The Chapel of Saints Peter & Paul

By Robert E. Armidon, MDiv ‘21

It is well-known among those who have attended, worked, or lived at Nashotah House that the highest point on the campus is occupied by Webb Hall, better known as “the Fort.” This building has seen many uses in its long history as one of the older buildings on campus, serving initially in 1865 as a residence for Dr. Azel Cole, the second Dean of Nashotah House and successor to James Lloyd Breck, and later as faculty housing, dormitory for Carroll College students resident at Nashotah House as part of the Preparatory Department, and currently as both faculty and guest housing. What is far less well-known is that on the east wing of the third floor lies one of the “hidden gems” of Nashotah House – the Chapel of Saints Peter and Paul. 

Perhaps what makes it so obscure is that currently one can only enter the chapel by walking up three flights of stairs to the apartment on the third floor, going through the hallway in the residence, and then walking down a short flight of stairs to the chapel. If someone is living or staying in that apartment, gaining access can be quite difficult!  

Notwithstanding these inconveniences, it is very much worth arranging a visit to this intimate chapel of simple beauty. Constructed during the time of Dean Cole’s residence and possibly to his specifications, it was restored in 1941 through the generosity of the alumni in memory of Canon Howard Baldwin St. George (1855-1932), who served as professor of church history, canon law, and liturgics from 1902 to 1932 and as a member of the Commission on the Revision of the Prayer Book from 1913 to 1928. A native of Ireland, graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and scion of what has been described as “an old-fashioned, High-Church, clerical family,” St. George was one of the young men who escorted the Ritualist Church of England priest R.W. Enraght from the gates of Warwick Prison back to his parish church, after Fr. Enraght had spent 49 days in jail for what the authorities had considered unauthorized ceremonial innovations. Ordained in 1881, Fr. St. George lived in “the Fort” during much of the early twentieth century and frequently entertained students there. After the death of his wife Euphemia in 1902, he came to Nashotah House with the responsibility of raising five children – one son and four daughters, aged seven to eighteen – in addition to his teaching duties. As the Very Rev. E.J.M. Nutter, Dean and President of Nashotah House from 1925 to 1947 and a former student of Fr. St. George’s, remarked, during St. George’s 30 years as a professor “several hundred embryo priests passed through his hands, and few left uninfluenced. . . . Pastoral theology was not officially his province, but none of his young men will forget the wise counsel and sage commonsense which he imparted in his lectures on the sacramental rites and occasional offices of the Prayer Book.”

It is therefore meet and right that this chapel should have been remodeled in Fr. St. George’s honor, and a plaque bears his name on the north wall. On both sides of the chapel’s small center aisle are several wooden pews, placed perpendicular to the altar and facing each other in the monastic (and seminary) tradition. Behind the pews on either side are several windows overlooking the broad expanse of lawn sloping down toward the rest of the seminary grounds. The altar itself is a simple wooden affair, placed against the east wall to allow for the celebration of ad orientem Masses in the traditional Catholic style. Behind the altar is a simple reredos bearing in the center on white fields the red English cross of St. George and the red Irish cross of St. Patrick; these are appropriate choices in a chapel remodeled in honor of Fr. St. George! Above the reredos is a statue of Jesus Christ as King, a familiar sight in Anglo-Catholic circles; to his right is a statue of St. Peter bearing the keys of the Church, and to his left is St. Paul, holding a sword.

It is not uncommon to have churches and chapels dedicated to Sts. Peter and Paul, both apostles and martyrs. As early as 258, there exists evidence of an already lengthy tradition of celebrating the feasts of both saints on the same day. In a sermon in 395, St. Augustine of Hippo remarked, “Both apostles share the same feast day, for these two were one; and even though they suffered on different days, they were as one. Peter went first, and Paul followed. And so we celebrate this day made holy for us by the apostles’ blood. Let us embrace what they believed, their life, their labors, their sufferings, their preaching, and their confession of faith.” Sound advice for those studying and teaching at Nashotah House!

During its history, the chapel, like “the Fort” which contains it, has seen many usages, including that of a place of worship for Carroll College students during their time of residency in “the Fort.” In later years, the chapel was used as a private oratory by Fr. Frederick C. Joaquin, librarian and Latin professor who lived with his wife Edna on the first floor of the building, and by Fr. John K. Mount, Professor of Pastoral Theology, who lived on the second floor. The saying of Masses celebrated without the people was not exceptional in the years prior to the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s; by the seventh century, with the proliferation of monastic and cathedral clergy, the custom arose of priests celebrating daily “private” Masses, and side altars were added to churches to facilitate such celebrations, irrespective of the presence of a religious community or congregation. This practice also spread to both Roman Catholic and Anglo-seminaries; for instance, one Nashotah House alumnus reports that juniors would serve Fr. Joaquin’s daily Mass in the chapel prior to attending Morning Prayer and the community Mass in St. Mary’s Chapel. It is believed that Fr. Joaquin in the Chapel of Sts. Peter and Paul, along with Bishop Donald Parsons, thirteenth Dean of Nashotah House, who used St. Francis Chapel in Lewis Hall, were the last two faculty members at Nashotah House who maintained the discipline of daily private celebrations. Following Vatican II, such “private” Masses were frowned upon; a former Nashotah House professor says that in the early 1990s the Dean at the time informed him that the chapel “was kept locked to prevent clandestine, unapproved Masses from being performed there by renegade priests on the faculty.” This view, while understandable and defensible to some degree, may have discounted the benefits of Masses celebrated sine populo; as the Anglican dogmatic theologian Canon E.L. Mascall wrote, “What makes the mass one and corporate is not the fact that a lot of people are together at the same service, but the fact that it is the act of the one Christ in his Body (corpus) the Church.”

During my time at Nashotah House, the chapel was used for services of Compline during Lent and for occasional Masses, celebrated mainly for the purpose of training students in the more traditional way of saying the Mass, using one of the various Anglican missals, or altar service books, containing supplementary devotions of the Anglo-Catholic variety. The chapel is well suited for the latter function, despite its unfortunate lack of an altar rail.  

I always found the Chapel of Sts. Peter and Paul to be one of those “thin places” where the boundary between heaven and earth seems especially porous, and where I could sense not only the presence of all the priests and students who had worshipped there, but in a very personal way, that of God himself. Jesus himself seemed to seek intimacy with his Father in special places; for instance, we read in Mark 1:35: “In the morning, a great while before day, he rose and went out to a lonely place, and there he prayed.” As his popularity grew, Jesus “withdrew to the wilderness and prayed” (Luke 5:16). The simple and lovely setting of this chapel lends itself to such intimacy. Despite the security and other problems in gaining access, it is my hope that it can once again be used for the purpose for which it was intended – the corporate worship of God, in which, as the Book of Common Prayer puts it, “we unite ourselves with others to acknowledge the holiness of God, to hear God’s Word, to offer prayer, and to celebrate the sacraments.”

Robert E. Armidon, ‘21, is a Postulant for Holy Orders in the Episcopal Diocese of Springfield. Thanks are due to John Conner, `21, Candidate for Holy Orders in the Diocese of Pennsylvania, for his research assistance. The preceding article was originally printed in Nashotah House’s Fall 2021 Missioner magazine, volume 35, number 2, pages 32-35.