Ecclesiastical art

“ The decline of ecclesiastical art, consequent on departure from ancient principles, is not confined to this country, or even to England, but, from widely differing causes, has spread over the entire of Europe since the early part of the sixteenth century. ”

“ To me it appears abundantly evident, that the much-needed improvement, in our ecclesiastical architecture, must be wrought by acquiring our knowledge of the Church's requirements within the Church herself—in other words, from her authorized books of rites and ceremonies; and that, so far as art is concerned, our safest course, at present, is to study those remains of Catholic antiquity which have escaped the devastations of faithless times. We must, moreover, strive for the high spirit of loyalty and affection for the Church which animated the Christian artists of the ages of faith. ”

“ The cure frankly declared that, if anyone offered him a large new cross in the place of this little one, he would be glad to make the exchange. It is unfortunate that so many rural priests place but little value upon religious antiquities other than images and relics which have a legend. Their appreciation of ecclesiastical art is too often regulated by the practical and utilitarian order of ideas. ”

“ Like the monks of old carefully scratching their invaluable parchment manuscripts, to put in their own words and notes, we have at one fell swoop scratched the history of English ecclesiastical art off the land, and archæologists are inquiring sadly for instances of unrestored churches, which, alas! ”

“ No, it is the Catholic Church alone that can stamp upon the painter's productions the supernatural impress of those notes by which she herself is recognizable as true.
There is a unity of intention, scope, and spirit in Catholic art of every age and clime. Like the doctrines and devotions of the Church, Catholic art, in all its various forms—symbolical, historical, devotional, ideal—ever revolves round one centre, and is referable to one exemplar. Divine beauty "manifest in the flesh"—the image of the Father clothed in human form and living in the Church—he is the inspirer of Christian art. ”

“ It is very uncommon to find a plain cross surmounting a church: the whole force of Christian art has sometimes been expended in wreathing and embellishing the instrument of redemption: flowers, and figures, and foliage are lavished upon it. ”

“ The fourteenth-century mystics opened their eyes in a congenial environment, in a church whose symbolism, teaching, and ordinances, were a coherent reflection of their own experiences, stood justified by their personal knowledge of the “law” of spiritual development, the conditions of advance in the way on which their feet were set.
They owed much to tradition, to their theological studies, to their familiarity with the recorded experiences of holy men; they recognized their church as the transmitter of this tradition, as the guardian of saintly testimony on the subject of their art. ”

“ From the central genius of this institution, displayed not merely in its doctrines and traditions, but also in its sublime faith in its own divine ordination and guidance, and in its ideals of holiness, have issued its liturgy, its ceremonial, and the infinitely varied manifestations of its symbolic, historic, and devotional art. The Catholic Church has aimed to rear on earth a visible type of the spiritual kingdom of God, and to build for her disciples a home, suggestive in its splendor of the glory prepared for those who keep the faith. ”

“ As we examine, we find that, although the three—Anglican, Greek, and Roman— thus differ in some respects, they are marvellously alike in all others. All three have a hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons. All have the holy altar of the tremendous sacrifice as the central object in their churches. All have robed clergy. All have saints' days and identical ecclesiastical seasons. All have a ritual form of worship. ”

“ In this respect the Roman Catholic Church has retained a great advantage over reformed churches. Whatever we may think of its tenets and principles, its forms of worship are more impressive and more attractive. The Mass, apart from all dogma and miracle, is a mysterious and beautiful religious drama, in which appropriate symbolism, vocal and instrumental music, all the highest efforts of human art, are united to produce feelings of joy and of devoutness. ”

“ But in our admiration of the genius and piety of these monastic artists we must not overlook one great fact, that this art is not only a representation of the interior life of the nation, a representation of its manners, customs, and modes of existence, but it is also a reflection of the state of the church at each successive period. ”

“ The chief object of ecclesiastical architecture is to symbolize the grandeur of the union between the soul and its Creator; as such, and as the storehouse and dispensary of graces, the banqueting-hall where He feeds us with Himself, the arsenal where He arms us for the combat and trains us for His soldiers, where, in His surpassing love and mercy, He deigns to remain in [59] the adorable Eucharist, the consecrated Church is the crown of human production, and rightly do we strain every nerve to make it rich and noble and fair. ”

“ The work is one vast, comprehensive, and sacramental manifestation of the central Catholic sacrament of the mass, searching and final in its symbolism, consummate in its mastery of all the elements that enter into the make-up of a great work of pictorial and decorative art, unapproached and unapproachable in its splendour of living and radiant colour. ”

“ The system which you propose is beautiful in all its bearings. It is our torment to feel that all that is beautiful in poetry or in art, nay, even in ethics, belongs to Catholicity, yet we do not belong to it. A hall of sculpture representing the Catholic ideal, as the figures of the duke's pantheon represent the pagan myth, would form the most sublime elucidation of the high triumphs of soul over self that could be imagined. There is no act of heroism, mental, moral, or physical, that would not find a representative in some authenticated historic personage. ”

“ The veneration of saints, relics, and images became more and more the central point of worship. Besides ecclesiastical architecture, which reached its highest development in the 13th century, the other arts began to be laid under contribution to beautify the ceremonial, the dresses of the celebrants, and the inner parts of the buildings. ”

“ Church—and which led, eventually, and by slow degrees, to those affecting and beautiful representations of the Saviour, the Virgin, the Apostles and other holy persons which are found in the painting and sculpture of the Italian schools of the purer times of Christian Art. With respect to the strange adaptation of the human figure to the tortuous shapes of the ornament on those crosses, I am disposed to think that no particular meaning is intended by it. It is probably a mere exercise of ingenuity on the part of the artist to try bow far the figure could be made to fill or fit into the spaces. ”

“ In our grand specimens of ecclesiastical architecture, we may read the world's later history, and to-day they breathe the sombre reverential influence of a faith which sought to satisfy itself with the visible symbolizing of those half-poetical, half-superstitious conceptions with which the religion of the Middle Ages was so deeply imbued. ”

“ The clergy, who were rich, and could only display their opulence in buildings, made it their glory to erect churches. To complete their work, they called in the aid of painting and sculpture, which, like architecture, owed their first encouragement to piety, and whose earliest masterpieces were consecrated to the ornamenting of the altars of the Christian religion. ”

“ In a word the design of the fashionable church-builder of the present moment is to produce a richly furnished, quietly adorned, dimly illuminated, ecclesiastical parlor, in which a few hundred ladies and gentlemen, attired in kindred taste, may sit perfectly at their ease, and see no object not in harmony with the scene around them. ”

“ From what has been said, the depth, and extent, and value of the influence of the church upon art may be inferred; but no one can imagine the condition of our art had it been without the inspiration of religion. ”

“ Up to about the 14th century the influence of the church was everywhere predominant in all matters relating to art. In ivories, as in mosaics, enamels or miniature painting it would be difficult to find a dozen examples, from the age of Constantine onwards, other than sacred ones or of sacred symbolism. ”

“ Some artists were priests themselves, and those who were not were under the direction of some church dignitary. Popes, bishops, abbots, and so on, were the principal patrons of art, and they suggested to the artists the subjects to be painted, and then the pictures were used for the decoration of churches and other buildings used by the religious orders. The monks were largely occupied in miniature-painting; artists frequented the monasteries, and, indeed, when they were engaged upon religious subjects, they were frequently under the same discipline as that of the monks themselves. ”

“ It will also be expedient that they procure all the books according to the ritual of Rome; theological and Biblical works in French, English, and Latin; chalices, ciboriums, crucifixes, vestments and church ornaments, altar pictures—in fact, everything relating to divine service. Surely they will be assisted through the piety of their friends and acquaintances. How many persons in France possess ecclesiastical or theological works which are not printed in America, as also sacred ornaments which are of no use to them ”

“ Poetry, music, painting, sculpture, and architecture all are unquestionably legitimate handmaids of religion and may be made most serviceable. But the use of images for ornament, instruction, and enjoyment is one thing; the worship of images is quite another thing. [271] In the Middle Ages only a few lofty souls here and there took the true view. Pictures were put into churches not as objects of art, but as aids and objects of worship. ”

“ Some, no doubt, after entering sacred Orders, became attached to cathedrals, colleges of priests, and even parochial churches, where, in the midst of a more or less active life, they prepared themselves for further ecclesiastical advancement. ”

“ All that is even bordering on heathen voluptuousness should be rigidly excluded. Works of Catholic art should adorn the walls even of the most public and splendid apartments. Every private room should have its crucifix, its Madonna, its vase of holy water, its prie-dieu, and books of prayer and devotion. An oratory, fitted up with the utmost elegance and costliness that is suitable to the circumstances, should be the shrine and chief ornament of the house. ”

“ The æsthetic charm of the catholic church, her evocative power over all that is eloquent and expressive in the better mind of man, her outward comeliness, her dignifying convictions about human nature:—all this, as abundantly realised centuries later by Dante and Giotto, by the great medieval church-builders, by the great ritualists like Saint Gregory, and the masters of sacred music in the middle age—we may see already, in dim anticipation, in those charmed moments towards the end of the second century. ”

“ In the beginning of the sixteenth century, the constellation of living genius in every department of art, the riches of the Church, the luxurious habits and classical studies of the churchmen, the decline of religious conviction, and the ascendency of religious controversy, had combined to multiply church pictures, particularly those of a large and decorative character. ”

“ The first undisputed proof of the use of art in public worship among the orthodox is found in a decree of the Synod of Elvira, Spain, in 306, that "pictures ought not to be placed on a church lest that which is worshipped and adored be painted on walls." ”

“ THE increased appreciation of ceremonial and art in the worship of the English Church within the last forty years is intimately connected with the higher tone of spiritual life, more thorough grasp of dogma, and wider munificence in giving to sacred purposes also characteristic of the period. ”

“ These citations sufficiently indicate the mind of the Catholic Church in respect to the uses of ritual and symbolic ceremony. The prime intention is the instruction and edification of the believer, but it is evident that a necessary element in this edification is the thought that the rite is one composite act of worship, a prayer, an offering to Almighty God. This is the theory of Catholic art, the view which pious churchmen have always entertained of the function of artistic forms in worship. ”

“ It is to the Catholic Church that modern art must look for the origin of its present development. To the monks of mediæval times must be ascribed the glory of the greatest achievements in Gothic architecture, the art of fresco-painting, and the foundations of modern music. ”

“ When we come to this period we will find all ecclesiastical history to consist of traditions, and a time in the world's life which is populated by Bishops and high-church dignitaries, who pass before us without speech or action, like shadows on a wall. ”

“ The version of the Scriptures into their native tongue, which had facilitated their conversion, must excite among their clergy some curiosity to read the original text, to understand the sacred liturgy of the church, and to examine, in the writings of the fathers, the chain of ecclesiastical tradition. These spiritual gifts were preserved in the Greek and Latin languages, which concealed the inestimable monuments of ancient learning. ”

“ And so in the churches of monks, regular canons and secular canons alike, most of the ecclesiastical authorities reverted to what had been all along the normal plan of the English parish church, viz., an eastern limb containing choir as well as presbytery. ”