Praxiteles

Leo M. J. Dielmann

St. Mary’s Fredericksburg, Texas

Catholics were the first denomination to leave the Vereinskirche, the community church in the Market Square of Fredericksburg. That first community church was built by the Adelsverein, the German Society of Noblemen, in 1847.

A log-house-style church was built in 1848 on the same property where they began building the larger native stone church in 1862. An Indian was asked to ring its bell when it was dedicated in 1863. After the Civil War additional streams of German Catholics came to Fredericksburg. By the turn of the century the need for a larger church was met with enthusiasm. Still known as “new” St. Mary’s, the church provides a classic example of Gothic architecture and was consecrated on November 24, 1908. Its principal architect was Leo Dielmann of San Antonio, with the contractor and builder, Jacob Wagner of Fredericksburg.

Built of native stone quarried near the city, the total cost of building and furnishing the church was around $40,000.

Still fully functional is the original pipe organ built by George Kilgen & Son of St. Louis, Missouri. It was installed in 1906 as a pump organ and has been completely electrified.

Leo M. J. Dielmann

St. Mary’s Church, Fredericksburg, Texas

The Lady Altar

St. Joseph’s Altar

Here we have an interesting article published recently in the Osservatore Romano by the internationally respected liturgist Michael Uwe Lang:

The liturgy and its expressions

Material and Very Concrete Beauty

By Uwe Michael Lang

The sapiential tradition of the bible acclaims God as “the very author of beauty” (Wisdom 13, 3), glorifying him for the greatness and beauty of the works of creation. Christian thought, drawing mainly from sacred Scripture, but also from classical philosophy, has developed the concept of beauty as an ontological, even theological, category.

St. Bonaventure was the first Franciscan theologian to include beauty among the transcendental properties together with being, truth and goodness. The Dominican theologians St. Albert the Great and St. Thomas Aquinas, although they do not count beauty among the transcendentals, make a similar discourse in their commentaries on the Treaty of Pseudo-Dionysius De divinis nominibus, where the universality of beauty emerges, whose first cause is God Himself.

Under the conditions of modernity, what is disputed is precisley the transcendent dimension of beauty, exchangeable (sc. insofar) with truth and goodness. Beauty has been deprived of its ontological value and has been reduced to an aesthetic experience, even to a mere “sentiment”. The consequences of this subjectivistic turn are felt not only in the world of art.

Rather, together with the loss of beauty as a transcendental, the self-evidence of goodness and truth has also been lost. The good is deprived of its power of attraction, as the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar has noted with exemplary clarity in his magnum opus on theological aesthetic, Herrlichkeit (The Glory of the Lord).

Certainly the Christian tradition knows also a false kind of beauty that does not raise towards God and his Kingdom, but instead drags away from truth and goodness, and causes disordered desires. The book of Genesis makes it clear that it was a false kind of beauty which brought about original sin. Seeing as the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden was a real pleasure to the eyes (Genesis 3, 6), the temptation of the serpent provokes Adam and Eve to rebellion against God. The drama of the fall of the progenitors is the background to a passage, in The Brothers Karamazov (1880) by the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), in which Mitya Karamazov, one of protagonists of the novel, says: “The frightening thing is that beauty is not only terrible, but it is also a mystery. It is here that Satan fights against God, and their battlefield is the heart of men.” The same Dostoyevsky, in his novel The Idiot (1869), puts on the lips of his hero, Prince Myshkin, the famous words: “The world will be saved by beauty.” Dostoyevsky does not mean just any beauty, on the contrary, he refers to the redeeming beauty of Christ.

In his masterly message to the Meeting of Rimini in 2002, the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger reflected on this famous dictum of Dostoyevsky, addressing the topic from a biblical-patristic perspective. As a starting point, he used Psalm 44, read in the Church’s tradition “as a poetic-prophetic representation of Christ’s spousal relationship with his Church.” In Christ, “fairest of the children of men”, appears the beauty of the Truth, the beauty of God Himself.

In the exegesis of this psalm, the Fathers of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Gregory of Nyssa, took up also the most noble elements of the Greek philosophy of beauty, through the reading of the platonists, but they did not simply repeat them because with the Christian Revelation a new factum has entered: it is Christ Himself, “the fairest of the children of men”, to which the Church, recalling His suffering, also applies the prophecy of Isaiah (53, 2): “He had neither beauty, nor majesty, nothing to attract our eyes, no grace to make us delight in him.” In the passion of Christ a beauty is found that goes beyond the exterior and it is learned “that the beauty of truth also embraces offence, pain, and even the dark mystery of death, and that this can only be found in accepting suffering, not in ignoring it,” as the then Cardinal Ratzinger indicated. Therefore, he spoke of a “paradoxical beauty”, noting however that the paradox is “contrast and not contradiction”, hence it is in its totality that the beauty of Christ is revealed, when we contemplate the image of the crucified Saviour, Who shows His “love unto the end” (John, 13, 1).

The redemptive beauty of Christ is reflected above all in the Saints of every age, but also in the works of art which the Faith has brought forth: they have the ability to purify and raise our hearts and, thereby, to transport us beyond ourselves to God, who is Beauty itself. The theologian Joseph Ratzinger is convinced that this encounter with beauty “which wounds the soul and in this way opens its eyes” is “the true apology of Christian faith.” As Pope he reiterated these thoughts of his in the meeting with the clergy of Bozen-Brixen of 8 August 2008 and in his message on the occasion of the recent public conference of the Pontifical Academies of 24 November 2008: “This” – the Holy Father said on the first occasion – “in a certain way is proof of the truth of Christianity: heart and reason find one another, beauty and truth touch each other.” [NLM note: translation corrected from the original German]

In addition, for Benedict XVI, the beauty of truth is manifested above all in the sacred liturgy. In fact, he resumed his reflection on the redemptive beauty of Christ in his post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis (22 February 2007), where he reflects on the glory of God which expresses itself in the celebration of the Paschal Mystery. The liturgy “is, in a certain sense, a glimpse of heaven on earth. (…) an essential element of the liturgical action, since it is an attribute of God himself and his revelation. These considerations should make us realize the care which is needed, if the liturgical action is to reflect its innate splendour.”(n. 35). The beauty of the liturgy manifests itself also in the material things of which man, made up of soul and body, has need to reach the spiritual realities: the building of worship, the furnishings, images, music, the dignity of the ceremonies themselves. The liturgy requires the best of our abilities, to glorify God the Creator and Redeemer.

At the general audience of 6 May 2009, dedicated to St. John Damascene, known as a defender of the cult of images in the Byzantine world, Benedict XVI explains “the very great dignity that matter has acquired through the Incarnation, capable of becoming, through faith, a sign and a sacrament, efficacious in the meeting of man with God.”

In this regard, the chapter on “The Dignity of the Eucharistic Celebration” in Ecclesia de Eucharistia (17 April 2003), the last encyclical of the Servant of God John Paul II, deserves to be re-read, where he teaches that the Church, like the woman of the anointing at Bethany, identified by John the Evangelist with Mary, the sister of Lazarus (John, 12; cf. Matthew, 26; Mark, 14), “has feared no ‘extravagance’, devoting the best of her resources to expressing her wonder and adoration before the unsurpassable gift of the Eucharist”(47-48).

The liturgical question is also essential for the appreciation of the great Christian heritage, not only in Europe but also in Latin America and other parts of the world where the Gospel has been proclaimed for centuries. In 1904, the writer Marcel Proust (1871-1922) published a famous article in “Le Figaro”, entitled La mort des Cathédrales, against the proposed laicist legislation that would have led to a suppression of state subsidies for the Church and threatened the religious use of the French cathedrals. Proust argues that the aesthetic impression of these great monuments is inseparable from the sacred rites for which they were built. If the liturgy is no longer celebrated in them, they will be converted into cold museums and become truly dead. A similar observation is found in the writings of Joseph Ratzinger, i.e. that “the great cultural tradition of the faith has an extraordinary strength that also applies for the present: that which in museums can only be witness of the past, admired with nostalgia, in the liturgy continues to become living present” (The Spirit of the Liturgy).

During his recent travel to France, the Pope referred to this idea in his homily for Vespers celebrated on 12 September 2008, in the splendid cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris which he praised as “a living hymn of stone and light” for the praise of the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God in the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was right there, where the poet Paul Claudel (1868-1955) had had a singular experience of the beauty of God, during the singing of the Magnificat of the Vespers of Christmas 1886, which led him to conversion. It is this via pulchritudinis which can become a way for the proclamation of God also to the man of today.

(© L’Osservatore Romano – 8-9 June 2009)

Details of the painting in Dubina:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sergiop/2966444291/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/farlykat/2257193466/

Part III

METALWORK

Once again, from L’Art d’Eglise, we see some examples of metalwork in the context of both a chalice, as well as two monstrances.

Concluding Thoughts and a Caveat

The intent here was primarily two fold.

One was to introduce a further layer of nuance into the critical consideration of certain modern forms of the liturgical arts, which are too often simply thought of as product of the post-conciliar era. As with many things (and this was recently pointed out with regard to sacred music as well, by way of a 1957 editorial in the journal Caecilia), the roots go much deeper, often relating to a certain “vanguard” of the Liturgical Movement, and so if we are to approach these matters adequately, then we must look well before the post-conciliar period. (Paired with this is also the importance of noting that one likewise shouldn’t draw the simple conclusion that anything that came before, even if “traditional” in style is therefore necessarily good. As we have our share of poor pre-conciliar hymns, we also have our share of poor pre-conciliar art in traditional styles.)

The second was similar insofar as there was also a desire to introduce a layer of nuance into the consideration of the possibility of development within the liturgical arts itself. Too often, people on other side of the divide approach these matters in a very black and white way. Either development is rejected out of hand as necessarily inferior, or the traditional expressions are rejected out of hand as inferior or obsolete. (Hence we end up with situations where some attached to the usus antiquior cannot fathom Mass in those books without the accompaniment of Roman style vestments, and some attached to the usus recentior, the modern Roman liturgy, cannot fathom Mass in the modern books with such things — and of course, the Roman example is simply one example.)

Some of our most traditional monasteries today, monasteries which act either in a reform of the reform capacity (e.g. Heilgenkreuz), or within the capacity of the usus antiquior (e.g. Le Barroux), do a fine job in witnessing against such dichotomies — and it puts me to mind that, to date, much of what seems best in relation to the early Liturgical Movement (either in practical execution or in theory) is that which specifically came out of that movement within its monastic context.

This brings me to a final caveat. While the intent here has been to focus on development within the liturgical arts, there is an assumption that must be avoided, and which needs to be explicitly addressed lest the point be misunderstood — particularly since modernity has been given so much priority in recent decades, and traditional expressions having been viewed with such skepticism.

While it is important that we do try to re-approach development within the liturgical arts as per the new liturgical movement of Benedict XVI, and indeed, as per the tradition of the Church herself, and while we must drop principles and associations to the contrary, at the same time, this does not mean it is spurious for people today to have churches built in fully traditional styles (e.g the Shrine in La Crosse, or the chapel at Thomas Aquinas College), nor to have vestments made explicitly in historical styles (be they Roman, gothic revival, conical, Borromean revival or otherwise). In short, while the approach to development in continuity is important, both practically and in principle, it is not as though this supercedes these long-utilized historical expressions, nor is it an absolute requirement it be approached in each and every instance.

In point of fact, I would suggest our traditional, historical expressions have a kind of pride of place (similar to what we would think of with regard to chant), and given that they are the basis for that very re-approach we have been considering, it is quite important that they have continued, visible expression, particularly with so much of the approach to modernity having not been terribly successful to date.

These expressions continue to speak to modern man and are deeply seeded within our ecclesiastical, liturgical and even cultural vocabulary and so they are most certainly quite relevant and applicable within our times.

As Msgr. Guido Marini noted, “…the important thing is not so much antiquity or modernity, as the beauty and dignity.” When it comes down to it, that is the ultimate criteria. Continuity, beauty and dignity.

This highly significant article was published today on the New Liturgical Movement webpage:

Sunday, June 07, 2009
Continuity, Beauty and Dignity within the Liturgical Arts and their Development
by Shawn Tribe

While the question of liturgical development is a constant point of discussion today, another issue that often arises outside of the question of the development of the texts and ceremonies of the missals, is that which further surrounds and clothes the liturgical rites, namely, the liturgical arts.

Before proceeding further, a comment seems necessary. Some take a rather reductionist approach to such questions, making them matters of mere aesthetics, and hence, misplaced priorities when it comes to proposing their consideration. However, far from being superfluous, these elements work hand in hand with those same texts and ceremonies, bringing a particular character and spirit to the liturgical rites and ceremonies, which in turn catechize us and engage the fullness of our divinely-created being — which as the Pope recently reminded us, is not merely that of the intellect, but much more. (cf. Wednesday General Audience, June 3, 2009) These things then are a gateway if you will; a “mover” which moves us to the greater depths and meaning of the liturgy, helping to incarnate the Faith and assist us in the worship of the Holy Trinity.

That apologetic aside, certainly one critique we hear in the contemporary post-conciliar age is in relation to those same arts. Be it sacred architecture, sacred music, vestment design, metalwork, muralwork, sculpture or otherwise. Often the critique goes that they are quite uninspiring and lacking in the character of beauty — and in my estimation that critique is quite often merited. The reasons given for this, if they are given, may be in relation to their particular forms and stylistic qualities, or it may be due to their relative absence, being influenced by a kind of functionalism and minimalism. Some may simply attribute it to their “modernity” categorically, though this seems to me to be overly simplistic on a variety of levels, since modernity might have various manifestations and like any style and period, there can be exaggerations as well as good and bad manifestations.

Of course, often going alongside this is the popular attribution of the source of these things — by those both for and against — to “the Council” or to “the 60’s”, and the desire for a vocabulary of modernity. But while that period may well have seen the further spread these particular expressions, they were not its advent and still earlier influences can be seen.

A Consideration of the Origins of a Certain Kind of Liturgical Modernity

The popular tendency is to think of the pre-conciliar period, most especially prior to the 1950’s, as being entirely traditional in its stylistic expressions. This is problematic on two different levels.

In the first instance, it is problematic insofar as this consideration would seem to presume that there were no problems and struggles in relation to our liturgical arts previous to this question of artistic modernism. In point of fact, these stylistically “traditional” expressions of the early 20th century (e.g. L’Art Saint-Sulpice) are themselves often the subject of significant critique; as having become cheaply produced, of low quality and overly-sentimentalist in character — and in that regard, not the model for liturgical art. In that sense, one can rightly ask how representative of the tradition these might truly be, but on the most cursory level.

In the second instance it is problematic because what is often thought of as “post-conciliar” in manifestation was extant and growing in influence well before that period. (See right for an example of an piece from the late 1930s-40s.)

To seek out the origins of this manifestation of liturgical art, we need to look deeper than the cliché explanations of the Council and the 1960’s, and I would propose we need to give consideration to the secular artistic currents that had been developing toward the end of the 19th century and which accelerated greatly within the 20th century.

One of the strong currents found within the avant-garde art movement was that of a certain fascination with “primitivism”, which looked to non-European sources for inspiration and which was significantly rooted in a rejection of more traditional Western forms of art. The 20th century Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso, was particularly influential in this regard. His contemporary, Henri Matisse, was similarly fascinated by these same influences and may well have introduced Picasso himself to them. On it goes through various examples within the 20th century and even the late 19th century.

It seems quite unlikely that this notable current in the art world did not influence certain schools associated with the Liturgical Movement, particularly as the desire to speak to “modern man” grew as a concept — with all the presumptions of the time as to what that might entail, including the presumption that what is classical and traditional somehow could no longer speak adequately to modern man. There are various references which do in fact speak to this influence, however, a simple stylistic comparison may well suffice. Let us begin with a comparison of the primitivism of Picasso’s early work to the example already shown above.

(“Head of a Woman,” 1907, Picasso / Station of the Cross, 1930’s or 40’s)

In both examples, we see strong lines and very two dimensional approach; the figures are rough-hewn with a mask-like quality to them. The station of the Cross to the right could as easily be a Picasso sculpture as it was a product of liturgical art, and yet this station of the cross was not created in the 1970’s, but rather in the earlier half of the 20th century.

While these two examples are particularly rigid, even severe, these same sort of influences often found a softer expression in the art of Matisse or, even earlier, Paul Gauguin. Gauguin’s The Yellow Christ, painted in 1889, not only bears the characteristic marks of an interest in primitive art, it also shows itself similar in these same features to certain types of liturgical art that were being manifest not only in the present day but certainly into the earlier half of the 20th century.

A comparison of Gauguin’s portrait of Christ, stylistically, and that of a typical modern set of the stations of the Cross brings forward some points of comparison. If one looks at the stylistic qualities of the figures in each and how they are depicted, one will note the heavy and sculpted forms of the figure, the facial features and so on. This type of figure is very common to this period and was certainly quite common within this period of modern art.

Of course, the examples so far shown relate to sculpture or painting most specifically, but in terms of vestments and sacred architecture, other examples of what would be considered very modern today were also to be found prior to the Council.

In terms of sacred architecture, one could already find very minimalist structures with very rigid, linear qualities. In many regards, this shows the marks of the influence of movements like that of the Bauhaus or the architect and artist Le Corbusier.

(A comparison of a Le Corbusier interior and a church built in the early 1950’s)

As regards vestments we can likewise see variations in cut and style that many would today associate as “post-conciliar” but which well pre-date the conciliar and post-conciliar periods:

(These vestments are from the latter half of the 1940’s)

A consideration of the liturgical arts of the 20th century are replete with examples such as these as early as at least the 1930’s. In that regard, there is nothing specifically “conciliar” nor post-conciliar about them. Rather, they represent a deeper trend that was represented in late 19th and 20th century art and, in the case of the examples above, represent one particular current associated with the liturgical movement.

In this regard, if we are to genuinely stop and take stock of the matter, we need to move away from convenient clichés and consider the deeper roots, not only from whence it originated, but also why and what other approaches might instead be taken.

Tradition and Development: Quo Vadis?

As noted earlier, “modernity” might have various manifestations and there have been exaggerations and bad manifestations, but also those which were good. One of the challenges that exists today is how we approach the question of “modernity” in the context of our tradition. Some might suggest we simply do not approach it, and while that would admittedly be easier, it seems less than satisfactory, being probably simply a reaction to some of the less than satisfactory attempts that have been tried heretofore — including, indeed, the ecclesiastical examples shown above. The problem is that this itself is out of sync with our venerable tradition which, while traditional, is neither reclusive nor immobilist.

From time to time over the years, we have touched upon the question of what might constitute appropriate forms of development in relation to the liturgy and the sacred arts; development that was in continuity with our tradition. (See for example: A Consideration of Two Very Different Directions in “Contemporary” Church Architecture) This becomes all the more relevant as a point of consideration today in the light of Pope Benedict XVI’s own attempts to highlight the importance of the liturgy and its forms, while also teaching the principle of continuity, and development or reform in continuity.

It seems fairly evident that the intention of Benedict XVI is to move us away from two polar opposites that have developed from this situation. One which would seek to rupture the Church from her tradition, seeing only through the lens of modernity while rejecting our tradition as obsolete, undesireable and incapable of speaking to modern man; the other which, in reaction to this extreme, itself retreats into another: that of an immobilistic philosophy which perceives modernity and development generally as being undesireable and incapable of being put into a proper application that will be of benefit and value. (To this I would also add the assumption that all manifestations of “traditional” are equal, with cross-reference to the debate surrounding L’Art Saint-Sulpice.)

By contrast, the Pope presents us a model whereby the tradition is valued and continues to have lived expression. It is something which has a defining voice and expression within the life of the Church, fostering and shaping the character of new developments; creating a continuity and harmony within the tapestry of those expressions. This model is nothing new, but in point of fact is the model that has always been. In that sense, the Pope is trying to foster regularity and normalcy.

The Pope’s approach seems adequately summarized by his Master of Ceremonies, Msgr. Guido Marini, in an interview he gave last year:
…it must be said that the liturgical vestments chosen, as well as some details of the rite, intend to emphasize the continuity of the liturgical celebration of today with that which has characterized the life of the Church in the past. The hermeneutic of continuity is always the precise criterion by which to interpret the Church’s journey in the time. This also applies to the liturgy. As a Pope cites in his documents Popes who preceded him in order to indicate continuity in the magisterium of the Church, so in the liturgical sphere a Pope also uses liturgical vestments and sacred objects of the Popes who preceded him to indicate the same continuity also in the Lex orandi. But I would like to point out that the Pope does not always use old liturgical vestments. He often wears modern ones. The important thing is not so much antiquity or modernity, as the beauty and dignity, important components of every liturgical celebration.
Continuity, beauty and dignity then are the criterion, be it ancient or modern, for that is what dictates their propriety for the liturgy.

We have all seen our share of less than efficacious attempts, but what then might be some better examples of development in continuity in relation to the liturgical arts?

While recently searching through the 20th century liturgical arts journal, L’Art de l’Eglise, I came across a few examples which struck me as meriting consideration.

VESTMENTS

In addition to these, I would present again a couple of examples from the Benedictine Abbey of Le Barroux:

From Downside Abbey is another example which shows a conical chasuble from this period, which was a popular revival of the earlier Liturgical Movement in particular, especially within its monastic context:

Whatever one’s personal stylistic preference (and one is certainly free to hold another preference), each of these examples strikes me as having the fulfilled that three-fold principle of development that is marked by continuity, beauty and dignity. They are certainly clearly within the vocabulary of the tradition, and yet also incorporate certain aspects of modernity, in some cases by way of the textiles used, in others the style of the ornamentation, the pattern in the orphreys, or their design.

The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Schulenburg, Texas

Some notes on the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Schulenburg, Texas

http://books.google.ie/books?id=I0GviYfRKOsC&pg=PA333&lpg=PA333&dq=leo+dielmann+architect&source=bl&ots=sjBUUwheaT&sig=aut70b1rre3Ph2AXcAj5rsU33pE&hl=en&ei=ZfArSrGPFIvD_Qb0k5zrCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#PPA333,M1

Neo-Gothic tradition in church building in Texas, USA

In the mid to late 19th. century, German and Bohemian emmigrants began to settle in Texas, especially in the more frontier parts of the state. While encouraged to bil in the classical or Spanish idiom, they preferred to buid in the tradition with which they had been familiar in Germany and in Bohemia. Thus across those parts of texas settled by Central European emmigrants we have an interesting local evolution of church building in the neo-Gothic style. Many of the furnishing, like their counterpart churches in ireland, came from Germany and particularly from the the Bavarian glass works of Mayer of Munich.

Among the architects responsible for the Texas neo-Gothic, mention must be made of Leo Dielmann, Fredrich Donecher, Godfried Flury, Jakobus Warenberger,

The first example here is that of the the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Schulenburg, near San Antonio, Texas, which was buuilt by Leo M.J. Dielmann in 1906:

Pinturicchio: St Bernard of Clairvaux, St Louis of Toulouse and St. Anthony of Padua in the Ara Coeli in Rome