Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

Abstract

"Both the new style of thinking Scholasticism and the new style of building Early Gothic architecture . . . spread from an area 5 comprised within a circle drawn around Paris with a radius of less than a hundred miles. And they continued to be centered in this area for about one century and a half. Here High Scholasticism is generally assumed to begin with the turn of the twelfth century, precisely when the High Gothic system achieved its first triumphs in Chartres and Soissons; and here a 'classic' or climactic phase was reached in both fields during the reign of St. Louis (1226-1270). It was in this period that such High Scholastic philosophers as Alexander of Hales, Albert the Great, William of Auvergne, St. Bonaventure, and St. Thomas Aquinas and such High Gothic architects as Jean le Loup, Jean d'Orbais, Robert de Luzarches, Jean de Chelles, Hugues Libergier, and Pierre de Montereau; and the distinctive features of High-as opposed to Early-6 Scholasticism are remarkably analagous to those which characterize High-as opposed to Early-Gothic art. It has justly been remarked that the gentle animation that distinguishes the Early Gothic figures in the west façade of Chartres from their Romanesque predecessors reflects the renewal of an interest in psychology which had been dormant for several centuries; but this psychology was still based upon the Biblical-and Augustinian-dichotomy between the "breath of life" and the "dust of the ground." The infinitely more lifelike-though not, as yet, portraitlike-High Gothic statues of Reims and Amiens, Strassburg and Naumburg and the natural-though not, as yet, naturalistic-fauna and flora of High Gothic ornament proclaim the victory of Aristotelianism. The human soul, though recognized as immortal, was now held to be the organizing and unifying principle of the body 7 itself rather than a substance independent thereof. A plant was thought to exist as a plant and not as the copy of the idea of a plant. The existence of God was believed to be demonstrable from His creation rather than a priori. In formal organization, too, the High Scholastic Summa differs from the less comprehensive, less strictly organized, and much less uniform encyclopedias and Libri Sententiarum of the eleventh and twelfth centuries much in the same way as does the High Gothic style from its ancestry. In fact, the very word summa (first used as a book title by the jurists) did not change its meaning from a "brief compendium" . . . to a presentation both exhaustive and systematic, from "summary" to summa as we know it, until the final lustra of the twelth century. The earliest fully developed specimen of this new kind, p8 the Summa Theologiae by Alexander of Hales . . . was begun in 1231, the very year in which Pierre de Montereau began the new nave of St.-Denis. The fifty or sixty years after the death of Saint Louis in 1270 (or, if we prefer, that of St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas in 1274) mark what is called the end phase of High Scholasticism by the historians of philosophy, and the end phase of High Gothic by the historians of art-phases in which the various developments, however important, do not as yet add up to a fundamental change in attitude but rather manifest themselves in a gradual decomposition of the existing system. Both in intellectual and artistic life-including music, which from about 1170 had been dominated by the school of Notre-Dame in Paris-we can observe a growing trend towards decentralization. The 9 creative impulses tended to shift from what had been the center to what had been the periphery: to South France, to Italy, to the Germanic countries, and to England, which, in the thirteenth century had shown a tendency toward splendid isolation. A decrease of confidence in the supremely synthetic power of reason which had triumphed in Thomas Aquinas may be discerned, and this resulted in a resurgence-on an entirely different level, to be sure-of currents suppressed during the "classic" phase. The Summa was again displaced by less systematic and ambitious types of presentation. Pre-Scholastic Augustinianism (asserting, among other things, the independence of the will from the intellect) was vigorously revived in opposition to Thomas, and Thomas's anti-Augustian tenets were solemnly condemned three years after his death. Similarly, the "classic" cathedral type was abandoned in favor of other, less perfectly 10 systematized and often somewhat archaic solutions; and in the plastic arts we can observe the revival of a pre-Gothic tendency toward the abstract and the linear. "The men of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries attempted a task not yet clearly envisaged by their forerunners and ruefully to be abandoned by their successors, the mystics and the nominalists: the task of writing a permanent peace treaty 29 between faith and reason. 'Sacred doctrine,' says Thomas Aquinas, 'makes use of human reason, not to prove faith but to make clear (manifestare) whatever else is set forth in this doctrine.' This means that human reason can never hope to furnish direct proof of such articles of faith . . . but that is can, and does, elucidate or clarify these articles. First, human reason can furnish direct and complete proof for whatever can be deduced from principles other than revelation, that is, for all ethical, physical, and metaphysical tenets including . . . the existence (though not the essence) of God. . . . Second, it can elucidate the content of revelation itself." (28-29) "Manifestatio, then, elucidation or clarification, is what I would call the first controlling principle of Early and High Scholasticism. But in order to put this principle into operation on the highest possibile plane-elucidation of faith by reason-it had to be applied to reason itself . . . . 31 And this could be done only by a scheme of literary presentation that would elucidate the very processes of reasoning to the reader's imagination. . . . Hence the much derided schematism or formalism of Scholastic writing which reached its climax in the classic Summa with its three requirements of (1) totality (sufficient enumeration), (2) arrangement according to a system of homologous parts and parts of parts (sufficient articulation), and (3) distinctness and deductive cogency (sufficient interrleation)" (30-31) "High scholastic philosophy, however, severely limited the sanctuary of faith from the sphere of rational knowledge yet insisted that the content of this sanctuary remain clearly discernable. And so did High Gothic architecture delimit interior volume from exterior space yet insist that it projet itself, as it were, through the encompassing structure." (44) "Like the High Scholastic Summa, the High Gothic cathedral aimed, first of all, at 'totality' and therefore tended to approximate, by synthesis as well as elimination, one perfect and final solution; we may therefore speak of the High Gothic plan or the High Gothic system with much more confidence than would be possible in any other period. In its imagery, the High Gothic cathedral sought to embody the whole of Christian knowledge, theological, 45 moral, natural, and historical, with everything in its place and that which no longer found its place, suppressed. In structural design, it similarly sought to synthesize all major motifs handed down by separate channels and finally achieved an unparalleled balance between the basilica and the central plan type, suppressing all elements that might endanger this balance, such as the crypt, the galleries, and towers other than the two in front." (44-45) "Instead of the Romanesque variety of western and eastern vaulting forms, often appearing in one and the same building (groin vaults, rib vaults, barrels, domes, and half-domes), we have the newly developed rib vault exclusively so that the vaults of even the apse, the chapels and 46 the ambulatory no longer differ in kind from those of the nave and transept." (45-46) "we perceive what corresponds to a hierarchy of 'logical levels' in a well-organized Scholastic treatise. Dividing the entire structure, as was customary in the period itself, into three main parts, the nave, the transept, and the chevet (which in turn comprises the fore-choir and the choir proper), and distinguishing, within these parts, between high nave and side-aisles, on the one hand, and between apse, ambulatory, and hemicycle of chapels, on the other" (47)