This was not universally true, however. Since the discovery of the early third-century frescoes at Dura Europos, assumptions about a uniform, or even widespread, anti-image bias of the early church have been challenged. Some have pointed out that the lack of images in the first two centuries of Christianity may have had more to do with its status as a persecuted religious body with little money to spend on decoration and few buildings to decorate than with any ideological position. It is certainly true that as soon as Christianity became a state religion, its royal patrons arranged for elaborately embellished buildings, filled with portraits of themselves as well as various biblical and extrabiblical personages and objects.
Nonetheless, the writings of early Christian theologians and preachers repeatedly circle around the issue of images and idolatry. This concern is not restricted to the visual arts, nor even to representation as such. As early as the late fourth century, Augustine of Hippo (354–430) wrote about his own struggles to keep his appreciation of music within proper bounds. Berating himself for loving the sound of the music more than the edifying words, and perhaps even more than God, he wrote,
at one time I seem to myself to give them more honour than is seemly, feeling our minds to be more holily and fervently raised unto a flame of devotion, by the holy words themselves when thus sung, than when not; and that the several affections of our spirit, by a sweet variety, have their own proper measures in the voice and singing, by some hidden correspondence wherewith they are stirred up. But this contentment of the flesh, to which the soul must not be given over to be enervated, doth oft beguile me, the sense not so waiting upon reason as patiently to follow her; but having been admitted merely for her sake, it strives even to run before her, and lead her. Thus in these things I unawares sin, but afterwards am aware of it.19
Augustine’s concerns were repeatedly echoed by other ancient writers. Suspicion of the arts, especially of visual art, came to a climax in the iconoclastic controversies of the eighth and ninth centuries. The matter of icons was settled in the Christian East at what is today celebrated as the Triumph of Orthodoxy in 843. The Western church continued to vacillate between an austere asceticism, as exemplified by the writings of the Cistercian monk, Bernard of Clairvaux, and a sumptuous exuberance reflecting the glory of God, as exemplified by the church built at St. Denis under the direction of Bernard’s contemporary, Abbot Suger. In his Apologia, written in 1125, Bernard writes disparagingly of the “enormous height, extravagant length and unnecessary width of the churches, of their costly polishings and curious paintings which catch the worshipper’s eye and dry up his devotion.”20
Abbot Suger extolled precisely the kind of elaboration that Bernard of Clairvaux deplored. His church at St. Denis is one of the earliest examples of what came to known as Gothic architecture. Such buildings featured pointed-arch windows filled with stained glass, ornate embellishments at every turn, and a lapis sky filled with golden stars on the ceiling over the altar. In his account of the building process, Suger argued that only the finest materials and workmanship were worthy for the service of God. As he wrote in his treatise, “De Administratione,”
If golden pouring vessels, golden vials, golden little mortars used to serve, by the word of God or the command of the Prophet, to collect the blood of goats or calves or the red heifer: how much more must golden vessels, precious stones, and whatever is most valued among all created things, be laid out, with continual reverence and full devotion, for the reception of the blood of Christ! . . . The detractors also object that a saintly mind, a pure heart, a faithful intention ought to suffice for this sacred function; and we, too, explicitly and especially affirm that it is these that principally matter. [But] we profess that we must do homage also through the outward ornaments of sacred vessels. . . . with all inner purity and with all outward splendor.21
In response, Bernard somewhat grudgingly accepts that it may be all right for parish churches and cathedrals to revel in outward splendor. It does no harm, he admits, to the simple and devout, whatever problems it may pose for the vain and greedy. However, he points out, for poor, spiritual, cloistered monks such things are at best distractions and at worst invitations to sin. He goes on,
But in cloisters, where the brothers are reading, what is the point of this ridiculous monstrosity, this shapely misshapenness, this misshapen shapeliness? What is the point of those unclean apes, fierce lions, monstrous centaurs, half-men, striped tigers, fighting soldiers and hunters blowing their horns? . . . In short, so many and so marvelous are the various shapes surrounding us that it is more pleasant to read the marble than the books, and to spend the whole day marveling over these things rather than meditating on the law of God. Good Lord! If we aren’t embarrassed by the silliness of it all, shouldn’t we at least be disgusted by the expense?22
In this short passage, Bernard summarizes an attitude that continues to resound in the church as well as the wider society. For Bernard and his spiritual descendants, art is too frivolous for serious people to fool around with, and much too expensive in both time and money when there are more important needs crying out for our attention. For Suger, however, through art and the light that art could reflect and reveal, God could be apprehended directly.
Three hundred years later, the unresolved tensions over the appropriateness of the arts in Christian worship became evident again in the iconoclastic excesses of certain portions of the Reformation. While stories of whitewashed churches and disfigured statues are familiar, it is important to remember that there were significant differences among the various reformers with respect to the arts. Luther, for example, advocated leaving the churches as they were, converting the use of whatever religious art existed to didactic rather than devotional means. He was horrified to discover that Andreas Karlstadt had encouraged the wholesale destruction of religious statuary during his absence from Wittenburg in 1522. Zwingli, on the other hand, was, like Augustine, all too aware of his own tendency to get so carried away by music that he forgot about God and banned even hymns from the worship of his church.
Despite these differences among the reformers and among the ecclesial traditions that derive from each, effective patronage of the arts was no longer seen as a legitimate role for the Protestant churches. The Roman Catholic Church did continue to commission important artworks for a long time. However, the widespread secularization of society in the ensuing centuries led to developments in serious visual art, music, and drama that made the practitioners of each of these art forms less and less interested in providing works that were appropriate for Christian worship and edification.
One strand of development that was particularly important in the divorce of the arts from the church can be traced to the eighteenth century, often referred to as the Age of Reason, or the Enlightenment. In his 1974 Mellon lectures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, Jacques Barzun notes that the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau “pointed to the spectacle of nature. Its beauty and harmony gave warrant for the feeling of awe which he then said that men experience natively like the promptings of conscience.”23 As Enlightenment rationality removed more and more of the mystery from the Protestant churches, in particular, the Romantics continued the elevation of the artist from humble craftsperson to prophetic visionary and priest that had begun with the Renaissance invention of the idea of artistic genius. Eventually, art—especially music, poetry, and painting, but encompassing other arts, as well—became for many a substitute for religion. Barzun continues,
Like other religions the religion of art promised the individual not only the peace of harmonized feeling and understanding but also the bliss of spiritual ecstasies.