Heaven in Stone and Glass

This is an altogether pleasant little book, written for a popular rather than scholarly audience. If the reader is expecting a hefty tome with a substantial thesis, such as Otto von Simson’s The Gothic Cathedral, Émile Mâle’s The Gothic Image, or Conrad Rudolph’s more recent Artistic Change at St-Denis, he will be disappointed. This short book is made up of fifteen brief theological reflections on certain elements of Gothic architecture. Most of the comments seem inspired by the author’s walks through either the cathedrals at Chartres or Notre-Dame de Paris, although there are several passing references to the cathedral at Amiens, along with one small black-and-white picture of the cathedral of York. (Indeed, if there is one serious criticism to be made of the book, it is that all fifteen of the illustrations are small black-and-white photos.)

The sub-title of the book is, “Experiencing the Spirituality of the Great Cathedrals.” Indeed, as long as the reader takes the author’s comments about Gothic architecture as expressions of his particular aesthetic feelings about the building in question, then there can be no objection. And so, when the author notes that there are subtle yet important differences between the right and left bell towers and the right and left portals of the facade at Notre-Dame de Paris, though he may be right to conclude that it is “hardly likely” that “the architects were imprecise in their measurements,” he is not on firm ground at all when he suggests that, “What the architects wanted in fact to communicate was the imperfection and sinfulness of the universe …” (p. 58). Notre-Dame de Paris, like all of the great medieval cathedrals, was built over the course of many decades. The notion that the bell-towers, portals, and statuary of a cathedral—built as they were by various artisans and architects often over the course of many decades, even centuries—are all in fact united by a common artistic ideal, is not altogether realistic. The differences between left and right in a facade might be due neither to imprecise measurements on the one hand, nor to a unified artistic plan on the other. It might just be that the architect two generations later liked squares better than triangles, or worked better with eights rather than sevens, or that the building committee just plain ran out of money and had to settle on a less expensive plan.

Indeed, all such broad generalizations about “what the medieval architects intended” probably ought to be viewed with caution. Why? Because even if we were to restrict our discussion to one Gothic cathedral alone (let alone making generalizations about four or five), we might be looking at the work of perhaps a dozen or more major architects who labored over decades and perhaps centuries of construction, who were aided by sometimes hundreds of auxiliary craftsmen and artists. Not only would we have to distinguish the “intentions” of each of the major players in the work, and the changes in that “intention” as the worked proceeded and the personnel changed, but we would also have to take into account all of the major changes in the political, cultural, aesthetic, and especially theological landscape that had occurred during the years of that construction. Unfortunately, the needed scholarly spadework simply has not been done yet.

In the case of Notre-Dame de Paris, for example, it is not at all clear that the man who planned the flying buttresses and the windows was the same man who put the famous gargoyles on the building. Indeed, many scholars think that the gargoyles weren’t added until much later, perhaps as late as the nineteenth-century renovations done under the direction of Viollet-le-Duc. It was during this time that the nineteenth-century Romantics, in reaction to what was perceived to be the excessive rationalism of the Enlightenment period, became fascinated by what they took to be the dark, mysterious, and lusty—almost barbaric—period then known as “The Dark Ages.” They even coined their own adjective for the period; because they thought that it was dominated, not by the rational Greeks and Romans, but rather by the lusty Goths that had overrun them, they called the period, along with its art and architecture, “Gothic.” We now realize, of course, that much of this was historical anachronism. The gargoyles on Notre-Dame probably tell us more about what the nineteenth century thought about the Middle Ages than about what the Middle Ages really were. And just as twentieth-century scholars look back with mild amusement at the fantastical imaginings of the “Gothic” that were invented by their nineteenth-century predecessors, so also shouldn’t we be careful not to read into the “Gothic” just what we want to find there? If we believe that the Middle Ages has something important—indeed irreplaceable—to offer us, shouldn’t we do our best to understand these great thinkers on their own terms, rather than forcing them into our social and spiritual categories and constructs?

All scholarly caveats aside, however, this is really more of a book of theological meditations than it is a book about Gothic architecture. To the extent that what it means to do is to teach the truths “ancient and yet ever new,” it does a fine job. The writing is crisp and clear, and the meditations are admirably orthodox without ever slipping into either pious sentimentality or dreary lecturing. In the final analysis, if this book is approached in the right vein, it can be enjoyed with pleasure and become a source of no small spiritual benefit. Warmly recommended, with the stated reservations.

Randall Smith is assistant professor at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. He has a doctorate in Medieval Studies and has taught at the University of Notre Dame.

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