Читать книгу The World's Debt to the Catholic Church - James J. Walsh - Страница 5

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The greatest contribution that the Church has made to civilization, that is to the human cult of the beautiful, is in architecture. "A thing of beauty is a joy forever," is thought a modern culture formula but Church edifices all over the world, whenever the Catholic Church has been free to express herself, have been an exemplification of this and have lifted people up by the beauty that they expressed. This was all the greater because the people felt that these beautiful edifices belonged to them; indeed, at the time of their erection, they knew that their fellow citizens, often their relatives, sometimes those who were very close to them, had labored in the production of all this beauty. They themselves had by their contributions of money, or, oftener still, of labor or of materials, made possible the erection of these wonderful structures. No wonder then that they had a definite sense of ownership which made them appreciate the splendor of the churches and helped to arouse in them a taste for what was fitting and to develop a sense of beauty which is almost the highest faculty that man has. Besides, the Church by providing manifold opportunities for the exercise in handiwork of any and every kind for all those who had the talent or the power to produce the beautiful, was lifting people above the sordid round of every day life. There is probably nothing which reacts more for the happiness of mankind and for the development of the best that is in man than an opportunity of this kind.

The beautiful buildings which were erected for Church purposes thus became themselves an important source of education in so far as one extremely significant part of that is the training of taste and the development of the sense of beauty. Christianity did not stop with the Church beautiful. Besides churches, monasteries, convents and schools, guildhalls and hospitals were made beautiful architecturally and were studiously fitted with appropriate decorations, interiorly and exteriorly, and thus of themselves were a very valuable educational feature. Contact with these beautiful structures and with the painting, the sculpture and the fine arts and crafts products so patiently and genially made for them, was of itself an education, a liberal education, that counted for much in the genuine cultivation of the human intellect in its taste for beautiful things. This is the sort of education that cannot be tested by examinations nor measured by rules of thumb, but it is very real and extremely significant. We are gradually working back in this generation to a recognition of what was accomplished in this matter, and we too are making our school buildings beautiful and decorating them as finely as possible, because we appreciate how much this means for education. When we do so, we go back for our models to the time when the Church was the beneficent patron of education and wished to educate not only the mind but also the heart and the soul in the sense of developing a love for beauty and a desire for the bringing out of what was best in man. All this is quite intangible and incommensurable according to material standards; but then, most of the things in the world that are really worth while are quite intangible.

Just as soon as the Church was free through the edict of Constantine to come out of the catacombs into the open, her beautiful churches began to appear. Indeed, even in the catacombs, as archaeological investigations during the past generation have made very clear, there was a definitely successful attempt to employ all the charms of beauty consistent with the situation as an appropriate setting for divine worship. Some of the decorative effects on walls and ceiling and the sacred vessels and various utensils employed in the services were made beautiful as well as useful. From very early days the textiles employed as altar cloths and the garments worn during the sacred ceremonials were distinguished for their beauty and finish. Very early in Church history the Mass books and other volumes employed in the services of the Church were the subjects of devoted artistry and the Scriptures themselves were written out with a loving devotion that made these books much more than mere useful articles, as is very well illustrated by the fact that the Book of Kells comes from one of the early centuries of the Middle Ages and must have represented the culmination of a tradition in this matter which had been in existence from early Christian history.

Under Constantine the Christians adopted and adapted the plan of the basilica which had been in use in Rome for centuries for their place of worship. The name "House of the King" suited them exactly because of their belief in Emmanuel, God With Us, and they proceeded to modify the basilica, as it had been used for public halls and courts of justice, for the purpose of public worship. The old construction of the basilica with an apse was particularly adaptable to the services of the Church. Two rows of columns dividing the main hall into a nave and ambulatories allowed for some circulation of the people even during services or in the midst of preaching. A transept was added after a time in order to give more room and also because the cruciform shape of the church then became symbolic of the Cross, the basis of Christianity. These early basilicas, of which examples may still be seen in Rome, as for instance San Lorenzo, built originally during the first half of the fourth century, and St. Paul without the walls, erected in the second half of the same century, furnish the best possible idea of how beautiful these churches might be. They were very simple and yet were marvelously effective in their construction and gave abundant opportunity for decorative effects of many kinds.

With the introduction of the arch the beginning of the Romanesque style is seen, and the use of what was known as the arch of triumph, which represented the opening of the nave into the transept, was particularly striking, and the space above this arch was used for decorative purposes. The next development was the erection of the dome at the crossing, and this was first exemplified in the great city which was built at Byzantium by Constantine to be his capital city and which came to be called after his name, Constantinople. Santa Sophia, the first of these great buildings, is a veritable triumph of architecture. It has been suggested that there are three supremely beautiful buildings that are the product of the religious spirit: Santa Sophia in Constantinople, the Cathedral of Chartres and St. Peter's in Rome. All of these represent developments of the devotion of the Christian people as displayed in architecture.

The dome of Santa Sophia was so marvelously set upon its pillars that it was said that it seemed as though it must be suspended from Heaven by chains. Santa Sophia still remains as it was thirteen centuries ago, as an index of what the Christian spirit could accomplish. It is still the admiration of mankind; and though it has now been so long the mosque of Omar and has deeply influenced the building of many mosques, there has been the fond hope in the Christian heart of the world that sometime or other this wonderful old Church with its marvelous beauty of construction would be returned to its pristine use as a Christian temple to the Most High.

When Ravenna became the capital of the Exarchate, the Eastern Empire headquarters in Italy, a series of Byzantine churches under Romanesque influence were erected there. Such churches as San Appollinare Nuovo or San Appollinare in Classe or San Vitale, all of them in Ravenna, have been a source of pleasure for visitors and a subject for study on the part of architects and artists ever since. They were beautifully decorated with mosaics, and while unimposing from the exterior are wonderful examples of effective devotional church architecture. The tomb of Galla Placidia at Ravenna, which is, as so many of them were, a chapel tomb, is one of the most beautiful things of its kind in the world. It shows how beautifully these Christians of the earlier Middle Ages could build under the influence of religious feeling. When in the modern time the French wanted to honor Pasteur, the man who saved more lives probably than any other who has ever lived, they built his tomb beneath the main door of the Pasteur Institute in Paris in imitation of the tomb of Galla Placidia. They went back nearly twelve hundred years at the end of the nineteenth century, which was so proud of its accomplishment, to find a model for a monument that would in some way serve to honor worthily a great modern man of science. No one who sees that tomb of Pasteur's will be disappointed, for the beauty of the design is such that everyone comes away with a feeling that the architect displayed excellent judgment in his choice of a model.

The culmination of this Byzantine style is to be found in St. Mark's in Venice. That is so beautiful and has attracted so much attention that very little need be said about it here. It is quite literally one of the most interesting churches in the world. What needs to be recalled particularly however, is that it was built not long after the year 1000. Those years are sometimes said to be the Dark Ages, when men had reached their lowest ebb in the power to think and in their interest of the things of the intellect. Yet here is a great church, one of the most beautiful of all time, the structure of which at least comes from this period and shows very clearly that the men of this generation had taste and a sense of beauty and an artistic discrimination and a power of accomplishment in structural work and a talent for solving architectural and engineering difficulties, all of which indicate developed intelligence of the highest order. Such a church would never have been built except that there were people in that time capable of appreciating it, able to achieve the work on it, ready to make sacrifices of time and money and energy in order to build it. It is a monument to their culture no matter what may be thought of them from other standpoints.

So far from this Byzantine style being outworn or suited only for people of much more primitive tastes in architecture than our generation, it is well to note that two of the great churches of recent years, Westminster Catholic Cathedral in London and St. Louis Cathedral in St. Louis, Mo., were designed by architects after the Byzantine. Their impressiveness makes it very clear that here is a great mode of construction that can be used to the very best advantage in modern times with wonderful effectiveness. In England it probably seemed better to the architect of Westminster not to try to rival the great Gothic churches which had been built in the flourishing Gothic period, and many were inclined to think that he made too great a sacrifice for this purpose. Even a short visit is likely to disabuse one of that opinion and to show very clearly that the Byzantine style can still be wonderfully impressive. What these devout Christians of an older time worked out as worthy of their basilicas, their houses of the King, are not mere passing fancies but enduring modes of what is highest in human expression in structural work.

Then came the great development of the true Romanesque which gave us the beautiful cathedrals of Aix and Spire and Mainz. There are some who affect to consider this style as representing a transition between the Byzantine and modern Gothic and as scarcely worth recording as a definite achievement in architecture. It was, however, ever so much more than that. Anyone who has been near the Cathedral at Mainz, not merely for a passing visit, but in intimate association with the old church, will realize how wonderfully impressive it can be when familiarity has bred, not contempt, but ever increased admiration. The fact that the most fashionable church in Boston, Trinity Church, was built at the end of the nineteenth century in this style shows how thoroughly modern architects have appreciated its structural value. Originally the cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York was to have been built in the Romanesque, and there is no doubt at all that the round arches and the dome of the style would have been very impressive on Morningside Heights, even though it is possible that the reconstructed design which will give us a great Gothic fane at the highest point of the city may prove even more charmingly beautiful. It will require all the resources of a great architect, however, to accomplish this, for the Romanesque is not an unworthy rival of the Gothic even at its best.

After the Romanesque came the development of Gothic and the erection all over the north and west of Europe of the great Gothic cathedrals and abbey churches. There are many, whose years of study and whose tried experience and cultivated taste give them a right to an opinion in the matter, who declare that these are the most beautiful church buildings in the world. Undoubtedly some of them are. It would be very hard to make a choice among them. No two of them are alike. Indeed they are almost infinitely diversified and yet the souls of the builders have gone into them and they represent no mere copying but the individual expressions of cultivated human hearts. Even when there are mistakes in the structure design, still the churches are beautiful. It has been said of St. Stephen's in Vienna that an architect could scarcely have made more mistakes, or at least more departures from a formal Gothic plan, in the building of the cathedral. And yet St. Stephen's is indeed beautiful and grows on one as all of us who made our medical studies in Vienna learned to know; and architect visitors have declared that the man who built it was a poet working in stone as a medium and has put his soul into it and that it will always continue to be interesting in spite of the fact that on first visiting it nearly everyone who has definite structural interests is inclined to think that he would like to have the chance at bettering it.

This Gothic architecture came to be applied not only to the churches but also to the abbey buildings, to the guild halls, the chapter houses, and public edifices of various kinds. Developed by the Church and under the emotion associated with religious feeling this style came to play a wonderful part in making the towns of the Middle Ages beautiful. It influenced not only the structural work but also the furniture and the fittings, the carvings of various kinds and the wood and stone, the hammered iron work and the stained glass. It provided large window spaces for the display of transparencies which under the influence of the sense of beauty of the time became great art. These window spaces were needed in the dark and northern countries where they have so much less sunlight than we are accustomed to. New York after all is on the latitude of Naples, and England and northern Germany approach the latitude of Newfoundland and Labrador and light is a great desideratum. But a utility that arose from imperious necessity was changed into a thing of beauty unsurpassed. These churches were immense in size, even though built in what we would think very small towns. Cities of six to ten or twelve thousand people had a cathedral that would accommodate four or five thousand people. This seems entirely too large and many in the modern time have felt that the erection of such buildings was mere bravura and a matter of boastful rivalry with neighboring towns. It must not be forgotten that there was but one religion in these towns and most of the population wanted to attend the principal service on the great feast days of the year and room had to be provided for them, and then, besides, the country people crowded in from miles around in order to share in the celebration of the feast days in the great cathedral. As a matter of fact most of these churches were crowded to the very doors a number of days in the year.

The influence of the Church on architecture can be very well appreciated from the fact that, as the result of the religious disunion in civilization since the religious revolt of the sixteenth century, in spite of all our ardor in the building line, there is not a new idea in architecture for the last four hundred years. The nearest thing to a new idea that we have is to be found in the Franciscan Missions in California. There the Franciscans in the later eighteenth century, taking Indians who are said to have been among the lowest savages in mentality in this country, transformed them in the course of a single generation into builders of beautiful structures that have been the source of admiration and amazement to our generation. We really did not appreciate these properly until we ourselves began to be cultivated to such an extent as to look for beauty in the structures in our cities and in the furnishings in the houses that we lived in. Then the mission style and mission furniture and fittings became fashionable. Of the beauty of these Missions nothing need be said here; they are the enduring witnesses themselves of their worth and charm. Where they are still in reasonable preservation, as at Santa Barbara or Los Angeles, they constitute an unending source of surprise as to how the friars ever succeeded in training the Indians to do such building. Not only the structural work is beautiful, as we have already suggested, but the Mission furniture and furnishings that went with it, the iron and wood and tile work and all the rest--singularly attractive as well as eminently useful and enduring. The spirit of the old Church was still able, in distant western America, some 1800 years after the Lord's death, to take the most ordinary of mortals and convert them in their hour of devotion to religion into artists who could raise enduring monuments of beauty that would quite literally be joys forever.

With the Renaissance and renewed interest in the classics it is not surprising that the architecture of Greece and Rome came to be studied very deeply once more and there was a revival of it. Brunelleschi started it all when, after studying the Pantheon and the other great buildings left by the Romans, he was given the commission to finish Santo Spirito and conceive and design the great dome. Leon Baptista Alberti built the beautiful little church of San Francesco at Rimini and the classic type came into vogue. A series of extremely beautiful churches were built and the Renaissance ideas dominated architecture for centuries after. St. Peter's at Rome, designed originally by Bramante whose plan would, if followed, have prevented many of the faults that subsequent architects permitted to creep in, is the outstanding monument of this structural mode. Raphael, Sangallo, Baldassare Peruzzi, carried on Bramante's work, and then came Michelangelo to finish it, and above all to add that great dome which seems more like the work of the Creator than of a mere creature. Ferguson, severe in criticism, did not hesitate to say, "In spite of all its faults of detail the interior of St. Peter's approaches more nearly to the sublime in architectural effect than any other which the hand of man has executed."

Besides Church buildings many other beautiful structures were designed and built as the result of the Renaissance influence. Everywhere in Europe where the Renaissance spirit and the Church conspired, magnificent structural results were achieved. One of the most striking examples is the monastery of the Carthusians known as the Certosa, not far from Pavia. The university of Alcalá in Spain, at the other end of Europe, shows how this influence was diffused, and the cloister of Lupiana, the Alcazar in Toledo, the Giralda Tower, simply confirm this expression. At Rome there was the Sistine Chapel, and at Oxford and Cambridge some of their most beautiful buildings, while in Louvain there was the library and the hotel de ville. The palaces of bishops and archbishops often became the models on which public buildings of various kinds or the homes of the nobility were erected. Down in Italy particularly the library of St. Mark's in Venice, as well as the Palace of the Dumani, are the demonstration of the fine spirit of magnificent architecture that was abroad. Palladio at Vicenza erected buildings that have been the admiration and sometimes the despair of architects ever since. Genoa was the city of palaces and of beautiful churches until the old city well deserves the name of "Genoa the Magnificent."