I am currently in a doctoral program, studying semiotics—cultural symbols—which requires a great deal of reading. Probably the greatest benefit of an education is the wise guide (teacher) who can give a curated tour of the best there is in any given subject, and such is the case with this program. Dr. Leonard Sweet has opened the door to an entire world of scholars and theologians who look beneath the surface of things and reveal mysteries. Now I would like to open that world to you.
Medieval England
So, this was a fascinating book, and I really enjoyed reading it. I have never made English archaeology my study, though I (like everyone else) went through my Arthurian phase and read The Crystal Cave, Mary Stewart’s (1916–2014) Arthurian saga. In fact, knowing I would be reading a series of books on English church history, I reread Edith Pargeter’s (1913–1995) The Cadfael Chronicles, a delightful collection of twenty-one historical novels set in twelfth-century England, featuring an actual Benedictine monk, Cadfael, who lived in Shrewsbury. Below is the Cadfael window in Shrewsbury Abbey.
Cathedral Trends
Roman Basilica
I had no idea that early cathedrals were based upon the Roman basilica (p. 70). I guess I thought early church buildings had a loose association with the second temple in Jerusalem, where the priest would enter the Holy Place to offer daily prayers for the people. The Roman basilica does make sense, though, since that would have been contemporary with Constantine’s reforms.
Norman Baptismal
The eleventh century baptismal with Jesus pulling a man from a tangle of vines and heading towards heaven offered an intriguing narrative (p. 78). It seems significant that on the other side are two figures so intent on battling each other, they are completely ignorant of Jesus rescuing this third man. These two remain locked not only in mortal combat, but entwined in the vines, presumably keeping them from going into heaven. Could the vines be the cares of this world, as in the parable of the four soils?
I really got it, that sense of an ancient yet timeless and continuous connection to faith through being baptized from the waters of a font that has been in use for a thousand years or more (pp. 88, 171). That is something I have not experienced, growing up in the community of my ancestors. It makes sense, then, that people would be reluctant to give up their spires and fonts.
The Green Man
I also happen to love the Green Man, but I had no idea his image had been incorporated into church interiors, and that his pagan meaning had been co-opted into the Christian concept of rebirth and resurrection, nor that his image shows up in the Templar church in Jerusalem, or Cyprus (pp. 88–89).
Gothic Longing for God
I also did not know that Gothic architecture was inspired by a Christian longing to express the “Divine presence” in an ethereal way (p. 103). But once I read about it, it really did click. Gothic cathedrals absolutely do have that mysterious, sort of breathtaking ambience of the holy come to earth in this magical space.
That, actually, explains so much about the Catholic expression of faith, the concrete experience of the Divine, through the Eucharist, through the incense and ritual, the gorgeous vestments, the candles and chanting, the statues and rood, the rood screen providing a see-through separation between the magic of consecration and the rest of earth waiting with bated breath. All of it seeks to engage the earthly in a heavenly experience.
Which, by the way, has to be why the Eucharist and not the sermon is the centerpiece of the Catholic service, because this is literally Christ’s presence, as seen in the transubstantiation of the elements, the “diaphanous veil” rather than the “solid wall” of separation between heavenly and earthly (p. 148).
Yet, Jesus and Paul conveyed that the experience of Christ’s presence is in the gathering of believers. So returning to a more communal arrangement for the worship time is in keeping with a return to what Jesus and the apostles taught about the true heaven-and-earth connection.
The Sacred and the Profane
The donor panels on stained glass windows called to mind the scenes of people worshiping the gods as painted on Egyptian funerary walls, wanting it to be commemorated for all eternity that they were pious. It also recalled the Sumerian practice of creating effigies of oneself praying, to place before the idol in the temple as a proxy praying.
The sarcophagi of people leaning on their side is actually a throw-back to ancient sarcophagi (p. 250).
Sarcophagus of the Spouses, c. 520 B.C.E., Etruscan, painted terracotta, found in the Banditaccia necropolis, Cerveteri (Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia, Rome; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Lady Mary Vyner using the ransom money for her now murdered son to build a new parish hall, and going to the best architect, artisans, and craftsmen available reminded me of the little Scrovegni Chapel, c. 1305, containing Giotto’s famous fresco (p. 388). Evidently, Dante had placed Enrico Scrovegni’s father in the seventh circle of hell for usury as a money lender. Enrico, following in the footsteps of his father’s trade, was now also a money lender. There is a tradition that Scrovegni commissioned the chapel as atonement for himself and his father.
Henry VIII’s decree that the royal coat of arms be displayed in all the churches (to acknowledge him as the Supreme Head of the Church of England) recalled a story about Pilate who caused a riot when he, a pious man, tried to introduce Caesar’s emblems in Jerusalem. Both Philo and Josephus wrote about it. Such mixing of secular and sacred images speaks to how powerful an effect semiotics can have on people.
Innovative Architecture and Imagery
I usually like innovation. But my first impression of the church on page 361 was of a nuclear power plant, or a bunker of some kind. The church on page 376 looks like a spaceship to me, or an alien temple from the original Star Trek series. Neither one seemed attractive. I also tried to like the convent on page 389, but could not get there.
The abstract window on page 371 is spectacular, truly a visual of God’s shekinah. But the Good Samaritan painting on page 379 did not draw me in (in fact, I found it repellant), and the depiction of Jesus and the woman at the well was too mermaidy for me, though I liked that both their hands held the bowl of water. The stained-glass window on page 378 is beautiful, a winning mixture of old and new, and the magi on horseback actually reflects the latest research on who they may have been (Nabatean sages, who definitely would have ridden horseback).
The Center of Church
The placement of the altar in the church building went through a series of iterations, at first as the central feature and focus of both the space and the worship, then set aside in favor of the Protestant pulpit. Stone altars, now wooden offering tables, were placed against a far wall while pulpits—often three-decker—were placed physically in the central position of the building, and spiritually as the center of the worship.
But now, there is a return of the Eucharist table to a central location in the worship setting. Byrne brings in a number of historical references to early circular churches in Rome in the fourth century, dating to after Constantine’s conversion. But the circular church dates to a time even earlier than that, with a circular first-century church built on the site traditionally recognized as Peter’s house in Capernaum. A fifth-century octagonal church replaced that earlier structure and can be seen today.
Additionally, a third century Christian prayer hall, called the “Megiddo Mosaic,” though rectangular in shape, has a table in the center, rather than at one end, indicating that the earliest Christians worshiped in the round. And, interestingly, the person who sponsored the mosaic, the person who sponsored the solid marble table, and even the artisan who laid the mosaic are all named, just like the donor panels would do a thousand years later.
