You might wonder how is it that Abbott Suger's description of the costly, glittery,
sumptuous things of this world might square with
the traditional Catholic mistrust of the body
and of material things which appeal to the senses.
And with at least one strain of medieval thought which laments in the phrase of
Pope Innocent II the misery of the human condition.
The answer lies, first,
in Suger's insistence that the cathedral is the house of God,
a threshold to heaven and a relic way of sacred, beautiful things.
"How secluded this place is," he states,"how hallowed,
how convenient for those celebrating
the divine rights has come to be known to those who serve God
there as though they were already dwelling in a degree in heaven while they sacrifice?"
The answer as to why Suger loved beautiful things lies,
second, in the origin of a new style of architecture.
He was a new type of man and a harbinger of what is known,
as we saw in our last time together,
as the renaissance of the 12th Century.
Suger elaborated a new philosophical order.
Unlike the early medieval platonic separation of material and
spiritual things passed to the Middle Ages by St. Augustine,
Suger thought it possible to behold sacred reality with bodily eyes.
He emphasized not a break but a continuum between
the world of the senses and the higher reality to which the senses,
on his account, were to lead us.
And in this the cathedral is an ideal space for
just such an uplift from the material to the spiritual plane.
Suger describe the actual experience of
contemplating the sparkling gems he had amassed in the cross of St.
Alloy. Beginning with a quotation from Ezekiel 28:13 he writes,
"Every precious stone was thy covering,
the sardius, the topaz, and the Jasper,
the chrysolite and the onyx and the beryl,
the sapphire and the carbuncle and the emerald.
Thus, when out of my delight in the beauty of the house of God,
the loveliness of the many colored gems has called me away from
external cares and worthy meditation has induced me to reflect,
transferring that which is material to that which is immaterial,
on the diversity of the sacred virtues,
then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling, as it were,
in some strange region of the universe which neither exists
entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the purity of heaven.
And that, by the grace of God,
I can be transported from this inferior to a higher world in an anagogical manner."
Now, the word anagogic is special and it belongs to
the somewhat complicated world of medieval exegesis or biblical interpretation.
According to many churchmen and even to poets like Dante,
there are four rules of Scripture by which we can understand difficult things.
There is a literal style of understanding for historical purposes.
There is a typological level which connects the old testament with the new,
thus Moses as a liberator can be said to
prefigure Christ as Mary can be said to redeem Eve.
Third, there is a tropological level which has to
do with moral meaning from which right conduct is drawn.
And there is an anagogical level,
a spiritual understanding by which we comprehend the future and
final end of things within the context of God's providence, the Divine Plan.
According to Abbot Suger,
we should take note of the pleasure produced in
our senses by light which shines on things that glitter.
Such a sensation is not to be rejected,
but that which is aesthetically pleasing simply requires some written explanation.
He writes, "And because the diversity of the material such as gold,
gems and pearls is not easily understood
by the mute perception of sight without a description,
we have seen to it that this work,
which is intelligible only to the literate,
which shines with the radiance of delightful allegories,
be set down in writing."
Howard BlochSterling Professor of French
