The Windows

The Chapel windows were originally plain. The present stained glass was executed by the firm of Heaton, Butler & Bayne. They were completed in 1884, as part of the commemoration of 300 years of Emmanuel.

Click on a window to get detailed descriptions of the figures depicted:

East End (Altar)
	St Augustine of Hippo St Anselm	Origen John Eriugena
	John Fisher Thomas Cranmer	John Colet William Tyndale
	Laurence Chaderton John Harvard	Benjamin Whichcote Peter Sterry
	William Bedell William Sancroft	John Smith William Law
West End (Entrance)

The History of the Windows

The windows' actual designer was most probably Clement John Heaton the younger (1861–1940). The general subject scheme was suggested by the Revd Hort (Fellow 1872–1892), who was a celebrated New Testament scholar. The basic intention was similar to that of the windows in Trinity College Chapel, although the scale is much smaller. Trinity's windows were planned a decade before by Hort's friends & colleagues there: Westcott and Lightfoot. The figures are chosen to illustrate the continuity of the history of the Church. The special part played in it by members of the College is also celebrated.

From east–west, the first window shows theologians of the early & middle ages. The opposite window shows two men of the English Reformation. It is said they might have belonged to Emmanuel, had it existed. The remaining four show theologians who actually were of Emmanuel. On the north side, they are men whose contributions were chiefly to the organisation of the Church, and to systematic theology. Those on the south to spiritual life & thought and to speculative theology. The plan exhibits a feeling for the Church as a unity, although this was less fashionable in the 1870s & 1880s than now. The Cambridge Platonists of the seventeenth–century are to be seen as the legitimate heirs of Origen & Eriugena. The Catholic John Fisher, and the Protestant Thomas Cranmer, both reformers (though in different ways) & martyrs, share a window.