26 Comments

Do you think you’ll do any posts on the beast fable genre? The symbolism and allegory talk reminded me of it

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Well, now that you mention it, yes! I had planned to write about the role of bestiaries in medieval culture, and a discussion of beast fable would be a nice complement to the bestiaries. Thanks for the suggestion!

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Nov 12Liked by Robert Keim

Oh, good! I'm glad you're going to write about bestiaries. This whole series on medieval symbols has called to mind the work of scholar William Ashworth, who has a couple of articles about what he calls the "emblematic worldview." The scholarship on premodern natural history would be greatly enriched by your view, I think!

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Nov 3Liked by Robert Keim

This is very beautiful - the post title alone just about made me weak-kneed. I'm a sacristan and it expressed the role so deeply on a much higher level than I had ever thought of. Thank you for that, and for all the other symbols of the church. I confess that it will be hard to imagine that in my Novus Ordo parish - I don't go there by choice but because I don't have access to the Vetus Ordo while I take care of my elderly father. Your explanation of the church's symbols also speak of the importance of real sacred architecture, which is sorely missing in the US - at least mostly in the western states (except for the old mission churches in California and New Mexico). My church is a hideous dark brown wooden structure that looks like a badly-constructed barn from the outside (circa 1969). The inside is an amphitheater, so there are no walls or pillars. Only in the last 3 years have they placed the tabernacle in back of the altar instead of at the side of the altar area. It is really pitiable and a great source of spiritual anguish, so I keep my eyes closed much of the time, and ears plugged when the horrible music is performed - and hope for the day that I might return to the Mass of the Ages. In so many ways, your posts help me adjust my thinking and seeing. I so appreciate them.

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So glad to hear that these posts are bringing some light into this period of liturgical/architectural darkness in your life. The pain that you describe is all too familiar, believe me—I have often found myself in liturgical situations that are far from ideal, and the medieval world that has taken shape in my imagination is a place of refuge.

I grew up in southern California and lived for a spell in New Mexico. I deeply love and miss the California missions, which contrast so starkly with the architectural degeneration that surrounds them.

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Nov 4Liked by Robert Keim

Yes, the simple medieval way is beginning to form deep inroads in my mind and heart and helps me to see things quite differently now. Yes, the missions are so simple and devotional. I think a medieval person would be right at home in any of them that have been kept relatively close to the original mission. I often visited the old San Felipe de Neri church when I lived in Albuquerque and always felt quite happy there.

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I think the missions appeal to me so strongly in large part because they were kind of a Middle Ages "redux." The conditions were so agrarian and monastic and fervent, in that characteristically Spanish way, and it's meaningful to me that such a thing existed in my homeland.

San Felipe de Neri is a nice church. I only went there once (I lived in Placitas, and driving into Albuquerque wasn't my favorite thing—Santa Fe is much more my kind of city).

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Nov 4Liked by Robert Keim

Well, truth be told, Albuquerque was not my favorite place either - too large, too worn down, too unsafe. I lived there for 5 years to be with my mother. But I agree that Santa Fe was much more appealing and retained more of the old world flavor - and what amazing vistas! That really was a magical place of New Spain history and spiritual feeling. It was too long a trek to visit often. We would take visitors there. I also got to know a few seminarians and would attend their ordinations at the basilica with the amazing room of relics. I'm glad to have had many experiences there of that wonder you have spoken of in your posts.

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She theorizes the opposed spiritualities of medieval and Reformation culture as “corporeality” (medieval) vs. “textuality” (Reformation).

I know this is only a footnote, but this is a wonderfully pithy way to describe the problem with Protestantism. Humans are first and foremost physical creatures. Any philosophy that ignores this basic fact is doomed to fail. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the most practical and effective school of virtue is hard physical training.

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Agreed, when I first came across these ideas in Owens' book I found them compelling. It's not that the ideas themselves were completely new to me, but her mode of expressing them really resonated.

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I love this. Beauty draws us to the *unity* of truth and goodness.

You ask, "Have you ever imagined the foundation of the church as signifying the Apostles, or the four walls of the church as declaring the spiritual presence of vast multitudes from north, south, east, and west who have embraced Christianity?"

And I immediately thought of this series by Denis McNamara, 10 short videos. https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2015/10/denis-mcnamara-on-theology-of-sacred.html

They really changed how I see things, or I should say, deepened what I intuitively knew or explained why I am drawn to and feel "at home" in some places and not in others.

I really appreciate your essay!

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Thank you for commenting, Leila, I'm glad you enjoyed the essay! I've never come across those videos, but they sound excellent. I'll come back to share my thoughts with you after I've had a chance to watch a few of them!

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I recommend these videos to parents for their curriculum for high school students. McNamara's conclusions end up being "Reform of the Reform"-oriented, but that's because he doesn't quite follow the logic of his own excellent presentations. Also, apparently he has come under a cloud of accusations, which is tragic.

All that said, I think his explanations are wonderful -- I would love to know what you think.

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Nov 6Liked by Robert Keim

As Thomas Aquinas pointed out, “Any truth can be manifested in two ways: by things or by words. Words signify things, and one thing can signify another.”

Doesn’t action manifest truth too, not just “by things or by words” Ex. the transfiguration, resurrection, baptism of Christ.

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Nov 6Liked by Robert Keim

The nature of truth is embodied by Christ, both human and divine.

Being human he is material and spiritual. “Words and things are material, physical things manifest truth.

The spirit give life, it is the living that manifest action, the manifestation of the divine, the spirit.

It is not only the physical, material realities that manifest truth, Truth is life, (John 14:6) since Christ is one. and life is made evident by action.

So with action as elements that manifest truth. If word and things, then it is incomplete.

Sorry to disagree.

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You seem to be separating "action" from "thing," but I don't see how that is possible. (Apparently St. Thomas didn't either.) An action (from Latin agere, "to do, to act") means "that which is done by something or someone." How would you perceive an action if it did not involve a perceptible thing (or person)?

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Yes indeed, but actions are included in the category of "things," because actions are things (observable, material realities) doing something. The fundamental point St. Thomas is making is that we engage with truth through two fundamental modes of signification: verbal signification, in which the signifiers are elements of spoken or written language, and material signification, in which the signifiers are elements of the material universe (which in some cases are relatively static and in others are involved in actions).

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Nov 6Liked by Robert Keim

“which in some cases are relatively static and in others are involved in actions.”

Could please give an example on this statement above?

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For the "things involved in actions" category, we have the events you already mentioned; the Transfiguration, for instance, is a real event involving real people but also signifies qualities of the divine essence and the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. We could also think of animals, such as a deer that drinks from a lovely woodland stream, which signifies (as in Psalm 41/42) the way in which a spiritually healthy soul longs for and satiates itself with the living God. For the "relatively static things" category, stars, mountains, and trees signify a variety of higher realities (such as God's omniscience, God's infinite strength, and the Cross of Christ, respectively).

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Things or words by themselves do not manifest the truth. To recognize truth requires the act of knowing, and knowing is action. Words and things without being known is not truth. It is in being known that complete it.

The nature of creation is embedded with the nature of its Creator, is always Trinitarian. Ex. Man is body soul, and spirit. Corresponding or representating illustrating the Trinity. Not only in elements but in relationships.

Things (body) word (soul) action (spirit). It is the spirit that animates action. Things( The Son, incarnate) The word ( the Fathe who speaks the word)

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Word and things need a knower for truth to be recognized, by thenselves, it is not evident.

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Maybe I'm evading your greater emphasis on churches' embodied symbols to peck at something more abstract, but your comments on allegory and poetry made me wonder at epiphanies (whose Joycean meaning is closest to hand, if that one is derived somewhat from Aquinas). Where does a more medieval ephiphany fit into your view of the allegories, symbols, and poetic living?

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Thanks for this comment. While "epiphany" in the sense you're referencing is somewhat tainted by its association with James Joyce (definitely not my favorite Modernist author), I agree that it is a useful construct for thinking about the allegorical/symbolic features of daily life. That experience of insight into the rich or radiant essence of a thing is comparable to the rich and radiant poetry of medieval life, but I think there's a crucial difference: Joycean epiphany is a *sudden* insight, an *intense* manifestation, a *fleeting* encounter with the transcendence of the ordinary. I would argue that the allegorical/symbolic/poetic experience that we associate with medieval life was fundamentally non-epiphanic insofar as it was enduring, subtextual, resonant. If Joycean epiphany is like an abrupt and dramatic ascending melody in classical music, the poetic mode of life in the Middle Ages was like an ison in Christian chant.

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That helps a lot, thank you!

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How sad it is that the poetry of many of our churches has been written over or erased in the past 60 years. In some places the manuscript has been, to use a very modern term, shredded, in others rewritten as drivel with all meaning obliterated.

When churches were built there was often a plan that included everything from the height of the bell tower to the design of the altar frontals and the iron work of votive light stands. Now one often sees this cohesiveness destroyed, and it doesn’t take much. Simply moving or removing furniture or a statue can completely change the view and meaning of the whole. Buying cheap liturgical schlock from catalogs doesn’t help. If we truly believe our churches are “the House of God and Gate of Heaven” and that our earthly worship is a type of the Heavenly, we must do all we can to preserve the poem in its entirety, whether a simple haiku or a florid sonnet.

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Extremely well said, Father, thank you. (I especially appreciated the reference to "cheap liturgical schlock from catalogs"—so true, and a disaster for artistic and cultural integrity in our churches.) And yes, the comparison between sacred architecture and poetry is completely apt, and the haiku/sonnet analogy is perfect. Isn't it amazing how even the simplest chapels of previous eras could be beautiful and inspiring and uplifting and prayerful? Sophistication and ornamentation are wonderful when done well, but not necessary—fidelity to tradition and to basic principles of Christian art and spirituality is enough to make a building sing like a well-crafted poem. The modern approach, in contrast, so often fails, for both simple and florid structures, because the harmony, the wholeness, the poetry are lacking—or even worse, have been (as you say) "erased."

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