| I’ve always found that a good way to begin a semester’s
study of medieval literature is to participate in that most medieval of
rituals, a pilgrimage. Ideally, I suppose, it would be a trip to Graceland,
which was, after all, the domain of "The King." Graceland, being unattainable,
the next best and probably more realistically medieval would be a journey
to a cathedral as a way of finding “fellaweship” with the nine and twenty
pilgrims of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Of course, before setting out,
we should, perhaps, ask why in fact this hearty group of “sondry folk”
was headed to the great cathedral. Certainly there would be many reasons.
Chaucer tells us that from every shire’s end people came to thank “the
holy blissful martyr,” Thomas a Becket, who helped them when they were
sick. But beyond, thanks or religious obligation or even the human need
to see “the place” where great events took place, a visit to the great
cathedral at Canterbury, or to any cathedral for that matter might have
been something more.
Far from simply being a building, magnificent in its size and execution, a cathedral was to the pilgrim, a book to be read; that is something rare and precious in an age in which books, themselves, were often gloriously gilded and decorated, not just for beauty’s sake but as part of their meaning. And it was a book in which even those untutored in letters could see a visual representation of the world and its principles of both order and morality—which to many would have denoted the same thing – and, most important, their place in that world. So here at Loyola, we make a short trip to Holy Name Church because it’s available and close, but primarily because its medieval design can be “read” and such a reading provides a rather good window into the medieval mind. Of course Holy Name is not a medieval edifice, but that too is OK. That fact should serve to remind us that, whenever we reconstruct the Middle Ages and represent it as being this or that, what we are dealing with is a reconstruction, accurate in some ways but inevitably flawed in others. Holy Name is, of course, not actually a cathedral. That term has its origins in the Latin cathedra, meaning, “chair.” Cathedral as a term refers not to the magnificence of or form but to the fact that the Archbishop has a “chair” or seat there. In short, a cathedral is the “home church” of the local Archbishop. Here in New Orleans, that’s St. Louis Cathedral. All that said, it’s time to begin our pilgrimage. |
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Even today in most cathedral towns, it is easy from the
outskirts to see that the cathedral dominates the landscape, towering above
the town below its towers and spires. At the same time, at ground level,
the twists and turns of medieval streets often crate a compact maze around
the cathedral, itself. The cathedrals themselves are often located
within spacious grounds called a “close.” That means that entering the
cathedral grounds has a physically liberating effect as one move from highly
compact space to a rather open one.
To the left is a a view of the York Minster through the narrow medieval streets of York, England. It's a view that with a lot of wishful thinking parallels the view of Holy Name's tower between Stallings and Marquette Halls. A "minster," by the way, is a church, a large one in this case, connected to a compound, usually a monastery. |
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To reproduce that effect, I always like to approach Holy
Name from the “back” that is from the old academic quad bounded by Bobet.
Stallings, and Marquette Halls as well as the old Library. To begin with,
I think the view from the front of Bobet tells a lot about the nature of
the building that we are about to explore. Looking south at the space between
Marquette and Stallings Halls, we get our first glimpse of Holy Name.
In many ways, Stallings Hall, on the right, is a static building, essentially a brick shoe box. On the opposite side is Marquette. |
| A slightly more complex structure, with more stonework decoration, Marquette Hall is in many ways a similarly static edifice. Its façade although decorated presents essentially a single facing plane. Framed by these two buildings, Holy Name demonstrates a complexity, ranging from the movement of the flying buttresses to the variety of geometric shapes and the stair-step three dimensionality. Interestingly, it seems “lighter” or less weighty, in part due to the movement of its lines as well as the use of free spaces under the buttresses and in the stone "lace-work" or tracery. |  |
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Walking down the pathway towards the church, we encounter
a small red brick building that, along with Marquette Hall, creates a narrow
passageway that leads to Holy Name. The effect here is quite
medieval—the narrow entranceway and the sense of gateway and controlled
access.
Like all of the great gates to cathedral closes, this de facto gate serves as a funnel, reordering our spread-out group of pilgrims into an orderly procession, in spite of ourselves. It’s the first marker that we have left the ordinary world and entered a different type of space. |
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Walking through the passageway, we get our first sense
of the use of space as the narrow passage opens up into a small courtyard.
The first result is a sense of freedom, very much the feeling of passing
from narrow medieval street into the openness of the typical cathedral
close.
At the same time, the forced proximity to the building emphasizes the height or size of the church. One must by force of the arrangement look upward, seeing only a proportionately small part of the building. More than likely anyone asked to estimate the size of the building would overestimate its size, so the management of space has again removed us from the ordinary to the mythic. |
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Most cathedrals have cloister or square courtyard bounded by such covered walkways. Usually these are areas for meditation and reflection. Often there are functional buildings such as libraries that are attached. One does not usually first approach a cathedral through its cloister, but in this case such an approach provides yet another helpful example of the controlling use of space. Here the movement from the covered, slightly close quarters of the cloister into the openness of the Loyola ”horseshoe”/ “meditation garden.” This emphasis on feeling is significant. For a cathedral is designed to have an affect as well as an intellectual content. |