Michelli, "Art and Spirituality," cont'd
Under Classical thought, a church would have to be beautiful in order to do its job: that is, in order to sanctify the soul and to manifest God. Classical beauty was a system based on extensive observation of people's aesthetic reactions. Plato observed that people respond well to geometric proportions. Aristotle noted their enjoyment of bright colour and light. Plotinus put the whole together just as the Christianity was legalized and it became the foundation of all later church design: whole-number proportions, bright colour or light, and flawless condition. Here is an early example. Where a person's taste deviated from this, the problem was assumed to be in the person.
These rules could be applied to all artifacts and all buildings, regardless of style, and by the time of the Renaissance, Alberti (whose treatise on architecture was the handbook of choice for all architects in Wren and Hawksmoor's time) wrote that "without Beauty, God cannot manifest Himself". This system was therefore applied by Wren and Hawksmoor in order to achieve beautiful churches that would sanctify the soul and manifest God. That people actually do find their churches beautiful is a demonstration that the system was originally rooted in popular taste. Note also that, under this way of thinking, beauty cannot be a distraction because it is the visible aspect of God Himself.
All this would be a mere historical curiosity if it was not underpinned by the best physical and biological science of the time. Let's go back to Plato, whose science was based on observation, logic and inference, and thus strongly contrasted with the symbolic approach of neighbouring cultures. For a long time, Classical knowledge was the best knowledge available. Until Alberti's time, it was considered unassailable. In Wren and Hawksmoor's time it was under review but by no means debunked.
Plato conceived the soul as lodged behind the retina of the eye, where it received all visual stimuli and absorbed their quality. Beauty would therefore ennoble the soul, ugliness would demean it. Now, since Plato also conceived the universe as having been created to a perfect "virtual" blueprint but fashioned from the most disgusting dross (sewage), he also placed the potentially perfect human soul inside a prison of sewage.
Naturally, no one would look for perfection in sewage, so the soul is permanently under threat of corruption. Exposing that soul to scientifically designed beauty was therefore a powerful way to ensure its health and purity. Even today, when we don't worry about the distraction or expense, we still assume that beauty is good for the soul. For Wren and Hawksmoor, then, Beauty was the whole point and focus of attention, as much a part of the church and its function as the liturgy.
But beauty was never limited to design alone. Until the time of Kant, materials that seem over opulent to the American mind were an integral part of an object's beauty. Again, there were logical reasons for this which were directly connected with liturgical purpose. The issue hinges on the eternal perfection of God. If we are to produce a place worthy of His permanent presence, then necessarily it must be made of materials that not only have the best potential to take on beauty, but (especially) that best retain the flawless condition which is a requisite part of His beauty. Let's look at some of those materials.
