This text is not a philosophical treatise. At least, apparently.
But it is a text that lives IN and OF a very precise philosophy. And such philosophy is an entire life, a world, a universe: it is the philosophy of the CLARITAS, the Clarity, the Light, the Divine Light that shines in the splendor of the beauty and shines in the miracle that has allowed the Abbot Suger to build a wonder of light out of dark, heavy stones. A wonder of light, a gothic cathedral.
“An entire life, a world, a universe” did I say ?
Let’s see.
First of all we have to notice that Erwin Panofsky correctly emphasizes (Introduction, p. 20) the extraordinary quotation from “John the Scot” (John/Joannes Scotus Eriugena/Erigena) :
“lapis iste vel hoc lignum mihi lumen est”
[ JOANNES SCOTUS ERIGENA, Expositiones Super Ierarchiam Caelestem Sancti Dionysii, in MIGNE, Patrologia Latina, MPL 122, columns 0125-0266 B, col. 129]:
“this stone or this piece of wood are light to me”.
This is certainly the ancient and eternal Sophia that fascinated also the Greek and Latin Fathers of the Church, who wove immeasurably precious texts about the metaphysics of Light.
And Panofsky does not forget to mention that at St. Denis had been deposited – p.18 – “a manuscript of the Greek texts” by Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite “obtained by Louis the Pious from the Byzantine Emperor Michael the Stammerer” (manuscript which is now at the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris): and these are exactly the texts that John the Scot had translated and commented. And these are the texts that the Abbot Suger evidently took into serious consideration…LAPIS ISTE…”this stone”…is Light…
So we do see here an entire Tradition, a world, a universe, the very life of many generations of Thinkers, Saints. Centuries of culture.
But the Abbot Suger did not weave a text: he “wove” a cathedral…literally a “Philosopher’s Stone”: that legendary Stone was supposed to transform lead into gold, instead the architecture of the cathedral transmutes the dark and heavy stone into miracles of light and wonder.
We should also remember here what Hegel said about architecture:
(GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, Art as a moment of the Absolute Spirit, from Aesthetics, lessons of the years 1820-1830 ) :
“…the beautiful Architecture. Its duty is to elaborate the extreme inorganic nature as to make it – as the external world conforming itself to Art - similar to the spirit. … by the work of architecture, the external inorganic world is purified…”.
Yes, of course, Hegel is talking about aesthetics, therefore he likes to say “purification” because he wants us to think about “art AND catharsis”, but he is actually talking about alchemy, although he probably wouldn’t admit it, about that specific “alchemy” of architecture that can transform the dark and the heavy into wonder and light.
And wonder weaves the lines of the Abbot Suger’s diaries also: the wonder of beauty, the wonder of seeing his dream of a Temple of Light coming true in this world.
So, an entire universe of life, reflections, and wonder is evoked in the pages of the Abbot Suger.
Get the book, get on a plane, walk the walk: in St. Denis, at Nôtre Dame, at the Cathedral of Chartres you will see by yourself if this “alchemy” worked or not, if the stone turns into Light or not.
But don’t miss this book.
And don’t blame me if you will find it dry and / or NOT very much inspiring: it’s the journal of an Artificer, and the Secret of his Art is hidden…until you will find it in your own Spirit.
The solid stones of those Cathedrals will certainly help you to find the secret…ask them.
A PRUDENT POSTSCRIPT
Yes, I do know that, up to this very day, so many centuries after the building of the Gothic cathedrals, and half-a-planet away from the cathedral of Saint Denis, Teachers and disciples gather, today like one thousand years ago, around the texts of the Tradition of the Od gSal (the Ösel), the (Radiant) Light. And we could certainly, and boringly, list innumerable other cultures and traditions in which the Light has been the center of human reflections.
Up to the fine jokes of the Blues Brothers about it, yes.
So, yes, we can mention “Ösel”, and we could indeed quote Tibetan words to comment on gothic cathedrals.
Traditions that are apparently so very different remind us of one (ultimately one, and philosophically one) and the same cultural world and indeed more than that: they remind us of one spiritual world … Do you want to call it the universe of Wonder ? it could be a good idea.
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