ABSTRACT

Theophany in Luminosity: The Theology of Light in Gothic and Shaker Architecture

Lydia Williamson

Director: David Lyle Jeffrey, Ph.D.

Light is a dominant metaphor in Scripture for conveying the relationship between humanity and the divine, from God’s command, “Let there be light” (Gen 1:3), to the Psalmist’s declaration of Scripture as “a lamp unto my feet” (Ps 119:105), to John’s description of Christ as the light that “shines in the darkness,” (Jn 1:5), to the description of the Celestial City as radiant with the glory of the Lord (Rev 21). The Christian exegetical tradition develops this metaphor further. Early French Gothic architecture and Shaker architecture, though disparate in time periods, locations, and traditions, both capture the beauty, purity, and simplicity of light. I argue that in medieval sanctuaries and in Shaker communities, the element of light is used to mystically manifest a heavenly vision on earth, visually incorporating aspects of Gothic and Shaker theology into their respective holy spaces, and guiding the worshippers to contemplate the Uncreated Light.

APPROVED BY DIRECTOR OF HONORS THESIS: ______________________________________________

Dr. David Lyle Jeffrey, Honors Program

APPROVED BY THE HONORS PROGRAM: ______________________________________________ Dr. Elizabeth Corey, Director DATE: __________________________

THEOPHANY IN LUMINOSITY: THE THEOLOGY OF LIGHT IN GOTHIC AND

SHAKER ARCHITECTURE

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of

Baylor University

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the

Honors Program

By

Lydia Williamson

Waco, Texas

May 2017

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... iii CHAPTER ONE: Introduction ........................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER TWO: Theology of Light in Scripture and the Exegetical Tradition ............. 16 CHAPTER THREE: Theology of Light in Gothic Architecture ...................................... 41 CHAPTER FOUR: Theology of Light in Shaker Architecture ........................................ 57 CHAPTER FIVE: Conclusion .......................................................................................... 73 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................. 79

iii

LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE 1.1. Chartres Choir .............................................................................................. 3 FIGURE 1.2. Brother’s Shop, Mount Lebanon .................................................................. 4 FIGURE 1.3. Center Family Dwelling House, Pleasant Hill, Kentucky ............................ 4 FIGURE 1.4. First Floor Hall, Center Dwelling House, South Union, Kentucky . ............ 7 FIGURE 3.1. Chartres Nave ............................................................................................ 42 FIGURE 3.2. Ground Plans and Elevation of Gothic Canopy Supports .......................... 45 FIGURE 3.3. Ground Plans and Elevation of Gothic Pinnacle ........................................ 45 FIGURE 3.4. Southern Rose Window at Chartres ........................................................... 55 FIGURE 4.1. Shaker Spirit Drawing ................................................................................ 59 FIGURE 4.2. Central Hallway, Central Dwelling House, Pleasant Hill, Kentucky ........ 65 FIGURE 4.3. Double Window over Ministry Stair, Pleasant Hill, Kentucky .................. 66 FIGURE 4.4. Arched Transom over Infirmary Door. Pleasant Hill, Kentucky ............... 66 FIGURE 4.5. Shaker Meetinghouse, Sabbathday Lake, Maine ....................................... 68

1

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

Worship in Windows and Walls

Two summers ago, during a study abroad trip, I visited Notre Dame de Chartres, a

beautiful cathedral about an hour’s train ride outside of Paris. It was a Wednesday, and

my 19th birthday, and instead of having class, we were taking a field trip to hear from

renowned Chartres tour guide, Malcolm Miller, about the cathedral. Stepping into the

cathedral was, in and of itself, a transcendent experience for me; even with significant

restoration underway, the towering vaults, dazzling stained-glass windows, and stately

elegance of the edifice made a huge impression on me. My delight and reverence were

furthered during Mr. Miller’s tour, as he likened the cathedral to a book to be read, and

explicated various stained-glass windows and tympana statuary for us. It was my first

time to hear an exegesis of architecture, and I was thrilled; I had never realized something

could be built with such beautiful craftsmanship, painstaking intentionality, and depth.

In Masterworks in Art two semesters later, Dr. Jeffrey lectured on the theology

that influenced early French Gothic architecture—specifically, the edifices of St. Denis

and Chartres. Retrospectively learning the theological underpinnings of these spaces, and

the intuitions and imagination of the medieval mind, was fascinating to me. I developed

an interest in the meaning in religious architecture, particularly with respect to the

element of light. As a photographer, I have always been particularly attentive to natural

2

light. Through my initial readings for this thesis regarding Chartres and St. Denis, light,

which was already aesthetically compelling to me, became theologically compelling.

I was introduced to Shaker architecture, and came across a work by Henry

Plummer, entitled Stillness & Light: The Silent Eloquence of Shaker Architecture, which

contains an introductory essay, “Building a State of Grace,” followed by a photo essay of

more than 100 images. Together, these mediums explore the theology of light in Shaker

architecture, a theology that is not so much overt (there are few source materials that

explicitly deal with the meaning of their architecture) as it is intuitive. Meetinghouses

and Dwellinghouses are designed so that light pours generously through abundant

windows, reflects off of white plaster walls and wooden floors, and flows from room to

room through careful layout and ingenious conduits like transom windows. Akin to the

Gothic use of light, in Shaker architecture light is almost treated as a building material

itself (Plummer 2009, Preface). While most immediately serving a practical purpose,

light reinforces and reiterates aspects of Shaker theology and spirituality, having a

purifying, sanctifying effect.

As I read and viewed Plummer’s work, I couldn’t help but think of the light that

streamed through stained-glass windows in Chartres and St. Denis. I began to wonder

what these different takes on light in architecture meant. How is light intentionally

filtered, framed, and focused, and what does it illuminate? What does this say about

respective understandings of the Christian life and afterlife; what does light figure or

represent? In this thesis, I have thus taken up as my task an exploration of these

questions.

3

A Fruitful Comparison At first glance, Gothic and Shaker architecture seem to have very little in

common; separated by centuries, cultural contexts, and traditions, they seem, at first, an

unmatched pair. Examining the architectural and theological similarities will reveal the

possibility for a fruitful study of these two architectures alongside one another, drawing

out the power of light to convey a heavenly vision in both, while also bringing

differences between the two into stark relief.

Light is a particularly prominent, powerful element of the architecture in both

early Gothic spaces and in Shaker spaces, and a careful intentionality and precision with

directing and filtering natural light is evident in both. The stained-glass windows of

Chartres and St. Denis greatly increased the capacity for luminosity in contrast to their

Romanesque predecessors (Fig. 1.1).

Fig 1.1: Chartres choir. Public Domain.

4

Flying buttresses, pointed arches, and ribbed vaults allowed sanctuaries to be built with

far larger windows and less heavy walls (in both a physical and visual sense). The

windows, then, act as “walls of light” (von Simson 1989, 4).

Shakers, too, sought to maximize light by placing windows in their architecture

wherever they could. The walls seem subservient to these portals of light in design,

filling in the space around the windows (Fig. 1.2, 1.3). They tried to eliminate pillars

from their buildings, as well, so as not to interrupt the elegance and spaciousness of

rooms, which light so gracefully accented. Their intentionality in this regard was

particular in their Meetinghouses, the places where they gathered in dance and song on

the Sabbath.

Fig. 1.2, left. The brick Brother’s Shop, Mount Lebanon Shaker Village in Mount Lebanon, New York. National Park Service. Fig 1.3, right. Center Family Dwelling

House, Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. Henry Plummer 2009, Stillness & Light 55.

In both architectures, proportion and austerity complement and emphasize

luminosity. Proportion and ratio were foundational to the builders of Chartres. Patristic

5

and medieval exegetes took Wisdom of Solomon 11:20, “thou hast ordered all things in

measure and number and weight,” to indicate that numbers and measurements had a

spiritual and anagogical function; they found a wealth of meaning in Old Testament

passages such as God’s instructions for the tabernacle and Solomon’s temple, and

Ezekiel’s vision of the temple. Neo-Platonism highly valued geometry as most perfectly

conveying truth. With the influence of these two streams of thought, numbers and ratios

were seen as reflecting an order embedded in the universe; the medieval theologian

believed geometry had an “‘anagogical’ function… [an] ability to lead the mind from the

world of appearances to the contemplation of the divine order” (von Simson 1989, 22).

Accordingly, architects based their measurements on polygons, especially the square.

Geometry, which had mainly been practical in designing architecture, became artistic as

well (von Simson 1989, 14-16).

Chartres and St. Denis, compared to preceding Romanesque architecture, are

relativity austere, and this austerity emphasizes the structure in a new way. At Chartres,

for instance, statues of biblical and historical figures seem embedded into a preexisting

structure, rather than grafted on; “The statues at Chartres are immobile without being

constrained, columnar without being compressed, easily fitting into an ideal shape.” The

expressions of the figures are stoic, not sentimentally stirring, a movement toward the

intellect and the ideal in the statuary. This results in “a harmony between tectonic and

natural qualities” (Katzenellenbogen 1964, 43). At Chartres and St. Denis, light and ratio

play a more dominant role than before, and intellectual contemplation is the goal of the

imagery, rather than an emotional reaction.

6

The new Gothic spaces, then, stressed the ideal. Luminosity and order were two

of the most important aspects of the architects’ ideal of beauty, and imitating these ideals

was to participate in Beauty itself. Order and luminosity complement one another.

Graceful structures, austerity, and less emotive focus bring light more to the fore

aesthetically. Order and luminosity come together most clearly in the rose window, one

of the most dazzling accomplishments of Gothic architecture.

Shaker architecture, too, was built with careful attention to order, and aimed to

create spaces that could visually calm and discipline. Of the hall in Fig. 1.4, for instance,

Plummer asserts that “A perceptual balance of the whole is maintained by the dual

arrangement of a large number of stronger and weaker foci, consistently drawing

attention back to an invisible centerline” (Plummer 2009, 38). The consistent, calm

movement of the space is patterned after Shaker life. Shakers would always move and

work with purpose, yet unhurriedly, following Mother Ann’s instructions to “do all your

work as though you had a thousand years to live, and as you would if you knew you must

die tomorrow.” Attention to harmony in architecture facilitates and guides the order and

harmony desired in both the practical routine of everyday life of the Shaker, and

encourages a peaceful, well-ordered spiritual life. As in the case of Gothic architecture,

proportion is not merely practical, but artful.

Moreso than Gothic architecture, Shaker architecture is austere. Essentially

devoid of images, Shaker buildings have a “refined poverty” which reveals elements in

“their bare essence”; Shakers sought to rid themselves of unnecessary objects and return

to the fullest sense of being (Plummer 2009, 3). This reflects their monastic way of life,

7

which was celibate, self-sacrificial, and devoid of personal belongings as it celebrated

community and sharing.

Fig. 1.4. First Floor Hall, Center Dwelling House. South Union, Kentucky. Henry Plummer 2009, Stillness & Light 38.

Where there are details in the architecture, they are simple and humble, and

mainly natural, subdued tones are used. Symmetry and lines are emphasized. As with

the Gothic sanctuaries, Shaker spaces represented heavenly ideals of simplicity and

beauty, which would facilitate the simple lives that the Shakers strove to have.

Both Gothic and Shaker architecture come at the dawn of new movements. The

new religious energy and excitement provide both medieval “theologian-architects” and

early Shakers the opportunity to construct a physical vision of a compelling spiritual

vision. In the latter part of the twelfth century, an intellectual movement emerged in

8

France, particularly powerful at the School of Chartres, which embraced and

synchronized Augustine’s thought about order and geometry and Platonic metaphysics

(von Simson 1989, 25). In addition, many people at the time thought the patron saint of

France, St. Denis, was identical to the figure of Dionysius, the Christian convert from the

Areopagus in Acts 17; they also thought he was identical to Pseudo-Dionysius, a

philosopher who fused neo-Platonic and Christian thought. This made for a metaphysical

Christian vision profoundly shaped by French ideas and history (Panofsky 1979, 17-19).

The growing enthusiasm for neo-Platonic ideals, and the sense of God’s favor over

France, help to account for the explosive zeal with which the projects of Chartres and St.

Denis were undertaken.

Religious zeal also propelled the Shakers. They sought to establish a new utopian

society, based on their belief in the Second Coming of Christ through Mother Ann Lee.

Merton describes this new revelation as compelling them to create communities that

reflected “a cosmos of creativity and worship.” “They were simple, joyous, optimistic

people whose joy was rooted in the fact that Christ had come” (Pearson 2003, 77). Their

vision of Christ’s second coming was the impetus of their asceticism and craftsmanship.

The movement was uniquely American, as the early Gothic movement was uniquely

French; the Shakers expressed with humility and elegance “much that is best in the

American spirit… the simplicity, the practicality, the earnestness, and the hope that have

been associated with the United States” (Pearson 2003, 81-82). The momentum of

religious enthusiasm that prompted the construction of St. Denis, Chartres, and Shaker

communities suggests a certain intentionality and consciousness of the architecture that

makes the case for deliberate embedded meaning stronger.

9

Theologically, the Shakers and medieval Catholics share a vision of the Christian

life wherein believers bring heaven to earth. In the context of medieval thought, a church

was a figure of the Heavenly Jerusalem, and the liturgical worship therein was seen as

participating mystically in an ultimate, eschatological worship. The physical reality was

permeated by the spiritual reality for the medieval Christian, and this is echoed in the

Shaker sentiment that “heaven and earth are threads of one loom” (Plummer 2009, 2).

The Shakers were millenialist, believing that Christ had already come again in the person

of Mother Ann Lee; they sought to purify the world and bring things back to their

simplest essence by living as brothers and sisters in innocence and celibacy, creating

furniture and other objects according to their heavenly ideals of beauty, and combining

ordered communal singing and dancing with individual visionary experience.

Already, then, interesting correlations between these two architectures emerge.

Moving forward, we will see how these two radically different takes on architecture are

fitting to their respective theological frameworks. Before proceeding, however, we will

orient this study within the broader conversations about meaning in religious space.

Context: The Study of Religious Space

Spaces embody belief, as the Gothic cathedral and Shaker Meetinghouse

exemplify. The places we inhabit, the structures we build, and the rituals we establish

shape us even as we shape them. The power of place has long been recognized and

utilized in the design of religious space; holy places may be conduits of divine encounter,

as spaces that communicate transcendence and offer “liminality,” a unique closeness of

10

divinity to humanity.1 The power and transcendence that many experience in great

cathedrals, pilgrimage sites, or even small, unassuming chapels, is unmistakable,

regardless of whether we interpret these qualities as substantive or sacralized.2

Holy places may be polylocative, as a visible physical reality closely relates to an

invisible spiritual reality; religious space is thus “a territory that often is nondefinitive,

protean, multivalent, temporally ambiguous, irregular, and by definition unchartable”

(Corrigan 2009, 160). As such, they can present complicated, specific accounts of the

nature of theophany. We will certainly see this in the case of both Gothic and Shaker

theology, which share a profound sacramental sense, a sense of the overlap of physical

and spiritual worlds.

There are many ways to understand and analyze sacred space, because it is a

subject that is, in many ways, interdisciplinary, at the intersection of religion, history,

anthropology, geography, architecture, and social studies, among others. In her article,

“Approaching Religious Space: An Overview of Theories, Methods, and Challenges in

Religious Studies,” Jeanne Halgren Kilde presents a taxonomy of four main approaches

1 For more on the “liminality” of religious spaces, cf. Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. 2 A substantive understanding of religious space approaches space from a “religious insider” perspective, assuming an ontologically real divine presence. This assumption is associated with structuralist, hermeneutical inquiries into the meaning of religious space. A sacralized understanding of religious space, meanwhile, sees the meaning of religious space as created and sustained by the behaviors and rituals of the people who create it, and their relationships with one another and with religious outsiders, as well. This approach is associated with socio-historical studies of religious space (Kilde 2013, 185-190). For the purposes of this thesis, I will primarily align myself with the former line of inquiry.

11

scholars have taken: hermeneutical, socio-historical, critical-spatial, and critical-spatial

within religions.

For the purpose of this thesis, I will be mainly using a structuralist, hermeneutical

approach, examining the universal correspondences and patterns of these two

architectures. This approach assumes a more static, consistent meaning, as opposed to a

socio-historical take that would see meaning as shifting and changing with human

behavior and relationship to space. The structuralist approach in the study of religious

space also generally assumes a “religious insider” perspective, taking for granted a real

divine presence (Kilde 2013, 184-188). In this thesis, it is appropriate to operate from this

perspective, because from the viewpoint of the medieval parishioner or the Shaker, a

church was imbued with the holy in a substantive, significant way. Identifying a static,

rather than dynamic, meaning in the architecture will help to simplify and clarify our

comparison.

Mircea Eliade’s influential book, The Sacred and the Profane, was one of the

foundational texts in the development of the hermeneutical approach, and his account of

holy space is pertinent to our study. For him, sacred space is differentiated from the

profane by the presence of the sacred; the sacred is ontologically and qualitatively

different from the profane, in that it is the source of being and reality, and breaks through

the homogeneity of the profane to reveal a distinctive “other” reality. The sacred in turn

reorients the profane world, as it becomes an axis mundi around which the profane is

reassembled. The relationship of the sacred to the profane is thus one of being to non-

being, of orientation to disorientation, of differentiation to neutral homogeneity (Eliade

1959, 20-25).

12

When the divine, supernatural, or “other” is made manifest to humans, it is

through what Eliade terms a hierophany. A hierophany transforms and brings meaning to

the physical and profane world, for with the sacred is meaning, power, and being. The

religious man seeks to remain as close as possible to the sacred: “for primitives as for the

man of all pre-modern societies, the sacred is equivalent to a power, and, in the last

analysis, to reality. The sacred is saturated with being. Sacred power means reality and

at the same time enduringness and efficacity… religious man deeply desires to be, to

participate in reality, to be saturated with power” (Eliade 1959, 12-13).

For Eliade, the sacred is an irruption into the profane world that interrupts the

homogeneity of space; it is a “break” in the homogenized, neutral, relative world. In the

profane world, there is no “point of reference,” so that in a hierophany there is a

“revelation of an absolute reality, opposed to the nonreality of the vast surrounding

expanse.” Thus, “the manifestation of the sacred ontologically founds the world” around

an axis mundi (Eliade 1959, 21). Then there is an organized cosmos, instead of chaos,

and the religious man seeks to fix himself at the center of it.

Eliade’s approach to understanding sacred space is substantive, because he

defines space as sacred when it is set apart because of divine presence or power. In

Sacred Power, Sacred Space: An Introduction to Christian Architecture and Worship,

Jeanne Halgren Kilde notes how a substantive view of the divine aligns quite well with a

sacramental worldview; many believers in a Catholic or Orthodox tradition within

Christianity believe the presence of God to be ontological and physical, a prime example

being the affirmation of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Others within

Christianity, however, affirm a supernatural presence that is more metaphorical; many

13

Protestants would affirm the “spiritual importance” of their sanctuaries, but hesitate to

say that this spiritual empowerment corresponds to a physical reality (Kilde 2008, 5-6).

Unlike some of their Protestant counterparts, the Shakers do take a mystical view on

space and light, considering it as a physical means of apprehending spiritual truth.

The Structure of this Study

To bolster and set up the contrast between Gothic and Shaker architecture, I will

first examine the biblical and patristic basis for light revealing, and figuring, God. Some

of the most immediate biblical passages for the relationship of God and light come from

the apostle John: “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 Jn 1:15) and “The

light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (Jn 1:5). 3 Light is an

important figure of God throughout Scripture, as we may see in Moses’ shining face as he

came down from the mountain, and Christ’s Transfiguration, and the tongues of fire at

Pentecost; God revealed Himself in the burning bush, and as a pillar of fire in front of the

Israelites in the Old Testament. These passages reveal a strong basis for associating

God’s presence and guidance, as well as holiness and blessedness, with light. Light is

also closely tied with knowledge and spiritual understanding; the Psalms say, “Your

Word is a lamp for my feet, and a light for my path” (Ps 119:105). In this chapter, I will

also consider the significance of light as it is developed in the exegetical tradition,

considering some of the theologians that wrote extensively about light leading up to the

13th century.

3 Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.

14

Next, I will analyze light in the structures of Notre Dame de Chartres and the

abbey of St. Denis. In these spaces, “corporeal light [acts as] an ‘analogy’ to the divine

light” (von Simson 1989). Light pours through stained-glass windows, which represent

teachers, and illuminates scenes from Scripture and their interpretation according to the

tradition of exegesis. These sanctuaries look back to the tabernacle and temple, and

forward to the Heavenly Jerusalem, connecting the Church militant with the faithful

across time and space. It filters out the outside world, crystallizing in its stead a radiant

heavenly vision that focuses the viewer on the altar of the Eucharist. The cathedral is

designed and built in continuity with Catholic tradition; the Church is the navis, the

vessel to eternal life, and it transfigures the profane reality outside into the sacred reality

within.

Finally, I will analyze light in the architecture from early Shaker communities,

including Pleasant Hill, Kentucky; South Union, Kentucky; Hancock, Massachusetts;

Sabbathday Lake, Maine; and Canterbury, New Hampshire. Associating light with

clarity, purity, simplicity, and the presence and revelation of God, the Shakers used light

to reflect their ascetic, celibate, communal conceptions of the Christian life. Their

beautiful continuity between the spiritual life and the physical life—epitomized in their

saying, “put your hands to work and your mind to God”—comes together in the element

of light, as light illuminates and guides their everyday, practical lives while also

illuminating their minds and souls.

I will argue that in these architectures, light bridges the physical and spiritual

worlds, not merely “representing” a heavenly vision but mystically manifesting it. Light

exhibits the heavenly ideals of order and beauty that both medieval Catholics and Shakers

15

strove to embody in their buildings, their worship, and their lives. In Gothic

ecclesiastical architecture, light figures the revelation communicated through the tradition

of the Catholic Church, as it filters through the exegetical “teachers” of the stained-glass

windows. Light calls one to contemplation and transfigures the outside world. In Shaker

architecture, light is inspiration and figures the direct, personal revelation of truth,

complementing the intense visionary Shaker spirituality. This direct revelation happens

in the context of the Shaker community. Both architectures utilize light as a powerful

element to represent revelation and to reinforce ritual.

16

CHAPTER TWO

Theology of Light in Scripture and the Exegetical Tradition

Before we begin our analysis of Gothic and Shaker architecture, respectively, we

will first examine theological conceptions of light founded in Scripture and interpreted by

theologians from St. Gregory of Nyssa to Aquinas and Bonaventure. From Genesis to

Revelation, light pervades Scripture as a metaphor for holiness and as an indicator of

God’s presence. The varied iterations of the theme provide a rich wealth of passages

from which exegetes can draw upon. We will first address some of these instances in

Scripture before turning specifically to the Western exegetical tradition concerning light.

Light in Scripture

The centrality and importance of light is evident in God’s first words, “Let there

be light” (Genesis 1:4). Before God creates, “The earth was without form and void, and

darkness was over the face of the deep” (English Standard Version, Gen. 1:2). Form

begins as light interrupts the void, and light precedes and enables the rest of creation.

This is certainly evident in the natural world, for the sun sustains life on Earth by its light.

Time also begins as light differentiates and orients it; God “separated the light from the

darkness,” creating Day and Night (Gen. 1:5). The day, perhaps the most fundamental

timekeeping measure, anchors the human experience and acts as a point of reference.

With the first divine fiat, form and time are brought into existence.

Light is also tied with rhythms and cycles. On the fourth day of creation, God

creates the sun, moon, and stars, and commands, “let them be for signs and for seasons,

17

and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light

upon the earth” (Gen. 1:14-15). Light establishes natural rhythms and cycles, as it breaks

up years into seasons, seasons into months, and months into days. Onto these natural

rhythms, feasts and fasts will later be overlaid. Light gives structure and orientation to

human existence.

The creation account establishes light as a central orienting force, particularly in

reference to the sun, moon, and stars. In Exodus, light more often signifies power,

presence, and guidance in the form of miraculous fire. God chooses to manifest Himself

to Moses in the burning bush (a bush that is miraculously not consumed by the fire) (Ex.

3:1-6). This encounter is the first time that God defines Himself as “I AM,” a significant

point in God’s revelation of Himself to His people. God commands Moses to take off his

shoes, for where he is standing is holy ground. The fire signifies God’s presence,

identifying Yahweh as holy, set apart, and “other.” It also establishes God’s power and

sovereignty over natural phenomena, and contributes to a motivation for reverence and

awe.

Miraculous fire also figures divine revelation in the pillar of fire that goes before

the Israelites and leads them in the desert. As they travel through the wilderness, God

goes “before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in

a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. The pillar of

cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people” (Ex.

13:21-22). The pillar of fire during the night reveals God’s continual presence and

power. It also reveals God’s gradually unfolding guidance. As the Israelites must trust

God daily for sustenance in the form of manna, so they must also trust God daily for

18

direction and guidance in their journey through the wilderness. God’s guidance through

the desert is a powerful image that is reiterated through Scripture later, in Nehemiah and

in the Psalms, as an example of God’s faithfulness. The story also associates light with

journeys and with pilgrimage; God is present with, and steadfastly guides, those who are

landless and wandering.

Fire is the light which physically guides and orients the Israelites in their

surroundings; it is also spiritually the light that is meant to orient and clarify all things,

and this role is specific and exclusive to Yahweh. There is no room for idols or false

gods. Thus, it is said, “For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God” (Deut

4:24). Fire purifies and consumes the profane.

Miraculous fire at Mount Sinai communicates God’s presence and power, yet

darkness also plays a prominent role in representing God, as it communicates His

hiddenness. Moses’s recounting of God’s laws and instructions is broken up by the

vignettes that describe the occurrences and movement on Mount Sinai. Exodus 19:18

describes Mount Sinai at Israel’s encounter with God before the giving of the covenant:

“Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the LORD had descended on it in fire.

The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled

greatly.” The interplay of light and darkness conveys God’s power and hiddenness, as it

evidences His sovereignty over nature, prevents the Israelites from seeing clearly, and

reiterates the theme of God’s presence in fire. The Israelites fear God when they behold

the thunder and lightning, recognizing His holiness and power, and Moses approaches

“thick darkness” to hear the words of God (Ex. 20:18-21).

19

Before Moses receives the instructions for God’s tabernacle, the tabernacle’s

instruments, and the priestly garments, the mountain is described more in terms of its

darkness; Moses must wait in the cloud on the mountain for six days before God calls

him out on the seventh, and when this happens “the appearance of the glory of the LORD

was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel”

(Ex. 24:17). The miraculous fire at Mount Sinai accompanies God’s further revelation of

Himself; I AM now delivers His instructions to His people, the covenant that He will

keep with Israel. Light (and darkness) mark the occasion as holy and set apart. These

themes are also reiterated in God’s instructions to keep the lamps in the tabernacle

burning continually (Ex. 27:20).

When Moses returns from Mount Sinai after forty days and forty nights, a

different sort of light is introduced as representing divine presence. Moses carries the

second set of tablets in his hand, and as he descends, his face is shining. According to

Exodus 34:30-31, he “did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been

talking with God. Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses, and behold, the skin of

his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him.” God manifests His presence with

the Israelites as a people when He goes before them in the desert in the cloud and fire; He

reveals Himself to Moses in the burning bush. But now Moses is physically set apart, and

marked as a mediator between God and His people (Ex. 34:32). In this way, he is a type

of Christ, made clear in Christ’s Transfiguration.

The increased specificity of holiness and closeness to the divine, signified through

light, is continued in Psalms and Proverbs. The psalms that celebrate “the man who fears

the Lord” declare, “Light dawns in the darkness for the upright” (Ps. 112:1-4). Light

20

represents the righteous while darkness represents the wicked: “The light of the righteous

rejoices, but the lamp of the wicked will be put out” (Prov. 13:9). Light represents

wisdom, guidance, and preservation that comes through a righteous life. Enlightenment

even continues to grow: “the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines

brighter and brighter until full day” (Prov. 4:18).

While light represents holy, righteous individuals in the Psalms, it is also used to

describe God, and God’s Law. The psalmist writes in Psalm 119, “Your word is a lamp

unto my feet, and a light unto my path,” and “The unfolding of your words gives light; it

imparts understanding to the simple” (Ps. 119:105, 130). These passages reinforce light

as revelation, as we saw in the burning bush and on Mount Sinai. They also reinforce

God’s presence, as He becomes present to His people through His Law; His words guide

and protect those who follow Him, giving clarity, meaning, and strength. In Psalm 27:1

the psalmist declares, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” and

later, he writes, “For with you is the fountain of life: in your light shall we see light” (Ps.

36:9). God led the Israelites out of Egypt and to the Promised Land in a pillar of fire;

God leads the righteous to blessedness and to life through His commandments.

Light also represents splendor, a luminosity that surrounds the holy. Psalm 104 is

a psalm of praise that celebrates God’s majesty. “O Lord my God, you are very great!” it

reads, “You are clothed with splendor and majesty, covering yourself with light as with a

garment” (Ps. 104:1-2). Isaiah 60 prophecies the glory of the future Zion: “Arise, shine,

for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you… the Lord will

arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. And nations shall come to your

light, and kings to the brightness of your rising” (Is. 60:1-3). Luminosity represents

21

God’s favor that will shine on Israel, His presence, and His choice of Israel as a nation set

apart for Him. Neither the sun nor the moon will be needed in that day, for “the Lord

will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory” (Is. 60:19). The

language of splendor and of God Himself providing light returns in descriptions of the

Heavenly Jerusalem, in Revelation.

Another prophecy in Isaiah tells of the coming of Christ: “The people that walked

in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death,

upon them hath the light shined” (Is. 9:2; Matt. 4:16). The mystery of the Incarnation is

explained as light irrupting into the darkness of the world, bringing new revelation and

new hope. John, in his prologue to his Gospel, tries to capture this mystery in all its

theological complexity:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it… The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world (Jn 1:1-9).

This prologue draws upon the biblical themes of light we have ascertained from the Old

Testament. The parallelism to the creation account in Genesis 1 is unmistakable, and we

see Christ as the One through whom all things were created. The One who commanded,

“Let there be light,” is the Uncreated Light; “God is light, and in him is no darkness at

all” (1 Jn 1:5). In the Incarnation, the Creator enters creation; human nature is redeemed.

This meeting of humanity and divinity, a wondrous new revelation of God to His people,

is described as light entering into darkness and overwhelming it. God’s presence with

His people, figured in light and fire, is made more intimate and profound as Christ,

22

Emmanuel, dwells among us. Divine guidance and protection is made incarnate; Christ

asserts of Himself, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in

darkness, but will have the light of life” (Jn 8:12). He brings us life, clarity, and healing,

making the blind—both physically and spiritually—see.

In the Transfiguration, Christ’s face shines, and His clothes become “white as

light” (Matt. 17:2). God the Father says, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well

pleased; listen to Him” (Matt. 17:5). Christ’s face shines as Moses’s shone in Exodus,

revealing Moses as an allegorical Christ figure. Christ is a prophet, who leads His people

to the Promised Land, the Kingdom of Heaven. He ushers in a new covenant in Himself.

He atones for the sins of the people. He perfects what God began in Moses.

Paul tells the Corinthians, connecting the creation narrative with Christ, that

“God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light

of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). Corporeal

light parallels spiritual light, as the One who illuminates the world illuminates our hearts,

showing His glory in His Son. James 1:17 says that “Every good and perfect gift is from

above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like

shifting shadows.” The vivid image of gifts coming down from heaven in radiant rays

differentiates the source of light from the rays that emanate from it. It is an image that

both Pseudo-Dionysius and Bonaventure use in developing their theology of light. This

passage also reinforces that God is the everlasting light, and that there is neither darkness

nor change in him. Darkness represents not only the absence of light, but mutability,

suggesting that darkness is derivative of light, for light is the positive force that founds

23

and orients the world. As a rejection of dualism, this verse illustrates that as God and

Satan are not equal opposites, so light and darkness are not equal opposites.

Those who follow Christ are lights, vessels of the Gospel to the world. Christ

tells his disciples, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.

Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to

all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see

your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:14-16). The

Gospel of Christ brings light to the darkness of the world, and believers are commanded

to reveal that light, and not to hide it. God dwells in us in the Person of the Holy Spirit.

The images of miraculous fire from the Old Testament are reiterated at Pentecost, as the

Holy Spirit comes to rest on the apostles in tongues of fire. God’s guidance and power

are now within His people in the Person of the Holy Spirit, an inner light.

Heaven is a place full of light. The sun and moon, paramount to the kronos, are

not needed in the eternal realm, for God is the everlasting light. We see repetition of

themes from Isaiah 60 in Revelation 21-22; there is no need for the sun or moon, because

the light of God’s glory illuminates all things (Rev. 21:23-22:5). Light shows the

splendor, power, presence, guidance, and protection of the Lord, in all perfection and

fullness . And the darkness that represented God’s hiddenness at Mount Sinai gives way

to the Beatific vision. In the Heavenly Jerusalem, the foundations of the walls are twelve

layers of precious stones, while the city is made of “pure gold, like clear glass” (Rev.

21:18). It seems difficult not to see the stained-glass of medieval cathedrals as an attempt

to capture some of the splendor. Heaven is overwhelmingly radiant, a place dazzling

with light in every way. The murky earthly experience of God is made crystal clear: “For

24

now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall

know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12).

The numerous and varied passages in which light is referenced reveal the Biblical

theme of light as a complex and fascinating substance. Light indicates the presence and

power of the divine, and clarifies the dynamic between divine and human, heaven and

earth. It is a powerful metaphor that communicates holiness and transcendence, and it is

used to convey theology and mystery.

Light in the Exegetical Tradition

It is unsurprising, therefore, that the theme of light in Scripture enjoyed

prominence in early Christian thought. One of the earliest hymns written, the “Phos

Hilaron” (translated in English as “O Gracious Light” or “O Gladsome Light”) is sung at

eventide. At the coming of the night, it welcomes the “light” in the Person of Christ, who

is “pure brightness of the ever-living Father in heaven.” The Nicene Creed speaks of

Christ as “Light from Light, true God from true God,” endeavoring to articulate the

mystery of the relationship between the Father and the Son, as two Persons of the Trinity.

Light is liturgically and doctrinally embedded in early Christian thought, taking after its

biblical use. In the writings of Plato, Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius, Robert

Grosseteste, Bonaventure, and St. Thomas Aquinas, the compelling metaphor of

luminosity as divinity is developed further.

Landmark ideas about light begin with Plato (circa 428-348 BC). Although a

pagan, Plato was seen as communicating a partial truth, like the “Egyptian gold” that

Augustine describes in Book II, chapter 40 of his On Christian Doctrine. Plato’s

Timaeus conveys his metaphysical system that is present in his other works. Calcidius’s

25

translation of chapters 17-53, and his accompanying commentary, was the only work of

Plato that was available in the Middle Ages in the West; although Phaedo and Meno

surfaced around 1150, they were given little attention (Ellard 2007, 34). Medieval

thinkers, especially at the school of Chartres, remained enormously faithful to this small

fragment of Plato, which contained the “central tenets of Platonic ontology, causality, and

cosmology,” and, in their eyes, “central tenets of the Christian faith,” as well (Ellard

2007, 34).

In Timaeus, Plato describes the creation of the cosmos, made by a “demiurge” (a

word that literally translates to “craftsman”; Calcidius uses the words, opifex—from opus

and facio—and fabricator, in his translation). The craftsman god orders the world

according to “the principles of beauty, simplicity, and unity,” relying on mathematics to

bring order to chaos in the most fitting way possible (Gregory 2008, xv-xvi). According

to this model, everything was made with a specific design and order in mind, and thereby

has a specific purpose; this makes Timaeus “the first thoroughgoing, exhaustive

teleological analysis of all natural phenomena” (Gregory 2008, ix).

Calcidius’s translation and commentary interpret the work further. His choices of

the words causa and ratio to describe the ordering of the universe emphasize the

importance of proportion in the demiurge’s creating, and his fascination with the

mathematics reflects Pythagorean writers, who “started from the assumption that the

understanding of the Timaeus requires familiarity with mathematics and that mathematics

in general provides the path for the soul’s elevation to higher realms of thinking” (Somfai

2004, 205-207). The importance of math in comprehending philosophical truth stems

from the belief that mathematical precepts were “unerring,” giving a pattern and insight

26

into the world’s true nature; “Learning mathematics then provides a pattern of thought

that facilitates the soul with the perception of abstract notions.” (Somfai 2004, 208).

To the medieval mind, which prized order, hierarchy, and systems, the Timaeus

account of creation was immediately compelling, particularly given its consonance with

the account in Genesis 1. Light, as an integral part of creation in the biblical account,

participates in God’s ordering of the universe, and to a schema that prizes beauty,

simplicity, and unity, light is a fascinating and perfect union of the three. Light also

behaves mathematically, as we shall see in Robert Grosseteste’s conception of it. It is

thus a substance with great possibilities for understanding the divine and the relationship

of the divine to earth.

Plato’s metaphysical and philosophical conceptions of light were already

influential in early Christian thought. According to Plato, there are invisible Forms that

represent the most perfect, fullest version of reality. These transcendental Forms (the

Good, the True, and the Beautiful) are ontologically most real, while everything that we

apprehend with our senses is only an imperfect, incomplete version of reality, a shadow

of the Forms. Forms are constant, while the imperfect iterations may change. Plato

accordingly makes a distinction between “Being” and “becoming,” and in fact Timaeus’s

first question in his explanation of the world is whether the earth always was, or came

into existence (the latter pointing to creation by a demiurge). With extremely rigorous

philosophical work, predicated especially on mathematical understanding (as we have

seen stressed in Timaeus), one might possibly apprehend the Forms with the intellect.

Plato illustrates this process metaphorically in Book 7 of the Republic, using light to

represent the realm of the Forms.

27

Socrates, speaking to Glaucon, describes intellectual ascent to comprehending the

Forms in his famous Allegory of the Cave. Humans are in a dark cave, chained so that

they face a wall, and they watch shadows of objects passing behind them, as if viewing a

puppet show, taking the shadows they see for reality. When a man is taken from his

chains and dragged out of the cave, at first he is disoriented and confused. After

adjusting his eyes, he recognizes the objects he sees as the realities of the shadows he

once considered to be real. Then the man will be able to look directly at the sun and, as

Socrates says, “he will contemplate him as he is” (Plato Republic 516b). Light for Plato

represents the realm of the real; proximity to the light corresponds to an enlightened

perception of true reality. Speaking of the light of the sun, Socrates tells Glaucon:

[M]y opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual (Plato Republic 517b-c).

This account of the Good shares some of the imagery of light developed in Scripture,

regarding light as revelation. Yet in effect, John’s account of the Incarnation in John 1:1-

9 inverts the Platonic interpretation of enlightenment. The man who is released from the

cave works his way up out of the darkness to the realm above, while Christ penetrates the

darkness of the realm below and “the darkness does not overcome it.” The Word “dwells

among us,” “Being” enters the realm of “becoming,” and the invisible God makes

Himself visible in Christ. The light effects not merely philosophical enlightenment, but

salvific transformation; the light is not for philosophers alone, for Christ “gives light to

28

everyone” (Jn 1:9). The Incarnation is a holy inversion of the partial truth that Plato

proclaimed.

Platonic conceptions of light and knowledge are an important context for the

thought of St. Gregory of Nyssa (335-395). His Life of Moses contains a historia that

relates the story of Moses in heroic, epic language (and sometimes elides his more

problematic character flaws), and a theoria that elucidates the spiritual meaning of the

text. In this allegorical interpretation, the corporeal light described in Scripture helps to

elucidate the spiritual light of enlightenment and union with God. Gregory’s theology of

light comes from two main passages in Scripture: Moses’s encounter with God in the

burning bush, and Moses’s encounter with God at Mount Sinai. These are two significant

moments when God makes Himself known to His people in a new way, and according to

Gregory, they can be taken as figures of God’s revelation to His people in every age.

In the burning bush, Gregory sees the mystery of the Incarnation prefigured.

God’s revelation through a “thorny bush” conveys the extent of God’s descent to us in

Christ; “Lest one think that the radiance did not come from a material substance, this

light did not shine from some luminary among the stars but came from an earthly bush

and surpassed the heavenly luminaries in brilliance.” As the divine light meets Moses in

a humble bush, so Christ descends to us in human form. The burning bush also figures

Mary’s womb, which held divinity, yet was not consumed (St. Gregory of Nyssa Life of

Moses, 59).

Gregory of Nyssa’s account of how one sees this light reveals a clear Platonic

influence. As Moses had to remove his sandals to be in the presence of God, so we must

remove the “dead and earthly covering of skins” from the soul, given to Adam and Eve

29

after their disobedience, to comprehend the light. This comprehension, for Gregory of

Nyssa, consists of “purifying our opinion concerning nonbeing.” After philosophical

contemplation, one begins to understand the difference between Being (which possesses

existence in and of itself) and nonbeing (which only appears to exist). Gregory believes

that in the theophany of the burning bush, Moses came to understand that the

“transcendent essence and cause of the universe, on which everything depends, alone

subsists” (St. Gregory of Nyssa Life of Moses, 59-60). This account of truth is

undeniably similar to Plato’s distinction between the realm of Being and becoming, as

Gregory integrates Plato’s idea of the “Form,” and the Christian idea of an omniscient,

omnipotent God. When God showed Himself to Moses, Moses saw true Being. He says

of us,

In the same way that Moses on that occasion attained to this knowledge, so now does everyone who, like him, divests himself of the earthly covering and looks to the light shining from the bramble bush, that is, to the Radiance which shines upon us through this thorny flesh and which is (as the Gospel says) the true light and the truth itself (St. Gregory of Nyssa Life of Moses, 60-61).

Light is truth for Gregory of Nyssa, truth regarding the true nature of “Being” and

“nonbeing.” Contemplating God is contemplating “Being,” but this “knowledge of

things sublime” is preceded by purification of the body and of the mind, and predicated

on renunciation of irrational emotions, preconceptions, and anything comprehended by

the senses (St. Gregory of Nyssa Life of Moses, 93).

The first theophany in the burning bush seems to be reversed in the second

theophany in the darkness at Mount Sinai. Gregory of Nyssa concedes this apparent

contradiction, but then explains its actual continuity with Scripture. Although “religious

30

knowledge” is received as light at first, as the mind develops a clearer, more advanced

understanding of reality, it begins to comprehend what is yet “uncontemplated.” As the

mind relinquishes all perception of the senses, “it keeps on penetrating deeper until by the

intelligence’s yearning for understanding it gains access to the invisible and the

incomprehensible, and there it sees God.” This “seeing that consists in not seeing”

transcends any human knowledge, and it is “separated on all sides by incomprehensibility

as by a kind of darkness” (St. Gregory of Nyssa Life of Moses, 95). For Gregory,

darkness reflects an apophatic approach to understanding God. God as light becomes

God as darkness when all earthly helps, whether for the senses or the intellect, are gone.

For him, the darkness at Mount Sinai represents a fuller, more perfect vision of God than

the vision of light in the burning bush; “If God appears first as light and then as darkness,

this means for Gregory that of the divine essence there is no vision, and that union with

God is a way of surpassing vision or qeoria, going beyond intelligence to where

knowledge vanishes and only love remains—or, rather, to where gnosis becomes agaph”

(Lossky 2001, 37).

Gregory returns to light as a metaphor for describing the final theophany, using

tactile, rather than visible, attributes of light. When Moses asks to see God, and God

goes before him, only showing His back, Gregory sees in this a holy yearning for the

divine, and expresses it in fire imagery. When the soul experiences God, it is kindled and

enflamed with love and desire to experience God more. This desire is never fully sated

on Earth, and instead grows all the more: “every desire for the Good which is attracted to

that ascent constantly expands as one progresses in pressing on to the Good. This truly is

the vision of God: never to be satisfied in the desire to see him. But one must always, by

31

looking at what he can see, rekindle his desire to see more.” (St. Gregory of Nyssa Life of

Moses, 116). Like a fire that burns more and more fiercely, this ever-deepening yearning

in the soul is a response to beholding the divine; this imagery recalls Proverbs 4:18: “But

the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until

full day.” The radiance and glory of God is inexhaustible.

The next theologian we might consider is Dionysius the Areopagite, or “Pseudo-

Dionysius,” who uses light abundantly in his theology.4 His work will become

particularly relevant in our examination of Gothic architecture, because his influence was

great in France at the time of Abbott Suger’s work on St. Denis. He is known for his

apophatic approach to theology, which reiterates and amplifies Gregory’s approach; in

his theological treatises he often pauses to remind readers that God is above all metaphors

we can use, all explanations we may say, and all conceptions our minds may conjure up.

This is why in The Divine Names, he says of the divine, “It is and it is as no other being

is. Cause of all existence, and therefore itself transcending existence, it alone could give

an authoritative account of what it really is” (DN 1 588B). Gregory of Nyssa takes

“Being” as itself representing transcendence; God is metaphysically the most “real,” like

a Platonic Form. To Pseudo-Dionysius, however, God is not the perfection and fullness

of existence, but is above existence itself as a “supra-existent Being” (DN 1 588B).

While the oft-repeated caveat that we can’t actually say anything definitive about an all-

transcendent God is at the forefront of the Areopagite’s mind, he still attempts to capture

4 Exact dates for Pseudo-Dionysius’s birth and death are unknown; he lived approximately in the late 5th-early 6th century.

32

what we can imperfectly begin to understand. Light is a multivalent, complex theme in

this endeavor.

Pseudo-Dionysius’s vision of blessedness is characteristically light. He describes

heaven as a place where God’s radiant glory will shine all around us; “there we shall be,

our minds away from passion and from earth, and we shall have a conceptual gift of light

from him and, somehow, in a way we cannot know, we shall be united with him and, our

understanding carried away, blessedly happy, we shall be struck by his blazing light”

(DN 1 595C). If the Beatific vision in heaven is one of overwhelming light, our

experience of God on earth is an imperfect echo of it. For Pseudo-Dionysius, light

figures God, and God’s interaction with men.

Taking “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all” at its word, Pseudo-

Dionysius sees light as an attribute of God—not the corporeal light we apprehend with

our eyes, but an unseen “divine light.”5 Following in the Eastern Christian tradition, the

divine light in Pseudo-Dionysius’s work is “interpreted not as something extrinsic to God

or as a figurative expression but as a ‘real aspect of the Godhead’” (Morgan 2010, 129).

Dionysius prefers to speak of God in terms of the “Good,” and connects this with light:

“Light comes from the Good, and light is an image of this archetypal Good” (DN 4 697B-

697C). This immediately recalls Socrates’s description of the sun in Republic. As the

sun of the earth gives light and life to all things, “nourishing them… perfecting them,

purifying them, and renewing them,” so the divine light purifies and perfects us, and

5 The following examination of light as the Being of God, as Grace, as Knowledge, and as Deification follows Jonathan Morgan’s structure in his 2010 article, “A Radiant Theology: The Concept of Light in Pseudo-Dionysius.”

33

“Everything looks to it for measure, eternity, number, order,” as is described in Wisdom

11:20—“you have arranged all things by measure and number and weight” (DN 4 697C).

Light is a founding and orienting force, by which everything is ordered and imbued with

purpose and meaning.

Pseudo-Dionysius incorporates the Neoplatonic teaching of “procession and

return” as he attempts to describe God’s interaction with the world (Morgan 2010, 129-

130). Like light draws things to itself, illumining and warming them, the Good unifies

and returns all things to itself: “The Good returns all things to itself and gathers together

whatever may be scattered, for it is the divine Source and unifier of the sum total of

things” (DN 4 700A). The Areopagite takes the emanating imagery of James 1:17,

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the

heavenly lights,” and begins to parse out a distinction that will be clarified by Gregory of

Palamas as God’s essence and energies. “Inspired by the Father,” Pseudo-Dionysius

says, “each procession of the Light spreads itself generously toward us, and, in its power

to unify, it stirs us by lifting us up. It returns us back to the oneness and deifying

simplicity of the Father who gathers us in. For, as the sacred Word says, ‘from him and

to him are all things.’” He beseeches us to call upon the Father, “the light which is the

source of all light,” through Christ, “the Light of the Father” (CH 1 120B-121A). This

fittingly begins and frames the rest of The Celestial Hierarchy, which examines the nine

ranks of angels. Distinguishing between the source of light and the rays of light that

proceed from the source, he can communicate ““a differentiation within God himself

without dividing God’s being,” a distinction that is also reflected in his description of the

relationships between the Persons of the Trinity (Morgan 2010, 130).

34

Light is the Being of God, and it is also grace. In Divine Names 3.1, Pseudo-

Dionysius describes the “kindly Rays of God” which reach down to us like a chain. We

reach to grab hold of it, and although it seems that we are pulling it to us, in fact it is

lifting us “to that brilliance above, to the dazzling light of those beams” (DN 3 680C).

This beautiful image communicates the Areopagite’s synergistic language. God’s grace

is a free gift, yet it must be responded to; we cooperate merely by accepting the gift, and

then find ourselves lifted to God not by our own doing, but by His grace. The more we

see and experience God, the more our longing for God grows (as in Gregory of Nyssa’s

description of Moses in the third and final theophany).

The Divine Light is also knowledge, yet it is here that the image of darkness

comes more into play. Gregory of Nyssa saw the darkness at Sinai as figuring a more

transcendent form of contemplation than the light in the burning bush, a contemplation in

which one abandons all earthly sensory or intellectual helps. Pseudo-Dionysius also uses

the metaphor of darkness, but in a subtly different way. Darkness represents

“unapproachable light,” a light that transcends conceptual knowledge; “It is by

unknowing, after abandoning all symbols and concepts, that we have union with God”

(Morgan 2010, 135). Unlike Gregory of Nyssa’s description of darkness, Pseudo-

Dionysius’s more closely expresses the imperfection of our comprehension of God; he

uses darkness as a metaphor “not in order to indicate a new mode of ecstatic experience

which would necessitate the suppression of all mysticism of light, but rather to supply

this mysticism of light with a necessary dogmatic corrective” (Lossky 2001, 39-40).

Finally, light communicates deification, a process which “consists of being as

much as possible like and in union with God,” “an inspired participation in the one-like

35

perfection and in the one itself, as far as possible” (EH 1 376A). Pseudo-Dionysius sees

deification as the process of God fashioning man, bearing His image, into His likeness; as

He gathers all things and brings them back to Himself, they become more like Him and

unified in Him. This brings together Light as the Being of God, and Light as Grace,

again turning to the language of procession and return. God Himself, as Light, is “both

the source and agent of deification, since the light radiates from the essence by the

energies through the hierarchies to deify those in the created order” (Morgan 2010, 139).

Grace fashions man to be ever more in union with God, as God “gives himself outward

for the sake of the divinization of those who are returned to him” (EH 9 912D).

For Pseudo-Dionysius, light is a heavenly substance that elegantly distinguishes

between God’s essence and energies, as it figures both the source of light and its brilliant

rays. This allows him to elaborate his theology about the Trinity, about knowledge,

about grace, and about deification, with more precision and clarity.

Pseudo-Dionysius was translated by Robert Grosseteste (1175-1253), who

developed light as not only a theological, but as a scientific and philosophical, substance.

Grosseteste served as a professor and then as Chancellor at Oxford, and for the last

portion of his life was Bishop of Lincoln, in England. Grosseteste’s works, including De

Luce, his short treatise on light, are mathematical and scientific regarding light and light’s

role in creation; Grosseteste “developed a cosmological theory founded on emanation,

reflection and the refraction of light as it forms and shapes the material world,

geometrically represented and studied as a complex interconnection of radial lines” (Panti

2014, 60). The Lincoln Cathedral was likely constructed with Grosseteste’s cosmology

36

in mind, so that it would be “a catechism of the geometrical substructure of the physical

world, in the tradition of the Timaeus of Plato” (Hendrix 2014, 101).6

Grosseteste considers corporeal light to be incredibly important. According to De

Luce, light is “the first corporeal form,” and as the closest physical form to what isn’t

matter, it is “more exalted and of a nobler and more excellent essence than all the forms

that come after it” (Grosseteste De Luce,10). Light was the first form created (Gen. 1),

and is thus the substance through which all other things were animated; it was

“multiplied,” making first the firmament, actualizing the other eight heavenly spheres,

and finally forming the four elements—fire, air, water, and earth. Medieval cosmology

places earth at the center, as the densest, with increasingly less dense spheres radiating

out to the outermost firmament (the most simple, unified, and perfect). The matter on

and nearest Earth still “participates in that first light,” but this light is “impure, weak, and

far removed from the purity which it has in the first body” because of its density and

“stubbornness” (Grosseteste De Luce,16). Grosseteste follows Pseudo-Dionysius in

differentiating between a source of light and its rays. In Latin, lux means the former,

while lumen translates to the latter. Through lumen, matter on earth participates in lux

(Riedl 1978, 6).

For Grosseteste, matter is passive, and it is animated or “actualized” by its

“form,” species (Riedl 1978, 3-4). When matter is fully “actualized” by light, as in the

heavenly spheres, it is unchanging, not decaying, while the less ethereal is changing and

corruptible, not fully actualized (Grosseteste De Luce, 15). Since light radiates through

6 Cf. Bishop Robert Grosseteste and Lincoln Cathedral, an anthology of essays concerning the relationship between Grosseteste’s theology and philosophy and the Lincoln Cathedral.

37

the highest and lowest spheres, it is, physically, the sustaining motion and force of the

whole cosmos. It animates and transforms everything else, and provides “the principle of

continuity in nature” (Riedl 1978, 6).

De Lineis followed shortly after De Luce, elaborating on the geometry of

reflection, refraction, and other optical phenomena. De Lineis was paired with De Natura

Locorum, which applied the abstract concepts in De Lineis to the natural world, including

phenomena such as mountains, tropics, seasons, and tides. Through these works

combined, “the virtus of lux, or the power of celestial light, as it becomes rays of light in

lumen or reflected light, is applied to earthly phenomena and translated into geometry,

perspective, and optics, resulting in a new natural philosophy” (Temple, Hendrix, and

Frost 2014, 4-5).

Grosseteste’s writings on light bring the medieval love of order and the medieval

love of radiance into one and the same substance. In fact, in Hexaëmeron, he says that

light is essentially beautiful and communicates the beauty of the whole cosmos (Panti

2014, 69). His study of light influenced his preaching to the Franciscans, and he liberally

used light metaphors to convey truths about the “Trinity, Incarnation, Grace, free will, the

role of man in the universe, the human desire of God, humility, and the beauty of the

created world” (Panti 2014, 60). Blending physics, philosophy, and theology, Robert

Grosseteste furthers the medieval intuition that the spiritual and physical realms are

intimately related.

St. Bonaventure (1221-1274) also describes light in mathematical terms, while

increasingly linking light to beauty. This movement towards a more aesthetic

consideration of light is apparent in his Hexameron, and De Reductione Artium ad

38

Theologium. The latter work, translated as Retracing the Arts to Theology, is similar to

Hugh of St. Victor’s Didascalicon, in that it systematically arranges the secular

disciplines and links them to divine revelation. The short treatise takes as its foundation

the passage of James 1:17—“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above,

coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to

change.” There are four different “lights” that illuminate differently, yet flow forth from

the same Uncreated Light. The “external light” is the mechanical arts, which provide for

human wellbeing, and they include navigation, medicine, and drama, among others. The

“lower light” is sense perception, the action of the senses through which corporeal things

become intelligible. The “inner light” is the light of “philosophical knowledge,” split

into “rational, natural, and moral philosophy.” Finally, the “higher light” is the light of

grace and of Scripture; it teaches “the eternal generation and Incarnation of the Son of

God, the pattern of human life, and the union of the soul with God” (Bonaventure De

Reductione 1.2-1.5).

For Bonaventure, light represents revelation. God is revealed to varying degrees

in any discipline, be it mechanical, philosophical, or theological (although most perfectly

revealed in the light of Sacred Scripture). The lumen of knowledge come down from the

Father of Lights, permeating the physical and spiritual realms. This light of the Wisdom

of God may lie “hidden” in some disciplines, yet it does not make it any less present.

Bonaventure ends by saying, “all divisions of knowledge are handmaids of theology, and

it is for this reason that theology makes use of illustrations and terms pertaining to every

branch of knowledge” (Bonaventure De Reductione 1.26). Transcendent Truth shines

through each discipline, for each can be used to guide man to God.

39

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) also speaks of light as revelation, while

emphasizing its context within Church Tradition. In Catena Aurea, “The Golden Chain,”

Aquinas gathers and carefully orders Patristic commentaries on the Gospels. The

imagery of a “golden chain” immediately recalls Pseudo-Dionysius’s from The Divine

Names, and it conveys the centrality of the Gospel narratives, the significance of

Scripture as illumination, and the way that Scripture is understood and interpreted by a

“chain” of teachers in the Church through the ages (Whidden 2014, 17). Also implicit in

this repeated imagery from Pseudo-Dionysius is the imagery of procession and return.

Aquinas takes the Dionysian ideas and expands and clarifies them; “The universe is

ordered so that God’s (created) light of divine wisdom works through creatures to lead

them back to the (uncreated) divine light” (Whidden 2014, 18).

In Aquinas’s work, there are three distinct, yet related, iterations of divine

illumination: the light of nature, the light of grace, and the light of glory. The light of

man’s natural intellect guides him to some knowledge of God, yet it is a knowledge

impoverished by ignorance and sin. Knowledge of God’s qualities—that He is the “first

cause,” “one,” and “wise,” for instance, can be comprehended by one’s intellect without

further revelation (Whidden 2014, 25). The light of grace is the divine light, through

which one gains true scientia of God. God is our teacher, showing us His goodness and

manifesting Himself to us, both internally and externally. He dissipates the darkness

from the natural intellect, so that we may know Him more, and so that we may love Him

more (because true knowledge is essential for genuine love) (Whidden 2014, 29).

Finally, the light of glory is the beatific vision, in which the blessed may see a perfect and

unhindered vision of God. This illumination is sometimes given fleetingly as “rapture” to

40

people on earth. These three “lights” are not mutually exclusive by any means, but are

“multiple effects” of the same light; they effect a transformation of drawing us from

darkness further and further towards that final, brilliant light (Whidden 2014, 34).

As in the case of Scripture, light in the exegetical tradition functions as a broad,

rich, and multivalent metaphor. Because it remains itself while transforming and

delineating all things it touches, light presents a powerful and dynamic metaphor of God

and God’s interaction in the world. Light is clarity, unity, and simplicity, orderly in its

radiance and in its actualization of the material world. It represents divine truth, present

in natural and divine revelation alike. The Heavenly Light emanates down to us in the

Incarnation, in the Holy Spirit, in Scripture, and in the natural world, drawing us to

participation in the divine and heralding the perfect beatific vision that is to come in

eternity.

41

CHAPTER THREE

Theology of Light in Gothic Architecture

Having examined some of the theological background founded in Scripture and in

the exegetical tradition, we will now analyze St. Denis, in its pre-Gothic reconstruction

(headed by Abbot Suger), and the reconstruction of Cathédrale Notre Dame de Chartres

after the fire of 1194. Both of these reconstructions were completed in a relatively short

amount of time, and are some of the earliest structures in the development of the French

Gothic style. As such, they provide fascinating, coherent examples of the luminous

architecture that evolved from the Romanesque style.

The soaring stained glass windows, pointed arches, and flying buttresses certainly

characterize the Gothic style. Yet these commonly noted architectural innovations

formed a new architectural style that was concurrent with (and perhaps influenced by) the

philosophical and theological considerations of the day, which we began to examine in

Chapter Two. What impetus propelled the undertaking of such expensive, massive

projects as building the worship spaces of St. Denis and Chartres? The Gothic “style”

was no mere decorative preoccupation. Luminosity in these spaces creates an image of

heaven that mirrors the order embedded in the world and draws the faithful closer to God

as it partakes in the divine light and transfigures the ordinary world.

We can see the new emphasis on light in Gothic architecture in its opposition to

preceding Romanesque architecture. Gothic architecture is unique and different for two

main reasons. Windows are smaller in Romanesque architecture, acting more as

“interruptions” in the walls. The Gothic windows, meanwhile, act more as “walls of

42

light” rather than as discrete interruptions in large, thick walls. Gothic windows are

framed by graceful, thin supports, and seem embedded in the structure itself, so that they

make the structure of the sanctuary seem radiant, imbued with heavenly light (Fig. 3.1)

(von Simson 1989, 4).

Fig. 3.1. The nave at Notre Dame de Chartres. Artstor Digital Library.

Secondly, the Gothic structure has a new “aesthetic dignity” of precise

craftsmanship and care in the building materials themselves, showing “a novel delight in

and esteem for the tectonic system for which the Romanesque, by and large, seems to

have had no eyes” (von Simson 1989, 5-6). In Romanesque structures, murals and

43

mosaics were the more prominent, central elements, and the artwork could cover slight

imperfections in the building; the more austere Gothic building brought the focus to the

beauty and order inherent in the structure itself. The result is ethereal and otherworldly:

“There are no walls but only supports; the bulk and weight of the vault seem to have

contracted into the sinewy web of the ribs. There is no inert matter, only active energy”

(von Simson 1989, 7). This resonates with the “actualizing” force of light that Robert

Grosseteste speaks of (Grosseteste De Luce, 16), and recalls the imagery of “procession

and return” of Pseudo-Dionysius, when he says that light “returns us back to the oneness

and deifying simplicity of the Father who gathers us in” (CH 1 120B-121A).

To the medieval mind, radiance is one of the most important qualities of anything

that is beautiful. Another quality of beauty is proportion. Proportion enables and

accentuates the power and centrality of light in Gothic sanctuaries. The luminous spaces

are constructed with a keen eye for geometry, a desire to imitate the most beautiful ratios.

Wisdom 11:21, “You have ordered all things in measure, and in number, and in weight,”

sets the foundation for this, while the importance of mathematics in the demiurge’s

creation in Timaeus provides a classical precedent.

This attention to ratio has direct biblical roots. Holy places in the Bible are

described in precise ratios, as the Tabernacle, Solomon’s Temple, and Ezekiel’s vision all

exemplify. Bede’s landmark works of exegesis, On the Tabernacle and On the Temple,

address this painstaking attention to mathematical detail. The Venerable Bede (673-735),

a priest and exegete from England, approaches the biblical descriptions of the tabernacle

and Solomon’s temple (Exodus 24:12-30:21 and 1 Kings 5:1-7:51, respectively) with a

keen eye for numerology. Bede bases his exegesis on the premise that the tabernacle and

44

temple are pre-figurations of the Church. The two texts complement each other and form

an overall vision of the body of Christ. The tabernacle is seen by Bede as the “Church

militant” because it is a holy place that travels with the Israelites through deserts and

wilderness, figuring our journey as Christians on earth. The temple, meanwhile, is seen

as the “Church triumphant,” because it is the holy place built later in the Promised Land,

figuring the eternal rest of heaven for the saints. Bede also tends to identify the Old

Covenant or Old Testament with the tabernacle, and the New Covenant or New

Testament with the temple (Holder 1994, xix-xx).

Dimensions are imbued with meaning for Bede, as length corresponds to

perseverance or patience, width corresponds to the fullness of charity, and height

corresponds to hope. The number three figures the Trinity, while the number four

commonly represents the Gospels or the four cardinal virtues. The number five often

corresponds to the senses or the Pentateuch, while the number ten usually represents the

Ten Commandments or the Law in general. These sanctuaries embody the Church in all

its diversity and unity, and prefigure heaven, where the faithful will be perfected and

allowed into the final “Holy of Holies,” the fullest experience of God’s presence (On the

Temple, 37-38). Shapes are important to Bede, as well; the square, in particular,

represents perfection and unity because of its equal sides and 1:1 ratio. Unsurprisingly,

the square was the most important module for the builders of the great medieval

cathedrals as they established the architectural plans of the structures and constructed the

stained-glass windows; that they integrated the square and its derivative shapes even into

unnoticed areas of churches reveals their profound submission to “true measure” (Fig. 3.2

and Fig 3.3) (von Simson 1989, 14-19).

45

Fig. 3.2, left, “ground plans and elevations of Gothic canopy supports.” Fig. 3.3, right, “ground plan and elevation of a pinnacle.” Otto von Simson 1989, The Gothic Cathedral,

15 and 17.

Bede’s intuition of the relationship between the tabernacle and temple, the

Church, and the Heavenly Jerusalem, comes from a common liturgical and exegetical

trope that identifies meaning in the “divine dimensions” described in Scripture and

assumes continuity between the sanctuaries where God has dwelt, dwells, and will dwell

with his people. This continuity seems especially natural when seen from the medieval

standpoint. The measurements and numerology described in Exodus 25-27 (for the

tabernacle), 1 Kings 5-7 (for Solomon’s temple), and Ezekiel 43 (for the “third temple”

prophesied to Ezekiel) are passages that point to a fundamental templum, a design

inherent in the universe. Passages such as Numbers 8:4 (the lampstand for the tabernacle

was hammered “according to the pattern that the Lord had shown Moses”), Ezekiel 43:10

46

(“As for you, son of man, describe to the house of Israel the temple, that they may be

ashamed of their iniquities; and they shall measure the plan”), and Hebrews 9:23 (“Thus

it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but

the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these”) affirm the notion of an

embedded templum. This divine pattern prefigured the Heavenly Jerusalem, the final

“sanctuary,” and could in turn be transposed to other holy places. Medieval sanctuaries

look back to the temple and tabernacle while anticipating heaven, effecting a vision of the

whole Church, from the Old Covenant, to the New Covenant, to eternity.

The effect of designing sanctuaries according to careful mathematical ratios is

intuitive and meaningful for the medieval mind. To them, geometry and music are the

two disciplines most revelatory of beauty—or more accurately, of Beauty. These two

disciplines are interrelated, as well; ratios could correspond to musical intervals, like the

square and the octave. To build structures according to the most ordered, perfect ratios

would be like creating tones according to the most ordered, perfect intervals.7 This

conception of harmony is not altogether unlike icons from the Eastern Orthodox tradition.

According to von Simson, “as an icon is thought to partake of the sacred reality it

represents, so, according to Augustinian aesthetics, the musical consonances in visual

proportions created by man partake of a sacred concord that transcends them” (von

Simson 1989, 24). As icons are meant to be looked “through” in the East, so the

7 Augustine speaks of music in very mathematical terms in his De Musica, a philosophical treatise on music. Beauty in music, for him, is based upon the “metaphysical dignity of the ratios on which they are based” (von Simson 1989, 22). Music and geometry are thus conceptually interrelated.

47

structures of these sanctuaries visually manifest, and participate in, eternal realities as

they are consonant with the transcendent ideal of beauty.

We examine this new emphasis on measure and ratio because of how it enables

and complements the new emphasis on light. The attention to geometry effects a new

aesthetic instinct. The structures of these spaces become aesthetic in and of themselves,

so that the building is a work of art. The ornamentation in the stained-glass windows and

statuary is more embedded in the building, forming a cohesive structure. The imagery in

Chartres and Saint Denis is also more subdued and austere than Romanesque

predecessors. It would be incorrect to say that Gothic is “iconoclastic,” because there are

plentiful figures and scenes depicted in the statuary and the stained-glass windows.

However, the imagery becomes less prominent, and it becomes more embedded in the

structure. At Chartres, the figures on the jambs in the portals seem chiseled out of the

church itself, and represent a movement from the emotive towards the ideal

(Katzenellenbogen 1964, 43).

The elegance and austerity of the space communicate unity and simplicity,

characteristics that were appreciated in an architectural context, but, more importantly for

our purpose, characteristics that light particularly exemplifies. The austerity reduces the

elements vying for the viewer’s attention and brings new focus to the interaction of light

with the building. Spiritually, it communicates a more “direct” experience of beauty, and

of God.

Proportion and light are both elements that make a heavenly vision manifest.

When we read about the Heavenly Jerusalem in Revelation 21, proportion and unity are

key elements. For instance, the number twelve (or its multiples) occurs nine different

48

times, and the foundation of the city itself is a square. But radiance is also a very

prominent aspect:

“And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal… The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, like clear glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass” (Rev. 21:10-11, 18-21).

As we read this passage describing the radiant heavenly city, it is difficult not to see

stained-glass windows as imitating this gloriously luminous vision. The oft-appreciated

medieval stained-glass window is, of course, a fundamental conduit of light in Gothic

architecture, which has meaning as a material in and of itself, as well as in its exegetical

function.

Glass in the ancient and medieval time periods was not standardized in thickness,

opacity, or coloring, as varied materials and methods were used. The words that came to

describe glass nonetheless reveal that to the ancients, transparency, the ability to see

through the glass, was the most sought-for quality; hyalus and cristallus are the first

words to describe glass, and the word vitrum develops from the Latin verb, videre, which

means, “to see” (Boyvadaoğlu 2008, 96). Glass was a less expensive alternative to

crystal, and was appreciated for how it allowed sight (or improved sight, in the case of

magnifying glass, for instance). The Middle Ages represented a shift in thought about

glass, however; transparency becomes less prized, so that glass no longer needed to

enable sight of the outside world. Rather, it facilitated a different kind of “seeing” in a

49

spiritual sense; “the desire of corroboration thus passed from the profane to the sphere of

the sacred. Translucent windows could flood a room with light without allowing a clear

vision of the outside world. This effectively insulated the experience within the

sanctuary from the milieu outside, delineating the sacred from the secular; “To close a

window with colored, translucent glass panes… fulfilled the function of optical as well as

acoustic insulation against the outside world while creating spaces as bright as day”

(Boyvadaoğlu 2008, 98-99). This insulation creates some sense of safety and respite

from everyday trials and pains. It also transfigures the reality of the outside world to the

heavenly reality and seals the vision of the sanctuary as a figure of the Celestial City.

Windows also had spiritual significance, and were often allegorized as the

teachers of the Church. Bede describes the windows of Solomon’s temple as

typologically representing “the holy teachers and all the spiritual people in the Church to

whom when in divine ecstasy it is granted more specially than to the others to see the

hidden mysteries of heaven… when they reveal publicly to the faithful what they have

seen in private, they fill all the inner recesses of the temple as windows do with the

sunlight they let in” (On the Temple, 25). This allegorical interpretation furthers the

theme that we have already developed: windows serve not only as panes through which

light may pass, but also as filters of that light. The teachers receive the most direct

knowledge and experience of God, which they then communicate to the congregation.

Windows also have a protective function, keeping out the rain or wind. While Bede had

50

developed this theme in his exegesis, it was Honorius of Autun (1151) who drew the

connection most clearly (Boyvadaoğlu 2008, 99). 8

The protective function of windows was also relevant to the moral edification of

the believer. Gregory the Great wrote about windows as representing the five senses

(indeed, the Latin word “lumina,” most literally meaning “lights,” was also used to mean

both “windows” and “eyes”); in Gregory’s thought, the senses “should be restricted in

their relationship to the world to avoid the infiltration of vanity,” but “the same windows

must remain open inward to grasp spiritual goodness.” This looks back to Greek

philosophy. The physical senses could lead to misguided conceptions of reality; to

perceive the true reality, one must see with the “eye of the soul” (Boyvadaoğlu 100-101).

It seemed obvious in ancient and medieval thought that senses must be controlled and

attuned to properly understand truth. The filtering nature of the stained-glass windows,

then, is a crucial function of light in the Gothic sanctuary, and this aspect was further

developed as the stained-glass windows became more complex and tied to multiple levels

of exegesis.

Large, plain panes of glass gave way to rudimentary figures in the late seventh to

the early ninth century (Boyvadaoğlu 2008, 100). These designs became increasingly

complex technically, but also exegetically. Just as light physically lightened the

8 Bede’s interpretation of goatskin coverings of the tabernacle elaborates on the protective role of teachers in the Church this: “the coverings… are the rulers of the Holy Church, by whose industriousness and labour the dignity of the same Church is protected and defended with unceasing care, lest the life and faith of the elect should be liable to be corrupted by the seduction of heretics, or defiled by the depravity of false catholics, or contaminated by the filth of tempting vices, or brought down into despondency by a lack of material resources… It is as if they provide the curtains with an abundance of splendour on the inside, while on the outside they themselves bear the tempests of affliction” (55-58).

51

enlightened the sanctuary, so it spiritually enlightened the minds and hearts of those

present. As the technologies for the precision of the glass and larger windows became

more sophisticated, the fondness for complexity and precision of exegesis was intuitively

incorporated into the Gothic program.

Medieval exegesis presupposed prior theological knowledge for an accurate

understanding of Scripture, and used a method of different interpretive levels to tease out

the important themes as well as the subtleties in a particular passage. The most common

breakdown (although it had variation of combined levels or further differentiated levels)

was into four senses: literal (historical), allegorical (spiritual), moral, and the anagogical

(eschatological).

Conrad Rudolph traces the invention of a “systematically” and even “self-

consciously” exegetical stained-glass window as originating with Abbot Suger at St.

Denis (Rudolph 2011, 400). Suger is one of the most important influences on Gothic

architecture, as his abbey represents its first instance. St. Denis, arguably one of the most

important religious locations in Suger’s day, was a politically central location, and under

Suger’s abbotship it not only gained wealth and importance but also underwent a radical

architectural transformation. Suger himself was a charismatic man, driven by his desire

to aggrandize his abbey and his desire to make peace with, and forge alliances with, the

crown of France. Through his fundraising attempts and clever alliances, Suger was able

to rebuild and ornament a space that coincided with his aesthetic tastes, which were in

turn influenced by a thinker whom we have already discussed.

A curious historical turn arguably helped to bring about the transition from

Romanesque to Gothic in France. Pseudo-Dionysius, the theologian, was taken to be

52

identical to Dionysius the Areopagite, who “joined [Paul] and believed” (Acts 17:34).

Pseudo-Dionysius was also identified as the saint who first brought Christianity to

France, Saint Denis, after whom the abbey was named. These three figures, fused into

one personality, gave Suger a powerful impetus to incorporate Pseudo-Dionysius’s

thought into his new architectural plan (Panofsky 1979, 18). He strove to make St. Denis

as luminous as possible, and carefully fashioned the new additions to the abbey so that

they would align with the old; in this way, “the whole would shine with the wonderful

and uninterrupted light of most luminous windows, pervading the interior beauty” (Suger

De Consecratione, 101).

Part of his inventiveness in rebuilding his abbey came in the stained-glass

windows. Suger’s contemporary, Hugh of St. Victor, consistently used a three-level

method of interpretation, as the importance of the senses in Scripture besides the literal

sense expanded. Suger employs this three-fold exegesis in the stained-glass windows at

his abbey, so that the windows not only illustrate stories of Scripture, but pair scenes and

depict them in order that they be read in a certain way. Painton Cowen remarks that

“One of Abbot Suger’s most important contributions to Gothic architecture was the

extensive application of typological iconography, the placing of a New Testament subject

next to one from the Old which seems to prefigure it.” One example of this typology is a

scene of Jonah and the whale placed next to a scene of the Resurrection (Cowen 1979, 8).

Some of this interpretation, however, would have been lost to the unlearned; in

fact, Rudolph argues that Suger uses this very inaccessibility to the lay people in some of

the windows to validate his aesthetic choice. Bernard of Clarivaux aggressively

denounced certain church art as distracting, particularly in a monastic context (different

53

allowances were made for the lay people). Suger justifies his stained-glass windows by

comparing them to literary exegesis of Scripture, certainly a crucial aspect of the

monastic life. Suger specifically marks a couple of the windows as “accessible only to

the litterati,” and Rudolph identifies this parallel to Scriptural exegesis as Suger’s most

novel, inventive defense of the art in his abbey (Rudolph 2011, 399). 9 Unlike what is

sometimes asserted, then, the stained-glass windows were not merely for communicating

Scripture to the illiterate, but represented a new avenue for highly literate study of

Scripture. The wealth of imagery and iconography in manuscripts at the time was

transposed to suit the new form. And indeed, perhaps it is appropriate that some of the

windows would have been accessible only to literate teachers, since they are the

“allegorical windows” of the Church.

The new pattern of exegesis was also iterated on a larger scale in the entire,

unified program of the church. At Chartres, this is particularly apparent: “the north rose

with kings, priests and prophets faces the south rose filled with the twenty-four elders of

the Apocalypse. This is a typological transformation that takes place across the church:

that is across the church as a building in space, but also through the Church in time”

(Cowen 1979, 8). The cathedral is the Church, encompassing the Old Testament (in the

north side) and New Testament (in the south side); the cruciform shape of the church

bridges the two, revealing that Christ brings the Church together in Himself, transcending

time (Cowen 1979, 9).

9 For a detailed defense of Rudolph’s argument, see “Inventing the Exegetical Stained Glass Window: Suger, Hugh, and a New Elite Art.”

54

If one walks into St. Denis or Chartres, the immediate darkness may be

disorienting. The entrances of these sanctuaries are the darkest part of the buildings, and

the path becomes increasingly illumined the further one travels toward the altar. Light

indicated God’s presence and guidance to the Israelites wandering in the desert; light

leads the pilgrims on a journey further into the truth of the Church. The climax of light is

at the altar, where God most intimately meets His people in the mystery of the Eucharist.

If the faithful stay in the Church, it will guide them from sin and imperfection to an

increasingly blessed, enlightened life. It is no wonder that word “nave,” from the Latin

word for ship, navis, came to describe this safe, womb-like place (Barron 2002, 15-16).

And if the navis is like the Ark that saved humanity from the Flood, it “becomes a sort of

metaphysical vessel that carries mankind through time, and the rose windows on either

side to the north and south are the stars that guide its course” (Cowen 1979, 9). It is to

these guiding “stars,” in the rose windows, that we will now turn.

Perhaps the most spectacular feat of technology, and most beautiful element of

Gothic architecture, is the rose window. It encapsulates the medieval ideals of beauty,

bringing together the “integritas (wholeness), consonantia (harmony), and claritas

(radiance),” which were highly esteemed (Barron 2002, 29). Rose windows may

represent a well-balanced soul, where its energies are ordered around Christ (Barron

2002, 30-31). These windows also prefigure the new heaven and new earth, a cosmos

that is perfectly ordered and beautiful, and centered around Christ. At Chartres (and in

many other medieval sanctuaries), the rose windows are each divided into twelve parts, a

number representing “perfection,” the “universe,” and the “Logos” (Cowen 1979, 91). In

the southern rose window (Fig. 3.4), showing Christ in Glory, Christ in the center is

55

surrounded by angles and the four Evangelists, and by the twenty-four elders. This

image, directly from Revelation 4:4-8, calls forth the eternal worship before the throne of

God (which Isaiah also speaks of in Isa 6:3): “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God

Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” Narratively, but also numerically, it conveys

a heavenly vision, a heavenly harmony.

Fig. 3.4. The southern rose window at Chartres. Artstor Digital Library.

Looking back to the tabernacle and temple, and forward to the Celestial City, the

Gothic sanctuary is a space that participates in and communicates the divine order in the

56

universe, and connects the sojourners in this life with the faithful across time. It

mystically participates in an eschatological vision of worshipping around the throne of

the Lamb, and reorients the secular world around the sacred. Light poured into the

church through stained-glass windows that instructed the minds of the faithful and helped

them commit the tenets of salvation history and its interpretations to memory. It

illustrated the journey of darkness to light, figuring each person’s spiritual journey, by

illuminating the altar with the most brightness. And in physically manifesting the

spiritual reality, it drew their minds upwards to the contemplation of the Uncreated Light.

57

CHAPTER FOUR

Theology of Light in Shaker Architecture

After examining Gothic architecture, Shaker architecture seems a far cry from the

magnificent religious edifices of 12th century France.10 As we begin our analysis of

Shaker architecture, however, we will recognize structurally similar ideas and also find

numerous points of departure, crystallizing some of the fundamental differences between

the two.

The United Society of Believers in the First and Second Appearance of Christ, or

colloquially, the “Shakers,” were a religious sect that began in the United States in

1774.11 Ann Lee (“Mother Ann”) sailed to the United States with eight of her followers,

fleeing from persecution in England and desiring to establish a utopian society in

America. She believed that Christ had come to her in visions, calling her to found a

society where men and women would live in celibacy, peace, and equality, living in

material and spiritual simplicity. Her believers recognized in her the second coming of

Christ, and they believed their mission was to usher in this millennial kingdom. From

this bold mission was born one of the most successful utopian societies, which at its peak

10 Interestingly enough, the Shakers do have some French roots, although distant. Their belief that Christ would come again in a woman was instilled through their former Quaker leaders, James and Jane Wardley (the Shakers broke off from the Quakers). This idea, in turn, originated from the Camisards, French Protestants who came to England in the early eighteenth century (Morse 10). 11 Although I will be using the past tense to describe Shaker history and Shaker life, it is important to note that there is still one active Shaker community in Maine. Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village has two members still living as of April 2017.

58

had 6,000 members, spread across the Eastern United States (concentrated in the New

England region).

Twenty-four Shaker villages at one time or another made up the United Society of

Believers. The Shaker communities we will focus on in this chapter are the most

paradigmatic of Shaker architecture and portray their masterful use of light. These

communities include Pleasant Hill, Kentucky; South Union, Kentucky; Hancock,

Massachusetts; Sabbathday Lake, Maine; and Canterbury, New Hampshire. Like the

medieval craftsmen, the early Shakers regarded light as a special, spiritual substance, one

that could reinforce and convey their theology. We have little in writing from the

Shakers regarding their architecture, but texts and history provide us insight into their

spirituality and theology. Based on this, we can glean insight into the meaning embedded

in the walls and windows where they worked and worshipped.

As in the case of Gothic architecture, the physical world was intimately connected

to the spiritual world. The Shaker belief that “Heaven and earth are threads of one

loom,” meant that “all spatial relationships and ordinary experiences would become

sacramental, pointing beyond themselves to a large and more powerful reality” (Lane

2002, 162). Medieval Catholics saw their sanctuaries as physically manifesting aspects

of heaven, mystically participating in heavenly worship and anticipating the eschaton and

beatific vision. The Shakers, in their own way, also asserted a sort of mystical

participation; “The geographical configuration of Shaker villages, with their various

families, outbuildings, and central meetinghouse, would symbolize an order introduced

from beyond. Angles, shapes, and colors all served to indicate the pattern of an

apocalyptic vision” (Lane 2002, 162). The Shakers believed that the millennium had

59

already come to earth, and they sought to manifest that reality. This gave them a twin,

entwined fascination with excellent craftsmanship and with intense spiritual experience;

“Shaker theology… would always be concerned to join visionary place to material place,

the heavenly sphere to the most tangible, earthly realm, the world of angels to the world

of well-turned table legs” (Lane 2002, 160-161). It is compelling to study their

architecture, then, because of the intense thoughtfulness and attention to material, and the

way that they conceived of the meaning of their space.

The layout of their villages was designed to reflect what they believed to be

heavenly ideals of beauty—simplicity, unity, grace, proportion. A spirit drawing from

1843, for instance, shows a map of the Mt. Lebanon and Hancock Shaker villages as the

Holy City (Fig. 4.1).

Fig. 4.1. Shaker spirit drawing. “Explanation of the Holy City with Its Various Parts and Appendixes Pointed Out.” March 16-21, 1843. Lane 2002, 173.

60

One Shaker hymn proclaims,

Here Zion reigns in glory, On this transparent base; Her visage meek and lowly, To sing redeeming grace: Here Zion stands adorned, With Christ on earth does reign, Triumphing like the morning, The conquest to maintain (Goodwillie and Crosthwaite 2009, 204).

This hymn directly connects Zion with the Shaker communities on earth, juxtaposing the

prophetic “transparent base” of the heavenly city with the city’s “visage meek and lowly”

on earth. There is a strong, direct correspondence between heaven and earth, the

Celestial City and the Shaker village. This plays out in one way through their attention to

order and proportion, another correspondence with the medieval thought we examined in

the last chapter. The passage of Revelation 21, describing the perfect square foundation

of the Heavenly City, was a significant for the Shakers, as it was for the Gothic

craftsmen. They especially valued symmetry, as well, and they carefully crafted the

layouts of their spaces to communicate these lovely ratios, creating architecture that

would be pleasing to the eye and practical, too.

Shaker rooms are usually plain and emptied of anything unnecessary—both in a

practical and visual sense. Large, clear windows interrupt the walls of almost any room,

even interior rooms. The light pours onto white plaster or stone walls (or occasionally,

walls of another color), revealing subtle textures and calming the eye with the stillness

and grace of simple forms. Warm woodwork makes up floors, trims, window frames,

and the famous Shaker peg rails that ring around entire rooms to allow for maximized

floor space. Sometimes, oil paint covers this woodwork, in yellow, red, indigo, or blue;

61

these colors draw further attention to the purity of the white walls. The perfected

simplicity and grace of these spaces reveals that the Shakers “knew precisely what to

leave out of their buildings,” drawing attention to “a reality not of the physical world”

(Plummer 2009, 10).

When Charles Dickens visited the Shaker community at New Lebanon in 1842,

however, he found the place quite grim: “We walked into a grim room, where several

grim hats were hanging on grim pegs, and the time was grimly told by a grim clock.”

The bareness of the room was unsettling, rather than charming, for him. In his Victorian

world, matter was the premium (Sprigg 1975, 63).12 Unique in their time, Shakers

desired to maximize space, and the bareness of their rooms is certainly that of a monastic

austerity. Its effect is similar to that of Cistercian abbeys, or even Zen temples, in that it

has “chaste forms in which light and shadow become the primary essence of the

architecture” (Plummer 2009, 4). The unadorned walls draw the eye to the lines, balance,

and light in the places.

Maximizing natural light inside was a matter of practical importance, facilitating

working and cleaning. But it also reflected a spiritual vision. A Shaker hymn entitled

“The Glorious Morn” conveys the Shakers’ theological conception of light:

O glorious morn! O happy day! Thy precious light, thy piercing ray Dispels the darkness all away, All nature’s on the move. O mighty pow’r! inspire my tongue,

12 Gothic architecture was novel in contrast to the Romanesque that came before; likewise, Shaker architecture was novel in its Victorian time, a world of “knickknacks” and “doodads,” conveying “solidity, tangibility, and stability” (Sprigg 1975, 63). The value of space and scarcity in Shaker architecture manifests the compelling Shaker spirituality.

62

To sound the truth to old and young; To tell what thanks to God belong, My Beauty and my Love! …The glorious resurrection light Disperses fast the glooms of night; Increasing day is shining bright, Detecting every wrong, And nothing can the light abide, But what is clean and purify’d; So all uncleanness, lust and pride, Must go where they belong (Goodwillie and Crosthwaite 2009, 183).

God’s coming is a “glorious morn,” and God’s work on earth is a “precious light”

which grows ever brighter as it purifies and drives out the darkness of sin. This is iterated

again in “John’s Vision,” which takes the prophecies of Revelation and describes their

fulfillment in both Mother Ann as the Second Coming of Christ, and also in the members

of Shaker communities who follow her example:

Amidst the dark and gloomy night, Lo, from the east appear’d a light! And while the tidings spread around, The resurrection trump did sound; The mighty sound did shake the earth, And thousands burst the bands of death, And rising from their kindred dust, Have bid adieu to every lust. …Let all the saints their voices raise, To sound the blessed Saviour’s praise, And join in one united band, To blow the trumpet through the land, That souls who are in darkness bound, May be awaken’d by the sound, And distant nations from afar, May view the bright and morning Star (Goodwillie and Crosthwaite 2009, 55).

63

Christ is the “bright and morning Star” that the Shakers, through their dedication

to community, asceticism, and celibacy, may proclaim. Insomuch as they are purified, the

Shakers themselves become light to all others living in darkness, as they herald the

coming of heaven to earth. Light is not only a potent spiritual metaphor, but is also

connected to corporeal light. According to Shaker medium Paulina Bates, “The light

which is established in the heavens or invisible world, is closely connected with the light

which is established on earth; and they who walk in the light which is manifest on earth,

are compassed about by those who walk in the same light, although in the invisible

world” (Plummer 2009, Preface). While sources do not speak of a direct causal

relationship between Shaker theology and architecture (a stronger argument of causality

may be made in the case of Gothic architecture), there are certainly many correlations

between the two.

In Shaker architecture, light is carefully dispersed so that it is shared and equal,

echoing the importance of community. Shakers shared possessions freely; those who

converted would have to give up all of their possessions as they entered the group. The

materially communal aspect was paralleled by communal everyday life. They shared the

burdens of work, of cleaning, of running their villages; the well-being of the whole group

depended on the faithfulness of everyone. They had to put aside their egos for the good

of the community. Anonymity was not problematic for them as it is for us today; they

would never mark their names on furniture, architecture, or anything else they created. In

fact, in most of the villages, they remain anonymous in death, not even having their own

individually marked graves (Sprigg 1975, 15).

64

In Shaker communities, everyone was valued equally. There was order and

differentiation in how members were organized into different Families. Each Family had

leaders, as well. Thus there was some degree of hierarchy, yet the leaders were subject to

the same rules and responsibilities as everyone else. Equality between men and women

was also an important tenet of their theology, novel for its time. This was fundamental in

their very conception of God. While the Bible was the text from which they built their

theology, they had at times a radical, unorthodox reading of it. There was not one God in

Three Persons; rather, there was a dual godhead, Father and Mother, a revelation that

became apparent in the person of Mother Ann, through whom Christ’s second coming

came. Shakers argued “from gendered human experience to divine identity,” and also

pointed to Genesis 1:27, “male and female he created them,” to articulate their

conception of God and of their “binary male and female universe” (Crosthwaite 2009,

27).

How are these ideas of sharing and equality manifested in the light of their

architecture? Equality is communicated through symmetry (Fig. 4.2); Shaker

Dwellinghouses were often made up of two mirrored halves; women and men of one

Family would live separately in either side. This visually affirms the equality of female

and male—both men and women on earth, and also the unity of their dual Mother and

Father God.

Shakers used various clever methods to share light throughout a building.

Transom windows above inner and outer doors allow light to be dispersed most evenly

throughout whole buildings (Fig. 4.4) (Plummer 2009, 78). Interior windows, “an

ingenious device to siphon daylight deeply into a building,” ensure that buildings are

65

illuminated as fully by natural light as possible, and allow for acoustic separation

between rooms while maintaining continuity of light and vision (Fig. 4.3) (Plummer

2009, 80).

Fig. 4.2. Central Hallway, Central Dwelling House, Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. Plummer 2009, Stillness & Light, 120.

Hallways and rooms intersect in such a way that they form corridors of light, so that

“lines” of light flow throughout the entire buildings, criss-crossing through its interiors

(Plummer 2009, 86). The natural light is sent deeply into the buildings; “the penetrating

energy is sent further inside by glazed openings cut into dividing walls and partitions,

allowing light to seep from room to room and permeate a large building mass.” As

heaven was shadowless, radiant with the glory of God, so the Shakers labored to

66

maximize ethereal luminosity throughout, “granting each room a just and equal right to

natural illumination” (Plummer 2009, 8).

Fig. 4.3, left. “Double Window over Ministry Stair, With Elder’s Room at Left,” Pleasant

Hill, Kentucky. Fig 4.4, right. “Arched Transom over Infirmary Door,” Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. Henry Plummer 2009, Stillness & Light, 79, 85.

Thorough illumination also indicates the purposeful lack of privacy that the

architecture and windows reinforced. The Millenial Laws (the main source of guidelines

and rules for Shaker communities) called for strict supervision; members “‘laying open’

their rooms and minds” were to be overseen and held accountable by elders in the

community (Plummer 2009, 7). Practically, maximum visibility in interiors would

facilitate this supervision. It also reiterates the principles of openness, no secrecy, and

purity, like light shining to the deepest recesses of the soul.

Natural light siphoned through entire buildings also reflected the sacredness of

each aspect of life. The Shaker would have agreed with St. Benedict of Nursia, who said

that “worship and labor involved a sharing in the celebrative and creative act of God’s

own freedom. Laborare and orare were mimetic devices used to bring to this world an

67

order from yet another” (Lane 2002, 169). “Put your hands to work and your hearts to

God” was their maxim, and it permeated their life together. They saw their everyday

chores and work as inherently worshipful, as an opportunity to physically manifest the

spiritual qualities that they believed characterized heaven; imbuing what they built with

the “simplicity, honesty, grace, utility, and sturdiness” that many appreciate today was a

“joyful and satisfying form of worship” (Sprigg 1975, 11-12).

To them, work was worship; likewise, worship was work. On the Sabbath, the

Shakers would put down their tools and rest for a day, coming together in the morning to

join in singing and dancing together. Everyone sang hymns together and danced along in

ordered formations; “Hundreds of Brothers and Sisters, wearing blue and white, stepped

and bowed in rows on opposite sides of the room” (Sprigg 1985, “On Turning Toward

the Light”). Together, through dance and song, they reaffirmed their theology, while

achieving a physical sense of unity, harmony, and cooperation. Dancing and singing, in

addition to visually manifesting their communal values, allowed them a space and time to

be cleansed of sins and carnal desires, as is apparent in the words of their hymn that goes,

“Come life, Shaker life, come life eternal / Shake, shake out of me all that is carnal.” 13

Meetinghouses were carefully crafted to facilitate these rituals of worship. The

configuration of the windows creates an effect that Henry Plummer terms “incantation”;

the alternating dark and light in the spaces creates visual movement through its repetition

and contrast, which would have complemented the carefully organized dancing inside

(Fig. 4.5). (Plummer 2009, 36). The windows in the Meetinghouse—and other large

13 For a video with selections of Shaker singing and dancing, cf. https://hancockshakervillage.org/shakers/shaker-religion/

68

rooms—can serve as “nodal points to catch a wandering eye, and bring it to focus,”

similarly to “a traditional religious diptych or triptych.” This has the subtle, unconscious

effect of bringing one more into a state of contemplation; “The effect is analogous to a

Christian plainsong, or Gregorian chant” (Plummer 2009, 5). The “halo-like” dark

woodwork frames around the windows reinforced this sense of the window as a focal

point, and along with the symmetry and plain walls, makes the window become “the

seminal force around which a room is developed” (Plummer 2009, 32).

Fig. 4.5. “Incantation” in the Shaker Meetinghouse at Sabbathday Lake, Maine. Plummer 2009, 36.

They spoke of the way they worshipped in their Meetinghouses specifically as

“labor” (Sprigg 1975, 12). Their understanding of work and worship as one and the same

returns to a similar biblical idea; the Hebrew word avodah means both work and worship.

Worship was seen as an act of obedience, “a work based upon obligation though the work

69

might be joyful,” and as a sacrifice, a surrendering of a part of one’s life (Kilde 2005, 15-

16). Worship was also thought of as a communal work (Kilde 2005, 23).

Architecturally, this strong, organic connection between work and worship is reflected in

the similarity between workshops, meetinghouses, and other buildings; the cohesiveness

of architecture across the village communicates the interrelated purposes of each.

Although the Shakers stressed the communal, laboring aspects of worship, their

worship was also characterized by individual visionary experience. Sometimes members

would be seized with leaping and twirling (thus their name, the “Shaking Quakers” or

“Shakers”), speak in tongues, or receive spirit drawings, as “orderliness gave way to

intensely private manifestations of the spirit” (Inner Light, “On Turning Toward the

Light”). These revelations began from the nascence of Shakerism, with Mother Ann’s

own heavenly revelation; many members would receive them, and they need not happen

only in the Meetinghouse, but anywhere at any time (Sprigg 1975, 26). This intense,

direct spiritual experience reflected aspects of revivalism, which entailed a more private,

emotional experience of worship (Kilde 2005, 6-7).

If the configuration of windows reflected the orderly, communal aspect of

Shakerism, the transparent frames reflect the other side of its direct visionary experience.

The Shakers maximized the number of windows they included in their spaces, to emit as

much light as they could throughout their rooms. These transparent, simple windows

were one of the few things that Shakers did not make themselves, but bought; in fact,

they spent thousands of dollars to purchase them (Sprigg 2005, 74). Windows were

clearly a financial priority, directly corresponding to a need for natural light.

70

Shaker windows are dramatically different from the complex, stained-glass

windows of Chartres and St. Denis. Transparent and free of images or adornment, the

windows are without any “hint of iconography or symbol, decoration or ornament, fresco

or stained glass, altar or crucifix”; in this way the Shakers “freed light” from “religious

dogma” (Plummer 2009, 3). Instead, one sees light, uninhibited, illuminating the plain,

spacious rooms with the pure, white light of midday or the piercing golden light around

sunset and sunrise. The eye is drawn to bare forms of the space—the play of light and

shadow, the textures of the walls. The radiant natural light “sanctified” the room through

giving them “sheer metaphysical presence” (Plummer 2009, 3). This transparency reflects

the direct, individual inspiration by the spirit that often occurred both during Sabbath

gatherings and sometimes during everyday life. Their intimate, immediate connection to

heaven and openness to God was manifest in the many windows as they invited light to

pour into every space where it was technologically possible.

It is as if the clear panes reflect their intuition there need not be a “filter” or

intermediary between the worshipper and God; the spirit would speak to each person

individually. This intuition can be seen in “The Glorious Morning,” cited earlier, in

which the Shaker sings to God, the Light, “O mighty pow’r! inspire my tongue / To

sound the truth to old and young” (Millennial Praises 183). Nor need there be a filter

between the inside and outside worlds. The Shakers had chosen rural, remote landscapes

in which to settle, so that there was no profane world to be filtered out; the sacred

experience in their Meetinghouse oriented and flowed into every other aspect of Shaker

life and “spiritualized” it. Their approach to architecture “combined a feeling for the

holy with the commonality of vernacular architecture—a unique conception of heaven on

71

earth, which was evidently based on the spiritualization of everyday things, rather than

the traditional notion of a supernatural world in opposition to everyday life” (Plummer

2009, 3). God was establishing God’s Kingdom and bringing heaven to earth, and the

vividness of this reality for the Shakers is reinforced in the abundant, clear light in their

buildings.

Windows could also speak to the sanctification of each individual soul. The

abiding metaphor of the window as a “human eye” was present in Shaker architecture.

Matthew 6:22-23 says that “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy,

your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full

of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” This was

reiterated in the very structure of the architecture and windows. Windows could figure

the soul, flooding a room with light, and thus becoming an exemplum for the inner life of

a believer. Windows could also literally allow more light into a room and thus, into one’s

eyes and even one’s soul. Eldress Aurelia Mace, from Sabbathday Lake, said that “Good

and evil are typified by light and darkness. Therefore, if we bring light into a dark room,

the darkness disappears, and inasmuch as a soul is filled with good, evil will disappear”

(quoted in Plummer 2009, 6). The overlaid heaven on earth meant that physical and

spiritual light were blended, and even one in some sense. This imitates the Heavenly

Jerusalem, completely empty of shadows and radiant with Everlasting Light. In this vein,

one of the Shaker hymns from Mount Lebanon, N.Y. in 1884 proclaims,

My heavenly home is here, No longer need I wait To cross the foaming river, Or pass the pearly gate; I’ve angels all around me,

72

With kindness they surround me, To a glorious cause they’ve bound me, And my heavenly home is here (quoted from Sprigg 1975).

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:12 that “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to

face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” For

the Shaker, this “then” was “now”; they believed they did see “face to face.” Their

millennial beliefs prompted the work to bring heaven to earth. The clear, plentiful panes

of Shaker architecture convey the clarity of the heavenly vision they believed themselves

to be seeing.

Embodying simplicity and grace, Shaker architecture captures heavenly beauty as

it invokes a radiant, ethereal space. Heaven meets earth in the plain and everyday,

reflecting the Shaker belief that “Heaven and earth are threads of one loom.” Iterating

Shaker ideals of equality and simplicity, while communicating the intensely personal

experience of faith, these buildings framed Shaker life, constantly reiterating their

spiritual labor to make God’s kingdom manifest, as well as the profoundly visionary

experience of their faith.

73

CHAPTER FIVE

Conclusion

“For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have

been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been

made” (Rom. 1:20).

The Shaker and medieval Catholic believed this verse wholeheartedly. For both,

the physical world presented a pattern and order that was not imposed arbitrarily, but

rather acted as an echo of a heavenly harmony, a shadow of a greater reality. The spiritual

realm was not emphasized in lieu of the physical realm; rather, the physical realm could

reflect the spiritual and even communicate truth. In this unique perspective, a stunning

focus and momentum towards the eternal animates a steadfast dedication to making the

eternal present. Beauty and order are first comprehended, and then crafted. The

sacramental sense of both theologies breathes sacredness into everything and every act,

and makes the world a lens of revelation through which humans might know and

experience God. Light is a powerful element in bridging the gap between heaven and

earth, and it contributes to a sense of liminality, even of close proximity, between

humanity and God.

A masterful use of light in Gothic and Shaker architecture conveys God’s

transcendence and immanence. Light floods into these sanctuaries in slender streams that

serve as connections between heaven and earth. Light is ethereal, flowing down to the

nave and aisles from the tall, slender tracery of Chartres, and flowing down the double

74

helix staircase of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky from the glorious skylight above. It heralds an

eternal light, a heaven with no shadows.

Yet light is also intimate and specific. It illuminates the Host, a sacrament that

manifests God’s presence in the most profound and intimate way (and in the Middle

Ages, the profoundly visual culture saw adoring the Host as nearly as efficacious as

ingesting it) (Seasoltz 2005, 141). It graces simple plaster, stone, and woodwork,

permeating each room and thereby touching each object, each action. Light retains its

heavenliness as it touches the humble things of earth, in a specific place and time. It

founds the world, keeping the time to which we are so intimately tied with the days,

weeks, seasons. If “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 Jn 1:5), then light in

these architectures exquisitely imitates God’s presence with humanity in the mystery of

the Incarnation, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and the ongoing revelation of God

through the context of Christian community.

In Gothic ecclesiastical architecture, the revelation that light embodies is the truth

communicated through the community of the Catholic Church. God is made known

through the sacraments and Church tradition; Scripture is interpreted through exegesis

developed over time. The Gothic windows inhibit vision to the world outside, allowing

light to stream through but replace the exterior view with truths from Scripture and the

Church tradition. Worship in the sanctuary was intended to be distinct and “other” from

the profane world. The church would often form the center of a town or village, orienting

the rest of life around itself. Connection with God would have occurred primarily in the

context of the liturgy and sacraments, through which the faithful could participate in

truth. The light in a Gothic sanctuary grows brighter and brighter as one approaches the

75

altar and the Host, symbolizing one’s spiritual journey from darkness to illumination that

occurs in the protection and guidance of the Church, likened to a ship (navis) in the

storms of life, or a womb (Barron 2002, 15-16).

In Shaker architecture, light conveys the direct revelation of truth, a revelation

that is intense, personal, and specific. Powerful personal visionary experiences were

mainly predicated, though, on faithful work and participation in the community,

happened most often in communal Sabbath services, and were not to be kept private, but

rather shared for the encouragement of the whole group. Light is not “filtered” through

exegesis but streams directly through transparent window panes, removing any mediator

between the worshipper and God. It is funneled and shared to the inmost places of

buildings, conveying equality and anonymity; in contrast to the distinct separation

between the clergy and lay people in medieval Catholicism, for the Shakers there was a

purposeful egalitarianism, which included the Elders. Not jeweled and towering, but

plain, simple, and pure, Shaker architecture expresses a sanctification that begins in the

Meetinghouse and radiates out to the rest of ordinary work, organically connecting work

and worship as the entwined purpose of Shaker life. Revelation is manifested through

inspiration, in the experiential singing, dancing, and visionary experiences at Sabbath

gatherings. For the Shakers, revelation was severed from any prior Christian tradition, yet

it grew and developed through their own hymns, sayings, and visions, giving them a

collective understanding of how God was working in and through them.

Truths may be conveyed in a visual, intuitive way that an aural manner could

simply not replicate; Christ says that “the eye is the lamp of the body” (Matt. 6:22), and

the power of vision in comprehending truth has long been identified in the Christian

76

tradition and across many religions. Both Gothic and Shaker architecture visually show

how God permeates and transforms this world, fashioning it into a new heaven and earth

as He fashions humans into His likeness. Both show the conviction that God is beautiful,

heaven is beautiful, and light is an element that uniquely communicates that beauty and

manifests it on earth.

Spaces that Speak Today

Many are recognizing a poverty of transcendence in holy spaces today, as the

ability of place to communicate meaning has been culturally deemphasized or altogether

ignored (at times intentionally). Paul Goldberger describes the architecture of the

megachurch, for instance, as “a neutral container, a place for the large gatherings that are

central to the church's way of serving its members. Architecture may have many jobs at

the megachurch, but providing spiritual meaning is not one of them” (Goldberger 1995).

Megachurches may often lack a sense of sanctus.

Many Protestant churches today may resemble a theatre, as amphitheater-style

seating slopes down to a stage where a pastor preaches and musicians lead worship. This

was a significant change in Protestant architecture that occurred in the late 1800s, spurred

on by an increasingly revivalist theology and corresponding worship style. It was a

significant change from the classic, rectangular Federalist church, which would have had

parallel pews facing a raised pulpit at the front of the church, embodying the dialogic

relationship between pastor and congregation and exalting the act of preaching (Kilde

2005, 6-12). Church services today may take place in renovated warehouses or gyms.

Randall Smith speaks of “drab, bloodless” Catholic churches built in the mid-1900s, or

earlier churches that were stripped of their “original beauty” in a wave of iconoclasm in

77

the 1960s and 1970s. He describes these churches as “white-washed, modernist, living-

room” churches (Smith 2017).

These sanctuaries, in some cases, are formed by theological convictions.

Providing space for “community and connection,” constructing welcoming and accessible

spaces, or building places that are “missional” and engage with the surrounding

community, may all be considerations in constructing modern churches today (Stetzer

2016). These architectural priorities certainly produce spaces that bring evangelism and

outreach to the fore, faithful to the focus and energy of evangelical Christianity. Often,

such spaces emphasize God’s immanence exceptionally well. In other cases, however,

the meaning in the architecture has not been as thoughtfully considered. Perhaps meaning

is displaced to an “invisible architecture,” hidden in other rituals and relationships that

take on more importance in communities.

There is a movement to emphasize transcendence more in Christian architecture,

and to reintroduce more beautiful elements. Julie Ooms, who chooses to drive further to

worship in a church that she finds more beautiful, proclaims that “Beauty is worth my 20-

minute commute,” and speaks of the importance of “physical space” for “physical

beings.” “High ceilings draw our eyes up as our prayers and songs rise. Pews encourage

us to sit with each other as individual chairs may not. Stained glass filters light across our

faces as ritual and rite filter the Word into our hearts” (Ooms 2016). Randall Smith shares

her sentiment, celebrating the return of beauty as iconography and beautiful flourishes are

being reintroduced to previously more “sterile” Catholic worship spaces (Smith 2017).

Spaces embody belief, and architectural choices reflect religious priorities and

reinforce specific views of the nature of worship and man’s relationship to God.

78

Medieval theologians and craftsmen of the 13th century, and the American Shakers of the

19th century, both had a keen sense of this reality and chose to meticulously construct

sanctuaries that would imitate and herald heaven. Perhaps Gothic and Shaker spaces may

serve as exempla today for the possibility of architectural and theological continuity, and

act as models to those seeking a greater sense of transcendence in religious architecture.

In Gothic and Shaker sanctuaries, transcendence and beauty are animated in

windows and walls, as light embodies clarity, purity, and collective revelation. These

spaces remind us of the power of theophany in luminosity, the promise and hope of

God’s reconciliation of humankind to Himself as He makes all things right, and all things

new.

79

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barron, Robert. Heaven in Stone and Glass: Experiencing the Spirituality of the Great

Cathedrals. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2013. Bede. On the Tabernacle. Translated by Arthur G. Holder. Liverpool: Liverpool

University Press, 1994. Bede. On the Temple. Translated by Seán Connolly. Liverpool: Liverpool University

Press, 1995. Bonaventure. De Reductione Artium Ad Theologiam. 2nd ed. Translation and commentary

by Healy, Emma Therese. Saint Bonaventure, N. Y., 1955. Boyvadaoğlu, Francesca Dell’Acqua. “Between Nature and Artifice: ‘Transparent

Streams of New Liquid.’” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 53/54 (2008): 93–103. Butler, Linda, and June Sprigg. Inner Light: The Shaker Legacy. 1st ed. New York:

Knopf, 1985. Calcidius. On Plato’s Timaeus. Translated by John Magee. Cambridge, Massachusetts:

Harvard University Press, 2016. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 41. Corrigan, John. “Spatiality and Religion,” in The Spatial Turn, ed. Barney Warf and

Santa Arias (London; New York: Routledge, 2009). 157–72. Cowen, Painton, and Jill Purce. Rose Windows. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1979. Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Translated by

Willard R. Trask. Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc. 1959. Ellard, Peter. The Sacred Cosmos: Theological, Philosophical, and Scientific

Conversations in the Early Twelfth Century School of Chartres. Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 2007.

Goldberger, Paul. “The Gospel of Church Architecture, Revised.” The New York Times,

1995. Accessed April 10, 2017. http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/20/garden/the-gospel-of-church-architecture-revised.html?pagewanted=all.

Goodwillie, Christian, and Jane F. Crosthwaite, eds. Millennial Praises: A Shaker

Hymnal. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009.

80

Gregory, Andrew. “Introduction.” In Timaeus and Critias. Plato. Translated by Robin Waterfield. ix-lvii. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Gregory of Nyssa. The Life of Moses. Translated by Abraham J. Malherbe. New York:

Paulist Press, 1978. The Classics of Western Spirituality. Grosseteste, Robert. On Light (De Luce). Translated by Clare C. Riedl. Milwaukee, Wis:

Marquette University Press, 1978. Mediaeval Philosophical Texts in Translation, No. 1.

Hendrix, John Shannon. “The Architecture of Lincoln Cathedral and the Cosmologies of

Bishop Grosseteste.” In Bishop Robert Grosseteste and Lincoln Cathedral: Tracing Relationships between Medieval Concepts of Order and Built Form. Farnham, Surrey ; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014.

Holder, Arthur G. “Introduction.” In On the Tabernacle. Bede. Liverpool: Liverpool

University Press, 1994. Katzenellenbogen, Adolf. The Sculptural Programs of Chartres Cathedral: Christ, Mary,

Ecclesia. New York: Norton, 1964. Kilde, Jeanne Halgren. “Approaching Religious Space: An Overview of Theories,

Methods, and Challenges in Religious Studies.” Religion and Theology 20, no. 3–4 (2013): 183–201.

———. Sacred Power, Sacred Space: An Introduction to Christian Architecture and

Worship. New York ; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. ———. When Church Became Theatre: The Transformation of Evangelical Architecture

and Worship in Nineteenth-Century America. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Lane, Belden C. Landscapes of the Sacred: Geography and Narrative in American

Spirituality. Expanded ed. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Lossky, Vladimir. In the Image and Likeness of God. Edited by John H. Erickson and

Thomas E. Bird. Crestwook, N.Y: St Vladimir’s Seminary Pr, 2001. Morgan, Jonathan. “A Radiant Theology: The Concept of Light in Pseudo-Dionysius.” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 55, no. 1-4 (Spring-Winter 2010): 127-147. Morse, Flo. The Story of the Shakers. Revised edition. New York, NY: The Countryman

Press, 2016.

81

Ooms, Julie. “The Enduring Appeal of a ‘Churchy’ Church.” Christianity Today. May 6, 2016. Accessed April 10, 2017. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/may-web-only/enduring-appeal-of-churchy-church.html.

Panofsky, Erwin. “Introduction.” In On the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and its Art

Treasures. 1-39. 2d ed. Edited by Gerda Panofsky-Soergel. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1979.

Panti, Cecilia. “Robert Grosseteste’s Cosmology of Light and Light-Metaphors: A

Symbolic Model of Sacred Space?” In Bishop Robert Grosseteste and Lincoln Cathedral: Tracing Relationships between Medieval Concepts of Order and Built Form. Farnham, Surrey ; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014.

Pearson, Paul M. Seeking Paradise: The Spirit of the Shakers. Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbis

Books, 2003. Plato. Timaeus and Critias. Translated by Robin Waterfield. Oxford ; New York: Oxford

University Press, 2008. Plato. Republic. Translated by Jeremy Hayward, Daniel Cardinal, and Gerald Jones.

London: Hodder Murray, 2007. Philosophy in Focus. Plummer, Henry. Stillness & Light: The Silent Eloquence of Shaker Architecture.

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works. Translated by Colm Luibhéid and Paul Rorem.

New York: Paulist Press, 1987. The Classics of Western Spirituality. Riedl, Clare C. “Introduction.” In On Light (De Luce). Milwaukee, Wis: Marquette

University Press, 1978. Mediaeval Philosophical Texts in Translation, No. 1. Rudolph, Conrad. “Inventing the Exegetical Stained-Glass Window: Suger, Hugh, and a

New Elite Art.” The Art Bulletin 93.4 (2011): 399–422. Seasoltz, R. Kevin. A Sense of the Sacred: Theological Foundations of Christian

Architecture and Art. New York: Continuum, 2005. Smith, Randall. “Architectural Signs of Hope.” The Catholic Thing. January 19, 2017.

Accessed April 10, 2017. https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2017/01/19/architectural-signs-of-hope/.

Somfai, Anna. “Calcidius’ ‘Commentary’ on Plato’s ‘Timaeus’ and its Place in the

Commentary Tradition: The Concept of ‘Analogia’ in Text and Diagrams.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. Supplement 83 (2004): 203–220.

Sprigg, June. By Shaker Hands. Hanover, N.H: University Press of New England, 1975.

82

Stetzer, Ed. “Trends in Church Architecture.” Christianity Today. July 18-22, 2016.

Accessed April 10, 2017. http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2016/july/trends-in-church-architecture-part-1.html

Suger, On the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and its Art Treasures. Edited, translated, and

annotated by Erwin Panofsky. 2d ed. Edited by Gerda Panofsky-Soergel. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1979.

Temple, Nicolas, John Hendrix, and Christian Frost. Eds. Bishop Robert Grosseteste and

Lincoln Cathedral: Tracing Relationships between Medieval Concepts of Order and Built Form. Farnham, Surrey ; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014.

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV Permanent Text Edition. Crossway

Bibles, 2016. Turner, Victor Witter. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. New York:

Aldine de Gruyter, 1995. Von Simson, Otto. The Gothic Cathedral; Origins of Gothic Architecture & the Medieval

Concept of Order. Expanded edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. Whidden, David L. Christ the Light: The Theology of Light and Illumination in Thomas

Aquinas. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014.