So vivid a picture of an actual mediaeval saint stands out upon this simple background as is hardly to be found elsewhere in all the records of centuries, but if the brother himself did not understand it and was so shamed and stupefied by Francis"s vehemence, the world could understand it no better; the Order itself was ashamed of Saint Francis because they understood him too well. They hastened to suppress this teaching against science, although it was the life of Francis"s doctrine. He taught that the science of the schools led to perdition because it was puffed up with emptiness and pride.
Humility, simplicity, poverty were alone true science. They alone led to heaven. Before the tribunal of Christ, the schoolmen would be condemned, "and, with their dark logic (opinionibus tenebrosis) shall be plunged into outer darkness with the spirits of the darkness." They were devilish, and would perish with the devils.
One sees instantly that neither Francis of a.s.sisi nor Bacon of Verulam could have hoped for peace with the schools; twelfth-century ecstasy felt the futility of mere rhetoric quite as keenly as seventeenth-century scepticism was to feel it; and yet when Francis died in 1226 at a.s.sisi, Thomas was just being born at Aquino some two hundred kilometres to the southward. True scholasticism had not begun. Four hundred years seem long for the human mind to stand still--or go backward; the more because the human mind was never better satisfied with itself than when thus absorbed in its mirror; but with that chapter we have nothing to do. The pleasantest way to treat it was that of Saint Francis; half-serious, half-jesting; as though, after all, in the thought of infinity, four hundred years were at most only a serio-comic interlude. At a.s.sisi, once, when a theologian attacked Fra Egidio by the usual formal arraignment in syllogisms, the brother waited until the conclusions were laid down, and then, taking out a flute from the folds of his robe, he played his answer in rustic melodies. The soul of Saint Francis was a rustic melody and the simplest that ever reached so high an expression. Compared with it, Theocritus and Virgil are as modern as Tennyson and ourselves.
All this shows only what Saint Francis was not; to understand what he was and how he goes with Saint Bernard and Saint Victor through the religious idyll of Transition architecture, one must wander about a.s.sisi with the "Floretum" or "Fioretti" in one"s hand;--the legends which are the gospel of Francis as the evangels are the gospel of Christ, who was reincarnated in a.s.sisi. We have given a deal of time to showing our own sceptical natures how simple the architects and decorators of Chartres were in their notions of the Virgin and her wants; but French simple-mindedness was already complex compared with Italian. The Virgin was human; Francis was elementary nature itself, like sun and air; he was Greek in his joy of life:--
... Recessit inde et venit inter Cannarium et Mevanium. Et respexit quasdam arbores juxta viam in quibus residebat tanta mult.i.tudo avium diversarum quod nunquam in partibus illis visa similis mult.i.tudo. In campo insuper juxta praedictas arbores etiam mult.i.tudo maxima residebat. Quam mult.i.tudinem sanctus Franciscus respiciens et admirans, facto super eum Spiritu Dei, dixit sociis: "Vobis hic me in via exspectantibus, ibo et praedicabo sororibus nostris aviculis." Et intravit in campum ad aves quae residebant in terra.
Et statim quum praedicare incepit omnes aves in arboribus residentes descenderunt ad eum et simul c.u.m aliis de campo immobiles perman serunt, quum tamen ipse inter eas iret plurimas tunica contingendo. Et nulla earum penitus movebatur, sicut recitavit frater Jacobus de Ma.s.sa, sanctus h.o.m.o, qui omnia supradicta habuit ab ore fratris Ma.s.sei, qui fuit unus de iis qui tune erant socii sancti patris.
Quibus avibus sanctus Franciscus ait: "Multum tenemini Deo, sorores meas aves, et debetis eum semper et ubique laudare propter liberum quem ubique habetis volatum, propter vest.i.tum duplicatum et triplicatum, propter habitum pictum et ornatum, propter victum sine vestro labore paratum, propter cantum a Creatore vobis intimatum, propter numerum ex Dei benedictione multiplicatum, propter s.e.m.e.n vestrum a Deo in area reservatum, propter elementum aeris vobis deputatum.
Vos non seminatis neque met.i.tis, et Deus vos pascit; et dedit vobis flumina et fontes ad potandum, montes et colles, saxa et ibices ad refugium, et arbores altes ad nidificandum; et quum nec filare nec texere sciatis, praebet tam vobis quam vestris filiis necessarium indumentum.
Unde multum diligit vos Creator qui tot beneficia contulit. Quapropter cavete, sorores mes aviculae, ni sitis ingratae sed semper laudare Deum studete."
... He departed thence and came between Cannara and Bevagna; and near the road he saw some trees on which perched so great a number of birds as never in those parts had been seen the like. Also in the field beyond, near these same trees, a very great mult.i.tude rested on the ground. This mult.i.tude, Saint Francis seeing with wonder, the spirit of G.o.d descending on him he said to his companions: "Wait for me on the road, while I go and preach to our sisters the little birds." And he went into the field where the birds were on the ground. And as soon as he began to preach, all the birds in the trees came down to him and with those in the field stood quite still, even when he went among them touching many with his robe. Not one of them moved, as Brother James of Ma.s.sa related, a saintly man who had the whole story from the mouth of Brother Ma.s.seo who was one of those then with the sainted father.
To these birds, Saint Francis said: "Much are you bound to G.o.d, birds, my sisters, and everywhere and always must you praise him for the free flight you everywhere have; for the double and triple covering; for the painted and decorated robe; for the food prepared without your labour; for the song taught you by the Creator; for your number multiplied by G.o.d"s blessing; for your seed preserved by G.o.d in the ark; for the element of air allotted to you.
You neither sow nor reap, and G.o.d feeds you; and has given you rivers and springs to drink at, mountains and hills, rocks and wild goats for refuge, and high trees for nesting; and though you know neither how to spin nor to weave, He gives both you and your children all the garments you need. Whence much must the Creator love you, Who confers so many blessings. Therefore take care, my small bird sisters, never to be ungrateful, but always strive to praise G.o.d."
Fra Ugolino, or whoever wrote from the dictation of Brother James of Ma.s.sa, after the tradition of Brother Ma.s.seo of Marignano reported Saint Francis"s sermon in absolute good faith as Saint Francis probably made it and as the birds possibly received it. All were G.o.d"s creatures, brothers and sisters, and G.o.d alone knew or knows whether or how far they understand each other; but Saint Francis, in any case, understood them and believed that they were in sympathy with him. As far as the birds or wolves were concerned, it was no great matter, but Francis did not stop with vertebrates or even with organic forms. "Nor was it surprising," said the "Speculum," "if fire and other creatures sometimes revered and obeyed him; for, as we who were with him very frequently saw, he held them in such affection and so much delighted in them, and his soul was moved by such pity and compa.s.sion for them, that he would not see them roughly handled, and talked with them with such evident delight as if they were rational beings":--
Nam quadam vice, quum sederet juxta ignem, ipso nesciente, ignis invasit pannos ejus de lino, sive brachas, juxta genu, quumque sentiret calorem ejus nolebat ipsum extinguere. Socius autem ejus videns comburi pannos ejus cucurrit ad eum volens extinguere ignem; ipse vero prohibuit ei, dicens: "Noli, frater, carissime, noli male facere igni!" Et sic nullo modo voluit quod extingueret ipsum. Ille vero festinanter ivit ad fratrem qui erat guardia.n.u.s ipsius, et duxit eum ad beatum Francisc.u.m, et statim contra voluntatem beati Francisci, extinxit ignem. Unde quacunque necessitate urgente nunquam voluit extinguere ignem vel lampadem vel candelam, tantum pietate movebatur ad ipsum. Nolebat etiam quod frater projiceret ignem vel lignum fumigantem de loco ad loc.u.m sicut solet fieri, sed volebat ut plane poneret ipsum in terra ob reverentiam illius cujus est creatura.
For once when he was sitting by the fire, a spark, without his knowing it, caught his linen drawers and set them burning near the knee, and when he felt the heat he would not extinguish it; but his companion, seeing his clothes on fire, ran to put it out, and he forbade it, saying: "Don"t, my dearest brother, don"t hurt the fire!" So he utterly refused to let him put it out, and the brother hurried off to get his guardian, and brought him to Saint Francis, and together they put out the fire at once against Saint Francis"s will. So, no matter what the necessity, he would never put out fire Or a lamp or candle, so strong was his feeling for it; he would not even let a brother throw fire or a smoking log from place to place, as is usual, but wanted it placed gently (piano) on the ground, out of respect for Him Whose creature it is.
The modern tourist, having with difficulty satisfied himself that Saint Francis acted thus in good faith, immediately exclaims that he was a heretic and should have been burned; but, in truth, the immense popular charm of Saint Francis, as of the Virgin, was precisely his heresies. Both were illogical and heretical by essence;--in strict discipline, in the days of the Holy Office, a hundred years later, both would have been burned by the Church, as Jeanne d"Arc was, with infinitely less reason, in 1431. The charm of the twelfth-century Church was that it knew how to be illogical--no great moral authority ever knew it better--when G.o.d Himself became illogical. It cared no more than Saint Francis, or Lord Bacon, for the syllogism. Nothing in twelfth-century art is so fine as the air and gesture of sympathetic majesty with which the Church drew aside to let the Virgin and Saint Francis pa.s.s and take the lead--for a time. Both were human ideals too intensely realized to be resisted merely because they were illogical. The Church bowed and was silent.
This does not concern us. What the Church thought or thinks is its own affair, and what it chooses to call orthodox is orthodox. We have been trying only to understand what the Virgin and Saint Francis thought, which is matter of fact, not of faith. Saint Francis was even more outspoken than the Virgin. She calmly set herself above dogma, and, with feminine indifference to authority, overruled it. He, having a.s.serted in the strongest terms the principle of obedience, paid no further attention to dogma, but, without the least reticence, insisted on practices and ideas that no Church could possibly permit or avow. Toward the end of his life, his physician cauterized his face for some neuralgic pain:--
Et posito ferro in igne pro coctura fienda, beatus Franciscus volens confortare spiritum suum ne pavesceret, sic locutus est ad ignem: "Frater mi, ignis, n.o.bilis et utilis inter alias creaturas, esto mihi curialis in hac hora quia olim te dilexi et diligam amore illius qui creavit te. Deprecor etiam creatorem nostrum qui nos creavit ut ita tuum calorem temperct ut ipsum sustinere valeam." Et oratione finita signavit ignem signo crucis.
When the iron was put on the fire for making the cotterie, Saint Francis, wishing to encourage himself against fear, spoke thus to the fire: "My brother, fire, n.o.blest and usefullest of creatures, be gentle to me now, because I have loved and will love you with the love of Him who created you. Our Creator, too, Who created us both, I implore so to temper your heat that I may have strength to bear it." And having spoken, he signed the fire with the cross.
With him, this was not merely a symbol. Children and saints can believe two contrary things at the same time, but Saint Francis had also a complete faith of his own which satisfied him wholly. All nature was G.o.d"s creature. The sun and fire, air and water, were neither more nor less brothers and sisters than sparrows, wolves, and bandits. Even "daemones sunt castalli Domini nostri"; the devils are wardens of our Lord. If Saint Francis made any exception from his univeral law of brotherhood it was that of the schoolmen, but it was never expressed. Even in his pa.s.sionate outbreak, in the presence of Saint Dominic, at the great Chapter of his Order at Sancta Maria de Portiuncula in 1218, he did not go quite to the length of denying the brotherhood of schoolmen, although he placed them far below the devils, and yet every word of this address seems to sob with the anguish of his despair at the power of the school anti-Christ:--
Quum beatus Franciscus esset in capitulo generali apud Sanctam Mariam de Portiuncula ... et fuerunt ibi quinque millia fratres, quamplures fratres sapientes et scientiati iverunt ad dominum Ostiensem qui erat ibidem, et dixerunt ei: "Domine, volumus ut suadetis fratri Francisco quod sequatur consilium fratrum sapientium et permittat se interdum duci ab eis." Et allegabant regulam sancti Benedicti, Augustini et Bernardi qui docent sic et sic vivere ordinate. Quae omnia quum retulisset cardinalis beato Francisco per modum admoni admonitionis, beatus Franciscus, nihil sibi respondens, cepit ipsum per manum et duxit eum ad fratres congregatos in capitulo, et sic locutus est fratribus in fervore et virtute Spirit us sancti:--
"Fratres mei, fratres mei, Dominus vocavit me per viam simplicitatis et humilitatis, et bane viam ostendit mini in veritate pro me et pro illis qui volunt mini credere et imitari. Et ideo volo quod non nominetis mihi aliquam regulam neque sancti Benedicti neque sancti Augustini neque sancti Bernardi, neque aliquam viam et formam vivendi praeter illam quae mihi a Domino est ostensa misericorditer et donata. Et dixit mihi Dominus quod volebat me esse unum pauperem et stultum idiotam [magnum fatuum] in hoc mundo et noluit nos ducere per viam aliam quam per istam scientiam. Sed per vestram scientiam et sapientiam Deus vos confundet et ego confido in castallis Domini [idest dasmonibus] quod per ipsos puniet vos Deus et adhuc redibitis ad vestrum statum c.u.m vituperio vestro velitis nolitis."
When Saint Francis was at the General Chapter held at Sancta maris de Portiuncula ... and five thousand brothers were present, A number of them who were schoolmen went to Cardinal Hugolino who was there, and said to him: "My lord, we want you to persuade Brother Francis to follow the council of the learned brothers, and sometimes let himself be guided by them." And they suggested the rule of Saint Benedict or Augustine or Bernard who require their congregations to live so and so, by regulation. When the cardinal had repeated all this to Saint Francis by way of counsel, Saint Francis, making no answer, took him by the hand and led him to the brothers a.s.sembled in Chapter, and in the fervour and virtue of the Holy Ghost, spoke thus to the brothers:
"My brothers, my brothers, G.o.d has called me by way of simplicity and humility, and has shown me in verity this path for me and those who want to believe and follow me; so I want you to talk of no Rule to me, neither Saint Benedict nor Saint Augustine nor Saint Bernard, nor any way or form of Life whatever except that which G.o.d has mercifully pointed out and granted to me. And G.o.d said that he wanted me to be a pauper [poverello] and an idiot--a great fool--in this world, and would not lead us by any other path of science than this. But by your science and syllogisms G.o.d will confound you, and I trust in G.o.d"s warders, the devils, that through them G.o.d shall punish you, and you will yet come back to your proper station with shame, whether you will or no."
The narration continues: "Tunc cardinalis obstupuit valde et nihil respondit. Et omnes fratres plurimum timuerunt."
One feels that the reporter has not exaggerated a word; on the contrary, he softened the scandal, because in his time the Cardinal had gained his point, and Francis was dead. One can hear Francis beginning with some restraint, and gradually carried away by pa.s.sion till he lost control of himself and his language: ""G.o.d told me, with his own words, that he meant me to be a beggar and a great fool, and would not have us on any other terms; and as for your science, I trust in G.o.d"s devils who will beat you out of it, as you deserve." And the Cardinal was utterly dumbfounded and answered nothing; and all the brothers were scared to death." The Cardinal Hugolino was a great schoolman, and Dominic was then founding the famous order in which the greatest of all doctors, Albertus Magnus, was about to begin his studies. One can imagine that the Cardinal "obstupuit valde," and that Dominic felt shaken in his scheme of school instruction. For a single instant, in the flash of Francis"s pa.s.sion, the whole ma.s.s of five thousand monks in a state of semi- ecstasy recoiled before the impa.s.sable gulf that opened between them and the Church.
No one was to blame--no one ever is to blame--because G.o.d wanted contradictory things, and man tried to carry out, as he saw them, G.o.d"s trusts. The schoolmen saw their duty in one direction; Francis saw his in another; and, apparently, when both lines had been carried, after such fashion as might be, to their utmost results, and five hundred years had been devoted to the effort, society declared both to be failures. Perhaps both may some day be revived, for the two paths seem to be the only roads that can exist, if man starts by taking for granted that there is an object to be reached at the end of his journey. The Church, embracing all mankind, had no choice but to march with caution, seeking G.o.d by every possible means of intellect and study. Francis, acting only for himself, could throw caution aside and trust implicitly in G.o.d, like the children who went on crusade. The two poles of social and political philosophy seem necessarily to be organization or anarchy; man"s intellect or the forces of nature. Francis saw G.o.d in nature, if he did not see nature in G.o.d; as the builders of Chartres saw the Virgin in their apse. Francis held the simplest and most childlike form of pantheism. He carried to its last point the mystical union with G.o.d, and its necessary consequence of contempt and hatred for human intellectual processes. Even Saint Bernard would have thought his ideas wanting in that "mesure" which the French mind so much prizes. At the same time we had best try, as innocently as may be, to realize that no final judgment has yet been p.r.o.nounced, either by the Church or by society or by science, on either or any of these points; and until mankind finally settles to a certainty where it means to go, or whether it means to go anywhere,--what its object is, or whether it has an object,--Saint Francis may still prove to have been its ultimate expression. In that case, his famous chant-- the "Cantico del Sole"--will be the last word of religion, as it was probably its first. Here it is--too sincere for translation:--
CANTICO DEL SOLE
... Laudato sie, misignore, con tucte le tue creature spetialmente messor lo frate sole lo quale iorno et allumini noi per loi et ellu e bellu e radiante c.u.m grande splendore de te, altissimo, porta significatione.
Laudato si, misignore, per sora luna e le stelle in celu lai formate clarite et pretiose et belle.
Laudato si, misignore, per frate vento et per aere et nubilo et sereno et onne tempo per lo quale a le tue creature dai sustentamento.
Laudato si, misignore, per sor aqua la quale e multo utile et humile et pretiosa et casta.
Laudato si, misignore, per frate focu per lo quale enallumini la nocte ed ello e bello et jocondo et robustoso et forte.
Laudato si, misignore, per sora nostra matre terra la quale ne sustenta et governa et produce diversi fructi con coloriti flori et herba.
Laudato si, misignore, per sora nostra morte corporale de la quale nullu h.o.m.o vivente po skappare guai acquelli ke morrano ne le peccata mortali....
The verses, if verses they are, have little or nothing in common with the art of Saint Bernard or Adam of Saint-Victor. Whatever art they have, granting that they have any, seems to go back to the cave-dwellers and the age of stone. Compared with the naivete of the "Cantico del Sole," the "Chanson de Roland" or the "Iliad" is a triumph of perfect technique. The value is not in the verse. The "Chant of the Sun" is another "Pons Seclorum"--or perhaps rather a "Pons Sanctorum"--over which only children and saints can pa.s.s. It is almost a paraphrase of the sermon to the birds. "Thank you, mi signore, for messor brother sun, in especial, who is your symbol; and for sister moon and the stars; and for brother wind and air and sky; and for sister water; and for brother fire; and for mother earth! We are all yours, mi signore! We are your children; your household; your feudal family! but we never heard of a Church. We are all varying forms of the same ultimate energy; shifting symbols of the same absolute unity; but our only unity, beneath you, is nature, not law! We thank you for no human inst.i.tutions, even for those established in your name; but, with all our hearts we thank you for sister our mother Earth and its fruits and coloured flowers!"
Francis loved them all--the brothers and sisters--as intensely as a child loves the taste and smell of a peach, and as simply; but behind them remained one sister whom no one loved, and for whom, in his first verses, Francis had rendered no thanks. Only on his death- bed he added the lines of grat.i.tude for "our sister death," the long-sought, never-found sister of the schoolmen, who solved all philosophy and merged multiplicity in unity. The solution was at least simple; one must decide for one"s self, according to one"s personal standards, whether or not it is more sympathetic than that with which we have got lastly to grapple in the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas.
CHAPTER XVI
SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS
Long before Saint Francis"s death, in 1226, the French mystics had exhausted their energies and the siecle had taken new heart. Society could not remain forever balancing between thought and act. A few gifted natures could absorb themselves in the absolute, but the rest lived for the day, and needed shelter and safety. So the Church bent again to its task, and bade the Spaniard Dominic arm new levies with the best weapons of science, and flaunt the name of Aristotle on the Church banners along with that of Saint Augustine. The year 1215, which happened to be the date of Magna Charta and other easily fixed events, like the birth of Saint Louis, may serve to mark the triumph of the schools. The pointed arch revelled at Rheims and the Gothic architects reached perfection at Amiens just as Francis died at a.s.sisi and Thomas was born at Aquino. The Franciscan Order itself was swept with the stream that Francis tried to dam, and the great Franciscan schoolman, Alexander Hales, in 1222, four years before the death of Francis, joined the order and began lecturing as though Francis himself had lived only to teach scholastic philosophy.
The rival Dominican champion, Albertus Magnus, began his career a little later, in 1228. Born of the n.o.ble Swabian family of Bollstadt, in 1193, he drifted, like other schoolmen, to Paris, and the Rue Maitre Albert, opposite Notre Dame, still records his fame as a teacher there. Thence he pa.s.sed to a school established by the order at Cologne, where he was lecturing with great authority in 1243 when the general superior of the order brought up from Italy a young man of the highest promise to be trained as his a.s.sistant.
Thomas, the new pupil, was born under the shadow of Monte Ca.s.sino in 1226 or 1227. His father, the Count of Aquino, claimed descent from the imperial line of Swabia; his mother, from the Norman princes of Sicily; so that in him the two most energetic strains in Europe met.
His social rank was royal, and the order set the highest value on it. He took the vows in 1243, and went north at once to help Albertus at Cologne. In 1245, the order sent Albertus back to Paris, and Thomas with him. There he remained till 1248 when he was ordered to Cologne as a.s.sistant lecturer, and only four years afterwards, at twenty-five years old, he was made full professor at Paris. His industry and activity never rested till his death in 1274, not yet fifty years old, when he bequeathed to the Church a ma.s.s of ma.n.u.script that tourists will never know enough to estimate except by weight. His complete works, repeatedly printed, fill between twenty and thirty quarto volumes. For so famous a doctor, this is almost meagre. Unfortunately his greatest work, the "Summa Theologiae," is unfinished--like Beauvais Cathedral.
Perhaps Thomas"s success was partly due to his memory which is said to have been phenomenal; for, in an age when cyclopaedias were unknown, a cyclopaedic memory must have counted for half the battle in these scholastic disputes where authority could be met only by authority; but in this case, memory was supported by mind. Outwardly Thomas was heavy and slow in manner, if it is true that his companions called him "the big dumb ox of Sicily"; and in fashionable or court circles he did not enjoy reputation for acute sense of humour. Saint Louis"s household offers a picture not wholly clerical, least of all among the King"s brothers and sons; and perhaps the dinner-table was not much more used then than now to abrupt interjections of theology into the talk about hunting and hounds; but however it happened, Thomas one day surprised the company by solemnly announcing--"I have a decisive argument against the Manicheans!" No wit or humour could be more to the point-- between two saints that were to be--than a decisive argument against enemies of Christ, and one greatly regrets that the rest of the conversation was not reported, unless, indeed, it is somewhere in the twenty-eight quarto volumes; but it probably lacked humour for courtiers.
The twenty-eight quarto volumes must be closed books for us. None but Dominicans have a right to interpret them. No Franciscan--or even Jesuit--understands Saint Thomas exactly or explains him with authority. For summer tourists to handle these intricate problems in a theological spirit would be altogether absurd; but, for us, these great theologians were also architects who undertook to build a Church Intellectual, corresponding bit by bit to the Church Administrative, both expressing--and expressed by--the Church Architectural. Alexander Hales, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and the rest, were artists; and if Saint Thomas happens to stand at their head as type, it is not because we choose him or understand him better than his rivals, but because his order chose him rather than his master Albert, to impose as authority on the Church; and because Pope John XXII canonized him on the ground that his decisions were miracles; and because the Council of Trent placed his "Summa" among the sacred books on their table; and because Innocent VI said that his doctrine alone was sure; and finally, because Leo XIII very lately made a point of declaring that, on the wings of Saint Thomas"s genius, human reason has reached the most sublime height it can probably ever attain.
Although the Franciscans, and, later, the Jesuits, have not always shown as much admiration as the Dominicans for the genius of Saint Thomas, and the mystics have never shown any admiration whatever for the philosophy of the schools, the authority of Leo XIII is final, at least on one point and the only one that concerns us. Saint Thomas is still alive and overshadows as many schools as he ever did; at all events, as many as the Church maintains. He has outlived Descartes and Leibnitz and a dozen other schools of philosophy more or less serious in their day. He has mostly outlived Hume, Voltaire, and the militant sceptics. His method is typical and cla.s.sic; his sentences, when interpreted by the Church, seem, even to an untrained mind, intelligible and consistent; his Church Intellectual remains practically unchanged, and, like the Cathedral of Beauvais, erect, although the storms of six or seven centuries have prostrated, over and over again, every other social or political or juristic shelter. Compared with it, all modern systems are complex and chaotic, crowded with self-contradictions, anomalies, impracticable functions and outworn inheritances; but beyond all their practical shortcomings is their fragmentary character. An economic civilization troubles itself about the universe much as a hive of honey-bees troubles about the ocean, only as a region to be avoided. The hive of Saint Thomas sheltered G.o.d and man, mind and matter, the universe and the atom, the one and the multiple, within the walls of an harmonious home.
Theologians, like architects, were supposed to receive their Church complete in all its lines; they were modern judges who interpreted the laws but never invented it. Saint Thomas merely selected between disputed opinions, but he allowed himself to wander very far afield, indeed, in search of opinions to dispute. The field embraced all that existed, or might have existed, or could never exist. The immense structure rested on Aristotle and Saint Augustine at the last, but as a work of art it stood alone, like Rheims or Amiens Cathedral, as though it had no antecedents. Then, although, like Rheims, its style was never meant to suit modern housekeeping and is ill-seen by the Ecole des Beaux Arts, it reveals itself in its great ma.s.s and intelligence as a work of extraordinary genius; a system as admirably proportioned as any cathedral and as complete; a success not universal either in art or science.
Saint Thomas"s architecture, like any other work of art, is best studied by itself as though he created it outright; otherwise a tourist would never get beyond its threshold. Beginning with the foundation which is G.o.d and G.o.d"s active presence in His Church, Thomas next built G.o.d into the walls and towers of His Church, in the Trinity and its creation of mind and matter in time and s.p.a.ce; then finally he filled the Church by uniting mind and matter in man, or man"s soul, giving to humanity a free will that rose, like the fleche, to heaven. The foundation--the structure--the congregation-- are enough for students of art; his ideas of law, ethics, and politics; his vocabulary, his syllogisms, his arrangement are, like the drawings of Villard de Honnecourt"s sketch-book, curious but not vital. After the eleventh-century Romanesque Church of Saint Michael came the twelfth-century Transition Church of the Virgin, and all merged and ended at last in the thirteenth-century Gothic Cathedral of the Trinity. One wants to see the end.