P E Michelli
Throughout its history, the Church has invoked the idea of beauty as a standard by which to create its buildings and their accoutrements. We are so accustomed to this, in fact, that we can easily miss the important fact that the concept of beauty has undergone dramatic changes. In fact, our contemporary assumptions about beauty are very feeble in comparison to the Classical concept that shaped the appearance of churches and ecclesiastical objects when Christianity first became legal. The same concept flourished throughout the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque periods, and thus solidified our notions of appropriate spiritual environments.
Because we now treat those notions as matters of individual preference about what gives us consolation or pleasure, it is important to understand that they were originally based on the best scientific knowledge of the time. That knowledge was Classical knowledge. In contrast to the thematic symbolism practiced by western barbarians, Classical knowledge was based on rigorous observation of cause and effect, investigation, mathematics, logic, deduction. There was every reason to take it as seriously as we now take particle physics.
Here is a synopsis of how it all came together to create a science of beauty.
Plato (5th century BC) laid the foundations of the system, which had to do with the ultimate reality of existence, our origin, our goal, our physical and spiritual health. He reasoned that all natural things are derived from ideal forms (i.e. perfect, beautiful designs). Unfortunately, none of those things are themselves perfect or beautiful, but Plato inferred that the human soul longed to be perfect and beautiful. In his more utopian moments, he believed it was possible to achieve this. At other times, he considered that it was at least possible to improve the human condition. Here's how:
In the Timmaeus, Plato explained that light is a form of fire that flows into and out of the eye. It goes out, collects an image and brings it back. Then it passes through the retina and lodges, with the image, in the human soul. The quality of that image therefore becomes part of the soul that is exposed to it. This is a way of quite literally feeding and manipulating the soul. By implication, if the soul is exposed to perfect and beautiful things, it will take in their perfection and beauty, and become more perfect and beautiful itself. Ultimately, therefore, we hope …
Obviously, it was essential to know exactly how to recognize beauty. For Plato, beauty had one main quality, supported by two subsidiary ones. These were Measure, noncomplexity and sobriety. In Laws Book II, he said: Apart from any pleasure art may give, its quality rests explicitly in its truth or rightness, i.e. its measure ("equal proportions"), and should only be judged in terms of its measure. In fact, Plato devotes most of this work to demonstrating that pleasure is a completely unreliable way of evaluating beauty.
Although Plato recognized the value of inspiration and emotional intensity, he considered them too wild for most people to manage safely and he strongly discouraged these states. In his Phaedrus he describes the kind of madness that can result from an emotional response to beauty: [the soul] sees the beauty of earth, recollects true beauty and knows itself trapped, and seems mad in its frustration. But his student Aristotle argued that the power of inspiration and emotion could, and should, be harnessed for the health of the soul. He discussed this in his Poetics, where he also maintained that beauty was not part of ultimate reality, but was an entirely physical property. In Metaphysics Book XIII, he defined it this way: the chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness. In Nichomachean Ethics, Book II, he dealt directly with visual art, commenting on the importance of the artist's skill, and of the perfect condition of the work. Then he said: we often say of good works of art that it is not possible either to take away or to add anything, implying that excess and defect destroy the goodness of works of art.
Thus we now have an expanded system. Added to Plato's measure, noncomplexity and sobriety, we now have clarity of design, moderation, good condition, and obvious skill. But the emotional bit is in conflict with Plato, and it was left to Plotinus (3rd century AD) to reconcile the problems and complete the system.
In his Enneads, Plotinus re-affirms Plato's beautiful and immaterial ideal forms but also defines what physical beauty looks like. And where Plato required the rational mind ("the pilot of the soul") to start from a physically beautiful thing and ascend by intellectual inference alone to higher levels of ever purer beauty, Plotinus endorsed Aristotle's concept that people can be inspired to do this. So where Plato saw the whole spiritual process as an essentially sober, rational pursuit, Plotinus saw it as both rational and emotional.
Plotinus, in fact, seems to have experienced something akin to the beatific vision or nirvana. Look what he says in Ennead I: and one that shall know this vision - with what passion of love shall he not be seized, with what pang of desire, what longing to be molten into one with This, what wondering delight! Emotions were very important in his scheme of things. Plotinus' definition of beauty reflects this by bringing in an important new element: almost everyone declares that symmetry of parts towards each other and towards a whole, with besides a charm of color. Plato's and Aristotle's Measurement is for the rational mind. Plotinus' Color is for the emotions.
Plotinus' work was published in Rome in 301. In 315, Christianity was adopted by the Roman Emperor Constantine and made legal. It is not difficult to see how the system could be grafted onto Christianity, and the designs for Constantine's new churches and their equipment reflect Plotinus very clearly with their symmetry/geometry, and light/color. As far as we know, no one summarized the system at the time, so let's bring it all together for our own convenience:
Beauty is part of ultimate reality. We long to be beautiful. We are not beautiful. This is frustrating and distressing. But we can acquire beauty of soul by looking at beautiful things whose images lodge in our souls. Beautiful things have the following qualities:
Vague references to these ideas appear during the early Middle Ages: St Augustine and St Denis both talk about light, color and measure, but the ideas remain fragmented. Then, suddenly, in the Gothic period, we have it all set down systematically for the first time. St Thomas Aquinas had been working on long lost Classical texts when he spelled out the whole system in 1266-67, in Summa Theologica: Beauty must include three parts: integrity or completeness (i.e. good condition, definition); right proportion or harmony; and brightness - we call things bright in color beautiful.
Thomas Aquinas, you might be interested to know, also achieved the beatific vision. As a result, he never completed the Summa Theologica. He simply stopped writing, telling his secretary that this was because, all I have written seems to me like so much straw compared with what I have seen and with what has been revealed to me.
The perception of beauty and the elevation of the soul are closely connected in human experience, and obviously this is a crucial concept for the design of churches and liturgy. You might also be interested to know that Plato's discussion of Measure in beauty was actually based on music, which can be defined in measured terms of rhythm and interval. Compare the ancient anatomical understanding of ears and eyes, and note how both organs were considered capable of taking in and giving out. Arguably, the same could be said about the nose and mouth, and we live in hope of identifying ancient texts that confirm the equation. Now consider the Mass in stereotypical and traditional "high" church. Just think of that moment in the Mass when the communicant takes in the perfect white disc of the Communion wafer, inhales embalming incense, hears a measured Gregorian chant, and sees the perfect proportions and colors of the building. Beauty taken into the soul through every orifice! Now that's a powerful, scientific, liturgy!