Music in the History of the Western Church. Dickinson Edward
service for the dead, office, exequies, and Mass, refers to the moment of death, and bears the imagination to the awful crisis of separation of soul and body.” “In like manner the Church prepares us during Advent for the commemoration of our dear Redeemer’s birth, as though it were really yet to take place. As the festival approaches, the same ideal return to the very moment and circumstances of our divine Redeemer’s birth is expressed; all the glories of the day are represented to the soul as if actually occurring.” “This principle, which will be found to animate the church service of every other season, rules most remarkably that of Holy Week, and gives it life and soul. It is not intended to be merely commemorative or historical; it is, strictly speaking, representative.”47 “The traditions and rules of church art,” says Jakob, “are by no means arbitrary, they are not an external accretion, but they proceed from within outward, they have grown organically from the guiding spirit of the Church, out of the requirements of her worship. Therein lies the justification of symbolism and symbolic representation in ecclesiastical art. The church of stone must be a speaking image of the living Church and her mysteries; the pictures on the walls and on the altars are not mere ornament for the eye, but for the heart a book full of instruction, a sermon full of truth. And thereby is art raised to be a participant in the work of edifying the believers; it becomes a profound teacher of thousands, a bearer and preserver of great ideas for the centuries.”48 “Our Holy Church,” says a German priest, “which completely understands the nature and the needs of humanity, presents to us divine truth and grace in sensible form, in order that by this means they may be more easily grasped and more securely appropriated by us. The law of sense perception, which constitutes so important a factor in human education, forms also a fundamental law in the action of Holy Church, whereby she seeks to raise us out of this earthly material life into the supernatural life of grace. She therefore confers upon us redemptive grace in the holy sacraments in connection with external signs, through which the inner grace is shadowed forth and accomplished, as for instance the inward washing of the soul from sin in baptism through the outward washing of the body. In like manner the eye of the instructed Catholic sees in the symbolic ceremonies of the holy sacrifice of the Mass the thrilling representation of the fall of man, our redemption, and finally our glorification at the second coming of our Lord. Out of this ground law of presentation to the senses has arisen the whole liturgy of the Church, i. e., the sum of all religious actions and prayers to the honor of God and the communication of his grace to us, and this whole expressive liturgy forms at once the solemn ceremonial in the sanctuary of the Heavenly King, in which he receives our adoration and bestows upon us the most plentiful tokens of his favor.”49
These citations sufficiently indicate the mind of the Catholic Church in respect to the uses of ritual and symbolic ceremony. The prime intention is the instruction and edification of the believer, but it is evident that a necessary element in this edification is the thought that the rite is one composite act of worship, a prayer, an offering to Almighty God. This is the theory of Catholic art, the view which pious churchmen have always entertained of the function of artistic forms in worship. That all the products of religious art in Catholic communities have been actuated by this motive alone would be too much to say. The principle of “art for art’s sake,” precisely antagonistic to the traditional ecclesiastical principle, has often made itself felt in periods of relapsed zeal, and artists have employed traditional subjects out of habit or policy, finding them as good as any others as bases for experiments in the achievement of sensuous charm in form, texture, and color. But so far as changeless dogma, liturgic unity, and consistent tradition have controlled artistic effort, individual determination has been allowed enough play to save art from petrifying into a hieratic formalism, but not enough to endanger the faith, morals, or loyalty of the flock. He therefore who would know the spirit of Catholicism must give a large portion of his study to its art. From the central genius of this institution, displayed not merely in its doctrines and traditions, but also in its sublime faith in its own divine ordination and guidance, and in its ideals of holiness, have issued its liturgy, its ceremonial, and the infinitely varied manifestations of its symbolic, historic, and devotional art. The Catholic Church has aimed to rear on earth a visible type of the spiritual kingdom of God, and to build for her disciples a home, suggestive in its splendor of the glory prepared for those who keep the faith.
All Catholic art, in so far as it may in the strict use of language be called church art, separates itself from the larger and more indefinite category of religious art, and derives its character not from the personal determination of individual artists, but from conceptions and models that have become traditional and canonical. These traditional laws and forms have developed organically out of the needs of the Catholic worship; they derive their sanction and to a large extent their style from the doctrine and also from the ceremonial. The centre of the whole churchly life is the altar, with the great offices of worship there performed. Architecture, painting, decoration, music, – all are comprehended in a unity of impression through the liturgy which they serve. Ecclesiastical art has evolved from within the Church itself, and has drawn its vitality from those ideas which have found their permanent and most terse embodiment in the liturgy. Upon the liturgy and the ceremonial functions attending it must be based all study of the system of artistic expression officially sanctioned by the Catholic Church.
The Catholic liturgy, or text of the Mass, is not the work of any individual or conference. It is a growth, an evolution. Set forms of prayer began to come into use as soon as the first Christian congregations were founded by the apostles. The dogma of the eucharist was the chief factor in giving the liturgy its final shape. By a logical process of selection and integration, certain prayers, Scripture lessons, hymns, and responses were woven together, until the whole became shaped into what may be called a religious poem, in which was expressed the conceived relation of Christ to the Church, and the emotional attitude of the Church in view of his perpetual presence as both paschal victim and high priest. This great prayer of the Catholic Church is mainly composed of contributions made by the Eastern Church during the first four centuries. Its essential features were adopted and transferred to Latin by the Church of Rome, and after a process of sifting and rearranging, with some additions, its form was completed by the end of the sixth century essentially as it stands to-day. The liturgy is, therefore, the voice of the Church, weighted with her tradition, resounding with the commanding tone of her apostolic authority, eloquent with the longing and the assurance of innumerable martyrs and confessors, the mystic testimony to the commission which the Church believes to have been laid upon her by the Holy Spirit. It is not surprising, therefore, that devout Catholics have come to consider this liturgy as divinely inspired, raised above all mere human speech, the language of saints and angels, a truly celestial poem; and that Catholic writers have well-nigh exhausted the vocabulary of enthusiasm in expounding its spiritual significance.
The insistence upon the use of one unvarying language in the Mass and all the other offices of the Catholic Church is necessarily involved in the very conception of catholicity and immutability. A universal Church must have a universal form of speech; national languages imply national churches; the adoption of the vernacular would be the first step toward disintegration. The Catholic, into whatever strange land he may wander, is everywhere at home the moment he enters a sanctuary of his faith, for he hears the same worship, in the same tongue, accompanied with the same ceremonies, that has been familiar to him from childhood. This universal language must inevitably be the Latin. Unlike all living languages it is never subject to change, and hence there is no danger that any misunderstanding of refined points of doctrine or observance will creep in through alteration in the connotation of words. Latin is the original language of the Catholic Church, the language of scholarship and diplomacy in the period of ecclesiastical formation, the tongue to which were committed the ritual, articles of faith, legal enactments, the writings of the fathers of the Church, ancient conciliar decrees, etc. The only exceptions to the rule which prescribes Latin as the liturgical speech are to be found among certain Oriental congregations, where, for local reasons, other languages are permitted, viz., Greek, Syriac, Chaldaic, Slavonic, Wallachian, Armenian, Coptic, and Ethiopic. In each of these instances, however, the liturgic speech is not the vernacular, but the ancient form which has passed out of use in other relations.50
The
Wiseman,
Jakob,
Sermon by Dr. Leonhard Kuhn, published in the
O’Brien,