llllllllllllllzllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll ,,.-i ' * 7 ... A 193 10501 7770 J bu. 9-g_ ’g .1‘ ‘ 17‘ a :3 V m a .W ‘91 I. 5 3334-1w" Tint-- - '4‘ wu“,5lf. ‘wrM. This is to certify that the dissertation entitled The Function of the Aestnetic in Religious Experience; A Comparison, Medieval and liodern presented by David W. Courtney has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Ph. D. degree in Interdisciplinary Studies, Arts and Letters m4 ”‘3”? é/i-[Mtdi-L _,, Major professor Date July 30, 1982 MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0-12771 MSU LIBRARIES RETURNING MATERIALS: Place in book drop to remove this checkout from your record. FINES will be charged if book is returned after the date stamped below. 91:9 i a ”M 9 5 5 , ’ t" 533%; THE FUNCTION OF THE AESTHETIC IN RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: A COMPARISON, MEDIEVAL AND MODERN BY David Wayne Courtney A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR or PHILOSOPHY College of Arts and Letters 1982 ABSTRACT THE FUNCTION OF THE AESTHETIC IN RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: A COMPARISON, MEDIEVAL AND MODERN BY David Wayne Courtney This study offers a reconsideration of the function or purpose of symbolism in religious art objects. Church architecture is considered a religious art object in this thesis. Many art historians and contemporary writers, who study church architecture, wish to discuss the "aesthetic form" that has been used or should be used in the construction of modern ecclesiastical buildings. This dissertation argues that church architecture's first and.most important responsibility is in fostering religious experience, not aesthetic experience. In this thesis, a firm wedge is driven between the two phenomena of religious and aesthetic experience. It is not Suggested that there should be no appeal to the viewer's aesthetic sensibilities; rather, the aesthetic experience should-be a secondary concern to the church builder... This dissertation develops the concept of ”iconographic significance” to explain the qualities 0f the religious art object that encourage profound David Wayne Courtney religious experience. The iconographic significance of the religious art object is for the instruction of the worshipper; it provides him or her with a mgdgl_g£ or image of the divine. This model or image is intended to be a Eggs; Egg earthly living. The worshipper is meant to transform his or her world to be like that of the heavenly order. For example, Gothic cathedrals presented an image of the "heavenly Jerusalem", that humanity might emulate the heavenly company of the celestial city. The church building was a symbolic formula for the intellectual, moral, and mystical instruction of the worshipping community. This thesis analyzes the religious intentions of Abbot Suger in the building of the first Gothic structure, the Abbey of St. Denis. Also considered is the socio-historical context which made Suger's inten- tions normative for the development of twelfth and thirteenth century Ile-de-France cathedrals. This thesis advocates that contemporary church architecture should be, like its Gothic antecedents, built with the primary intention of fostering religious experience. The works of two twentieth century churchmen, Ralph Adams Cram and Bishop Charles E. Bennison, and the socio-historical contexts which made their works normative, are analyzed i ~- .€.;. H... - ‘6'.- l 1' I David Wayne Courtney because of intentions to instruct the laity in holy living through the vehicle of church architecture. Copyright by DAVID WAYNE COURTNEY 1982 To Evalyn Ashmore Anderson whose encouragement made this work possible ii instan Ii. ‘ ‘."h r NH.. w-..;€“hs s3-.." Pv- ‘htb‘s try ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Professors Mary Schneider, Winston Wilkinson, Judson Mather, Webster Smith and Molly Smith. Professor Schneider's learned and trenchant comments were of immeasurable aid in expediting the thesis process. If this thesis holds ideas of any consequence, it is because Professor Wilkinson was able to guide me through the maze of theoretical issues concerning religious experience and aesthetic experience. I am convinced that Professor Webster Smith's suggestions, in regard to prose style, brought a great deal of clarity to the arguments posed. It was the seminal thought of Dr. Molly Smith that brought me to Michigan State and this study. It is due to the quality of her scholarship and insight into the nature of religious art objects that this thesis was inspired. The strengths of this thesis are due to the quality of her work; this thesis weaknesses can be only ascribed to the author. iii PREFACE The primary concern of this thesis is the analysis of church buildings that have well-organized symbolic formulas for the instruction of the worshipping community. It is my view that church builders and architects, who erect buildings in the Catholic tradition, have obligations to meet in the structural and symbolic make-up of their churches. Along with the analysis of structures considered, there will also be an evaluation of how well Catholic church builders have fulfilled their obligations to the Church, the worshipping community. I have considered Episcopal and Roman Catholic churches that reflect the same symbolic and theological tradition. I have not considered churches in the Protestant tradition because of the lack of agreement, among protestant sects, as to what religious expression should come from church architecture. iv CHAPTER I. CHAPTER II. CHAPTER III. CHAPTER IV. CHAPTER V. CHAPTER VI. BIBLIOGRAPHY TABLE OF CONTENTS Page IntrOduCtion 00....000.0.00000..0.0.0. 1 Rational Knowledge as the Foundation for Mystical Meanings ................ 48 The Iconographic Significance of Suger's Abbey Church of St. Denis .... 84 Ralph Adams Cram and Neo-Gothic ”Chitec‘ture 0.000000000000000000..0.. 119 Contemporary Church Building, Christ the King Episcopal Cathedral, Kalamazoo, Michigan .................. 167 Conclusion: A Summary ................ 209 000.00.00.000000000...000000000000.0000 219 17 Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure 30 40 LIST OF FIGURES "The Macarena of Miracles" . ......... 2 Melchizedek and Abraham (Reims cathedral) 00.000.......0....00000.0. 59 Abbey Church of St.-Denis. Ground plan of sanctuary ................... 109 Abbey Church, St.-Denis. Interior of ambulatory. 1140-44 ............. 110 Strawberry Hill, Twickenham. 1749-77 0000.00.00.0000000000....0... 124 Typical cathedral plan. (Cram) ..... 125 Hereford Cathedral .................. 126 Plan of Canterbury .......... ........ 127 Salisbury--plan ..................... 128 New York Cathedral (Accepted design). 129 St. Paul's,;Detroit, Mich. (Plan) .. 130 All Saints Church, Ashmont, Dorchester, Mass. ................... 131 Western entrance. St. Paul's Cathedral, Detroit, Mich. ........... 132 St. Paul's Cathedral, Detroit, Mich.. 133 All Saints Church, Ashmont, Dorchester, Mass. (Nave) ........... 134 St. Paul's Cathedral, Detroit, Mich. (Nave) 0000000000....0000000.00.00000 135 St. Thomas', Fifth Avenue. ROOf trusses 00.000000000000000000000 136 vi u .I.‘ I I.’ A $38 21. av . Figure Figure Figure Figure 18. 19. 20. 21. Christ the King Episcopal Cathedral, Kalamazoo, Mich. (Interior) 00000000000000....00000... Christ the King Episc0pal Cathedral, Kalamazoo, Mich. (Exterior) 0.000.000.00000000. ...... 0 Christ the King Episc0pal Cathedral, Kalamazoo, Mich. (PlanS) .000000.00.00.00000000.0..... Christ the King Episcopal Cathedral, Kalamazoo, Mich. (Exterior balcony) vii 171 172 173 '7“: ‘0 takes use ““Hdsca. C ALA A . r‘-=--32:..c. .§. ‘F fl‘cag‘.“s‘ ‘ PA‘ ‘ . ' ”V ‘ G fit“\“0 a CHAPTER I Introduction The modern Christian visual art object, which makes use of the traditional fine arts media and has significant quality and expression, seems to be a rare phenomenon. One does not find many profound religious paintings, sculpture pieces, or mixed media works. If a religious subject does appear on a canvas or in sculpture, it is, as often as not, commentary on religion itself rather than the delivery of a religious idea.1 The last vestige of noteworthy religious art objects is probably church architecture. But even modern ecclesi- astical architecture has had trouble finding a form and vocabulary of expression which would make it distinct from secular structures and simultaneously confront the world with a symbolic expression indicative of the beliefs of the community who built it. On the other hand, it is well known that the development of ecclesiastical architecture in twelfth and thirteenth century France (the Gothic style) may well be unparalleled 1See figure 1, the ”Macarena of Miracles" by Audrey Flack. Figure 1 Audrey Flack. Alamrena qf .llimcles, 1971. Oil, 66’ x46'. By courtesy :1 French & Co. 0’), . .. {It 5:310 V « . flagk'iu‘ v I '13:)?" 3.. 1"":w - (’4'. «cw ’ v _- ', , ‘ r \\\.\~:-“’i’“» .49" loll. 1 « w «4' . 3,. ‘ , ' - r .9, (I , V ,‘I in its 90' ability t1 31.. an; 3215):: o; .a'h“ A‘. Laney“ :‘R 1 p \A‘ “e e: P s. by.“ N‘H“.lon 0‘ ‘ :3; in its power of aesthetic expression and its sheer ability to spiritually inform. The development of the Gothic2 style was not a happy accident. It grew out of well-ordered symbolic and mystical formulas and a rigorous intellectual context. Chapters II and III will examine the development of the socio-historical context of the Gothic style and the initiation of its architectural expression in Abbot Suger's twelfth century abbey church of St. Denis. Church architecture of subsequent periods is made dynamic and expressive not by imitating antecedent styles but by drawing forth the essential elements of the symbolic tradition of the Church and incorporating them in new designs. New designs should be a synthesis of the needs of the contemporary worshipping community and the essential symbolic elements of the Church's tradition. For church builders of subsequent building styles, they, like their gothic predecessors, should work from a coherent intellectual basis in making determinations of a church's style and symbolic program. Chapters IV and V will examine two churches that (like 2Hereinafter, gothic with a small "9” will indicate the period and Gothic with a capital ”G" will refer to the architectural or sculptural style. Eh‘es‘la A H ' C- d 1 ‘ 'a¢¢ V's .DQ EN 6 r -~' UEOAOS ‘ V “0055. n q‘n A..- 5:;et‘ ‘n 5:. 136 St. I :e P. w v St. Denis) are firmly a part of the Catholic tradition. Like St. Denis, these two buildings demonstrate building programs of reflective and learned church builders concerned with meeting the worship needs of their own communities. Chapter IV examines the early twentieth century Gothic Revival work of Ralph Adams Cram, especially St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral in Detroit, Michigan. Chapter V offers an analysis of Christ the King Episcopal Cathedral in Kalamazoo, Michigan (completed in 1969), and notes the influence of the liturgical movement in determining the cathedral's structural and symbolic program. Before proceeding to an analysis of the buildings and the socio-historical contexts that determined their composition, it is necessary to consider some of the issues concerning the focus of this study and to offer some definitions and distinctions which will be needed throughout the study. They are as follows: (1) some things which should remain constant in the design of ecclesiastical structures; (2) changes in church building to meet the socio-historical demands of the worshipping community; (3) what the three structures chosen have in common; (4) how the three structures chosen are different; (5) reasons for selecting the three structures; (6) the difference between religious experience and aesthetic uteri no ccztext o: 0 ' r -‘ 1AA- '. figures ' .-.'A ..‘~. hbsfl‘» 5 fl ‘ A1 . Nsvgoclc d 2“,; 5.: . ” I 1:9 J v I .. I“ . N‘ + ‘- § 1 .-_ ‘MS . I" s , V «N‘U- experience; (7) a definition of religion and the cultural context of religious symbolization; and (8) the concept of "iconographic significande". The remainder of the introduction is devoted to these topics. (1) Some things should remain constant in the design of ecclesiastical structures. There are three constants I wish to note. (a) Churches should be erected in a manner that enhances and develops the worshipping community's religious experience. A church building should reflect a system of symbols that are a “model of" divine truths 3 A that in turn become a "model for" earthly living. church4 through its symbolic system should instruct theologically, liturgically, scripturally, aesthetically, and mystically. And it is the last of these, mystical meanings, which will be my primary focus. Church architects have the opportunity and the obligation to reveal the mystical meanings of the faith. I have included church architecture among other religious art objects, and I want to suggest that their primary 31 will discuss ”model of" and "model for" later in this chapter during my discussion of Clifford Geertz's definition of religion. 4Hereinafter church with a small "c" will indicate the building; Church with a capital "C" will signify the worshipping community gathered. mm is t define and ‘ I I .’0F\‘ a.” LF“‘5ELL I merience w IAQA'F‘ ' xifiuuar} {ins-i t." ‘ ..:k“‘Cd: 5:1 ~‘Hg E -“d‘ ' s 00.... N ‘ ”WM-era 6'. 4.. 5.6 “‘33:. c 1' -. v ‘T‘ rm. G I ; ‘ ire: ‘euc 1. n.‘ import is their iconographic significance. I will define and discuss ”iconographic significance" at some length later in this chapter, but for now it means mystical meanings revealed. (b) Our second constant is that church architecture's first purpose is to foster religious experience; aesthetic experience should only be a secondary concern. It is the church's religious significance which dictates the overall form the building should take. Stylistic and aesthetic considerations should not distract the worshipper from the dynamic expression of a well-ordered system of religious symbols. This thesis argues that aesthetic experience and religious experience are distinct and different phenomena. The concerns of religion are not the concerns of art. Though there will be con- siderable discussion on this issue later in this chapter, for now, aesthetic experience (in the arts) is a response to a form which provides its own reality and is "without practical significance".5 Conversely religious experience is a response to the wider mystical reality that is meant to direct human actions. 5Susanne Langer, Feeling and Form (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953), pp. 50-51. 4115' guara- “I .u‘y. '. ‘0‘ . . ._ . an... ‘3': ”‘9- It»- .— 0..." ‘.e -v. s... :6 ”'56 'c‘ . ‘ V t . 'U '1 ~ CQE.‘e 2 h ‘0 5:915 a, I ‘L 15“. kt.“ There is one further reason that a distinction needs to be made betWeen religious experience and aesthetic experience. Some art historians of the medieval period mistakenly try to determine the "aesthetic form", that builders such as Abbot Suger sought to serve as a model for the new Gothic style. In the case of Suger, he used the mystical hierarchical form of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.6 The Pseudo-Dionysian mystical hierarchy is a religious form not an aesthetic one. Otto von Simson and Erwin Panofsky, leading art historians of the medieval period, both make this mistake of calling the symbolic formula of St. Denis an aesthetic form. The religious form of St. Denis and the problems of the von Simson and Panofsky analyses of the structure will be considered at some length in chapter III. The distinction between aesthetic form and religious form seems a small matter until one stops to consider the very different impact a religious form, as opposed to an aesthetic form, is meant to have on the practical lives of human beings. Through a system of religious symbols the worshipper is called to an imitation of the Divine and is asked to transform Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite was an Eastern monk and writer of nee-Platonic mystical treatises during the sixth century. the van: 1 :riered to '1 M" “E a" "U an n I Lie 9‘“ .. IUQO‘ - ‘ tsetssed 1 l: 'Q‘ ‘ “39.3 re: a ‘A. H“ ' ‘5 fl nice". 9|. ‘ 'A ‘ "’ R\ S» fit‘ ‘ :‘Vus J h D s“ attlt‘ ? ‘n th .. H d 53-,“ blifir‘ar“ Q‘ ‘~ Se"?- AL .“ V- V 4- the world into an image of the heavenly order. (c) The design of every church building should be ordered to create a sacred space. This space should provide an image of the union between heaven and earth. Like the holy of holies or Mount Horeb or the altar of the eucharistic event, it is a space where the Presence of God is assured. The issue of sacred space will be discussed especially in chapter V. (2) Though many aspects of church architecture should remain constant, it is also necessary that the design and style of church buildings change to meet the religious needs and other socio—historical demands of their own epochs. Three changes, in regard to the demands of the socio-historical context, are noted. (a) As the Church continually changes, as a result of its search for an authentic faith, the worship programs change. Church buildings should be organized in ways that support the worship programs of the community gathered. In the examination of the three buildings chosen for this thesis, we will witness radical changes in attitudes as to the place of the laity in worship. In the gothic period, the laity was cut off from the eucharistic rite and were not allowed to receive the sacrament. In contrast, the late nineteenth century churches of Ralph Adam.Cram make the altar visually dominant for the laity. But the emphasis was on the Presence of Christ not his reception. In contemporary Catholic worship the emphasis is on the reception of Christ by the whole community. The community makes up the one incarnate body of Christ in the world through the reception of his body and blood. (b) That the church should be an instructional tool of the faith remains a constant for the Church, but the church must be modified in its design to be consistent with the prevailing ideas of theology and spirituality. The church can and should provide a symbolic program that instructs the worshipping community as to its, the community's, relationship to God. The structure should provide a system which enhances the moral instruction of the scriptures and sacraments. The structure should provide an environment which promotes contemplation and understanding of mystical meanings. (c) The church building should be built in the style of the wider culture so as not to cut itself off from secular society. If the heavenly order is meant to be carried into the world to transform it, the Church can not allow itself to be alienated from that world. The message of the Church will only be allowed to be carried to the wider culture if the Church is seen as a contributing member of the culture. As the Church 183:" A “‘51 n b_-s n 1 .‘ “h. H. 3.‘~~ \ M‘ ""39“... cent 10 was the center of gothic culture, its architecture needed only to be indicative of its own religious ideas. But the contemporary church is challenged to find a means of being a part of the secular context while not losing its ecclesaistical identity and purpose. The building of the contemporary church in the dominant secular styles will be discussed in greater detail in chapter V. Having outlined the obligations of church builders, I would like to briefly consider the three structures chosen for this dissertation by discussing what they have in common, what is different among them, and how the subsequent structures were influenced by antecedent styles. (3) Five aspects of what the buildings have in common will be considered. (a) All three buildings, St. Denis, St. Paul's, and the cathedral at Kalamazoo, demonstrate that the iconographic significance of the structure was a first concern of its builders. The builders consciously tried to capture the mysteries of Christianity in their structures, and these mysteries were the chief focus of each of the structures. (b) The realizations of these three churches were the result of single, forceful men. Though well- ordered and dynamic visions may more easily be carried 3:: by 51‘ 'zy the cc recczzzenc gm out It is so: the tire izin'idm churches at C lie. have con 11 out by single powerful persons whose visions are untainted by the communities they serve, this thesis does not recommend that significant church architecture should grow out of the imposed program of a single person. It is somewhat of a coincidence in this thesis that the three structures chosen were built in response to individual visions. There exist many notable contemporary churches, such as the abbey church at St. John the Baptist at Collegeville, Minnesota, built by Marcel Breuer, which have come about through the decisions of learned and reflective committees of church people who carefully engendered, in their decisions, the best of liturgical, theological, ascetical, symbolic, and aesthetic thought. (c) All three buildings grow out of the Catholic tradition although two of the buildings are Episcopal churches. Ralph Adams Cram was an Anglo-Catholic (high churchman) who desired to restore the Episcopal Church's architecture to its Catholic and sacramental roots. Cram felt a moral commitment to his building program, and thus believed that any evaluation of his structures should be made with regard to the honesty with which he used his materials and how adequately his buildings fostered Catholic worship. EYES-:12 tglica 12 The liturgical movement7 of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been as much a concern for the Anglican Church as for the Roman Catholic Church.8 A scientific study of the Fathers and the early liturgies, and the reconsideration of the purpose and meaning of the worshipping community, has been a common concern to all denominations who acknowledge the same tradition. Bishop Bennison's cathedral at Kalamazoo is a church built in response to the insights uncovered by the liturgical movement. (d) Earlier styles have had an influence on subsequent building styles. Influences of earlier 7The "liturgical movement" is an episode in the church's on-going reconsideration of its liturgy and rites. It began as a nineteenth century monastic movement interested in renewing ancient liturgies which seemed more apprOpriate expressions of Catholic faith. It more recently has been a movement to restore what is essential to the faith. It has also had a profound effect on the Church's reconsideration of its ecclesiology. And the liturgical movement has been a powerful force in ecumenismm I think it is fair to say, at the time of this writing, that the liturgical movement is a study carried on without concern for denominational affiliation. 8A royal commission was established by the Prime Minister of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1867 to reconsider what was essential to the liturgy and how rubrics might be changed to encourage greater participation of the laity in the liturgy. C. J. Cuming, A History of Anglican Liturgy (New York: Macmillan, 1969), p. 200. strictures at scme le an earlier work of Ra style that by the R85 styles to tecture ti 3f the me: his 'Orgar needs of 1 Past: and rEligifius to the he: sacranent: Tl moi in . 13 structures on subsequent buildings will be dealt with at some length in the body of the text. One example of an earlier style's influence on a later style is in the work of Ralph Adams Cram. Cram worked in the Gothic style that he thought had been prematurely interrupted by the Reformation and the coming of Renaissance building styles to England. He wanted to reinstitute an archi- tecture that would be a building block in the restoration of the medieval age of faith. He believed if the structure was ”organic" (living) and able to change to meet the new needs of the worshipping community, the wisdom of the past, and the most powerful architectural expression of religious belief (the Gothic style), could be married to the new emphasis on full lay participation in the sacraments. The symbolic use of light has been a powerful motif in the architecture of Suger, Cram, and the cathedral at Kalamazoo. It is this theme of ”light" and its symbolic organization that the cathedral of Kalamazoo borrows to focus attention on the altar as the hub of the eucharistic liturgy. A discussion of other symbols borrowed by the cathedral at Kalamazoo from earlier churches will be discussed in chapter V. (e) Finally, a recurring theme for all the builders studied is the disposition to say that the starch is be the hea pi MC V I zany for: m cmcn 391' also historical 14 church is "organic". The church, as it is believed to be the heavenly Jerusalem on earth, transcends its material substance and fosters eternal life. In chapters IV and V there will be a great deal of discussion on the many forms of the church's organicity. (4) As much as the churches under scrutiny have in common as a result of belonging to the same tradition, they also have in difference because of the socio- historical contexts that influenced their expressions. Religious art objects of the Gothic style were distinct entities for the presentation of mystical meanings. The other two forms that were capable of bearing mystical meanings were Scripture and the sacraments. Chapter II is devoted to a description of the intellectual and socio-historical context that provided a hierarchy of knowledge that prepared one for the perception and understanding of the divine order revealed through Scripture, sacrament, and the iconographic significance of the religious art object. Though Cram wished to impose the Gothic iconographic formula on the modern church, the worship needs of modern religious communities meant that adjustments to the Gothic style were needed. Cram believed the ideals of Gothic could be reconciled to the modern church if Gothic Revival architects were flexible enough to build 15 structures around the changing ritual of the Church, while fulfilling the moral injunction to build honest Gothic. In chapter IV I will develop the ideas concerning Cram's moral aesthetic. This moral aesthetic meant that no structural deception should occur in the building--stone vaults should be made of stone, be load bearing, and not have steel running through them. But Cram's moral aesthetic also meant that architects of ecclesiastical structures had the moral obligation to use as their starting point the premier architectural style of the Church, Gothic. Where Suger felt an obligation to provide a mystical image of the heavenly Jerusalem, as proferred by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Cram felt the moral obligation of renewing what he instinctively believed was the ideal vision of the Gothic; in fact, he knew nothing of the four-fold interpretation of mystical images or the angelic hierarchies that motivated Gothic builders. Modern members of the Church, such as Bishop Charles E. Bennison, reject imposed historic styles. In considering the case of Bishop Bennison and the cathedral at Kalamazoo, I will explore in chapter V the socio-historical context of the liturgical movement and its emphases on the eucharist, the maintenance of the body of Christ in the community, and the social responsibilities of the Church in the wor Semison c :eadopting Stat brou; inst: .ctiv the heaven IEf:ECts a the Can t the GSthic few of the “*1 see 1 abstribec 16 in the world. Because of the liturgical movement, BiShOp Bennison chose to build in a Contemporary style while readopting symbols of past architectural styles. Where Cram brought forth the Gothic style with only an instinctive notion of its iconographic formula, Bennison's church is wholly modern in style while simultaneously resupplying Gothic iconographic images, such as that of the heavenly Jerusalem. Bishop Bennison's building reflects an understanding of Gothic iconographic formula that can be brought forward without having also to follow the Gothic style. But Bishop Bennison only selects a few of the iconographic images of the Gothic style. We will see in the body of this thesis that each builder subscribed to different mystical formats. As each builder hopes to build a powerful iconographic formula into his structure, each has prescribed a different symbolic system consistent with what is seen to be essential to the faith of his age. (5) There are specific reasons for selecting these three particular churches for use in developing the idea of iconographic significance. Clifford Geertz's definition of religion (which will be explicated later in this chapter) suggests that a system of symbols provides a culture a vision of a unique reality. The earthly reality is a part of the wider reality, but the gvbhi h. ul‘ .2 «.1 A V... n': e ' R! was i; a: 99 22583 A: m 0‘ \na: :t. 17 earthly reality is also incomplete and unperfected; it is only as the earthly reality is transformed and becomes indistinguishable from the wider reality that its purpose and meaning are realized. The three buildings I have chosen were all built to provide an image of the wider reality. Those persons who worship in each of these structures were or are expected to go out from them and live in a manner consistent with the image of what it is to participate in the wider reality. Each of our three church builders has documented how their churches are meant to provide an image of the wider reality, and each has documented what effect their structures are meant to have on those who worship in them. Suger's church, most art historians agree, is the first building constructed in the Gothic style. The elements of iconographic significance he tried to capture in his structure became a model for builders in the Gothic style after him. For example, the bishop of Chartres hired the sculptors of Suger's West facade after they completed the work at St. Denis. Suger also records the story of how the effect of the abbey and her patron saint on Louis VI and the Lords of France brought about a firm.alliance, an alliance that Suger believed, only the Church could forge. This story is briefly told in chapter III. But the most important reassn fo: izcmentel 1: his 5': 1: these ship of t 3.2:: re “Ilia! b“.f + Ugly u~ I ‘hyfig‘ “Mu-sh t ‘l'i‘ch 5“ .Y‘. “ “*Ptdra they chu \ It}. "‘1'8 c C J .. 18 reason for choosing St. Denis is that Abbot Suger documented his iconographic intentions for the structure in his writings De Administratione and De Consecratione. In these documents he provides an image of the relation— ship of the earthly order to the divine order. The church reflects not only an image of the heavenly order but the mystical aspects of the hierarchy of angels interposed between God and humankind. Angels and the heavenly are without image; the image provided by the church is only there that the worshippers might be led through these visible symbols to the invisible reality. We will examine the results of Suger's iconographic intentions in the first level of the chevet and in the sculptural organization of the West tympanum of his abbey church. Cram, like Suger, documents his symbolic inten- tions, an organic formula of church building, in several books and articles. It is in fact through his writing, as an architectural critic, that he later became interested in becoming an architect. His iconographic intentions for cathedral building are no better exemplified than in St. Paul's Cathedral in Detroit. This building, unlike St. John the Divine in New York (based on another Cram design), is a logical continuation of fifteenth century English Gothic. Its plan, lighting, sculptural program, and placate: pan for Church E 6'- ' ~19 SIIU ." ‘ cuo'uu‘ure ' actrratr l9 placement of the altar come very close to Cram's ideal plan for a cathedral that is outlined in his book 9 As for Church Building (compare Figures 8 and 13). the structure's relationship to people of the immediate culture, Cram says he built his churches not "for the admiration of the passerby" but for strengthening the religious understanding of the worshipping community; and we see that there is very little sculpture on the exterior but a great deal on the interior.10 Finally, I chose the cathedral at Kalamazoo, for it is so clearly a structure built in response to the concerns and insights of the contemporary liturgical movement. As the building was completed in 1969, it is a structure that we can compare to the dominant styles of architecture now in vogue. Its admirable reconcili- ation of a Modern architectural style with an organization of space to meet the demands of the liturgical movement, and a synthesis of symbols drawn from the Judeo-Christian tradition, lead me to believe that this structure can serve as a paradigm for contemporary church building. Bishop Bennison maintains that this church is the church of the whole Catholic family. He has organized the 9Ralph Adams Cram, Church Building (Boston: Marshall Jones Company, 1924). loIbid0' p. 85. 20 seating in concentric circles around the altar to suggest that as the worshippers leave the church those concentric circles continue out into the world. The altar is the center of all those concentric circles. It is the Space where man is mysteriously joined to God; it is the sacred space. What is intended for the communicants of the cathedral is that they look upon themselves no longer as merely sinful men in an imperfect world but as the body of Christ. As the incarnate Christ they are to go out into the world to transform it into the divine image. As the church reveals the heavenly order, so it is that the Church (the community gathered) should provide an image of the divine to the world. Having discussed why these three buildings were chosen, we are now ready to proceed to some distinctions and definitions of terms that are used throughout this thesis. The most important distinctions needed, for analyses of our church structures and their socio- historical contexts, are between religious experience and aesthetic experience and the purposes of religion and art. Terms that need to be provided with working definitions for the rest of the thesis are "religion" and "iconographic significance". (6) A distinction needs to be drawn between religious experience and aesthetic experience for two reasons. religious the same p :atures a: they are i experience EVEZCS , a; as p Ber \ \e ‘ r111 11c 21 reasons. First, there is an assumption among many that religious experience and aesthetic experience are one and the same phenomenon. That both experiences by their natures are fundamentally non-discursive, does not mean they are identical. I wish to submit that aesthetic experience and religious experience are very different events, and this is especially known by their consequences. Second, I have already mentioned two art historians who confuse religious and aesthetic form. Otto von Simson, as is discussed in chapter III of this thesis, suggests that the Pseudo-Dionysian, iconographic, hierarchical formula is an "aesthetic form" for Abbot Suger. As an example of one who maintains the claim that religious and aesthetic experience are identical, let us consider Bennet Reimer, who, in his doctoral disser- tation of 1963 entitled ”The Common Dimensions of Aesthetic and Religious Experience", codified the assumption that these two experiences are the same phenomenon.11 By borrowing from Paul Tillich's theo- logical thought about "ultimate concerns", Reimer proposes that art, like religion, shows forth ultimate concerns. Aesthetic experience and religious experience, 11Bennet Reimer, "The Common Dimensions of Aesthetic and Religious Experience” (Champaign: University of Illinois, 1963). in Reimer' s C see response mire-re cone ...'Iillic of aesthe ultimate such as a significa £13 infin Them deals wit which de: art-works Point of the real: because C Of that h” thIOugh I Mr. I 1‘ ~1- ‘ “Wing w? be. He goes 22 in Reimer's thinking, are two different terms for the same response to insights gained in the pursuit of ultimate concerns. Reimer states: ...Tillich recognizes at the outset the power of aesthetic experience to reach the level of ultimate concern. Finite and preliminary concerns, such as art-works, cannot be elevated to infinite significance, Tillich points out, but through them Egg infinite Egg become real [accepting Tillich's understanding of theonomous culture]. Theology deals with man's ultimate concerns--those things which determine our being or not-being. While art-works are not objects of theology from the point of view of artistic merit, they 3;; within the realm of the theologian's subject matter because of ”their power of expressing some aspects of that which concerns us ultimately, in and through their aesthetic form." Mr. Reimer's thesis was written with the intention of showing what a profound event aesthetic experience can be. He goes so far as to say that aesthetic experience is as important as and a great deal like religious experi- ence; their likeness leads him to offer a proof that they are the same experience. He concludes that the importance of educating a public to art's positive humanizing effects cannot be overestimated. But I suggest that the results of aesthetic experience and religious experience are different when seen in their greater contexts. The religious experience helps create a model 9: the divine 12Ibid., p. 194. I would like to make clear that my quarrel is not with Tillich, but with Reimer's indis- criminate application to the whole of society of Tillich's thoughts on theonomous culture. and a l as such pr T‘: :c relate realities heieviour “:LtY 1 23 and a mggglIfgg earthly living. The aesthetic object as such presents no such model. The effect of religion on culture is precisely to relate divine order to earthly order, so that the realities of each can be established through human behaviour consistent with religion's own metaphysic. Aesthetic experience suggests no models. The significance of aesthetic experience is the perception of art's own abstract formulae. Art is disconnected from practical application. Susanne Langer says "...all art is abstract. Its very substance [is] quality without practical signifi- cance..."13 Art's quality is the expression of human feeling. The aesthetic experience is the perception of that symbol of feeling through the unique expression of reality each art form presents. In art, forms are abstracted only to be made clearly apparent, and are freed from their common uses only to be put to new uses: to act as s 018, to become expressive of human feeling. That art has had and will continue to have some effect on an individual's psychological make-up and on his resulting behavior is very possible. Art educates our 13Susanne Langer, Feeling and Fogm (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953), pp. 50-51. 141bid., p. 51. 24 feelings. It articulates our emotions and gives them form so that we may better understand our web of feelings. Langer says, Above all, however, art penetrates deep into personal life because in giving form to the world, it articulates human nature: sensibility, energy, passion, and mortality. More than anything else in experience, the arts mold our actual life of feeling. But aesthetic experience, unlike religious experience, is not part of a codified formula for the purpose of changing societies. Manifestoes for the change of the society through art, such as the Dadaists', have come and gone with little long-lasting effect, for although art can show forth a feelingful, social complaint, its purpose is seldom to provide a model for solving the complaint. It is the nature of art to be disconnected in its form from having practical use to culture. Reimer wants to grant a great deal more to the aesthetic experience than it can carry. He says, ...it will be argued that the experience of art in the formalist sense can indeed, if it is of high enough quality, carry us into the realm of human values, and at a point at which these yglues can only be discussed in metaphysical terms. 151bid., p. 401. 16Reimer, "Common Dimensions of Aesthetic and Religious Experience”, p. 83. 25 He uses the writings of Langer to defend this view of aesthetic experience especially in the area of visual art by suggesting that visual art creates a higher realm of images to which both representational art and abstract art refer. He concludes from his reading of Langer that what religious experience and aesthetic experience share in common is the non-discursive, presentational symbol. For Reimer this symbol presents an image of feelings and human values that transcends the pragmatic organization of earthly function. But we have already seen (see Langer quote, p. 22) that the art object can only be an image of our feelings. For Reimer, it is in this "image” that art addresses ultimate concerns. He suggests that our feelings, aesthetically experienced in the art object through images, provide us with a metaphysical, sacred order that can result then in ritual or in secular societal practice. But Langer contradicts this directly by suggesting that art and its aesthetic preception liberates our mind from the use of conceptualization for practical uses. Schiller was the first thinker who saw what really makes ”Schein", or semblance, important for art: the fact that it liberates perception and with it, the power of conception-~from all practical purposes, and lets the mind dwell on the sheer appearance of things. The function of artistic illusion is not "make-believe", as many philosophers and psychologists assume, but the very opposite, disengagement from belief... The krowle signif give a 1‘13: is 1:: =";er:ence v.1. ‘ 4 o’:. C 26 knowledge that what is before us has no practical significance in the world is what enables us to give attention to its appearance as such. What is important to remember here is that the aesthetic experience confirms the "otherness" of art. Art presents its own reality. Its qualities are carried in its forms, and the forms possess their own import. But the forms are not empty abstractions for they do have the content of human feeling and sentience.18 To say that the art object cannot carry is not to reduce its scope of expres— sion. Religion, on the other hand, provides its community with an image for human action in the world. Religious experience is gained both from a perception of the divine order and from the practical application of that order to transform the earthly order. In that the images provided by ecclesiastical architecture should first promote religious experience, a working definition of religion is the next order of business. (7) Because the churches studied here were built in different historical periods, it is important to specify the common religious sources of symbolization they embody. To this end I have relied upon the "anthro- pological" definition of religion formulated by Clifford 1.7Langer, Feeling and Form, p. 49. IBIbid. :eertz. Get 'Religic (I) a s; powerfu. motivat: concept: (4) c101 of facti seen on: {his definil tenomenon. 1925 define isfinition l " (1) $5.115 that 5 512ng the ( iieal Patter 53110113: ai‘lhere 1 far as 1 denotes inherit, forms b1 perpetug 11d att: :ze reSult < 27 Geertz. Geertz says, "Religion" is: (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men [people] by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) thg moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. , This definition deals with religion as a cultural phenomenon. The above definition needs many of its own terms defined; therefore, I will lay out Geertz's definition by breaking it down into its five parts. "(1) A system of symbols which acts to..." means that sacred symbols serve the purpose of synthe- sizing the culture's order of day to day living with an ideal pattern oi'life. "Culture" is discussed here as follows: In any case, the culture concept to which I adhere has neither multiple referents nor, so far as I can see, any unusual ambiguity: it denotes an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men [people] communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.20 The result of the synthesis between a culture's metaphysic and actual human circumstances is that a link is formed 19Clifford Geertz, "Religion as a Cultural System", Michael Banton (ed.), Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion (London: Tavistock, 1966), p. 4. 201bid., p. 3. which the vi uésutually 5L In religiox ethos [what metaphysic] able by be: ideally ads he world-x is renderec ‘resented a affairs pen such a way 'n 9"; .- ..l.s system 3blative as i] 55 the moral a1 reaffirm . tiger II of . £18,751 age t t: aft, afld m mag-«ind. Th fiil‘trained I 28 in which the viability of each domain is established and mutually supported by the other. Geertz says, In religious belief and practice a group's ethos [what I am calling the culture's metaphysic] is rendered intellectually reason- able by being shown to represent a way of life ideally adapted to the actual state of affairs the world-view describes, while the world-view is rendered emotionally convincing by being presented as an image of an actual state of affairs peculiarly yell arranged to accomodate such a way of life. 1 In this system moral and aesthetic choices are made objective as indicative of the immutable reality. As the moral and aesthetic opinions become deeply felt, they reaffirm the truth from which they come. In chapter 11 of this dissertation I will show how the medieval age took symbols from Scripture, the sacraments and art, and made them a part of the knowledge of humankind. This formula suggested that man through a well-trained rational mind could perceive, with the grace of God, the prelapsarian order of the earth. A Gothic church, such as Suger's, provided not only a formula of symbols to provide an image of the earthly realm and its true nature, but also provided an image of the divine order that we might first perfect our earthly nature and then purify it to be one with the divine. ZlIbid. In 1 necessary fl :elir'ion an 15.5 disser :sei thr oug Sa :-A ' . «u snoulc bi HEII- i] Ffiacls , 55 the 3V 71‘3" and are 1“died. me! an 29 In that a consistent use of the term "symbol" is necessary for an understanding of Geertz's definition of religion and is a term of such importance to the rest of this dissertation, this is the definition which will be used throughout: a symbol is any object, quality, idea, event, act, and/or relation which is used as a vehicle to conception. The conception is the symbolic meaning.22 Sacred symbols are to result in cultural acts and should be readily observable. If these acts are to be well-integrated and consistent with the image of the symbols, they must show forth a pattern or model. But as the symbols reveal both the efficacy of the world View and the reality of the sacred realm, two models are needed. A.mgggl g: reality reveals the sacred order and provides an image or mgdglflfgg cultural application to answer the culture's moral, intellectual, and emotional needs. In the "model for", a theory is created to guide and organize our relationships (physical, psychological, gt cetera). In a religious system, symbolic concepts are not called theories but "rites", "doctrines", and ”melodies".23 Geertz says of the double aspect of symbol, 22Langer, Feeling and Form, p. 369 ff. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, p. 27 ff. 23Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System”, p. 7. Unlike ge surces, culture 1 they glv to socia themselv be will see as;ect' of r sertation we “17:31 ‘n Lu... ._ wr e c‘ s. ‘ “‘5 [1". [“‘¢Lankin G teniC-h \.-Cy ' a; u; est 30 Unlike genes, and other non-symbolic information sources, which are only models for, not models of, culture patterns have an intrinsic double aspect: they give meaning, i.e. objective conceptual form, to social and psychological reality both by shapigg themselves to it and by shaping it to themselves. We will see how church architecture will have this "double aspect" of patterns. All three buildings in this dis- sertation were built with the intention of providing a model for earthly living and a model of the wider reality. The second part of this definition of religion is "to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men [people]". "Mood" here means a great deal more than transient, sentimental dispositions, such as that of a teenage girl being crushed by the termination of her first love. "Mood" here points to human tendencies which become more enduring as they are found to be consistent with ideal images, "which lend a chronic character to the flow of his [humankind's] activity and the quality of his [humankind's] experience."25 Geertz distinguishes a ”motivation" from a mood by describing it this way. "A motivation is a persisting tendency, a chronic inclination to perform certain sorts of acts and experience certain sorts of feelings in certain 24Ibid., pp. 7-8. 251bid., p. 9. scrts of si1 The 'forsolatinz the moods a :easoo for mono s1; JA‘I'ZC-n 0L ,- <3: 1“; ‘ég—u F5 4“." $- 31 . . "26 sorts of Situations. The third part of Geertz's definition is "formulating conceptions of a general order of existence." The moods and motivations we call religious find their reason for being and purpose by drawing from symbols or symbolic systems. The symbols provide the sacred pattern in which our moods and motivations are to participate. The definition of proper dispositions or system of action based on the sacred pattern finds its "world View" counterpart in the conceptualization and codification of systems to direct human behavior. Fundamental to religion is the ability of the sacred symbol to create a situation in which humanity sanctifies its action in the belief that its action participates in ”transcendent truth". Geertz offers the following example. If sacred symbols did not at one and the same time induce dispositions in human beings and formulate, however obliquely, inarticulately, or unsystema- tically, general ideas of order, then the empirical differentia of religious activity or religious experience would not exist. A man can indeed be said to be 'religious' about golf, but not merely if he pursues it with passion and plays it on Sundays: He must also see it as symbolic of some transcendent truths.27 Again, all three structures, analyzed in the body of this thesis, have a symbolic, conceptual formula for 261bid., p. 10. 27Ibid., p. 12-13. an 32 the instruction of the worshipper as to the nature of his or her existence. For example, chapter V has some discussion as to the architectural arrangement of the cathedral at Kalamazoo. Its iconographic arrangement suggests that the further one moves from the center of the Church's power and authority, as is affirmed in the eucharistic event, the greater is the world's and humankind's privation from God. The fourth part of Geertz's definition of religion is "...clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality...” The guarantor that our moods and motiva- tions are authentic and veridical is based on the ”prior 28 Subscription to an authority acceptance of authority." outside self is how the religious person justifies the body of belief. A particular belief is justified by showing its place in the entire religious conception. Only after the authority is accepted can the wealth of revelation flow from it. Geertz says "the basic axiom underlying what we may perhaps call 'the religious perspective' is everywhere the same: he [or she] who would know must first believe."29 281bid., p. 25. 291bid., p. 26. Thong :iteria for :f the revel: establishes 1 respective :E‘man dis sezse perspe 'Lie aesthet In c :9 realitii :‘IC'inds the 1" sancnf 3? “5118450; Cf realitiq Un :fl :I . s»h«‘tles :‘ESt F’: ~ .321 e“lty 0 s‘ \' ; lig‘ous -.Qh 33 Though we have an authority that reveals the criteria for authentic human action, the "factuality" of the revelations has not yet been established. Geertz establishes factuality by contrasting the religious perspective (or religious way of seeing) to other modes of human discernment. The others include ”the common— sense perspective", ”the science perspective", and "the aesthetic perspective". In contrast to the common-sense perspective, the realities of everyday life, the religious perspective grounds these everyday realities in a wider reality. The sanctification of everyday realities is accomplished by transforming them from a loosely bunched collection of realities to interconnected aspects of a cosmic whole. Unlike the scientific perspective which examines realities with an academic skepticism that yields, at best, probabilistic hypotheses, the religious perspective examines realities to see how they fit into the broad reality of non-hypothetical truths. Geertz says of the religious perspective, ”Rather than detachment, its watchword is commitment, rather than analysis, encounter."30 Geertz.reaffirms our understanding of the aesthetic view or prespective as regards the aesthetic object. He shares 30Ibid., pp. 27—28. 34 in the view that the aesthetic perspective is detached from common-sensical and pragmatic concerns; the aesthetic is interested in its own forms and images as they are "in themselves". He says, And as for the aesthetic perspective, which under the rubric of 'the aesthetic attitude' has been perhaps most exquisitely examined, it involves a different sort of suspension of naive realism and practical interest, in that instead of questioning the credentials of everyday experience that experience is merely ignored in favor of an eager dwelling upon appearances, an engrossment in surfaces, an absorption in things, as we say, 'in themselves'... I would like to remind the reader of Langer's view of the art object, on which I have relied for making dis- tinctions between aesthetic concerns and religious concerns. She says, It is not the percipient who discounts the surroundings, but the work of art which, if it is successful, detaches itself from the rest of the world; he [or she] merely sees it as it is presented to him [or her]. In that I have disavowed Reimer's understanding of the relationship of religious concerns to aesthetic concerns, and if we find Geertz's definition of religion more helpful to the understanding of the use of symbolic forms, his distinction between the aesthetic view and the religious view becomes important to the thrust of 311bid., p. 27. 32Langer, Feeling and Form, p. 45. 35 this dissertation. It is the issue of determining the factuality of events that separates the two perspectives. Art divorces itself from the whole issue of factuality. Its interest is in creating an aura of semblance and illusion. The ”religious perspective" might be said to be opposite the "aesthetic perspective" in that its primary concern is fact--the yearning to sense the really real, immutable, in the face of secular dissuasions. In sum the religious perspective is ...the imbuing of a certain specific complex of symbols--of the metaphysic they formulate and the style of life they recommend--with a persuasive authority which, from an analytic point of view is the essence of religious action. The supreme act of uniting all symbols into an order which draws together the sacred realm.and earthly realm, making them one realm, is ritual. The American philosopher George Santayana says, Any attempt to speak without speaking any particular language is not more hopeless than the attempt to have a religion that shall be no religion in particular... Thus every living and healthy religion has a marked idiosyncrasy. Its power consists in its special and suprising message and in the bias which that revelation gives to life. The vistas it opens and the mysteries it propounds are another world to live in; and another world to live in-- whether we expect ever to pass wholly over into34 it or no--is what we mean by having a religion. 33Geertz, ”Religion as a Cultural System”, p. 28. 34George Santayana, Reason in Religion (London: Constable, 1912), pp. 5-6. 36 Any ritual may seem to the casual outside observer to be merely an art form, but for the believer it is far more; it is a model of what he believes and a model for the believing of it: "in these plastic dramas men 35 In ritual attain their faith as they portray it.” there is no aesthetic distance between the actors and the audience. The ritual event is not important only to itself. It is a re-presentation of reality and a vehicle to embrace that reality. The aesthetic object is an unenterable world of illusion.36 We will see the powerful effects ritual has had or is meant to have on the worshippers of St. Denis, St. Paul's, and Christ the King. The ritual in which Louis VI received the banner of St. Denis and pledged himself a vassal of the saint had the effect of uniting all of France against an imminent invasion. The greatest concentration of light in the nave is reserved for the center aisle of St. Paul's, where the processions take place. The primary aspect of the architectural plan for Christ the King (the cathedral at Kalamazoo) is that the building be a tool of the ritual of the 35Geertz, ”Religion as a Cultural System", p. 29. 361 am.using "illusion“ here, as Langer does, meaning that the aesthetic object is its own, sheer, virtual form and is not an imitation of reality and therefore has no practical reference. escharisti- Fi. azr defini 21.7.1er 1‘ spools th is a: awn t “:9 to I :5 . 37 eucharistic event. Finally, then, we come to the fifth part of our definition "that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic." It is in the ritual and permanent symbols that grow out of it that the cosmic reality is drawn together and is most powerfully recognized. But that which proves religion to be a powerful force is that humanity begins to change its conceptualization of its common-sense world and uses religious symbols to redefine it. If the symbol is a unique presentation of fact, of reality, the religious person will reorder his or her world to be consistent with the reality re- vealed. The common-sense perspective remains, but it is altered; it is now seen as an aspect of the wider reality. Each event in the common-sense world is somehow also a cosmological event. The intensity of application of a culture's religion will of course vary from time to time and place to place, as will different individual applications of the religious system. Some symbolic formulas will grow or lessen in influence as inducements to religious behavior. Some symbolic uses will disappear altogether. Symbolic formulas which do not bring depth of religious insight, rightly fade away. But the symbolic formulas which enhance the faith and keep the cosmological vision :o:;lete ar (8) sextant : 9““mnrav-h ovvabvj. .4“ u 38 complete are too precious to be lost. (8) For the purposes of this disertation, the most important symbolic formula is what I want to call the iconographic significance of the religious art object. The iconographic significance of the religious art object is that aspect which serves as a vehicle to introduce the believer to the metaphysical order of his or her belief. The iconographic aspect is believed not to be built on any human conceptual system but is an order revealed mystically. The formula for depiction or organization of the art object is rational and "perfect". The rational is the gift (by the grace of God) which allows us to order phenomena, find their relationships, and learn their interdependence in the cosmological scheme. The iconographic significance of the religious art object is ”perfect” in that the uniting of the elements in the formula is perfectly ordered. This order is revealed mystically. I have used the term iconographic significance in referring to a part of the operation of the Western medieval, religious art object rather than taking the leap to call it an outright icon for two reasons, and these reasons are not wholly separable. First, I am convinced that the Western medieval, religious art object makes some appeal to our aesthetic se:sibilitic 3;: religio ales an a; hisdox t: are not C] gracisely . 0' l I‘ m I 1‘!) .1. I I t [‘1 (n . ’9 0-4 I! (D O '1 [1! 't 1 O (I? 39 sensibilities. The object is used not only to appeal to our religious beliefs, thoughts, and insights but also makes an appeal to our feelings. Many in the Eastern Orthodox tradition would argue that the reason icons have not changed in their basic look and formula is precisely an utter lack of interest in demonstrating an image of human feelings--the icon is meant to be an image of the divine. For the East, the vagaries of human emotions are transient and present no consistent image of the immutable divine. Second, the patristic understanding of the icon, which provides an image of Christ, is that it represents his transfigured, deified person, not Jesus the corruptible man. Patriarch St. Germain said, "In icons we represent 'the holy flesh' of the Lord."37 The Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council explained it this way. Although the Catholic Church in her painting represents Christ in His human form, it does not separate His flesh from His divinity which are united in Him; on the contrary, the Church believes that His flesh is deified and confesses it to be one with His divinity conforming to the teaching of the great Gregory the Theologian and to the truth...but does not through that deprive this flesh of its divinity. The same as he who represents a man through painting does not thereby render him 37Leonid Ouspensky, "The Theology of the Icon in the Orthodox Church”, trans. Jane M. de vyver Horka, Le Sens et 1e Contenu de L'icon (Editions de 1'Exarchat Patriarcal Russe en Europe Occidentale: Paris, 1960), p. 8. inanimated, animated. because of make an icc deified fie other than prototype. icon receii likeness t} type: 35.. is venerab Tieh’estern ”u: tithe Huger}: WEI image f 5:1in used 32 His true, 6 tip-.1 umdataneous l) :5? 1 u aal peOple liz'et ‘ PMSUe 1 fit“.- God's gre 117' lne, There ‘1 , 35 Ssn fOr the :1 reSpects t: 10 Sun ‘JQESt th: 40 inanimated, but on the contrary, the man lives animated. Just as the image is called his portrait because of the likeness, in the same way, when we make an icon of the Lord, we are confessing His deified flesh, and we recognize in the icon nothing other than an image representing a likeness of the prototype. It is due to this likeness that the icon receives its name; it is by means of this likeness that the icon participates in the proto- type, and it is due t03§his likeness that the icon is venerable and holy. The Western image of Christ suffering or beleaguered by the misery of the flesh is for the Orthodox not a proper image for the icon. The icon of Christ is strictly used to show the transfigured Christ, an image of His true, divine nature. In the icon Christ is simultaneously the second Adam that is the Prototype for all people to see their true nature, so that they might pursue the likeness of Christ, and in so doing, with GOd's grace, find themselves in unity with the divine. There is some temptation to go on at length here about the differences between ”image" and "like- 11955" for the Eastern Orthodox, but my purpose is to pay my respects to the peculiar nature of the icon in order to suggest the Western medieval, religious art object is not an icon, but like the icon shares in the notion 0f Presenting an image of the divine. An icon of Christ is not a representation of the divine; "it points to the 3 jxticipati ;:::.s that is; regre- :storica‘. 2: zone i: .§.._ ' "Me I I 1. r L" O 0: I I c (D '(J '3 (D I) ‘ 7“ ' . \;: N s ‘ Q .-. K 'V] 4 l 41 participation of man in the divine life."39 As for icons that are not the image of Christ but of the saints, they represent humanity finding its true nature. Their historical lives serve as a type for the religious perSon to move from alienation in the world to his or her true nature. The icon serves as the constant image of what we ought to be. Orthodox theology recognizes the simul- taneity of two realities, the divine and the earthly. In Orthodoxy Christ is simultaneously God and man, and He represents the two realities that are neither mixed nor confused. In the hypostatic union the two natures of Christ dwell distinct one from the other (they remain ”with neither mixture nor confusion'I according 40 to the terminology of the Chalcedonian dogma,... For the Orthodox, the icon, as in the life of Christ and the saints, provides one of the few revelations, here in human creation, ”of the mystery of the age to come." The persons who have known sanctification through experience have created images which correspond to it, and which really and truly constitute a ”revelation and demonstration of what is hidden" according to St. John of Damascus, just as the Tabernacle, made according to the directions of Moses, revealed what had been shown 39Ibid., p. 11. 4°1bid., p. 7. to him on tt reveal to me hey also pe in it. ‘ The Ort} :e'n‘estern Chui tune order. :P‘CSEIY: and I '2: moods and 1:: LECtic and Ob ‘-‘~“~"1y reality It thus Said, that '5 illusion rePresent 1 Wm an i illusion. abJect it8e 42 to him on the mountain. Not only do these images reveal to mankind a transfigured universe, but they also permit him [humankind] to participate in it. The Orthodox Church is right when it says that the Western Church mixes the stuff of human order with divine order. I am wont to say that this mixing is done purposely, and its purpose is to sanctify human actions (or moods and motivations) that are found to be consistent with the heavenly order. The Eastern icon is resolutely didactic and objective, avoiding any illusion of material, earthly reality. Leonid Ouspensky says, It thus follows from everything which we have said, that the icon does not at all seek to create an illusion of the object that it represents, to represent it 'as though it were true' (as an exterior fact). In effect, being by its very nature an image, the icon is the opposite of illusion. In beholding it, we not only know, but we clearly see that we are not bigore the object itself, but before its image. The greater part of the Western medieval, religious art object is like the icon, didactic and an objective presentation of an image of the heavenly reality, that we might through the visible image share in the invisible truth. I think an example is warranted here. Medieval religious thinkers have a preoccupation with light. It is the light of God that reveals what 4lIbid., p. 36. 421bid., pp. 32-33. 43 was before hidden. Through baptism and the acceptance of the gifts of God, humankind by Grace is penetrated by and shares in the divine light, which in the end provides life and sustenance to all things. The light of God is too powerful for imperfect humanity to wholly perceive; thus Moses averts his eyes from the burning bush. The Eastern mystic Pseudo-Dionysius the AreOpagite provides a formula for humanity to move through light from the stuff of the material world to the highest and purest of light, the divine light. Pseudo-Dionysius bridges this gulf of the light of God seen in screens and shadows to the pure all-pervasive light by interposing a hierarchy of beings between man and God. Because Pseudo-Dionysius' hierarchical arrangement was based on neo-platonic thought, it was easily embraced by mystics and theologians of the West whose theologies were also neo-platonic. Foremost of these hierarchical beings are the angels, and the highest among them are the seraphim.whose only form is fire (a kind of light)--the consuming fire of God. The role of light in the religious art object has iconographic significance. It is an element that shares in the divine and can be recognized on earth. In that light is part of divine source it sanctifies all that it touches on earth. But it also becomes a ".3: ' S'y'I'J‘C :5 “he light :2 to a clet ,. u n 1 at: is the ‘ Q' n :e czsccSSi 3;.133t1031 3:: now, I 1 REC-ts . ( t". ‘Ih ‘ "‘ I“Nu~ he. “3‘- I “ F .- ~~»“ . w:c.“ 1C ;\\51y tC p.~ "L. W " s‘g‘o“. c N :-g ‘M‘ h, 3* at“ “ ._3\.. ‘ 44 primary symbol of the heavenly; thus, the understanding of the light and of all of its manifestations brings one to a clearer understanding of the divine light which is the font of all light. More will be said in chapter III about light in the discussion of the Abbey of St. Denis and Suger's application of The Celestial Hierarchy of Pseudo-Dionysius. For now, I have tried to show the similarity of function between the Eastern religious object called the icon and the Western medieval, religious art object which has iconographic significance. The iconographic significance is the primary aspect of Western medieval, religious art objects. Only secondarily do they have aesthetic import. For though one has feelings of awe and wonder when entering a magnificent structure like the Cathedral at Chartres, the medieval religious would move quickly to a rather complete explanation of the reasons for the awe and wonder, and in turn these reasons would be expected to explain the cosmological order. In medieval thought, feelings present no separate reality apart from the cosmological reality. But where the Eastern icon appeals solely to our spiritual selves, the Western medieval, religious art object also appeals to our human feelings and grants that human feelings are a proper part of the cosmological scheme. ‘1 would hold that finally the 45 Western medieval, religious art object does not provide us primarily with an image of our feelings, but an image of the Christian metaphysic in which our feelings are a part of its fabric and are permitted to share in that fabric. The history of art marks, from the thirteenth century on, the growing importance and the greater participation human emotions will have in the content of a work. It is during the Renaissance that human emotion becomes the primary content of the religious art object and the iconographic significance becomes a secondary concern. To sum up the meaning of the term iconographic significance, it is that aspect of the religious art object which provides an image of the divine reality in which man participates. It simultaneously provides a vehicle for ultimate comprehension and participation in the divine while sanctifying the earthly order which consistently shares in the divine order. The Western medieval, religious art object is unlike the Eastern icon in that it makes some appeal to man's aesthetic sensibilities. Iconographic significance acknowledges and sanctifies human behavior and actions regarded by the East as transient and worldly while in the West they are sanctified--in the Western Church all baptized flesh is "holy flesh". In th ;.':p:sitions ' flushes, as iii“. an icon: iii: make u; assure sh: 2:13: of to east to en}: 93-9 Comanj 5155.539 of T‘ildiflg Slit “‘ heavenl ha... “swig“ of \ ML?!” 46 In this introduction I have outlined the major propositions which constitute the body of this work. Churches, as religious art objects, should be provided with an iconographic significance. The system of symbols which make up the iconographic significance of a church structure should provide the primary form of the organi- zation of the building. The iconographic formula is meant to enhance the religious experience of the worship- ping community by bringing the congregation to an under- standing of its relationship to the divine. The church building should be designed to provide an image of the heavenly order so that the congregation might have a model of the divine order and a model for earthly living. In that the qualities of aesthetic experience and religious experience are different, and in that some art historians of the medieval age confuse aesthetic form with religious form, I have found it necessary to make a distinction between the two phenomena of religious experience and aesthetic experience. For church architecture, the first concern of the builder is the inducement of the congregation to meaningful religious experience. Aesthetic experience, for the church builder, is a secondary concern. Geertz's definition of religion 47 provides us with useful explication of the role of symbols in a religious community's determination of its relation- ship to the divine order. As the Church changes and develops from age to age, it continually reconsiders what is essential to the faith and how best to express it. Though Gothic archi- tecture represents a powerful expression of the Christian faith, it is not the ideal form for every age. We will examine in succeeding chapters the efforts of three church builders to respond to their socio-historical contexts with dynamic ecclesiastical structures. Each of our three builders' intentions demonstrates the desire to erect structures that reflected the best of the religious thought and spiritual insight of his age. The next chapter describes the mystical, symbolic, and theological concepts that were dominant in the time of Abbot Suger. Chapter II gives us an overview of the religious context that Suger would draw from to erect the first Gothic structure. CHAPTER I I Rational Knowledge as the Foundation for Mystical Meanings For who knoweth the ordinances of Heaven, or can explain the reasons of them upon earth? The ideas of Plato and Platonic rational methods were widespread in France in the middle ages. Abelard, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Abbot Suger, and Hugh of St. Victor shared in the rational methods of Plato as they passed through Augustine. They held reason in high esteem; it formed a basic method for their theologies. Though their theologies differed, as did their mystical orderings of the universe, the elements of reason were generally agreed upon. As the centers of education began, in twelfth century France, to move from monasteries to cathedral schools, probably no text was in wider use than Hugh of St. Victor's Didascalion, written in the late 1120's. Jerome Taylor speaks on the range of its influence. A crude index of its influence on its own and subsequent ages can be seen in its survival in nearly a hundred manuscripts of the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries, preserved in some forty- 48 49 five libraries stretching across EurOpe frpm Ireland to Italy, from Poland to Portugal. On the other hand, for twelfth- and thirteenth- century writers as different from the Victorines and from one another as John of Salisbury, Clarenbaldus of Arras, William of Conches (or his diciples), Peter Comestor, Stephen Langton, Robert Kilwardby, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Bonaventure, and Vincent of Beauvais it served both as a source of references and extracts which they incorporated into their own writings or, more significantly, as a source of leading ideas to the guidance of which they submitted their thought and their work.2 In this chapter I will explore the range of theological, mystical and symbolic concepts that belonged to twelfth century France. These concepts served as the intellectual ground for the development of Gothic architecture's symbolic formulas. The first part of this chapter outlines Hugh of St. Victor's twelfth 3 This system was hier- century epistemological system. archically arranged. The highest level of understanding was gained through mystical perception. The rest of the epistemological system served as a foundation for 1Jerome Taylor (trans.), Introduction to the Didascalion, by Hugh of St. Victor (London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1961), p. 4. 2 Ibid., p. 5. 3Hugh was born in 1096. He was the author of many treatises, especially commentaries on the mystical theologies of other authors. He was master of the abbey school at St. Victor until his death in 1141. 50 mystical perception. The second part of this chapter explores the four meanings given to symbols as they appeared in twelfth century religious art objects.4 For this task, I have relied on the first book of the Rationale Divinorum Officiorum by William Durandus, written in 1293.5 Durandus believed he was codifying those meanings that were in fact part of the mystical hierarchy of twelfth and thirteenth century thought. Not once does he hint that these meanings are his own personal interpretations. For Durandus they are the meanings these symbols have, have always had, and, if in the future properly understood, would always have. The joining of Hugh and Durandus' thought on symbolism, in this chapter, seems an obvious choice in order to arrive at the threshold of mystical vision and to have an accounting of the elements of that vision. Durandus adopted much of the description 4I am considering the church building itself to be a religious art object. 5William Durandus, The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments, trans. The Rev. John Mason Neale and the Rev. Benjamin Webb (New York: AMS Press, 1973), P. 185. William.Durandus was born at Puy-moisson, in Provence, about the year 1220. He taught canon law athodena and published several volumes on speculative thought. He became chaplain to Pope Clement IV before being finally named Bishop at Mende in 1286. 51 of the symbolic meanings of the church structure from Hugh of St. Victor's The Mystical Mirror of the Church. In chapter one of the Mystical Mirror, Hugh says, ”The material church in which people come together to praise God, signifies the Holy Catholic Church, which is built in the heavens of living stones."6 Durandus in the eighth part of chapter one of The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments says, "For the material church, wherein the people assemble to set forth God's holy praise, symboliseth that Holy Church which is built in Heaven of living stones."7 For Durandus and Hugh of St. Victor to arrive at an understanding of the sacred meanings of symbols, a host of human intellectual capabilities had to be developed first. Hugh's Didascalion is a text that explicates the liberal and mechanical ”arts” and prescribes their relationships to each other and to the higher plane of mystical perception. Mystical perception provided an image of the divine order. But it was believed that man could understand the divine order only if he understood the earthly order and its weaknesses. This understanding would then 6 . . Hugh of St. Victor, The Mystical Mirror, Patrologia Latina, p. 237. 7William Durandus, The Symbolism of, p. 22. 52 relieve the religious of the physical weaknesses of earthly life that would prevent them.from comdng to unity with the divine order. Through first having a thorough understanding of the physical order, once the initiation of perception of the divine order began, its relationship to the earthly order could be comprehended. Hugh subscribed to a hierarchical arrangement: the material and visible at the base, and the heavenly and invisible at the pinnacle of the cosmological order. Hugh, as Frederich Heer suggests, believed that man was interposed in the middle of the hierarchy, participating simultaneously in the material world and, by virtue of being created in the image of God, in the heavenly. Even in the early twelfth century there were some sensitive monastic thinkers who did not cease to contemplate and celebrate the mystery of man. Hugh, master of the monastic school of St. Victor's in Paris, the son of a Saxon count, and one of the most influential theologians of his century, taught that God created for the sake of mankind: "mankind is set in the midst of creation”. Man, that is, stood between God and the visible world, and had a portion in each. The world served mankind, mankind should serve God. Man had been given a great freedom, magna libertas: he could not be forced to turn his heart to God, the highest good. To serve God in freedom meant using the highest gifts of head and heart mankind had received from God: reason and understanding on the one hand, faith and the strength of a loving heart on the other.8 8Friedrich Heer, The Medieval World: Europe 1100- 1350, trans. Janet Sondheimer (New York: New American Library, 1961), p. 107. 53 But what Heer does not make note of is that for enlightened individuals, Hugh believed, their corporeality was of little or no consequence. Hugh and other neo-platonists like him believed they had gained control of Greek philosophy. And this philosophy explained the earthly order ina matter-of-fact way. R. W. Southern says, With St. Bernard, Abelard and Hugh of St. Victor, new and commanding figures of more fertile genius than that of Fulbert had appeared; and even masters of smaller stature, like the brothers Anselm and Ralph at Laon, had advanced far beyond the limits of technical achievement which had been possible in the early eleventh century. It is never possible to say without qualification that the learning of the past--especially of so distant a past as that of Greece and Rome--has been assimilated; but we come to a point where scholars begin to feel comfortable about their command of the achievement of the past. This is the point which we reach in the second generation of the twelfth century. Throughout the greater part of the twelfth century there was a confident sense that the steady mastery of tge works of the past was reaching its natural end. This intellectual comfort would soon be disrupted by Aristotelian thought, which in its turn would become applied in summae such as Thomas Aquinas'. Hugh established the primacy of logic and reason to explain the material world and its order. Hugh held that unity with the divine could only be accomplished 9R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1953), p. 204. 54 as humankind's understanding of the universe progressed up the hierarchical ladder established by God. There could be no understanding of the invisible unless there was first an understanding of the visible earthly order. Hugh's Didascalion is a handbook for the education of young religious. It was to provide them with the methodologies of logic and reason that would, once learned and applied to the understanding of material matters, allow them to transcend the base plane of the material. Hugh's use of reason gives us an understanding of the medieval religious life which is consistent with our definition of religion. The holy already exists in the earthly. As to what degree the divine actually participates in the material, this can only be understood after comprehension of the Operations of and relationships among material entities, and the abstract concepts their relationships foster, is developed. This thorough grounding in understanding the physical provides the discipline and logic necessary to move to higher levels of understanding. The highest level of understanding is mystical perception through the image of the heavenly. Once this highest level of perception is achieved one can look back.upon the physical creation to see how and to what degree physical 55 events share in the image of the divine. The highest level of perception is mystical perception. Mystical perception provides the clearest view of the heavenly order. Mystical perception brings about the following. First, it affirms the participation of the physical in the wider cosmological order; thus, we have a sanctification of the earthly. Second, the image of the divine, provided by mystical perception, offers a mog§l_£2£ restoring the world to union with the divine. Third, mystical perception furnishes images of the divine order such as the heavenly Jerusalem. The church is built not as an imitation of the heavenly Jerusalem.but as an image of the heavenly Jerusalem, for it is built on revealed, perfect principles.10 The visible Gothic church is a guaranteed vehicle to the invisible heavenly Jerusalem. The Gothic cathedral is a EQQEl.2£ the heavenly order. Finally, mystical perception confirms the actuality of the heavenly order. The heavenly order is known through the understanding of the word of God-(and His authority) which is carried by the Bible, the sacraments where the Holy Spirit is active, and images that reveal the 10"Imitation" here means likeness without participation in. The Church as an image of the heavenly Jerusalem i§_a part of the divine order. 56 heavenly order. In regard to the sacraments Durandus says, With respect to the Sacraments of the Church it is to be noted that, according to Gregory, there is a Sacrament in any celebration when an outward act is so performed as that we receive inwardly some degree of the thing signified; the which is to be received holily and worthily. Also a Mystery is that which the Holy Ghost worketh secretly, and invisibly, so as to sanctify by His operation, and bless by His sanctification. A mystery is said to exist in Sacraments; a ministry only in ornaments. The actuality of the heavenly order is known by means of the teachings of Jesus and his institution of the Church. It is as the material church reflects the instituted Church of Christ that the church can be said to be the image of the "Heavenly Jerusalem" and not merely an imitation of the image. The outlining of Hugh's Didascalion is necessary to show how symbols found in the natural world were seen to have properties endowed with the divine. It is as believers like Hugh proceeded from the material that the invisible and numinous became known. An event or body could be understood to have more than one meaning. The analyses of multiple meanings provided understanding and recognition of the vital link between God and man. These meanings offered the evidence by which the will 11William Durandus, The Symbolism of, p. 185. 57 of God could be discerned. For every symbol, found in religious art objects, the sacraments, and holy writ, there existed four possible meanings. These four neanings were: the literal, the allegorical, the trOpo- logical, and the anagogical. The meanings of these terms vdil be discussed at some length below because of the application of these meanings to symbols supplied to Gothic church structures. For now, it is important to understand that this four-part view of the symbolic was widely held throughout twelfth and thirteenth century France. And this four-part system was essential to the definitions of meanings of symbols delineated by Durandus. But before these four meanings could be pursued, and I suggest that before we can adequately pursue them, the understanding of twelfth century methods of inquiry were preliminary. The study of the scriptures, sacramental theology, and symbolism.could not be under- taken, because of their four-fold natures, without, as Beryl Smalley says, ”a sufficient grounding in the arts and sciences." His [Hugh's] changes in the form of lectio divina consist in introducing a special course of studies as a preliminary to the investigation of each sense. When the student has a sufficient grounding in the arts and sciences to approach the Scriptures, he 58 must begin with a literal, historical sense.12 From the literal sense of scripture one could move to the allegorical, and so forth up the hierarchical ladder. For Hugh the three categories of symbols, seen in religious art, the sacraments, and the scriptures, demonstrates the whole of the cosmos (heaven and earth). The sacraments for Hugh are both symbolical and historical. They are symbolical as they show forth the immutable; historical, as the sacraments trace the history of man's restoration to God. Religious art objects are also, to Hugh, historical and symbolical; symbolical as they provide an image of the heavenly, the historical as they instruct the viewer in past events consistent with the will of God. Such a religious art work is the sculpture in Reims Cathedral of Melchizedek offering the bread and wine (for Hugh a foreshadowing of the New Testament sacrament, the eucharist) to the victorious Abraham (see Figure 2) whose faith in God and His will serves as a paradigm of human faith. 12Though scripture, sacraments and religious art objects were each capable of providing the four-fold meanings independently, the authority of scripture was used to support the interpretations offered in each case. Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle gags (Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame Press, 1964), p. 87. 59 Figure 2 interior er I; , - Melchizedek and Abraham 51 , Reims Cathedral. Aft west wall 60 Having laid out the broad scope of Hugh's faith, I would like to outline his "scientific" formula of reason; for it is in understanding this elementary part of medieval education that an intellectual context is provided for the medieval religious' (and for the modern reader's) comprehension of the higher symbolic perceptions. Here is the hierarchical ordering of Hugh's scientific thought.13 Hugh's ”philosophy" remains orthodox and is mystically oriented, for his end is the understanding of the wider reality not just the physical. ”Philosophy" for Hugh is the pursuit of divine wisdom. The divine wisdom is the divine mind, which is the pri- mordial pattern of all things. Consistent with our definition of religion, the divine pattern acts in the material world in order that the divine pattern might ultimately be recognized and chosen. Jerome Taylor says, Calling man back to Itself, It bestows Its own divinity on man's soul and restores human nature to proper force and purity through leading it to truth and to holiness of action. 4 The first hierarchical arrangement is that of the soul which has three powers, and these powers are ‘ 13"Scientific“ here means provable by means of lOgical and rational principles. 14Jerome Taylor, Introduction to the Didascalion, p. 9. 61 hierarchically arrayed. The three powers of the soul are: 1) growth and nourishment as in plant life; 2) the addition of sense perception as found in animals; 3) the addition of reason found only in man in the material world. Reason exists in man that he might learn the nature of things, and direct and instruct his morals. (All things fall into three categories of existence. The lowest is the temporal, all that is corporeal and exists on the sublunary earth. The next is the perpetual, where the angels exist. The angels are lumped into a broader category, the ousiai, which includes all the levels of angels and prelapsarian man as primordial exemplars. This level demonstrates the influence of Pseudo-Dionysius on Hugh, for Hugh accepts the hierarchy of angels and, later, borrows the Pseudo-Dionysian metaphor of light and its manifestations of illuminating 1ight--the fire of the seraphim, and light which leads the mind from the visible to the invisible. The highest category of existence is the eternal where existence of the individual and true existence are one and the same. ‘Here exists the Creator. Hugh proposes that through knowledge man can aScend the cosmological hierarchy from the temporal to th£2 eternal, but that the ascent can only be accomplished in stages. First must come the knowledge of all temporal 62 things so that instruction in such will allow man to direct his life in a way that is consistent with his true nature. Adam, as prelapsarian man, and Jesus, the second Adam, are the paradigms of the "perpetual" nature of man. Contemplation of the divine prepares one for the parousia in which all is wholly and completely one. Taylor describes Hugh's states of man's ascent through knowledge by making reference to the ”Pseudo- Dionysian figure of the three eyes." What man saw before the fall, what he lost by it, and what he must do to restore the loss, Hugh expresses by the pseudo-Dionysian figure of the three eyes. Before the fall man saw the physical world with the eye of flesh; with the eye of reason he saw himself and what he contained; with the eye of contemplation he saw'within himself God and “the Epings which are within God" (primordial exemplars). The ultimate purpose and goal of man must be the renewal of the eye of contemplation. Only in this eye can the divine image be seen. The eye of contemplation is regained by the restoration of our true human nature through knowledge and virtue. Hugh says, The integrity of human nature, however, is attained in two things--in knowledge and in virtue, and in these liescnnrsole likeness to the supernal and divine substances. For man, since he is not simple in nature but is composed of a twofold substance, is immortal in that part of himself which is the more important part--that part which, to state the case more clearly, he in fact ig. In \ 15Ibid., p. 14. 63 his other part, however-—that part which is trans- itory and which is all that has been recognized by those too ignorant to give credit to anything but their senses--he is subject to death and to change. In this part man must die as often as he loses concrete substantiality. This part is of that lowest category of things, having both beginning and end. Knowledge and virtue are attained through philosophy, ”the discipline which investigates comprehensively the ideas of all things, human and divine."17 Knowledge is divided into two parts. The first is the theoretical. This is speculative thought-~the attempt to find what is true. The second is the practical, which is the delineation of morals in a response to the truth. The mechanical arts are those works by men which imitate nature. Included among the mechanical arts are the crafts and theatrics. ngig, Hugh suggests, was a late discovery of nan's. For Hugh logic as it was studied among the "Ancients" was absolutely essential to discussion of truth so that arguments might be learned, well—ordered, and correct. In sum, Hugh's understanding of knowledge is that there are four "branches" but in fact only two 16Hugh of St. Victor, The Didascalion, p. 52. 1'7Ibid., p. 51. 64 ”parts” for the mechanical and logical are subordinate to the theoretical and practical. For Hugh the many and various forms of the arts and appendages to the arts are either subordinate to philosophy or "tangential" to LflLilosophy. Hugh felt his four-fold system of know- lexige served philOSOphy in a far more careful, reflective, anxi ordered manner. His comments are scathing of those who use the "appendages of the arts” to attempt to arrive at; knowledge . There are two kinds of writings. The first kind comprises what are properly called the arts; the second, those writings which are appendages of the arts. The arts are included in philosophy: they have, that is, some definite and established part of philosophy for their subject matter as do grammar, dialectic, and others of this sort. The appendages of the arts, however, are only tangential to philosophy. What they treat is some extra- philosophical matter. Occasionally, it is true, they touch in a scattered and confused fashion upon some tOpics lifted out of the arts, or, if their narrative presentation is simple, they prepare the way for philosophy. Of this sort are all the songs of the poets--tragedies, comedies, satires, heroic verse and lyric, iambics, certain didactic poems, fables and histories, and also the writings of those fellows whom today we commonly call "philosophers" and who are always taking some detours, obscuring a simple meaning in confused discourses--who, lumping even dissimilar things together, make, as it were, a single "picture" from a multitude of "colors" and forms. Keep in mind the two things I have (distinguished for you--the arts and the appendages of the arts. Between these two, however, there is in my view such distance as the poet describes when he says: As much as the wiry willow cedes to the pale olive, Or the wild nard to roses of Punic red. (Vergil's ”Eclogae“ v. 16-17.) 65 It is a distance such that the man wishing to attain knowledge, yet who willingly deserts truth in order to entangle himself in these mere by- products of the arts, will find, I shall not say infinite, but exceedingly great pains and meagre fruit. It suggest that the literary pursuit of "extra-philosophical matter”, which Hugh refers to above, may be a warning against granting great epistemological significance to airtistic illusion. If so, this continues to support the idea, offered in the introduction of this thesis, tiiat.the pr0per path for consequential artistic expression, it: religious art, lies in a well-ordered myStical formula bllilt on a rational base, not in an image of our feelings. Once Hugh's young pupils had learned the four-fold epistemological formula and found application of it, they were ready to move on to the mystical realities. It). the monastic school of the Victorines, the sacraments and the scriptures provided, through mystical perception, the image of the divine reality. I want to reiterate that only as Hugh's students had a thorough comprehension of the four-fold philosophy were they allowed to enter into Biblical exegesis. For Hugh there are three ways in which God informs man of the heavenly order. They are the literal (and \ 18Hugh of St. Victor, The Didascalion, pp. 87-88. 66 historical), the allegorical, and the tropological. Hugh makes clear that any given passage of scripture may convey one, two, or all three meanings. But he warns against false exegetes who want to find mystical meanings everywhere . First of all, it ought to be known that Sacred Scripture has three ways of conveying meaning--namely, history, allegory, and tropology. To be sure, all things in the divine utterance must not be wrenched to an interpretation such that each of them is held to contain history, allegory, and the trOpology all at once. Even if a triple meaning can appropriately be assigned in many passages, nevertheless it is either difficult or impossible to see it everywhere. ...in the divine utterances are placed certain things which are intended to be understood spiritually only, certain things that emphasize the importance of moral conduct, and certain things said according to the simple sense of history. And yet, there are some things which can suitably be expounded not only historically but allegorically and tropologically as well. It is necessary, therefore, so to handle the Sacred Scripture that we do not try to find everywhere but rather that we assign individual things fittingly in their own places, as reason demands. Often, however, in one and the same literal context, all may be found together, as when a truth of history both hints at some mystical meaning by way of allegory, and equally shows by way of tropology how we ought to behave.19 The literal or historical refers to recorded eVents or ideas that are to be taken at face value. Nothing is hidden and no other meaning is implied. Allegogy reveals the spiritual meaning of a paSsage. Though the literal meaning may appear at \ 191bid., pp. 120-121. 67 times to be in conflict with other passages, the spiritual meaning that allegory reveals never is. JEven so the Divine Page, in its literal sense, contains many things which seem both to be opposed to each other and, sometimes, to impart something 'which smacks of the other and, sometimes, to impart something which smacks of the absurd or the impossible. But the spiritual meaning admits no opposition; in it, many things can be different from one another, but none can be opposed. In. that the spiritual meaning provides the most profound image of the divine, it cannot be interpreted carelessly. Hugh thought that only the student prepared with philo- sOphical rigor can begin to interpret the allegorical meaning, for only he will be able to place it in its PrOper place in the relationship between earthly and divine. Hugh suggests that only the student of scripture who has good judgment will be able to refrain from the zealot's desire to find an allegorical message in all things . After the reading of history, it remains for you to investigate the mysteries of allegories, in which I do not think there is any need of exhortation from me, since this matter itself appears worthy enough in its own right. Yet I wish HYOu to know, good student, that this pursuit demands :not slow and dull perceptions but matured mental «abilities which, in the course of their searching, Inay so restrain their subtlety as not to lose good judgment :h1 what they discern. Such food is solid Stuff, and, unless it be well chewed, it cannot be \ 20Ibid. , p. 140 . 68 swallowed. You must therefore employ such restraint that, while you are subtle in your seeging, you may not be found rash in what you presume. The tropological sense of scripture is moral :hlstruction. But Hugh suggests that the tropological is more easily found in things than in words. Hugh says, Concerning tropology I shall not at present say anything more than what was said above, except that it is more the meaning of things than the meaning of words which seem to pertain to it. For in the meaning of things lies natural justice, out of which the discipline of our own morals, that is, positive justice, arises. By contemplating what God has made we realize what we ourselves ought to do. Every nature tells of God; every nature teaches man; every nature reproduces its essential form, and nothing in the universe is infecund.22 TPliere are three ideas important to note here. First, filigh wants us to keep in mind that three ways of percep- tion of mystical meaning are found in all things in the created universe, as well as the word of God. Hugh says of ”things”, It ought also to be known that in the divine utterance not only words but even things have a meaning--a way of communicating not usually found to such an extent in other writings. The philosopher knows only the significance of words, but the signifi- cance of things is far more excellent than that of words, because the latter was established by usage, but Nature dictated the former. The latter is the ‘voice of men, the former the voice of God speaking to men. The latter, once uttered, perishes; the \ 211bid., p. 139. 221bid., pp. 144-145. 69 Former, once created, subsists. The unsubstantial work is the sign of man's perceptigns; the thing is a resemblance of the divine Idea.2 Second, for Hugh ”word" and "concept" are only necessary levels in the hierarchy of obtaining wisdom that we might seJE these, sacraments and religious art objects, Durandus Eilpeaks at some length in his first book of the Rationale EZ;§vinorum.Officiorum, (The Symbolism of Churches and EEggprch Ornaments). This book codified the many symbolic flaueanings of visual objects that were a sign of the hleavenly. A sign here is an event or visual expression ‘hfilich presents an image of the divine order. For example, tille eucharist is a sign of Christ's holy flesh and blood. In The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments, lblarandus focuses on and supplies the mystical meanings tlllat religious art objects held in his time. Durandus 261bid., p. 55. 71 does this inamatter-of-fact way, for the symbolism of the Gothic church by 1293, a century and a half after Suger's structure, had become quite regularized. Instruction in mystical meanings from visual Symbols was more often the starting point for both the literate and illiterate in twelfth century society than were the words and concepts of scripture. Beryl Smalley comments on Hugh's use of visual symbols this way. Hugh also had a vivid visual imagination, in this being typical of his century. Symbolism demands a keen perception of the sign. The roles of text and picture, that we are accustomed to, seem to be reversed in much of the twelfth-century educational literature. You begin with your picture to which the text is a commentary and illustration.25 lrit was common practice for Hugh to present the abstract “l<3tions of ecclesiology through pictures or images. 1L1) example is found in this quotation from his treatise (>11 Noah's ark, De Arca Noe Morali. As an illustration of this spiritual building I shall give you Noe's ark, which your eye shall see outwardly that your soul may be fashioned to its likeness inwardly. You shall see colours, shapes and figures which please the eye; but know that they are set there to teach you wisdom, understanding and virtue, to adorn your soul. The ark signifies the Church, and the Church is Christ's body; so I have drawn the whole person of Christ, head and members, in visible shape, to picture it for you clearly, that when you see the whole you may better V 27Beryl Smalley, The Bible in the Middle Ages, p. 95. 72 be able to follow what is said of the parts.28 It was also not unusual for Hugh to refer to himself as an artist as he “draws” a visual picture for the brethren. First I find the center of the flat surface ‘where I mean to draw the ark. There, having fixed the point, I draw around it a small square to the :measure of that cubit, in which the ark was completed. Then I draw another rather larger square around the first, so that the space between may appear to be the border of the cubit. Then I draw a cross inside the inner square, so that the ends meet each of the sides; and I paint it gold. Then I paint in the spaces between the cross and the square, the upper ones flame colour, the lower sky blue... That the visual symbols should have regularized and commonly accepted meanings a century and a half later, a51'“: ter receiving such elaborate use in the instruction of religious, is not suprising. In later chapters I will be addressing myself t<=’ specific religious art objects and their meanings. B1urt.art grows out of a socio-historical context, and D‘uxrandus completes our use of meanings supplied to the rEligious art objects of the Gothic church. I believe tll'lat the provision of the context will help the reader \ 28Hugh of St. Victor, De Arca Noe Morali, J. P. Migne (ed.), Patrologia Latina I, if, 622. 2 . 9Hugh of St. Victor, De Arca Noe Morali, J. P. Migne (ed.), Patrologia Latina 1, iii, 626-628. 73 have more discerning eyes when dealing with certain church structures and their ornaments. In that medieval religious art objects were condensations of mystical meanings, they carried all three mystical meanings of Hugh plus yet another, the anagogical meaning, and through the anagogical Durandus recognizes the use and purpose of the Pseudo-Dionysian hierarchy in twelfth and thirteenth century, Ile-de-France architecture. Durandus defines and describes the anago- gical sense this way. Anagoge is so called from ana, which is upwards, and goge, a leading: as it were an upward leading. Whence the anagogic sense is that which leadeth from the visible to the invisible: as light, made the first day, signifieth a thing invisible, namely the angelic nature which was made in the beginning. Anagoge, therefore, is that sense which leadeth the mind upwards to heavenly things; that is to the Trinity and the Orders of Angels, and speaketh concerning future rewards, and the future life which is in the Heaven. I)Lnrandus immediately offers an example of how all 2E(Durmeanings can be applied to.a single image, the " heavenly Jerusalem". Historically, it is the earthly C=ity to which Christian pilgrims travel. Allegorically, Jerusalem is the Church militant, the place from which b1elievers go out armed with their faith. TrOpologically, those who dwell in the heavenly Jerusalem are models of 3OWilliam Durandus, The Symbolism of, p. 10. 74 concord and love. Anagogically, it is the celestial city that is the ultimate dwelling to which all men are called. The Heavenly Jerusalem is one of the synonyms for the Gothic cathedral. With the four-fold meaning of religious art objects in mind, let us consider Durandus' meaning of the church, which has its most profound and elaborate expression in the cathedral. The world "church” has two meanings. It is the building where the Divine Offices are celebrated. It is the spiritual fabric of the community of faithful. The two are mutually supportive for "the material typifieth the spiritual Church",31 and the material church provides a place in which prayers of the whole comunity might be 1133. rd. -..that prayers may be heard there. Whence in the prayer of the Mass of Dedication it is said, "Grant that all who shall meet together here to pray may obtain, whatsoever be their trials, the benefits of the cgasolation." (I Kings 8:30, Authorized Version) The material church was seen as holy for it grew out DE the community gathered and was an aspect of its 11Oliness. The community proclaims in its creed that the Church is one, Q, Catholic, and apostolic. HOliness conferred on the Church by Christ and maintained k 311bid., p. 17. 321bid., p. 115. 75 by the activity of the Holy Spirit consecrated the Church building as an actual part of the sacred corporate Church. On the other hand, in that the church was an image of the divine, its consecration automatically was transferred to the individual souls who worshipped in it and also took on the name ”Church" as a community. Durandus says, In good truth whatsoever things be here done visibly, God by His invisible power worketh the same in the Soul, which is the Temple of the True God: in which Faith layeth the foundation, Hope buildeth up, and Charity perfecteth. For the Catholick Church Herself, made one out of many living stones, is the Temple of God, because many Temples make one Temple, of which the True God is one, and the Faith one. The House, therefore, must be dedicated; the Soul sanctified. And it is to be observed that Consecration effecteth two things: for it appropriateth the .material church itself to God, and doeth insinuate (our own betrothal, as well namely of the church as of the Faithful Soul.33 Through the church's wedding to the divine, the consecra- tion, the comunity of faithful (the Church) are reminded Qfi their own wedding to God. For medieval thinkers the church as a building Was inseparable from the Church as community. The building was part of the nature of the Church as ordained kW'God. This was known historically, allegorically, tIOpologically, and anagogicallyu k 331bid., 116. 76 Historically, the church was the continuance of the Temple. For Durandus, only the Temple consecrated by God could accept gifts offered to Him. The Jews therefore, as we read in Burchardus, used to have the places in which they sacrificed to the Lord consecrated by divine petitions, nor used they to offer gifts to God in any places but such as were dedicated unto Him. Aliegorically, the church in its.militancy was called 35 Zhnh. It offers the vision of place to the community seeking heavenly rest. With the use of the historical sense, the church as tabernacle, Durandus justified the division of the church into two parts--the place of Earniestly practice veiled from the believers in the other lpealrt. ‘Whatever the Jewish Church received by the Law, that doth the Christian Church receive, and with .large increase, by grace, from Christ Whose Bride She is. The setting up of an oratory, or church, is not new. For the Lord commanded M0832 in Mount [Sinai, that he should make a tabernacle of «curiously wrought materials. This was divided by a.veil into two parts: the outer, called the Holy ‘Place, where the people attended the sacrifices: the inner, the Holy of Holies, where the Priests and Levites ministered before the Lord:37 ‘ 34Ibid., p. 112. 351bid., p. 18. 36The “tabernacle" for Durandus prefigures the church. 37WilliamDurandus, The Symbolism of, p. 20. 77 The church was anagogically seen as the "Holy Church". ”For the material church, wherein the people assembled set forth God's holy praise, symbolizes that Holy Church which is built in Heaven of living stones."38 The image of "living stones" was used persistently by Durandus to show the community of faithful how they were the "living Stones” by giving them an image, through the church structure, of how they participated in the building up of the wider cosmological order. Durandus described Christ's Church (and church) as being built in the fol lowing manner . This is that House of the Lord, built with all :strength, upon the foundations of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief (Corner stone. Her foundations are in the holy Inountains. The walls built upon these are the Jews iand Gentiles; who come from the four parts of the ‘warld upon Christ, and who have believed, believe, (Jr shall believe on Him. The Faithful predestinated to eternal life, iire the stones in the structure of this wall which Shall continually be built up unto the world's end. Iknd one stone is added to another, when masters in ‘the Church teach and confirm and strengthen those ‘who are put under them: and whosoever in Holy Church undertaketh painful labours from brotherly love, he as it were beareth upon the weight of stones which have been placed above him. Those stones which are of larger size, and polished, or squared, and placed on the outside and at the angles of the building, are men of holier life than others, who by their merits and prayers retain weaker brethren in Holy Church. 9 ‘ 381bid., p. 22. 391bid. 78 Finally, the church is tropological in its dictates of proper human behavior. The Church, in its parts that dictate proper moral behavior and attitudes, is described by Durandus as follows. Again, in the Temple of God, the foundation is Faith, which is conversant with unseen things: the roof, Charity, which covereth a multitude of sins. The door, Obedience, of which the Lord saith, If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. The pavement, Humility, of which the Psalmist saith, My soul Cleaveth to the pave- ment. The four side walls, the four cardinal virtues, justice, fortitude, temperance, prudence. Hence the Apocalypse saith, the city lieth four square. The windows are hospitality with cheerfulness, the tenderness with charity.40 The church is an image and symbol of the heavenly Jerusalem. It establishes in man particular moods and motivations by the establishment of heavenly order that can be seen and understood. The moods and motivations foStered by this symbolic form are affirmed insofar as they are consistent with the ordinances of Scripture. tPIIEE Gothic cathedral church was a living Bible. Not ‘Nflly did it supply the visual spiritual framework that D'urandus described, but it was filled with stories from both Old and New Testaments to instruct the believers, ESpecially the illiterate, in their faith. I have already given the example of the story of Abraham and Melchizedek g 40Ibid., pp. 25-26. 79 carved in stone in the interior at Reims cathedral (see Figure 2). Durandus refers to a host of ornaments in the church, such as "pictures", which proffered the lessons of Christian principles. Pictures and ornaments in churches are the lessons and the scriptures of the laity. Whence Gregory: It is one thing to adore a picture, and another by means of a picture historically to learn what should be adored. For what writing supplieth to him which can read, that doth a picture supply to him which is unlearned, and can only look. Because they who are uninstructed, thus see what they ought to follozi and things are read, though letters be unknown. Against iconoclasts, who would fear that images might be worshipped in their own right, Durandus counters: But we worship no images, nor account them to be gods, nor put any hope of salvation in them: for that were idolatry. Yet we adore them for the .memory and remembrance of things done long ago. ‘Whence the verse, Effigiem Christi, guum transis, pronus honorai Non tamen effigiem, sed Quem designat, adora. I have mentioned before the "matter-of-faCt way" that Durandus lists the vocabulary of mystical meanings for medieval symbols. Durandus speaks with equal assured— ‘ 411bid., p. 53. 421bid., pp. 53-54. When you cross by the effigy of Christ, bow in honor. Not to the effigy, but Him who is designated, adore. 80 ness about the meaning of religious art works which involve numbers of things. The use of a particular number of things carried an ostensible meaning, but here, too, multiple meanings for each number of things were also assigned. The extra numerical symbologies are often lost on our twentieth century minds unless we are willing to explore other numbers that give us a clue to another number's meanings. These meanings were apparently not ”hidden” at the time; they were generally understood, and Durandus seems not to have felt compelled 'tc> spell them.out. An example of numbers as symbols is :Ecaumd in the following passage. Sometimes the twenty-four Elders are painted around the Savior, according to the Vision of the said John, with white garments, and they have on their heads crowns of gold. By which are signified the Doctors of the Old and New Testament; which are twelve, on account of Faith in the Holy Trinity preached through the four quarters of the world: or twenty-four, on account of good works, and the keeping of the Gospels.43 I '1DWenty-four" are the number of Doctors, twelve for the 01dTestament and twelve for the New. There are twelve because of faith in the Holy Trinity (three) multiplied by the preaching in four quarters of the world. But if one adds "good works” together with "keeping of the Gospels", we have two as a mmltiplier bringing us, like the twenty-four elders, twenty-four Doctors of the Church. g 43Ibid., pp. 59-60. 81 It seems that whenever the medieval mind can break down multiple numbers to their explicable primary numbers, the building up of order is explained. I think it is the medieval intent to place the primary articles of faith, for example the Trinity, at the base of any cosmological ordering. The last and perhaps most significant finding for me in the writings of Durandus is that he seems to recognize a set "formula" or arrangement of Christian sandbols. An accepted formula for the depiction of figures and other symbols suggests the use of a model (:1: pattern book such as the Eastern icon painters had. Here may be another justification for my use of the term "idconographic significance". If the knowledge gained from the mystical image is clear and well-ordered, it is only a matter of copying the image. I want to suggest that the copying down of the mystical image with a well- QT-‘dered formula was precisely what the medieval religious artist saw as his or her responsibility and craft. Durandus says the mystical image of the cosmos is hierarchically arranged, for example, as Christ sits in Power. ...when on a state or lofty throne, We be taught His present power: as if He said, All things are given to Me in heaven and in earth: according to that saying, I saw the Lord sitting upon His Throne: 82 that is, reigning over the angels; as the text, Which sitteth upon the Cherubim.4 But of figures who once lived and serve as models for the faithful, Durdandus also suggests the proper modes of depiction. "How the Apostles Bartholomew and Andrew are to be painted, shall be said hereafter."45 Or, . . -why Paul is represented at the right, and Peter at the left of the Savior, we shall show hereafter."46 For Durandus all things and events have a right and Pr0per order. Seemingly, there exists no room for individual artistic expression. The artist's task is to provide a concrete presentation of the image of the heavenly and natural order. The measurement of achieve- meht for the medieval artist is his approximation to the InYatical image. In the next chapter we will see how Abbot Suger, his architects, and artists pursued the mystical image. BY capturing the mystical image, the Abbey church of St. Denis was sanctified. Its consecration served the Purpose of consecrating all who entered her. \ 4411616., p. 58. 451bid., p. 62. 951bid., p. 63. In good u‘ WM! “A X in the $0111. *5 hick. hi‘ 1;. ml- Char. “inch Bus is the ‘19:: me Temple EYES. 0% me Soul m L‘iecte 32211 :3. m D H. p Us l 83 In good truth whatsoever things be here done visibly, God by His invisible power worketh the same in the Soul, which is the Temple of the True God: in which Faith layeth the foundation, HOpe buildeth up, and Charity perfecteth. For the Catholick Church Herself, made one out of many living stones, is the Temple of God, because many Temples make one Temple, of which the True God is one, and the Faith one. The House, therefore, must be dedicated; the Soul sanctified. And it is to be observed that Consecration effecteth two things: for it appropriateth the material church itself to God, and doth insinuate our own betrothal, as well namely of the church as of the Faithful Soul. ‘ 471bid., p. 116. “"u ‘0‘“ “FY”: my“: ‘VV“\" - - \ ‘vu-W5 a. .‘u b . I‘ ..‘ 5:1:‘1 CHAPTER I I I The Iconographic Significance of Suger's Abbey Church of St. Denis lBright is the noble work; but, being nobly bright, the work Should brighten the minds, so that they may travel, through the true lights, fro the True Light where Christ is the true door. JIn what manner it be inherent in this world the golden door defines: frhe dull mind rises to truth through that which is material Amd, in seeing this light, is resurrected from its former submersion.1 The aims of this chapter are to demonstrate iflhe, application of meanings to actual medieval, religious art objects and to describe the socio- hiStorical context that made these meanings normative. The art objects will be the chevet, the stained-glass ‘Whndows, and the gilt-bronze doors originally at the central entrance of the West facade of the abbey church of St. Denis. The building program of St. Denis from 1137 to 1144 is a propitious choice for this thesis, 1Inscribed on the doors of the Abbey of St. Denis. Abbot Suger, De Administratione, Erwin Panofskey (Trans., ed,, annotator), Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St. Denis and Its Art Treasures (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton U. Press, 1946), pp. 47-49. 84 1:: the abbot. 1 firm and. m '3 mm us. ‘ an)“: is :3 =::'.:. as x “ 5n 1: UV 1 (L 85 for the abbot, Suger, recorded aspects of the building program and, more importantly, offered a description of the symbolic significance of these artistic endeavors at St. Denis, the birthplace of the Gothic style. This style is partly the result of architectural advances such as the ribbed vault used with pointed arches so as to reduce the thickness of walls and pier supports. But this style is also the product of an architectural, glass, and sculptural program that could show forth the hierarchical cosmology of belief in aesthetic and re1 igious terms unparalleled by any previous ecclesiastical stYle. Suger, in this new building was able to offer an architectural equivalent of the Pseudo-Dionysian light imagery. St. Denis is the prototype for the great surge of Gothic architecture that followed. The abbey's Well ordered use of symbolic numbers and hierarchical sl’stems, as supplied by Pseudo-Dionysian formulae, made St. Denis a model for many subsequent Gothic structures. Suger was named abbot of St. Denis in 1122. Before this he had been made chief political advisor to King Louis VI; it was while he was on an ambassadorial mission to the pope on behalf of Louis that he was named to the abbacy. The close relations established by Suger between Crown and Church were to bring unprecedented Prestige and wealth to the abbey, although the pre- W32 oi 1 “us fl" 9‘ MAKE A: J Wu E’i'iS‘ '6‘» ' I‘ grea 86 eminence of St. Denis, as a royal abbey, dates back to King Dagobert of the seventh century. Otto von Simeon states: Even in the age of monasticism, even among the greatest monasteries of France, St. Denis occupied a position of unparalleled power and prestige. The old historians of St. Maur have not unjustly called it the foremost of all French and perhaps of all European abbeys." medieval sources abound in references to its pre-emdnence. They designate St. Denis the mother of French churches and the crown of the realm. No other ecclesiastical institution, perhaps no institution of any kind, was more closely identified with the Capetian monarchy. St. Denis was the shrine of the patron saint of France and of the royal house and the burial place of French kings since Merovingian times. Long the recipient of munificent donations of the crown, the house was, as one of the "royal".abbeys, exempt from all feudal and ecclegiastical domination and subject only to the King. Under the direction of Suger, an ornamental, architectural, and spiritual richness would be brought ti) the abbey, greatly enhancing its already great Prestige. Suger’s ambitions for the abbey would have to withstand the slings and arrows of the so-called "anti-art" disposition of Bernard, but by 1127, even before the building program was started, Suger's diplomacy won Bernard to his side. As it turns out, Bernard's protests to Suger was not based on a disagree- Ment over Suger's use and understanding of religious kg 2Otto von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral, pp. 65-66. c‘ 39:15. ‘ I “:zezlal n I ‘- I L: 3:! .LC .. . . wan to! F-uosbé . on" I». “At W. yin “MO-ax 87 art objects. For even Bernard allowed for the use of "material" religious art objects in public churches where the participants were less intellectually and spiritually sophisticated. Bernard says, "...since the devotion of the carnal pOpulace cannot be incited with spiritual ornaments, it is necessary to employ material ones, ... ."3 Suger's promotion of St. Denis as a pilgrimage church certame makes it a public church. I believe Bernard's invective is reserved for what he thought might be Suger's tendencies to self-aggrandizement like that which had been associated with the Cluniacs. Bernard is against religious art, jewels, sculpture, paintings, and other Works of religious art which are decorative or celebrated fer their own intrinsic beauty. Though Suger's new, Gmythic structure would be beautiful, its first purpose Wes to lead the viewer on a spiritual path towards a lnature faith. As the church and its decoration were to be made as an image of the heavenly order, so those Participating in the work were to be illuminated and edified by it. In the raising of the church Suger Suggests the workers are made one with the saints. The midst of the edifice, however, was suddenly raised aloft by twelve columns representing the number of the Twelve Apostles and, secondarily, by 38ernard of Clairvaux, Apologia ad Guillelmum, XII, J. P. Migne (ed.), Patrologia Latina, CLXXXII, 914. 88 as many columns in the side-aiSles signifying the number of the [minor] Prophets, according to the Apostle who buildeth spiritually. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, says he, but fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prOphets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone which joins one wall to the other: in Whom all the building--whether spiritual or material--groweth unto one holy temple in the Lord. In whom we, too, are taught to be builded together for an habitation of God through the Holy Spirit by ourselves in a spiritual way. The more loftily and fitly we strive to build in a material way.4 Suger is accomplishing by physical instance the image that Hugh could only mentally "draw". And through tilis architectural endeavor, he converts St. Paul's nle'taphor of building upon ”the foundation of the apostles and prophets" (Ephesians 2:20, RSV) into a concrete jIII-age. An event at the abbey in 1124 made the enrichment <3f the abbey and its new building program possible. The aJJJance between the Pope Calixtus II and the king of :France, forged in part by Suger, had never been stronger. In 1119, while seeking refuge in France from the Struggles against the empire, Calixtus II excommunicated the Emperor, Henry V of Germany, "as an enemy of the 4Abbot Suger, De Consecratione. Erwin Panofsky (trans., ed., annatator), Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church 2£_St. Denis and Its Art Treasures (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton U. Press, 1946), p. 105. 89 church."5 Henry V did finally make his peace with Rome at the first Ecumenical Council held in the Lateran in 1123. But he did not forgive France for fostering .his excommunication. Louis' kingdom was a feudal system in which the strength, size and richness of some of the ‘feudal states, and their lords, were greater than the king's real holdings. To compound Louis' problems, issues of allegiances and taxes had made relations between the Crown and many of the feudal states far less than cordial. Such a condition made France appear very VTfilnerable to attack. Henry V with his father-in-law Henry I of England decided to join in a two-pronged airtack on a divided and disharmonious French state. At t1lis point, according to Suger's chronicle, Louis I’Ilshedto the abbey church of St. Denis. Before the elltposed relics of St. Denis (the patron saint of France) and his cohort of Rusticus and Eleutherius, Louis invoked 'the intercessions of St. Denis on behalf of the kingdom. Louis prayed to St. Denis as the greatest protector of the realm, after God, and promised rich donations to the saint in the event of victory. Donations to .the saint Would of course mean aggrandizement of his shrine. An 5Abbot Suger, Vie de Louis VI 1e Gros, H. Waquet (ed. and trans.) (Paris, 1929), p. 94. 90 appeal to the Patron Saint in front of all the feudal lords was a request the lords of France found hard to refuse. The ritual Suger instructed Louis to use in this plea was that of Bohemond of Antioch who had enlisted followers for his Crusade in Chartres Cathedral earlier in the twelfth century.6 Once Louis' prayers were completed he received from Suger the banner of St. Denis, and Louis pledged tc> be St. Denis' vassal. The response to these acts Vfiis overwhelming, and the feudal contingents from Reims, (naalons, Laon, Soissons, Etampes, Paris, Orleans, St. IDenis, Burgundy, Aquitaine, Anjou, Chartres, Flanders, and Troyes swelled the king's ranks. With such an armada facing him, the Emperor withdrew from the field <3f battle. But the event in the abbey church that drew France together under the name of St. Denis also made ‘the abbey church the spiritual center of France. And the withdrawal of the Emperor meant, besides, that the wealth of the abbey church was guaranteed. The retreat was a victory for Louis and his kingdom and provided him with an allegiance he had never before experienced. Suger's political and ecclesiastical 6Suger, Vie de Louis, IX, 23. 91 maneuvers brought about a bond between church and state which made them inseparable. What is so remarkable about the twelfth-century religious community, secular, sacred, and royal, is its bond to the material church. In the age of faith the church building became the primary image of the faith of the entire community. At the consecration of the choir of St. Denis in 1144, Suger records the crowd's reaction. You mdght have seen...how so glorious and admirable men celebrated the wedding of the Eternal Bridegroom so piously that the King and the attending nobility believed themselves to behold a chorus celestial rather than terrestrial, a ceremony divine rather than human. The p0pulace milled around outside with the drive of its intolerable magnitude; and when the aforesaid chorus sprinkled the holy water onto the exterior, competently aspersing the walls of the church with the aspergillum, the King himself and his officials kept back the tumultuous impact and protected those returning to the doors with canes and sticks.7 Some‘art historians, such as Otto von Simson and Erwin Panofsky, writing on the medieval period find such comments to be filled with hyperbole and to be indicative of a kind of religious sentimentality. No doubt there is a degree of exaggeration here, but the skeptical inter- pretation of such modern men has, I think, caused them to miss the essence of religious art objects, which is 7Suger, De Consecratione, p. 115. 92 their ability to serve as vehicles of spiritual enlightenment. An example of this modern skepticism is Erwin Panofsky's comments about Suger during the consecration of the choir. Suger, however, was frankly in love with splendor and beauty in every conceivable form; it might be said that his response to ecclesiastical ceremonial was largely (my underlining) aesthetic. For him the benediction of the holy water is a wonderful dance,....8 In fact, Suger's experience was first and foremost a religious one. A liturgical rite such as the blessing of the water revealed an image of divine religious practice. As Suger says, as quoted above, "the attending nobility believed themselves to behold a chorus celestial rather than terrestrial, a ceremony divine rather than human."9 My comments about art historians' skeptical views of the intense religiosity of medieval chroniclers may seem a very small thing about which to quibble. The caveat I offer is that we cannot understand the purpose and meaning of art of another age if we insist on inter- preting it on the foundation of modern values. Well- meaning curators welcome the Opportunity to place icons in art museums in the belief that the appeal of such objects is primarily aesthetic, not religious. The 8Erwin Panofsky, Abbot Suger, p. 14. 9Suger, De Consecratione, p. 115. 93 sanctification of water in the twelfth-century church was not merely a dance. The cost, the labor, and crafts- manship of building a monumental Gothic church would never have been accomplished merely to satisfy aesthetic needs. The building of a monumental Gothic church was an actual investment in the divine. Suger, as abbot of St. Denis, as chief counsel to the-king, as witness to the victorious intercession of St. Denis on behalf of France, and as a catalyst for the transformation of the abbey church into the spiritual center of the whole nation of France (and in his mind, possibly Europe), saw that a much larger church than the Carolingian structure was needed. For now, in Suger's way of thinking, St. Denis would be a pilgrimage church as famous as Santiago de Compostela, as rich as Hagia Sophia, and symbolically the image of the Temple of Solomon. Suger's Gothic structure may have realized all three of these ambitions. under his administration a much larger building was needed for at least four reasons. First, the pilgrimage shrines had by now become nore numerous than in the early Middle Ages. Chartres, for example, drew many pilgrims who would revere its Special relic, the tunic of the Virgin. The importance 0f a relic was measured in some part by the size and beauty of the building which housed it. The intention was to 94 create a powerful and pervasive sacred space in which the relic would be viewed. Attracting pilgrims to such a shrine also meant attracting their money, which in turn would help to pay for the building program; thus, the rather small community of Chartres in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was able to build one of the grandest and most elaborate structures of the epoch. The Abbey of St. Denis had since Carolingian times been a pilgrimage shrine because it housed the relics of St. Denis and the tombs of some of the kings of France. After 1124 Suger's church became especially important as the King had given the abbey control and administration of the Lendit.10 Suger, believing the patron saint of France, Dionysius the Areopagite (a disciple of St. Paul), to have been, also, the writer of The Celestial Hierarchy, required a monument much greater than the diminutive and archaic Carolingian basilica. Second, as a basilica for St. Denis and because of recent historical events (the 1124 uniting of the feudal states under the king) bringing the saint to new prominence, a larger structure was needed to accommodate 10The Lendit was an annual fair in Medieval France initiated in the mid-eleventh century. It was a Celebration of the relics of Christ's passion that had been given to the abbey of St. Denis by Charles the Bald. 95 the crowds who gathered for the feast day of the Saint and the celebration of the Lendit. Third, after the events of 1124, Louis VI declared St. Denis abbey the keeper of all royal insignias, including the Oriflamme. Fourth, the allegiance pledged by the feudal lords of France on that August night in 1124 was as much to St. Denis as it was to the King, thus making the saint and the abbey the spiritual center for the whole of the nation of France. For the above reasons Suger saw the necessity of building a church that would be unrivalled in the West. His hope was that it would be compared only to Hagia SOphia and the Temple of Solomon. Through a gift of God a new quarry, yielding very strong stone, was discovered such as in quality and quantity had never been found in these regions. There arrived a skillful crowd of masons, stone— cutters, sculptors and other workmen, so that-- thus and otherwise--Divinity relieved us of our fears and favored us with Its goodwill by comforting us and by providing us with unexpected [resources]. I used to compare the least to the greatest: Solomon's riches could not have sufficed for his Temple any more than did ours for this work had not the same Author of the same work abundantly supplied His attendants. The identity of the author and the work provides a sufficiency for the worker. In carrying out such plans my first thought was for the concordance and harmony of the ancient and the new work. By reflection, by inquiry, and by investigation through different regions of remote districts, we endeavored to learn where we might obtain marble columns or columns the equivalent 96 thereof. Since we found none, only one thing was left to us, distressed in mind and spirit: we might obtain them from Rome (for in Rome we had often seen wonderful ones in the Palace of Diocletian and other Baths) by safe ships through the Mediter- ranean, thence through the English Sea and the tortuous windings of the River Seine, at great expense to our friends and even by paying passage money to our enemies, the nearby Saracens. 1 Suger's thoughts of acquiring beautiful and richly colored Roman columns reflects the expense he was willing to go to in order to give his structure the aura of unequalled magnificence. If he was to compete in prestige with other churches, especially Cluniac structures, he felt we would have to eclipse them. And as such a pilgrimage center St. Denis was, as we have seen, meant to rival the great Cluniac sanctuaries on the roads of Compostela; that their art should be eclipsed by the style of his church was surely Suger's ambition. 2 It seems somewhat of a paradox that a monastic Church should strive to be such a public church, especially 1h! a time when the powerful and reform-minded.Bernard advocated a strict interpretation of the Benedictive rule. But the peculiar nature of the abbey of St. Denis and its and Suger's relationship to the king served to aPpease Bernard, at least in this one case, concerning 11Suger, De Consecratione, p. 91. 1 . . 2von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral, p. 113. 97 secular participation in the monastic house of prayer. Panof sky states : The reformed St. Denis as realized by Suger thus differed very considerably from the reformed St. Denis as imagined by St. Bernard: and in one essential respect there was not only a difference but an irreconcilable contrast between the one and the other. Nothing could be further from Suger's mind than to keep secular persons out of the House of God: he wished to accommodate as great a crowd as possible and wanted only to handle it without disturbances--therefore he needed a larger church. Nothing could seem less justified to him than not to admit the curious to the sacred objects: he wished to display his relics as ”nobly” and "conspicuously" as he could and wanted only to avoid jostling and rioting--therefore he transfered the relics from the crypt and the nave to that magnificent upper choir which was to become the unsurpassed model of the Gothic cathedral chevet. Nothing, he thought, would be a graver sin of omission than to withhold from the service of God and His saints what He had empowered nature to supply and man to perfect: vessels of gold or precious stone adorned with pearls and gems, golden candelabra and altar panels, sculpture and stained glass, mosaic and enamel work, lustrous vestments and tapestries. Among the many images of the divine order that the lusterial church reflected for Suger were "the church as the Bride" and "the church as heaven". Suger says, How secluded this place is, how hallowed, how convenient for those celebrating the divine rites has come to be known to those who serve God there as though they were already dwelling, in a degree, in Heaven while they sacrifice.14 13Panofsky, Abbot Suger, pp. 13-14. 1 4Sugar, De Administratione, p. 45. 98 Suger also saw the "church as the Bible". Suger, like Hugh, recognizes that the allegorical message of the “material" can only be understood by those who have an understanding first of earthly matters; therefore, Suger often supplies verses to accompany art objects, which could be read to the illiterate so that the allegorical and anagogical senses might be understood. And because the diversity of the materials [such as] gold, gems and pearls is not easily understood by the mute perception of sight without a descrip- tion, we have seen to it that this work, which is intelligible only to the literate, which shines with the radiance of delightful allegories, be set down in writing. Also we have affixed verses expounding the matter so that the [allegories] might be more clearly understood: Crying out with a loud voice, the mob acclaims Christ: Osanna. The true Victim offered at the Lord's Supper has carried all men. He Who saves all men on the Cross hastens to carry the cross. The promise which Abraham obtains for his seed is sealed by the flesh of Christ. Melchizedek offers a libation because Abraham triumphs over the enemy. They who seek Christ with the Cross bear the cluster of grapes upon a staff.15 But;, for Suger, the highest understanding, the most eilevated of the mystical senses, was the anagogical. Buried in his own church, Suger believed, was the Writer who offered the clearest understanding of the mystical and anagogical vision of the heavenly order 151bid., p. 63. 99 available to the Western Church. Suger was convinced as were many of the churchmen of twelfth century EurOpe that the disciple to Paul, Dionysius the Areopagite, and the first bishop (and martyr) of France, Dionysius (St. Denis),16 were one and the same person. ‘We now know that a Syrian monk, 91.52.11 500 A.D., wrote many mystical treatises under the name Dionysius the Areopagite. He will hereinafter be referred to as Pseudo-Dionysius. Suger believed that what he had to do to give the new church its anagogical form was follow the lead of St. Denis. AS the church is to be an image of the heavenly, and for Pseudo-Dionysius the celestial hierarchy is the model f43!: all other hierarchies including the ecclesiastical hierarchy, Suger sought to build a church that in the anagoqical manner would transport the soul from the material to the inmaterial. Thus, when--out of my delight in the beauty of the house of God--the loveliness of the many-colored gems has called me away from external cares, and WOrthy meditation has induced me to reflect, transferring that which is material to that which le immaterial, on the diversity of the sacred v-L:rtues: then it seems to me that I see myself dWelling, as it were, in some strange region of e univese which neither exists entirely in the s]_ ime of the earth nor entirely in the purity of Heaven; and that, by the grace of God, I can be 1 6St. Dionysius (St. Denis) travelled France circa 250 A.D. 100 transported from this inferior so that higher world in an anagogical manner.1 Suger looked upon the Pseudo-Dionysian Celestial Hierarchy as a handbook for the building of an anagogical structure. The: only thing which caused him to hesitate was his question of whether or not he himself had a sufficient understanding and was in a necessary state of grace to enuilate the Dionysian celestial hierarchy in this new structure. On this issue, von Simson says, Suger wished to express yet another thought at the beginning of his Booklet: the great enter- prise that is about to be undertaken requires an inner disposition, a state of grace, on the part of the builder. The mystical vision of harmony can become a model for the artist only if it has first taken possession of his soul and become the ordering pripgiple of all its faculties and (aspirations. In 1137, with Johannes Scotus Erigena's ninth cenirury translation and commentary on The Celestial fierarchy available to him, Suger began work on the west facade. I propose that Suger used the Pseudo-Dionysian Visixln, as offered in the Celestial Hierarchy, to endow the Ireligious art object with qualities that would evoke profClund religious experiences in the viewers. The art objeCt, for Suger, provided an image of the heavenly x l 7Suger, De Administratione, pp. 63-65. 18 . . von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral, p. 127. 101 order that was to be used by the worshippers to trans- form his or her inner spiritual and community life. The first import of the Western, Medieval religious art object was its iconographic significance--the propensity to spiritually inform the worshipper. A brief examination of The Celestial Hierarchy will help us to grasp Suger's vision of what church architecture should be, and also provide us with a vocabulary of meanings with which to interpret the art works. I believe the imitation of the Pseudo- Dionysian vision by Suger was the single greatest contributh element to the birth of the Gothic style. Pointed arches had already been used at Cluny and elsewhere. Durham already had ribbed cross-vaults. The tripartite towered facade was already established as an architectural motif, most notably at St. Etienne, Caen. The great innovation of St. Denis was the degree to Which it brought 1395 into the church, and this innovation was born of the necessity, in Suger's mind, to Present the Pseudo-Dionysian vision in the form Of a building. Suger carefully considered how to bring the new nave into structural harmony with the 01d church'...except for that elegant and praiseworthy 102 extension [the chevet, or choir], in [the form.of] a circular string of chapels, by virtue of which the whole would shine with the wonderful and uninterrupted light of most luminous windows, pervading the interior beauty.” 19 Light is the linchpin of the Pseudo-Dionysian Vision. The The the Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of Lights. Further also, every procession of illuminating light, proceeding from the Father, whilst visiting us as a gift of goodness, restores us again gradually as an unifying power, and turns us to the oneness of our conducting Father, and to a deifying simplicity. For all things are from Him, and to Him, as said the Sacred Word. Invoking then Jesus, the Paternal Light, the Real, the True, which lighteth every man coming into the world, through Whom we have access to the Father, Source of Light, let us aspire, as far as is attain- able, to the illuminations handed down by our fathers in the most sacred Oracles, and let us gaze, as we may, upon the Hierarchies of the Heavenly Minds manifested by them symbolically for our instruction. And when we have received, with immaterial and unflinching mental eyes, the gift of Light, primal and super-primal, of the supremely Divine Father, which manifests to us the most blessed Hierarchies of the Angels in types and symbols, let us then, from it be elevated to its simple splendour. understanding of the angelic message can only be 19 . Suger, De Consecratione, p. 101. 20Dionysius the AreOpagite, The Heavenly Hierarchy, Rev. John Parker (trans.), The Works of Dionysius Areopagite (Merrick, N.Y.: Richwood Publ., 1976), 5w 1-2. 103 entered into through contemplation. For Hugh of St. Victor, contemplation is the highest gift given to man and provides the most complete knowledge of man's nature and his link to the Divine. Pseudo-Dionysius suggests that.those wishing to be "illuminated“ should be led to contemplation. ...those who are being illuminated should be filled with the Divine Light, conducted to the habit and faculty of contemplation in all purity of mdnd;...21 Pseudo-Dionysius proposes that God is utterly different fromxman, and nothing exists as an apt shmili- tude to His likeness. If man desires to achieve a oneness with Him, he must pass through the Hierarchy of angels, who are the company of heaven. Pseudo- Ifionysius has no vision of God, but he has some idea of the essential aspects of each level of angels. The angels are perpetual, ever ascending and perfect. Their ascendency is the process of purification. Man must first achieve his true nature, the nature established by God in prelapsarian man. After perfection is achieved man can then move closer to unification with God by being purified by the Source of Light. For I suppose we have sufficiently shown above, that the purpose of every Hierarchy is an unswerving 21Ibid., p. 15. 104 devotion to the divine imitation of the Divine Likeness, and that every Hierarchical function is set apart for the sacred reception and distri- bution of an undefiled purification, and Divine light, and perfecting science. The angels are at nine levels. The highest is that of the Seraphim, who are perpetually afire. The Seraphim are unlocatable for they illumine all that is around them. The next highest level is that of the Cherubim._ Their. essential characteristic is a "fullness of.know1edge or stream of wisdom." The lowest order is that of the Angels,23 who are the directors of nations, and it is at the level of the Angels that communication and instruction is established with man. The abundance of God's gifts to each level of angels causes each to overflow with celebration. This abundance causes the desire to share the gift with the order below; thus, each level of angels instructs the one below it. ...those who purify should impart, from their own abundance of purity, their own proper holiness; that those who illuminate, as being more luminous intelligences, whose function it is to receive and to impart light, and who are joyfully filled with holy gladness, that these should overflow, in proportion to their own overflowing light, towards those who are worthy of enlightenment: and that those who make perfect, as being skilled in the impartation of perfection, should perfect those being perfected, through the holy instruction, 221bid., p. 26. 23Angels with a capital "A" refer to the lowest level of angels: angels with a small "a" refers to all nine levels of angels. 105 in the science of the holy things comntemplated. Thus each rank of the Hierarchical Order is led, in its own degree, to the Divine co-operation, by performing, through grace and God-given power, those things which are naturally and supernaturally in the God head, and accomplished by It superessentially, and manifested hierarchically, for the attainable imitation of the God-loving Minds. As each level of angels is purified into the new it cumulatively gathers the perfect natures of each until it is joined into the Simple (the One God). The desire of the Angels is to have man join their {ever ascending journey to divine purification. Pseudo-Dionysius insists that he proposes nothing that is not already written in the Bible; he merely wants to share his vision of illumination of what is revealed in Scripture. For example, the "cumulative effect" of coming to divine wisdom is not new with Pseudo- Dionysius. Christ says in the Gospel of Matthew, “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them" (Mt. 5:17, RSV). By the outpouring of instruction of the Angels to man, an invitation to join the angelic ascendency is offered. An example of such a contact was the annunciation to Mary by the angel Gabriel. Pseudo-Dionysius points out that Angels are often 24Ibid., pp. 15-16. 106 given anthropomorphic qualities in art to establish a link to man, although what man and the angels have in common is not body but the "intellectual faculty". But they also depict them under the likeness of men, on account of the intellectual faculty, and their having powers of looking upwards, and their straight and erect form, and their innate faculty of ruling and guiding, and whilst being least, in physical strength as compared with the other powers of irrational creatures, yet ruling over all by their superior power of mind and by their dominion in consequence of rational science, and theig innate unselfishness and indomitableness of soul. 5 In thus saying that what man and the angels share is the "intellectual faculty", Pseudo-Dionysius reveals his Platonism. The mind, to him, is that which ascends to God. The Angels are higher than man and unlike him in that they are "free from all passion".26 Pseudo-Dionysius allows for the rendering of angels with anthropomorphic qualities because the learned viewer knows that flesh is dissimilar to the divine and yet it is the material lgggg of divine attributes. Again, only through the material can we move beyond it to the hMmaterial. The hierarchy of angels interposed by Pseudo- Dionysius between God and man is for ”the assimilation and union, as far as attainable [each thing in its 25Ibid., pp. 57-58.‘ 26Ibid., p. 58. 107 own nature], with God".27 God through the hierarchy §§nctifies all things with "its own prOper light to each according to their fitness, and perfects in most Divine initiation”.28 Through the vision of the hier- archy of angels, Pseudo-Dionysius proposes a model for earthly living and a mgle g: the divine, in which one participates in the other. That interchange sanctifies the earthly by fulfilling the will of the divine. In sum, through the illumination of the angels, "the Minds around God"29, man is brought to 1) immediate elevation, 2) purification, 3) spiritual illumination, and 4) perfection "by a gift of light from the God head, more hidden and more manifest--more hidden, indeed, as being more intelligible, and more simplifying and more unifying...."30 Suger is able to share in the Pseudo-Dionysian 27Ibid., p. 14. 281bid., p. 13. 29Ibid., p. 41. 3°1bid. 108 vision, for ...the participation of wisdom.and knowledge throughout is common to all the minds which bear the image of God:...31 The Divine illumination having been "distributed to all," Suger, feeling he understands the vision, overflows, like the angels, with joy at the illumination and wants to share his joy and instruct others in it. It is in his new choir, constructed in less than four years, that the multi-colored light floods the interior and its holy relics with divine illumination. Suger's choir at St. Denis was embraced by a double ambulatory, which is still extant. The succession of concave segments that constitute the outer wall of the outer ambulatory functions as a series of radiating chapels (see Figures 3 and 4). The chapel walls are 32 Never pierced by double stained-glass windows. before had such large windows been used in relation to the scale of the structure surrounding them. The windows practically become the chapel walls. These windowed walls were made possible by the use of pointed arches, which transfer most of their weight to the large diagonally-placed pier-buttresses that protrude on the exterior. The absorption of the vault-thrusts on 3lIbid., p. 45. 32Of the new choir only the crypt and first level remain as Suger built them, and our attention is focused on this first level. 109 Figure 3 109 / W4\V%p\§ / \V\ ”. 7?: 7‘» §x< 01/; \VI \V’ [V AW W .14 bc‘hbfyChflr 05ft MD?” :Grmmdplanofmmmov 110 Figure 4 C p & h m u h C m b A .5 ulxloll' I toll-olflll‘t a}..- "ll'hi! .n; (above) Interior of ambulatory. 1140—44. I .n . u 06’. ....l I.l1l.".l|tl|y‘. , ” ...,.,,3.u4 A _ , . nqvfnbflmw.r, ,. .. . 4. \‘J .. ., Ahflmr'g ”...4 M1,... '4‘}; . , :A..'l.W/’p,(a‘ . ”I , . allow inter of ti“. HHHQ / '11 ’1 fl) 111 the exterior of the building made it possible to use comparatively small supports inside, allowing for a new freedom in the flow of space and light. The diagonal placement of the pier-buttresses, as Opposed to their conventional arrangement at right angles to the structure, allowed the light to flow into the ambulatory in a less interrupted manner than before. Whitney Stoddard says of the diagonally-placed piers, These piers in their diagonal arrangement transform the interior space. No longer are the spaces cubical, flanked by walls which reiterate the longitudinal axis down the nave.33 Inside the building these pier-buttresses look more delicate than they really are, and this effect was accomplished by giving them the appearance of being nothing more than clusters of graceful colonettes. Columns supporting the vaults of the ambulatory are, in turn, aligned with the diagonally-placed pier-buttresses, allow- ing, again, for minimal interruption of light rays that flow in through the windows. These rays could then flow unimpeded to the very center of the choir. The column supports standing between the inner and outer ambulatories are extraordinarily slender; such thin supports allow a maximum of light to penetrate into the midst of the 33Whitney Stoddard, Art and Architecture in Medieval France (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p. 106. light 112 structure. Because the chapels were made very shallow, one does not know where the ambulatory leaves off and the chapels begin. The use of these ”shallow" chapels, as opposed to more conventional deep-set chapel niches, brought the windows a great deal closer to the ambulatory and choir. Clearly, Suger is concerned with the unity, the flowing-together, of the chapel-, ambulatory-, and choir spaces. But why is Suger interested especially in "colored light”? Light flowing through stained-glassed windows does not provide as much illumination as would trans- parent panes of glass. The stained glass windows were to serve many purposes. As narratives of Holy writ they carried literal, allegorical, and tropological meanings. Anagogically, they exemplify the divine images of the celestial hierarchies as described by Pseudo-Dionysius: Also the WOrd of God attributes to the Heavenly Beings a likenesg to Brass, Electron, and many- coloured stones. 4 We must consider that the many-coloured appear- ances of stones denote either as white, the luminous; or as red, the fiery: or as yellow, the golden; or as green, the youthful and the full grown; and within each likeness you will find an explanation which teaches the inner meaning of the typical images.35 “ 34 . . . . . . Pseudo-Diony31us, The Celestial Hierarchy, p. 62. 351bid., p. 63. a‘bjas r? 1 I' (D g': ..E mfirfir—hH-mpomm- mar] the " tha1 L, 113 For Pseudo-Dionysius the image of heaven, as seen in the cosmos, is also a veiled image. The sheer light of God is not able to burst through unimpeded. The Light of God can shine transparently through the heavenly hosts, but as it strikes the denser matter of the earthly realm, the image of light, though splen- diferous, is not that of angelic purity. ...the distribution of the sun's ray passes with easy distribution to first matter [the angels], as being more transparent than all, and, through it with greater clearness, lights up its own splendours: but when it strikes more dense materials, its distributed brilliancy becomes more obscure, from the inaptitude of the materials illuminated for transmission of the gift of Light, and from this it is naturally contracted, so as to almost entirely exclude the passage of Light.36 The translucent windows of Suger's church remind the viewer that the truth they see of the divine is still the veiled truth. Though the material can lead to the immaterial, it can never serve as a similitude of the heavenly substance. Suger provided verses to explain the multiple narrative content of one of these windows. It is the anagogical character of the narrative events depicted that he emphasizes. By working the mill, thou, Paul, takest the flower out of the bran. Thou makest known the inmost meaning of the Law of Moses. .From.so many grains is made the true bread without bran, Our and the angels' perpetual food. 351bid., p. 47. Also in use He W‘: The I in anot ‘ ‘obi'u Mose Roya In the Hoses 1 Just 114 Also in the same [window], where the Lion and Lamb unseal the Book: He Who is the great God, the Lion and the Lamb, unseals the Book. The Lamb or Lion becomes the flesh joined to God. In another window, where the daughter of Pharaoh finds Moses in the ark: Moses in the ark is that Man-Child Whom the maiden Royal, the Church, fosters with pious mind. In the same window, where the Lord appeared to Moses in the burning bush: Just as this bush is seen to burn yet is not burned, So he who is full of this fire Divine burns with it yet is not burned. Also in the same [window], where Pharaoh is submerged in the sea with his horsemen: What Baptism does to the good, that does to the soldiery of Pharaoh A like form.but an unlike cause. Also in the same [window], where Moses raises the brazen serpent: Just as the brazen serpent slays all serpents, So Christ, raised on the Cross, slays His enemies. In the same window, where Moses receives the Law on the mount: After the Law has been given to Moses the grace of Christ invigorates it 37 Grace giveth life, the letter killeth. After these verses Suger speaks of the gold, silver, and precious gems found on the many sacred ornaments in 37Suger, De Administratione, pp. 73-77. the in“ silver I of the 1 mulatc vision: qifih thf of gate} at St. 1 for th measure provide Passion intensi message gilded letters F0: Sm Gi‘ Th. Ye 115 the interior of the church. The response to light of gold, silver, and precious gems was for Suger a recapitulation of the light of the windows. As the structure of the ambulatory was built in response to the Pseudo-Dionysian vision, so the windows were designed to be consistent with the Pseudo-Dionysian understanding of the relation of material to light. There may be no clearer expression of the anagogical at St. Denis than the now-lost bronze doors Suger had cast for the central entrance of the West facade. These doors measured fifteen by twelve and one-half feet. They provided a sculptural narrative of the Resurrection and Passion of Christ. To invest these panels with the intensity of light needed to carry his anagogical message, Suger saw to it that the reliefs were made of gilded bronze. Suger added verses, in copper-gilt letters, to mark the year of consecration. For the splendor of the church that has fostered and exalted him, Suger has labored for the splendor of the church. Giving thee a share of what is thine, O Martyr Denis, He prays to thee to pray that he may obtain a share of Paradise. The year was the one Thousand, One Hundred, and Fortieth Year of the Word when [this structure] was consecrated. 381bid., pp. 47-49. But it doors I to the Panofs] ricer: n E '5‘“ ‘0 3:1 Shc To In '3 I.) 116 But it is the next set of verses,that were added to the doors by Suger,that once again reflected his commitment to the anagogical process for spiritual enlightenment. Panofsky says, "In reality these verses amount to a condensed statement of the whole theory of 'anagogical' illumination."39 Whoever thou art, if thou seekest to extol the glory of these doors, Marvel not at the gold and the expense but at the craftsmanship of the work. Bright is the noble work: but, being nobly bright, the work Should brighten the minds, so that they may travel, through the true lights, To the True Light where Christ is the true door. In what manner it be inherent in this world the golden door defines: The dull mind rises to truth through that which is material And, in seeing this light, is rigurrected from its former submersion. Suger explains through these verses that the first responsibility assigned to these doors is not to evoke the awe of the worshipper over the beauty of the doors. Rather the brilliant work should inspire and lead the worshipper's mind to the True Light or divine wisdom. Bright is the noble work; but, being nobly bright, the work Should brighten the minds, so that they may travel, through the true lights, To the True Light where Christ is the true door. 39 4 . . . 0Suger, De Administratione, pp. 47-49. Erwin Panofsky, Abbot Suger, p. 23. The re In Th Ar. explai 13d f v {r (T) I n as it the 1: meter. appeé Ones! 117 The rest of the verses which read, In what manner it be inherent in this world the golden door defines: The dull mind rises to truth through that which is material And, in seeing this light, is resurrected from its former submersion. explain the anagogical process of leading the human mind from.the material to the immaterial. For Suger, the "golden doors" begin to reflect the immaterial, as, in wonderment, the mind gains in understanding of the immaterial, one is lifted from ”submersion" in the material world. Certainly the doors were beautiful, and I am sure that those who beheld them shared in a wonderful aesthetic experience. I think Suger commends the beauty of the work when he says, "Marvel not at the gold and the expense but at the craftsmanship of the work." But for Suger the greatest importance of these doors is their ability to spiritually inform.and lead the worshipper to profound religious experience. The qualities supplied to the door to religiously inform is what I want to call their iconographic significance. Although Suger allows the doors to have aesthetic appeal, he emphasizes that they are to be used to enhance one's religious understanding. The doors are, for Suger, 4111616. a vehic with th ' ‘I Remvai for the worship adamant to capt Church' Cram th Pamper} 118 a vehicle to carry the contemplative worshipper to union with the heavenly hosts. In the next chapter we will see how the Gothic Revival architect, Ralph Adams Cram, shared Suger's desire to religiously inform the worshipping community through ecclesiastical architecture. Cram, too, suggests the first importance of the church structure should be for the spiritual enlightenment of the community who worships inside the church. As we will see, Cram was adamantly opposed to the building of churches simply to capture the admiration of the passerby. For him a church's aesthetic appeal was a secondary concern. Cram thought that the purpose of church structure, properly built, was to promote sacramental worship. This but (Act Sight c archite 'Spirit His res the Got that ti by the the PI: Reviva] a Sign: Createc' Out Eu: CHAPTER IV Ralph Adams Cram and Neo-Gothic Architecture This is the stone which was rejected by you builders, but which has become the head of the corner. (Acts 4:11, RSV) This chapter will explore a twentieth century attempt to renew a church architecture that had not lost sight of Christ as its cornerstone. The American architect Ralph Adams Cram wanted to restore the ”spiritual quality" of ecclesiastical architecture. His restoration method was conducted during the end of the Gothic Revival in America.1 It was Cram's belief that the "Gothic style" had been "most untimely cut off by the synchronizing of the Classical Renaissance and the Protestant Revolution."2 Except for the Romanesque Revival style of Henry Hobson Richardson, Cram believed, a significant ecclesiastical architecture was not being created in his time. As a result of his travels through- out EurOpe, and as a result also of his own deep-seated 1His architectural firm.af Cram and Wentworth, Architects opened in 1890. 2Ralph Adams Cram, MyLife in Architecture (Boston: Little, Brown, 1936), p. 72. 119 iglo-Ce archite created lore p: he lac his me1 to bui {is 111 to? to at. 120 Anglo-Catholic convictions, he believed that an architecture of dynamic spiritual expression could be created to meet the needs of the modern worshipper. More pragmatically, he also believed that because of the lack of significant new ecclesiastical structures, his new firm had a "virgin field" in which to grow and to build its reputation. Cram says, My hopes were higher, however, than for a career in housebuilding, interesting as this is; and I told Charles that if a young firm such as ours was to get anywhere we should have to find some compar- atively virgin field and, if possible, make it our own. A careful survey indicated that there was such a field, and that was one of which my new interests, acquired in Rome, argued acceptance. This was the building of churches. Just at that time this was in a very parlous state. The Gothic sequence, both Puginesque and Victorian, had been rudely broken by the Richardsonian episode, and as this had become deeply discredited by the puny successors of the original giant, every— one seemed to be wandering in a maze, uncertain what to do. My idea was that we should set ourselves to pick up these threads of the broken tradition and stand strongly for Gothic as a style for church building that was not dead but only moribund, and 3 perfectly susceptible of an awakening to life again. It is in the maintenance of the "spiritual essence" of ecclesiastical architecture that Cram contrasts his church architecture from that of his contemporaries. He felt his contemporaries, using the "Gothic style", indiscriminately applied Gothic motifs to church 3Ibid., pp. 71-72. structL‘ spirit1 121 structures, making them aesthetically pleasing but spiritually bankrupt. Though Cram describes his understanding of the "spiritual essence" of church architecture as being "intuitive", I want to suggest that his interest was in the providing of a structure that had "iconographic significance". We will see later in this chapter that he would subordinate his architectural forms to the activity around the altar. He believed that it was in the sacraments of the Church that the church had its purpose and focus. Before pursuing Cramis own peculiar views of neo- Gothic church structures, I would like briefly to outline the historical and stylistic context that surrounded him. Charles Eastlake in his book on A History of the Gothic Revival (1872) suggests that Gothic architecture as a style never died in England. Although under Queen Elizabeth's reign, the Italian Renaissance style would begin to be heavily imported, country houses would remain Gothic.4 But later writers such as Kenneth Clark (1928), Calder Loth and Julius Sadler (1943) would call the vestiges of the Gothic style in the seventeenth and 4Charles Eastlake, A History of the Gothic Revival (London: Longmans, 1872), p. 5. Mb 4 stat. a .l .5 c H F... E+¢Ct0t -‘ 4h a k ct Bu. hp... aw. W a; 122 eighteenth centuries "Gothic Survival". Loth and Sadler state: The creators of this belated expression of the Gothic built as they did because the only way they knew to put together and ornament a building was according to the precepts of design and construction handed down from.previous generations. They were neither aping an earlier style nor trying to create an historical ambiance, but continuing to build in a surviving tradition: the term Gothic would have held no meaning for them. This differentiates Survival from GothiC'Revival, which was a conscious Romantic endeavor intended to arouse a particular emotional response through the evocation of an historical atmosphere. Some Survival Gothic is contemporary with or even later than certain examples of early Gothic Revival; the expressions of each style may most properly be distinguished from one another by the motives of their creators. And Kenneth Clark says, Writers on English architecture sometimes say that a tiny stream of the Gothic tradition was never lost, but flowed unbroken from.Henry VII's chapel to the Houses of Parliament. In one sense this is true: from 1600 to 1800 perhaps no year passes which did not see the building of some pointed arch and gabled roof, or the restoration of some crumbling tracery. There are churches, colleges, private houses, built under the stiffest Augustan tyranny, which can only be classified as Gothic; and they have led some writers to suggest that the phrase 'The Got ic Revival' should be abandoned as mis- leading. The end of Gothic as a dominant architectural style in England was probably due to the neo-Classical and 5Calder Loth and Julius Trousdale Sadler, Jr., The Only Proper Style (Boston: New York Graphic Society, ISIB, p. 3. 6Kenneth Clark, The Gothic Revival ( New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1928), p. 11. Renaj It we 123 Renaissance building styles of Inigo Jones and other. It was as Jones began his restoration project of St. Paul's Cathedral in London in 1633 that the dominant new style would mark the fast decline of the Gothic; as Eastlake says, "the first stone was laid for a Roman portico to one of the finest cathedrals of the Middle Ages,...."7 In England, the neo-classical styles would remain the dominant force for the next 150 years. The Gothic Revival first began as a literary style. Poems by such persons as Alexander Pope and David Mallet in the middle of the eighteenth century were filled with a melancholy and nostalgia for things past. Art historians of Gothic Revivalism seem to agree that such literature inspired an architectural dilettantism among English gentlemen who began to take an interest in ancient buildings. The result of such study was the borrowing of Gothic ornaments to decorate interiors of homes, such as at Strawberry Hill (see Figure 5). In this context Gothic became one of many exotic styles. 0f neo-Gothic churches built in the late eighteenth century Clark says, They seem to have associated Gothic far more with the decorative forms than with the shapes and arrange- ments of the old churches. It was pointed arches 7Eastlake, History of the Gothic Revival, p. 5. 124 Figure 5 - HORACE WALPOLE, with WILLIAM ROBINSON and others. Strawberry Hill, Twickenham. 1749—77 ”.15."? '1,dll\o.I-I~ , Aw... . II. 36414. . é“. grill. . - Interior, Strawberry Hill 125 Figure 6 CXXHL TYPICAL CATHEDRAL PLAN. K'V-—L Lady Chapel. a. Sanctuary. 3. Choir. 4. Altar Sacristy. 5. Choir Sacrisly. 6. Organist's Room. 7. Side Chapel. 8. Side Chapel. 9. Dean‘s Sacrisly. ’°' 09'?!" Sammy. u. Bishops' Saul-lies. Ia. Bishops’ Cloister. 13. Chapter House. I4. Great Cloister. I5. North Porch. 16. South Porch. I7. North Transepl. I8. South Transept. 19. Nave. an. Chantrie- and Tombs. n. Calvary and Mortuary Chapel. 2:. BapIisIery. 23. 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Clark says, Two hundred and fourteen churches were erected as a result of the Church Building Act (1818); and of these a hundred and seventy-four were in a style then described as Gothic, and which it is perhaps impossible to classify in any other manner. Most of them.bad pointed arches, and the pointed arch is, at this period, the only workable distinction between Gothic and the other styles. But the choice of Gothic was not for its intrinsic ability to spiritually inspire, rather, it was chosen because it could house economically a great many peOple, could be built of brick (which was the most economical building material of the time), and had some elegance about it. Clark says of such a great number of churches in the neo-Gothic style, 8Clark, The Gothic Revival, p. 94. 91bid., pp. 95-96. 138 They suggest an admiration for medieval architecture which the Commissioners did not feel. Their motive was economy. A Minute had been circulated among prominent architects, asking them to suggest “the most economical mode of building churches, with a view to accommodating the greatest number of persons at the smallest expense, within the compass of an ordinary voice.“ The results of this questionnaire were favourable to Gothic for it was agreed that the cheapest medium was brick. "No greater quantity of stone should be used," wrote Sir Jon Soane, "than is required to assist their [the churches] construction", and in the classical style a great deal of unnecessary stone was used on porticoes and pediments. So the Commissioners advised Gothic; and the Church Building Society suggested how the style should be employed. The pillars of the gallery were best made of cast iron, though in large churches this might want grandeur; ornament was to be neat and simple, yet venerable; and if there were a vault or crypt, it should 98 designed to hold coal or the parish fire engine. Though in the first half of the nineteenth century there were many ostensibly new Gothic churches, they were not built on a well organized set of architectural principles appropriate to the Gothic style. Most of the architects of these churches were in fact trained in the classical style. It is not unusual to find that a pointed arch is merely tacked onto what is essentially a neo-Classical, secular building, such as the church at Tetbury which Clark says "is built like a theatre."11 By the middle of the nineteenth century, three authors would help establish a positive attitude towards 1°1bid., p. 96. lllbid. ' p. 94. 139 Gothic as an architectual style, and define “principles" of Gothic design and structure. They were Augustus welby Pugin, John Ruskin, and Viollet-le-Duc. The essential principles set forth in their combined writings may be described as follows: 1) that the viability of Gothic architecture was in its religious appeal; thus, a Gothic church must be thoroughly Gothic, not just in decorative details: it must be an organic unified structure which might foster a religiosity as fervent as that of the Middle Ages. 2) If the new Gothic architecture was to promote religious fervor, it was under a moral injunction to be honest in its statement of structure and in the use of materials.12 Any kind of architectural illusionismxwould amount to a falsehood, which, in turn could hardly be expected to foster honesty in man. 3) Medieval society was morally "good" and in fact superior to that of post-enlightenment England, which felt itself stifled, artistically and expressively, by its own narrow rationalism.. These principles --or perhaps they should be called notions-- were not not based on any intrinsic aesthetic criteria. 12An example of architectural honesty is in making ribs in fact a reinforcement of vaults, not merely applied to them as surface decoration. 140 The main intention of all three writers was to recapture Gothic spirituality and to impose it on a culture that felt a need for a spiritual revival. Most American architects took up Gothic Revival, as an imported style, mainly for its decorative applications to churches, civic and institutional buildings, and houses. Only in the Episc0pal Church, which felt the pressure of the Camden Society and the architectural formulas prescribed by its publication The Ecclesiologist, did American Gothic Revival find itself consistently tied to the spiritual and moral injunctions developed in England. An example of a church built in America in response to the English ecclesiologists is St. James and Less (Philadelphia), which was meant to be a paradigm for subsequent church architecture in this country.13 But the ecclesiologists' direct copying of the Gothic style was challenged by many including the English architectural critic James Fergusson. Fergusson hoped to convince Pugin and the ecclesiologists that if the contemporary religious community was to regain the religious dynamism of the Gothic period, it should "adopt the spirit, and reject 13Phoebe B. Stanton, The Gothic Revival and American Church Architecture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1968). P. 91ff. 141 the [architectural] form."14 Fergusson states: It is proposed to erect a building, say a parish church, to accommodate a certain congregation. This can be done in a common-sense modern edifice, with a sufficient amount of ornament and character, for say 5,000 pounds. No, say all the ecclesiologists, archaeologists, and amateurs of mediaeval antiquities, this can never do; and the architect is made to ask 5,000 pounds more, to put the church into a mediaeval dress,--in other words, to crowd the floor with pillars, which prevent people from seeing and hearing,-- to abolish galleries, which accommodate crowds at a small expense; to deepen the chancel, so thgt the clergyman's voice cannot be heard, etc, etc. One should not assume that Fergusson is rejecting the whole of the Gothic Revival and that he is proposing a brand new, never-before-seen, architecture. His target was Gothic Revival architecture that was mere copying and was not built to suit the needs of the contemporary Church.16 What Fergusson wanted was a ”modern” architecture built around the needs of contemporary culture. He wanted an architecture that would use the new building materials, for the sake of economy, and to use them in a straightforward way, for the sake of a functional aesthetic, in the overall designs of new structures. 14Ibid., p. 200. 15James Fergusson, "Effect of the Want of Reality on the Works of Modern Architects", The Builder, March 16, 1850, p. 122. 16"Copying" here.means the lifting of individual ornaments, .motifs, and building forms and rejoining them.not as they are found in any particular Gothic building but rather as they are shaped in an eclectic collection of architectural forms and ornaments. 142 The suggestions of Fergusson were to be realized in the American Gothic Revival architecture of Ralph Adams Cram. Cram assumed that most of the Gothic Revival work which preceded his own exemplified the worst kind of archaeology. He saw his work as at once Modern and Gothic in that he was not copying the old style but was taking it toward its logical end. Because of his assumption that Gothic architecture was "untimely cut off" in its development, Cram believed his own architecture was an extension of the Gothic architecture of sixteenth-century England. But his architecture can rightly be called "modern" for three reasons. First, it was constructed to meet new liturgical needs. Second, it made use of some modern material, such as steel in the structures. Third, his architecture reflected the religiosity and an aesthetic preference of its own time. Cram's work appears both "modern" and a logical "extension of Gothic" if considered in relation to its time, 1890—1930. During these years architects agreed that architecture could not be accomplished in 23339. All seemed to agree that new architectural ideas were to find their viability in precedents, and they were made modern in the realization of these precedential forms in the meeting of contemporary needs. What separated Cram from.many of his peers was his understanding of older forms and of what such forms might mean to 143 contemporary architecture. Cram points out that the ecclesiastical architect working :h1 a Gothic style should develop an understanding of the “spiritual impulse" or "essence of Gothic”. This ”impulse” or "essence" should be elucidated in the organization and decorative aspects of Gothic monuments. For Cram those who merely copy, or just paste on details of Gothic, or attempt a re-creation of it, are cold archaeologists who re-present the forms without an understanding of the religious/aesthetic motivating forces of Gothic. The ”archaeologists" work is thus one of the following things: a random application of Gothic forms "stuck onto" current structures; Or eclectic grotesques thrown together by well meaning architects, but lacking the integrity of good art or viable religious meaning. Though the Gothic Revival movement begins in the United States as early as the late eighteenth century, in Cram's view almost all the work, until Richardson's Trinity Church, Boston, was "archaeological".17 Cram agreed with Gothic-Revival apologists such as Pugin and Ruskin when they suggested that the only "true Church" is one that attempts to draw forth the best of its 17'Archaeological” means the copying of past styles and motifs and applying them to contemporary structures. 144 symbolic offerings throughout its history--an acknow- ledgment that in its Reformation and Counter-Reformation the Church had lost much of its art, much of its liturgy, its unity, and almost its sacraments. For Cram Gothic was regenerated in an attempt to revive a moribund Catholic Church in all its magnificence. Cram says that in the beginning of the Gothic Revival the intention was good, but the results, as in Victorian Gothic, were abominations. They were churches of intention not learnedness--their builders intended that the churches should have the spirit of Gothic, but these builders knew very little about theology or medieval symbolic programs. Most of all they were churches without an understanding of the spirituality of the gothic epoch which they had hoped to emulate. The following is in part a caveat of Cram's to the neo-Gothic architect who would copy the Gothic-style "little parish church of England". The little parish church of England is the most perfect type ever produced and must therefore be for us a model in every way. The fad for "Romanesque” is dead, fortunately; and the latest fashion, Parisian Renaissance, can never be applied to church work. we have tried many things, but, in the end, we are driven back where, logically and historically, we belong [to Gothic]; and, if we try to do what our English forefathers did, without trying to copy their work, we cannot go very far wrong. They [Cramfs new churches] are not copies of English originals; they are only inspired by them. It would be possible, of course, to measure some 145 old church and reproduce it exactly; but this would be inexcusable affectation, it would be bad art. Into every design produced at this time must enter something of the personality of the architect, a great deal of the contemporary quality of the church. Our sense of economy forbids our making a church any larger than is absolutely necessary; and so we cannot have the dark aisles with their stone piers and chiselled arches, the side chapels and chantries, the lofty roofs and deep chancels that are such facile means of producing structures of dignity and grandeur, so sure a guarantee of mystery and awe in the final effect. Neither do we altogether need these adjuncts to nave and chancel as yet. Therefore, we must do the best we can without; and, though the task is harder,18 it is not beyond the powers of our achievement. But Cram also states a more pragmatic reason why our small neo-Gothic structures must be different from those of the gothic period. We cannot hope to rival the little churches of England in this day and generation, for conditions absolutely prevent the hearty lavishing of labor that was characteristic of the Middle Ages. The cut stone and carving, the elaborate stone tracery, the buttresses and balustrades and pinnacles are out of the question. We cannot restore the externals of the Gothic style; but we can endeavor to recreate the underlying spirit, and lead it to express itself in the new forms we most impose on it.19 It is the nineteenth-century architecture of eclectics and copiers which led Cram to pronounce this period the ”Dark Ages" of ecclesiastical architecture for Europe and America. He pointed out that the 1876 18Ralph Adams Cram, Church Building (Boston: Marshall Jones Co., 1924), pp. 30-32. 19 Ibid., p. 22. 146 Centennial proved American architects to be "artistic 20 barbarians”. For Cram the only respite from this was the ”masculine and powerful work of Richardson" (and, 21 secularly, McKim). Richardson was to be the first to understand the "spiritual impulse" of the medieval period, specifically in the Romanesque expression. He was to create a new, vital and modern work for the peOple of Trinity Church in the nineteenth century; which was meant to be in no way imitative of Romanesque except to revive its vitality and its expressive qualities. Cram thought that the architecture of Richardson was honest and powerful because of Richardson's ability to provide a church that was modern, distinct and monumental, while capturing the essence of the Romanesque precedent. Cram.states: The Centennial was the signal for the complete break-up of all consistent building; and the deplorable chaos that followed was lightened only by the fast strengthening influence of Richardson, with his enormous vitality, his splendid sincerity and honesty. But his was an alien style, with no historic or ethnic propriety: its virtue was the virtue of its advocate alone; and with his death the fatal weakness of Romanesque became apparent. There was none to carry on the master's work. It degenerated into the most shocking barbarism, and passed into history as an episode. Yet, even if this was its lamentable fate, the greater quality of Richardson persisted; and, until French Renaissance ZOCram, My Life in Architecture, p. 31. 211bid., p. 33. 147 came as the latest and freshest fad, something of 22 honesty and directness was demanded in architecture. But precisely because Richardson chose Romanesque as his model, Cram felt later on that Richardson and his stature led American ecclesiastical architecture away from unity of purpose and a national style, which for Cram could only rightly lie in a kind of Gothic. For Cram it was the Gothic period which offered the premier demonstrations of Christian belief not Romanesque. Furthermore, whereas the development of Gothic, in Cram's view, had been arbitrarily cut off--unlike the Romanesque, which had been allowed to run its course--the revival of Gothic, more than Romanesque, was particularly well justified. Cram states: It is hardly necessary to prove that Gothic is the one style in which we can work. This is generally admitted, now that the late architectural episode has died in the humiliation of "schoolhouse Romanesque"; and the new fashion of Parisian Renaissance has nothing to offer, and so per force drives its devotees to a cynical disregard of the Church. But "Gothic” as a term has not as yet differentiated itself. Too often it means anything done in any country of Europe between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. Hence we only have buildings that try to appear, in detail at least, of some particular time and some special land. This is archaeology, not architecture. If we are to build honorably, we must take up the life of church building where it was severed, and continue from that point, adding what we will, of course, so long as we assimilate it, borrowing anything’that is available from earlier 22Cram, Church Building, pp. 263-264. 148 periods, even from as far back as the Norman. But the root must be the English Perpendicular Gothic of the early sixteenth century.2 Cram in referring to his early nineteenth century British counterparts outlines the birth of the Gothic Revival this way. The architectural revival which began under Anglicanism was conscientiously and even meticulously Gothic. It knew little about underlying principles, it was innocent of the old spirit, it could not, under industrialism, recover anything of the Medieval craft, it could not even copy intelligently, still it made shift to do with a sort of architectural shorthand and it faithfully tried to suggest what it could by no means accomplish. 4 Cram felt that if the neo-Gothic architecture which preceded his own had one fundamental flaw it was that "it had been built for the admiration of the passerby” 25 Too often American and not for the Glory of God. architects had rejected Pugin's call for an honest use of materials. These architects, unlike Pugin, wanted to create effects that would impress all who gazed upon them. Cram was to also use the moral aesthetic to declare such work ”bad art”, for it was work built solely to (command the aesthetic attentions of people outside the Church . Cram states : 231bid., p. 45. 24Ibid., p. 322. 25Ibid., p. 85. 149 I have spoken of this point before, the prime necessity of rigid honesty in church building, where any willful falsity approaches the point of sacrilege; but it cannot be dwelt upon too strenuously in this age of expedients. False construction is simply a lie told for reasons of penury or ostentation. There has been altogether too much of this sort of thing of late. Imitation stone and mosaic, make- believe chimes, imitation marble, and even stained glass, all the tricks of trade are quite bad enough in civil and domestic affairs; but, when they enter into the question of church building and ornamentation, they become unpardonable.26 For Cram the church was built for those who worshipped in her. Its architecture was to be subordinate to the.church's ritual and sacraments. Cram relies on his instinctual understanding of fifteenth century English architecture and his own sacramental theology to create his modern form of Gothic. In ecclesiastical art done by instinct the best the architect can do is respond to the Church's sagacity. She is the Muse of the ecclesiastical architect. As in the theology of Thomas Aquinas, the flavor of wisdom of ages past can be seen in Cramls work and yet it is wholly new and unprecedented. The closest antecedent to his "typical plan" for a modern cathedral ‘would be that of fifteenth century English Perpendicular cathedrals (see Figures 6, 7 and 8); but.it is important to note that hardly any one plan in this style comes 261bid., pp. 84-85. 150 particularly close to this offering by Cram. This can be explained by the fact that Cram has taken what he thought was the best of English Gothic elements and put them together with his own innovations. He has used the English fifteenth century schema for the most part, of nave, transepts (sometimes double), monastic choir, chancel, sanctuary, and lady chapel (see Figure 11). But there are some unique and original solutions here. First, Cram believed the church building should dominate its surroundings- but be immediately recognizable as to its purpose and function, hence the predominance of very large towers and many of them. In this plan there are two West towers--much more true of the continent, especially of Ile—de-France, than of England. There are towers at the joining of the transepts and nave, and a truly monumental crossing tower. From a distance, it is the huge crossing tower which immediately lets one know that it is a Cram church (see Figure 10). Cram repeatedly described English Perpendicular as having “slender" cross- ing towers. It is important to note that Cram thought that the thirteenth century work of French Gothic was sublime, perfected, and thus removed from the worship of common humanity--its impact on the worShipper.was that of-a place for being awe-struck, not a place for daily worship. It 151 was English Gothic which was human and about to flower, a form not yet perfected. Cram says, In England, on the other hand, there is no trace of the pride that goeth before a fall. The builders of the cathedrals were not masterly men. They dared not pile their stones to the dizzy heights that lured the French. They shrank from cutting away the supports until the stone vaults hung breathlessly in the air. They did not under- stand how to dispose of columns, how to trace the lines of aisles and chapels, how to curve their arches and vaults as best to obtain the most awe-inspiring effects of shadow and fluctuant light and misty, bewildering perspective. And, just because they did not, they often achieved a success equal to, if not beyond, that of their more self- conscious rivals on the Continent. Cram felt that English Gothic left the door open to continued development of style and the contributions of individual artistic expression. A second unique feature of Cramfs church designs is their special emphasis on sacramental aspects of the Church. Cram shows great care here. He places a monumental font at the entrance of the church (see Figure 6), symbol- izing one's entering the Church through the sacrament of baptism. But the single most important feature of Cramis churches is the altar. The whole of a Cram church is built around this one focus. I will say more about the altar and its "organic" importance to the total structure 27Ibid., 184-185. 152 later. To begin with, he was determined that it be the converging point of the eye's attention and that it be accessible both to the eye and to the communicants. Such visibility and accessibility of the altar reflect the requirement of the modern Church that there be greater participation,than before,:h1the mysteries by the community gathered. Thus, Cram removed the rood screen, shortened and widened the nave, put seating in the crossing and transepts, making it possible for those sitting in the transept to see the altar (see Figures 6 and 11). He shortened the monastic choir, lessened the depth of the sanctuary, elevated the altar, and provided the greatest illumination for chancel and sanctuary. Additional new solutions are also given prominence. Note in Figure 6 that he does not introduce ‘windows into the side-aisle walls; only the clerestory 'windows throw light on the center aisle--the place of solemn processions; the greatest light is concentrated at the altar-end of the building. Cram felt the side aisles and nave were liturgically insignificant. In ‘what appears to be a deviation from his "typical" plan, the side-aisle walls of All Saints Church, Ashmont (see Figure 12) are pierced, but the windows are in fact very small; the intent here, as in the "typical" plan, is to 153 keep the eye moving toward the altar by keeping the \// greatest intensity of light around the altar. To make up for his de-emphasis on side aisles, Cram favored the addition of chapels to his shallow transepts, thus meeting two needs at once: for places for smaller gatherings, and for additional seating with a view of the high altar (see Figures 6 and 11). The shallow depth of the transepts keeps the community drawn in and in interaction; the architects of Notre Dame in Paris and of Chartres Cathedral wanted a comparable pulling in of the transepts, away from a marked cruciform shape. Cram also advocated, in his "typical" plan, the use of a secondary transept (see Figure 6) as a supplementary source of illumination of the chancel. The exteriors of Cram's churches are markedly different from.their English precurSors. Cram agrees with G. H. Cook that the direction of English Gothic was to continue to simplify the fundamental architectural structure. The frills and fancies of the Decorated style were dispensed with, architectural features were simpli- fied and shorn of over-elaboration, although the ogee-arch and the crocketed pinnacle persisted through the Perpendicular period, mainly as decorative adjuncts.28 28G. H. Cook, The English Cathedral (London: Phoenix House, 1960), p. 253. 154 Cram took what was, to him, the next logical step: removing the superfluous, "merely decorative" pinnacle and ogee-arch (see Figure 13). Moreover, the exterior aspect of the Church as a kind of sculptural object was of no great importance to Cram. One is not invited to walk around a church of his to view it as one, autonomous sculptural piece. He seems determined to attach out-buildings (sacristies and church offices) to impede a complete perimeter view of the church prOper (see Figures 6 and 11). One might object that artistic integrity demands that the church proper not be masked or hidden by attached buildings. But it seems clear that for Cram religious art was to be wholly subservient to religious demands. The church is not built for the passerby except to clearly reveal its function; it is raised for the peOple who are within. Cram felt he was a pious churchman who was well aware of the essential interrelationship between the church as a building and the Church as a community of believers. An exception had to be made, of course, for a .11 cathedral church, as Cram believed that such an edifice, being the see of a bishop and the church of an entire diocese, a great deal of decoration, both exterior and interior, was obligatory. The amount of cathedral 155 decoration was dependent on the size of the church, and unfortunately, often on the wealth of the parish. Compare, for example, his vision for New York Cathedral (Figure 10) and the actuality of Detroit's (Figure 14). At St. Paul's, Detroit, though the over-all decoration of the exterior appears simplified, a few pinnacles, a large rose window, a blind triforium, and archivolts remind the worshipper that he is in fact entering a cathedral church. St. John the Divine in New York, as envisioned by Cram (Figure 10), is a monumental under- taking in which the ideal structure could be pursued without concern for the limits of funds, land, protestant 29 Because of the unity intended by theology, and time. Cramfs designs, one knows that the sculpture on the outside of St. Paul's and St. Johns will be matched equally on the inside. The new and developmental goal Cram held out for was to build cathedral churches that drew religious/ aesthetic elements together as one integrated unity for a common purpose--an "organic" framework for a living 29The original plan for St. John the Divine, of which Cram's firm was not involved, was that it should be a Romanesque structure. After the foundation had already been laid, Cram was engaged to build the church in the Gothic style. For reasons known only to Cram, he believed that the French formula was the only Gothic style that could rest on the completed foundation. 156 Church. The decorative, in this formula, can only be used if it complements the whole structure and does not draw the eye away from essential parts. Cramis churches are organic in a number of ways, and I will list them below. Cramis desire was to create a church that appeared to be "living". He says, I shall speak of architectural style in the con- cluding chapter, passing the question here, only saying that the cathedral built today, like those built centuries ago, must grow like any of God's creatures; it must live: every stone must enter perfectly into the being of what is almost a sen- tient thing. Every shaft and arch and vault, every buttress, wall, and pinnacle, must play its just and perfect part: there must be no waste of force and no weakness6 no faulty proportion, no ill-considered mass. In my evaluation of Cram structures, such as St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral in Detroit, I think the vitality of its architectural features helps accomplish his goal of a church that is filled with life. One meaning for organic is that the structure be organized. Each part should be a part of every other part so that a contiguous whole is created. Part of the quality of Suger's chevet is that the chapels are not separated architectural niches but are aspects of the choir. The light that comes from radiating chapels floods the choir with its colored lights. As one looks 30Cram, Church Building, pp. 204-205. 157 at the plan of St. Paul's (Figure 11), the nave columns are aligned with the choir columns so that the eye can move in an uninterrupted line to the elevated sanctuary. There are no separate architectural niches, bays, chapels, or chantries along the way to distract the viewer's focus from the altar. The positioning of the altar, its relationship to the rest of the body of the church, is itself organic. The altar, as seen at All Saints Ashmont (Figure 15), is the cell or "nucleus" from which the rest of the structure is to grow'out. Cram says, ”the altar is the "31 The interior nucleus, the heart of the whole matter. is fabricated to bring the eye unswervingly to the altar. The eye and the attention of the worshipper are directed to the altar by an emphasis on the horizontal string course; the nave arcade moves in an uninterrupted manner toward the sanctuary (see Figure 15). Cram.has dispensed ‘with capitals, filigrees, and even the extra-sharp points that one may expect in nave-arcade arches, so that no accentuation of structure or of decoration will interrupt or delay the eye's movement forward. Note that the walls, too, are plain so as to prevent a "looking around" as opposed to the desired focusing of attention on the 31Ibid., p. 89. 158 sacramental liturgy around the altar. It is around the altar where significant decoration is thus concentrated: on the altar itself and its complements: the retable, reredos, choir stalls and crucifix. Even the stained- glass windows in Cramis opinion were to be viewed less for their representations and more for their effects, of colored light flowing in from a pierced wall. The greatest concentration of windows is always at the apsidal end in Cram's churches so that their enriching effect will be concentrated on the altar. Erwin Panofsky in his book Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism reiterates this idea of the unification of the church structure around a single element. In his character- ization of the classic Gothic style he says, ...the classic style demands that we be able to infer, not only the interior from the exterior or the shape of the side aisles from that of the central nave but also, say, the organization of the whole system.from the cross section of one pier. The last-named instance is especially instruc- tive. In order to establish uniformity among all the supports, including those in the rond-point (and also, perhaps, in deference to a latent classicizing impulse), the builders of the most important structures after Senlis, Noyon, and Sens had abandoned the compound pier and had sprung the nave arcades from monocylindrical piers. 32 . . . Erwin Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (New York: Meridian Books, 1957), pp. 50-51. 159 In that Panofsky's book post-dates Cram's, and if we can accept Panofsky's assumption of a single element serving as unifying aspect of a whole structure, it might be fair to say that Cram indeed does have an "intuitive" understanding of how to unify a structure to show forth its spiritual essence. At the altar, the focus of the architectural structure of the church, Cram wanted a unifying sense of balance expressed between, on the one hand, modern theological demands of the community's participation in the sacraments of the word and eucharist, and, on the other hand, the spiritual essence of the architecture in itself. He says, Of the new requirements, that of accommodating the largest number of people, with the smallest proportion of those who cannot see either the altar or the pulpit, is the most important. The inexorable law here is that this shall be con- sidered up to the point where there would be the slightest loss architecturally, but not one step further.33 A third sense in which Cram's churches are "organic" consists in their vitality and liveliness, ‘which one senses especially because of the lightness of the structure, and the rhythmic elements that carry the eye along towards the final focus. The 33Cram, Church Building, p. 205. 160 interior of St. Paul's (see Figure 16) has this rhythmic feature in its nave arcade in which the arches:spring from.one pier to the next in clean uninterrupted lines. To emphasize the springing from one pier to the next he recapitulates the line with creases in the arches. He maintains this same "crease” pattern even in the crossing vaults. Again, his attempt is to maintain decorative unity throughout the structure. But this decorative element is also meant to help lead the eye to the altar. ‘ The outside and inside of the church are themselves meant to be seen, organically, as parts of the same whole. As one moves from the relatively undecorated West facade into the simplified interior ofgthe church, the building thus appears coherent. Cramls motivation for this interior/exterior consistency is rooted in his idea of an honest church architecture, created not for the awe of the passerby, but for those who worship inside. Cram felt that honest ecclesiastical architecture should not provide the shock that can be obtained from a contrast between moving from highly ornamented exterior 3 “to a pristine simplicity on the inside or vice versa. If architecture is to be a "living" organism all parts must seem to grow from each other. 161 Cram even thought that a church building should be organic in the sense of not having been built all at once. He thought that, ideally, it should develop slowly and become the product of many generations, and therefore the center of people's lives, as the church building had been in medieval Europe. Cram wanted an opportunity for succeeding generations to make their contributions to the church's realization, and thus share in its being brought to perfection. A church built all at once becomes, in Cramis way of thinking, a historical statement of a particular generation or group of people, and an expression of the vanity of that generation or group. For Cram, the gradual bringing of a church to perfection over the generations had symbolical meaning both for the Church building as a concrete structure and for a community of people helping each other in their striving for religious perfection. The two manifestations of the Church, as building and as community, must interact if they are to live. Cram believed that religious architecture might draw us to the ”mysteries" if it is profound and ”organic" in its expression. A final aspect of Cram's organicity can be seen at St. Paul's. Much of this structure has a plant-like motif in the construction of the piers, and the vaults 162 that spring from them. The archivolts in the West entrance (see Figures 13 and 14) seem to grow out of the wall and the supporting buttresses. This organic motif is carried on in the interior as well. The transverse arches (see Figure 18) grow out of the supporting cross- ing piers. These tree-like forms support the idea of the church as growing and living. The innovations of Cram demonstrate modern work if for no other reason than they are unprecedented. Though he felt the only honest Gothic architecture was stone upon stone without steel reinforcement, he was not against the use of new building material that was a structural improvement over its precursor. In the roof of St. Thomas Church in New York City he used steel supports as a substitute for wooden beams to hold up the roof (see Figure 17). In Cramfs writings about his own ecclesiastical architecture he generally is very circumspect about making the focus of his writing the building and its spiritual integrity. He seldom ventures on to theological or liturgical ground, except in a general way, to justify his architectural decisions. But his Anglo-Catholic (High Church Episcopal) prejudices can be seen as he addresses the issue of how "to build a church rightly". 163 To build a church rightly, it is necessary to do three things: first, to build in the only style that we have any right to, and that has any kinship with the American branch of the Anglican communion of the Catholic Church; second, to select an architect who believes in the Church and sym- pathizes with her, who understands Gothic as a living, not an historic style, and then to rely on him implicitly; third, to build a little now and build it right, instead of trying to build a great deal, and as a result building it meanly.34 In his autobiography he sometimes gloats over how he would place the altar prominently in ”Protestant" churches, forcing them to deal with the issues of Catholic sacramentalism. Cram no doubt shares in a rather roman- tic idea of the religious fervor of the Gothic period; much of this came from a popular notion of the medieval Church as presented by the nineteenth century Oxford movement. Cram saw that he was doing his part to restore a more authentic and zealous faith by main- taining and developing the premier architectural achievement, Gothic architecture, that sprang from the Catholic faith. His architecture was to be one part of the resurrection of the true faith that had been, like the Gothic building, interrupted by the Reformation. Cram says of his architecture, For, at the risk of what may seem wearisome reiteration, I must continue to insist on the necessity of preserving the continuity of the 34Ibid. 164 architectural idea, in order that we may adequately show forth the perfect continuity of the Church.35 I have suggested that the primary aspect of Cram's architecture is its iconographic significance. It is architecture which is first built to serve the contemporary sacramental needs of the Church. Cram's ecclesiastical architecture is built around the eucharistic service. The altar is elevated, it is the architectural focus, and is the architectural feature most highly illuminated. But there is also a second way in which I think iconographic significance is at work in Cram's architecture. In ecclesiastical architecture Cram makes no distinction between aesthetic and religious form. He merges them together in one complete, holistic form. Before I am accused of in fact vindicating Reimer, I want to make the following distinction in regard to Cram's work. Ostensibly aesthetic language such as ”beautiful”, "sublimity" or ”grandeur” that Cram.uses in describing authentic neo-Gothic architecture is language based on a EQ£§l_aesthetic. Ecclesiastical architecture constructed so that the spirituality of those who worship in it have the profound faith of Christian civilization renewed is "good" or "sublime" 3SIbid., p. 207. 165 or ”beautiful" architecture. Cram says in regard to building cathedral churches, First of all, those supreme qualities of ultimate grandeur and sublimity already postulated for the parish church by reason of its nature as a Tabernacle of the Living God, those qualities which are to be obtained through self-sacrifice and through the giving of the absolute best we have in art and labor, are as persistent now as in the past. Then, also, we must build in such ways as to crush with awe all those who enter the portalsj and raise them again into spiritual exaltation. 6 Cram even saw himself as like a priest or prophet of the Church. With his particular gifts he thought he was helping revive the "sacramental philosophy” that had been drowned by "brutal materialism". ...our confident civilization was not progressing; that because it had abandoned the medieval equili- brimm between the spiritual and the material, expressed by sacramental philosophy, it was surren- dering to a rampant and brutal materialism; and that consequently life had now to go backward so that it might go forward-~"back to gather up the golden apples lost in the wild race for prizes of another sort, back for its running start, that it may clear the crevasse that startingly has opened before it. Beyond this chasm lies a new field and a fair field, and it is ours if we will."37 He saw that if he could help rejuvenate one cell of the Christian faith, the giant organism of the Church Inight come to life once again and reclaim the world. 361bid., p. 203. 37Douglas Shand Tucci, Church Building in Boston, 3E720-1970 (Concord: Rumford, 1974), pp. 113-114. 166 "We must build for all time and little by little, making what is today but one minor cell, perhaps, in the final vast and triumphant organism."38 In the next chapter, we will see a contemporary attempt to place the church in the world as a model for the world's transformation. Like Suger's abbey and Cram's St. Paul's, BishOp Bennison's Cathedral at Kalamazoo was built to provide an image of the heavenly order. 38Cram, Church Building, p. 203. CHAPTER V Contemporary Church Building, Christ the King Episcopal Cathedral, Kalamazoo, Michigan In the first year of Cyrus the King, Cyrus the ling issued a decree: Concerning the house of God at Jerusalem,.let the house be rebuilt, the place where sacrifices are offered and burnt offerings are brought; its height shall be sixty cubits and its breadth sixty cubits, with three courses of great stones and one course of timber; let the cost be paid from the royal treasury. And also let the gold and silver vessels of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar took out of the temple that is in Jerusalem.and brought to Babylon, be restored and brought back to the temple which is in Jerusalem, each to its place; you shall put them in the house of God. (Ezra 6:3-6, RSV) As the last major chapter of this dissertation many issues need to be raised concerning contemporary church building. Does or should a church building have any greater meaning than a pragmatic function of keeping worshippers warm and dry, and offering them a common room in which to gather? Can iconographic significance have meaning to the contemporary worshipper? Does or should or can the contemporary religious art object carry mystical meanings and instruct religious communities in mystical meanings? Through what archi- tectural formulas should church building respond to new 167 168 liturgical concerns brought to the Church's awareness by the liturgical movement? How should the contemporary church building address itself to new architectural styles? I will attempt to answer the above questions through an analysis of a church building that I think admirably meets the needs of a contemporary sacramental, Christian community. The church is the Episcopal Cathedral of Christ the King of Kalamazoo, Michigan. I would like to list briefly ideas that were a part of the liturgical and theological intent of the builders of this structure. First, this structure was designed to offer a positive response to many of the aims of the liturgical movement. The liturgical movement began in the nineteenth century as an effort of the Catholic Church to bring the laity into greater participation in sacramental worship. An example of the Cathedral's response to the liturgical movement is that the altar is the dominant feature of the structure (see Figure 18). It is at the altar where the corporate life of the body of Christ, the community of faithful, is sanctified. No architectural member impedes the view or access of any worshipper to the altar's benefits. This church's architectural response to the liturgical 169 movement will be developed a great deal further later in this chapter. Second, as a cathedral church it is built to be the church of all who worship in the diocese. This fact had an effect on the Church's location. Third, the bishop and architect responsible for its design have tried to retain and/or rejuvenate a symbolic content the Church has had in her long tradition. The symbolic expressions are very understated, and probably have no real significance for most of the church's worshipping community. Again, I will discuss this in some detail later in the chapter. Fourth, the building was built with a great deal of economy. The structure was designed to hold #1 the greatest number of pe0ple with the smallest possible square footage that would still give the appearance ofaibuilding of monumental pr0portions. This economy “J of space means that people are literally brought closer to each other and to the sacraments. The building was fabricated from ferro-concrete, steel, and brick, and there is no sculptural program attached to or carved frontthe interior or exterior walls (see Figure 19). 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