Chapter X · Gothic Art in Normandy[314] (continued 3)

What, then, killed Gothic art? For it was slain with all this warm blood in its veins. Some say the return to pagan ideals dealt the death blow, the deserting of the celestial man-humble ideal for the terrestrial self-intoxicated pride of the Italian Renaissance: “The Renaissance is man seeking knowledge, happiness, and love, outside of Christianity.” A Christian had knelt in prayer on a Gothic tomb, or reposed with serene confidence, awaiting the trumpet call of the archangel, a Book of Hours in his hand. On a Renaissance tomb the deceased reclined like a pagan at a feast. The Italian wars diverted from its natural channels the genius of the northern Latins (who were so strongly Celt and Frank), and in many cases the imported neo-classicism was not that of Italy’s supreme masters, but of the lesser artists, their successors.

Others have contended that the printing press and the Protestant Reformation—with its spirit of hostile criticism—proved fatal to the national art, since the very life of Gothic was legend, poetry, and dreams, and symbolism its inspiration. Doubt quickly drained the sources of life. “Its charm had been to retain the candor of childhood, the limpid book of young saints. It was an art whose faith discussed not—it sang.”[386] It was an art happy and bold and free of restraint, save the restraint which its own right instinct for discipline imposed—co-ordinating the multitudinous into a symmetrical unity—an art unfettered in its truth telling, daring to sculpture king or bishop marching to Hell, yet giving no offense to authority by so doing.

Alas, one must acknowledge that the Church, so long the guardian of Gothic art, dealt a deadly blow at the sweet naïve gayety of the Middle Ages. To reform Catholic Christendom there gathered at Trent a much-needed Council, impregnated with the critical spirit which Luther had unloosed. Pious churchmen had come to look askance on legends. They were ashamed of the simplicities which the XIII-century man was so certain pleased Our Lady, who accepted them with a friendly smile of comprehension of her fellow creatures. The good fathers at Trent regarded prudishly the spiritual passion of the Canticle of Canticles flaming in cathedral windows; they thought it forwardness to carve mechanics’ tools on altar stones. Such manifestations were excessive. What would our critics of Wittemberg and Geneva say? The mystery plays, source of inspiration for the late-Gothic sculptors, now became suspect. Deprived of popular life, the religious themes grew cold. When censured, the creative instinct withered. In 1563 (a year after the iconoclastic outrages in France) the Council of Trent, at its last session, complained that Gothic artists scandalized the faithful by their childish superstitions. The Middle Ages were ended.

Cathedrals are not raised by critics or doubters. When France built her great churches, her faith was humble, her love a mounting flame. Her cathedrals were symbols of the Kingdom of God in her midst, the pons sæculorum whereby man passed beyond the bourne of his narrow life. They were solaces in his hours of misery, in his delinquencies; they stood for justice alike to serf and baron; they were the Sermon on the Mount made visible, the Biblia pauperum wherein lettered and unlettered read the same lessons; they were the Credo chanted by men who believed in Christ, Son of the Living God and Son of the Immaculate Virgin.

Nor should it be forgotten that the generations who raised the great cathedrals believed profoundly in themselves as God’s specially loved instruments, his own selected knights-errant. “We are a race that exists to advance in the world the affairs of God,” said the old Gallic patrician to Clovis the Frank, and soon a Frankish parchment ran, “Vivat Christus qui diligit Francos.” When men feel like that they are compelled to express it grandly. When as pagans they feel it, the expression is a cataclysmic war of conquest. When they feel it as Christians, they build cathedrals. The generations whom St. Bernard purified, whom Suger trained, whom St. Louis inspired, founded their church on a firm rock, a living rock, lighted it unto a precious stone, prepared it as a bride adorned for her husband, and ever since sanctity has abided therein; kings have brought hither their honors and glory, and the glory and honor of the people have adorned the walls.

FRANCE

Regretfully one turns to other interests after spending years in trying to draw closer to the spirit of the Middle Ages—years that have coincided with the apocalyptic struggle that has desolated the classic region of the national art, laying low, one after another, the churches of the first fugitive hour. And watching the giant battle, it has grown clearer how indissoluble is the solidarity of modern Frenchmen with their achieving grandfathers. A nation’s bulwark is the unbroken solidarity of Past with Present. And only when la race lumineuse, compounded of Celt, Gaul, Latin, and Frank, denies that solidarity will it be conquered.

The peasant-soldier of 1914, starting for the front, who replied with grave dignity to his well-wisher, “Whichever way it turns, I am ready,”[387] would have met death like a paladin at Roncevaux, in 778, holding up his gauntlet to God, his suzerain, certain of the justice of Him who from the grave raised Blessed Lazarus, and Daniel saved from lions.

The young tradesman of 1915 who wrote from the trenches to one who loved him: “I look on this struggle less as a war against an enemy than as a crusade to reinstate God in his place in France,” was true to his race apostolique that sets the church bells ringing. At Clermont, in 1095, he pressed forward with the cry: “The cross! The cross! God wills it!” The priest-soldier offering sacrifice at an improvised altar within hearing of the guns, his spurs fretting his sacerdotal gown, is Turpin, guarding well the Cross and France.

The stricken lad, flung back, diseased from the prisons beyond the Rhine, weak, broken, in tatters, who cried with vibrant voice, as he and his comrades crossed the Swiss frontier, and friendly strangers gathered round: “La tête haute! C’est nous la France!” conquered Jerusalem with Godfrey de Bouillon in the olden days, and related his prowess in a legend-medallion window at Chartres.

Above all, lives the soul of the Past in the generalissimo to whom a righteous destiny granted the freeing of his land from invaders. In churches shattered by shell fire he knelt daily—the weightiest fruit bending lowest—and he begged that the children of Christendom lift up their little white hands to heaven to petition for his endurance. In 1249, with flashing sword and the cry, “Montjoie-St.-Denis,” he sprang into the surf beside his saint-king, following the oriflamme as it touched African soil. We have seen them alive again, the cathedral builders, the commune winners, the crusaders, dying with the farewell sigh, “Ha! doulce France!”

And thank God the flame is unquenchable, thank God that in the French race is the underlying sentiment for the Infinite, that peasant, artisan, student, priest, and chief feel the same humility and the same proper pride as those who built Soissons, the lovely stricken virgin; and Laon the intrepid, braving the hammer of Odin and Thor; Amiens the perfect, menaced and shaken but spared to us; and tragic, immortal Rheims, symbol of a people’s resurrection. To herald the dawn is the mission of France, to look on her deeds as Gesta Dei per Francos. “Hers is the hand that scatters the seed.”