The cathedral paradox: Why sublime architectural ideals often collapse into fragmented reality

“ We went into the Cathedral, the most beautiful which I have yet seen in Italy. The choir resembles a sacred grove of lofty columns, under the arch of which it is good to wander, to sit, to think, and to elevate the mind. In whatever direction one looks one sees beautiful or significant objects. The whole church is a poem; the stones speak and blossom forth. I have never felt in any Catholic churches the sublimity of their symbolism so much as in this. ”

“ The Christian architect seeks to affect the emotions of the votary with a sense of vastness filled with unseen power. Our cathedrals are symbols of the universe where God is everywhere pavilioned and invisible. The Greek temple was a practical, utilitarian dwelling-house, made beautiful enough to suit divinity. The modern church is an idea expressed in stone, an aspiration of the spirit, shooting up from arch and pinnacle and spire into illimitable fields of air. ”

“ Before proceeding further the visitor should pause, and observe the great length of the Cathedral, the noble appearance of the lofty arches, and the sublime grandeur of the whole. When we look around and see the lofty Tower with its decorated ceiling above; on the right, the south-west Transept, rich in the extreme with its several arcades of plain, intersecting, and trifoliated arches; and in front, through the long vista of the Nave, the noble Octagon, and the enriched Choir, to the extreme end of the church, we cannot but pause and admire the skill of man shewn in such a work ”

“ Of the fine arts, architecture alone subserves utility. We build for use. But the geometrical proportions which the architect observes, contain the element of beauty and powerfully influence the soul. Into the language of arch and aisle and colonnade, of cupola and façade and pediment, of spire 243and vault, the architect translates emotion, vague perhaps but deep, mute but unmistakable. When we say that a building is sublime or graceful, frivolous or stern, we mean that sublimity or grace, frivolity or sternness, is inherent in it. ”

“ The more ideas express perfection of any object, the more perfect are they themselves; for we do not admire the architect who has planned a chapel so much as the architect who has planned a splendid temple. ”

“ It has never been granted to another one man to create a perfect building which should be at once the marvel and the model of all time. Many architects have wrought upon the American Capitol, and there are discrepancies in its proportions wherein we trace the conflict of their opposing idiosyncrasies. We see places where their contending tastes met and did not mingle, where the harmony and sublimity which each sought was lost. ”

“ I do not ask you to go to the ends of the earth; I do not ask you even to go to places like Ely and Durham in distant parts of our island. A short trip will take you to Llandaff, and a trip a little longer will take you to Hereford, and there you will see English cathedral churches as they ought to be, but as the church of Wells is not. Enter the church of Wells, you find yourself in a vast empty space; a solid wall in front of you, with an organ on the top of it, blocks off the small part of the church which alone is used for divine worship. ”

“ Salisbury is now esteemed the culmination of the Gothic art in England, as the buttresses are fully unmasked, and honestly detailed from the sides of the pile. The interior of the Cathedral is obstructed by the organ in the middle, acting like a screen. I know not why in real architecture the hunger of the eye for length of line is so rarely gratified. The rule of art is that a colonnade is more beautiful the longer it is, and that ad infinitum. And the nave of a church is seldom so long that it need be divided by a screen. ”

“ It is really wonderful that the cathedral of an English diocese, and the chapel of one of our greatest colleges, should remain in a condition which would disgrace the meanest hamlet. In the first place, it will hardly be credited by those whose eyes have not witnessed the sacrilege, that a portion of the church is actually desecrated. In so vast a college the hire of a single room cannot be dispensed with, but the House of God must be defiled; a bay of the south transept and one of the adjoining chapels are blocked off to form a residence for the verger. ”

“ Begun in 1434 and finished about the end of the fifteenth century, as I discover in Murray, it has a magnificent nave, not of great length, but of extraordinary height and lightness. On the other hand, it has no choir whatever. There is much entertainment in France in seeing what a cathedral will take upon itself to possess or to lack; for it is only the smaller number that have the full complement of features. Some have a very fine nave and no choir; others a very fine choir and no nave. Some have a rich outside and nothing within; others a very blank face and a very glowing heart. ”

“ I have seen many fine churches both in our own country and abroad, many of them of course on a scale which might seem to put Wells out of all comparison. But I can honestly say that I know of no architectural group which surpasses the harmony and variety of our own cathedral, as seen by the traveller as he first enters the city from Shepton Mallet.
From the outside we turn to that of which the outside is after all the mere shell. When we enter the church, we find ourselves in a building which can fairly hold its own against competitors of its own class. ”

“ The spire, one of the most elevated in Europe, is 440 feet, while that of Cologne is 482 feet, Rouen is 458 feet, and Notre Dame at Paris but 200 feet in height.
Usually church edifices are grim and gray; but Strasburg presents, in its sandstone of the Vosges, a beautiful tone, which in the westering sun of a summer's day can only be described as a rose-pink, and is like no other church edifice in Europe, unless it be the cathedral at Rodez in Mid-France, which Henry James called mouse-coloured, but which in reality is a sort of warm, deep rose. ”

“ The first view of an Italian Gothic church, whatever its date, is startlingly and, I think, disagreeably unlike anything that we are accustomed to in our own old buildings. You may go to a great English cathedral and find that from every point of view, inside and outside, every feature is well proportioned to its place, and beautiful in itself, whilst the tout ensemble is also perfect in proportion and mass. ”

“ For the outside of a French cathedral, except for its sculpture, is always to be thought of as the wrong side of the stuff, in which you find how the threads go that produce the inside or right-side pattern. And if you have no wonder in you for that choir and its encompassing circlet of light, when you look up into it from the cross-centre, you need not travel farther in search of cathedrals, for the waiting-room of any station is a better place for you;—but, if it amaze you and delight you at first, then, the more you know of it, the more it will amaze. ”

“ In a cathedral, the shade is coolest and the silence most profound; the music is better than it is in the theatre, and nothing can be compared to the splendour of the pageants. It is the central point, the most attractive spot, like the Opera-house in Paris. We northern catholics, with our Voltairean temples, have no idea of the luxury, elegance, and comfort of Spanish churches: they are furnished, they are animated, and have not that icy, deserted look which ours have: the faithful can live in them in sweet familiarity with Heaven. ”

“ I therefore most earnestly conjure all those men who profess to revive true architecture to look to the wants and circumstances of the time, not to sacrifice principles, but to prove that the real principles can combine with any legitimate requirement of religion; let the bishops and clergy practically perceive that Christian architecture fulfils perfectly all their wants: let there be light, space, ventilation, good access, with the absence of drafts, which destroy devotion and excite prejudice against Pointed doorways. ”

“ I must confess, with every wish to preserve my charity, I am moved to indignation when I hear proposals for erecting great sheds to serve as Catholic churches, places resembling a depot for railway goods or the housings of a wharf. What treatment is this for the divine mysteries! what treatment for the poor, who are brought to worship God in a place little, if any, better than the union, or market shambles themselves! One of the many great benefits conferred by church architecture, is its affording the poor man a glorious edifice where he may enter at will ”

“ These points are sufficient to indicate what I mean by saying that the cathedrals have in some respects had an unfavorable influence upon the doctrine and worship of the Church of England.
Presbyterians also have Felt the Effect of them.
If at the Reformation every cathedral in Great Britain had been pounded to pieces by the iconoclasts, it would have been an immeasurable calamity to art, but it might have been a real gain for religion. At any rate, it is ritualism rather than religion that is now promoted by the cathedrals. ”

“ A single glance shows what trouble the architect had with the old facade and towers, and what temptation to pull them all down. One cannot quite say that he has spoiled his own church in trying to save what he could of the old, but if he did not quite spoil it, he saved it only by the exercise of an amount of intelligence that we shall never learn enough to feel our incapacity to understand. ”

“ Do not ask of what shape or architecture; it is almost impossible to tell, so great is the confusion of ornaments. The dome gives the mass an oriental appearance, which helped to bewilder me; in short, I have dreamed of such buildings, but little thought they existed. On one side you survey the famous tower, as perfectly awry as I expected; on the other the baptistery, a circular edifice distinct from the church and right opposite its principal entrance, crowded with sculptures and topped by the strangest of cupolas. ”

“ Enough, I trust, has been said to show the reader that the rudeness or imperfection which at first rendered the term “Gothic” one of reproach is indeed, when rightly understood, one of the most noble characters of Christian architecture, and not only a noble but an essential one. It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect. ”

“ And it is, perhaps, the principal admirableness of the Gothic schools of architecture, that they thus receive the results of the labor of inferior minds; and out of fragments full of imperfection, and betraying that imperfection in every touch, indulgently raise up a stately and unaccusable whole. ”

“ Good architecture is the work of good and believing men; therefore, you say, at least some people say, 'Good architecture must essentially have been the work of the clergy, not of the laity.' No—a thousand times no; good architecture has always been the work of the commonalty, not of the clergy. What, you say, those glorious cathedrals—the pride of Europe—did their builders not form Gothic architecture? ”

“ So soon as you desire to build largely, and with addition of noble sculpture, you will find that your work must be associative. You cannot carve a whole cathedral yourself—you can carve but few and simple parts of it. Either your own work must be disgraced in the mass of the collateral inferiority, or you must raise your fellow-designers to correspondence of power. ”

“ There is very little architecture in the world which is, in the full sense of the words, good and noble. 133 A few pieces of Italian Gothic and Romanesque, a few scattered fragments of Gothic cathedrals, and perhaps two or three of Greek temples, are all that we possess approaching to an ideal of perfection. All the rest—Egyptian, Norman, Arabian, and most Gothic, and, which is very noticeable, for the most part all the strongest and mightiest—depend for their power on some developement of the grotesque spirit ”

“ Granted a Church, Saint Thomas's Church was the most expressive that man has made, and the great Gothic cathedrals were its most complete expression.
Perhaps the best proof of it is their apparent instability. Of all the elaborate symbolism which has been suggested for the Gothic cathedral, the most vital and most perfect may be that the slender nervure, the springing motion of the broken arch, the leap downwards of the flying buttress,—the visible effort to throw off a visible strain,—never let us forget that Faith alone supports it, and that, if Faith fails, Heaven is lost. ”