CHAPTER ONE: Turning on the Light
continued from February 28, 2005
Chartres Cathedral is a supreme example of what's called the High Gothic style. Its construction was started in the twelfth century. Standings inside this church beside one of the massive stone pillars, I don't see how anyone could not be moved in some way, regardless of whether or not one is a Catholic or, for that matter, holds any traditional religious belief. The darkened interior, the stain glass windows, and the echo of footsteps on the stone floor made it easy for me to believe that I had been transported back in time. It seemed perfectly reasonable that I might pass a bishop on his way to see the king, or be surprised by a knight with a red cross on the front of his tunic, who had stepped out from the shadows.
Some historians consider Chartres a bridge between the ending of the "dark ages" and the reawakening of European civilization and culture after nearly 700 years. Certainly the pervasive and unchallenged influence of Augustine and Plato lessens, and the word "truth" picks up a few new definitions.
It was the philosopher Peter Abelard, of Heloise and Abelard fame, who said truth must be realized by evaluating all sides, and he was apparently pretty good at walking a fine, sometimes dangerous line, between church dogma and logic. More of Aristotle's work was recovered and translated in the twelfth and the thirteenth century and, as the historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto says, "Aristotle gradually recovered his pre-eminence."
While the twelfth century was still an "age of faith," it was rapidly becoming an age of "reason" as well. By the start of the thirteenth century the works of the Islamic scholar Averros was being read throughout Europe as well as many of the Jewish scholars. St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century wrote that the truths of faith and those of the senses were compatible and complementary, a momentous declaration at the time. A world of logic, of organization, and of classification was forming in the West. This was to have a weighty influence on our humble weed.
It was dark when we arrived at our hotel in the city of Bayeux that evening. Bayeux was the first city liberated after the allies landed in June 1944 and only six miles from the D-Day beaches. We ate dinner at a small restaurant with long wooden picnic tables, noted for its traditional Normandy cuisine. At our table was an American couple in their late seventies. The husband had been among the first wave to land on Omaha Beach on the sixth of June. They tried to return every few years his wife told us; it was important to both of them. The day, my son and I agreed back at the hotel, had been a good one.
The following morning we drove to Omaha Beach, where the German soldiers had put up the stiffest resistance. The D-Day beaches extend seventy-five miles along the Atlantic coast. Utah and Omaha Beach are where the Americans landed; Gold was where the British came ashore; both Canadian and British soldiers landed on Juno; Free French troops along with British soldiers came ashore on Sword.
Omaha Beach was deserted and windy as we walked along the water's edge on a beautiful October morning, at the end of the twentieth century. There was nothing visible on the horizon this day, but it wasn't difficult to imagine how the Germans might have felt when they first saw the appearance of the largest invasion fleet ever assembled. I had an uncle who landed on the beaches of Salerno in Italy and another uncle who was a medic on Guadalcanel in the Pacific. My mother told me many years before that they never once talked about their experience after they left basic training in 1942.
On a bluff just above Omaha Beach is the American Cemetery. France gave the United States free, permanent use of the 172-acre site, which is maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission. Many of us have seen pictures of the American Cemetery, but I think one has to stand silently among the precise rows of more than 9,000 radiant white marble crosses and Stars of David to begin to appreciate all that it represents. I think we both left this place with a different perspective about a lot of things.
The design of the American Cemetery has a connection to the first metropolitan rural cemetery, which appeared in France in 1803. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, a spirit of egalitarianism had swept over much of Europe. As well, a new republic was developing across the Atlantic Ocean in the United States.
Before the nineteenth century both Catholic and Calvinist believed that "original" sin and predestination proved that the mortal life was corrupt. It was after the "baseness" of mortality that humankind might--hardly guaranteed--join God. A permanent resting-place for the dearly departed was not a major concern.
Anyone who has ever visited an old New England cemetery that dates back to the seventeenth and eighteenth century can find gravestones tilted at various angles with the death mask carved into them. I remember the cemetery beside our house outside of Hartford, Connecticut where, on a crisp fall day, we'd frequently push my son's carriage. It was not a place you'd find green, manicured lawns or trimmed hedges, regardless of the time of year. Usually you would be greeted by thistles, uncut grass, and vines crawling up the front of these humorless tombstones. A Garden of Eden did not exist in the dour afterlife theology of these folks.
Even the planting of trees in cemeteries was often not allowed by these old puritans because it could encourage paganism, which they were certain lurked just below the surface of just about everyone. Most definitely they were not going to permit a carving depicting nature on tombstones. The desk mask was sufficient; it reminded one and all that wordly concerns were meaningless.
The new century, however, swept away many of the old views. Ecclesiastical authority was declining and the influence of the middle class gained strength. Romanticism and sentimentalism took hold, and the need to return to an idealized "nature" seized the imagination of the bourgeoisie. In the United States the philosophy of transcendentalism urged a "spiritual union" with nature.
At the same time, there was also an increasing awareness of health concerns, especially in the overcrowded cities. Churchyard cemeteries in urban areas were full. Bodies were being dug up so that new ones could be buried. On a hot summer day, it was not unusual for city residents to catch the "sweet" aroma of rotting flesh.
The custom of the ancient Greeks was now thought worth considering. By the fifth century B.C. Athens required all the dead to be buried outside city limits. Urns, altars, and sculptures became standard grave markers for the Greeks, and memorials were constructed to honor important Athenians.
Death was becoming secularized in the nineteenth century. That the individual should be given some dignity was a common theme; friends, family, and future generations should be able to pay their respects and honor those who passed away.
Cemeteries outside urban areas were to be centers of peace and tranquility. The old slab tombstones were either outlawed or fell out of favor and replaced by ornate monuments or at least gravestones that would be noticed.
The obelisk, which goes back to ancient Egypt as well as Greece and Rome, became a standard feature in many European and American cemeteries. Memorials were built to honor political and cultural heroes as well as prominent families. Trees were planted, hedges trimmed, flowerbeds maintained, and grass lawns expected. Landscaping was increasingly important, and uncut grass and unsightly "weeds"--or anything that did not fit within the design of the eternal resting-place--was vigorously guarded against.
You can wander through almost any cemetery in the United States and you'll find them remarkly similar in terms of landscape design, a design that first became popular 200 years ago. At the same time, many of the old urban churchyards were gradually turned into city parks. Here you'd be able to read or meditate on a park bench, and where once there was only dirt, now you'd find grass and sometimes flowers, nowadays usually without the Keep Off the Grass signs that once dotted public parks.
to be continued...
Chartres Cathedral is a supreme example of what's called the High Gothic style. Its construction was started in the twelfth century. Standings inside this church beside one of the massive stone pillars, I don't see how anyone could not be moved in some way, regardless of whether or not one is a Catholic or, for that matter, holds any traditional religious belief. The darkened interior, the stain glass windows, and the echo of footsteps on the stone floor made it easy for me to believe that I had been transported back in time. It seemed perfectly reasonable that I might pass a bishop on his way to see the king, or be surprised by a knight with a red cross on the front of his tunic, who had stepped out from the shadows.
Some historians consider Chartres a bridge between the ending of the "dark ages" and the reawakening of European civilization and culture after nearly 700 years. Certainly the pervasive and unchallenged influence of Augustine and Plato lessens, and the word "truth" picks up a few new definitions.
It was the philosopher Peter Abelard, of Heloise and Abelard fame, who said truth must be realized by evaluating all sides, and he was apparently pretty good at walking a fine, sometimes dangerous line, between church dogma and logic. More of Aristotle's work was recovered and translated in the twelfth and the thirteenth century and, as the historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto says, "Aristotle gradually recovered his pre-eminence."
While the twelfth century was still an "age of faith," it was rapidly becoming an age of "reason" as well. By the start of the thirteenth century the works of the Islamic scholar Averros was being read throughout Europe as well as many of the Jewish scholars. St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century wrote that the truths of faith and those of the senses were compatible and complementary, a momentous declaration at the time. A world of logic, of organization, and of classification was forming in the West. This was to have a weighty influence on our humble weed.
It was dark when we arrived at our hotel in the city of Bayeux that evening. Bayeux was the first city liberated after the allies landed in June 1944 and only six miles from the D-Day beaches. We ate dinner at a small restaurant with long wooden picnic tables, noted for its traditional Normandy cuisine. At our table was an American couple in their late seventies. The husband had been among the first wave to land on Omaha Beach on the sixth of June. They tried to return every few years his wife told us; it was important to both of them. The day, my son and I agreed back at the hotel, had been a good one.
The following morning we drove to Omaha Beach, where the German soldiers had put up the stiffest resistance. The D-Day beaches extend seventy-five miles along the Atlantic coast. Utah and Omaha Beach are where the Americans landed; Gold was where the British came ashore; both Canadian and British soldiers landed on Juno; Free French troops along with British soldiers came ashore on Sword.
Omaha Beach was deserted and windy as we walked along the water's edge on a beautiful October morning, at the end of the twentieth century. There was nothing visible on the horizon this day, but it wasn't difficult to imagine how the Germans might have felt when they first saw the appearance of the largest invasion fleet ever assembled. I had an uncle who landed on the beaches of Salerno in Italy and another uncle who was a medic on Guadalcanel in the Pacific. My mother told me many years before that they never once talked about their experience after they left basic training in 1942.
On a bluff just above Omaha Beach is the American Cemetery. France gave the United States free, permanent use of the 172-acre site, which is maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission. Many of us have seen pictures of the American Cemetery, but I think one has to stand silently among the precise rows of more than 9,000 radiant white marble crosses and Stars of David to begin to appreciate all that it represents. I think we both left this place with a different perspective about a lot of things.
The design of the American Cemetery has a connection to the first metropolitan rural cemetery, which appeared in France in 1803. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, a spirit of egalitarianism had swept over much of Europe. As well, a new republic was developing across the Atlantic Ocean in the United States.
Before the nineteenth century both Catholic and Calvinist believed that "original" sin and predestination proved that the mortal life was corrupt. It was after the "baseness" of mortality that humankind might--hardly guaranteed--join God. A permanent resting-place for the dearly departed was not a major concern.
Anyone who has ever visited an old New England cemetery that dates back to the seventeenth and eighteenth century can find gravestones tilted at various angles with the death mask carved into them. I remember the cemetery beside our house outside of Hartford, Connecticut where, on a crisp fall day, we'd frequently push my son's carriage. It was not a place you'd find green, manicured lawns or trimmed hedges, regardless of the time of year. Usually you would be greeted by thistles, uncut grass, and vines crawling up the front of these humorless tombstones. A Garden of Eden did not exist in the dour afterlife theology of these folks.
Even the planting of trees in cemeteries was often not allowed by these old puritans because it could encourage paganism, which they were certain lurked just below the surface of just about everyone. Most definitely they were not going to permit a carving depicting nature on tombstones. The desk mask was sufficient; it reminded one and all that wordly concerns were meaningless.
The new century, however, swept away many of the old views. Ecclesiastical authority was declining and the influence of the middle class gained strength. Romanticism and sentimentalism took hold, and the need to return to an idealized "nature" seized the imagination of the bourgeoisie. In the United States the philosophy of transcendentalism urged a "spiritual union" with nature.
At the same time, there was also an increasing awareness of health concerns, especially in the overcrowded cities. Churchyard cemeteries in urban areas were full. Bodies were being dug up so that new ones could be buried. On a hot summer day, it was not unusual for city residents to catch the "sweet" aroma of rotting flesh.
The custom of the ancient Greeks was now thought worth considering. By the fifth century B.C. Athens required all the dead to be buried outside city limits. Urns, altars, and sculptures became standard grave markers for the Greeks, and memorials were constructed to honor important Athenians.
Death was becoming secularized in the nineteenth century. That the individual should be given some dignity was a common theme; friends, family, and future generations should be able to pay their respects and honor those who passed away.
Cemeteries outside urban areas were to be centers of peace and tranquility. The old slab tombstones were either outlawed or fell out of favor and replaced by ornate monuments or at least gravestones that would be noticed.
The obelisk, which goes back to ancient Egypt as well as Greece and Rome, became a standard feature in many European and American cemeteries. Memorials were built to honor political and cultural heroes as well as prominent families. Trees were planted, hedges trimmed, flowerbeds maintained, and grass lawns expected. Landscaping was increasingly important, and uncut grass and unsightly "weeds"--or anything that did not fit within the design of the eternal resting-place--was vigorously guarded against.
You can wander through almost any cemetery in the United States and you'll find them remarkly similar in terms of landscape design, a design that first became popular 200 years ago. At the same time, many of the old urban churchyards were gradually turned into city parks. Here you'd be able to read or meditate on a park bench, and where once there was only dirt, now you'd find grass and sometimes flowers, nowadays usually without the Keep Off the Grass signs that once dotted public parks.
to be continued...
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