Versus:
Upper Chapel, Sainte-Chapelle, Paris. Built 1243-48
During the Gothic period, lavishness - gold, jewels and *ahem* pure gluttony(?) was associated with the Divine. Churches were decked out in all that sparkled and impressed. In art, Jesus was continually associated with the aristocracy of the Bible and the aristocracy of the time. So when the cross pictured above was put on display in a London Cathedral - a chapel at Coneyhoop in the parish of St Mildred, Poultry, London - it caused quite the scandal.
The poor loved it, and made their own copies to wear around. This was a Jesus they could relate to. I mean, just look at it... its so beautifully raw.
The rich found this rawness threatening, caling it a "terrifying cross" that "incurred much harm." The cross was taken down, and Ralph Baldock, Bishop of London, ordered that it be "borne forth...to some place without our diocese, either at early dawn or late in the evening, when it can be done most secretly and with least scandal." In other words, the cross was secretly destroyed in the middle of the night so that the poor wouldn't riot.
Then, the creator of the cross, a German craftsman called Thydemann, was made to promise never to create such an atrocious looking thing again.
And this makes me sad. It also makes me want to hang a picture of that cross up somewhere. And it also creeps me out that the Church can be so off base about such fundamental issues to Christianity. And it makes me wonder just how good our mass mechanisms for discerning Truth really are.
Interesting.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious as to when this happened? Do have a place I can find the story?
The court case took place in 1306. I found out the information from my Art History class, but my professor got his sources from:
ReplyDelete"Registrum diversarum litterarum Radulphi Baldock, episcopi Londoniensis", Registrum Radulphi Baldock, Gilberti Segrave, Ricardi Newpport et Stephani Gravesend, episcoporum Londoniensium, ed. R.C. Fowler, Canterbury and York Soc., VII 1911
and
T.A. Heslop, "Attitudes to the Visual Arts: The Evidence form the Written Sources", in Age of Chivalry, Art in Plantagenet England 1200-1400, Eds JJG Alexander and Paul Binski, London: 1987, pp 26ff.