THE CATHEDRAL PROGRAMME AND THE SPIRIT OF THE I3TH CENTURY
sand that is earthly toil which love has taken upon itself, and water
uniting heavenly love and our earthly world.
All this one must keep in mind to realise how alien this world is to
ours, despite all enthusiasm for the cathedrals and their sculptures.
We are liable to a reaction in these vast halls which is far too roman-
tic, nebulous, sentimental, whereas to the cleric of the isth century
everything was probably lucid. Lucid, but transcendental. That is the
antagonism which defeats us in our age of agnosticism. In the 13th
century the bishop and the monk, the knight and the craftsman -
believed firmly—though each to the measure of his capacity—that
nothing exists in the world which does not come from God, and
derive its sense and sole interest from its divine meaning. The medi-
aeval conception of truth was fundamentally different from ours.
Truth was not what can be proved, but what conformed to an
accepted revelation. Research was not conducted to find truth, but
to penetrate more .deeply into a pre-established truth. Hence
authorities meant more to the mediaeval scholar than to anyone now,
and hence also the faith of the mediaeval artist in the 'exemplar*, the
example to be copied. Neither originality nor the study of Nature
counted for much. Even Villard de Honnecourt copied in nine out
of ten of his pages. Innovations came by degrees and much less
deliberately than we can imagine.
Yet the Gothic style surely was a deliberate innovation and the
work of strong and self-confident personalities. Its forms allow us
to assume that, and we find in fact within scholasticism, as the chief
innovation of the 13th century, a marked departure from the purely
transcendental attitude of the Romanesque and earlier centuries.
St. Peter Damiani, in the first half of the nth century, had said:
"The world is so filthy with vices that any holy mind is befouled
by even thinking of it*'. Now Vincent of Beauvais exclaims: "How
great is even the humblest beauty of this world! I am moved with
spiritual sweetness towards the Creator and Ruler of this world,
when I behold the magnitude and beauty and permanence of His
creation". And beauty according to St. Thomas Aquinas (or a close
follower of his philosophy) "consists of a certain consonance of
diverging elements".
But it is never—not yet—the beauty of the world as such that is
praised. It is the beauty of God's creation. We can enjoy it whole-
heartedly; for God Himself "rejoices in all things, because everyone
is in actual agreement with His Being" (St. Thomas). Thus stone-
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