Church Architecture is the only addition which the Middle Ages made
to Art; but even this fact is remarkable when we consider the
barbarism and ignorance of the Teutonic nations in those dark and
gloomy times. It is difficult to conceive how it could have
arisen, except from the stimulus of religious ideas and
sentiments,--like the vast temples of the Egyptians. The artists
who built the hoary and attractive cathedrals and abbey churches
which we so much admire are unknown men to us, and yet they were
great benefactors. It is probable that they were practical and
working architects, like those who built the temples of Greece, who
quietly sought to accomplish their ends,--not to make pictures, but
to make buildings,--as economically as they could consistently with
the end proposed, which end they always had in view.
In this Lecture I shall not go back to classic antiquity, nor shall
I undertake to enter upon any disquisition on Art itself, but
simply present the historical developments of the Church
architecture of the Middle Ages. It is a technical and complicated
subject, but I shall try to make myself understood. It suggests,
however, great ideas and national developments, and ought to be
interesting.
The Romans added nothing to the architecture of the Greeks except
the arch, and the use of brick and small stones for the materials
of their stupendous structures. Now Christianity and the Middle
Ages seized the arch and the materials of the Roman architects, and
gradually formed from these a new style of architecture. In Roman
architecture there was no symbolism, no poetry, nothing to
represent consecrated sentiments. It was mundane in its ideas and
ends; everything was for utility. The grandest efforts of the
Romans were feats of engineering skill, rather than creations
inspired by the love of the beautiful. What was beautiful in their
edifices was borrowed from the Greeks; what was original was
intended to accommodate great multitudes, whether they sought the
sports of the amphitheatre or the luxury of the bath. Their
temples were small, comparatively, and were Grecian.
The first stage in the development of Church architecture was
reached amid the declining glories of Roman civilization, before
the fall of the Empire; but the first model of a Christian church
was not built until after the imperial persecutions. The early
Christians worshipped God in upper chambers, in catacombs, in
retired places, where they would not be molested, where they could
hide, in safety. Their assemblies were small, and their meetings
unimportant. They did nothing to attract attention. The
worshippers were mostly simple-minded, unlettered, plebeian people,
with now and then a converted philosopher, or centurion, or lady of
rank. They met for prayer, exhortation, the reading of the
Scriptures, the singing of sacred melodies, and mutual support in
trying times. They did not want grand edifices. The plainer the
place in which they assembled the better suited it was to their
circumstances and necessities. They scarcely needed a rostrum, for
the age of sermons had not begun; still less the age of litanies
and music and pomps. For such people, in that palmy age of faith
and courage, when the seeds of a new religion were planted in
danger and watered with tears; when their minds were directed
almost entirely to the soul's welfare and future glory; when they
loved one another with true Christian disinterestedness; when
they stimulated each other's enthusiasm by devotion to a common
cause (one Lord, one faith, one baptism); when they were too
insignificant to take any social rank, too poor to be of any
political account, too ignorant to attract the attention of
philosophers,--ANY place where they would be unmolested and retired
was enough. In process of time, when their numbers had increased,
and when and wherever they were tolerated; when money began to flow
into the treasuries; and especially when some gifted leader
(educated perhaps in famous schools, yet who was fervent and
eloquent) desired a wider field for usefulness,--then church
edifices became necessary.
This original church was modelled after the ancient Basilica, or
hall of justice or of commerce: at one end was an elevated
tribunal, and back of this what was called the "apsis,"--a rounded
space with arched roof. The whole was railed off or separated from
the auditory, and was reserved for the clergy, who in the fourth
century had become a class. The apsis had no window, was vaulted,
and its walls were covered with figures of Christ and of the
saints, or of eminent Christians who in later times were canonized
by the popes. Between the apsis and the auditory, called the
"nave," was the altar; for by this time the Church was borrowing
names and emblems from the Jews and the old religions. From the
apsis to the extremity of the other end of the building were two
rows of pillars supporting an upper wall, broken by circular arches
and windows, called now the "clear story." In the low walls of the
side aisles were also windows. Both the nave and the aisles
supported a framework of roof, lined with a ceiling adorned with
painting.
For some time we see no marked departure, at this stage, from the
ancient basilica. The church is simple, not much adorned, and
adapted to preaching. The age in which it was built was the age of
pulpit orators, when bishops preached,--like Basil, Chrysostom,
Ambrose, Augustine, and Leo,--when preaching was an important part
of the service, by the foolishness of which the world was to be
converted. Probably there were but few what we should call fine
churches, but there was one at Rome which was justly celebrated,
built by Theodosius, and called St. Paul's. It is now outside the
walls of the modern city. The nave is divided into five aisles,
and the main one, opening into the apsis, is spanned by a lofty
arch supported by two colossal columns. The apsis is eighty feet
in breadth. All parts of the church--one of the largest of Rome--
are decorated with mosaics. It has two small transepts at the
extremity of the nave, on each side of the apsis. The four rows of
magnificent columns, supporting semicircular arches, are
Corinthian. In this church the Greek and Roman architecture
predominates. The essential form of the church is like a Pagan
basilica. We see convenience, but neither splendor nor poetry.
Moreover it is cheerful. It has an altar and an apsis, but it is
adapted to preaching rather than to singing. The public dangers
produce oratory, not chants. The voice of the preacher penetrates
the minds of the people, as did that of Savonarola at Florence
announcing the invasion of Italy by the French,--days of fear and
anxiety, reminding us also of Chrysostom at Antioch, when in his
spacious basilican church he roused the people to penitence, to
avert the ire of Theodosius.
The first transition from the basilica to the Gothic church is
called the Romanesque, and was made after the fall of the Empire,
when the barbarians had erected new kingdoms on its ruins; when
literature and art were indeed crushed, yet when universal
desolation was succeeded by new forms of government and new habits
of life; when the clergy had become an enormous power, greatly
enriched by the contributions of Christian princes. This
transition retained the traditions of the fallen Empire, and yet
was adapted to a semi-civilized people, nominally converted to
Christianity. It arose after the fall of the Merovingians, when
Charlemagne was seeking to restore the glory of the Western Empire.
Paganism had been suppressed by law; even heresies were
extinguished in the West. Kings and people were alike orthodox,
and bowed to the domination of the Church. Abbeys and convents
were founded everywhere and richly endowed. The different States
and kingdoms were poor, but the wealth that existed was deposited
in sacred retreats. The powers of the State were the nobles,
warlike and ignorant, rapidly becoming feudal barons, acknowledging
only a nominal fealty to the Crown. Kings had no glory, defied by
their own subjects and unsupported by standing armies. But these
haughty barons were met face to face by equally haughty bishops,
armed with spiritual weapons. These bishops were surrounded and
supported by priests, secular and regular,--by those who ruled the
people in small parishes, and those who ruled the upper classes in
their monastic cells. Learning had fled to monasteries, and the
Church, with its growing revenues and structures, became a new
attraction.
The architects of the Romanesque, who were probably churchmen,
retained the nave of the basilica, but made it narrower, and used
but two rows of columns. They introduced the transepts, or cross-
enclosures, making them to project north and south of the nave, in
the space separated from the apsis; and the apsis was expanded into
the choir, filled with priests and choristers. The building now
assumes the form of a cross. The choir is elevated several steps
above the nave, and beneath it is the crypt, where the bishops and
abbots and saints are buried. At the intersection of choir, nave,
and transept,--an open, square place,--rises a square tower, at
each corner of which is a massive pier supporting four arches. The
windows are narrow, with semicircular arches. At the western
entrance, at the end opposite the apse, is a small porch, where the
consecrated water is placed, in an urn or basin, and this is
inclosed between two towers. The old Roman atrium, or fore-court,
entirely disappears. In its place is a grander facade; and the
pillars--which are all internal, like those of an Egyptian temple,
not external, as in the Greek temple--have no longer Grecian
capitals, but new combinations of every variety, and the pillars
are even more heavy and massive than the Doric. The flat wooden
ceiling of the nave disappears, on account of frequent fires, and
the eye rests on arches supporting a stone roof. All the arches
are semicircular, like those of the Coliseum and of the Roman
aqueducts and baths. They are built of small stones united by
cement. The building is low and heavy, and its external beauty is
in the west front or facade, with its square towers and circular
window and ornamented portal. The internal beauty is from the
pillars supporting the roof, and the tower which intersects the
nave, choir, and transepts. Sometimes, instead of a tower there is
a dome, reminding us of Byzantine workmanship.
But this Romanesque church is also connected with monastic
institutions, whose extensive buildings join the church at the
north or south. The church is wedded to monasticism; one supports
the other, and both make a unity exceedingly efficient in the
Middle Ages. The communication between the church and the convent
is effected by a cloister, a vaulted gallery surrounding a square,
open space, where the brothers walk and meditate, but do not talk,
except in undertone or whisper; for all the precincts are sacred,
made for contemplation and silence,--a retreat from the noisy,
barbaric world. Connected with the cloisters is a court opening
into the refectory, where all the brothers dine. "Meals were in
common, work was in common, prayer was in common"--a real community
life.
The whole range of these sacred buildings is enclosed with walls,
like a fortress. You see in this architecture the gloom and
desolation which overspread the world. Churches are heavy and
sombre; they are places for dreary meditation on the end of the
world, on the failure of civilization, on the degradation of
humanity,--and yet the only places where man may be brought in
contact with the Deity who presides over a fallen world, exalting
human hopes to heaven, where miseries end, and worship begins.
This style of architecture prevailed till the twelfth century, and
was seen in its greatest perfection in Germany under the Saxon
emperors, especially in the Rhenish provinces, as in the cathedrals
of Spires, Mentz, Worms, and Nuremberg. Its general effect was
solemn, serious,--a separation from the outward world,--a world
disgraced by feudal wars and peasants' wrongs and general
ignorance, which made men sad, morose, inhuman. It flourished in
ages when the poor had no redress, and were trodden under the feet
of hard feudal masters; when there was no law but of brute force;
when luxuries were few and comforts rare,--an age of hardship,
privation, poverty, suffering; an age of isolations and sorrows,
when men were forced to look beyond the grave for peace and hope,
when immortality through a Redeemer was the highest inspiration of
life. Everybody was agitated by fears. The clergy made use of
this universal feeling by presenting the terrors of the law,--the
penalty of sin,--everlasting physical burnings, from which the
tortured soul could be extricated only by penance and self-
expiation, offerings to the Church, and complete obedience to the
will of the priest, who held the keys of heaven and hell. The men
who lived when the Romanesque churches dotted every part in Europe
looked upon society and saw nothing but grief,--heavy burdens,
injustices, oppressions, cruel wrongs; and they hid their faces and
wept, and said: "Let us retreat from this miserable world which
discord ravages; let us hide ourselves in contemplation; let us
prepare to meet God in judgment; let us bring to Him our offering;
let us propitiate Him; let us build Him a house, where we may chant
our mournful songs." So the church arises, in Germany, in France,
in England,--solemn, mystical, massive, a type of sorrow, in the
form of a cross, with "a sepulchral crypt like the man in the tomb,
before the lofty spire pointed to the man who had risen to Heaven."
The church is still struggling, and is not jubilant, except in
Gregorian chants, and is not therefore lofty or ornamental. It is
a vault. It is more like a catacomb than a basilica, for the world
is buried deep in sorrows and fears. Look to any of the Saxon
churches of the period when the Romanesque prevailed, and they are
low, gloomy, and damp, though massive and solemn. The church as an
edifice ever represents the Church as an institution or a power,
ever typifies prevailing sentiments and ideas. Perhaps the finest
of the old Romanesque churches was that of Cluny, in Burgundy,
destroyed during the French Revolution. It had five aisles, and
was five hundred and twenty feet in length. It had a stately tower
at the intersection of the transepts, and six other towers. It was
early Norman, and loftier than the Saxon churches, although heavy
and massive like them.
But the Romanesque church, with all its richness, is still heavy,
dark, impressive, reminding us of the sorrows of the Middle Ages,
and the dreary character of prevailing religious sentiments,--
fervent, sincere, profound, but sad,--the sentiments of an age of
ignorance and faith.
The Crusades came. A new era burst upon the world. The old ideas
became modified; society became more cheerful, because more
chivalric, adventurous, poetic. The world opened towards the East,
and was larger than was before supposed. Liberality of mind began
to dawn on the darkened ages; no longer were priests supreme. The
gay Provencals began to sing; the universities began to teach and
to question. The Scholastic philosophy sent forth such daring
thinkers as Erigena and Abelard. Orthodoxy was still supreme
before such mighty intellects as Anselm, Bernard, and Thomas
Aquinas, but it was assailed. Abelard put forth his puzzling
questions. The Schoolmen began to think for themselves, and the
iron weight of Feudalism was less oppressive. Free cities and
commerce began to enrich the people. Kings were becoming more
powerful; the spiritual despotism was less potent. The end of the
world, it was found, had not come. A glorious future began to shed
forth the beams of its coming day. It was the dawn of a new
civilization.
So a lighter, more cheerful, and grander architecture, with
symbolic beauties, appeared with changing ideas and sentiments.
The Church, no longer a gloomy power, struggling with Saracens and
barbarism, but dominant, triumphant, issues forth from darksome
crypts and soars upward,--elevates her vaulted roofs. "The
Oriental ogive appears. . . . The architects heap arcade on arcade,
ogive on ogive, pyramid on pyramid, and give to all geometrical
symmetry and artistic grace. . . . The Greek column is there, but
dilated to colossal proportions, and exfoliated in a variegated
capital." The old Roman arch disappears, and the pointed arch is
substituted,--graceful and elevated. The old Egyptian obelisk
appears in the spire reaching to heaven, full of aspiration. The
window becomes larger and encroaches on the naked wall, and
radiates in mystic roses. The arches widen and the piers become
more lofty. Stained glass appears and diffuses religious light.
Every part of the church becomes decorated and symbolical and
harmonious, though infinitely variegated. The altars have pictures
over them. Shrines and monuments appear in the niches. The
dresses of the priests are more gorgeous. The music of the choir
peals forth hallelujahs. Christ is risen from the tomb. "The
purple of his blood colors the windows." The roof, like pinnacles
and spires, seems to reach the skies. The pressure of the walls is
downwards rather than lateral. The vertical lines of Cologne are
as marked as the old horizontal lines of the Parthenon. The walls
too are not so heavy, and are supported by buttresses, which give
increased beauty to the exterior,--greater light and shade. "Every
part of the church seems to press forward and strive for greater
freedom, for outward manifestation." Even the broad and expansive
window presses to the outer surface of the walls, now broken by
buttresses and pinnacles. The window--the eye of the edifice--is
more cheerful and intelligent. More calm is the imposing facade,
with its mighty towers and lofty spires, tapering like a pyramid,
with its round oriel window rich in beautiful tracery, and its wide
portal with sculptured saints and martyrs. And in all the churches
you see geometrical proportions. "Even the cross of the church is
deduced from the figure by which Euclid constructed the equilateral
triangle." The columns present the proportions of the Doric, as to
diameter and height. The love of the true and beautiful meet. The
natural and supernatural both appear. All parts symbolize the
passion of Christ. If the crypt speaks of death, the lofty and
vaulted roof and the beautiful pointed arches, and the cheerful
window, and the jubilant chants speak of life. "The old church
reminds one of the Christ that lay in the tomb; the new, of the
Christ who arose the third day." The old fosters meditation and
silence; the new kindles the imagination, by its variety of
perspective arrangement and mystic representation,--still
reverential, still expressive of consecrated sentiments, yet more
cheerful. The foliated shaft, the rich tracery of the window, the
graceful pinnacle, the Arabian gorgeousness of the interior,--as if
the crusaders had learned something from the East,--the innumerable
shrines and pictures, the variegated marbles of the altar, with its
vessels of silver and gold, the splendid dresses of the priests,
the imposing character of the ritualism, the treasures lavished
everywhere, all speak greater independence, wealth, and power. The
church takes the place of all amusements. Its various attractions
draw together the people from their farms and shops. They are
gaily dressed, as if they were attending a festival. Their
condition is so improved that they have time for holidays. And
these the Church multiplies; for perpetual toil is the grave of
intellect. The people must have rest, amusement, excitement. All
these things the Catholic Church gives, and consecrates. Crusader,
baron, knight, priest, peasant, all resort to the church for
benedictions. Women too are there, and in greater numbers; and
they linger for the confessional. When the time comes that women
stay away from church, like busy, preoccupied, sceptical men, then
let us be on the watch for some great catastrophe, since practical
paganism will then be restored, and the angels of light will have
left the earth.
Paris and its neighborhood was the cradle of this new development
of architecture which we wrongly call the Gothic, even as Paris was
the centre of the new-born intelligence of the era. The word
"Gothic" suggests destructive barbarism: the English, French, and
Germans descended chiefly from Normans, Saxons, and Burgundians.
This form of church architecture rapidly spreads to Germany,
England, and Spain. The famous Suger, the minister of a powerful
king, built the abbey of St. Denis. The churches of Rheims, Paris,
and Bourges arose in all their grandeur. The facade of Rheims is
the most significant example of the wonderful architecture of the
thirteenth century. In the church of Amiens you see the perfection
of the so-called Gothic,--so graceful are its details, so dazzling
is its height. The central aisle is one hundred and thirty-two
feet in altitude,--only surpassed by that of Beauvais, which is
fourteen feet higher. It was then that the cathedral of Rouen was
built, with its elegant lightness,--a marvel to modern travellers.
Soon after, the cathedral of Cologne appears, more grand than
either,--but long unfinished,--with its central aisle forty-four
feet in width, rising one hundred and forty feet into the air, with
its colossal towers, grandly supporting the lofty openwork spires,
five hundred and twenty feet in height. The whole church is five
hundred and thirty-two feet in length. I confess this church made
a greater impression on my mind than did any Gothic church in
Europe,--more, even, than Milan, with its unnumbered pinnacles and
statues and its marble roof. I could not rest while surveying its
ten thousand wonders,--so much lightness combined with strength; so
grand, and yet so cheerful; so exquisitely proportioned, so
complicated in details, and yet a grand unity; a glorious and fit
temple for the reverential worship of the Deity. Oh, how grand are
those monuments which were designed to last through ages, and which
are consecrated, not to traffic, not to pleasure, not to material
wealth, but to the worship of that Almighty God to whom every human
being is personally responsible!
I cannot enumerate the churches of Mediaeval Europe,--projected,
designed, and built certainly by men familiar with all that is
practical in their art, with all that is hallowed and poetical. I
glance at the English cathedrals, built during this epoch,--the
period of the Crusades and the revival of learning.
And here I allude to the man who furnishes me with a text to my
discourse,--William of Wykeham, chancellor and prime minister of
Edward III., the contemporary of Chaucer and Wyclif,--who
flourished in the fourteenth century, and who built Winchester
Cathedral; a great and benevolent prelate, who also founded other
colleges and schools. But I merely allude to him, since my subject
is the art to which he gave an impulse, rather than any single
individual. No one man represents church architecture any more
appropriately than any one man represents the Feudal system, or
Monasticism, or the Crusades, or the French Revolution.
I do not think the English cathedrals are equal to those of
Cologne, Rheims, Amiens, and Rouen; but they are full of interest,
and they have varied excellences. That of Salisbury is the only
one which is of uniform style. Its glory is in its spire, as that
of Lincoln is in its west front, and that of Westminster is in its
nave. Gloucester is celebrated for its choir, and York for its
tower. In all are beautiful vistas of pillars and arches. But
they lack the inspiration of the Catholic Church. They are indeed
hoary monuments, petrified mysteries, a "passion of stone," as
Michelet speaks of the marble histories which will survive his
rhapsodies. They alike show the pilgrimage of humanity through
gloomy centuries. If their great wooden screens were removed,
which separate the choir from the nave, the cathedrals doubtless
would appear to more advantage, and especially if they were filled
with altars and shrines and pictures, and lighted candles on the
altars,--filled also with crowds of worshippers, reverent before
the gorgeously attired ministers of Divine Omnipotence, and excited
by transporting chants, and the various appeals to sense and
imagination. The reason must be assisted by the imagination,
before the mind can revel in the glories of Gothic architecture.
Imagination intensifies all our pleasures, even those of sense; and
without imagination--yea, a memory stored with the pious deeds of
saints and martyrs in bygone ages--a Gothic cathedral is as much a
sealed book as Wordsworth is to Taine. The Protestant tourist from
Michigan or Pennsylvania can "do" any cathedral in two hours, and
wonder why they make such a fuss about a church not half so large
as the New York Central Railroad station. The wonders of
cathedrals must be studied, like the glories of a landscape, with
an eye to the beautiful and the grand, cultured and practised by
the contemplation of ideal excellence, when the mind summons the
imagination to its aid, with all the poetry and all the history
which have been learned in a life of leisure and study. How
different the emotions of a Ruskin or a Tennyson, in surveying
those costly piles, from those of a man fresh from a distillery or
from a warehouse of cotton fabrics, or even from those of many
fashionable women, whose only aesthetic accomplishment is to play
languidly and mechanically on an instrument, and whose only
intellectual achievement is to have devoured a dozen silly novels
in the course of a summer spent in alternate sleep and dalliance!
Nor does familiarity always give a zest to the pleasure which
arises from the creations of art or the glories of nature. The
Roman beggar passes the Coliseum or St. Peter's without notice or
enjoyment, as a peasant sees unmoved the snow-capped mountains of
Switzerland or the beautiful lakes of Killarney. Said sorrowfully
my guide up the Rhigi, "I wish I lived in Holland, for there are
men there." Yet there are those whom the ascent of Rhigi and the
ruined monuments of ancient Rome would haunt for a lifetime, in
whose memory they would be perpetually fresh, never to pass away,
any more than the looks and the vows of early love from the mind of
a sentimental woman.
The glorious old architecture whose peculiarity was the pointed
arch, flourished only about three hundred years in its purity and
matchless beauty. Then another change took place. The ideal
became lost in meaningless ornaments. The human figure peoples the
naked walls. "Man places his own image everywhere. . . . The tomb
rises like a mausoleum in side chapels. Man is enthroned, not
God." The corruption of the art keeps pace with the corruption of
the Papacy and the discords of society. In the fourteenth century
the Mediaeval has lost its charm and faith.
And then sets in the new era, which begins with Michael Angelo. It
is marked by the revival of Greek art and Greek literature. At
Florence reign the Medici. On the throne of Saint Peter sits an
Alexander VI. or a Julius II. Genoa is a city of merchant-palaces.
Museums are collected of the excavated remains of Roman antiquity.
Everybody kindles with the contemplation of the long-buried glories
of a classic age; everybody reads the classic authors: Cicero is a
greater oracle than Saint Augustine. Scholars flock to Italy. The
popes encourage the growing taste for Pagan philosophy. Ancient
art regains her long-abdicated throne, and wields her sceptre over
the worshippers of the Parthenon and the admirers of Aeschylus and
Thucydides. With the revived statues of Greece appear the most
beautiful pictures ever produced by the hand of man; and with
pictures and statues architecture receives a new development. It
is the blending of the old Greek and Roman with the Gothic, and is
called the Renaissance. Michael Angelo erects St. Peter's, the
heathen Pantheon, on the intersection of Gothic nave and choir and
transept; a glorious dome, more beautiful than any Gothic spire or
tower, rising four hundred and fifty feet into the air. And in the
interior are classic circular arches and pillars, so vast that one
is impressed as with great feats of engineering skill. All that is
variegated in marbles adorns the altars; all that is bewitching in
paintings is transferred to mosaics. And this new style of Italy
spreads into France and England. Sir Christopher Wren builds St.
Paul's, more Grecian than Gothic,--and fills London with new
churches, not one of which is Gothic, and all different. The brain
is bewildered in attempting to classify the new and ever-shifting
forms of the revived Italian. And so for three hundred years the
architects mingle the Gothic with the classical, until now a
mongrel architecture is the disgrace of Europe; varied but not
expressive, resting on no settled principles, neither on vertical
nor on horizontal lines,--blended together, sometimes Grecian
porticos on Elizabethan structures, spires resting not on towers
but roofs, Byzantine domes on Grecian temples, Greek columns with
Lombard arches, flamboyant panelling, pendant pillars from the
roof, all styles mixed up together, Corinthian pilasters acting as
Gothic buttresses, and pointed arches with Doric friezes,--a heap
of diverse forms, alien alike from the principles of Wykeham and
Vitruvius.
And this varied mongrel style of architecture corresponds with the
confused civilization of the period,--neither Greek nor Gothic, but
a mixture of both; intolerant priests wrangling with pagan sceptics
and infidels,--Aquaviva with Pascal, the hierarchy of the French
Church with Voltaire and Rousseau, Protestant divines with the
Catholic clergy; Geneva and Rome compromising at Oxford, the
authority of the Fathers made antagonistic to the authority
of popes, new vernacular tongues supplanting Latin in the
universities: everywhere war on the Middle Ages, without full
emancipation from their dogmas, ancient paganism made to uphold the
Church, an unbounded activity of intellect casting off all
established rules, the revival of the old Greek republics,
democracy asserting its claim against absolute power; nothing
settled, nothing at rest, but motion in every direction,--science
combating faith, faith spurning reason, humanity arrogating
divinity, the confusion of races, Babel towers of vanity and pride
in the new projected enterprises, Christian nations embroiled in
constant wars, gold and silver set up as idols, the rise of new
powers in the shapes of new industries and new inventions, commerce
filling the world with wealth, armies contending for rights as well
as for the aggrandizement of monarchies: was there ever such a
simmering and boiling and fermenting period of activities since the
world began? In such a wild and tumultuous agitation of passions
and interests and ideas, how could Art reappear either in the
classic severity of Greek temples or the hoary grandeur of
Mediaeval cathedrals? In this jumble we look for new creations,
but no creations in art appear, only fantastic imitations. There
is no creation except in a new field, that of science and
mechanical inventions,--where there is the most extraordinary and
astonishing development of human genius ever seen on earth, but "of
the earth earthy," aiming at material good. Architecture itself is
turned into great feats of engineering. It does not span the apsis
of a church; it spans rivers and valleys. The church, indeed,
passes out of mind, if not out of sight, in the new material age,
in the multiplication of bridges and gigantic reservoirs,--old Rome
brought back again in its luxuries.
And yet the exactness of science and the severity of criticism--
begun fifty years ago, in the verification of principles--produce a
better taste. Architects have sought to revive the purest forms of
both Gothic and Grecian. If they could not create a new style,
they would imitate the old: as in philosophy, they would go round
in the old circles. As science revives the atoms of Democritus, so
art would reproduce the ideas of Phidias and Vitruvius, and even
the poetry and sanctity of the Middle Ages. Within fifty years
Christendom has been covered with Gothic churches, some of which
are as beautiful as those built by Freemasons. The cathedrals have
been copied rigidly, even for village churches. The Parthenon
reappears in the Madeleine. We no longer see, as in the eighteenth
century, Gothic spires on Roman basilicas, or Grecian porticos
ornamenting Norman towers. The various styles of two thousand
years are not mixed up in the same building. We copy either the
horizontal lines of Paganism or the vertical lines of the ages of
Faith. No more harmonious Gothic edifice was ever erected than the
new Catholic cathedral of New York.
The only absurdity is seen when radical Protestantism adopts the
church of pomps and liturgies. When the Reformation was completed,
men sought to build churches where they could hear the voice of the
preacher; for the mission of Protestantism is to teach, not to
sing. Protestantism glories in its sermons as much as Catholicism
in its chants. If the people wish to return again to ritualism,
let them have the Gothic church. If they wish to be electrified by
eloquence, let them have a basilica, for the voice of the preacher
is lost in high and vaulted roofs. If they wish to join in the
prayers and the ceremonies of the altar, let them have the
clustering pillars and the purple windows.
Everything turns upon what is meant by a church. What is it for?
Is it for liturgical services, or is it for pulpit eloquence?
Solve that question, and you solve the Reformation. "My house,"
saith the Divine Voice, "shall be called the house of prayer." It
is "by the foolishness of preaching," said Paul, that men are
saved.
If you will have the prayers of the Middle Ages and the sermons of
the Reformation both together, then let the architects invent a new
style, which shall allow the blending of prayer and pulpit
eloquence. You cannot have them both in a Grecian temple, or in a
Gothic church. You must combine the Parthenon with Salisbury,
which is virtually a new miracle of architecture. Will that
miracle be wrought? I do not know. But a modern Protestant
church, with all the wonders of our modern civilization, must be
something new,--some new combination which shall be worthy of the
necessity of our times. This is what the architect must now aspire
to accomplish; he must produce a house in which one can both hear
the sermon, and be stimulated by inspiring melodies,--for the
Church must have both. The psalms of David and the chants of
Gregory must be blended with the fervid words of a Chrysostom and a
Chalmers.
This, at least, should be borne in mind: the church edifice MUST be
adapted to the end designed. The Gothic architects adapted their
vaults and pillars to the ceremonies of the Catholic ritual. If it
is this you want, then copy Gothic cathedrals. But if it is
preaching you want, then restore the Grecian temple,--or, better
still, the Roman theatre,--where the voice of the preacher is not
lost either in Byzantine domes or Gothic vaults, whose height is
greater than their width. The preacher must draw by the
distinctness of his tones; for every preacher has not the musical
voice of Chrysostom, or the electricity of St. Bernard. He can
neither draw nor inspire if he cannot be heard; he speaks to
stones, not to living men or women. He loses his power, and is
driven to chants and music to keep his audience from deserting him.
He must make his choir an orchestra; he must hide himself in
priestly vestments; he must import opera singers to amuse and not
instruct. He cannot instruct when he cannot be heard, and heard
easily. Unless the people catch every tone of his voice his
electricity will be wasted, and he will preach in vain, and be
tired out by attempting to prevent echoes. The voice of Saint Paul
would be lost in some of our modern fashionable churches. Think of
the absurdity of Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians
affecting to restore Gothic monuments, when the great end of sacred
eloquence is lost in those devices which appeal to sense. Think of
the folly of erecting a church for eight hundred people as high as
Westminster Abbey. It is not the size of a church which prevents
the speaker from being heard,--it is the disproportion of height
with breadth and length, and the echoes produced by arcades,
Spurgeon is heard easily by seven thousand people, and Talmage by
six thousand, and Dr. Hall by four thousand, because the buildings
in which they preach are adapted to public speaking. Those who
erect theatres take care that a great crowd shall be able to catch
even the whispers of actors. What would you think of the good
sense and judgment of an architect who should construct a reservoir
that would leak, in order to make it ornamental; or a schoolhouse
without ventilation; or a theatre where actors could only be seen;
or a hotel without light and convenient rooms; or a railroad bridge
which would not support a heavy weight?
A Protestant church is designed, no matter what the sect may be to
which it belongs, not for poetical or aesthetic purposes, not for
the admiration of architectural expenditures, not even for music,
but for earnest people to hear from the preacher the words of life
and death, that they may be aroused by his enthusiasm, or
instructed by his wisdom; where the poor are not driven to a few
back seats in the gallery; where the meeting is cheerful and
refreshing, where all are stimulated to duties. It must not be
dark, damp, and gloomy, where it is necessary to light the gas on a
foggy day, and where one must be within ten feet of the preacher to
see the play of his features. Take away facilities for hearing and
even for seeing the preacher, and the vitality of a Protestant
service is destroyed, and the end for which the people assemble is
utterly defeated. Moreover, you destroy the sacred purposes of a
church if you make it so expensive that the poor cannot get
sittings. Nothing is so dull, depressing, funereal, as a church
occupied only by prosperous pew-holders, who come together to show
their faces and prove their respectability, rather than to join in
the paeans of redemption, or to learn humiliating lessons of
worldly power before the altar of Omnipotence. To the poor the
gospel is preached; and it is ever the common people who hear most
gladly gospel truth. Ah, who are the common people? I fancy we
are all common people when we are sick, or in bereavement, or in
adversity, or when we come to die. But if advancing society, based
on material wealth and epicurean pleasure, demands churches for the
rich and churches for the poor,--if the lines of society must be
drawn somewhere,--let those architects be employed who understand,
at least, the first principles of their art. I do not mean those
who learn to draw pictures in the back room of a studio, but
conscientious men, if you cannot find sensible men. And let the
pulpit itself be situated where the people can hear the speaker
easily, without straining their eyes and ears. Then only will the
speaker's voice ring and kindle and inspire those who come together
to hear God Almighty's message; then only will he be truly eloquent
and successful, since then only does his own electricity permeate
the whole mass; then only can he be effective, and escape the
humiliation of being only a part of a vain show, where his words
are disregarded and his strength is wasted in the echoes of vaults
and recesses copied from the gloomy though beautiful monuments of
ages which can never, never again return, any more than can "the
granite image worship of the Egyptians, the oracles of Dodona, or
the bulls of the Mediaeval popes."