Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 425, March, 1851

LEGENDS OF THE MONASTIC ORDERS, AS REPRESENTED IN THE FINE ARTS.²¹

Lovers of the Fine Arts – and they ought to be the whole civilised world – owe an especial regard and reverence to the Monastic Orders, without whom there would have been, and would be now, no Art at all. Taking the Fine Arts at their lowest value, as a mere source of pleasure, from the love of imitation or representation of agreeable objects – the remembrancer of scenes of interest, the elegant accomplishment by which homes are embellished and made more beautifully homely – surely some little gratitude is due, where it has been the fashion to be sparing of any praise, to those good and pious men who in their convents prepared, improved, and invented colours as well as implements of Art; were themselves the early painters, and by their extensive patronage may be called the Fathers of the Arts. Had the world derived from the monastic orders no other good, that one should have insured them a perpetual respect.

But the Arts do not stand alone – are themselves a sisterhood, if we may so speak – many orders, but one religion; one bond binding them together – the culture of humanity.

History has unfortunately too often been the work of infidel hands and hearts. Whatever is of religion has been viewed with a prejudice; the vices of mankind at large have been tenderly treated; while such as could with truth or untruth be charged upon religious orders, have met with little mercy, and have been exempted from the common apology of the age. In this, little candour has been shown. It would be fairer, speaking of any class of men, to inquire whether they were worse or better than others – a benefit or a plague-spot on society; and it would be fairer to see what efforts they made for their own and for the general improvement, and rather to estimate their success, where few but themselves struggled for amelioration, than to single out every fault, every corruption, and of every age, and to bring the accumulation to bear upon the head, as it were, of one generation. The monastic orders have been the theme of general abuse by many a flippant writer, as if they lived but at one particular period, and were but examples of ignorance and vice – the encouragers of superstition for their own selfish ends. The "dark ages" have been indeed dark to those who have shut their eyes to the light which, small and glimmering though it appeared from our broad and open way of life, might, if followed with a gentle curiosity, have led into undreamt-of recesses, found to contain great treasures; and as the bodily, so the mental eye would have accommodated its vision to the degree of light given, and would have seen distinctly both form and beauty, which would have burst with a kind of glory upon them through the gloom, and met them as goodness would meet willing seekers.

 
"Virtue makes herself light, through darkness for to wade."
 

"I know nothing," says one writer, "of those ages that knew nothing." As it has been justly retorted – how did he, knowing nothing of them, know that they knew nothing? It might be more easy to show that, if he knew anything about anything, he was mainly indebted to those very ages which kept within them the light of knowledge, preserved and cherished from utterly going out with the sanctity of a vestal fire. Turn where we will, we see the monuments of the labour of the monastic orders – wonderful monuments. And surely if any age may be said with truth to be dark, dark were those of the two last centuries which, with the wondrous edifices before their eyes, saw not their beauty mutilated, and with most unwarrantable conceit thought they had improved upon them. Whose was the ignorance? Look at our architecture. Great advancement has been made, and is making daily; and what is the consequence of this revived taste? A proper appreciation of the architecture of the "dark ages." Our best hope is, to imitate successfully. Who were they who designed these miracles of art? Devout men – the monastic orders! Who furnished every species of decoration – the sculpture, the painted glass, the pictures, that were a language? Men who themselves lived humbly and sparingly, that they might devote themselves, their talents, and their possessions to make an exalted and visible religion upon earth, as the one thing needful for future generations of men. Such, undoubtedly, was the one mind of the great religious orders – we speak of their purpose and of their doings. It was their mission over every land: we say not that corruption did not find them out, that there was no canker in their fruit. The enemy knew where to sow his tares; but perverse people tore, uprooted and cast from them the wheat, and loved to lay waste; and, as is ever the case, hating whom they injure, they vilified per fas et nefas; and, upon the plea of others' corruption, became themselves robbers, plunderers, and, too often, assassins.

It has been charged against these orders, that from the extreme of poverty they became rich. Hinc illæ lachrymæ. But how did they so increase? Because toil and labour were their law: they brought wealth out of lands chosen for their sterility, that their rule of toil might be the more continually exercised. Industry had its natural fruits, and spread its influence: they taught as well as practised; and their object, how they disposed of that which they gained, is now well known. The monuments, long unheeded, are before us. That we may not be unjustly thought, in what we have said, to favour Romish institutions, we would make a distinction, too little observed, – we would not confound the retired, the benevolent, the religious lives of those benefactors in the monastic orders, with the political tyrannical Papacy in Rome itself. There was ambition and avarice – a worldliness, at the instigation of the "Prince of this world," working out a system whose necessities begot the vilest superstitions and idolatries for unholy gain, and disseminated corruption instead of life. The history of the Popes is not the history of the devout and laborious of the monastic orders at all times. They were indeed within the pale of the Church of Rome, for there was then no other; but they who cultivated wastes, taught the people, and preserved and invented arts and literature, were far other men. The evil of Papacy had not reached them at once in their wildernesses. When the corrupt system did reach them, it bore its fruit. But even then, and among such, be it remembered, arose those who were still pure, and above the corruptions – and from them originated the Reformation. In reasoning upon past institutions, consideration must be had of the peculiar phase of the world when they arose. The whole altered condition of society would make that a positive evil which was once a positive good. Monastic institutions have done their work; – they cannot be restored, in a healthy state, in a Protestant country, whose constitution, and the laws that both make and support it, and the habits, manners, and feelings of the people, are entirely repugnant to them. Romanism is antagonistic with everything that is not of it. It demands at all times and everywhere to be the dominant power. To give it more than toleration, is to put into its hands that fulcrum which will be incessantly employed to subvert every institution that cannot be resolved into itself. Neither governments nor homes can escape its snares and its tyranny.

 
"Inspectum domos venturaque desuper urbi."
 

And here we would offer a quotation from Mrs Jameson's introduction to this her third volume of the Series on Religious Art; and we cannot but think that the scrutiny her subject has led her to make, into the real character of the religions orders of the middle ages, has given a more serious, we would say solemn, respect for them than was perceptible in the two former volumes. Not that we would charge any levity upon her in them: the reverse; but we do think that the reverence and respect for the subjects generally have fallen advantageously upon the "orders" themselves.

"In the first place, then, monachism in art, taken in a large sense, is historically interesting, as the expression of a most important era of human culture. We are outliving the gross prejudices which once represented the life of the cloister as being from first to last a life of laziness and imposture. We know that, but for the monks, the light of liberty and literature and science had been for ever extinguished, and that for six centuries there existed for the thoughtful, the gentle, the inquiring, the devout spirit no peace, no security, no home but the cloister. There learning trimmed her lamp, there contemplation 'pruned her wings;' there the traditions of art, preserved from age to age by lonely studious men, kept alive in form and colour the idea of a beauty beyond that of earth – of a might beyond that of the spear and the shield – of a Divine sympathy with suffering humanity. To this we may add another and a stronger claim on our respect and moral sympathies. The protection and the better education given to women in these early communities – the venerable and distinguished rank assigned to them when, as governesses of their order, they became in a manner dignitaries of the church – the introduction of their beautiful and saintly effigies, clothed with all the insignia of sanctity and authority, into the decoration of places of worship and books of devotion – did more, perhaps, for the general cause of womanhood than all the boasted institutions of chivalry."

 

Now, be it remembered that all this was effected in the midst of a hostile and turbulent world, whom they thus subdued by their sanctity to an awe and respect, without which there would have been no peace to them, no shelter to the pure and the weak from injury and wrong. Do we not see here the strongest proof of their earnestness, their piety, their charity, and that they were, under Heaven, the ministers of blessings to mankind? There was a period, however, when the entire seclusion of the cloister ceased to be beneficial – the contemplative life must be succeeded by the active. From that period must we date the promise of all that is great and good in art, science, and every effort of human genius, which burst winged out of darkness into day, with the rise of the Mendicant orders.

"If the three great divisions of the regular ecclesiastics seem to have had each a distinct vocation, there was at least one vocation common to all. The Benedictine monks instituted schools of learning; the Augustines built noble cathedrals; the Mendicant orders founded hospitals: all became patrons of the fine arts, on such a scale of munificence that the protection of the most renowned princes has been mean and insignificant in comparison. Yet, in their relation to art, this splendid patronage was the least of their merits. The earliest artists of the middle ages were the monks of the Benedictine orders. In their convents were preserved, from age to age, the traditional treatment of sacred subjects, and that pure unworldly sentiment which in later times was ill exchanged for the learning of schools and the competition of academies; and as they were the only depositories of chemical and medical knowledge, and the only compounders of drugs, we owe to them also the discovery and preparation of some of the finest colours, and the invention or the improvement of the implements used in painting: for the monks not only prepared their own colours, but when they employed secular painters in decorating their convents, the materials furnished from their own laboratories were consequently of the best and most durable kind. As architects, as glass-painters, as mosaic workers, as carvers in wood and metal, they were the precursors of all that has since been achieved in Christian art; and if so few of these admirable and gifted men are known to us individually and by name, it is because they worked for the honour of God and their community – not for profit, nor for reputation."

Mutability is written upon the face of all earthly things, whether they be good or evil in themselves. We progress and we retrograde according as influences act upon us. If we would judge in candour, we cannot take any class of facts of things or persons by themselves – all are parts of one whole; but how made one, is a speculation of a deep philosophy. It is hard to place upon the map of understanding the hidden causes, and their relation to each other, which make up the general social aspect at any one period. However we may advance, in knowledge, however that knowledge may operate as a check, mankind are in heart intrinsically the same they ever were – they have within them the same passions, the same instincts; and though we are daily pronouncing, as we look back upon past ages, that such and such things never can be again, that we cannot have the same superstitions, nor exercise the same cruelties, whatever we may hope, we do in fact say but this, that the identical facts and identical personages will not come again upon the stage of life. Of this we may be sure, that under certain influences, always within the sphere of our liabilities, the passions of men will lead them to the same excesses, the same fanaticism, the same crimes. The plot of the drama may be somewhat varied, or even new, but tragedy and comedy will still designate the play of human actions. We may have crusades without a Holy Land to recover – as we have had a Bartholomew massacre; we have had, and may have again, in civilised Europe, the political massacres which, in reading history in our closets in our own peaceful homes, we had fondly deemed passed away for ever. Fanaticism in religion and politics is still a human instinct – the sleeping volcano in every man's breast, though he knows it not, believes it not. "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" Who can answer for himself? It is wiser, far better to bow the head in humility – "Lead us not into temptation." As the times are, as people are, in peace or in suffering, will be their religious hopes or their religious fears – a gloom or a comfort, a wholesome practical virtue or a feverish excitement, a personal selfishness, a frenzy of despair – intolerance and persecution the result. The civil troubles of England made our religion, or that which passes for religion among the masses, gloomy and morose on the one hand, and, on the other, an awful conceit of self-righteousness. There was the asceticism of the early ages, but in a new form: there were no deserts, no dens into which fanatics could fly from worldly pleasure: compelled to live in its sight, they persecuted it to the death, and took their own insane pleasure in denying pleasure to others. General distress will naturally engender unwholesome excitement, and it will infect invariably the religious mind. These remarks are not superfluous – they arise out of the subject. Mrs Jameson herself sees analogies of times, which it may be worth our while to pause and consider.

"It seems to me that in the movement of the thirteenth century there was something analogous to the times through which we of this present generation have lived. There had been nearly a hundred years of desolating wars. The Crusades had upheaved society from its depths, as a storm upheaves the ocean, and changed the condition of men and nations… A generation sprang up physically predisposed to a sort of morbid exaltation, and powerfully acted on by the revelation of a hitherto unseen, unfelt world of woe. In the words of Scripture 'men could not stop their ears from hearing of blood, nor shut their eyes from seeing of evil.' There was a deep, almost universal, feeling of the pressure and burden of sorrow – an awakening of the conscience to wrong, a blind anxious groping for the right, a sense that what had hitherto sufficed to humanity, would suffice no longer. But in the uneasy ferment of men's minds, religious fear took the place of religious hope, and the religious sympathies and aspirations assumed, in their excess, a disordered and exaggerated form… But what was dark misery and bewilderment in the weak and ignorant, assumed in the more highly endowed a higher form; and to St Francis and his order we owe what has been happily called the mystic school in poetry and painting – that school which so strangely combined the spiritual with the sensual, the beautiful with the terrible, and the tender with the inexorable – which first found utterance in the works of Dante and of the ancient painters of Tuscany and Umbria. It has been disputed often whether the suggestions of Dante influenced Giotto, or the creations of Giotto inspired Dante; but the true influence and inspiration were around both, and dominant over both, when the two greatest men of their age united to celebrate a religion of retribution and suffering – to solemnise the espousals of sanctity with the self-abnegation which despises all things, rather than with the love that pardons and the hope that rejoices – and which, in closing the gates of pleasure, 'would have shut the gates of mercy on mankind.'"

Dante himself, the great man of his age, the deep in soul and intellect, but individualises the character of an age; and, as far as individual character can portray a general, tends to confirm the observations into which the nature of our subject led us. Dante lived a whole life of injury and wrong, of sorrow, of persecution, which doubtless darkened and embrowned every faculty of his consummate genius. The persecutions of the early Christians drove men into solitudes, where the tumult and fear of the world was exchanged for tumult and fear within; for they were where nature, ordaining every man to work for a common good, never intended them to be, and therefore would not give them peace. No wonder, if, in their bewildered fancies, they were haunted by demons, and took their fevered visions for realities. No wonder if they enacted the extravagant vagaries of insanity, and their faith (still faith) became mixed with a fabulous superstition. The anchorite was sought as a holy man; people believed in his miraculous powers as people have believed since – and people believe now, though no longer in anchorites. There are even Protestant miracle-workers, and thousands who have a kind of belief in their hearts which they will not acknowledge in words; and, while they ridicule the Romish calendar, have their own Protestant saints, and worship them, too, with an idolatry perhaps not less in reality than that which they so vehemently condemn in others. It is well to discountenance seriously and gravely the lying legends of Rome, and to sift from the fables the evil purpose with which they are fabricated or propagated, to expose the hidden design – a dominant power over minds and persons. But, to be candid, there was a time when legends of miracles were household words, and yet had nothing to do with priestcraft and Popery. Such things were before Popery; and that corrupt Church but took advantage of a human propensity, which they could not hope to eradicate. It would indeed be wonderful if there was not at all times a ready belief in them, as long as people believed anything, and that there might be powers above the human. And be it remembered, that many legends of miracles are of that early date which may be said to have begun ere miracles had ceased – ere the belief, not in the possibility, but in the present existence, could be well worn out. The necessity of keeping up the show of them has indeed been the crime, and is the crying disgrace, of the Romish Church. All we mean to assert is, that, considering the contiguity of the true and the false, in point of time, there is at least a great diminution of disparagement of intellect in those who, in the earliest times, took visions and dreams for facts, and events, that happened to be simultaneous, for miracles. Then, again, we know that many of these legends were but repetitions, and in their origin not intended to pass for truth. The lives of saints were the school-themes in convents – the only, schools. The names and a few leading lines of life of saints given, scholars were to fill up, as their imaginations could supply detail; consequently we see many of them to be of a puerile and even infantine fancy, and taken from nursery tales enlarged – a kind of 'raw-head and bloody-bones' – children boiled in a pot, the Thyestean supper, and the children leaping whole out of the dish. And here we would ask the Romish clergy, who certainly in their accredited books propagate fables scarcely less ridiculous, if the being ridiculous is not a test of their falsity? We cannot, while we are reasonable, suppose otherwise than that the Author of miracles would at least guard them from contempt of this kind; that, as they are intended for the conversion of mankind, they should not present themselves in a ridiculous posture, or under ridiculous coincidences. Such was not the pattern of the Scripture miracles. We would, however, make a great distinction between the fraudulent (that is, having a fraudulent purpose) legends, and those which are merely exaggerations or repetitions, readily and naturally applied under congenial circumstances, and for the most part allegorical of the Christian charities, and inculcating Christian virtues. Shall we shock the reader if we add, too, that there may be a very innocent superstition? Since bloody persecution has ceased, superstition in the eyes of this wise-growing age is like the dog that the member of a Peace Society rebuked thus, "Friend, I won't beat thee, but I'll cry mad dog." Should a child, now-a-days, on lying down in bed, say, as children did say in our younger days —

 
"Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on,"
 

there may be grounds for fear that, should ever the Government inspectors of schools hear of it, the poor innocents would be put to an inconvenient questioning; and it is possible that these inspectors, or multitudes of men equally learned, discreet, and wise, may, after lecturing the school teachers and scholars on superstition, go directly, with as great credulity, to a lecture of another kind, and to witness mesmeric experiments, which assume powers far beyond those of any miracles whatever. Those who would smile at the tale of a holy man healing the sick by a word, will credit a somnambulist who, upon a physician's fee, professes to look blindfolded into the inside of his credulous patient, and, without knowing anything whatever about medicine, say what drug will effect a cure; who advertises to be at home for consultation upon people's most private affairs – to tell them of unknown, unsuspected, important papers and documents – to tell the past, the present, and, more wonderful, the future. And, with a wonderful inconsistency, there are men who, having entire faith in these assumptions, and on the infallibility of their science, have no belief whatever in a soul, scoff at spirituality, and boldly pronounce the phenomena of seeing without eyes, travelling without feet, bidding doors, whether of mansion or of cabinets, open to them, and, being obeyed, of knowing all secrets which were never told; of knowing what is passing thousands of miles off with persons never before seen, by holding any person's hand; of entering into that person; of prophesying; of knowing thoughts and their consequences, as to be shown in events; – audaciously, we say, pronouncing these phenomena to arise from materialism.

While such things are, and things as strange, who can hope to expel superstition from the stronghold of man's belief? and who would wish to do it altogether, if the vacant citadel is to be taken possession of by such philosophy as this – the fanaticism of science? And whilst we condemn, as it must be confessed we ought, but duly and discreetly, the greater part of the Romish saintology, their legends and the works of art relating to them, as all belonging to "ages dark" and obsolete, it may not be altogether amiss to turn over some of the old and new pages of the evangelical magazines, where modern saints figure in portraiture and biography – that is, in our enlightened art and literature; and it is more than probable we shall be humbled and disgusted, and be charitably disposed to make some apologies even for the aurea legenda. And should any, in their folly or in their wickedness, desire to set up a new idol, to rival or obliterate the memory of St Johanna Southcote the immaculate, or St Huntingdon, for whom the fishes leaped voluntarily from the ponds into his sanctified hands, and for whose sake sudden death came upon the man who would not receive him as a tenant, let such person or persons not despair of collecting a household of "Latter-day Saints" after the authorised manner of Joe Smith the Mormonist. It may be read in modern biographies, that children almost infants have been miraculously converted whilst in idle play, and have gone back to their homes and converted their great-grandfathers. Poor good John Wesley believed many of these absurd things. He assented to the assertion of the profligate who courted his sister, that it was by "the Lord's directions;" and again, that suddenly "the Lord" had told him to transfer his affections to John's other sister. The published Sancta sanctorum of religious sects are nigh forgotten now-a-days; but they still exist, as did other legends, to be collected in form, should a seeming necessity or a cunning purpose require it: for there are multitudes who credit them now, and many more who might, without much difficulty, be made strenuous to establish them for "their Church."

We must not, however, forget, that the subject of Mrs Jameson's book before us is the legends of the monastic orders in their connection with art. And here modern superstition or fanaticism is at a desperate disadvantage. Modern art itself is far too worldly, too material a thing for spirituality, real or assumed. In those evangelical portraits to which we have already alluded, gross, and, as it would almost seem, studiedly ugly similitudes, lest the flesh should boast, shining with an unction too human, and with the conceit of self-applause escaping from every pore, and redolent of congregational adoration, vulgar personifications of peculiar and hostile sectarianism, the material man has been alone the aim of the artist. There is no tale told – no act of devotion represented – no religious procession, no temple spirituality, – but the man alone; not as he might be seen – humble, devout towards God, but, as it were, with his back to sacred things, and his face towards his people, as if he were the sole or chief recipient of worship. How different in character were the works of Angelico, Il Beato, of Giotto, and those great and pious men, who with their wondrous genius adorned the cloisters of the monastic orders – not with the portraiture of the monks of the day, but with devout and holy processions, acts of their founders, and incidents of sacred history! They taught by the eye; and it possessed, in some respects, a charm above that of the being taught by books. Picture, at once, is able to imbue the spectator with a kind of spirituality ere it touches the understanding; whereas, in reading, it is the uninformed and grosser imagination supplies the portraiture from scenes of a narrow experience, and personages of a homely familiarity.

Yet even in very many of the monastic pictures Mrs Jameson finds a defect, in the too human purpose of the painters and their patrons: she ascribes somewhat of a vain-glorious and exclusive, where the chief object was to exalt a St Benedict, a St Francis, or St Dominick, not as men, but as saints of their respective orders, and for those orders. Still, we think this objection is carried too far. The purpose was, at least, no present portraiture; and surely the subjects did often convey precept, and were calculated to touch the heart, and kindle devotion, and encourage human charities. Undoubtedly, far higher in the poetical scale were those themes of an actual Divinity, of which she treated so enthusiastically in the first part of her former volumes – ascending from angels and archangels, from the heavenly host, to the precincts around the throne of the Divine glory. Yet be it duly weighed, in favour of the patronage of the monastic orders, that this exaltation of art in its theme was not altogether ever abandoned; and upon the whole, we doubt if advantages were not in some degree gained by the admixture of things more comprehensible, and more directly appealing to natural sensibilities. Besides, there was a class of paintings which arose out of our human affections, and which, therefore, led to a pious trust, through our common sympathies: we allude to votive pictures, which were of the earliest and latest date – pervading, indeed, the whole religion; for it was, in truth, a practice continued from the heathen worship.

"The pictures, too," says our authoress, "which are suspended in churches as votive memorials of benefits received, are often very touching. I recollect such a picture in the gallery of Vienna. A youth about fifteen, in the character of Tobias, is led by the hand of his guardian angel Raphael; and on the other side is St Leonard, the patron of captives, holding his broken fetters; Christ the Redeemer appears above; and below in a corner kneels an elderly man, his eyes fixed on the youth. The arrangement of this group leaves us no doubt of its purpose. It was the votive offering of a father whose son had escaped, or had been redeemed from captivity. The picture is very beautiful, and either by Andrea del Sarto, or one of his school. If we could discover where it had been originally placed, we might discover the facts and personages to which it alludes; but, even on the walls of a gallery, we recognise its pathetic significance: we read it as a poem – as a hymn of thanksgiving."

Mrs Jameson makes a very good remark upon a deficiency in catalogues of galleries and collections – the omission of the name of the church or chapel, or the confraternity, whence the pictures were purchased, and such history as might be known respecting them. Our collectors, indeed, are not without their picture-pedigrees; but they are of a curious kind – rather too expressive of a fear of dupery of dealers, and implying but little good foundation of taste in purchasers. Picture-pedigrees refer not to an inherent virtue, visible as the pure blood of the Arabian courser, but to the supposed taste or better known wealth of the last possessor. Few pictures stand on their own merits – they acquire a virtue from the hands or houses they have passed through, more than from the hands that worked them. Indeed, the known collector is generally the only authenticity of the painter, and stamps the value. But to say somewhat of pictures of sacred subjects – and they are by far the finest in known collections – from this deficiency in the catalogues much of their interest is lost; not only so, but we see them in the midst of strange incongruities, as well as injured in their effect by locality, and by light unsuited to them. We cannot judge fairly of their real excellence, nor understand the actual religious power they once possessed. Many of them were painted for private chapels or oratories, and purposely, perhaps, for dim religious light; for an intimate communion of the devout with the one sentiment and with it alone. We have often earnestly wished that, in building national galleries, the large and ostentatious display, at one view, were not the object, and that the particular character of our greatest works were well considered, and fit positions given, and proper lights adjusted. It would be a great thing, for instance, to see the "Raising of Lazarus" of Sebastian del Piombo, in our National Gallery, in a room by itself, and under a studied and arranged light. It is now where it is not all, and at all times, visible; and it is far too important in itself, of too impressive a character, for the look of one passing moment, and the distraction of many things. In the Vatican the Apollo has a room to himself. Picture galleries should not emulate the show-rooms of trade. If the pictures are irrecoverably removed from their own birthplace, from their own home, separated from their local history and interest, much may still be done, in some degree, to preserve for them their general character, and to allow them to make the intended general impression. And it is in fact for this purpose that we highly estimate this work of Mrs Jameson, that, in referring to these legends, we may read the productions to which they have given rise.