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"The world is a beautiful book, but of little use to him who cannot read it." (Carlo Goldoni, 'Pamela', act 1, sc.14, 1746)
The Roman Empire was in a steady decline. Any pretense of democracy had long since evaporated. The self-confidence that marked the Greek and Roman world of an earlier time having disappeared,was replaced with the fear of barbarian hoards and pirate politicians. The classical hubris of the natural beauty could not answer the fear. Plotinos (c.205-270) speaks of a rejection of classical notions, (Pollitt, 1966, pp.218-219). The large eyes and stiff formal poses were returning to statuary. The art of late antiquity marked a turning to God. Christianity became the religion of the Roman world, and spirit took precedence over the flesh once again, (Pollitt, 1966, pp.213-227).
The long and difficult period which followed, sometimes referred to as dark ages, was a return to simplicity and spiritual matters. Great monasteries spread across Europe, from Jerusalem to Ireland and back again. Extravagant and monumental art was laid aside for nearly a thousand years. This was an age which deliberately shunned self-aggrandizement least the destructive excesses of Rome return. However the monasteries housed rich learning and luminous works of art. To suggest that the swirling lines of drapery carefully styled and laid with gold about peacefully taut but powerfully radiant saints is deficient, is to dismiss some of the richest and most beautiful art the west has produced.
It is instructive to remember that one of the first great controversies of the Christian church was Iconoclasm. The question revolved around whether or not it is permissible to depict the human presence of the Holy. The debate, drawn from Judaism, raged for several centuries and spilled over into Islam. The concern was whether or not the depiction of the saints would debase their memory, or worse, cause us to turn from God to idolatry of the saints, as when Hoshea removes the brazen serpent that Moses made because the people had begun to worship it (2 Kings 18:4). Eventually the Christian world determined it was proper to depict Christ as a man (DeArteaga, 1996, pp.202-203), Islam chose not to allow the image of Mohammed to be reproduced without some sort of veil over his face.
The veneration and pilgrimages to holy sites where various statues or paintings are believed to have special powers to heal, suggests that this was not a foolish debate. The debate simply skirted the real issue, turning implements of worship into occult objects. Shrines may involve natural objects such as the bones of saints, or locations of special visitations, as easily as they might involve an image depicting someone or something of significance. This occult veneration involving pilgrimages is in fact more pronounced in Islam than in those Christian groups which practice it.
While Rome collapsed as a military power, the church spread rapidly. The social instability helped to encouraged a deep spiritual need. The church of Rome became the spiritual stabilizer for the West, the Greek church of Constantinople stabilized the East. While ultimately the iconoclasts lost the debate within Christianity, their point was clearly made. Sensual or all too natural portraits of saints or even the portrait of a common person were no longer comfortable to the spiritual sensitivities of the age. While there was no political unity, there was a agreement to spiritual authority. So although no one dictated style, the Roman and Greek churches, and later Islam, each developed distinctive styles reflecting a spiritual longing.
Europe in the eleventh century was a place of turmoil. Increasing trade, urbanization and plagues caused a spiritual upheaval. Pilgrims trekked across Europe seeking shrines and Holy relics. The Popes called for crusades to return the Holy lands to Christianity. Cathedrals, shrines and churches were being commissioned. This was an age of religious zeal:
“Who ever saw, who ever heard, in all the generations past, that kings, princes, mighty men and women of noble birth, should bind bridles upon their proud and swollen necks and submit them to waggons which, after the fashion of brute beasts, they dragged with their loads of wine, corn, oil, lime, stones, beams, and other things, necessary to sustain life of to build churches, even to Christ's abode? Moreover, as they draw the waggons we may see this miracle that, although sometimes a thousand men and women, or even more, are bound in the traces (so vast indeed is it), yet they go forward in such silence that no voice, no murmur is heard; and, unless we saw it with our eyes, no man would dream that so great a multitude is there. When again, they pause on the way, then no other voice is heard but confession of guilt, with supplication and pure prayer to God that He may vouchsafe pardon for their sins; and while the priests there preach peace, hatred is soothed, discord is driven away, debts are forgiven, and unity is restored betwixt man and man.” (Gothic Art, 1971, pp.25-26; from a letter of Haimon, Abbot of Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, to the monks of Tutbury Abbey in England).
The Crusades brought the soldier-pilgrims in contact with Byzantine and Moslem art and architecture. The builders of the new churches and cathedrals being erected along the major pilgrim routes were naturally inspired by the stories of returning Crusaders. Suger, abbot of Saint-Denis, commissioned and personally directed the construction of the first completely Gothic structure relates: “I used to converse with travelers from Jerusalem and, to my great delight to learn from those to whom the treasures of Constantinople and the ornaments of the Hagia Sophia had been accessible, whether the things here could claim some value in comparison with those here.” (Gothic Art, 1971, pg.9).
The spiritual energy and the fresh style led to a transformation from the squat, solid figures of early Christian Europe to the tall, ethereal figures of high Gothic art. Gothic art is at once an expression of spiritual longing and the boast of flourishing civilization. this was a self-conscious age, concerned with itself in the eyes of God, and concerned with pleasing God, and concerned with becoming important in the eyes of the world.
English scholar Alexander Neckam (ca. 1157-1217) disliked the sense of hubris he saw in the new Gothic art: “The extent of human affectation is shown in part by the expenditures dedicated to pleasure which an empty boastful pride consumes and squanders in the superfluous magnificence of buildings. Towers are erected that threaten the stars, excelling the peaks of Parnassus. The summit of Nysa [one of the peaks of Parnassus in Thessaly] marvels that it cannot equal the heights achieved by human toil and skill; nature complains that she is surpassed by art....O vain affection!” (Gothic Art, 1971, pg.31). Like Babel before it the cathedral builders were attempting to build their way to heaven. As Neckam observes, there is too much of the builder in it. “And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it.” (Exodus 20:25, KJV).
The pride of the Gothic builders represented a form of religious boast. As noted above, contact with Islam and the East had a great deal to do with the Gothic exuberance and developed into many new avenues of scientific inquiry. It was not long before Europe lost all sight of heaven. The stiff Gothic figures stretching heavenward soon give way to an aggressive sensuality in the arts. It is in this atmosphere that the reformers arrived. They were quick to embrace, or more properly stimulate, a changing social and political climate. Their greatest concern was to keep God foremost. As such they were opposed to the exuberant sensuality that was appearing in the arts of the time. They were equally opposed to the pride of gaudy public displays, whether in a cathedral or in dress.
The Protestant Reformation caused a rupture within the church between the forces of established authority in the church and those who were addressing the corruption that had crept in at every level. Besides the sensuality evident in new Vatican art, one of the things which greatly grieved Luther, Calvin and other reformers was the way in which pagan idolatry had been absorbed into the church through the veneration of saints (some of whom where simply renamed pagan idols) and their cultic icons, statues and other objects. The church having by this time accepted the veneration of images, had simply re-established idolatry according to the reformers. Calvin in particular was uncomfortable with almost all religious art. “Although Calvin permitted paintings of historical and biblical scenes, he never really understood the need for religious art. This is indicated by his nervousness about the cherubim on the ark of the covenant, calling them ‘paltry little images.’ Later Reformed theologians went further and for all practical purposes closed down religious art within the Protestant nations, abandoning the fine arts to secular hands. Again this had tragic consequences. Western art began a separation from its spiritual roots, which eventually led to art without meaning and ultimately to the godless fashions of modern art.” (DeArteaga, 1996, pg.204).
Protestant Christians are often accused of engendering a war against progress in the arts. But from the other side of the fence, I believe that many Christians have rightly discerned that from the first hints of sensuality in the arts four centuries ago, art had set itself in opposition to any spiritual value that was not centered on our human dreams, passions and desires. Art turned its back on God's dreams, passion and desire with the first glimmer of the 'Enlightenment'. But, as DeArteaga notes in the quote above, Protestant Christianity stopped engaging in the arts for all intents and purposes ceding the field to the humanists.
This extreme within Protestant Christianity, rejecting all arts, ignores the point that expressions of our humanity, even if God is not mentioned, can also express the joy and the richness of creation. Solomon's “Song of Songs” is a collection of love poems, which abounds in some rather frank sensuality. While it is common to spiritualize the text, generations of Christians and Jews have accurately seen this collection for what it is, the joy of a man and a woman together. To become antiseptic in our approach to human relations horribly distorts the biblical message. It is not necessary to oppose all art, but rather to oppose anti-social or anti-religious bias in the arts. This includes pornography, encouragements to substance abuse, denigration of religious, political or social symbols, attacks against public figures, etc.
Ken Myers in an excellent letter concerning Christians and federal funding for the arts, notes that the modern view of 'art' which has developed over the last four centuries pits art against our God given spirituality. The modern ethos is humanist, that is, man-centered and not God-centered. Reason and human will set the tone for modernity. “On this view, imagination is not an organ of meaning that assists us in recognizing boundaries, but imagination is a way of expressing unbounded human creativity, freedom, and power. This is why art has, for many modern people, displaced religion, and why many currents of modern art are so deliberately opposed to traditional religious belief.” (Ken Myers, The Mars Hill Audio Journal, Essay: "Ken Meyers on the NEA", Sept. 2005).
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