Je ne suis pas d'avis que tous les arts doivent être
écrasés à terre et périr par l'Évangile,
comme certaines personnes bigots l'affirment,
mais j'aimerais les voir tous, et surtout
la musique,
serviteurs de Celui qui les accorda et créa.
(Martin Luther, cité dans La
bataille pour notre culture. Entrevue avec Francis Schaeffer)
- Voir FORUM (section sur l'art) -
MP3 :
Grâce et créativité (Jean-Marc Daumas)
Nous vous recommandons, en français : http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/arts/,
dans lequel vous trouverez notamment :
La
bataille pour notre culture. Entrevue avec Francis Schaeffer
The Battle for Our
Culture. Interview with Francis Schaeffer.
La création
biblique et les arts et lettres. Ellen Myers
Le don de la créativité.
(Rookmaaker)
Qu'a fait l'Eglise du don
merveilleux de l'art ? Andrew Sievright (pdf)
Adonné à la médiocrité.
(Franky Schaeffer)
La liberté
de l'artiste évangélique. Paul Gosselin
La créativité humaine:
La littérature, la musique, les beaux arts. Ellen Myers
La
danse
Cet excellent site comporte plusieurs sections, dont
: littérature, musique, cinéma, arts
visuels
A lire, du webmaster de Samizdat, Paul Gosselin :
D'un point de vue plus strictement
réformé,
je vous propose de lire en tout premier lieu, sur le sujet (en anglais) :
Abraham
Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism
Fifth Lecture - Calvinism and Art
The page numbering of the Eerdmans printed edition has been retained
for the benefit of readers.
The Stone Lectures CALVINISM AND ART Page 142
IN THIS FIFTH LECTURE, which is the last but one, I speak of Calvinism
and Art. 1
It is not the prevailing tendency of the day that induces me to do this.
Genuflection before an almost fanatical worship of art, such as our time
fosters, should little harmonize with the high seriousness of life, for
which Calvinism has pleaded, and which it has sealed, not with the
pencil or chisel in the studio, but with its best blood at the stake and
in the field of battle. Moreover the love of art which is so broadly on
the increase in our times should not blind our eyes, but ought to be
soberly and critically examined. It presents the fact, which is in every
way explainable, that artistic refinement, thus far restricted to a few
favored circles, now tends to gain ground among broader middle classes,
occasionally even betraying its inclination to descend to the widest
strata of lower society. It is the democratizing, if you like, of a
life-utterance which hitherto recommended itself by its aristocratic
allurements. And though the really inspired artist may complain that,
with the majority, piano-playing is mere strumming, and painting little
more than daubing, yet, the exuberant feeling of having a share in the
privileges of art is so overwhelming, that the scorn of the artist is
preferred to the abandonment of art-training in education. To have laid
a production of your own, however poor, upon the altar of art becomes
more and more the characteristic of an accomplished civilization.
Finally, in all this the desire of enjoyment through ear and eye
expresses itself, especially by means of music and of the
The Stone Lectures CALVINISM AND ART Page 143
stage. And if it cannot be denied that many court these sensual
pleasures in ways that are less noble and too often sinful, it is
equally certain that in many instances this love of art leads men to
seek enjoyment in nobler directions and lessens the appetite for lower
sensuality Especially in our great cities, stage-managers are able to
provide such first rate entertainments, and the easy means of
communication between the nations imparts such an international
character to our best singers and players, that the finest artistic
enjoyments are now brought for almost no price within the reach of an
ever-widening class. Besides, it is but fair to concede that, threatened
with atrophy by materialism and rationalism, the human heart naturally
seeks an antidote against this withering process, m its artistic
instinct Unchecked, the dominating influences of money and of barren
intellectualism would reduce the life of the emotions to freezing-point.
And, unable to grasp the holier benefits of religion, the mysticism of
the heart reacts in an art intoxication. Hence, though I do not forget
that the real genius of art seeks the heights of isolation rather than
the plains below, and that our age, so poor in the production of real
creative art, is deemed to warm itself at the splendid glow of the past;
yea, though I admit that the homage of art by the profanum vulgus must
necessarily lead to art-corruption, nevertheless, in my estimation, even
the most injudicious aesthetical fanaticism stands far higher than the
common race for wealth, or an unholy prostration before the shrines of
Bacchus and Venus. In this cold, irreligious and practical age the
warmth of this devotion to art has kept alive many higher aspirations of
our soul, which otherwise might readily have died, as they did in the
middle of the last century. Thus you see, I do not under-estimate the
present aesthetical movement. But what in the light of History should be
discountenanced is the mad endeavor to place it higher than, or even to
make it of equal value with the religious movement of the 16th century;
yet this is what I should be doing if I begged for Calvinism the favor
of this new artistic movement. And therefore, when I plead the
significance of Calvinism in the domain of art, I am not in the least
induced to do so by this vulgarization of art, but rather keep my eyes
fixed upon the Beautiful and the Sublime in its eternal significance,
and upon art as one of the richest gifts of God to mankind.
The Stone Lectures CALVINISM AND ART Page 144
Here, however, every student of history knows that I founder upon a
deeply-rooted prejudice. Calvin, it is said, was personally devoid of
the artistic instinct, and Calvinism, which in the Netherlands proved
guilty of Iconoclasm, cannot but be incapable either of artistic
development or of real, noteworthy art-production. A brief word
therefore about this strong prejudice is here in order. Without putting
too high an estimate upon his: “Wer nicht liebt Weib, Wein und Gesang,
”it is beyond dispute that Luther was more artistically disposed than
Calvin; but what does it prove? Will you deny Hellenism its artistic
laurels because, devoid of all sense of the beautiful, Socrates boasted
of the beauty of his giant nose because it allowed his breath to pass
more freely? Do the writings of John, Peter and Paul, the three pillars
of the Christian Church, in a single word betray any special
appreciation of artistic life? Yea, be it asked reverently, is there any
instance in the Gospels of Christ ever pleading for art as such, or
seeking its enjoyment? And when these questions, one by one, must be
answered in the negative, have you therefore the right to deny the fact
that Christianity as such has been of an almost invaluable significance
to the development of art? And if not, why then would you accuse
Calvinism on the mere ground that Calvin personally had little feeling
for art? And when you speak of the Iconoclasm of the Beggars, should you
forget that in the 8th century in the midst of the artistic and
beautiful Grecian world the manly spirit of Leo Isaurus instigated a
still more violent Iconoclasm, and should therefore the honor be denied
to Byzantium of having produced the finest monuments? Do you ask for
still further proof to the contrary? Well, more sharply even than Leo
Isaurus in the 8th century or the Netherland's Beggars in the 16th
century, did Mahomed in his Khoran militate against images of all kinds,
but will this justify the charge that the Alhambra in Grenada and the
Alcazar at Seville are no wonderfully beautiful products of
architectural art?
We must not forget that the artistic instinct is a universal human
phenomenon, but that in connection with national types, climates and
countries, the development of that artistic instinct is most unequally
divided among the nations. Who will look for a development of art in
Iceland, and who on the other hand will not scent it, if I may so
express myself, amidst the luxury of nature in the Levant? Is it then a
matter of surprise that the South of
The Stone Lectures CALVINISM AND ART Page 145
Europe was more favorable for the development of this artistic instinct
than the North? And when History shows that Calvinism was most widely
received by the people of the North, does it prove aught against
Calvinism, that in nations living in a colder climate and of poorer
natural surroundings, it was not able to quicken an artistic life such
as flourished among the Southern nations ? Because Calvinism preferred a
worship of God in spirit and in truth, to sacerdotal wealth, it has been
accused by Rome of being devoid of an appreciation of art, and because
it disapproved of a woman debasing herself as an artist's model or
casting away her honor in the ballet, its moral seriousness has clashed
with the sensualism of those who deemed no sacrifice too sacred for the
Goddess of Art. All this, however, concerns only the place which art has
to occupy in the sphere of life, and the boundaries of its domain, but
does not touch art itself. To view therefore from a higher platform the
significance of Calvinism to art, follow me in the investigation of
these three points: 1. why Calvinism was not allowed to develop an
art-style of its own; 2. what flows from its principle for the nature of
art; and 3. what it has actually done for its advancement.
____________________
All would be well, if only Calvinism had developed an architectural
style of its own. Just as the Parthenon is boasted of at Athens, the
Pantheon at Rome, the Saint Sophia at Byzantium, the Cathedral at
Cologne, or the Saint Peter's at the Vatican, so also ought Calvinism to
be able to exhibit an impressive structure, embodying all the fulness of
its ideal. And that it did not do this is considered sufficient proof of
its artistic poverty. Of course Calvinism is understood as having tried
to ascend to the same artistic luxury, but is censured as having proved
unable to accomplish it; its barren inflexibility being the obstacle
that prevented every higher aesthetical development. And when the
humanist boasts of the classic art of Old Hellas, the Greek Church of
the Byzantine, and Rome of its Gothic Cathedral, then Calvinism is
looked upon as standing perplexed by the painful charge of having
lessened the fulness of human life. Now in opposition to this thoroughly
unfair accusation, I maintain that for the very reason of its higher
principle
The Stone Lectures CALVINISM AND ART Page 146
Calvinism was not allowed to develop such an architectural style of its
own. I was bound in this connection to put architecture to the front,
because both in classic and in so-called Christian art the absolute and
all-embracing production of art was exhibited in architecture, all the
other departments of art finally adapting themselves to the temple,
church, mosque or pagoda. Scarcely a single art-style can be mentioned
which did not arise from the center of divine worship and which did not
seek the realization of its ideals in the sumptuous structure for that
worship. This was the thriving of an impulse which in itself was noble.
Art derived her richest motives from Religion. The religious passion was
the gold-mine, which financially rendered her boldest conceptions
possible. For the realization of her conceptions in this holy domain she
found not only the narrow circle of art-lovers, but also the whole
nation at her feet. Divine worship furnished the tie that united the
separated arts. And what tells more still, by this connection with the
Eternal, art received its inner unity and its ideal consecration. And
this explains the fact that whatever the palace and the stage may have
done for the development of art, it was always the sanctuary by which it
was impressed with the stamp of a special character and to which it was
indebted for a creative style. Art-style and the style of worship
coincided. Now of course, if this wedding of art inspired worship, with
worship-inspired art be no intermediate stage, but the highest end to be
obtained, then it must frankly be confessed that Calvinism cannot but
plead guilty. If, however, it can be shown that this alliance of
religion and art represents a lower stage of religious, and in general
of human development, then it is plain that in this very want of a
special architectural style, Calvinism finds an even higher
recommendation. Being fully convinced that this is the case, I proceed
to account for this conviction.
First then the aesthetic development of divine worship carried to those
ideal heights of which the Parthenon and the Pantheon, the Saint Sophia
and Saint Peter are the stone-embroidered witnesses, is only possible at
that lower stage, in which the same form of religion is imposed upon a
whole nation, both by prince and priest. In that case every difference
of spiritual expression fuses into one mode of symbolical worship, and
this union of the masses, under the leadership of the magistrate and the
clergy, furnishes the possibility of defraying the immense expense of
such colossal structures
The Stone Lectures CALVINISM AND ART Page 147
and of ornamenting and decorating them. In the case, however, of a
progressive development of the nations, when individual character-traits
split the unity of the masses, Religion also rises to that higher plain
where it graduates from the symbolical into the clearly-conscious life,
and thereby necessitates both the division of worship into many forms,
and the emancipation of matured religion from all sacerdotal and
political guardianship. In the 16th century Europe was approaching,
though slowly, this higher level of Spiritual development, and it was
not Lutheranism with its subjection of the whole nation to the religion
of the prince, but Calvinism with its profound conception of religious
liberty, which initiated the transition. In every country where
Calvinism has made its appearance, it has led to a multiformity of
life-tendencies, it has broken the power of the State within the domain
of religion, and to a great extent has made an end of sacerdotalism. As
a result of this, it abandoned the symbolical form of worship, and
refused, at the demand of art, to embody its religious spirit in
monuments of splendor.
The objection that such a symbolic service had a place in Israel does
not weaken my argument, it rather supports it. For does not the New
Testament teach us that the ministry of shadows, naturally flourishing
under the old dispensation, under the dispensation of fulfilled prophecy
is “old and waxeth aged and is nigh unto vanishing away? ”In Israel
we find a state-religion, which is one and the same for the entire
people. That religion is under sacerdotal leadership. And finally it
makes its appearance in symbols, and is consequently embodied in the
splendid temple of Solomon. But when this ministry of shadows has served
the purposes of the Lord, Christ comes to prophesy the hour when God
shall no longer be worshipped in the monumental temple at Jerusalem, but
shall rather be worshipped in spirit and in truth. And in keeping with
this prophecy you find no trace or shadow of art for worship in all the
apostolic literature. Aaron's visible priesthood on earth gives place to
the invisible High-priesthood after the order of Melchizedek in Heaven.
The purely spiritual breaks through the nebula of the symbolical.
My second proof is that this agrees entirely with the higher relation
between Religion and Art. Here I appeal to Hegel and Von
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Hartmann who, both standing outside Calvinism, may be relied upon as
being disinterested witnesses. Hegel says that art, which, at a lower
stage of development, imparts to a still sensual religion its highest
expression, finally helps it by these very means to cast off the fetters
of sensuality; for though it must be granted that at a lower level it is
only the aesthetical worship that liberates the spirit, nevertheless, he
concludes, “beautiful art is not its highest emancipation, ”for that
is only found in the realm of the invisible and spiritual. And Von
Hartmann even more emphatically declares that: Originally Divine worship
appeared inseparably united to art, because, at the lower stage,
Religion is still inclined to lose itself in the aesthetic form. At that
period, all the arts, he says, engage in the service of the cult, not
merely music, painting, sculpture and architecture, but also the dance.
mimicry and the drama. The more, on the other hand, Religion develops
into spiritual maturity, the more it will extricate itself from art's
bandages, because art always remains incapable of expressing the very
essence of Religion. And the final result of this historic process of
separation, he concludes, must be that Religion, when fully matured,
will rather entirely abstain from the stimulant by which aesthetic
pseudo-emotion intoxicated it, in order to concentrate itself wholly and
exclusively upon the quickening of those emotions which are purely
religious.”
And both Hegel and Von Hartmann are correct in this fundamental thought.
Religion and Art have each a life-sphere of their own these may at first
be scarcely distinguishable from each other and therefore closely
intertwined, but, with a richer development, these two spheres
necessarily separate. Looking at two babies in a cradle you can scarcely
tell which is boy or girl, but when, having reached the years of
maturity, they stand before you, as man and woman, you see them both
with forms, and traits, and modes of expression peculiarly their own.
And so, arrived at their highest development, both Religion and Art
demand an independent existence, and the two stems which at first were
intertwined and seemed to belong to the same plant, now appear to spring
from a root of their own. This is the process from Aaron to Christ, from
Bezaleel and Aholiab to the Apostles. And, by virtue of that same
process, Calvinism occupies a higher standpoint in the 16th century
The Stone Lectures CALVINISM AND ART Page 149
than Romanism could reach. Consequently Calvinism was neither able, nor
even permitted, to develop an art-style of its own from its religious
principle. To have done this would have been to slide back to a lower
level of religious life. On the contrary, its nobler effort must be to
release religion and divine worship more and more from its sensual form
and to encourage its vigorous spirituality. This it was enabled to do
because of the powerful pulsebeat by which at that time the religious
life coursed through the arteries of mankind. And the fact that in these
days our Calvinistic churches are deemed cold and unheimish, and a
reintroduction of the symbolical in our places of worship is longed for.
we owe to the sad reality that the pulsebeat of the religious life in
our times is so much fainter than it was in the days of our martyrs. But
so far from borrowing from this the right of re-descending to a lower
level of religion, this faintness of the religious life ought to inspire
the prayer for a mightier in-working of the Holy Spirit. Second
childhood, in your old age, is a painful, retrograde movement. The man
who fears God. and whose faculties remain clear and unimpaired, does not
on the brink of age return to the playthings of his infancy.
One more objection might maintain itself after this demonstration, and
that too I want to face. The question may be asked whether a really
independent life-tendency should not create its own art-style, even if
it developed itself as absolutely secular. Let the real meaning of the
objection be well understood. It does not suggest that Calvinism if
truly possessed of an esthetic significance should have given a certain
direction to the practice of art, for the fact that Calvinism has truly
done this will presently show itself. The point of this objection hits
deeper, and puts the question whether in the first place a secular
art-style is conceivable; and in the second place, whether the creation
of such a purely secular and dominating art-style could have been
demanded of Calvinism. The answer I make to the first is: that in the
history of art no record of the rise of such an all-embracing art-style
independent of Religion, is to be found. Mark you, I do not here speak
of a school of a single art, but of an art-style which puts a concentric
impress upon all the arts together. To a certain degree it could be
asserted of Roman art and of that of the Renaissance that, although
devoid
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of a leading religious impulse, they nevertheless reached an all-sided
revelation in art-forms. Speaking of architecture, the dome in Roman and
Byzantine art is not an expression of a religious thought but of
political energy. The dome symbolizes world-power, and, though it may be
in a different sense, of the Renaissance also it must be confessed that
it did not take its rise in religion, but in the circles of civil and
social life. Now the Renaissance will be considered more fully in the
third part of this lecture, but with respect to the Roman art-style I
here answer, first, that a style, which borrowed almost all its motives
from Greek art can scarcely boast of an independent character; and
secondly, that, in Rome, the State-idea had become so identified with
the Religious idea, that when, in the period of the emperors, art
reached its height of prosperity while sacrifices were burned to Divus
Augustus, it is unhistorical to consider State and Religion any longer
as being at that time separate spheres.
But, apart from this historic outcome, it may be questioned, whether
such an all-embracing art-style ever could have originated outside of
Religion. The rise of such a style demands a central motive in the
mental and emotional life of a people, which shall dominate the whole
existence from within, and which consequently carries its effect from
this spiritual center to its outermost circumference. Not of course as
though a national world of art ever could be the product of intellectual
thought. Intellectual art is no art, and the effort put forth by Hegel
to draw out from thoughts, militated against the very nature of art. Our
intellectual, ethical, religious and aesthetic life each commands a
sphere of its own. These spheres run parallel and do not allow the
derivation of one from the other. It is the central emotion, the central
impulse, and the central animation, in the mystical root of our being,
which seeks to reveal itself to the outer world in this fourfold
ramification. Art also is no side-shoot on a principal branch, but an
independent branch that grows from the trunk of our life itself, even
though it is far more nearly allied to Religion than to our thinking or
to our ethical being. If, however, it be asked how there can arise a
unity of conception embracing these four domains, it constantly appears
that in the finite this unity is only found at that point where it
springs from the fountain of the infinite. There is
The Stone Lectures CALVINISM AND ART Page 151
no unity in your thinking save by a well-ordered philosophical system,
and there is no system of philosophy which does not ascend to the issues
of the infinite. In the same way there is no unity in your moral
existence save by the union of your inner existence with the moral
world-order, and there is no moral world-order conceivable but for the
impression of an Infinite power that has ordained order in this moral
world. Thus also no unity in the revelation of art is conceivable,
except by the art-inspiration of an Eternal Beautiful, which flows from
the fountain of the Infinite. Hence no characteristic all-embracing
art-style can arise except as a consequence of the peculiar impulse from
the Infinite that operates in our inmost being. And since this is the
very privilege of Religion, over intellect, morality and art, that she
alone effects the communion with the Infinite, in our self-consciousness,
the call for a secular, all-embracing art-style, independent of any
religious principle, is simply absurd.
Understand that art is no fringe that is attached to the garment, and no
amusement that is added to life, but a most serious power in our present
existence, and therefore its principal variations must maintain, in
their artistic expression, a close relation with the principal
variations of our entire life; and since, without exception, these
principal variations of our entire human existence are dominated by our
relation to God, would it not be both a degradation and an
underestimation of art, if you were to imagine the ramifications, into
which the art-trunk divides itself, to be independent of the deepest
root which all human life has in God? Consequently no art-style has
sprung from the Rationalism of the 18th century, nor from the principle
of 1789, and however grievous it may be to our 19th century, all her
efforts to create a new art style of her own have ended in perfect
failure, and then only do her artistic productions possess a real charm
when she allows herself to he inspired by the wonders of the past.
Thus by itself the possibility must be denied that a proper art style
can originate independently of religion; but even if this were otherwise,
it would still be illogical, and this was my second argument, to demand
such a secular tendency of Calvinism. For how can you desire that a
life-movement, which found the origin of its power in the arraignment of
all men and of all human life
The Stone Lectures CALVINISM AND ART Page 152
before the face of God, should have sought the impulse, the passion and
the inspiration for its life outside of God in so exceedingly important
a domain as that of the mighty arts? There remains, therefore, no shadow
of a reality in the scornful reproach that the non-creation of an
architectural style of its own is a conclusive proof of Calvinism's
artistic poverty. Only under the auspices of its religious principle
could Calvinism have created a general art style, and just because it
had reached a so much higher stage of religious development, its very
principle forbade it the symbolical expression of its religion in
visible and sensual forms.
____________________
Hence the question must be differently stated. And this brings us to our
second point. The question is not whether Calvinism produced what, with
its higher view-point, it was no longer allowed to create, viz., a
general art-style of its own, but what interpretation of the nature of
art flows from its principle. In other words, is there in the life- and
world-view of Calvinism a place for art, and if so, what place? Is its
principle opposed to art, or, if judged by the standards of the
Calvinistic principle, would a world without art lose one of its ideal
spheres? I do not speak now of the abuse, but simply of the use of art.
In every domain, life is bound to respect the dimensions of this domain.
Encroachment on the domain of others is always unlawful; and our human
life will only then attain its nobler harmony when all its functions
cooperate in just proportion to our general development. The logic of
the mind may not scorn the feelings of the heart, nor should the love of
the beautiful silence the voice of conscience. However holy Religion may
be. it must keep within its own bounds, lest, in crossing its lines. it
degenerate into superstition, insanity or fanaticism. And, in the same
way, the too exuberant passion for art which laughs at the whispering of
conscience, must end in an unlovely discord quite different from what
the Greeks exalted in their kalokagathos. The fact, for instance, that
Calvinism arrayed itself against ail unholy play with woman's honor, and
stigmatized every form of immoral artistic enjoyment as a degradation,
lies therefore outside our scope. All this properly denounces the abuse,
while it carries no weight whatever with the question of the lawful use.
And that
The Stone Lectures CALVINISM AND ART Page 153
the lawful use of art was not opposed, but encouraged and even
recommended, by Calvin himself, his own words readily prove. When the
Scripture mentions the first appearance of art, in the tents of Jubal,
who invented the harp and organ, Calvin emphatically reminds us that
this passage treats of “excellent gifts of the Holy Spirit.” He
declares that in the artistic instinct God had enriched Jubal and his
posterity with rare endowments. And he frankly states that these
inventive powers of art prove most evident testimonies of the Divine
bounty. More emphatically still, he declares, in his commentaries on
Exodus, that 'all the arts come from God and are to be respected as
Divine inventions. ”According to Calvin, these precious things of the
natural life we owe originally to the Holy Ghost. In ail Liberal Arts,
in the most as well as in the least important, the praise and glory of
God are to be enhanced. The arts, says he, have been given us for our
comfort, in this our depressed estate of life. They react against the
corruption of life and nature by the curse. When his colleague, Prof.
Cop, at Geneva, took up arms against art, Calvin purposely instituted
measures, by which, as he writes, to restore this foolish man to sounder
sense and reason. The blind prejudice against Sculpture, on the ground
of the Second Commandment, Calvin declares unworthy of refutation. He
exults in Music as a marvelous power to move hearts and to ennoble
tendencies and morals. Among the excellent favors of God for our
recreation and enjoyment, it occupies in his mind the highest rank. And
even when art condescends to become the instrument of mere entertainment
to the masses, he asserts that this sort of pleasure should not be
denied them. In view of all this we may say that Calvin esteemed art, in
all its ramifications, as a gift of God, or, more especially. as a gift
of the Holy Ghost; that he fully grasped the profound effects worked by
art upon the life of the emotions; that he appreciated the end for which
art has been given, Vi[sterling]., that by it we might glorify God, and
ennoble human life, and drink at the fountain of higher pleasures, yea
even of common sport; and finally. that so far from considering art as a
mere imitation of nature, he attributed to it the noble vocation of
disclosing to man a higher reality than was offered to us by this sinful
and corrupted world.
Now if this implied nothing beyond the personal interpretation of
Calvin, his testimony would of course have no conclusive value
The Stone Lectures CALVINISM AND ART Page 154
for Calvinism in general. But when we observe that Calvin himself was
not artistically developed, and that therefore he must have derived this
brief system of Aesthetics2 from his principles, he may be credited with
having expounded the Calvinistic consideration of art as such. To go
direct to the heart of the question, we begin with Calvin's last saying,
viz., that art reveals to us a higher reality than is offered by this
sinful world. You are familiar with the question, already mentioned,
whether art should imitate nature or should transcend it. In Greece
grapes were painted with such accuracy that birds were deceived by their
appearance and tried to eat them. And this imitation of nature seemed
the highest ideal to the Socratic school. Herein lies the truth, all too
often forgotten by idealists, that the forms and relations exhibited by
nature are and ever must remain the fundamental forms and relations of
all actual reality, and an art which does not watch the forms and
motions of nature nor listen to its sounds, but arbitrarily likes to
hover over it, deteriorates into a wild play of fantasy. But on the
other hand, all idealistic interpretation of art should be justified in
opposition to the purely empirical, as often as the empirical confines
its task to mere imitation. For then the same mistake is committed in
art so often committed by scientists when they confine their scientific
task to the mere observation, computation and accurate report of facts.
For even as science has to ascend from the phenomena to the
investigation of their inherent order, to the end that man, enriched by
the knowledge of this order, may propagate nobler species of animals,
flowers and fruits, than nature, herself, could produce, so also it is
the vocation of art, not merely to observe everything visible and
audible, to apprehend it, and reproduce it artistically, but much more
to discover in those natural forms the order of the beautiful, and,
enriched by this higher knowledge, to produce a beautiful world that
transcends the beautiful of nature. And this is what Calvin asserted:
viz., that the arts exhibit gifts which God has placed at our disposal,
now that, as the sad consequence of sin, the real beautiful has fled
from us. Your decision here depends entirely upon your interpretation of
the world. If you are considering the world as the realization of
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the absolute good, then there is none higher, and art can have no other
vocation than to copy nature. If, as the pantheist teaches, the world
proceeds, by slow processes, from the incomplete to perfection, then art
becomes the prophecy of a further phase of life to come. But if you
confess that the world once was beautiful, but by the curse has become
undone, and by a final catastrophe is to pass to its full state of glory,
excelling even the beautiful of paradise, then art has the mystical task
of reminding us in its productions of the beautiful that was lost and of
anticipating its perfect coming luster. Now this last-mentioned instance
is the Calvinistic confession. It realized, more clearly than Rome, the
hideous, corrupting influences of sin; this led to a higher estimation
of the nature of paradise in the beauty of original righteousness; and
guided by this enchanting remembrance, Calvinism prophesied a redemption
of outward nature also, to be realized in the reign of celestial glory.
From this standpoint, Calvinism honored art as a gift of the Holy Ghost
and as a consolation in our present life, enabling us to discover in and
behind this sinful life a richer and more glorious background. Standing
by the ruins of this once so wonderfully beautiful creation, art points
out to the Calvinist both the still visible lines of the original plan,
and what is even more, the splendid restoration by which the Supreme
Artist and Master-Builder will one day renew and enhance even the beauty
of His original creation.
If thus, on this principal point, Calvin's personal interpretation
agrees entirely with the Calvinistic confession, the same applies to the
next point in question, If the Sovereignty of God is and remains, for
Calvinism, its unchangeable point of departure, then art cannot
originate from the Evil One; for Satan is destitute of every creative
power. All he can do is to abuse the good gifts of God. Neither can art
originate with man, for, being a creature himself, man cannot but employ
the powers and gifts put by God at his disposal. If God is and remains
Sovereign, then art can work no enchantment except in keeping with the
ordinances which God ordained for the beautiful, when He, as the Supreme
Artist, called this world into existence. And further, if God is and
remains Sovereign, then he also imparts these artistic gifts to whom He
will, first even to Cain's, and not to Abel's posterity; not as if art
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were Cainitic, but in order that he who has sinned away the highest
gifts, should at least, as Calvin so beautifully says, in the lesser
gifts of art have some testimony of the Divine bounty. That artistic
ability, that art-capacity, as such, can have room in human nature, we
owe to our creation after the image of God. In the real world, God is
Creator of everything; the power of really producing new things is His
alone, and therefore He always continues to be the creative artist. As
God, He alone is the original One, we are only the bearers of His Image.
Our capacity to create after Him and after what He created, can only
consist in the unreal creations of art. So we, in our fashion, may
imitate God's handiwork. We create a kind of cosmos, in our
Architectural monument; to embellish nature's forms, in Sculpture; to
reproduce life, animated by lines and tints, in our Painting; to
transfuse the mystical spheres in our Music and in our Poetry. And all
this because the beautiful is not the product of our own fantasy, nor of
our subjective perception, but has an objective existence, being itself
the expression of a Divine perfection. After the Creation, God saw that
all things were good. Imagine that every human eye were closed and every
human ear stopped up, even then the beautiful remains, and God sees it
and hears it, for, not only “His Eternal Power, ”but also His
“Divinity, ”from the very creation, has been perceived in His
creature, both spiritually and somatically. An artist may notice this in
himself. If he realizes how his own art capacity depends upon his having
an eye for art, he must necessarily come to the conclusion that the
original eye for art is in God Himself, Whose art capacity is
all-producing, and after Whose image the artist among men was made. We
know this from the creation around us, from the firmament that
overarches us, from the abounding luxury of nature, from the wealth of
forms in man and animal, from the rushing sound of the stream and from
the song of the nightingale; for how could all this beauty exist, except
created by One Who preconceived the beautiful in His own Being, and
produced it from His own Divine perfection? Thus you see that the
Sovereignty of God, and our creation after His Likeness, necessarily
lead to that high interpretation of the origin, the nature and the
vocation of art, as adopted by Calvin, and still approved by our own
artistic instinct. The world of sounds, the world of forms, the world of
tints, and the world of poetic
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ideas, can have no other source than God; and it is our privilege as
bearers of His image, to have a perception of this beautiful world.
artistically to reproduce, and humanly to enjoy it.
____________________
And thus I come to my third and last point. We found that the want of an
art-style of its own, far from being an objection to Calvinism, on the
contrary indicates the higher stage of its development. After that, we
considered how exalted an interpretation of the nature of art flows from
the Calvinistic principle. And now let us see how nobly Calvinism has
encouraged the progress of the arts both in principle and in practice.
And here, in the first place, I draw your attention to the important
fact that it was Calvinism which, by releasing art from the guardianship
of the Church, first recognized its majority. I do not deny that the
Renaissance had the same tendency, but, with the Renaissance, this was
marred by a too one-sided preference for the Paganistic, and a passion
for ideas more Heathen than Christian; while Calvin, on the other hand,
kept firmly to the Christian ideas, and more sharply even than any other
Reformed opposed every Paganistic influence, To deal justly, however,
with the older Christian Church a somewhat fuller explanation is here in
place. The Christian Religion made its appearance in the Greek and Roman
world, which, though thoroughly demoralized, still recommended itself by
its high civilization and its artistic splendor. Therefore, in order to
oppose principle to principle, Christianity was bound. at the outset, to
react against the then-dominating over-estimation of art, and thereby to
break the dangerous influence which Paganism was exercising. in its last
convulsion, by the enchantment of its beautiful world. As long,
therefore, as the struggle with Paganism remained a struggle for life or
death. the relation of Christianity to art could not but be an hostile
one. This first period was followed almost immediately by the influx
into the highly civilized Roman Empire of the still almost barbaric
Germanic tribes, after whose speedy baptism the center of power
gradually removed from Italy to beyond the Northern Alps, thus giving to
the Church, as early as the 8th century, an almost exclusive ascendancy
over the whole of Europe. Thanks to this constellation,
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the Church for several centuries became the guardian of higher human
life, and so nobly did she acquit herself of this exalted task that no
religious hatred or party prejudice dares question any longer the
glorious result she then achieved. In the literal sense of the word, all
human development of that period depended entirely upon the Church. No
science and no art could prosper unless shielded by ecclesiastical
protection. And hence originated that specifically Christian art, which,
in its first passion, tried to embody the maximum of spiritual essence
in the minimum of form and tint and tone. It was no art copied from
nature, but art invoked from out the spheres of heaven, which fettered
music in the Gregorian chains, the pencil and chisel of which longed
after acosmic creations, and which only in the building of the
cathedrals attained the really Sublime and reaped imperishable fame. All
educational guardianship, meanwhile, leads to its own dissolution. A
right-minded guardian intends to render his guardianship superfluous as
soon as possible, and he who tries to prolong his control. even after
his ward has reached maturity, creates an unnatural relation and makes
his guardianship itself an incentive to resistance. When therefore the
first education of Northern Europe was completed. and the church still
persisted in swaying her absolute sceptre across the entire domain of
life, four great movements were started from as many different sides,
viz., the Renaissance in the domain of art, the Republicanism of Italy
in politics, Humanism in science, and centrally, in Religion, the
Reformation.
No doubt these four movements received their impulse from very different,
and in some cases conflicting principles, but they all agreed on this
one point, viz., that they tried to escape from ecclesiastical tutelage,
and to create a life of their own in accordance with their own principle.
Hence it is not at all surprising that, in the 16th century, these four
powers repeatedly acted in concert. It was the one human life that,
weary of any further guardianship, hastened in every way after a freer
development, and therefore, when the old guardian tried by main force to
hold back the declaration of maturity it was but natural that those four
powers should encourage one another fiercely to resist. nor to desist
before freedom was obtained. Without this quadruple alliance not only
would the tutelage of the Church have persevered over all Europe
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but –the rebellion once crushed –its rule would have become even
more grievous and intolerable than beforehand. Thanks to this
cooperation, the bold undertaking was crowned with enduring success, and
the combatants, by their combined energy, earned the everlasting glory
of having brought art and science, as well as politics and religion, to
the full enjoyment of maturity.
Will it be fair on this ground to assert that Calvinism has freed
Religion, and not Art, and that the honors of the emancipation of art
belong exclusively to the Renaissance? I readily grant that the
Renaissance has a right to claim its share of the victory, especially in
so far as it stimulated art herself to vindicate her liberty by her
wonderful productions. Aesthetic genius, if I may so call it, had been
implanted by God Himself m the Greek, and only by hailing again, amid
loud rejoicings, the fundamental laws of art, which Greek genius had
discovered, could art justify her claim to an independent existence.
This by itself, however, could not have achieved the desired liberation.
For the church of those days did not in the least oppose classical art
as such. On the contrary, she welcomed the Renaissance, and Christian
art did not hesitate a moment to enrich herself with the best the
Renaissance had to offer. In the so-called Cinquecento, or
high-Renaissance, Bramante and Da Vinci, Michael Angelo and Raphael,
stored the Romish Cathedrals with treasures of art, quite unique and
inimitable, never to be surpassed. Thus the old tie continued to unite
Church and Art, and this of itself established a permanent patronage.
The real liberation of art required much more patent energies. From
principle, the Church was to be forced back to her spiritual realm. Art,
having hitherto confined herself to the holy spheres, had now to make
her appearance in the social world. And in the Church. Religion had to
put aside her symbolical robes, in order that, after having ascended to
the higher spiritual level, her life giving breath might animate the
whole world. Just as Von Hartmann truly observes: “It is pure
spiritual Religion which with one hand deprives the artist of his
specifically religious art, but which, with the other, offers him, in
exchange, a whole world, to be religiously animated. ”Now Luther
certainly desired such a pure, spiritual Religion, but Calvinism was the
first to grasp it. First under the stirring impulses of Calvinism. our
fathers broke with
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the splendor ecclesiae, i.e., with her outward glitter, and so also with
her vast possessions, by which art was financially held in bondage. And
although Humanism rebelled against this oppressive and unnatural state
of things, it could never hope to effect a radical change if left to its
own resources. Only think of Erasmus. Triumph in the struggle of that
time was not reserved for the man who carried on the strife for
Religious liberty by mere criticism, but only for him, who, standing on
an higher stage of religious development, overcame the symbolical
religion as such. And, therefore, we may boldly assert that it was
Calvinism which prompted the spirited impulse by which the victory was
won, and, by its indefatigable perseverance, has put an end to the
unjustified tutelage of the church over all human life, art included.
Meanwhile I readily grant that this outcome would have been purely
accidental, if Calvinism had not, at the same time, led to a deeper
interpretation of human life and so of human art. When, under Victor
Emmanuel, with the help of Garibaldi,3 Italy was made free, the day of
liberty also dawned for the Waldenses, in Middle and Southern Italy, but
neither the Re galantuomo, nor Garibaldi, had even thought of the
Waldensians. Thus it were possible that in its struggle for human
liberty Calvinism also cut the tie that thus far held art a captive, but
without having in the least intended to do this, by virtue of its
principle. And therefore I must still illustrate the second factor,
which alone decides the case. I have already, more than once, called
your attention to the important significance of the Calvinistic doctrine
of “common grace, ”and of course in this lecture on art I must refer
to it again. That which is to he ecclesiastical must bear the stamp of
faith, therefore genuine Christian art can only go out from believers.
Calvinism, on the contrary, has taught us that all liberal arts are
gifts which God imparts promiscuously to believers and to unbelievers,
yea, that, as history shows, these gifts have flourished even in a
larger measure outside the holy circle. ”These radiations of Divine
Light, ”he wrote, “shone more brilliantly among unbelieving people
than among God's saints. ”And this of course quite reverses the
proposed order of things. If you limit the higher enjoyment of art to
regeneration, then this gift is exclusively the portion of believers,
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and must bear an ecclesiastical character. In that case it is the
outcome of particular grace But if, at the hand of experience and
history, you become persuaded that the highest art-instincts are natural
gifts, and hence belong to those excellent graces which, in spite of
sin, by virtue of common grace, have continued to shine in human nature,
it plainly follows that art can inspire both believers and unbelievers,
and that God remains Sovereign to impart it, in His good pleasure, alike
to Heathen and to Christian nations. This applies not only to art, but
to all the natural utterances of human life, and is illustrated by the
comparison in early times between Israel and the other nations. As far
as holy things are concerned, Israel is chosen, and is not only blessed
above all nations, but stands among all nations, isolated In the
question of Religion, Israel has not only a larger share, but Israel
alone has the truth, and all the other nations, even the Greeks and the
Romans, are bent beneath the yoke of falsehood. Christ is not partly of
Israel and partly of the nations; He is of Israel alone. Salvation is of
the Jews. But just in proportion as Israel shines forth from within the
domain of Religion, so is it equally backward when you compare the
development of its art, science, politics, commerce and trade to that of
the surrounding nations. The building of the Temple required the coming
of Hiram from a heathen country to Jerusalem; and Solomon, in whom,
after all, was found the Wisdom of God, not only knows that Israel
stands behind in architecture and needs help from without, but by his
action he publicly shows that he, as the king of the Jews, is in no way
ashamed of Hiram's coming, which he realizes as a natural ordinance of
God.
So Calvinism, on the ground both of the Scriptures and of history, has
arrived at the confession, that, wherever the Sanctuary discloses itself,
all unbelieving nations stand outside, but that nevertheless, in their
secular history, they are called by God to a special vocation, and form
by their very existence, an indispensable link in the long chain of
phenomena. Every utterance of human life requires a special disposition
in blood and in descent, and proper adaptations of lot and incident as
well as of natural environment and climatic effects are to contribute to
its development. In Israel all this was adapted to the holy heritage
which it was to receive in the Divine Revelation. But if Israel was
chosen for the
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sake of Religion, this in no way prevented a parallel election of the
Greeks for the domain of philosophy and for the revelations of art, nor
of the Romans for the classical development within the domain of Law and
of State. The life of art also has both its provisional development, and
its later unfoldings, but in order to insure a more vigorous growth, it
wanted first of all clear self-consciousness in its centrum that, once
for all, the unchangeable foundations of its ideal existence might be
brought to light. Such a phenomenon as art arrives at this
self-revelation once only, and that revelation, once granted to the
Greek, remains classical, tone giving and for ever dominant. And
although a further art-development may seek newer forms and richer
material, the nature of the original find remains the same. Thus
Calvinism was not only able, but bound, to confess that, by the grace of
God, the Greeks were the primordial nation of art; that owing to this
classical Greek development, art conquered its right of independent
existence; and that although it certainly ought to radiate also in the
sphere of Religion, it should in no wise be engrafted in a dependent
sense upon the ecclesiastical tree. Therefore, being a return of art to
her rediscovered fundamental lines, the Renaissance did not present
itself to Calvinism as a sinful effort, but as a divinely ordered
movement And as such Calvinism encouraged the Renaissance not by pure
accident, but with clear consciousness and definite purpose, in
accordance with its deepest principle.
Hence there is no question that, simply as an involuntary result of its
opposition to the Hierarchy of Rome, Calvinism should at the same time
have encouraged the emancipation of art. On the contrary, it demanded
this liberation and was bound to effect it, within its own circle, as a
consequence of its world- and life-view. The world after the fall is no
lost planet, only destined now to afford the Church a place in which to
continue her combats; and humanity is no aimless mass of people which
only serves the purpose of giving birth to the elect. On the contrary,
the world now, as well as in the beginning, is the theater for the
mighty works of God and humanity remains a creation of His hand, which,
apart from salvation, completes under this present dispensation, here on
earth, a mighty process, and in its historical development is to glorify
the name of Almighty God. To this end He has ordained
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for this humanity all sorts of life-utterances, and among these, art
occupies a quite independent place. Art reveals ordinances of creation
which neither science, nor politics, nor religious life, nor even
revelation can bring to light. She is a plant that grows and blossoms
upon her own root, and without denying that this plant may have required
the help of a temporary support, and that in early times the Church lent
this prop in a very excellent way, yet the Calvinistic principle
demanded that this plant of earth should at length acquire strength to
stand alone and vigorously to extend its branches in every direction.
And thus Calvinism confessed that, inasmuch as the Greeks had first
discovered the laws by which the growth of the art-plant is governed,
they therefore remain entitled to bind every further growth and every
new impulse of art to their first, their classical development, not for
the sake of stopping short with Greece, or of adopting her Paganistic
form without criticism. Art, like Science, cannot afford to tarry at her
origin, but must ever develop herself more richly, at the same time
purging herself of whatsoever had been falsely intermingled with the
earlier plant. Only, the law of her growth and life, when once
discovered, must remain the fundamental law of art for ever; a law, not
imposed upon her from without, but sprung from her own nature. And so,
by loosening every unnatural tie, and cleaving to every tie that is
natural, art must find the inward strength required for the maintenance
of her liberty. Calvin therefore does not estrange art, science, and
religion, from one another; on the contrary, what he desires is that all
human life shall be permeated by these three vital powers together.
There must be a Science which will not rest until it has thought out the
entire cosmos; a Religion which cannot sit still until she has permeated
every sphere of human life; and so also there must be an Art which,
despising no single department of life adopts, into her splendid world,
the whole of human life, religion included.
Let this suggestion of the wide extension of the domain of art introduce
my last point, viz., that Calvinism has also actually and in a concrete
sense advanced the development of the arts. It scarcely needs a reminder
that, in the realm of art, Calvinism was not able to play the role of a
sorcerer, and could only work with natural data. That the Italian has a
more tuneful voice than the Scot,
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and that the German is carried away by a more passionate impulse of song
than the Netherlander, are simple data with which art had to reckon,
under Roman supremacy, as well as under that of Calvinism. An undeniable
fact, which explains why it is neither logical nor honest to reproach
Calvinism for that which is merely due to the differences of national
character. The truth is equally plain that, in the Northern countries of
Europe, Calvinism was not able to produce, as by magic, marble, porphyry
or free-stone, from the ground, and that therefore the arts of sculpture
and architecture, which require rich, natural stone, were more readily
developed in those countries where quarries abound, than in a country
such as the Netherlands, where the ground consists of clay and mire.
Poetry, music, and painting, therefore, can alone be considered here as
the three free arts that are most independent of all natural data. This
does not imply that the Flemish and Dutch city hall fails to hold a
position of honor all its own among the creations of architecture.
Louvain and Middleburg, Antwerp and Amsterdam still bear witness to what
Dutch art wrought in stone. And he who has seen the statues in Antwerp
and at the tomb of William the Silent, carved by Quellinus and by De
Keyzers, does not question the ability of our artists of the chisel. But
this is subject to the objection that the style of our City Hall was
found long before Calvinism made its appearance in the Netherlands, and
that, even in its later development, it exhibits no single feature that
can remind one of Calvinism. By virtue of its principle Calvinism built
no cathedrals, no palaces and no amphitheatres, and was unable to
populate the vacant niches of these gigantic buildings with sculptured
ornaments.
Indeed, the merits of Calvinism, with respect to art, are to be found
elsewhere. Not in the objective, but exclusively in the more subjective
arts which, not depending upon the patronage of wealth and not in want
of the marble quarry, have their spontaneous rise in the human mind. Of
poetry I can make no further mention in this connection. To that purpose
I should have to disclose to you the treasures of our own Dutch
Literature, for the narrow bounds within which our Netherland language
is confined have excluded our poetry from the world at large. This
privilege of making their poetry a world phenomenon is only reserved for
those larger
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nations, whose language, being spoken by millions and millions, becomes
a vehicle for international intercourse. But if the province of language
for smaller nations is limited, the eye is international, and music
heard by the ear is understood in every heart. In order, therefore, that
we may trace the influence of Calvinism upon the development and the
welfare of art, we must limit ourselves, in the international sense, to
the two subjective and independent arts, those of painting and music.
Now of both these arts it is to be stated that, before the days of
Calvinism, they soared high above the common life of the Nations, and
that only under the Calvinistic influence did they descend to the so
much richer life of the people. As regards painting, just recall the
productions of Dutch art by brush and etching-needle in the 16th and
17th centuries. Rembrandt's name alone is here sufficient to summon a
whole world of art-treasures before your mind's eye. The museums of
every country and continent still vie with each other, to the utmost, in
their effort to obtain some specimen of his work. Even your brokers have
respect for an art-school whose returns represent so vast a capital. And
even in our days the masters all over the world are still borrowing
their most effectual motives and their best art-tendencies from what, at
that time, demanded the world's admiration as an entirely new school of
painting. Of course this does not say that all these painters were
personally staunch Calvinists. In the earlier art-school, which
flourished under the influence of Rome, the “bon Catholiques ”were
also very rare. Such influences do not operate personally, but put their
impress upon surroundings and society, upon the world of perceptions, of
representations and of thought; and as a result of these various
impressions an art-school makes its appearance. And, taken in this sense,
the antithesis between the past and the present in the school of Dutch
art is unmistakable. Before this period, no account was taken of the
people; they only were considered worthy of notice who were superior to
the common man, viz., the high world of the Church and of the priests,
of knights and princes. But, since then, the people had come of age, and
under the auspices of Calvinism, the art of painting, prophetic of a
democratic life of later times, was the first to proclaim the people's
maturity. The family ceased to be an annex to the Church, and asserted
its stand
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ing in its independent significance. By the light of common grace it was
seen that the non-churchly life was also possessed of high importance
and of an all-sided art-motive. Having been overshadowed for many
centuries by class-distinctions, the common life of man came out of its
hiding-place like a new world, in all its sober reality. It was the
broad emancipation of our ordinary earthly life, and the instinct for
liberty, which thereby captured the heart of the nations and inspired
them with delight in the enjoyment of treasures so long blindly
neglected. Even Taine has sounded the praises of the blessing, which
went forth from the Calvinistic love of liberty to the realm of art, and
Carriere, who himself was equally far from sympathizing with Calvinism,
loudly proclaims that Calvinism alone was able to plough the field on
which free art could flourish.
It has frequently been remarked, moreover, that the idea of election by
free grace has contributed not a little toward interesting art in the
hidden importance of what was seemingly small and insignificant. If a
common man, to whom the world pays no special attention, is valued and
even chosen by God as one of His elect, this must lead the artist also
to find a motive for his artistic studies in what is common and of
every-day occurrence, to pay attention to the emotions and the issues of
the human heart in it, to grasp with his artistic instinct their ideal
impulse, and, lastly, by his pencil to interpret for the world at large
the precious discovery he has made. Even foolish and drastic
extravagances became the motive for art-productions, merely as
revolutions, of the human heart and as manifestations of human life. Man
was also to be shown the image of his folly, that he might depart from
evil. Thus far the artist had only traced upon his canvas the idealized
figures of prophets and apostles, of saints and priests; now, however,
when he saw how God had chosen the porter and the wage-earner for
Himself, he four d interest not only in the head, the figure and the
entire personality of the man of the people, but began to reproduce the
human expression of every rank and station. And if thus far the eyes of
all had been fixed constantly and solely upon the sufferings of the
“Man of Sorrows, ”some now began to understand that there was a
mystical suffering also in the general woe of man, revealing hitherto
unmeasured depths of the human heart, and
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thereby enabling us to fathom much better the still deeper depths of the
mysterious agonies of Golgotha. Ecclesiastical power no longer
restrained the artist, and princely gold no longer chained him in its
fetters. If artist, he also was man, mingling freely among the people,
and discovering in and behind their human life, something quite
different from what palace and castle had hitherto afforded him,
something, too, which proved to be much more valuable than the keenest
eye had ever surmised. As Taine so significantly says: To Rembrandt,
human life hid its face behind many sombre hues, but even in that
chiaroscuro4 his grasp upon that life was profoundly real and
significant. As the result therefore of the declaration of the people's
maturity and of the love of liberty which Calvinism awakened in the
hearts of the nations, the common but rich human life disclosed to art
an entirely new world, and, by opening the eye for the small and the
insignificant, and by opening the heart for the sorrows of mankind, from
the rich content of this newly discovered world, the Dutch school of art
has produced upon the canvas those wondrous art-productions which still
immortalize its fame, and which have shown the way to all the nations
for new conquests.
Finally, as to the significance Calvinism had for Music, we face one of
its excellencies which, though less widely known, is notwithstanding
highly important –as Mr. Douen taught us ten years ago, in his two big
volumes on Marot. Music and painting here run parallel. Even as in the
ecclesiastical-aristocratic period it was only the high and the holy
that interested the masters of the pencil, so in music the plain chant
of Gregory was dominant, which abandoned rhythm, despised harmony, and
which according to a professional critic, by its provisionally
conservative character barred the way to the further artistic
development of music. Far below the level of this stately chant flowed
the freer song of the people, too often, alas, inspired by the worship
of Venus, which at the times of the so-called “donkey-festivals,' much
to the chagrin of ecclesiastical officials, penetrated even the walls of
the churches, and there occasioned those repulsive scenes which the
Council of Trent first succeeded in putting under the ban. The Church
alone
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was privileged to make music, while that which the people produced was
scorned, as being beneath the dignity of the art. Even in the oratory
itself, while the people were allowed to listen to the holy music, they
were forbidden to join in the song. Thus, as an art, music was almost
entirely deprived of its independent standing Only in so far as it could
serve the church was it permitted to flourish artistically. Whatever it
undertook on its own responsibility had no higher call than the popular
use. And as in every department of life, Protestantism in general, but
Calvinism more consistently, bridled the tutelage of the church, so also
was music emancipated by it, and the way opened to its so splendid
modern development. The men who first arranged the music of the Psalm
for the Calvinistic singing were the brave heroes who cut the strands
that bound us to the Cantus firmus, and selected their melodies from the
free world of music. To be sure, by doing this, they adopted the
people's melodies, but as Douen rightly remarks, only in order that they
might return these melodies to the people purified and baptized in
Christian seriousness. Music also would flourish, henceforth, not within
the narrow limitations of particular grace, but in the wide and fertile
fields of common grace. The choir was abandoned; in the sanctuary the
people themselves would sing, and therefore Bourgeois5 and the
Calvinistic virtuosi who followed him were bound to make their
selections from the popular melodies, but with this end in view, viz.,
that now the people would no longer sing in the saloon or in the street,
but in the sanctuary, and thus, in their melodies, cause the seriousness
of the heart to triumph over the heat of the lower passions.
If this is the general merit of Calvinism, or rather the change which it
effected in the domain of music, by forcing the idea of the laity to
give room to that of the general priesthood of believers, historic
accuracy requires a still more concrete elucidation. If Bourgeois was
the great master whose works still assure him a front rank among the
most notable composers of Protestant Europe, it is also worthy of note
that this Bourgeois lived and labored
The Stone Lectures CALVINISM AND ART Page 169
in Geneva, under the very eyes of Calvin and even partly under his
direction. It was this same Bourgeois who had the courage to adopt
rhythm and to exchange the eight Gregorian modes for the two of major
and minor from the popular music; to sanctify its art in consecrated
hymn, and so to put the impress of honor upon that musical arrangement
of tunes, from which all modern music had its rise. In the same way
Bourgeois adopted the harmony or the song of several parts. He was the
man who wedded melody to verse by what is called expression. The
solfeggio, i.e., the singing by note, the reduction of the number of
chords, the clearer distinction of the several gamuts, etc., by which
the knowledge of music was so much simplified, is all owing to the
perseverance of this Calvinistic Composer. And when Goudimel,6 his
Calvinistic colleague, once at Rome the teacher of the great Palestrina,
listening to the singing of the people in the church, discovered that
the higher voices of the children outstripped the tenor, which had thus
far held the lead, he for the first time gave the leading part to the
soprano; a change of far reaching influence which has ever since been
maintained.
Pardon me if for a moment I detained you with these particulars, hut the
merits of Protestantism, and more particularly of Calvinism, in music
are of too high an order to suffer longer depreciation without protest.
I fully acknowledge that Calvinism exercised over some arts only an
indirect influence, by the declaration of their maturity, and by
affording them liberty to flourish in their own independence, but on
music, the influence of Calvinism was a very positive one, due to its
spiritual worship of God, which provided no room for the more material
arts, but assigned a new role to song and to music by the creation of
melodies and songs for the people. Whatever the old school did to join
itself to the newer development of music, the modern music remained
unnatural to the cantus firmus, because it sprang from a quite different
root. Calvinism on the other hand not only joined itself to it, but
under the leadership of Bourgeois and Goudimel gave it its first impulse
The Stone Lectures CALVINISM AND ART Page 170
pulse, so that even Roman Catholic writers are constrained to
acknowledge that our beautiful development of music in the last and
present centuries for the most part owed its rise to the heretical
church-hymns.
That in a later period Calvinism lost almost all influence in this
domain, cannot be denied. For a long time Anabaptism overwhelmed us with
its dualistic prejudices, and an unhealthy spiritualism prevailed. But
when on that account, with entire disregard of our great musical past,
Calvinism is accused by Rome of aesthetic dullness, it is well to call
to mind that the great Goudimel was murdered by Romish fanaticism in the
massacre of St. Bartholomew. This fact is suggestive; for we naturally
ask with Douen: Has that man any right to complain about the stillness
of the forest, who with his own hand has caught and killed the
nightingale?
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1. (Ed.) Art has been defined as the embodiment of beautiful thought in
sensuous form, as for example, marble or speech. In Calvinsime en Kunst
Dr. Kuyper states: “as image-bearer of God, man possesses the
possibility to create something beautiful, and to delight in it. This 'kunstervermogen'
is in man no separate function of the soul but an unbroken (continuous)
utterance of the image of God. ”
2. (Ed.) Aesthetics may be defined as the science of beauty and taste;
the branch of knowledge that pertains to the fine arts and art criticism
There is no generally accepted Aesthetics. There are three schools: the
sensualistic (Hogarth): the empirical, (Helmholtz) and the idealistic
owing its origin to Kant.
3. (Ed.) Garibaldi, Italian patriot and liberator, 1807-1882.
4. (Ed.) Chiaroscuro from the Latin “clarus”: and oscuro: obscure.
It indicates a blending of light and shade in pictures.
5. (Ed.) Loys Bourgeois born about 1510 at Paris, in 1541 followed
Calvin to Geneva where he became “chartre ”of the church. He was one
of the first psalmbewerkers. ” But since he desired to introduce still
more “meerstemmige ”Psalms, he got into conflict with Calvin and his
consistory and in 1557 returned to Paris. He published his 'vierstemmige'
Psalter in Lyons (1547) and Paris (1554). Also wrote “Le droict chemin
de musique,” 1550.
6. (Ed.) Claude Goudimel, born in Besancon, France, 1505 or 1510. About
1540 he opened a school of Music. That Palestrina at one time was one of
his pupils has been denied. He embraced the Reformed religion and
settled at Lyons where he was murdered during the night of St.
Bartholomew, 1572. He furnished music for the Psalms (1562) and
published tunes still in use.
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