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RE Mirand
Great points! It is interesting to me how different expressions existed amidst the various classes. The more wealthy individuals would have had beautiful buildings crafted and moralized bibles made, while the less fortunate would have been so grateful for much smaller, less costly items in order to expression their own devotion to God.
As churches constantly become more and more beautiful and intricately designed in the Gothic period, many wealthy families invested in things such as moralized bibles. These bibles were made of up thousands of illustrations of the stories and values found within scripture and they also included commentaries. These bibles would have been extremely costly, therefore would not have been accessible by the commoners. Being able to have these items would have only been a possibility because of rank. Though, there was also a growing access to various written devotionals for commoners called the ‘books of hours’. These books would have becoming increasingly more available to those who were less fortunate as the gothic period went on. Each of these books would have been unique. Inside would be a number of prayers that the individual could read and specific times of the day. In many ways this shift began as the Christians valuing of personal piety grew.
RE: Kaitlyn
Great point. They did believe that they would be transported into the real heaven so attempting to make the churches as high as possible makes total sense. The addition of flying buttresses was certainly an innovative way for the architects to get the style they wanted while still creating structurally sound buildings.
The dramatic shift towards widows and church buildings brought a tremendous amount of light into the buildings. Before this, churches would have been very dark and somewhat dreary on the inside. Previously, the columns in churches would have brought the eyes down, where as the architecture in the Gothic period caused the people to look upwards. The stained glass brought a whole new dimension of awe into the churches. Abbot Suger wanted the church attendees to feel that they were entering heaven when they walked into the church. The beautifully designed windows and elegantly carved upwards stretching archways made that possible. This is a theme that defined the Gothic period and brought a tremendous shift in religious architecture.
RE: Miranda
Great post! It is very clear the message that the church was attempting to convey, and I am certain that they were successful in conveying it! It is pretty incredible how art can bring such a strong message and how that message can be used to further a religious belief.
RE: Raven
Really interesting point! It seems like the spiritual ‘cleansing’ that takes place during these pilgrimages caused them to be popular in other religions and spiritual practices. It is a way for people to show their devotion to their belief. Very interesting concept!
It was a widely held belief that going on a pilgrimage would cause believers to have favor with God and help them to have a better chance of getting into heaven. These pilgrimages took individuals of all economic status on long natural and spiritual journeys. The goal was for the individual to visit various different churches and experience relics. Relics were items that held significant value to the people because of the items’ religious affiliation. Many of the churches has a cruciform plan that helped to direct the pilgrims through the building in an orderly fashion. At the end of the church would be a apse that directed the people back around and out of the building. While I am sure that these pilgrimages would have been significant to the individuals who took them, it is clear that the church took advance of these people. Pilgrimages generated a lot of revenue for churches and for the cities the churches were in.
Because the masses were for the most part illiterate, it was up to the church to communicate the biblical stories and values that they wanted to be held in a visual manner. By creating incredibly beautiful churches with carvings and paintings inside of them, the illiterate would have visual representations of biblical narratives and the wealthy would still appreciate the beauty of the architecture. One example of this is seen at the Cathedral of St Lazare. Above on of the doors is a carved scene that has been dubbed a ‘sermon in stone’. In this stone carving we see a depiction of the final judgment. This would have easily conveyed the message of the need for ones to submit themselves to God and to the Church in order to avoid eternal suffering. This would have been a powerful message that would have easily been understood by anyone who took the time to look. Art played a massive role in the authority and control that the church had on society. It was also the way that many illiterate were able to grasp the gospel, other scripture, and the messages that the church was trying to convey.
RE Lacey,
You’re so right! The concept of being illuminated, and creating a work of art that certainly doens’t look like anything we would see in the real world is very prevalent in this time period. I hadn’t thought of the repetitive and intricate design as an indication of the classical period, but you are so right. Great point!
Like in Byzantine art, we see in the illuminated manuscripts that humans are not depicted in a ‘realistic’ way. They are generally depicted in a way that would have a viewer believe them to carry more spiritual attributes rather than relatable human attributes. Art was not used in the dark ages to bolster humanistic values, rather the images in the manuscripts would have primarily been used to carry a religious message. As this was a time when Christianity was prominent, the message of the gospels was often portrayed in these manuscripts. The primary goal was to tell stories, not so much to heighten the perspective of political leaders like we have seen in other periods. It is also clear that while they were not fully ‘following’ the second commandment, like the Byzantines, the people in the dark ages did not want to create images that could be worships as deities.
RE Jessie:
Really interesting point! I totally agree. You could say that there was a lack of innovation but only in specific areas of culture. To say that no innovation took place is a rather absurd notion.
When I hear ‘Dark Ages’ I immediately think of disease and poverty. I certainly don’t think of beautifully crafted art work. But, what I have seen amidst this weeks Medieval wing is a plethora of incredibly made pieces of art. While it is clear that there was tremendous artistic ability during this time period and a lot of it has survived. While there was certainly social and economic ‘darkness’ due to the lack of innovation during this time, the art during this time period is absolutely beautiful and awe inspiring. I would not call these the ‘dark ages’, I much prefer the term Medieval. While there wasn’t much progress forward in things like standard of living, there was certainly development artistically.
RE Csayreswody
Really great point! The Romans weren’t so concerned about telling a story or communicating the values of a religion as the Byzantine artists were. This really makes a difference in the way they portrayed basically everything! It is pretty incredible how a difference in worldview can just totally shift the way that people want to document and communicate artistically.
There is a significant shift in the way that art is made within the Byzantine Empire compared to what we find in Roman art. I think a big reason for this is the shift away from a humanistic worldview. As the Christian religion spread, peoples’ values shifted. The goal of the art was no longer to glorify humans. It was instead used to make humans consider God and spiritual things rather than just the natural. Also, there was somewhat of a shift in that the people that were depicted were painted in such a way that they were recognizable, but the artists wanted to portray them as spiritual authorities, rather than just idealized human beings. They also didn’t what ‘heavenly’ things to be seen the same as earthly things. Making more whimsical art that portrayed values and spirituality rather than realism was more important during the Byzantine Empire.
Iconoclasm was certainly an issue at various points in the Byzantine empire. There is a significant amount of loss of art during this period simply because it was actually illegal in certain areas to make a rendering. This didn’t last too terribly long as the church again began to value the rendering of saints and Christ in order to be able to tell stories. Still, they wanted to be sure that people were not worshiping the actual image, but they were instead directing their worship to the entity behind the image. This is a significant shift to what we saw in the Early Jewish and Christian art. Before there was a significant amount of reverence for the command about graven images, but over time this reverence seems to be lost to some degree. While there is still a marked difference in the way the humans are portrayed, as there is a loss of realism in idealism that was found in Greek art in byzantine art, there is a significant amount of depictions of animals and people found in the churches. I would argue that the church may have taken depictions too far and ‘cut corners’ so to speak, in ways that may have broken this commandment. Yet, in a time when books were far more rare and fewer people would have been able to read, these depictions would likely have been helpful in communicating the stories found in scripture. This is such an interesting issue! It clearly caused a significant divide within the church and raised a lot of questions about what it meant to obey the commands of God!
