5.3 The Uplifting Church

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From the course by Yale University

Age of Cathedrals

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Yale University

Age of Cathedrals

100 ratings

An introduction to some of the most astonishing architectural monuments the world has ever known—Gothic cathedrals. We shall study the art, literature, intellectual life, economics, and new social arrangements that arose in the shadow of the cathedrals and that were such an important part of the revival of cities in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The goal of the course is a better appreciation of the High Middle Ages, a world that is still recognizably our own.

From the lesson

Saint-Denis

Here we encounter the portrait of Abbot Suger via his account of how and why he built Saint-Denis, what is portrayed on the West façade of the cathedral, and how the doctrine of God as light, encountered in a book which had come from Byzantium to the abbey centuries earlier, was translated into architectural form. We see some of the objects that are part of the treasury of Saint-Denis and discuss the Abbot’s notion of “anagogical uplift” as a way of moving—via stained glass—between the Old and New Testaments and from the material to the spiritual plane.

5.1 God is Light7:37

5.2 Saint-Denis, a Storehouse of Treasure7:20

5.3 The Uplifting Church4:37

5.4 The Anagogical and Moses Windows5:32

Meet the Instructors

Howard Bloch
Sterling Professor of French
French

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."

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