Divine Times

The Duomo of Florence, Italy

There are a couple of things that motivate me now to write about the churches of Europe, which have been a constant source of awe for me throughout our travels here.  The first is that the rapidly approaching holiday provides me constant reminders of Europe's long history as a land where the "Great Mother Church" held sway over the vast majority of social life, political thought, policy, education, music, art, ethics and philosophy.  The other reason is that now that our time in Europe is up, I have a comprehensive list of churches, abbeys, basilicas, duomos, baptisteries and crypts from which to draw experience.

Michelangelo's Moses, Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome

Anyone who has visited such places as the great Duomo of Florence, the church of Santa Croce, St. Peter's Basilica and Marsielle's Notre Dame de le Garde knows that one thing they share is their absolutely overwhelming size.  Vaulted arches soaring hundreds of feet overhead, columns the width of a car, naves that would dwarf the entirety of most whole churches I have seen back home--these are what strike the observer first.  These breathtaking edifices serve as testaments to the ingenuity, skill, enormous effort and almost inhuman determination that the belief in the Church, in God--and the need to glorify Him--inspired.

Málaga Cathedral, Spain

Málaga Cathedral, Spain

I believe the story of these churches--their architects, builders, political benefactors and rivals, the artists who created the frescoes, crucifixes, statues and massive paintings--tells us something about the human need to believe in some higher power, some divine source.  And, as was especially the case throughout the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, how the lack of other, scientific explanations for natural phenomena served to propel massive numbers of the populace to devote their whole lives to the search for and the glorification of the "unseen Divine."

York Minster, England

York Minster

Of course, the enormous power held by the church at the time inevitably gave rise to countless individuals in the upper reaches of the church's hierarchy taking advantage of that power in order to further their own aims.  The church of the middle ages became a massive beast of bureaucracy, almost comically corrupt, where cardinals could reign as tyrannical despots and papal inquisitors tortured and killed in the name of the eradication of heresy.  The church, with all its enormous wealth, became a political institution as much as a religious one, along with all the trappings that inevitably ensue when religion becomes so entrenched in politics.

Michelangelo's Pietá, St. Peter's Basilica, Rome

The church now found it necessary to maintain both its political viability and its unquestioned authority on all religious doctrine.  This is one reason that so much of the art of the period was relegated to strictly religious themes--another being that the church was one of the very few institutions that could afford to pay for such art.  The artists of the period could only reach greatness if they bent to the will of the church--accepting its commissions as well as its restrictions.   The frescos, pietás, madonnas, sculpted cherubim, paintings, reliquaries, the gilded tombs of martyred saints, the towering domes--these were the great masterpieces that adorned the holy places.  And the epic scope and awe-inspiring beauty of such works illustrates an attempt to simultaneously become closer to God, and to separate Him from the mundane, everyday life of the populace.  After all, how could the church maintain it's unquestioned authority if an individual believed God was attainable through ordinary means, through simplicity, even through poverty?

Notre Dame de la Garde, Marseille

Whenever I encounter one of these places, I experience a curious mix of emotions--awe, inspiration, humility, as well as an uncomfortable awareness of the irony of having so much opulence openly displayed within a church whose founding principles included the righteousness of poverty.  I try to imagine Jesus preaching to the faithful from the pulpit of these places, and the idea seems preposterous to me.

Sevilla Cathedral, Spain

Choir and ceiling of the Málaga Cathedral, Spain

Ceiling of the Baptistery, Florence

But, whether one sees European churches as ironic and unseemly displays of vast and unjustly-earned wealth, or as holy places of unequaled beauty--or, as is my case, something in between--it cannot be disputed that these place demonstrate with awesome clarity the power of humanity's faith, intellect and spirit.

~Sean