"How did the Roman Catholic Church maintain its grip on European hearts and minds for so long?"

A New York Times review of an art exhibition, "Italian Paintings From the Richard L. Feigen Collection,” at the Yale University Art Gallery, seizes upon the opportunity to indulge in some overt and crude Catholic-bashing:

Of the 59 works on view, about half of which are from the medieval period, the Danaë painting is one of only two that does not picture a Christian theme. (The other is an impressively monumental, Caravaggio-esque painting of Alexander the Great and Thaïs by Ludovico Carracci from 1609-12.) But because of its sensational visual quality and its unabashed eroticism, Gentileschi’s “Danaë” casts the rest of the show in a certain shadowy but revealing light.

You can see why secular humanism, inspired by the pagan cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, was bound to triumph over the authoritarian, otherworldly, sado-masochistic mysticism of medieval Christianity. ...

Ordinary human tenderness appears only in images of the Madonna and Child. Painted in subtly modulated colors, a close-up picture of Mary cuddling her naked boy, by Bartolomeo Schedoni from about 1605-10, is a silky dream of maternal affection. Its stylistic and psychological realism calls to mind Dutch contemporaries like Rembrandt and Vermeer.

The weirdness of this Christian iconography persists, however, in Annibale Carracci’s otherwise naturalistic painting from 1587-88 of a sweet Madonna and Child to whom St. Lucy — the early Christian martyr whose eyes were extracted by her torturers — presents a pair of staring eyeballs on a saucer.

How did the Roman Catholic Church maintain its grip on European hearts and minds for so long? Judging by this exhibition, the answer seems to be by artfully managing the fear, ignorance and superstition of the faithful. The rise of humanism from the Renaissance on came as an exhilarating release for the Western world’s cramped imagination.

Key phrase: "Judging by this exhibition..." And if I were to judge all of modern culture and Western society by looking at this exhibition or that exhibition, exactly how joyful, enlightened, and "un-cramped" would I likely say the culture/society is? I sent the article link to Sandra Miesel, whose has both a vast knowledge of medieval art (she has a masters degree in medieval history) and a massive collection of works on medieval art; I was able to visit her a couple of year ago and was blown away by her personal library. She replied:

As for the NYT article, that guy must have had a very narrow exposure to art history. Not to mention logic, since he treats one show of one man's collection (itself governed by personal taste and market availability) as the key to pre-Renaissance Christianity. Simple factual correction: the green-skinned Resurrected Christ that he find "ghoulish" is a result of chemical changes in pigment, not the artist's original concept. Blood martyrdom scenes were not the dominant way of representing saints. Crucifixions don't get bloody, nor Madonnas tender, until after 1200, reflecting a taste for emotional religion.

But the elites have gotten to a point where they don't even know what they don't know. Reminds me of the pair of Purdue art professors writing an exhibition catalog who were appallingly ignorant of Biblical subjects--even when the picture had a caption! I had to explain to them who Lot & Co. were and why they were leaving Sodom.

And for today's curious fact: Orazio Gentileschi's daughter Artemesia was also an excellent painter and more in vogue than he right now.

Back to the question: "How did the Roman Catholic Church maintain its grip on European hearts and minds for so long?" Several years ago I took some philosophy courses at the University of Oregon. One of the teaching assistants, who was close to earning his doctorate in philosophy (his thesis was on some aspect of Nietzsche's thought), was a professed atheist, but not of the "new atheist" variety. We went out for coffee a couple of times and he lamented, to my surprise, that he had not (in his words) "been given the gift of faith." He then said, "I sometimes wish I could have lived in the medieval era, because even though life was hard, people knew their place in the cosmos." Needless to say, I was a bit stunned, and I've always remembered that comment very clearly. He understood, as he expressed in our conversations, that fear, ignorance and superstition are not the calling card of Christianity, but the shared patrimony of humanity. As Pope Benedict has expressed in various ways and places, any and every religion and belief system can atrophy and be distorted into an ideology of fear and ignorance. (He has also, of course, said a great deal about that fact that Europe as an idea and a reality is rooted in Christianity and won't exist without Christianity.)

For many decades—well, centuries—Western man, generally speaking, has been "lost in the cosmos," to directly lift the title of Walker Percy's brilliantly funny and sometimes unsettling book. What might have been "an exhilarating release for the Western world’s cramped imagination" for those living in the 14th-16th centuries hasn't always worked out to be so exhilarating, nor a true "release". The depiction of St. Lucy (+c. 304) holding her gauged out eyes in a saucer might strike some as weird, but it offers a clear clue about the power of the Catholic Faith, which does not flow from physical might, fear of inquisition, or earthly power—however often some Catholics have believed or acted so down through time—but from love for Christ, thirst for holiness, and pursuit of truth.

St. Lucy is depicted as holding her eyes before Madonna and Child because they are evidence of her faithfulness to Christ and her willingness to suffer and die for her heavenly Bridegroom rather than be given to a pagan groom. There is much legend in her story as it has been told and retold, but the essential idea is clear enough—unless you think religious beliefs and devotion are bunk and that humanism divorced from cultus is the greatest good. If that is the case, your review of Catholic art is most likely not going to be either helpful or fair.

Comments

[Bill]

I am no longer surprised by the ignorance and bias of those who write for the NYT, or by their outright and open hatred of religion. I am only surprised that they get away with it, obvious as it is. What also surprises me is that there are still millions of people who regard the NYT as the last word in truth and journalistic integrity. In my opinion, it's become just another rag, hardly different from the tabloids in its devotion to cheap sensationalism.

Oh, yeah -- full disclosure: I edit for a living. I'd fire any writer who turned in a piece like that.

[Sharon]

I'm beginning to get the idea that the NYT doesn't like Catholicism!

[Charles E Flynn]

I am not surprised that the author of the review did not know that the pigment was not originally green. Years ago, I saw an exhibit of Finnish industrial design with labels written by a presumably-American graduate student who did not know the difference between mahogany and birch.

[Julia]

Many years ago in the 1980s, at Washington U in St Louis, a very liberal philosophy professor teaching a course on modern philosophical thought told us something very similar to what that atheist teaching assistant told you. The Professor had lived for several years in Florence and said that before the Enlightenment, people knew they had a place in the world and weren't confused like they are today. He also said he greatly admired the Catholic religion because it tries mightily to be systematically logical. He personally knew Wittgenstein et al and found them depressing. At the time I had been 10 years out of the Church.

The icing on the cake was the very last class for my Masters. I thought it would be interesting to see what a secular historian had to teach in a class on the Catholic Church and the Popes. The professor was Anglican and I was the only Catholic student. We read only original sources starting with the letters of Clement and letters from around the Mediterranean that referred to the Bishop of Rome. He showed his slides of the then-new digging for Peter's tomb under the Vatican. We followed the trail through the Justinian Code to the the founding of universities to what was going on in Hamlet's head to the Tractarians. Unfortunately, I got my only "C" in that class because I couldn't come up with a non-religious answer to the semester paper"s required subject - "Why is the Catholic Church and its Popes still around after 2,000 years?"

By the time I finished my Masters, I had found my way back to the Church thanks to that secular university. Strange.

[Sandra Miesel]

Here's a bit of fluff from Canwest News Service. Spot the reporter's amazing mental lapse?

http://www.nationalpost.com/Agora+director+Alejandro+Amenabar+real+ladies/3137003/story.html

[Kmbold]

Hypatia must have time-traveled back a few centuries, eh, Sandra?

[Michael]

Overt and crude Catholic-bashing! Well, I guess the NYT did not get the dirt on Pope Benedict that they thought they would. I honestly believe during the past few months they actually thought they were on the very verge of bringing down the Catholic Church. "Intelligent" people never cease to amaze me. Do these people have a life? Is our Church so heavily burdening their minds ;).

[Kmbold]

There they go again.
Am I overly sensitive or has the NYT's attitude toward the church gotten a lot more iniquitous and even more ubiquitous?
Let Johnson go find that “smiling Buddha”. He is clearly unable to comment on anything deeper, such as art relating to "some Christian deity".
I have to hand it to him, though: in his article he didn't once mention pedophile priests.

[cantueso]

"How did the Roman Catholic Church maintain its grip on European hearts and minds for so long? Judging by this exhibition, the answer seems to be by artfully managing the fear, ignorance and superstition of the faithful. The rise of humanism from the Renaissance on came as an exhilarating release for the Western world’s cramped imagination."

You seem to forget how destitute Europe was once the Roman empire collapsed. You can't summarize 800 years in one sentence. Imagine yourself getting summarized as part of the European Renaissance! Which would not be so absurd, since it was the REnaissance which brought about that curiosity about what there might be further out there.

[Tim H]

I suppose the invention of the hospice and the hospital were inventions of sado-masochistic medieval Christianity. So much for fear, ignorance and superstition.

-Tim-

[Christopher Lake]

Ahh, the journalistic and art elites of New York are funny... no, make that tragi-comic.

Some people *really* need to be exposed to a wider view of history and culture. The "fear, ignorance, and superstition" of St. Thomas Aquinas, Leonardo da Vinci, Gregor Mendel, Louis Pasteur, and Francois Mauriac (to name but a few, from over the centuries) have stimulated the minds of millions...

[Ismael]

Ken Johnson is awfully IGNORANT... and I would dare say STUPID.

Either that or he is a bigot with a passion for hating the Church. His article is thus either stupid or intolerant.

Two points

1- FACTS he got wrong:

He writes:

"The weirdness of this Christian iconography persists, however, in Annibale Carracci’s otherwise naturalistic painting from 1587-88 of a sweet Madonna and Child to whom St. Lucy — the early Christian martyr whose eyes were extracted by her torturers — presents a pair of staring eyeballs on a saucer."

St. Lucy, as a matter of fact was NOT tortured by removal of the eyes.

She died around 304 AD, under Diocletian's persecution, but no accounts tell of eye-gouging.

The iconography comes from that fact that Lucy, from the Latin 'Lux' means 'light' and so she was early on associated as the patron of the eyes. An this detail did not appear before the XV century.

Where did Johnson get his facts? Wikipedia? Yes English wikipedia (which I recently edited ) also reported the famous 'eye-gouging'

Sheesh! You would expect that a serious critic would use a reliable source....

1b- Art HISTORY

I am not sure what degree Ken Johnson holds... but even with the advent of renaissance and humanism there are many paintings and other works of art that depict the death of saints...

So I do not understand when he says "The rise of humanism from the Renaissance on came as an exhilarating release for the Western world’s cramped imagination. "

Is he serious? Did he go to college? Did he study art? From these words I would say NO...
If he did study art... then I doubt his intelligence...

---

2- ILLOGICAL conclusions

Why would the images of tortured saints keep people IN the Church?

The saints were Christians AND GOT KILLED BECAUSE OF IT.

Now... logically one would rather think: 'If being Christian gets me marthyred, I'd rather NOT be Christian'.

I think Ken Johnson completely misses the point of the iconography regarding martyrdom.
They show us the courage and strong faith the martyrs had.

In any case, such images would certainly NOT 'scare you Christian', but would perhaps have the opposite effect, for those who do not understand what is depicted in the painting... just like Ken Johnson, it seems.

[Manuel G. Daugherty Razetto]

Historicity and Faith become intertwined on the reasons why the Church has not just survived but triumphed through 2 millennia. Since the beginning we see wondrous upward shifts that placed Christianity as the true salvation for mankind.

St. Paul has to be acknowledged as the one who initiated universality in the Church by his persistence in accepting gentiles, opening the door to all. By crowning the Synoptic Gospels with St. John's hellenized theology the Church took the biggest step to become the perfect messenger of our Faith-the Divine Nation- Union and Discipline characterized the first hundred years.

The presence of prodigious men and women, true saints, have glorified the teaching of our Lord Jesus, like St. Augustine, Aquinas, St. Boniface, St. Francis, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, Ignacio de Loyola et al.

[Shakespeare's Cobbler the ever loginner forgetter who needs to sync all his blog IDs]

What I don't get is how St. Lucy, if the eye-gouging story were true, was about fear. Fear is how decadent ancient Rome tried to rule those upstart Christians -- and St. Lucy, like the rest of the martyrs, just demonstrates that even making good on the threats of fear just plain doesn't work in the great grand scheme of things. St. Lucy of gouged-out eyes is an awe-filled example of Christianity kicking fear's *ss. You'd have to come into the picture already thinking Christianity has to do with fear in order to conclude this was evidence for that -- and in that case, you're using circular logic. Well, ok, it might not be so obstinate -- you could also think it's about fear simply because your brain shuts down in terror when you leave your supposedly fear-free bubble of hippy flower soap suds. I'll leave it up to those who feel such comments are directed at them to decide which is less insulting -- I'm just listing the possible ways one can bypass logic and reach a conclusion so backward.

[Catholic Art]

Honestly I believe during the past few months they actually thought they were on the very verge of bringing down the Catholic Church.