Friday Links, July 23, 2021
+ Should Rome declare which art is suitable for churches?
+ Dante’s youthful handwriting discovered in examples of his student copywork.
+ Why we need stories to teach morals without moralizing.
WHEN ROME POLICED ART
Josh Nadeau, Dappled Things Associate Editor, recommends the above-linked essay by Bronwen McShea at First Things. The title refers to the controversy around a pronouncement in 1921 by the Holy Office that forbade the exhibition in churches of certain works of the Flemish painter Albert Servaes and the history of the Church’s similar pronouncements on other works of art.
The article mentions that Jacques Maritain “carried water for the Vatican” when he agreed with the Church’s decision removing some works of Servaes from churches. In Maritain’s view, the expressionistic style used by Servaes in his depiction of Christ’s sufferings was condemned by the Holy Office (now the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) on the apt grounds that the depictions were not consistent with the voluntary nature of Christ’s Passion and death and that their distortions obscured His divine dignity.
Afterwards, most of Servaes’s works were removed from churches. In later decades, as McShea writes, “The reputations of excellent, devout Catholic artists such as Servaes were restored.”
One’s reaction to this article quite probably will be colored by one’s views on whether the Church has the authority and competency to pronounce on aesthetic matters. Or was the pronouncement actually not on aesthetics at all but on a perception of doctrinal incompatibility?
Here is an excerpt from Maritain’s defense that suggests the latter view.
“Servaes is a painter of very considerable talent, a Christian full of faith, and one can only speak of his character with respect and friendly feeling. I am happy to bear witness to it here. The Stations of the Cross which raised such a violent commotion in Belgium stirred deep religious emotions in certain souls, nay, brought about conversions. The work in itself is beautiful and worthy of admiration. Nevertheless the Church condemned it, and it is never difficult, even when appearances and human methods of procedure disconcert us, to understand the wisdom and the excellent reasons behind the decisions of the Church. In spite of himself, assuredly, and not in his soul but in his work, the painter, fascinated by the Ego sum vermis et non homo of Isaias and conceiving his Via Crucis as the very dizziness of grief, found himself falsifying certain theological truths of capital importance—above all the truth that the sufferings, like the death of Our Lord, were essentially voluntary, and that it was a divine Person who suffered the most appalling human suffering: the pain and agony of His Humanity were handled by the Word as a tool with which It performed Its great work.”—Jacques Maritain, Some Reflections upon Religious Art
What do you think? Tell us in the comments.
A nun just unearthed a previously unknown Dante manuscript.
Karen Barbre Ullo, co-founder of Chrism Press and former DT Managing Editor recommends the above linked post by Walker Caplan at “LitHub.”
Julia Bolton Holloway, a former Anglican religious sister, now Catholic anchorite, who is also a scholar of medieval studies, actually found two previously unknown Dante manuscripts in his own hand.
“Hidden away in two libraries in Florence and at the Vatican, the manuscripts date to Dante’s days as a student in Florence in the late 13th century when he was copying out works on the art of government dictated by his teacher, Brunetto Latino.”
The design of a square imposed on a circle on the bottom left of the image below illustrates a concept used by Dante much later in his life to describe his vision of God in the Divine Comedy.
Moralism and Mimetic Teaching.
Katy Carl, DT Edito-in-Chief, recommends the above-linked article by Andrew Kern at The CiRCE Institute.
“Since we are not terribly good at doing good things consistently, we need stories to help us along.”
