Dear list--another a long response, but to to the topic--
Surely Christopher you're not wishing a "pox" on Susan? This would be too
much, even for YOU!
Seriously, to Susan, shall we blame Otto von Simson with sneaking in the
Benedictines (in their Cistercian incarnation) as the "originators" of the
Gothic? CC points out that Chartres was staffed by canons--clergy occupied
with public-oriented religious (pastoral) duties, rather than the intensely
private, internally-oriented religious lives of the monks [Christopher,
were the Chartres clergy really NOT reformed under a "cathedral-rule"?] --
thus we need to be careful about transferring images appropriate to the
monastic milieu to a cathedral complex, especially if the transfer seems to
be "common sense" to us.
For the sake of argument we might make the claim that Chartres cathedral
embodies the image of a hortus conclusus, and that also for the sake of
argument this hortus conclusus = Garden of Eden (as other list members
indicate, the medieval sense of this Eden needs to be interrogated). We
need to establish under what conditions and circumstances this general idea
might become an active metaphor for those who use the building (take on
significance and have value in people's lives). We need to get specific and
ask what the canons understood the Eden--in contrast to the other segments
of society--the monastic understanding, the understanding of aristocratic
laity and the "rustics". A general agreement might well mask significant
differences brought about by the specific sort of religious life of the
canons, by their urban setting, and who uses the building, etc.
The Eden image, by the way, would not necessarily be applied to a
Benedictine cloister. The "hortus conclusus" is only one possible metaphor
for the monastic "claustrum" (see Meyvaert's article on this in Gesta
1973)- In fact I'm not sure I've ever run across the image of Eden for a
monastery, though of course such might be possible (but would have to be
argued [note also that the cloister as a four-sided structure around a
central courtyard (horticultural garden or garth) became standardized only
from the late 11th century].
Metaphorically, the monastic cloister was a workshop for manual and
spiritual labor (according to the Benedictine Rule), it was a prison or
place of incarceration (mortification of the soul), and the Portico of
Solomon (article by Wayne Dynes in same issue of Gesta), as well as the
earthly/heavenly Jerusalem. Other images might be deduced or adduced, e.g.
a "paradise of pleasure," but this last is contestable and controversial
and needs to be argued carefully; I rather like the image of the cloister
as locus of Jacob's ladder, but again this would have to be "proven" by
decorative program and/or text witness.
Some of these images may find support or elaboration in the architectural
decoration and/or whatever other decorative work is used (carving, painting
etc.--and this interests art historians), but even if the decorative work
can be interpreted by us to support such-and-such an image (which we
identify), the same visual material may answer other concerns equally well
or better. For instance, to the extent that the carefully observed
vegetative-carvings in Gothic cathedrals convey the natural world, they
would seem to fit into a very different and this-worldly, present-tense
scheme of things connected with cathedral school and university
developments. A garden-reference in this milieu would be received by its
audience, whether canon or lay, very differently than by a Benedictine (who
we might imagine would be ruminating on such "references" together with
relevant Genesis commentaries).
As for the Rose windows evoking the Garden of Eden, I don't think I ever
asked myself when "rose" was first applied to those great glasses (thinking
it to be a post-medieval phenomenon), but a Rose window could evoke the
Garden of Eden in (and only in) connection with the Romance of the Rose, a
13/14th century poem in which there is that famous wall around the Lover's
domain, and the notorious scene of the Lover at the fountain in the midst
of a forest--aptly the hortus conclusus. Is this Garden evoked by the
interior of Chartres cathedral >for its late 13th/14th century users? or
maybe for its 19th century Romanic users?< ? I don't want to go down that
path!! But maybe someone else does.
Of course this doesn't mean that a sense of the Edenic or paradisic in a
church or cathedral is necessarily inappropriate or unintended (what ever
that means) as an individual response, or that it might not be connected
with mystical experience, but this is a very private experience beyond
architectural capacity to assure.
Leah
Leah Rutchick, PhD
Visiting Scholar, Hanes Art Center
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
TEL / FAX 919-471-5041
E-mail [log in to unmask]
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