GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AND SCHOLASTICISM
balance. Like a Bach fugue, a Gothic cathedral demands all our
emotional and intellectual powers. Now we find ourselves, lost in
the mystical ruby and azure glow of translucent stained glass,
and now called back to alert attention by the precise course of thin
yet adequately strong lines. What is the secret of these vast temples >
Is it in their miraculous interiors with vast stone vaults at an im-
mense height, walls all of glass and arcades much too slim and tall
to carry them ? The Greek architect achieved a harmony of load and'
support convincing at once and for ever, the Gothic architect, far
bolder constructionally, with his Western soul of the eternal ex-
plorer and inventor, always lured by the untried, aims at a contrast
between an interior all spirit and an exterior all intellect. For inside
the cathedral we cannot and are not meant to understand the law
governing the whole. Outside we are faced with a frank exposition
of the complicated structural mechanism. The flying buttresses and
buttresses, though by no means without the fascination of intricate
pattern, will chiefly appeal to reason, conveying a sensation similar
to that of the theatre-goer looking at the stage apparatus behind the
scenes.
One need hardly point out in so many words how exactly the
Gothic cathedral re-echoes in all this the achievements of Western
thought in the isth century, the achievements, i.e. of classic
scholasticism. Scholasticism is the name for the characteristically
mediaeval blend of divinity and philosophy. It grew up with the
Romanesque style, the centuries before the nth having in the main
not done more than simplify, regroup and, here and there, modify
the doctrines of the Fathers of the Church and the philosophers and
poets of Rome. During the I2th century, when the Gothic style was
created and spread, scholasticism developed into something just as
lofty and at the same time just as intricate as the new cathedrals.
The first half of the I3th century saw the appearance of the com-
pendia of all worldly and sacred knowledge, St. Thomas Aquinas's
Summa, and the works of Albert the Great and St. Bonaventura, the
Specula of Vincent of Beauvais, and in poetry Wolfram's Parsifal
One of these encyclopaedic tomes, the De Proprietatibus Rerum by
the English Dominican Bartholomaeus Anglicus, written about
1240, begins with a chapter on the essence, unity and the three per-
sons of God. The next chapter deals with the angels, the third with
Man, his soul and senses. There follow chapters on the elements and
temperaments, on anatomy and physiology, on the Ages of Man,
E.A.—5 47