I am used to the idea of five being associated with human life and St Bonaventure for example, makes this connection in describing the five corporal senses and the five spiritual senses of man. Given that Our Lady who gave, so to speak, Christ his humanity, the linking of Our Lady to the number five does seem to be a natural extension of this, but if this extension had been made in the past one would have thought that there would reference to it somewhere in the writings of the saints. Similarly, we know from historical documents that gothic masons used geometry in the design of their cathedrals (Milan Cathedral is designed on a triangular grid, for example). I have heard of no similar document making the connection between a building dedicated to Our Lady and a pentangular design, although I have heard similar claims about other buildings such as the rose window at the gothic cathedral at Amiens dedicated to Our Lady – ‘Notre-Dame d’Amiens’ (shown above). There is every chance of course that these records do exist and it is simply that I do not know about them, so I keep an open mind.

Suppose, for arguments sake that we can find no real justification for concluding that there is a historical connection between the number five and Our Lady, and that the examples listed are to be considered just coincidences – after all you have to pick some sort of symmetry in a well ordered design. Does this mean that we can’t make the association now? In my opinion, the answer to that is no. There seems to be logic behind the arguments for the connection, so even if the connection wasn’t made in the past, we can make that connection now. If a tradition is to be a genuinely living tradition, it has to allow for development in the present. It cannot only be about reestablishing what was done in the past.

Then, assuming that we make the connection even if we assign five to the Blessed Virgin, what do we do with it? Why bother to do such a thing? This brings us down to the fundamental question as to the purpose of such symbolic numbers. There are different reasons why they are useful. Sometimes is allows for a deeper interpretation of scripture and St Augustine especially was very interested in this.

Also we can order time and space according to it. Number has a special property in that it can be both conceived in the abstract and then assigned to matter and time. In this sense it occupies both the material world and the world of ideas (or perhaps more accurately the ‘immaterial’ world). We can order time and space in accordance with it, for example designing a work of art, or the dimensions of a building, or even a cycle of prayer around fivefold symmetry, five relative units of length, or five repetitions respectively.

There is an important point to make in regard to this: the symbolism is not arbitrarily assigned. If there is anything to it all it is because the number symbolism reflects and reveals some underlying truth, and so helps us to understand better (sometimes at an intuitive level) what it is pointing to. This being so, when we design a window, for example, that is based around an image or theme of Our Lady and if the number five is truly symbolic of her, then the window will be more beautiful and suited to its purpose in all ways if its design is ordered to it – a fivefold symmetry, for example. One of the attributes of beauty listed by St Thomas is ‘due proportion’. The argument here would be that ordering the design of things associated with Our Lady to the number five is appropriate or ‘due’. In another recently posted article I argued, here, that the octagonal design, linked to the symbolism of eight as the eighth day of creation, in Raphael’s Mond Crucifixion contributed significantly to its beauty and its effectiveness as a work of art. This is true, and here is the important point, regardless of whether or not the viewer is conscious of the design feature or of the symbolism. In the case of the Raphael, I was attracted by the beauty of the painting long before I noticed this design feature. Once I had noticed it, it gave me greater understanding of Raphael’s methods, but did not change one iota my appreciation of his painting.

If we forget this and are not discerning in our interpretation and application of these numbers, there is a real danger that the whole topic degenerates into a game in which the initiated communicate with each other via a secret language. Some who I have met do treat this as a secret knowledge that only those who are ready may know. This strikes me as a modern day Gnoticism that is to be discouraged.

My introduction to these ideas came through people who, despite their great interest in tradition, subscribe to a philosophy they called perennialism or universalism, which as I understand it gained popularity in the 20th century. As far as I was able to grasp their position, they maintain that the major religions are equally valid revelations by God to different cultures. This meant the people I met were always looking for elements common to all as the basis of truth. While I am grateful for the work these people have done in showing me and many others aspects of my own tradition that I would very likely not have known otherwise, I am wary in accepting uncritically any interpretations they give. I try to seek authenticatification from a Catholic source, such as the writings of a Church Father, before wholeheartedly embracing it.

As to whether or not I will use fivefold symmetry in paintings of Our Lady? I need to think about it and perhaps give it a try, and see how it turns out.

A plan of the Lady Chapel at Wells Cathedral (the alcove top, centre in the diagram). The furthest three facets do correspond, within the bounds of accuracy of working in such a diagram, to part of a pentagon.

The path traced by the planet Venus across the night sky. This diagram comes from a modern analysis. Some may question to as to whether this would have been known by the classical world or the medievals. I do not know, but think it is possible. The reason that Venus, which would otherwise be another bright light in the sky, was differentiated from the other stars is that it appeared to move independently of the rest of the stars, which all moved together as a single canopy rotating around the pole star. If they could distinguish Venus as being different, then I would imagine that they studied its motion across the sky with great precision.

How we might re-establish Catholic traditionsin sacred art After my references to Western icons and also my assertion of the importance of re-establishing the gothic style as living traditions, people have been asking me to give examples of the images I am talking about. I am going to do a regular series of features of such examples in order to promote these styles. My hope is that we in the West will follow the remarkable work of the Russians and Greeks who reestablished the iconographic tradition in the Eastern Church in the middle of the 20th century (figures such as Ouspensky and Kontoglou).

The first stage in doing this is the artistic study – copying with understanding – of the works of a past tradition. And then the second stage, if this is to become a truly living tradition, is the creation of new works that are consistent with the core timeless principles of the tradition. The great achievement of our Eastern brethren is to moved through to the second stage. In the West our artistic heritage is richer (in the sense that we not only have iconographic tradition, but also the gothic and the baroque as authentic and complementary sacred art traditions). This means that in once sense, given there are three traditions, the task ahead is greater but in another, because we can follow the methods used by the Russians and Greeks (and more recently Copts with Dr Stephane Rene doing great work) it is less because we can use the principles that they used.

We have made a start at this effort in cultural reform at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts and my classes there now focus on these Western forms. What is interesting is to see how the students take to these forms very happily and seem to enjoy creating them. As a result they are producing some of the best work I have seen students of mine produce. (I will post some of their work at the end of the semester once they have finished their projects). My sense is that just seems more natural to us Western Catholics to paint like images like this than to paint Eastern icons. Similarly, the Way of Beauty Summer Atelier (see here for details), which is offering an icon-painting summer school will focus on these forms, which come from illuminated manuscripts. These are excellent examples to study if you are a beginner because they are strongly line based, rather than relying on the modelling of form through gradual blening of tone and colour. This latter requires sophisticated handling of the paint which is very difficult in egg tempera, the medium used. We use egg tempera paint on high quality watercolour paper to replicate these manuscript images.

The image shown here is a remarkable plate from a 13th-century German psalter. Rheinau is the town in Germany where it was created. The artist’s name is unkown. It is consistent with the iconographic prototype. The draughtsmanship is wonderful. I love the contrast between the sure smooth flow of the lines that describe the human forms, which contrast with the vigorous angular handling of those lines which describe the drapery. Artists today could learn from this, because this use of a faceting in the description of drapery helps to give the image a greater strength and less sentimental feel. Sentimentality is the scourge of modern sacred art. This device is not limited to iconographic or gothic art – even Bernini used it when he sculpted drapery in the baroque era. Note also how the Rheinau image conforms to the Western preference for patterned borders (which is not unknown but certainly less common in the Eastern variants).

Some might question the ideas this is iconographic by pointing the fact that some of the figures are in profile (not seen in icons usually). However, it seems to me that the artist is being selective in accordance with the iconographic convention. The two figures who have halos, Christ and St Peter are not in profile. All the other figures, with Judas most prominent, are part of the crowd of men who are arresting Christ. These are not saints and so this is indicated not only by the absense of halos but also by drawing them in profile.

Lately I’ve been forcing myself to marvel at this fact (you know, to keep my mind off the muddy paw prints in the carpet and that place where someone broke a pen and forgot to tell me about it) and , whadya know, was able to come up with a handy list of 5 frustrating things my kids do that apparently God wants me to be thankful for.

1) The growing inside my actual torso in a manner that is equal parts irritating and completely out of my control.

So here’s where it starts.  A whole human being growing inside of me, kicking me in the bladder first then in the lungs eventually.  The heartburn, the waiting, the doubling of the rear end for no good reason, the exhaustion, the waiting, the cankles.  The waiting.  Have I mentioned the waiting?  Yeah, the waiting really sucks.

And I’m all “can’t you just have them pop out of huge egg pods or something?” and God’s all “but then would you have to truly live the fact that you’re not really in control of anything in this life?”  Touche.

Hey God, thanks for knowing I can do something that is so ridiculously hard, that if I knew how ridiculously hard it would be I never would have done it to begin with, and then I would miss out on all the incredibly good that can only follow the ridiculously hard.

2) The waking up in the middle of the night for no reason.

So you get them out of your torso and you’re all excited that you can finally sleep without a second butt jamming itself against your ribs.  And then it starts.  The crying.  The fussing.  The general wide-awakeness with no obvious solution.  And even though you want to just sleep, you can’t.  You have to get up and, like, do stuff.  In the middle of the night!  It’s just so unfair!

Hey God, thanks for showing me that my needs don’t always have to come first.  Even when I really, really, really, with every fiber of my being, want them to

3) The refusing to do what they’re supposed to do.

This one might be my favorite.  So, you tell your son to put his cars away in the bin.  Easy, right?  He dumped them out, he knows where they belong, and he’s capable of doing it.  What could possibly be go wrong?  And then it starts.  The wailing!  The gnashing of teeth!  The negotiations!  The stomping!  It is, honestly, a more ridiculous display than you could have imagined.  What the heck?  It’s silly and foolish and a waste of energy and….

Ooooooooh, well when I have to clean up the messes I’ve made or take care of the stuff that’s MY responsibility and I throw a little grown-up temper tantrum, it’s not nearly as bad because…..um…well because….

Yeah, okay.  Sorry about that, God.  Thank you for showing me how silly I sound when I throw a fit and refuse to do the things that I know I’m supposed to do.

4) The being hungry several times a day, every single dang day

We feed them.  Then they’re full.  And then, THEN, they’re hungry all over again!  So inconvenient.  But we keep feeding them.  Because they need it.

Congratulations to the EWTN Radio Network on its 20th anniversary!

Like many, I enjoy syndicated programs from EWTN and other Catholic radio stations such as Ave Maria Radio–especially when I’m out running errands. These stations do an excellent job of providing quality programming related to catechetics, apologetics, family life, spirituality, and politics. Congratulations to all in this industry on a work well done.

Yet I would like to register a plea.

A plea addressed not only to EWTN, but to all involved in the Catholic radio industry.

It is essential, of course, for those responsible for Catholic radio programming to focus on the kinds of programs I mentioned above. But I also find myself wishing for some greater variety. Why can’t there be some entertainment programming on Catholic radio?

Take a look at the website for BBC Radio 4. Go to the menu of program categories and click on “Arts,” “Comedy,” “Drama,” “Music.” You’ll find shows featuring, among many other things, long and short-form radio drama, serialized book readings, short stories, sketch comedy, arts programs, music reviews, panel games, poetry readings. It’s a rich feast. Why can’t Catholic radio offer entertainment and cultural programming of this sort?

Because our mission is to evangelize culture–I suppose the main objection will be. And that’s absolutely appropriate. But isn’t there more than one way to a person’s mind and heart? God bless Al Kresta, for example, for so very clearly and ably walking his audience through the tyrannical escapades of the Obama administration’s HHS mandate. But wouldn’t it be great if Catholic radio also offered a program like the BBC’s Afternoon Play or 15 Minute Drama or Classic Serial? Is it not imaginable that many who won’t listen to a program on Church politics or spirituality might listen to a program of sketch comedy or a show like Book at Bedtime? Perhaps that experience would introduce them to a world they had never thought much about before.

Not that the point of such programming would be merely to attract those outside the Catholic fold. It would also be good for the sake of Catholic culture itself. A culture is most essentially its religious practices (or lack of them). But a culture is also the stories it tells, the music it sings, and the jokes it laughs at.

And I’m not just thinking about programs featuring stories of saints, or of religious music, or of other material that is explicitly catechetical or apologetic. Catholic entertainment programming would not have the values of the BBC, but that doesn’t mean that it would have to be exclusively hagiographic. Catholics in our culture have been great entertainers in the past. Why can’t they be again?

But the BBC is state-funded radio. Yes, it is. And programming budgets for Catholic radio stations I’m sure are already stretched. But if every good idea was neglected because the funds weren’t immediately available, where would innovation be?

And it is a good idea. And what’s more, no one else is doing it. No one. NPR has a minimal slate of cultural programming, but nothing much if anything in the area of original contributions to the arts. It would be pathbreaking for a U.S. radio station, Catholic or otherwise, to start offering dramatizations of serials, plays, short stories, and the like.

There isn’t an audience for it.

Pursue it with supreme artistry, and see if they don’t come.

Where can Catholics Go to Learn to Paint in the Naturalistic Tradition?

How the form of the iconographic tradition relates to the Catholic worldview

Should We Paint God the Father?

Learn to Live the Way of Beauty at Thomas More College

Continue at source:

Learn to paint icons the traditional way, the Catholic way

‘Cause I’m super good at setting an example, I tell ya what.

So they know they can get along, and they know how do it, and they’ve agreed that their lives are easier and better when they do.  Yet there they are, fighting.  Putting fairness ahead of love.  Putting pride ahead of peace.  Pursing those lips so an accidental smile doesn’t ruin such a glorious tantrum.

“You’re choosing to be miserable.  It’s crazy.  You have the knowledge and the ability to be happy and you’re turning your back on all that for…for what?  For some imagined glory?  Who cares if you’re the winner of whatever this ridiculousness is?  Why does it even matter?”

And there it is.  My own words are like a not-so-delectable slice of humble pie, waiting patiently to be eaten.  Because at every glorious tantrum I throw, at every ridiculous grab at imagined glory, at every pursed-lip march down the hallway, God shakes His Head.  He sighs.  And He wonders why I’m choosing to be miserable.

It’s crazy, He says.

You have the knowledge and the ability to be happy, He says.

Don’t turn your back, He says.

So I won’t.

I’ll try harder to put love ahead of fairness.  To put peace ahead of pride.  And to remember that being kind is so much more important than sounding smart.

Especially if it means the kids will quit fighting, ya know?  That scene is gettin’ old real quick.

But then it happened.

Well, before it happened, this happened….

“Mom, I can’t get dressed because all my pants are wet.”

“Yeah, mine too.”

It’s a funny thing when you put all your clean pants into the dirty laundry instead of putting them away. And that is that your mother will then wash them.  And you know how there is no dryer and your wet pants will have to hang on the line, all unwearable and stuff?  Yeah, that’s the thing that should dissuade you from putting your clean pants into the dirty hamper.  Should, but doesn’t.

And then…then it happened.  The real ‘it’.

My oldest daughter looked at the thermometer through the living room window.

“It’s already 57 degrees out!”

On the north side of our house.  IN THE SHADE.

If you have never lived through a Michigan winter, the words “fifty-seven” and “degrees” being used in the same sentence, especially during the first week of March, are like…like when you put your hand into the pocket of a jacket you haven’t used in a long time and find money, but instead of a $5 bill it’s, like, a $100 bill.  $100!  I just found $100!  It was definitely $100 bill weather.

So I did what any normal person would do.  I told my facebook friends all about it.

And then we all scurried outside.  But just for a bit, of course.  I have a post to write!

Hubby is pruning the apple trees in the back.  The goats are eating the chicken food.  And drinking their water.  Can’t I please do something about it?

Now the 2 year old is chasing a chicken into a dense igloo of wild grapevines.  Can I rescue her from certain demise?  And help the baby too, while I’m at it?

Apparently it’s so “hot” that the children require popsicles.  Which is fine, but I also encourage them to consider removing their winter coats.

Okay, almost time to go inside and WRITE!

“Honey, can you drag those branches around back to the pile?  Just real quick?”

“Mommy, I need a drink.”

“Hey, later we should clean out the goats’ pen.  And maybe also stake out the new garden.”

“If you’ll hold her head, I can just trim her hooves right now.”

“Is it summer? Can I put on shorts????”

Because it was $100 bill weather, friends.  That is what happens when you’ve endured week after week of $0.12 in coins weather.  Or worse.  Weather days that make you owe money.  Yeah, we’ve had a couple of those, too.

Yep, on the first $100 bill weather day of the year, you do more outside than you will do on every other day of the year combined.  And when you get any ideas of slipping inside to “just write a quick post”, something cute or interesting or hilarious or dangerous will happen and it will completely distract you.  Like a goat jumping into, and then out of, a wheelbarrow, for example.  Which we can all agree is every one of those things.

And that is why I’ve not managed to say anything profound or life-altering.  Why my day was filled with every non-writing activity I could think of.  Why I frittered away my afternoon in the sun and the wind and I liked it.  It was the $100 bill weather.  And this little one, with her eager disposition and sweet smile, who hollered out “I’m a strong farmer girl!”

Understanding that man is body, soul and spirit might be step towards establishing a culture of beauty.

I have written before,

here

of the idea that liturgy and culture are linked. Each forms and reflects the other. If this is the case, then the answer to the question of how to reform a culture of ugliness, even a culture of death in any lasting way has its roots in, or at least must include firmly at its heart, liturgical reform.

A true Catholic culture is one that not only reflects the liturgy, but through its compelling beauty, is so powerful that it overcomes other cultures and dominates the profane (ie the wider culture outside the domain of religious practice). This is the case with the gothic and the baroque. All art, architecture and music during these periods, for example, seemed to be drawing on the forms that were set in the liturgy. In his book The Spirit of the Liturgy, Pope Benedict XVI says the following: ‘The Englightenment pushed the Faith into a kind of intellectual and even social ghetto. Contemporary culture turned away from the Faith and trod another path, so that faith took flight in historicism, the copying of the past, or else attempted to comprimise, or lost itself resignation and cultural abstinence.’

In other words, by the 19th century and as a result of the Enlightenment, the culture of faith was separated from the wider culture. Catholic culture, as it was manifested at this time, was not a genuine Catholic culture of beauty, but rather an emasculated, paler version. In the area that I know well, art, we see this very clearly. There are some exceptions, but in general the academic art of the 19th century is only a poorly defined shadow of the 17th century baroque from which it is descended. For those who are interested to know more, you might read for example articles

here

and

here

or for a fuller account read the book

Baroque

by John Rupert Martin.

If we accept the premise and this assessment of the culture, then it indicates that in the 19th century there were problems with the liturgy as well as the culture. This would explain why the response to the Enlightenment in this period was not only intellectual, but also liturgical, with the beginnings of a liturgical reform movement. This being so, the question remains as to what it is about the Enlightenment that affected the liturgy?

I read recently

Looking Again at the Question of the Liturgy with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger: the Proceedings of the July 2001 Fontgombault Liturgical Conference,

edited by Alcuin Reid. One of the presentations was by Stratford Caldecott, who runs the

Thomas More College Centre for Faith and Culture

in Oxford. Mr Caldecott argues that the problems lay in the fact that the anthropology – the understanding of the nature of man – had strayed from a full recognition of the tripartite anthropology described by scripture. St Paul for example, talks of body, soul and spirit. There had been tendency argues Caldecott, to equate, or at least insufficiently differentiate between, soul and spirit. (His presentation is online, at the Second Spring website,

here

. Go to the section on the left that says ‘online reading’ and then click the title of the article:

Liturgy and Trinity; Towards a Liturgical Anthropology

.)

His description of the ‘spirit’ is most interesting. Equating it with the intellectus of the Western medievals or the nous of the Eastern Church in the tradition of Church Fathers, the spirit is the spiritual receptive knowing power of the human mind. This is the aspect that ‘sees’, so to speak, God and is receptive to grace. While the fathers do sometimes use the word soul interchangebly with a description of the full spiritual dimension of man that includes both spirit and soul (when using the scriptural use of the terms), the distinction of the two in the minds of the medievals is never lost. Occasionally in icons the artist paints a ‘bump’ in the forehead. I was told that this shape drawn in the forehead, between the eyes, is sometimes considered a physical manifestation of the spiritual eye, the nous. (See the icons displayed here.)

A quote from Joseph Pieper’s Leisure the Basis of Culture (p11-12) was helpful to me here: ‘The medievals distinguished between the intellect as ratio and the intellect as intellectus. Ratio is the power of discursive thought, or searching and re-searching refining and concluding, whereas the intellectus refers to the ability of ‘simply looking’ (simplex instuitus) to which the truth presents itself as a landscape presents itself to the eye. The spiritual knowing power of the human mind, as the ancients understood it, is really two things in one: ratio and intellectus: all knowing involved both. The path of discursive reasoning is accompanied and penetrated by the intellectus‘ untiring vision, which is not active but passive, or better, receptive – a receptively operating power of the intellect.’

Without a full acknowledgement of this tripartite anthropology, suggests Caldecott, a flawed dualism consisting only of body and soul is created and an instability in which one of the aspects tends to dominate the other to the exclusion of God (just as Cartesian dualism was inherently unstable and led in two very different directions: materialism and idealism). According to trinitarian anthropology, the human person is by its very nature other-centred. We love God, and this opens us to the life of the other; we love our neighbour, and this opens us to the love of God. Without fully appreciating the spiritual faculty of the soul we cannot properly understand either marriage (based on the self-giving love of man and woman) or the Mass (the marriage of heaven and earth). Thus the crisis over Humanae Vitae in the 1960s was paralleled by the crisis over reforms in the liturgy because both had the same root — an earlier loss of the sense of the spirit uniting husband and wife in openness to new life on the one hand, and of the spirit uniting priest and laity in one single work of sacrifice on the other. To those who had acquired this mentality, it seemed that the Mass had become an exercise in which the priest did his thing at the altar and the laity waited and watched or prayed their rosary in the pews. This is why why they went to the other extreme of over-stressing “activity” in the Mass, along with human fellowship and social justice, as though these were the only things that were important. Many religious orders went into steep decline as the communitarian aspect of their mission took precedence over the liturgical, the love of neighbour over the love of God. It is the spirit in man that opens us to the “vertical” dimension of grace: without it, both marriage and the liturgy are reduced to activities performed on the horizontal plane, with little or no relationship to heaven.

It strikes me that such a neglect as a result of the Enlightenment should result in a cultural decline as well as a liturgical decline is made all the more understandible when one considers the role of the intellectus, or spirit, in the apprehension of beauty. In the first part of her little essay Beauty, Contemplation and the Virgin Mary, Sister Thomas Mary McBride, OP describes succinctly in just a few paragraphs, the traditional understanding of beauty and how man apprehends it (and as such I would recommend this piece for anyone seeking an introduction to this subject). She draws on the Latin medievals and states that beauty illuminates the intellectus, describing the apprehension of beauty as the ‘gifted perfection of seeing’. Then echoing Caldecott in the connection between intellectus and spirit says: ‘In the light of the above, this writer would suggest that the proper place of beauty is in the spirit.’

An appropriate active participation in the liturgy is one that engages the full person in order to encourage within us the right interior disposition. Any participation in the liturgy that does not engage body, soul and spirit therefore does not engage the full person. Our participation in the liturgy is the primary educator in the Faith at all levels. A true conformity of body, soul and spirit is what is desired. One can see that any participation in which consideration of the spirit is neglected (through a balanced active participation of soul and body) will result in therefore necessarily result in a deficiency in our ability to apprehend beauty, which resides in the spirit. This explains this link between culture and liturgy and how important liturgical reform is in our efforts to create a culture of beauty today.

You may also like…

1. 

   The Liturgical Life that will Create the Culture of Beauty

2. 

   Beauty and the Renewal of Catholic Culture by New Liturgical Movement’s Fr Thomas Kocik

3. 

   Two Evening Talks on Liturgy and Culture at Thomas More College, open to the public

4. 

   The Psalms and the Evangelisation of the Culture

Tagged as:
anthropology,
body,
icons,
Liturgy and culture,
Liturgy and prayer,
soul,
spirit

Original post:

Liturgy, Culture, Beauty and the Spirit