. These alternative histories are relatively
modern - not dating back before the early 1990s. The precursor to these
Rosslyn theories is the 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael
Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln that introduced the theory of the Jesus
bloodline in relation to the Priory of Sion hoax - the main protagonist of
which was Pierre Plantard, who for a time adopted the name Pierre Plantard de
Saint-Clair. See also
Clan Sinclair Sinclair
Earl of Caithness Sinclair & Girnigoe Castle
Roslin Castle Castle of Mey
References = Further reading=
Cooper, Robert L. D. The Rosslyn Hoax?. Lewis Masonic. 2006. ISBN 0-85318-255-8.
Forbes, Robert An Account of the Chapel of Roslin..
Hay, Richard Augustin, Genealogie of the Sainteclaires of Rosslyn. 1835.
Thompson, John, The Illustrated Guide to Rosslyn Chapel and Castle, Hawthornden
&c., 1st ed. 1892, Masonic Publishing Co. 2003. ISBN 0-9544268-1-9).
Peter St Clair-Erskine, 7th Earl of Rosslyn, Rosslyn Chapel, Rosslyn Chapel
Trust, 1997. External links
Official Rosslyn Chapel website Rosslyn Chapel's extraordinary carvings
explained at last — an article on Rosslyn's Green Men, and an associated
reading of its carvings, from The Scotsman
QuickTime Virtual Reality Image of Rosslyn Chapel by Jonathan Greet, View 2
"The Rosslyn Templar", a book about the pastel painting by R T McPherson in 1836
of a "Templar Knight at Roslin Chapel" with new photographs of the Chapel