The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments. Guillaume Durand
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so much reality as to carry out most satisfactorily Mr. Pugin's canons; yet, inasmuch as in neither case was the builder's ideal the true one, so in neither case is his architecture in any way adapted to, or an embodiment of, the ideal of the Church. Reality, then, is not of itself sufficient. What can be more real than a pyramid, yet what less Christian? It must be Christian reality, the true expression of a true ideal, which makes Catholic architecture what it is. This Christian reality, we would call Sacramentality; investing that symbolical truthfulness, which it has in common with every true expression, with a greater force and holiness, both from the greater purity of the perfect truth which it embodies, and from the association which this name will give it with those adorable and consummate examples of the same {xxviii} principle, infinitely more developed, and infinitely more holy in the spiritual grace which they signify and convey,—the Blessed Sacraments of the Church.
The modern writers who have treated on Symbolism seem to have taken respectively very partial views of the subject. Mr. Pugin does not seem in his books to recognise the particular principle which we have enunciated. We have shown that his law about Reality is true so far as it goes, but that it does not go far enough. He himself, for example, is now contemplating a work on the reality of domestic, as before of ecclesiastical, architecture. Now, nothing can be more true, nothing more useful, than this. Yet even he does not seem to have discerned that as contact with the Church endues with a new sanctity, and elevates every form and every principle of art: so in a peculiar sense the sacred end to which church architecture is subservient, elevates and sanctifies that reality which must be a condition of its goodness in common with all good architecture; in short, raises this principle of Reality into one of Sacramentality. We should be sorry to assert that Mr. Pugin does not feel this, though we are not aware that he has expressed it in his writings: but in his most lasting writings, his churches namely, it is clear that the principle, if not intentionally even, and if only incompletely, has not been without a great influence on that master mind. Yet even in these we could point to details, and in some of his earlier works to something more than details, which shew that there is something wanting; that in the bold expedients and fearless licence which his genius has led him to employ, he has occasionally gone wrong; not from the fact of his departure from strict precedent, and his vindication of a certain architectural freedom, but because in these escapements from authority, he has not invariably kept in view the { xxix} principle now advocated. However the author of the 'True Principles' might point to his churches, to prove that a reverent and religious mind, employed in administering to the material wants of the Church, (even though that reverence be misapplied, and that Church in a schismatical position), cannot fail to succeed, at least in some degree, in stamping upon his work the impress of his own faith and zeal, and in making it, at least to some extent, a living development and expression of the true ideal.
Mr. Poole, the author of the 'Appropriate Character of Church Architecture,' would appear to believe the symbolism of details rather than any general principle. He was the first, we think, to reassert that the octagonal form of fonts was figurative of Regeneration. In the latter edition of his Book he has adopted several of the symbolical interpretations advanced by the writers of the Cambridge Camden Society.
Mr. Lewis, in his illustrations of Kilpeck church (in an appendix to which he has printed a translation of some part of the 'Rationale' of our author), has given a treatise on symbolism generally, and has applied his principles to the explanation of the plan and details of that particular church. His book excited some attention at the time of publication, and was met by considerable ridicule in many quarters. To this we think it was fairly open, since the author did not seem to have grasped the true view of the subject. He appears to believe that, from the very first, all church architecture was intentionally symbolical. Now this is an unlikely supposition, inasmuch as till church architecture was fully developed, we do not think that its real significancy was understood to its full extent by those who used it. That it was, in its imperfect state, symbolical, we should be the last to deny; but it seems more in accordance {xxx} with probability, and more in analogy with the progress of other arts, to believe that at first certain given wants induced and compelled certain adaptations to those wants: which then did symbolise the wants themselves; and which afterwards became intentionally symbolical. Now such a view as this will explain satisfactorily how a Christian church might be progressively developed from a Basilican model. Mr. Hope, in his essay on Architecture, carries us back to the very earliest expedient likely to be adopted by a savage to protect him from weather, and from this derives every subsequent expansion of the art. Which may be true, and probably is true, so far at least as this: that, however first acquired, the elementary knowledge of any method of building would be, like all other knowledge, continually receiving additions and improvements, till from the first bower of branches sprang the Parthenon, and from that again Cologne or Westminster. But then it is clearly necessary to show some moral reason for so strange a development, so complete a change of form and style. Now the theory that the ethos of Catholic architects working upon the materials made to hand, namely, the ancient orders of pagan architecture and (say) the Basilican plan, gradually impressed itself upon these unpromising elements, and progressively developed from them a transcript of that ethos in Christian architecture, is intelligible at least, and presents no such difficulty as Mr. Lewis's supposition that ancient architects (he does not say when, or how long—but take Kilpeck church and say Norman architects) designed intentionally on symbolical principles. We want in this case to be informed when the change took place, from what period architects began to symbolise intentionally, at what time they forgot the traditions of church-building, which they must have had, and commenced to carry new principles into practice. {xxxi} Nor, on this supposition, do we see why there should have been any progressive development, why the Basilican and Debased-Pagan trammels were not cast away at once; nor why, if the ideal of the Norman architect was true and perfect (that is if he were a true Catholic), its expression should not have been so too: nor why any Norman symbolism, thus originated, should ever have been discarded (as it has been in later styles), instead of remaining an integral and essential part of the material expression of the Church's mind. Now our view appears to be open to no such objection. On the one hand there are given materials to work upon, and on the other a given spirit which is to mould and inform the mass. The contest goes on: mind gradually subdues matter, until in the complete development of Christian architecture we see the projection of the mind of the Church. It is quite in analogy with the history and nature of the Church, and with the workings of God's providence with respect to it, that there should be this gradual expansion and development of truth. We foresee the objection that will be raised against fixing on any period as that of the full ripeness of Christian art, and are prepared for many sneers at our advocacy of the perfection of the Edwardian architecture. But we are assured that, if there is any truth (not to say in what is advanced in this essay, but) in what has ever been proposed by any who have appreciated the genius of Pointed Architecture—to confine ourselves to our own subject—no other period can be chosen at which all conditions of beauty, of detail, of general effect, of truthfulness, of reality are so fully answered as in this. And from this spring two important considerations. Firstly, the decline of Christian art—which may be traced from this very period, if architecture be tried by any of the conditions which have been laid down—was confessedly {xxxii} coincident with, and (if what we have said is true) was really symbolical of, those corruptions, which ended in the great rending of the Latin Church; the effects of, and penalties for, which remain to this day in full operation in the whole of Western Christendom. Secondly, the Decorated style may be indeed the finest development of Christian architecture which the world has yet seen; but it does not follow that it is the greatest perfection which shall ever be arrived at. No: we too look forward, if it may be, to the time when even a new style of church architecture shall be given us, so glorious and beautiful and true, that Cologne will sink into a fine example of a transitional period, when the zeal and faith and love of the reunited Church shall find their just expression in the sacramental forms of Catholic art.
But besides the above objection to Mr. Lewis's theory we may mention the arbitrary way in which he determines on things which are to be symbolised, and then violently endeavours to find their expected types. This is quite at variance with the practice of any sober symbolist; and more especially (as we shall hereafter have occasion to point out) with that of Durandus. This forced sort of symbolism naturally leads to a disregard of precedent