rood-screen

rood-screen. Term in Christian church architecture for a screen separating the chancel (reserved to the clergy) from the nave (assigned to the laity). It is named after the Crucifixion figure or group, known as the rood (Old English for ‘cross’ or ‘crucifix’), that usually surmounted it, although there is in fact no necessary connection between the rood (which originally stood on a beam) and the screen. A great many screens survive from the Middle Ages, not least in England, where there are some superb examples, particularly of the 15th century. They represent one of the great flowerings of the art of the medieval carver and in East Anglia they often incorporate painted panels (notably at Ranworth in Norfolk). The screen was often surmounted by a loft that housed the choir and sometimes a small organ. Many medieval rood figures survive in Continental churches, but during the Reformation in England they were so thoroughly ‘extincted and destroyed’ (in the words of an Act of 1548) that of the thousands of Crucifixes that must once have existed only a few poignant fragments remain, notably a wonderful head of Christ (c.1130, BM, London) from All Hallows, South Cerney, Gloucestershire. When the Renaissance style came to dominate church architecture, an unbroken view from the nave into the chancel became the norm, and the rood-screen became virtually obsolete during the 18th century.